Trumpets Sounding

What have I done? I’ve opened up a can of beans with my methane gas as an alternative fuel suggestion!

Weds I ate lunch in Central Park. It was a breezy, beautiful, sunny, 70 degrees day. A man with a dog came and sat down behind me. He stretched out, got a bit too relaxed and loudly released a gust of his own wind. He looked both surprised and guilty, and then he looked at the dog. I thought, “Don’t even try it. No way a dog that small created a sound that big.”

Then last night I was walking home and got behind a group of college kids that had just walked out of a bar. They were walking slow, so I walked up behind them and at the next street, I was going to squeeze past them. The kid in the very back slowed down even more, so he was about a foot in front of me. Right before I passed him, he passed on me. He even leaned to the right and shook his left leg. I half expected something to fall out of the bottom of his pants leg. He too made the same shocked and surprised look when we made eye contact.

Then it happened again today in the ladies bathroom at work. It's the protocol that when you know you have a stall mate, you release it slowly and silently. There are the standard sighing tinkle toots that you expect to hear in a ladies restroom, but this one was something you’d expect to hear at an elephant camp. It sounded like someone simultaneously opening a can of soda and a music box, “pffttttt-doodle-dooooo-dooodle-doooo-pffffffftttttt.”

Three strangers within three days tooted in front of me. One quite literally in front of me. What is this world coming to? I felt like I was part of the plot of a cult movie. One of those with three different story lines, then at the end you realize the thing they all had in common was they ripped one in front of the same woman by accident.

Convict Him? Suits Me.

Ohh, looky looky, it’s a two blog Thursday.

I forgot this funny nugget in my last blog. A Southern friend got called to Jury duty in New York. She thinks she didn’t get picked because she’s from the South and everyone just assumes Southerners are racist. Stereotypes are a shame really. A detriment to society. The nerve of those smug attorneys thinking she would pre-judge someone based on demographics!

I asked if she thought the guy was guilty. She sympathetically thought for a minute, “Yeah, he’s gonna be convicted. You should have seen the suit his attorney was wearing! The color! Ugh! He looked like a pimp…”

So, if you ever find yourself on trial, just remember, you might not be judged by the color of your skin, but definately by the color of your suit.

TomTiger and his Reign of Daytime Terror

I made a new resolution to try and blog every day, no matter how petty the topic.

I was reading up on the TomKat kitten and thinking back on Tom’s year of couch-jumping and word slinging. I don’t know much about Scientology, don’t know much about biology, don't know much about…Anyway, I’m not promoting or knocking it, but Tom Cruise has to be as bad for Scientology as Tammy Faye Baker was for Christianity. He’s not a respected spiritual spokesman but more like a faith pirate. “Errrhhh, shiver me timbers, get the glib anchor out of the way, matey, I’m going to choke Brook’s pill swallowing throat.”

I like that creative thinkers call him “excited” or “passionate”. Those are much better adjectives than just plain old crazy. I think he’s tense. He’s angry. He’s volatile. He’s just on the verge of cracking wide open. You can see his distressed soul on his strained face.

So, rather than the spiritually wounded Cruise, they should pick a better spokesperson for their religion, someone who interviews well, like Queen Latifah. That woman is smooth, like home-made peach ice-cream on a hot summer afternoon and damn funny! I don’t know what her religion is, but she’d make a good poster-child for contentment.

I should make a new resolution to quit hatin’ on people I don’t know. But, they way I see it, if you go into a public profession, you’re opening yourself up to be loved or hated by strangers. And if you've become unhinged, it's likely to be the later.

White Trash Spa Day

Admit it, you’ve had one.

My first one was at the LAX airport, two, maybe three years ago. I was milling around, killing time to catch a flight, and I walked past a BrookStone or one of those stores that sells massage chairs. I politely milled around for a few minutes before dropping my bag. I looked both ways before kicking off my shoes and putting all the settings on full throttle.

Awe, yeah. I had kinks in my back I didn’t know about. My neck was stiff and apparently my shin muscles were tight. My back was arched and my entire body was shaking when my phone rang. As if I hadn’t already called attention to myself by sitting a wee bit too long for a demo, now bells were ringing.

It was Art, “Hey, what are you doing?”

I had to think about this trick question for a minute, “uh, I’m having a white trash spa day.”

I’ve done this a few times since then. The crazy part is he knew I was a White Trash Spa-er and married me anyway. It makes me think thoughts like, “ain’t that some crazy shit.” These thoughts confirm that I’m white trash, if the spa-ing didn’t.

When you're new at the White Trash Spa, you do the customary look about at the robotic vacuum or the talking remote meat thermometers. But once you've been a few times, you just walk right in and get in a chair. No fluffing about with the contour body pillows or comparing prices on the polycarbonate drinkware. You don't even pretend to shop because you already know which chair you're heading for when you walk in the door. And if it’s a small shop and there’s only one chair, and it’s occupied, you can’t even mask your disappointment.

And the really advanced regulars give advice to timid newbie’s reading the info sheets on the chair, "awe yeah, you gotta check that one out, make sure you click the lumbar section!"

And you'll know the regulars, even before they start talking to you. They are all relaxed. They will either have sunglasses on or their eyes closed. They don't even fake it and pretend to read the info sheet. No walking around when they are done. Nope, they just shoot out the door.

For some reason I still feel compelled to fake shop. I don't know why. One look at me and my $15 purse and you know I'm not the type to buy a $5,000 chair.

Grass-Poots Organization

Today someone e-mailed me this article about gas-free beans:
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/04/26/1145861419058.html

I mean, come on. Taking the gas out of beans? That's like making unscented perfume.

Ironically, I had just read this article about San Francisco making electric power from methane gas:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/03/0321_060321_dog_power.html

It occured to me that, sometimes instead of getting rid of the problem, we fuss over getting rid of the solution. We need some way to pair up the people with problems with the people with the answers. I'm thinking of starting a grass-poots organization. Something like "Ban the New Bean and Keep Our Stinkin' Cities Clean!'

Alright, enough fartin' around for one day. Back to work.

Switch Hitter

Apparently I'm a switch-hitter. Everyone at the office I'm working at either drinks tea or coffee, but not both. Various times as I have been working here, somone will see me making tea and say something like "Oh, you drink tea instead of coffee? I drink tea, too." And to their horror and shock, I say, "no I drink both." Then once someone else saw me making tea and confused said, "Hey, I thought you coffee!"

Isn't this odd? Not only that the office is divided into the teas vs the coffees, but that anyone might actually notice my drinking preferences, let alone remember them the following day? So to keep everyone on their toes, I keep a cup of coffee and tea on my desk at all times. And, if I'm feeling really wild, some days I let loose and add milk to my tea...others I don't.