Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Fear and Loathing in the Cold and Flu Aisle at CVS

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

Who put Mannitol in my Mucinex?

I am still sick. Not very sick, but a little. I got sick on Christmas Day. That was almost 20 days ago. How long can a virus last? At this rate, people who broke their arms hanging Christmas lights will get well before I do.

I’m only taking two medications now. Nyquil and Hall’s cough drops. At first, I took the drops because they seemed to soothe my dry throat. Now I’m not sure why I’m taking them. But I don’t know if I can stop. The packages says to use one drop every two hours. I read that after establishing a regimen of one drop every ten minutes. Now I’m wondering…what are the long-term health effects of overdosing on menthol and eucalyptus oil? You could hang me in a taxi to freshen the air. It’s like I’ve been using Lestoil for aftershave.

Marv likes Hall’s, too. I was lying in bed with him the other day, listening to a CD, when I noticed that he was obsessed with my mouth. Something in that region was driving him crazy. He was standing on my chest with his eyes wide, squeaking frantically and trying to put his beak in my mouth. I figured it had to be the cough drop I was working on, so I gave him one of his very own. He chomped it up while shaking his head to dissipate the minty fumes. It apparently caused him some discomfort, but that didn’t slow him down at all. It was like me, eating curry.

Maynard just eats the wrappers.

I guess I’m going to have to go cold turkey when the drops run out. At least I still have Nyquil. Although it doesn’t seem to do anything any more, except for helping with congestion. I miss that Nyquil high. Ten minutes after a dose, I was as happy as Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet. They ought to make Nyquil in a convenient inhaler mask. I could chase it with PABST…BLUE…RIBBON.

Obscure references. They are what I live for.

I still think Kyle Maclachlan is K.D. Lang. No one has proven otherwise.

I never watched Twin Peaks, but if you feel like making references in the comments, knock yourself out. I thought it was very dull. I remember something about pie, and a scene with a lady in a clear plastic laundry bag. I think.

I think I can actually DO things now. That would be a good idea. Doing things. Lying in a recliner refreshing The Drudge Report and waiting for death is not much of a lifestyle.

The Internet has gotten really boring. I used to read lots of blogs, and I wrote several blogs, and I had a big time. Now it’s pretty much me, Weather Underground, Sondra K., Day by Day, and Drudge. Moxie quit blogging. Agent Bedhead keeps writing about celebrities I have never heard of because I’m old. Dennis doesn’t have much going on now that Pajamas Media is on life support. The Hampsterdance is gone. Is it any wonder I have felt compelled to venture into the real world more and more, and that I spend more time dealing with actual human beings? Some are born with a life, some achieve a life, and some have a life thrust upon them. That’s how I see it.

Pie…that would be good. Yes. Pie.

I will make a list of actual things to do. Then I may conceivably do some of them. This is my plan. I like it.

I can always leave Drudge open while I work.

Wait Till Ahmadinejad Gets his Hanes on You

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

Don’t Shop at Mohammed’s Secret

Wheeeee my brain is still floating in a viral mist. I may go back to the doctor today to see if he has better drugs to help me breathe while I sleep. The virus is doing what they so often do. It’s touring my body, with a different stop every day. First, the throat. Then the bones. Then the sinuses. Then the lungs. I suppose I’ll get well when it runs out of new places to go.

I have to wonder if I’m one of the lucky people who get the flu in spite of being vaccinated. I don’t think so. I haven’t had much of a fever. But this is no cold.

I think I made a mistake yesterday, getting up and fooling with tools. Maybe doctors really mean it when they prescribe rest. I thought they just said that so they could feel like they were helping.

I’ve looked at the news, and it appears that we will all have to expose our genitals to airport screeners from now on. For some this will be a degrading nuisance. Others will think, “Finally, I have an excuse.”

No one ever listens to me. I solved the screening problem a long time ago. We need an express line for people willing to eat a slice of ham in front of airport employees. People who eat pork don’t blow up airplanes. And it’s not racial profiling. Oh, no. It’s DIETARY profiling. Totally different.

I know I’m eccentric, but I can’t shake this mysterious hunch that says terrorism is somehow connected to Islam.

