Absolutely the worst party I’ve been to in my life.
It was in a horrible location: a difficult to navigate snow-covered mountain pass more suited for ox-drawn wagons than a proper vehicle. Seriously, rent a hall.
The only music they had was some old guy with a fiddle who couldn’t play it properly because he’d lost several fingers to frostbite.
Everyone was just dour. There was a lot of wailing and weeping–it was a real mood killer.
They ran out of hor d’oeuvres almost immediately; the food was the biggest disappointment.
It was such an ill-planned party–I left early.
I just hope things picked up after I left.
Addendum:
The Donner Party is sometimes referred to by historians as the Donner-Reed Party.
But I’m certain Donner-Reed would throw a fantastic party.
“You can tell by my maniacal sneer that I’m a good guy.”
You’re not really a bad person.
Sure, you parked in front of that fire hydrant despite the big sign clearly indicating not to park in front of the fire hydrant, because of all the laws and such.
You couldn’t have possibly known that orphanage would catch on fire.
You did see some smoke coming from the building as you were parking, but you imagined a nice cozy fire burning in the fireplace…midday in the middle of August.
And while it seemed odd the smoke was emanating from a window and not a chimney, you’re not a chimney expert.
Besides, it wasn’t very much smoke…at first.
For all you knew, they were just electing a new orphan pope, you’re not an orphan pope expert.
And you’re all for freedom of religion, despite that time you punched that Jehovah’s Witness in the face. He rang the doorbell and got you out of bed and it was barely past noon. Besides, you’re not a freedom of religion expert.
And while you made the decision to argue with the firemen rather than allow them the unimpeded ability to aide the orphans who were now fleeing for their lives from a burning building, you’re not a firefighting expert.
Hey! Those firemen put a scratch on your car that isn’t going to buff out.
What’s the big deal anyway? They’re orphans–they’re used to hardship.
You probably shouldn’t have cursed at that nun, but it was a very intense situation and that crack she made about your future being filled with damnation and hellfire just seemed mean. She did seem to be a damnation and hellfire expert; she was quite longwinded about it.
Imagine the following scenario: you’re innocently walking down street, minding your own business, contemplating life, when you spot something out of the corner of your eye: on the grass sits a solitary toad. You make a mental note of the toad, but you don’t think much about it.
But as you carry on with your day, you can’t shake one niggling thought: I could have licked that toad.
It’s a thought that persists with you through the following days. It grows from a gentle nagging into a full-blown obsession.
Your days are filled with confusion and regret; your nights are haunted with sleepless torment.
And thus begins your journey as a toad-licker.
There’s no shame in being a toad-licker. You’re not hurting anybody. You’re still the same person you’ve always been, but people begin to see you differently.
Admittedly, a much higher than normal percentage of toad-kickers are criminally insane, but you’re not criminally insane; when the voices inside your head tell you to kill, you almost never listen to them.
Your friends begin to treat you differently. They subtly begin to remove you from their lives. The invitations to parties and get-togethers become less frequent. They say they fear you’ll suddenly produce a toad from your pocket and start licking it. They claim you’ll start licking a toad at a really inappropriate time.
You will produce a toad from your pocket and start licking it, but you’re discreet. Besides, if you can’t lick a toad at a funeral; when can you lick a toad?
Society tries to separate you. Society tries to ostracize you.
It’s not like you have Ebola, or the face of a goat, or you’re a Kardashian: YOU’RE NOT A FREAK!
I urge all of you to look into your hearts and give toad-lickers a chance; toad-lickers are people just like you and me…apart from all the toad-licking and the fact they rarely bathe.
Please, toad-lickers just need a little understanding…except for this guy–this guy’s a weirdo.
I had been working with this woman, Cathy, for about a month.
She was a normal person. And when I say normal, what I mean is, she was slightly more verbose than most and several degrees louder. She was like a howler monkey without the grace.
For the month we worked together, I sported a beard.
One weekend I decided to shave the beard. There was no particular reason for the removal of the beard, it was just the whimsical part of my nature that people find so endearing.
I went to work the following Monday morning, sans beard.
I walked past Cathy and I said hello as one would do.
She looked at me with pure horror and recoiled like I was Jeffrey Dahmer asking her over to my place for dinner.
