Big Ugly Man Doll

Do you know that feeling you get when you get up at 3am to use the facilities and get yourself a little more nice cold water, and you’re just awake enough to want to put your mind onto more pleasent things than whatever it was you were dreaming about, so you sit down in front of this machine and start surfing for new and exotic ways to, well, nevermind, but you start surfing the web for about 5 minutes, and you just start to think, ah, OK, I can go back to bed now, and just as you click on the last link you’re going to follow, you are startled out of your reverie and your bloody wits by a young voice right behind you saying, “I threw up.”  Do you know that feeling?

Not the she could help it, poor thing was sick as a dog and apologetic for keeping me up.  After an hour and a half of massive containment and cleanup efforts involving paper towels, wipes, baths, showers, and 75 minutes on hold with FEMA, I got her back to sleep.  By this time, it’s quarter to six.

I made coffee.  I went for a short walk, filled with sunrise, birdsong, and flowers.  I returned to find first one, then the second, of the other urchins awake.  I could tell the first one was up by the trail of ketchup leading to the basement.  “Everything tastes better with ketchup,” is his personal motto, but I draw the line at staircases.

The Reigning Queen of Pink, High Duchess of Fluff, and Protector of Barbies announced her presence with the usual preemptory, “I want waffles and hot chocolate.”  We scurry to obay, mostly because that sounded pretty good to me also.

The sick one is sleeping it off, as is SOBUMD, who slept through all of it but the bath part.  

And it’s not even 0730!

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Once again, I find myself doomed.  Today’s reason follows a conversation with Number One Daughter, the nine-yr-old Human Tape Recorder. (As mentioned, “Human Voice Ripper and MP3 Playback Device” lacks that je ne se qua.) It went as follows:

HTR:  I love Fridays in school because we have Guidance class.
BUMD:  You talk to the Guidance Counselor?
HTR:  She talks to the whole class every Friday.  Today we talked about the difference between hurtful comments and un-hurtful comments.  We had to list some comments that might be hurtful.  Some kids suggested, “Your best friend is ugly and you’re retarded.”  Someone else suggested, “Shut up, toilethead!”
BUMD:  I can see where those could be taken in a negative light…
HTR:  I said we could combine them and say, “Shut up, toilethead!  Your best friend is ugly and you’re a friggin’ retard!”  We came up with lots of hurtful comments.  Man, that was fun.
BUMD:  You’re supposed to be learning how to say things that aren’t hurtful, not how to make hurtful comments more effectively!
HTR:  Shut up, toilethead.  [laughs]

Doomed.

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This year continues my streak of great Cincos de Mayo.  Last year’s included a party, a pig, a keg – and then we broke out the Tequila.  This year’s was much more sedate, not to mention sober, but nonetheless a great Cinco de Mayo.

The day began in an office, where I was managed.  Then I drove to a second office, where I did some managing.  Next, I drove to still a third office, where there was mutual managing.  (And yes, we still manage to respect each other in the morning.)  Then I came home to wonderful dinner.  

At the second office, however, I was discussing business with a colleague when I noticed that there was a bowl on her shelf.  I noticed this not so much for the small clear glass bowl itself as for the sheer bewildering number of fresh green limes that it held.  In fact, in your standard factory-grade office with typical boring decor, any number of decorative fresh limes above zero is likely to cause comment.  Said colleague claimed feng shui, though the comments may have been the real reason.

But not my comments.  Oh, no.

If you are like me – and I am not for one minute suggesting that you are – you may have, rattling around in that steel trap of your brain, some highly esoteric humorlined up, just waiting for the right moment.   It’s not every day you get to pull these out, in context; in fact, it’s not even every decade.

BUMD:  “Oh, so those limes are in there keeping the moisture away from the inside of the glass bowl?”
Innocent Colleague:  “Um, huh?”
BUMD, removing one of the limes and holding it up:  “Ah yes, you see:  These are the limes that dry men’s bowls.“

Yep.  Not every day you get to whip that one out and wave it around.  To give you an idea how excited I was to get to pull out something that crusty, note the attribution:  

To Wolfman Jack, thanks for the tunes and crazy one-liners!  Rest in peace.

And to all, a wonderful Cinco de Mayo to youo!

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Before we get to the Time Suck of the Week, I’d like everyone to take a moment and reflect on the irony and tragedy of life. I, the Big Ugly Man Doll, have a problem with betting on horse races. Specifically, my problem is that I don’t live near enough to a track to make betting on horses feasible, and betting on line is boring. So, I only very rarely bet on horses. The running of the 134th Kentucky Derby was different, not because I was there, but since someone I know was likely to be there – and he (who is to be known only as the Future Senator from Kentucky) was kind enough to both enable my bad habits and guide me in my excesses. I had asked that he spot me for $20 on Eight Belles to win.

The Future Senator from Kentucky knows a LOT about horses, and explained (having seen all the horses the day before he spoke to me) that I’d be throwing away my yuppie foodstamp by betting on the filly to win. Despite the favored Big Brown having the 20th post position, the Future Senator from Kentucky was impressed with him: “There’s a lot of horse on that thing.” On my favorite, he said, and again I quote: “She’s a BIG bitch.” So on his advice I put $10 on Eight Belles to win, and another $10 on her to place.

Of course we were both right: Big Brown did win, and Eight Belles did place, not too far behind him. Then this wonderful and good looking horse, who had just done me the favor of winning me some cash, popped both ankle bones and had to be put down on the track, just minutes after damn near winning the Kentucky Freaking Derby. Damn you, gods of irony! Happiness does not mix well with unfounded generalized guilt. Happiness mixes well with bourbon and mint.

OK, enough grief. In a very disturbing note, Hillary Clinton told supporters, “I hope that everybody will go to the derby on Saturday and place just a little money on the filly for me,” a day or so before the race. Now let’s not all draw parallels between a filly running for the roses and one running for the Rose Garden, ’cause that would be mean. What bothers me about it is that I think this marks the first time a horse has committed Arkancide. Weird.

So, without further ado, The Time Suck of The Week. (I know, you were starting to think this *was* the TSOW.) There I was, innocently trolling for knowledge or maybe porn on the Good Job Sucking site, and what should I find but a link to a site with some of the most disturbingly and hauntingly beautiful photographs I have ever seen. It’s called Opacity. It describes through photographs urban ruins and abandoned places; the mission seems to be “recording their transformations through time before they are demolished.” The photos are worth paging through for hours on their own merit; what makes this site the TSOW are the comments. After reading about 200 of them, I felt like I knew many of these people. Some of them are really funny, even in the face of the most haunting pictures. And I want to find some of these places. And I want a better camera. ;-) 

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OK, I haven’t posted in a while, but I’ve decided on a new feature:  The TimeSuck of the Week.  Every Sunday I will post a new and wonderful way to waste time.  This week’s is simple:  

http://members.iinet.net.au/~pontipak/redsquare.html 

This TimeSuck is great in that not only will it help you consume those annoying moments of your life, but it will actually tell you how much of your life it has sucked away.   

Besides, you weren’t really going to do anything productive for the 11 seconds it will take you to lose this game anyway. 

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