It’s disturbing how underwear has evolved into an offensive weapon. First, the Unabomber tried to kill himself with his underwear. That wasn’t so bad. Now underwear is going tactical, and they’re using it to kill other people. Do you know what this means? We’re all carrying concealed weapons now. Except for hippies who don’t wear underwear.

Sensible underwear laws NOW! Where is Sarah Brady when you need her? We need an advocate to take a stand before people start going to underwear shows and using loopholes to buy armor-piercing cop-killer underwear. Studies show that over 99% of violent crime victims have underwear in their homes. Even more disturbing, very few of them store their underwear properly, in underwear safes.

Don’t make me connect the dots.

I posted my new terrorism remedy on Twitter. Are you ready for it? Here’s how we punish terrorists from now on: exploding underwear activated by calls from Dick Cheney’s cell phone.

We’re going to have to refine our jargon. From now on, going without underwear will have to be referred to as “NOT going commando.”

We’re going to have to ban assault underwear. That much is clear. And we’ll have to come up with classifications, such as automatic and semi-automatic underwear.

I estimate it will be about three days before we hear about an anonymous porn message board featuring backscatter photos of attractive tourists. It would be wise to prepare. The next time I fly, I plan to sell ad space on my belly. For the right sum, I’ll get glue and sequins and spell out “This Bud’s for You” or “Palin 2012.” How about, “Ask me About Herbalife”?

I’m trying to figure out what Muslims could to to humiliate us further, but I’m drawing a blank. Well, that’s not true. I forgot about the butt bomber. Remember him? He hid his bomb in a very unfortunate location. When his specialty gets popular, we’ll have privacy invasions that make backscatter scans seem about as offensive as passport photos.

Here’s a theological question. If a Muslim wears exploding underwear on a plane, but he sits next to Mitt Romney, who is wearing magical Mormon underwear, which underwear wins? Will the magic underwear prevail? I hope Mormons never get into terrorism (beyond producing Harry Reid). Their underwear is so big, one pair could take out a city block.

I foresee a day when no American will be able to go anywhere, for any reason. When that happens, Muslims will walk to your house and blow their underpants up when you open the door.

You know who must be embarrassed today? The guy who made the Flight 253 underwear bomb. His pal trusted him to give him a nice clean blast, and instead, the terrorist is now basically a lady. Fat lot of good 72 virgins will do him now. How do you apologize for a thing like that? I’ve had friends let me down, but generally it involved things like failing to repay small loans. When a buddy char-broils your entire crotch, de-friending him on Facebook doesn’t really express the extent of your hurt feelings.

Stay in on New Year’s Eve. I think it’s safe to assume there will be an exploding-underpants flash mob at every celebration in the United States. I’m glad Dick Clark isn’t alive to see this. Oh, wait. He is alive. Hope he has ear plugs and a polycarbonate face shield. As the premiere rock and roll impresario of the Fifties, he is very familiar with the sight of flying underwear, but in the past, it usually contained hotel keys and love notes, not homemade napalm.

Hey, I just realized who we need to call to fix this crisis. Tom Jones! If anyone knows how to deal with airborne underpants, it’s Tom.

I’m eagerly waiting to see what fanatical Islam can do to make air travel more disgusting and ridiculous.

Leper

Friday, December 25th, 2009

Stand Upwind

My throat feels funny and I have a fever of 99.4°. You are advised to shun me until further notice. If you are female and therefore already shunning me, you may disregard this message.

What’s a good cocktail based on Nyquil? Can I make a frozen daiquiri from it?

Dogged by Controversy

Monday, December 21st, 2009

Flea Confrontation

Give me your opinions on a vital issue.

You have a dog. You find flea bites on the dog’s butt. The dog’s butt is sore.

You have a flea-killing product called Advantix, but you have not been using it. It works like this: you put a drop on the dog once in a while, and it kills the fleas.

Would you:

A) Take your dog to the veterinarian and ask if medical science can cure his butt, regardless of cost?

B) Give the dog a flea dip, put Advantix on him, and see how his butt looks in a couple of days?

