Malarky Monday is HERE!

AND HERE!

AND HERE!

AND HERE!

You know the drill by now.
Watch, read, listen and [hopefully] LAUGH!
Visit the above links after your visit here and be sure to have some
paper towels to wipe off your computer monitor.

I originally intended to go all political this week but have decided against it.
I'm not wussing out, I just hate listening to a certain faction of people whine incessantly
about the small stuff, okay?
That said, here are some pics that had me howling at the mOOn, so to speak.
Happy Malarky Monday peeples!!!
Be sure to click on the linx above after your visit here.
Danke . . .

Hopefully, you've heard or seen Chris Farley,
the motivational speaker
from Saturday Night Live.
Saw this and busted two guts . . .

This geographical phenomenon has always bugged me as well.

My God, I hated my 8th grade English teacher.
She had legs that belonged on a Grand piano and no tits whatsoever.
No wonder I never got a hankering for Raymond Carver.
Bummer.
Thanks for nothing, Nancy . . .

Last but not least, I am chillin' out
wit my gnomies . . .

Happy Malarky Monday!!!!

Just a short video regarding the immeasurable distance internet technology has achieved.
Australia is a millisecond away but downloads can make us weep.
I love this video for many reasons.
Maybe because I understand it.
Or not.

I run into many interesting people during the course of my day in Boston.
This morning a customer took me by surprise with a true story that was just too damn funny not to share. I am not making this up folks.
May not be suitable for reading the kids before bed either.
I made mention of the fact that I had made chili on Wednesday when BLH said, “I gotta good chili story for ya.”

In the (somewhat) paraphrased words of BLH:

“This was several years ago when I was living next to two gay guys.
Great guys, too.
They did their thing, I did mine, ya know?
Live and let live, I say.
Anyway, my kitchen window looked right into theirs as it was less than 15 feet away.
So this one summer day, I’m making chili.
Beautiful day, windows open, music on and I’m chopping up onions and garlic and Habanero peppers for my chili.
I leave the kitchen for a minute to go and take a piss and resume my cooking.
It’s not even 2 minutes later that  ‘Mr. Willy’ starts to heat up.
Like really heating up.
I look at the Habanero peppers now nicely chopped and look down at my crotch and think, “Dear God, no.”
Within 5 minutes, I realize that ‘Mr. Willy’ needs some serious medical attention.
This is getting painful.
And really hot.
I get a facecloth, soak it in cold water and drop my pants right there in the middle of the kitchen.
It didn’t take long to realize that all the wet facecloth did was move all the hot stuff down to my
two soon-to-be ‘Hot Mexican jumping beans’.
I was in too much pain and making too many oohs and ahhs to realize that I was also gathering something of an audience 15 feet across the way.
With my crotch turning into a smoking Mojave desert, I was getting desperate.
(Is that steam?)
Christ, I’m on fire down there!
I suddenly remembered buying a big container of sour cream for the chili and
waddled like a penguin over to the fridge.
I ripped open the container like a madman, took a fistful of the cool white stuff
and began rubbing it in gobs into the raging fire down below.
My oohs, ahhs and general sounds of relief were obviously misinterpreted by my now smiling neighbors across the way.
There I am with my pants down, breathing heavy, and sour cream smeared all over my crotch.
Beautiful.
A proud Kodak moment for me, ya know?
I’m close to my mother so I told her the story, and man, did she laugh.
Two weeks later, I’m out to breakfast with her at a place she frequently goes.
The waitress brings my breakfast of fried eggs, home fries and bacon
but on the side of the plate is a small tub of sour cream.
I asked the waitress, “What’s up with the sour cream?”
She winked and said, “Your mother says you really like it.”
(I am laughing hysterically now)
You’ll be thinking about this every time you make chili now, right?”

Yeah, BLH, you are sooo right.
Was it a funny Thursday morning for me?
You betcha schweet bippie.
Thanks for a great tale, BLH
You have total attribution.
I just hope I did you some justice.
(BLH’s version is much funnier but has a different rating)
Hopefully ’Mr. Willy’ has found some cooler climes by now.
And, BLH, I hope you were using low-fat sour cream.
That regular stuff is just plain nasty . . .

