Today's Lesson

Today's Lesson is...Don't Be a Flipp'n Moron with your Cell Phone.

I'll eleborate.

Imagine you are having a delicate, intense, incredibly painfull conversation with someone.

Now imagine that after you get off the phone with that person, you call your Mom to talk to her about the conversation. The phone rings and rings and finally goes to voicemail, except it isn't voicemail, because your Mom hasn't bothered to make one. A pre-recorded voice reads off a telephone number and then you get to leave your message.

It doesn't cross your mind at this point that the person you just finished talking to ALSO has this kind of voicemail.

So you leave your message on your Mom's phone, giving rough details of this delicate, painfull conversation and throwing in a few personal observations about the situation for good measure. You hang up and go about your day.

Later, your phone rings. It is the person whom you had the delicate conversation with. You answer, surprised, because this person and you are trying to get some things figured out by not talking for a while.

"Hello?" you say.

"You know that message you left your mom was actually on my phone", says the person, cutting right to the chase.

...

Your brain says several words that aren't very nice, but your mouth manages, after a long, deliciously awkward silence, to say "Oh."

"I just thought you should know," says the person. "So you could actually leave her one."

For the sake of privacy, I'll leave the conversation there and come back to you and today's lesson.

Dear friends, valued readers...don't be a complete imbicile with your cell phone like your friend Andrew. It only leads to terrible, terrible things.

The Baconator

Consider the Baconator combo meal from Wendy's.

Half a pound of beef in the form of two patties (fresh, never frozen), piled high with six, count em six strips of hickory smoked bacon. Glued together with two slices of American cheese and topped off with ketchup and mayonaise. Slammed down in between two buns and served with fries and a Frosty. So grotesque...so overdone...so needless...so American it ought to squirt red white and blue juice.

See it well, dear friends. It will prove to be my undoing.

What is it about this particular hamburger that holds me powerless? Why can't I refuse it! I'm never satisfied after eating one, I always feel fat and greasy and slightly troubled by the amount of animal (pig AND cow) that I just consumed.

It has to be something about the Baconator's bold faced unashamedness. It is brashy. It is sassy. It is what it is, and it knows it, and I know it, and I love it and hate it for this...and the Baconator knows this too.

I'll be on my way somewhere, usually on my way to work number two from work number one, and I'll pass by Wendy's. Upon first glimpse of that red pigtailed sign, my olfactory senses immediatly ramp up into overdrive. My mouth begins watering. My hands shake. Already the Baconator pulls me in like some sort of freshly grilled black hole, my imagination sends me fantasy after delectable fantasy, and before I know it I'm standing in line.

"But all is not lost!", I groan, knowing that all indeed is. "I may be at Wendy's but at least I can get a wrap!"

But I have no intention of doing such a thing. The lady behind the counter knows it, I know it, Dave Thomas in heavenly Frosty Palace knows it.

I order the Baconator.

Here's the point where things begin to get really messed up. Yes, I've now ordered a hamburger that has a very real chance of striking me dead of heart attack immediatly upon consumption. Yes. But I could still be marginally healthy. Dave Thomas (smart Dave, cagey Dave) has also given me the option of getting WATER and a FRUIT CUP instead of a Frosty and Fries.

Dave knows I won't do this. (crafty Dave, oh so clever Dave!) Because I've already ordered a sandwhich called THE BACONATOR. What's the point of getting a fruit cup! I'll most likely be dead before the fourth bite, I might as well ENJOY my death as much as possible.

And so I happily hammer the final two nails into my congestive heart failure coffin.

Because the Baconator is a momentary happiness. All joy in the eating vanishes with the last bite. I finish a Baconator with the same kind of guilt and self loathing that I imagine drug addicts and ciggerette smokers feel after falling off the wagon.

But a Frosty and Fries...that is a road towards obiesity that I will joyfully skip down at every opportunity.

Today's Unger Report

Check this out...a sort of Swiftian commentary on celebrity babies.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19338301

Oh Brother

I don't have much to say right now. It was a tough weekend. I've got all sorts of ruminations but I've made it a point in this blog not to get too introspective...nor am I feeling particularly funny at the moment. Soon enough my mind will return to the strange places it likes to go, I can no more stop it than I could stop breathing. But for now, for today, I'll stick with this: it's a fine, fine thing in life to have a brother.

Also, I've learned a valuable lesson concerning hammocks and too much alchohal.

So, a work related item today.

While researching for an upcoming show on “Animal Architects”, I came across this interesting passage on a website about beavers.

“Wildlife rehabilitators find beavers to be gentle, reasoning beings who enjoy playing practical jokes.”

Really? Practical jokes, huh? One can imagine that beaver practical jokes might get out of hand rather quickly. After all, practical jokes have a way of escalating…it’s easy to see how two beavers could start out rubber banding sink spray handles and dipping paws into warm water and end up knocking trees down on each other and sabotaging dams, resulting in death and widespread flooding downstream. Entire families of rabbits and chipmunks piling onto floating shreds of bark, desperately chirping to each other as Mama Chipmunk gives up her space on the bark for all her little babies…all because Chip the Beaver was getting back at Woody the Beaver because Woody let all the air out of Chip’s tires while Chip was on a date.

Lesson of the day—Practical jokes aren’t really that funny…even when you’re a beaver. Especially when you’re a beaver. The consequences are just too significant.

