Assorted Nonsense

Q. Dammit Joe, I didn’t receive a Christmas card from you this year. What’s up?

A. Sorry Dude. My sincere apologies to everyone who hasn’t received a Christmas Card from me. Hang tight and maybe you’ll get an Easter Card.

Q. Come on Joe. The fact is you’re too lazy and too cheap to send Christmas cards. Right?

A. You forgot old and fat.

Q. You’re too old, fat, lazy and cheap to send Christmas cards.

A. Better.

Q. Would it kill you to pick up a handful of Hallmarks, simply sign your name, and drop them in the mail to those you care about?

A. Of course it wouldn’t kill me. But it might be painful. And pain can hurt.

Q. What’s the matter with you? People send you cards. Schmuck.

A. It’s true. Look, I feel bad about it.

Q. Badly.

A. Huh?

Q. Badly. You feel badly, not bad. It’s an adverb, it should end in “ly.”

A. Now who’s the schmuck?

Q. So you gonna do Christmas cards next year or what?

A. Hey, it all depends if I find the time. If I were retired you’d all get Christmas cards every year. Groundhog Day cards too, probably.

Q. Birthday cards?

A. Don’t push it.

Coolest.  Christmas present.  Ever.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Chatted briefly with my mother this evening. I was making a homemade cornmeal pizza at the time, and looking forward to making some chocolate balls later. The cornmeal pizza was fairly healthful (all the cheese notwithstanding); the chocolate balls less so.

We got to talking about weight. I told her I thought chubby people seemed happier than skinny people. I have no scientific evidence to back this up, it was really a foolish assertion to make. And yet my life’s experience seems to bear this out. Which is just as foolish an assertion to make. And yet, dear reader, it is far from the last foolish assertion I will make in this post.

I told my mother, “Mom,” I said, “It seems to me that to be happy you have to be large. Which is why I’m feeding my family large slabs of homemade cornmeal pizza, and then later copious amounts of homemade chocolate balls.”

“Son,” she said, “You’re an idiot.”

I beg your pardon, actually she was just thinking that. What she actually said was, “So what you’re telling me” — idiot — “Is that in order to be happy you have to be unhealthy.”

I hadn’t actually thought of it like that until she said it. But the truth of it hit me like a bag of potato chips in the face. Which is to say it didn’t hurt much or leave much of an impression. “That’s it exactly Mom,” I told her. “I’ve known lots of skinny people and they’re all miserable sods” (another ridiculous assertion). “Whereas all the large people I know are full of joy, among other things.” The conversation soon drifted into other areas as my mother gently and without too much difficulty steered her idiot son toward more benign conversational material.

But the idea has taken seed, which is why my immediate family and I are going to eat our faces off this Christmas season. And I’m not talking pan fried fish here (although there will almost certainly be some of that… Arctic Char… hmm). No, it’s Chocolate Balls and Cherry Surprises for us. Turkey with lots of gravy and stuffing. Cherry Cheese Cake, Jell-O Pudding Pie, and Harold Squares. Red wine and beer. Potato Chips and Strawberry Wine.

We will be large. We will be happy. Life will be short, but grand.

Burp.

Rest in peace, Number One.

Talking to Laurence Stevenson today reminded me that I really need to keep this blog up.  My readership of two is counting on me.

Talking to someone else today reminded me of my favourite words.  Here’s a list of some off the top of my head:

1. Decimate

I was reminded of this one today when someone misused it.  “The department was decimated,” she said.  She might well have been right, but was it really reduced by a tenth?

2. Chomping

Another misused word.  People use it when they really mean “champing.”  As in  “He was really champing at the bit.”

3. Fireplace

It’s such a silly word, really.  “Where do you want this log?”  “Oh I dunno… why don’t you put it in the, uh, fire, um, place.  You know, the place with the fire.”

4. Limanouse

When I was a kid reading Ritchie Rich comics, I never looked closely enough at the word “limousine.”  I always read it as “limanouse.”  I still think that limanouse ought to be a word.  No idea what it should mean, though.

5. Jus de pamplamouse

Just love the sound of that word.  Love the juice, too.

6. Cart a puce

That one too.  I heard it once working on a French radio show.  I’ve never heard it since, though, and any French person I’ve asked about it denies that it’s actually a word.  I think it’s supposed to mean banking card, or the like.

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