It was 20 years ago tonight that my wife elbowed me at 1:30 in the morning saying,
“My water just broke. Get some sleep.”
Get some sleep?
Yeah, right.
I called Pamela’s mom and told her to come over immediately (to watch a sleeping 3 year-old Sarah)
and it wasn’t soon after that we were changed and in my silver Datsun 210 on the way to the hospital.
It was cold as hell and my brakes were grinding to the metal.
Pamela thought we would never make it to Hannemann Hospital.
We did.
At 8:11AM (2.7.90) Pamela gave birth to our second daughter, Jenna.
Tomorrow afternoon we will have a house full of family and Jenna's college friends
and more Chinese food than you can shake a stick at.
We will also be watching some Supernatural episodes (Jenna’s favorites, methinks)
We will basically have our own ‘Supernatural Bowl’.
Could be much better than the actual Super Bowl itself.  (no Dean)
Happy birthday, Jen.
Mom and I love you and your sisters more than you will ever know.
Have a ‘supernatural’ day, okay?
Here's a Supernatural gag reel that you may not have seen.
See you tomorrow afternoon, kiddo.

Reading 'Carver' right now.
Please READ THIS.
You will spend 20 minutes of your life and thank me.
This is one of Carver's most amazing short stories.
Please take the time and read it.
The man was amazing.
Simply amazing . . .

A guy comes into the store today and says,
"I want 4 packs of American Spirit Yellow."
We ring him up, take his money and say, "Would you like a bag?"
He says, "No thank you, I have gloves."
I have gloves?
More like you have a frozen mush of a cerebellum.
Jesus Krispies.
It must be the cold here in New England, huh? (7 degrees)
That would be like ordering at a drive-thru Burger King
and telling them, "I want to eat it here though, thanks."
A definite WTF moment.
Damn, I encounter far too many these days.
Maybe it's me.
Not!

He stares blindly out the window of another night
down on Bleeker Street, where nothing seem to change except a world gone mad.
He exists.
I exist.
I go to him, touch his shoulder feeling the quivering bone underneath my hand
but he doesn’t move, nobody is home it seems.
As I bend to kiss his forehead,
I think back to my childhood remembering the smell of him;
a rich elixir of leather, spice and a fatherly scent I could never quite put my finger on.
It was a smell of  total comfort and one of extreme familiarity.
His scent is different tonight; he smells clinical, preserved and abandoned.
He smells like a familiar stranger, an ancient decade of melancholy memories,
echoes of voices lost in an obsidian mist . . .

I sit there with him as we both blindly stare out the window, watching a world gone by
and we sigh,
we cry,
we say goodbye to the too many words left unspoken,
the things we once took for granted,
and the once welcome spaces where we no longer belong.
I take his frail and shaking hand and wonder (as I have thousands of times before)
how many more nights will he sit here all alone and stare?
And simply exist.
There is little left to say but with my father, somehow that’s okay.
Somehow, I know he understands.
He has taught me well.
He was never big on words anyway.
It will be very hard to forget the nights down on Bleeker Street and even harder to forget
the little man just sitting staring out the window . . .

I need the sharpest of knives to slice this
epidermal anomaly from the trappings of my weak and aging body
Deep slices to the elbows, slow and tender slices to the knees
please scratch my legs until they bleed, thank you please
this betrayal of skin, the most hideous part of me
is a possession of the worst kind,
an internal itch I will never be physically able to touch
the P takes over my body, the quintessential tired host
it will never be free . . . as the crimson spreads far above the blood that boils deep within me
People will continue to stare,
invisibly pointing to my sprawling scarlet letter ‘P’
just another ugly ducking,
just another ugly waiting stranger hiding deep inside of me . . .
I hate this

A favorite song of mine that means many things to many people.
(for me? not about the 'horse')
Please listen and enjoy.
I had another post ready to go until I entered HTML Hell. (And I mean Hell)
My blogging mentor, genius and friend is working on the sketchy details.
And it's all about the details.
Headphones would be great for this vid, IMHO
We got your city girls, y'all.
Here at the Western World . . .

Nothing says congratulations quite like a picture of Borat, don'tcha think?
High Five! <-- click here, please
Back in November I did a post regarding people that have left
the most comments on my blog.
I challenged people to try and up their comment count by offering prizes.
(I know, I'm a comment whore, sue me)  :mrgreen:
As of 12.31.2009 the top three commenters were:
*Maureen (154)
*Lolly (77)
and
*Lynn (71)

*numbers are a very close approximation according to Google

I want to thank all three of you for being such an integral part of my blog over the past year.
Without interaction and comments like yours I wouldn't be here.
Know that something will be on its way this Wednesday when I hit the post office.
*Maureen, your prize will be inside Morky's b-day gift which we will send in February
(And it's quite a doozy, let me say. And no, it is not a cheeseburger)
I thank all three of you for visiting me and making my comment numbers go in the right direction.
Up.
You ladies have rocked my world.
The best to all of you in the new year.
And please keep visiting . . .