Um, words…
I used to be in the Cub Scouts. The idea was, you had to earn three patches and then you could get a WEBELOS badge with a fleur de lis thing on it that looked like a peeled banana. WEBELOS was like the black belt of Cub Scouts, just below the actual Boy Scouts. I got two of the four patches before deciding that this good deeds and citizenship stuff was way too much work, and I dropped out.
As a grammar snob, I never could have been part of WEBELOS anyway.
WEBELOS stands for WE BE LOyal Scouts. I’m not even close to kidding here. I just double-checked it on the Web and yes, the guidebook for young male citizenship really does read this way. Who be loyal scouts? We be loyal scouts. Yes, we be. You is. I is. We be.
So yous seeing, as am a writer, I couldn’t have be associa-macated with them people, nohow.
Now, I don’t actually expect people to know that “snuck” isn’t a word and that when you’re sick, you feel nauseated and not nauseous, the latter of which means “inducing nausea.” I’ve come to terms with the fact that people are going to think me stupid when I say, “He sneaked around the corner,” which is actually correct. But I mean, come on. Some things are just blatant.
For instance, a jingle: “Almond joy’s got nuts; Mounds don’t.” I wouldn’t say that this wins most annoying jingle (that goes to Safe Auto Insurance: “1-800-Safe Auto — pick up the phone; the call is free!”) or even most disturbing jingle, which goes to an early version of the Goldfish crackers theme: “the wholesome snack that smiles back until you bite their heads off.” But it does win the worst grammar award. And for serious, someone wrote this jingle. Someone with a college education. I do. You do. He, she, it does. Mounds, it don’t. So, who do?
“I hate this commercial,” I’ll tell Robin.
And I never get an enthusiastic response.
So I’ll quiz her. The other day — and this was completely blue-sky out of nowhere — I said, “Do you know the rule for when you’re supposed to say ‘were’ versus ‘was’? Like, ‘If I was/were you’?”
“Uh, no.”
“You use ‘were’ if it’s hypothetical. Like, if you’re not a millionaire but you’re imagining a situation where you had a million dollars, you might say, ‘If I were a millionaire,’ not ‘If I was a millionaire.”
“I see.”
“And also, people say, ‘If I was you.’ But that’s just plain wrong.”
She nodded. “Aha.”
This simply doesn’t bother most people. My old roommate Eric, he had his own private language. He used to just make words up and try to sneak them by us. He once wrote me this: “There are now three 80’s stations in the winston-salem area now. I’m one is pretty cool, two isn’t bad but three?”
Today, this man has a Ph.D. Seriously.
But that’s just Eric who, now that I think about it, might secretly be Amish. A few years ago, Robin and I ordered a china cabinet from an Amish furniture maker named Abe. The Amish don’t have phones, so they kept us posted by mail. A recent note read: “Hello, just a few lines your way on a beautiful da. You shall pick up your china cabinet by Nov. 16– Thank you.” This was written on the back of a comment form from the CCRA Conference and Expo. One of the form’s questions was if this subject matter would lend itself to Web-based training. Abe hadn’t answered that one.
“Its, without an apostrophe, is possessive,” I’ll tell people. “It’s, with the apostrophe, means ‘it is.’”
“You can only use a semicolon between two independent clauses,” I’ll say.
And people just sort of stare at me. My mom, she understands. She’ll complain about people saying things like, “on behalf of my wife and myself.” I’ll shoot back with my favorite peeve, “an historic occasion.” We can go on like this forever. Todd, my stepfather, ignores us. Robin will sit there and look bored.
“You can only use ‘myself’ reflexively,” Mom will say.
“I mean, ‘an historic’ is trying too hard anyway.”
“‘I did it myself.’ Now that’s the way you’re supposed to say it.”
“Would you say, ‘an horse?’ ‘An hurricane?’”
She’ll say, “I mean, really.”
“‘An hot pepper?’”
And this can continue forever. A network of fellow nerds reports things to me, too. Another big trend? People don’t know how to use quotation marks.
On a booth: Please “do not” knock on glass.
In a store window: New merchandise available “Tuesday.”
And perhaps most daunting, a farmer’s sign: “Fresh” strawberries. As in, they’re not really fresh. Imagine someone holding fingers in the air to connote quotes while saying this. These strawberries, they’re almost fresh — but not quite.