I could tell by the expression on her face and the vacant look in her weird fish eyes, that she had no idea who I was.
“It’s Larry,” I told her.
After a moment I could see the light of recognition dawn across her face.
Then she looked at me said what I considered to be a remarkable thing: “Ew. Is that what your face looks like?” Then following a not unsubstantial pause, she said: “no offense.”
She then went on a lengthy diatribe detailing what a mistake it was for me to expose my face to light of day. But after every insulting (and frankly hurtful) thing she said, she would follow it with: “no offense.”
Well guess what, Cathy, I took offense then and I take offense now!
Why do people think they can say any horrible thing they want and it’s okay if they just punctuate it with, “no offense”?
If at the end of World War 2, Hitler had thrown his hands into the air and said, “listen everybody, no offense,” would it have all been okay?
No, Adolph! It’s not okay! And you’re not okay either, Cathy!
That day I told Cathy that despite her strong feelings toward my face, I thought she was a wonderful and precious and perfect person in every way.
Just like a liar would.
No offense.
Me without the beard and with the beard…maybe I can see the confusion.
Everyone knows someone who’s overbearing and obnoxious.
As you were reading that sentence, somebody’s name popped into your head.
A person who’s ego is so enormous, it blots out the sun.
A person who is aggressively ignorant.
A pompous loudmouthed prick.
And on occasion, that person points their pompous loudmouthed aggression in your direction.
How do you deal with it?
Do you simply try to keep your distance?
You can’t: his bloated face encroaches all boundaries.
Do you attempt to ignore him?
You can’t: his presence is tantamount to being locked in a room with a hundred diseased monkeys all throwing their feces at your face. Some would argue his presence is worse.
I have a solution that is guaranteed to be successful: shoot the pompous loudmouthed prick in the face with a crossbow.
It’s simple. It’s elegant. It’s crazy fun.
Once a person has been shot in the face with a crossbow, their primary concern immediately becomes the fact that they’ve just been shot in the face with a crossbow.
It takes an amazingly short amount of time for the pompous loudmouthed prick’s bloviating to transition to: “Holy shit, you’ve just shot me in the face with a crossbow. I’m in a ridiculous amount of pain! There’s so much blood! Why are you laughing?”
Note: it’s probably best not to cackle hysterically as the pompous loudmouthed prick bleeds out, but that’s entirely up to you.
I know what’s going through your mind right now: if I shoot somebody in the face with a crossbow, won’t there be ramifications?
Maybe. You probably won’t get invited to as many parties.
But do you really want to go to parties where pompous loudmouthed pricks aren’t being shot in the face with a crossbow?
Of course, you don’t–nobody wants that.
I hope reading this post has been an aid to you; I know writing it has helped me.
The crossbow: dealing with loudmouthed pricks since the Middle Ages.
As this is the first day of Spring, this post is devoted to my favorite springs.
Spring Theory
This is much like String Theory, a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings.
In Spring Theory, the universe isn’t made of strings, but of tiny little Slinkys.
The Slinky
There was nothing better than getting that classic childhood toy on Christmas morning.
You would rush to the top of the stairs and send it marching down the steps in that classic Slinky way. And as if by magic, that Slinky would transform into a ball of entangled metal by the time it reached the bottom of the stairs. That Slinky would provide seconds and sometimes minutes of joyful playtime.
Good times…and the building blocks of the universe.
The Springtail
The springtail are omnivorous, free-living organisms that prefer moist conditions. Doesn’t that describe us all?
Isn’t it just adorable?
Coffee Springs, Alabama
Coffee Springs is a tiny town in Alabama where, I’m guessing, coffee literally springs up through the ground–how fantastic is that?
Coffee Springs has a population of 228 people who are constantly buzzed on caffeine. The people of Coffee Springs have a hard time sleeping but they get a lot done.
Jerry Springer
Are you feeling badly about yourself? Do you feel like loser or an outcast? Just watch a handful of episodes of The Jerry Springer Show and I promise you will feel better about yourself.
Unless you’ve been cheating on your paint huffing alcoholic cousin with your other cousin (who dresses like vampire and drinks blood) while raising a child who was fathered by, based the indicators of the child’s behavior and appearance, a Malaysian yak, you’re probably good.