I think you will be able to predict my answer. I have a spider bite on my back, and it’s a big boily knot of a thing. I probably have a low-grade fever, and it may be the reason I got a kidney stone yesterday. I am not going to the doctor. God healed me of the kidney stone before I could get treatment, and I don’t care about the spider bite.

If I’m not deserving of a trip to the ICU, neither is a dog. That’s how I see it.

He Hates QANTAS

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

Mighty Morphin’ Mormon Marsupial

I turned Fox News on while I was eating a mid-afternoon pork snack, and Glenn Beck was on.

I can’t shake the feeling that I am being lectured by a koala bear.

Unofficial Explanation

Sunday, November 29th, 2009

Obvious

To all the people speculating about the Tiger Woods car accident, speculating as to how he managed to do a 120-degree turn and destroy an Escalade on a clear night with nobody else on the road, please remember before you judge…the man is half Asian.

Scan Update

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

News Later Today

It looks like I was wrong about the timing of my sister’s scan results. She is with her doctor now, and he’s giving her the interpretation. It may seem strange that she would be there by herself, and that I would not know exactly what was going on, but that’s how it has been much of the time for the last few months. It has been very difficult to stay engaged and informed.

My father and I are going to try to get her to let us take her out to dinner.

Thank you for your prayers and encouragement. She thanks you, too.

Islamic Nutwad Nomenclature

Saturday, November 14th, 2009

Terrorist v. Guerilla

I guess I’m going to catch it for saying this, but I don’t consider Nidal Hasan a terrorist.

To me, “terrorist” means someone who attacks civilians with no justification. This nut shot up an Army base. So I would call him a guerilla, a traitor, and maybe a spy. But I don’t think “terrorist” fits, even though I’ve probably already used that term to describe him.

I don’t want people to get the crazy idea that I approve of his slimy, despicable actions. But Fort Hood is a legitimate military target, even if this attack made no sense from a strategic standpoint. I don’t think it makes sense to compare this attack to 911. I wouldn’t call the Pearl Harbor attack terrorism, either.

Whatever he is, it’s contemptible.

Matched Set

Saturday, October 24th, 2009

Why not Pack Them in the Same Box?

Tonight I went to the drugstore to stock up on toilet paper. While I was there, I remembered that I needed some old-man cereal. So I showed up at the register with a box of Fiber One and a twelve pack of Scott tissue.

I apologize to the makers of Fiber One if the sight of me with these items discouraged any shoppers from trying their product.

Who Was That Masked Man?

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

He Smelled Like Lysol and Prime Beef

I have the swine flu figured out. All you have to do is get a freezer and shop at Costco.

Today I saw a crazy report on Fox News. They said a study at Purdue University had concluded that 60% of us are going to get the flu, and about 25% of us will be pretty ill. That sounds horrendous. I can’t find information on the percentage of people who get the seasonal flu. Surely it’s not 60%.

The thing that alarms me about the swine flu is that it’s the first flu I’ve ever encountered that has an appreciable chance of killing me. I don’t even like having a sore throat. Death is considerably worse.

If you have Costco and a freezer, you can pile up all sorts of stuff to eat while people die around you. This isn’t my objective, as I stuff the freezer. But it works out that way.

The study also says we’re not going to get vaccinated early enough to make a dent in the contagion. Nice work, Mr. Obama. I’m sure you and your family have already had the vaccine. Don’t you worry about the rest of us. We will try not to die in front of your motorcade.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

More Medals Than Idi Amin

This is embarrassing. I won another Nobel Peace Prize.

Last time I won for not strangling my neighbor’s yappy dogs, who wake me at 5:30 every day. This time I won for not ramming a lady in a minivan at the McDonald’s drive-thru. She had about 19 kids in there with her, and none of them knew what they wanted, and she started asking the cashier if the lettuce was union-picked.

This time I won an Obama-head snow globe. You shake it, and little snowflakes shaped like dollar signs rain down on a grinning plastic Obama head. Most of them hang up on the ears.

Why do women always want to interrogate the drive-thru people? If you really care whether the hash browns are PETA-approved, just go in and ask. Don’t make me wait in the sun until they quit serving breakfast. Where is your humanity?

So anyway, I saved that lady’s life.