They’re, you know, “fresh.”
So after all of my huffing and puffing, I had this little article published in a journal somewhere. It was about simple, do-it-yourself design tips. One of my tips was to proofread thoroughly. “Nothing loses respect faster than simple misspellings,” I wrote. Only, what they printed after re-typing the article was, “… faster tan simple misspellings.” I can only hope readers thought I was going for irony.
Well, anyway, my family and myself wish you alls a “festive” month of May. We is going to “eat” some apple pie; and that be “nice,” weren’t it?
Grandmother well, not dropping hairballs
My mother just got back from a trip to San Diego, where apparently my grandmother is not barfing on the carpet. Thankfully.
This is the second time she’s been away in two weeks, and really, that’s pushing things because the other three members of the household cannot be left alone lest they start acting out in strange ways and inadvertently nearly killing each other.
The first two are very small dogs. The third is my stepfather, Todd. The dogs are like my mother’s children, if her children weren’t living in northeast Ohio and writing this blog post right now. It’s typical that the dogs won’t eat for Todd and will begin to starve before my mother comes home to save them, or that they’ll get sick. And Todd sometimes acts out.
“He shaved Gracie,” my mom told me once.
I asked why and she said his excuse was that she seemed hot and that he thought she (Mom) would like the effect. But she knew it was actually a passive-aggressive move. There was more beyond this dog shaving. And a week or so later, she had it figured out.
“I think I’ve been away too much recently,” she said. “I think that’s why Todd shaved Gracie — because I’ve been inattentive.”
“You mean like how a cat will pee on your bed if it’s mad at you?” I asked. I was mystified as to why she was guessing at her husband’s intentions instead of just asking him. It was as if she had done research and maybe consulted a Husband Whisperer to find out what was wrong. I could just imagine this Husband Expert hovering over Todd as he sat in the La-Z-Boy eating potato chips, clicking one of those dog clicker things and offering him treats, finally determining that the problem was lack of attention. In all likelihood, my mother would be advised to crate Todd if she was going to have to be out of the house for extended periods of time.
Then there was the time that Todd tried to save Liesl’s life by sticking his finger down her throat. Liesl — whose legal, registered name is “Liesl Diesel Weasel Bezo” — is a miniature dachshund who is no longer permitted at my house following a cat-chasing, bleeding-on-our-bedspread incident which we shall not discuss. One time while home alone, Todd noticed that Liesl was choking on something. He looked in her mouth and saw nothing. Yet, she still struggled. So he reached his finger inside and rooted around. Nothing. Panicked now, he reached deeper and found the obstruction. She was choking on a small bone. But it refused to dislodge. So, he yanked harder. Liesel continued to gag. So, he pulled even harder, because it almost seemed to be moving.
At this point, I don’t know how the situation resolved in detail, but the bone remained in her throat, Todd gave up, and Liesl ran away, apparently able to breathe again. Later, Todd took her to the vet.
“You were trying to remove her larynx,” the vet reported.
Following the throat-pulling incident, Todd tried to smooth the situation over by offering Liesl a frozen dog treat called Frosty Paws. Liesl was not appeased, but, on the flip side, I can report that she is now afraid of Frosty Paws.
And now this latest. Gracie, AKA “Amazing Grace,” is a poofy little bichon frise who cannot live without my mother’s constant attention. I’m not one to cry “wolf” or “psychosomatic illness,” but shortly after Mom left, Gracie developed kennel cough. I guess that’s a cough they get when in kennels or something. I don’t know. Still, she got worse.
“I think she’s going to die,” Todd reported on the phone.
So Mom stopped calling home. She reported what she knew on Facebook and stuck her head in the sand. Todd called her, wanted to know why she wasn’t calling. Mom said it was because he kept saying how her dog was going to die. He said, “Oh.”
A few days later, she updated her Facebook status. She was out of town and Todd was home alone. Amazing Grace had kennel cough. She was on antibiotics and, with the help of those magic pills, should be getting better.
But then, a setback. I further saw on Facebook three days before she returned home that Todd had discovered gross pills all over the house after Gracie spit them up.
My mother panicked further.
At this point, some Canadian friends were going to be coming into the states and wanted to visit. But they had read my mom’s Facebook updates, so they knew that:
• Mom was out of town, visiting her mother, and Todd was home alone.
