Agate Pendate

As you know, I love to scan things and post them on this blog. Since I am on the theme of birthday presents, here is yet another one I received, this one from Tiffy. She was up North visiting her parents for Christmas, and there is a jewelry boutique up there she loves. (It is very nice.) This is what she got for me there this year: an agate pendant.

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Meet Ynka

Check it out - the Lost Llama of Hardingfele has been found! And he was definitely worth the wait. His name is Ynka Armakanki. Isn't he adorable?

Ynka

Here is a full-body scan of him. I am totally addicted to a particular game on ePlush and have become so proficient that I always win the championship. Would this make me the world champion? Anyway, Ynka can take all the credit. He can be world champion.

All of Ynka

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Today's Guest Spammer: James Joyce

Funny that just yesterday I mentioned writing a post in the style of James Joyce, because today in my spam folder there appeared a refreshing piece of spam that neither asked me to accept large sums of money from a dying foreigner nor go to a questionable website to receive a kiss from a stranger. Instead, it could easily have been written by Joyce, because it is total stream-of-conscience with a hint of a story emerging:

Or challenging or inviting one another to go in swimming. The boys in the Boy's Town used to make the motion of swimming with both arms; or they held up the forefinger and middle-finger in the form of a swallow-tail; they did this when it was necessary to be secret about it, as in school, and when they did not want the whole crowd of boys to come along; and often when they just pretended they did not want some one to know. They really had to be secret at times, for some of the boys were not allowed to go in at all; others were forbidden to go in more than once or twice a day; and as they all _had_ to go in at least three or four times a day, some sort of sign had to be used that was understood among themselves alone. Since this is a true history, I had better own that they nearly all, at one time or other, must have told lies about it, either before or after the fact, some habitually, some only in great extremity. Here and there a boy, like my boy's elder brother, would not tell lies at all, even about going in swimming; but by far the greater number bowed to their hard fate, and told them. They promised that they would not go in, and then they said that they had not been in; but Sin, for which they had made this sacrifice, was apt to betray them. Either they got their shirts on wrong side out in dressing, or else, while they were in, some enemy came upon them and tied their shirts. There are few cruelties which public opinion in the boys' world condemns, but I am glad to remember, to their honor, that there were not many in that Boy's Town who would tie shirts; and I fervently hope that there is no boy now living who would do it. As the crime is probably extinct, I will say that in those wicked days, if you

And that's where it ends. Tantalizing, isn't it? What happens next? And what is the purpose of this bit of literary refuse? The only other thing in the email was a jpeg labeled "seamstress," which I was not crazy enough to open. It seems to be a story about a bunch of jeuvenile delinquents swimming without permission, although the line about "my boy's older brother" did puzzle me, since wouldn't the older brother of your son also be your son? Unless they are half-brothers. Luckily nobody ties shirts these days. How did they ever survive those terrible shirt-tying times? Count your blessings that you didn't have to live through that!

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Today's Guest Spammer: Faulkner!

As you may remember, Richard Bonomo had requested that I write a blog post in the style of William Faulkner, who is known for his "stream-of-consciousness" (i.e., run-on sentences) style. (Isn't it amazing how in English class they would tell you not write a certain way, and then they would force you to read things by authors who write like that? Case in point: Ernest "Small Words/Short Sentences" Hemingway.) I am not familiar enough with Faulkner to copy his style, although I understand he is something like James Joyce, and I could probably do a mean James Joyce. Maybe I'll have him write tomorrow's post.

Anyway, once again Hardingfele comes to the rescue, this time with some spam that was apparently written by the dyslexic love child of William "Who Needs Punctuation" Faulkner and ee "who needs capital letters?" cummings. How would Hardingfele ever know what was going on in her life without spam to tell her? As you may remember, she did not know she was selling her stolen bicycle or looking for an unspecified part-time job, and now she has just learned that she is selling her house:

Hey I noticed your trying to sell your home, i just wanted to let you know That God also put me threw that trial a not too long ago and well it was tough i mean i didnt want too and as embarressing as it was i was loosing my home because of the economy and things got slow at work it was almost heart breaking when i had to come home and tell my family my hours were cut from work so i really understand what your going threw, and i wanted to share with you how i overcame and turnned it all around in 1 week, it sounds hard to believe but man omg it worked for me and im the most non computer person i know, have faith and give it a try God bless you and yours, Learn How to Start.

Lest you are tempted to make an offer on Hardingfele's house yourself, let me assure you that Learn How to Start does not have his/her facts straight, and Hardingfele has no intention of selling her house at this time. After all, the ePlush llama she bought for me on that online auction didn't set her back that much. Speaking of cute plushie things, I ordered some for myself as a birthday present. I even had them delivered at work! As my faithful readers know, I love stuffed animals and stuffed germs, but behold stuffed food:


What is it? I left the tag on to give you a clue: "Plush Sushi." That's right, this is a little plush blob of wasabi and a little plush pile of ginger. Plush condiments: no funny aftertaste.

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Exiting Stage Left

In this life there are many things we don't get to plan, chief among them our own deaths. However, that has never stopped us from pondering how we would go if we could choose, and so today after Mass, when a bunch of us went out to brunch, we somehow got on this topic. The ex-Marine and current cop Semper Fi mentioned that he would not want to die like Elvis, on the toilet, because that is not an honorable way to die. I said true, but the worst was the summer I was in Spain, and we went to the running of the bulls in Pamplona. Nobody was killed by the bulls, but two guys passed out in the middle of the road and were run over by the street cleaner in the early morning hours. "Not a tough way to go," I said. "Maybe if you were running from a psycho driving a street cleaner after you..."