Don’t make a big thing out of it. I hate being lionized and celebrated, regardless of how much I obviously deserve it.

Have you been watching the Obama/Fox feud? I don’t know what to make of it. I had been praying this guy would do something so silly it would wake people out of their coma and make them realize he’s in over his head. Maybe this is it. Fighting with the press is like having a head-butting contest with a parked backhoe. It will end poorly. Ask Joe McCarthy.

What’s with this White House and its junior high antics? They put out that whiny blog about “Fox lies.” They have the King of All Credibility, Robert Gibbs, claiming Fox is not a news organization. What’s next? Are they going to toilet-paper Glenn Beck’s house and say mean things about him on Myspace?

I’m no Glenn Beck fan. Regardless of whether what he says is true, his delivery is just too whiny for me. I can’t listen to a grown man cry all day. But it seems to me that he’s about as credible as his liberal counterparts, one of whom was just Acorned into the US Senate. Where is the blog for Rachel Maddow lies? How about the blog for Chris Matthews lies? I don’t watch their shows, but I would imagine they occasionally say stuff that isn’t true. Of course, if they did, it would almost certainly benefit Obama. Perhaps that’s the okay kind of lie.

Some dogs, you can kick every day. They’ll keep coming back and licking your hand. Others eventually bite. Obama has been kicking the press for over a year. Scratch that. He’s been having his servants kick the press, which is even more degrading. Nobody wants to be bitten by Renfield or shot by Gabby Hayes. It’s okay to be defeated by Luthor, but nobody wants to be pimp-slapped by Otis. Even the liberal press has been hammered. Will the Fox feud wake them up? When your entire profession is being threatened, sooner or later, you have to notice. If the Obamites can mistreat the biggest name in cable news, they can definitely beat on little tykes like Olbermann and David Gregory.

I can tell the Fox people have mixed feelings. On the one hand, this is fantastic for ratings. Obama filled the gun industry with unprecedented vigor, and he’s doing the same thing to Fox. They don’t have to look for a big Obama story. The story came to them. They are the story. Even on other networks. On the other hand, they would like to do their jobs, and he is preventing them.

I always said this guy was a tyrant at heart. Imagine what he and his subordinates would do, if they were unrestrained. We’d be well on our way to a second Cambodia. Not falling dead into ditches with 7.62mm rounds in our heads, but headed in that direction.

The protections the founding fathers put in the Constitution seem almost silly when our leaders behave. When they get full of themselves, suddenly those protections seem relevant. No wonder people have emptied store shelves of ammunition and guns. “It can happen here.” Isn’t that what they used to say?

I have to wonder if what Obama is doing is Constitutional. He’s an agent of the government, and he’s attacking an organization for exercising freedom of speech. Singling it out, in what could be a violation of the Equal Protection clause. Government agents don’t have the same freedom the rest of us have. The Constitution puts limits on them, and sometimes those limits are surprising. Fox should sue and see what happens. Win or lose, a year from now, their ratings would be so high, the other guys would quit. They’d run infomercials 24/7, instead of just on the weekends.

I don’t really care whether Obama knocks it off. He’s helping Fox, and maybe he’s helping some Americans realize they elected someone too small for the job. Those are good things. If he quits, maybe it will mean he’s maturing. That would be good, too. The only thing certain is that he’ll look bad either way.

Oh, look! In the little plastic Igloo! Isn’t that Karl Marx? Thank you, Nobel panel. Words cannot express my gratitude.

Drawers of Frustration

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

Make New Friends at the Laundromat

The pimply thing that was bothering me yesterday came back! I was highly annoyed. It disappeared, and I blogged it (having no common sense), and then it reappeared a couple of millimeters from the original location. Then it went away and reappeared in a third location. Then this morning, it disappeared again. The only thing I learned from this is not to make light of answered prayers.

Now I’m struggling with my third gay underwear crisis. Longtime readers will recall that I had a problem a couple of years ago; I could not find normal-sized underwear in Miami, because everyone here has a giant butt. I don’t know if it’s the frijoles and yuca or what. You have to go above size 38 to find selection. So I ordered some underwear online, and when it arrived, it turned out I had misjudged the photos. What I ended up with were San Francisco eye patches. Ideal for exercise, but not an easy thing to explain to anyone who sees you doing laundry.