• Amazing Grace had kennel cough.
• Gracie was still very sick, and worse – she was barfing up her pills on the carpet.
The Canadian man proposed going to visit, but his wife said, “Oh, no, we can’t. Marcia is out of town and Todd is home with her mother, and she’s really sick and keeps spitting her pills out all over the house.”
You wouldn’t think that game of “Telephone” would work in the internet age, but apparently it’s alive and well.
Luckily, my mom returned home in time, Gracie started taking her meds, and all is on the mend. She just needed the return of her human pacifier. Who dresses her in all sorts of maddening outfits, but which she’s still somehow cool with. Apparently love means never having to refuse to wear a pumpkin hat.
However, Liesl does not accept Frosty Paws from Todd under any circumstances. Just to be safe.
I'll bet Denzel gets mistaken for Jesus all the time
I always get really self-conscious when I go to church, because I only go twice a year and because I think the regulars suspect me of having horns. But in my defense, I’m not trying to sneak in and be a hypocrite. Left to my own devices, I wouldn’t go at all. I go because I know our attendance means something to my mother-in-law, who attends regularly and has never, in any obvious way, mentioned whether or not she cries in private and prays for our poor heathen souls.
(Either way, it’s still a step up from the way my Catholic college roommate’s family seemed to think that the other three of us were damned. Once, we sang “Happy Birthday” with them and didn’t know there was a second verse that goes, “May the dear Lord bless you.” And also, we sometimes forgot to hide the giant black dildo that sat on top of our TV. I never caught the Yates family in the act, but I’m pretty sure that they spent a lot of the time that they were in our apartment crossing themselves and blessing our various disgusting surfaces with Holy Water.)
But I’m not Godless, dammit. I’m a fairly spiritual guy once you get down deep, past the cool hair and the fart jokes. And I’m a respectful guy too, which is why I go on Easter and Christmas to make my mother-in-law happy.
The attendance problem churches face today boils down to the fact that church is not fun. And it should be. You’re celebrating resurrections, talking about snakes, digging for eternal life in a place cooler than any pad on MTV Cribs, but with chicks that aren’t as slutty.
I think that back in the day, God was strict but cool, and made things generally cool, but then over the years, whitey fucked it up as whitey always does. It’s not church’s fault per se. I mean, black people kept it real, which is why I’d be more devout if I were black. Black churches look like a party. Like, if you were running the sound system, you could pretty easily put on Public Enemy instead of devotionals and it wouldn’t matter because even Black God would dig it.
But for white people? Church amplifies our rampant lameness and distills it to its purest, whitest form. Sometimes, I can’t believe Orville Redenbacher hasn’t shown up leading a crew of albino mutes. But then again, maybe they avoid the holiday services.
This Sunday, we got a quartet of singers. No electric guitars or turntables whatsoever. I’m trying to keep my 4-year-old son Austin from dropping his Transformers onto the people in the pew ahead of us, and when the song finishes, he says quite loudly, “That was an awful song.”
But I was too absorbed in the program they’d given me at the door to really pay attention. This church uses a lot of modern Christian music, and I couldn’t help but notice that most of the upcoming pieces had totally ripped off 1980s pop songs.
“Look at this,” I whispered to Robin. ” ‘What a Savior.’ ”
“What?”
“Doesn’t that sound familiar to you? Like… say… maybe something from a pair of ladies by the names of Salt and Peppa?”
She glanced up. “What are you talking about?”
“You don’t think it’s a little close to ‘Whatta Man’?”
She looked back at the front of the church.
“Let me ask you this. Don’t you imagine that people thought about Jesus and were like, ‘Whatta man, whatta man… whatta mighty good man?’ I mean, think about it. Is he not smooth like Barry and his voice got bass? A body like Arnold with a Denzel face?”
“Jesus looks nothing like Denzel Washington.”
I snorted. “I’ll bet he does in black church.”
I looked back down, running my finger through the following songs. “See Him in the Garden” sounded legit, but what about “Mary Don’t Weep?”
“How about this one?” I said, pointing.
She wouldn’t look down, so I nudged her.
“Yes?”
“Kind of like ‘Papa Don’t Preach’?”
She looked back toward the front of the church. “That’s ridiculous. It’s not even close.”