Also, today is George Washington’s Birthday. It’s time to celebrate it with those most time honored of GWB celebrations. So come on, people! Lets go chop down some cherry trees! Lets wear ivory dentures and drink red wine, thus giving root to the myth of “wooden teeth”. Lets lead some Revolutions, baby!

Aight, I’m spending the evening playing Halo 3 all night long in joint celebration of me, my brother, and Derek Phillips birthday. Huzzah!

The Existance of Yogurt Proves that God Exists

Today, in my usual fashion, I swished with mouthwash and spat into the sink, only to have a small stream of caustic alcohol bounce (in complete denial of physics) directly back up into my eye. I jerked backwards in surprise and pain and hit my head on the shelf right behind me.

This sort of thing happens to me a lot more often than one would think possible, which I take as continued proof that:

1) There is a God and

2) He has a sense of humor but

3) That sense of humor is kind of a nasty one, and not near as goofy as people like to think because

4) Although certain kinds of people like to point to things in the natural world like llamas and platypi and Paulie Shore and say “Wowzers, look at Paulie Shore riding a llama and wearing a with a platypus on his head like a hat! God has such a goofy sense of humor”…

5) …I find it much more accurate to point at things in the human condition such as

6) “the early stages of puberty”, which, as British comedian Eddie Izzard says, happens to be the time in a persons life where he/she cares most about attracting the opposite sex AND SIMULTANEOUSLY the time in a persons life where his/her body becomes as greasy, pimply, smelly, uncoordinated, awkward, and disgusting as it will ever be…and

7) “yogurt” which is basically bacteria cultures that we are EATING ALIVE ladies and gentlemen…and I want to know who came up with such a concept and why in the world people don’t storm yogurt production facilities across the country demanding an end to yogurt consumption, even if it does occasionally taste like blueberries and help with yeast infections (or so I’ve been told by several people who are, in fact, actual girls) …so in conclusion

8) It is my belief that the Good Lord’s sense of humor is much more caustic and sarcastic that goofy, and yes indeed, I have used the examples of puberty and yogurt to make my rather flimsy argument.

Tomorrow I’m going to write about hamburgers.

Brain Fluff

SOMETHING THAT IS FLUFFY:

Andrew Marshall's hair at this moment.

OTHER THINGS THAT ARE FLUFFY:

St. Bernard Puppies.
Kittens.
Hobbits.
Dandilions.
Clouds.
Cotton Balls.

ASSOCIATION:

Andrew Marshall = St. Bernard Puppies/Kittens/Hobbits/Dandilions/Clouds/Cotton Balls.

GOOD RESULT:

Andrew Marshall is often cuddled by the kind of people who like to cuddle St. Bernard Puppies or kittens. Very often this includes attractive women. (Although it does also include other sorts of people...nothing is gained without sacrifice, friendly readers.)

BAD RESULT:

Andrew Marshall is also often:

Given rabies vacinations and forced to take heartworm medication once a month.

Made to journey across Mordor to destroy the One Ring.

Blown on while people make wishes.

Stared at by young lovers on picknicks. ( I see a hippo! No, it looks like a giraffe to me! You know what I see? What? An engagment ring. Will you marry me and then divorce me four years from now after we have a child? Of course, of course, a thousand times yes!)

Glued to construction paper by second graders during Christmas to make snowmen. (or what ever else people use cotton balls for)

TANGENT:

In fact...are cotton balls used for anything but arts and crafts projects in the second grade? I find it hard to believe that the cotton ball industry could sustain itself based soley on a cotton ball's easy adaptability into two dimensional clouds and snowmen on a construction paper background.
But perhaps. Perhaps.

CONCLUSION:

Andrew Marshall is at least as awesome as a cotton ball.

Banana Vanisha fee fi fo Fanisha...Banisha!

Bananas could be gone from the United States in ten years or less.

For the reasons why, check this out: http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13

But for now, just assume that what I say is true and that soon (historically speaking, that is) the importing of bananas into the United States and Europe will cease.

So, Dear Reader, lets imagine a forthcoming America. An America fifty years in the future where multiple generations of people have NEVER eaten a Banana. What would be different? What would be the consequences? Would they be good or bad? Here's what I came up with on the way home from work today. The significance of these consequences is measured in my patented "BANANA’0’VANISHA CONSEQUENCE CANICA" scale.

1) The time honored “slip on a banana peel” joke would fall by the wayside. BANANA’0’VANISHA CONSEQUENCE CANICA METER: Not terribly significant.

2) The banana split ice cream Sunday would be no more. BANANA’0’VANISHA CONSEQUENCE CANICA METER: Hugely Significant.

3) The banana as a phallic symbol would become irrelevant. BANANA’0’VANISHA CONSEQUENCE CANICA METER: Bad for pornographers and experimental filmmakers, irrelevant to everyone else.

4) Grandmother’s homemade banana pudding would cease to be made in small southern kitchens across the nation…or at least it would cease to be made with fresh bananas. BANANA’0’VANISHA CONSEQUENCE CANICA METER: Of National Importance.

5) Artificial banana flavoring would most likely stick around, and the word “banana” as it applies to flavor would also remain as a useless artifact of culture. (another example of this is the “record scratch” sound still used in television and movies, even though the current generation of young media consumers know it only as a sound that signifies “something stopping suddenly” and have no idea where it originated from.) BANANA’0’VANISHA CONSEQUENCE CANICA METER: Interesting to sociologists and dorks like me, but not really to anybody else.

What other impact would the vanishing of Bananas from the U.S. eventually have? Any ideas, Friends and Neighbors?