"At half a mile an hour?" said A-Fooze.

"Maybe if one of them tripped..." I said.

"Still..." said A-Fooze.

"OK, maybe a steamroller, then," I suggested. "That would be a little tougher, being run over by a psycho driving a steamroller. Still, if you really want a tough death, you can hardly beat jumping out of one airplane to land on another airplane piloted by terrorists, sending it into a death spin."

"Right into the plane you were trying to save," said A-Fooze.

"I would want to die an honorable death," said Semper Fi. "A sword fight on top of a cliff is the kind of thing I would want."

"Mr. Icon wants to be martyred by a polar bear," I said. "He thinks that would make a fantastic icon."

"How could he be killed for his faith by a polar bear?" Rich wondered, and I shrugged.

"I dunno. Maybe it's a Moslem polar bear?"

"Being torn apart by wild animals would be better than ending up in a nursing home," said Semper Fi. "Maybe when I'm 95 I'll take a bus up to Alaska and find a bear cub to pet. That should take care of the problem."

"You, Mr. Icon, and Bella Maryella should take that bus together," I said. "She wants to get torn apart by wild animals too. Me, I'm hoping for 105 in my sleep. Or better yet, 135 on Good Friday, just after receiving the Eucharist. But all my kids and grandkids and great-grandkids and great-great-grandkids wouldn't notice I was dead until after the service was over."

"They could try to shake you awake," A-Fooze suggested, "and then you would fall over on the floor, like in the movies or something."

I had to point out that if it were a movie, I'd die at 135 on the beach at Acapulco and my great-great-grandkids would not want to pay to ship my body back to the States, so they would hide my body in a sleeping bag, and then when they stopped for lunch, someone would steal the car. Still, I like the falling on the floor idea. When I told Semper Fi that I had come up with my ideal death, he said, "Eating a ham sandwich on the train tracks in Bosnia and you can't hear the train coming," and I said, "You're so close, but no."

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Catechism Cataclysm

Today when I asked Richard Bonomo how his Catechism class at Our Lady of Perpetual Sobriety went, he said, "We had a catechism cataclysm!" The ceiling had fallen down, which he later determined was caused by a leaky radiator on the floor above. (The OLPS school building is almost as old as the OLPS church building.) Just as he and his students had cleaned most of the mess up, the secretary came and said another catechist had not shown up, so they ended up moving to another room anyway. Then Rich taught both classes, and he said there were so many kids in there that they could barely move! Is it any wonder I don't teach catechism anymore?

Last night Rich hosted a party for our choir using the money we were paid for singing at the Monday wedding. It was a lot of fun, and his famous chocolate mousse tasted even better than usual. I had a tough day at work so I had a beer before dinner which went straight to my head, and A-Fooze said I was very entertaining. Guess I should have written a post then - can you imagine how it would have turned out? One of the altos told a great story about her brother, who lives in Vermont, traveling to Jamaica. A native offered him some pot, and he said, "This is great stuff! Is it from here?" and the Jamaican said, "No, mon. You heard of a place called Vermont?" Some people were playing a game that is a wooden labyrinth with two small metal balls, and one of the balls fell on the floor. As they were desperately looking for it (and it has yet to be found), Kathbert said, "You know, that game only came with one ball. I just bought a second one at the hardware store because I knew someone would lose it eventually." One person brought a talking George Bush doll that really annoyed Rich. The funny thing is that half the people are liberal and half are conservative, but it was one of the conservatives who brought the doll! Did he not realize it was mocking Bush? Rich said, "Why incite a political argument?" I still remain not so much a moderate as on the extreme left of some issues and the extreme right of others. I suppose you could split the difference and call me a moderate. I have always thought of myself as the anti-Giuliani since pretty much whatever side of an issue he is on, I am on the other.

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Questions to Ponder

Last night I was discussing with Richard Bonomo how we could make my Anglo-Saxploitation flick, aka. Beowulf meets Shaft, and I said using hats might be too hard so maybe we could do stop-motion using drinking glasses. "After all," I said, "one of those amber-colored goblets you have would be perfect for Beowulf. And one of the tiki glasses my folks have would make a fantastic Grendel's mother." Rich allowed as how he had never actually considered what kind of drinking glass would make the most ideal actors for a movie version of Beowulf, shockingly enough. This got me to wondering about other questions I have pondered that likely have not been pondered by other people... and it's high time they should be!

What's it like to be a red blood cell? Why has nobody written a novel yet from the point of view of one?

Do ferns remember that their ancestors used to rule the world? Do they ever think to themselves, "Darn those angiosperms! We would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for those meddling blooming plants!"

At the Epiphany service at the Lutheran church, they kept invoking God with these weird titles I had never heard before, like "Inclusive God" and "Welcoming God." The Moslems have 99 names for God, but they are not that out there. I wonder what the oddest title is that God has been called? And which one is His favorite?

Should @$$hole be an ethnicity? But if it were, would they demand special protections? Would @$$holephobia become a crime? Would you be able to get a BS in @$$hole Studies from your more PC four-year universities? And what kind of job could you get with that?

Who would take it in a smackdown, a dime or a nickel? A dime is worth more, but the nickel has the size advantage.

I wonder if they will ever come up with a use for pumpkin guts and that little stem on the top? Then pumpkins would be the most efficient thing ever. You could use every part!

What were the people doing who discovered you could eat truffles or that you can write dirty words upside-down on a calculator? Were they actually trying to do that or did they discover it by accident?

Am I crazy for wondering these things? Don't answer that, unless you are trying to get an advanced degree in @$$hole Studies.

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