“Don’t you remember that Madonna video where Black Jesus came to life and it was vaguely sexual, and everyone got all mad, maybe because of the sex but maybe because Jesus was black, and not just black but super Wesley-Snipes-Yaphet-Kotto black, or maybe because Madonna exists?”
“They weren’t even on the same album,” she said. ” ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ was on True Blue and was before she started making out with religious statues. And besides, ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ was about Madonna getting knocked up and Danny Aiello getting fat and mad at her. ‘Mary Don’t Weep’ is about Easter.”
“You think Danny Aiello didn’t weep? Not in public maybe, but that’s because he’s Italian.”
But I was sure that the entire service had been cribbed. The following song was “Cherish the Cross,” which was a bit coincidental given that Madonna also had a big hit with “Cherish.” And she always wore a cross around her neck, because she’s Catholic and because it somehow made her look extra slutty in the 80s, like forbidden Catholic school girl fruit but with all sorts of diseases or something.
I kept scanning the program, making a fair amount of noise turning pages. And Robin was like, “What are you doing?”
“Looking to see if they have Run DMC’s ‘Down With the King’ in here. Although I’m thinking that would work better at Christmas.”
I could get into that. It would make me come back for Christmas. I’ll bet the black church is down with the King. Especially since they’re already down with Martin Luther King.
Really, I’m not anti-church. I just don’t understand it. I mean, we’ve crafted and molded the story of Jesus over the years, but whoever he was in the end, he still lived as a dude and built things and hung out with his apostles and you know he probably had some good jokes. You have to figure that he was cool. Not all boring and preachy all the time. I have to think he’d be fun to hang out with, like you could have some mead after a goats-for-eggs trade and just kind of shoot the shit. I mean, think of how many millions of people are down with the King today. Only a cool dude with a good sense of humor and fun could have that many people get down with him. Nobody to date has built a religion centered around a guy who was a dick.
Well, except for that one. You know who I’m talking about.
My Totally Original Parenting Book That Isn't Printed on Soiled Nappies Like Some Other Parenting Books
The following guest post was written by Rob “Diesel” Kroese, whose blog Mattress Police was one of the first humor blogs I found when I first started writing TEIH, and which remains one of the few humor blogs I continue to read because he’s a funny guy and really doesn’t match a nickname like “Diesel.”
I thought it would be fun if Diesel and I traded posts today (my post is on his blog right now) so that I could maybe get some of his large following to visit my site. Those bastards.
When I announced recently that I was writing a parenting book, Johnny B. Truant responded by accusing me of stealing his idea. I want to assure you that this is not the case. It’s totally plausible that we both had this same idea at the same time, the same way that Newton and Leibniz both independently invented calculus and the way that Ray Parker, Jr. wrote the Ghostbusters theme on a six minute bus ride while listening to Huey Lewis and the News’ “I Want a New Drug.”
It should certainly be no surprise that Johnny and I came up with the same idea at the same time – after all, we’re practically the same person. He’s a humor writer and web developer in his mid-thirties. I’m a humor writer and web developer in my mid-thirties. Wesley Snipes and Oprah Winfrey live in his barn. Tom Waits and Maury Povich live in my barn. Other than the fact that I had the sense to move to California, we’re basically interchangeable. If he had played Marty McFly’s girlfriend in the first Back to the Future and I played Marty McFly’s girlfriend in both sequels, you’d never even have noticed the switch.*
And, of course, we’re both fathers – fathers who love our respective children so much that we want nothing more than to send them to bed early so that we can finally have some peace and quiet to write our respective parenting books. Yet that’s where the similarities end: for while Johnny’s book is a tragicomic farce in the vein of Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 and Leland Delansky’s The Hidden Trombonist, my book is full of hands-on practical parenting advice that will be invaluable to parents of all non-Chinese children.
Yes, my book, The Nonfictional Diesel Guide to Parenting Non-Chinese Babies, is 265 pages of advice** such as:
- Your child was born with a deep-seated need to be loved unconditionally. Because of this weakness, withholding love from them is a highly effective punishment.
- There are several foods that children under the age of one should never be given. Keep track of these foods in a spiral notebook to avoid making the same mistake twice.
- Be careful not to teach your children gender stereotypes. Remember, your children will shape the future of society. Well, not the girls so much, but still.
- Music is important to your child’s development. Studies indicate that babies who listen to an hour of classical music a day learn to turn off a CD player more quickly than other babies.