Then this year I found the most amazing underwear in the universe. Mundo Unico microfiber boxer briefs. This is the ultimate in functional underwear. Unfortunately, it’s designed by Latins. In Colombia. So while it’s completely normal and perhaps even masculine by Latin standards, here in the US, it’s incredibly gay. If there was such a thing as a gayometer, these things would set it on fire and make springs pop out of it.

I started out with one pair of the plainest black ones they made, and they looked reasonably normal, so I ordered six more pairs. Sadly, they were three inches shorter. I did not realize that. So instead of something resembling bike shorts, I ended up with something that would go really well with a teddy. They would look fantastic on Heidi Klum.

Well. So would Pampers or even old newspapers. Bad example.

On top of this, it turned out that the site where I got them was aimed at gay men. I figured this out from the email ads they started sending me. You would not believe this stuff. Every color of the rainbow. Thongs. Straps. I’m pretty sure I saw a leather biker’s cap in one photo. And the fruitiest models imaginable. I decided to unsubscribe, but then I thought, “What if they put the longer underwear on sale? I’ll never know.” So for months I’ve been getting these horrifying emails with pictures in them.

I figured it was no big deal. After all, nobody would know. Unless some moron wrote a blog post about it.

Oops.

My conclusion is that sometimes I work just a little too hard to get a bargain. I could have paid full price for underwear that looked nearly normal, but I Googled and Googled for a low price, and I ended up with something Richard Simmons probably wears. I think I’m going to give up, order the normal ones, throw out the creepy ones, and consider the expense tuition.

Now it looks like the normal ones are very hard to find at any price. Why can’t makers of heterosexual non-Latin underwear come up with a product like this? I don’t care how great these things are. I am not ordering them in turquoise, sheer black, lime green, or tiger stripes. I would go back and check the site for even-more-amusing colors, but my stomach can’t handle it.

The men’s underwear industry just isn’t cutting it. In the old days, you had boxers, which don’t really do anything to help you, or you could get briefs, which looked like diapers, fit poorly, and turned a mildewy-looking grey after three washes. Now it’s boxers, briefs, and functional underwear that is extremely gay.

At least I cheer up bored airport screeners.

One More Reason for Inferior Non-Americans to Admire Number One

Friday, October 9th, 2009

Can YOUR President Walk on Bottled Water?

What makes Americans look more egotistical and provincial?
George Bush wearing a flight suit and invading Iraq
Barack Obama accepting a Nobel Peace Prize after nine months in office
Nominating Barack Obama for a Nobel Peace Prize after nine DAYS in office
  
pollcode.com free polls

Had to edit this after a commenter pointed out the nomination deadline was in February.

Viral Message

Saturday, September 19th, 2009

SCORE!

Okay, keep this to yourselves.

The Walgreen’s at Bird Road and US 1 has flu shots. Hurry.

The Road Wearier

Thursday, September 17th, 2009

Roasting Like a Burger Under a Heat Lamp

I thought today would be a slow day, but I ended up hauling my sister around, getting groceries and prescriptions. Her doctor phoned a prescription in to a pharmacy about five miles away, and in Miami, five miles is like fifty because of the horrible traffic. We got to the pharmacy, and the Miami-bilingual (fluent Spanish, four words of English) pharmacist said she hadn’t filled the prescription because she had not been able to understand the doctor. So we came home, my sister called the doctor, the doctor excoriated the pharmacist, and then we went back. Two and a half hours of baking, roasting road time under the Miami sun, interrupted by an hour-long break, during which we had to search for my sister’s lost car keys.

We are seeing side effects, but we don’t know what caused them. They injected dye into her on Tuesday, and the iodine in the dye makes some people sick. They didn’t hydrate her after chemo on Monday, and that makes some people sick. Her radiation oncologist was contracting a bug when she saw him, so she is worried that he might have given it to her.

I should have some semblance of a life next week, but I am not setting my heart on it.

I have a little free time before dinner. I wish I had a long enough layover to support a nap.