Trick or treat, I'm packin' heat...

I am going to a costume party for Halloween, and I wanted a fake gun to go with my Halloween costume. Due to gun violence and kids getting shot and all that stuff that ruins the innocent fun of blood and guts and Halloween, you can't buy a decent fake 9mm in the toy department anymore (or even the dollar store, thank you, China). I will add that you can still buy fake hatchets, machetes, and bloody fake body parts, however, so all is not lost.

So I went online for my fake gun. As luck would have it, I found the perfect little plastic model through Amazon for 75 cents -- with $3.25 shipping and handling, I still considered this a bargain. It arrived yesterday. Here it is...



No, this is not a re-enactment of Lincoln's assassination, nor is it a photo commentary on the state of the economy. It is my 75-cent gun, and yes, it is smaller than a penny. In my defense, that's not how it looked in the online photo when I placed the order. However, if I had clicked photo number 2, I would have seen this guy, and that might have clued me in...




I am still going to strap this baby to my thigh, with a piece of scotch tape. Can you say sexxxxxxy?

Caution!

This cautionary graphic was on the protective bag that my new laptop came in.
I don't know why human stupidity strikes me as so funny, but since we're exposed to so much of it, I suppose it's good to find humor in it. Now, I know this is cautioning me not to leave this where my baby might find it and put it over his head and suffocate, (DUH!!), but since a picture is worth a thousand words, I amused myself coming up with some other possible cautionary notes, just in case I was wrong with my first guess:

It could mean --

No square-headed babies!, or
Don't let you baby crawl around with a laptop on her head!, or maybe,
Don't let your square-headed baby use the laptop in this bag!, or
If you find yourself in this position with a bag on your head, you are in no condition to be using a laptop.

Other possibilities???

"You can freeze them!"

You all know what I'm talking about. This statement is the clever sales pitch of the most ingenious marketers on the planet. And you know who they are -- those little girls in green, who knock on our doors, selling their totally addictive, crack-like, thigh-expanding cookies. They're the daughters of our neighbors and co-workers, and they're the only door-to-door salespeople we actually look forward to seeing, year after year.

They're Girl Scouts.
And every year, I buy more boxes than a person who lives alone with a dog should ever buy. And I do this because the phrase "You can freeze them!" allows me to pretend, as I buy way too many boxes of cookies, that I will allow myself, -- oh, let's say, two cookies a day until they come around again next year.

Now, it's absolutely true that you can freeze them. I know. Because this year, I did just that. I froze them. And you know how that worked out? I'll bet you do...

I ate entire sleeves of cookies, night after night, just like I always do.. only this year, they were FROZEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"Welcome to the '90s!"

...that is what one of my friends exclaimed last year when I gave her my new (and first) cell phone number. Now, like most, I cannot believe I lived 44 years without a cell phone. I carry it with me at all times, check it frequently and recently had to upgrade my texting package. I've lost it twice and both times I thought the world was coming to an end. Though I like to think I am not as bad as many, I have broken all of the cell phone habits I find most annoying -- talking in public, talking while driving, and leaving my ring tone on during meetings. Did I mention that my ring tone is a song by Pink called Bad Influence? It's not a tune you want screaming out of your briefcase at a staff meeting, I discovered recently. And that texting package? At the time I was averaging about 35 texts per month, and it was cheaper to upgrade to 250 per month. By the following month I was averaging 200 texts. WTF? So as resistant as I am to new technologies, I embrace them enthusiastically once I get around to it.


Now I've taken another major technological leap -- because apparently I missed the 80s too. I just upgraded my cable package so that I can DVR. Is that a verb? I think it is. Of course, I have absolutely no idea how to DVR. There have always been about 45 more buttons on my remote than I needed. On/Off/volume/channels/mute -- what else could one possibly do with a TV? Now I need all those buttons, but I will have to take a special ed course at the junior high in order to learn how to do it. In fact, I even have a second remote that came with my TV, and I have never taken it off the end table. I am afraid I will learn that I need two remotes!

One of the things I worry about with my new ability to DVR is that I will like it. A lot. And that I will sit in front of the TV like a giant vegetable and do nothing all winter but watch all the shows that I claim I don't have time for or that come on too late. Because now I can watch them on a weekend afternoon when the only thing that used to be on was Roadhouse with Patrick Swayzee or football and I would normally be doing something more productive.

Like talking on my cell phone. Or texting.

Blah, blah, blog...

I think that sums up my blog lately. A bit lackluster. I am working on a number of art projects but they're not ready to be unveiled yet. So, I've decided to spice up my blog a bit by posting a nude photo of myself. Just click here.

I knew you'd look...and as you might have guessed, that's not me...if it was, I would be walking around nude everywhere, and I'd have a nude profile photo at the right. But it's a good segue into the story I wanted to share today -- another minor office catastrophe -- the kind that keep my colleagues amused and from which I escape, still employed, but with just a little less dignity than the day before.

I was at work one day, several years ago, and I received an email from one of my female colleagues whose office is just down the hall. The subject line was something vague, like "information for you" and when I opened the email, there appeared to be a photo attachment, named: "me-nude.jpg"

Well, of course, I opened it -- just like you clicked on that link -- and it unleashed some kind of nasty virus through my computer. I knew immediately what I had done, as my monitor blinked and my cursor flew around on the screen. And I also knew that, now, I'd have to tell my I.T. guy what I'd done...and how I'd done it. It went something like this."

K - "Hi, John, this is Kerri. I think I just unleased an email virus on my computer."

J - "Uh, oh, what exactly happened?"

K - "Well, I received an email from Nancy A. with an attachment that was named "me-nude," and well, as you can guess, I opened it, and bad things started to happen on my monitor."

J - "Why would you want to see Nancy A. nude?"

K- "I didn't exactly WANT to see her nude, but if I'm sitting at my desk and any colleague sends me an attachment named "me-nude" I'm going to look. Wouldn't you?"

J- "(laugh) No! I don't want to see most of our colleagues clothed! I'll be over in a minute to fix it, but first I have to send an email to everyone here to warn them not to do the same thing."

Great! Please tell this story to the other 85 employees here.

Footnote: Nancy wasn't sure whether to be flattered or a little scared -- probably she was both. She resigned the following year, and she didn't give me her new email address.

Two of my favorite philosophers

An uncanny likeness, don't you think?
I cannot take credit for this observation, however --- It was my friend Alison who pointed it out to me, and one quick google search later, I found these two images, which I could not resist sitting side by side. I should mention that I actually think Ellen is quite attractive, but isn't it amazing what happens when you place her next to Thoreau? She looks much better next to Portia de Rossi. And then of course, there are some of my favorite quotations by each of them:

Henry David Thoreau...
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.

Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.

Ellen Degeneres
Human beings only use ten percent of their brains. Ten percent! Can you imagine how much we could accomplish if we used the other sixty percent?

In the beginning there was nothing. God said "Let there be light!" And there was light. There was still nothing, but you could see it a whole lot better.

I'm a godmother, that's a great thing to be, a godmother. She calls me god for short, that's cute, I taught her that.

My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She's ninety-seven now, and we don't know where the hell she is.
and the motto by which I've lived most of my adult life:
I don't need a baby growing inside me for nine months. For one thing, there's morning sickness. If I'm going to feel nauseous and achy when I wake up, I want to achieve that state the old fashioned way: getting good and drunk the night before.

See how they have the same powers of observation, too?