- Encourage your child to follow their dreams. Unless, you know, their dreams are stupid.
I should clarify that much of this advice probably applies to Chinese babies as well as regular babies, but since I’ve never had any Chinese babies, I don’t feel that it’s my place to tell you how to raise them. I don’t, for example, know anything about the proper way to trim their horns.
Anyway, there’s lots of other good stuff in the book and you should buy it as soon as it’s available. I expect to publish it about two weeks after Johnny’s book comes out.
*Although I am, of course, bustier, and went on to star in such successful films as Hollow Man and The Way of the Karate Kid, whereas he peaked with a guest appearance on Simon & Simon).
** Along with 84 pages of legal disclaimers.
Johnny’s P.S: If you are Chinese or a woman or a Chinese woman or Mel Tormé and take offense at anything written above, you should send rat heads to Diesel, not me. I hear he’s in the book. Under “D.”
Stupid bloggers always stealing my cheese
I have a lot of ideas. One time, I had this idea to get a bunch of cows together to see if their large masses and close proximity would trigger some sort of gravitational collapse, resulting in a huge black hole and all sorts of time/space side effects like pants getting worn out and thrown away before being purchased. But then I realized what a waste that would be (in terms of pants expenditures) and abandoned the whole project. Stupid cows trying to cost me all sorts of money on pants.
But a lot of my ideas do work out. I had an idea to see if I could work with Naomi of IttyBiz, and that’s going pretty well. And I had this idea to write a free guide called How to Launch a Blog in a Half Hour for Under $20, Even if You’re a Total Idiot, except that it wasn’t my idea at all and was actually Naomi’s idea. (I actually did write that guide, by the way. It will debut on Monday in my IttyBiz column and if I remember, I’ll remind you here too.)
And now I’ve got this idea to start a whole new website where I’ll offer free webinars on how to do techie stuff like launching blogs and mailing lists and all of that, because I’m a website developer and know this internet stuff like the back of my hand. You know, if the back of my hand were full of porn and nerds. And that site should be open by Monday, too.
Honestly, the only problem with all of these ideas is that they push some of my other awesome ideas out of the spotlight. Which lets other opportunistic people who live in California and work at Google and wear glasses and run blog directories and have nicknames synonymous with fossil fuels SWOOP RIGHT IN AND STEAL THE FUCKING IDEA.
Not that I have anyone in mind. Except for Diesel.
You know, it’s a funny world we live in. A devious, dangerous world. You let your guard down for ONE MOMENT and these other bloggers are in your house, under your car, outside your window, in your refrigerator, stealing your ideas. If it’s not The Bloggess giving out my email address to sexy homicide spammers and stealing my newspaper (don’t try to tell me it’s the kid next door), it’s Black Hockey Jesus taking the change out of my car’s ashtray. And dammit if it hasn’t been LESS THAN A MONTH since I finally got Darren Rowse out from under my porch, and wouldn’t you know it, the exterminator’s guarantee is good for two weeks and THE SECOND IT EXPIRES, that fucker is back under the deck and I’m like DAMMIT, DARREN, STOP CHARGING PIZZA DELIVERIES TO MY CREDIT CARD and wouldn’t you know it, there’s nothing the authorities can do because he’s from Australia. I mean, hell.
And then this. The other day, I read the following over at Diesel’s blog, Mattress Police:
And that’s when I realized that what was really important to me wasn’t awesome blog directories or hilarious novels about the adventures of an AWOL angel on the brink of the Apocalypse, but rather my relationship with my children. “That’s it!” I exclaimed. “I will write a book on parenting!
Oh, snap. Where have we heard that idea before?
So I’m like, “Hey! Diesel! That’s my idea!” And no matter how loud I yelled, there was no response. This meant war.
Or not. But it does mean I really have to step on it. Because the problem is that Diesel is pretty funny. A little too funny, if you catch my drift. I’m not going to say anything specific, but I do think he’s lucky that the anti-doping laws in blogging are so lax.
And that there is no swimsuit competition.
I suspect that I may not have heard the end of this. Luckily, there’s no chance he’ll guest post here next week, or I’d be totally fucked. No chance at all.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go get a broom, a kangaroo, and some Vegemite. There has to be a way to get him out from under that porch before he starts gnawing on the wood again.