“That yak was my baby daddy!”
Addendum
Some of my assertions about Coffee Springs, Alabama may not be entirely by the strictest definition of word: accurate.
What a lovely looking party…it’d be a shame if somebody ruined it.
What if murder wasn’t illegal?
What if murder was just a thing considered rude–something you wouldn’t do at a friend’s party?
Imagine you were invited to a party at a friends house. While at this party you have a bit too much to drink.
During the festivities you question the host’s taste in decor. You toss out phrases like: garish, glitteringly obnoxious, tasteless, and the truly unfortunate phrase: just plain butt-ugly.
During this party, you cause a perfectly nice couple to storm out after you ask them if they named their daughter Liz because she bears an uncanny resemblance to a lizard.
At some point during the night, you murder a guy named Mitch with a waffle iron.
And through an unfortunate accident, you ruin the cheese dip.
Now imagine the thing your friend is the most upset about is the cheese dip. In fact, everyone is mad at you because the cheese dip was really good.
“Did you have to hit Mitch in the back of the head with a waffle iron?” your friend yells at you. “You made him fall face first into the cheese dip…now no one will eat the cheese dip.”
The next morning you apologize profusely as you make your friend some pancakes. (You’d make waffles but the back of Mitch’s head ruined the waffle iron.)
You apologize for the remarks you made about the decor. The decor is perfectly lovely if you’re colorblind, or just plain blind.
You phone that nice couple and apologize for implying their daughter looks like a lizard. (Just because it’s true doesn’t mean it needs to be said.)
You apologize for insinuating that your friend’s wife dresses a tad slutty. Then you remember that you never actually said that out loud, so you apologize for that.
But most emphatically, you apologize for the cheese dip, because the cheese dip was truly delicious.
What you don’t apologize for is Mitch, because Mitch was a dick. Besides, it’s not like murder is illegal.
Several random thoughts immediately leapt into my brain after this cluster of search terms appeared on my stats page.
Note: there’s a lot of room in my brain for random thoughts to leap, stretch out, or do an entire gymnastic floor routine; it’s pretty vacant up there.
Thoughts such as:
What kind of questions does Jack Elam ask, and why are there so many of them?
How badly do your wife’s feet have to smell for it to be enough?
How do you know my neighbor, and how do you know he has a happy face?
Would I look good in gator boots?
Wow, this blog certainly attracts some weirdos (but not you).
Punch and idiot in the face day? Is that a real thing?
After doing an extensive amount of research (Google) I discovered “punch an idiot in the face day” isn’t a real thing.
Bitter disappointment.
Then I had another thought: just because something isn’t a real thing, doesn’t mean it can’t be.
So after once again doing an extensive amount of research (Wikipedia) into the process of initiating a ballot measure in the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, I came to a conclusion: it’s a lot more work than I am willing to do.
Just a few of the things required:
A petition containing signatures equal to 10% of the last local general election vote for governor. (Governor? I thought Pennsylvania had a potentate.)
These signatures must be real people and not characters from Warner Brothers cartoons.
If your real name happens to be Elmer Fudd, there is an enormous amount of extra paperwork involved.
If your real name happens to be Elmer Fudd, your parents are dicks.
None of the signatures can be from dead people; this is not Illinois.
Petitions must be submitted by the 13th Tuesday before the election. Petitions may be circulated for (at most) 7 weeks, and circulation may not begin before the 20th Tuesday prior to the election. Initiated measures may be submitted at primary, municipal, or general elections…and must be written in yaks blood.
You must understand the previous requirement and be able to cite it verbatim while juggling running chain saws.
Election officials must submit successful initiatives to voters at the next primary, general, or municipal election occurring not sooner than the 13th Tuesday after the initiative was filed.
The successful initiatives mentioned in the previous requirement, must be submitted in triplicate with the third set written entirely in Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Every fifth word of every document must be written in a silly font.
Pointing out to any official, that the previous two requirements contradict each other, will result in the immediate disqualification of your ballot initiative. You will also be slapped in the face and poked in the eyes Three Stooges style.
The Pennsylvania election code requires you to obtain the following items: holy water, a cross, a wooden stake and a clove of garlic. (Sorry, that’s the Transylvania election code.)
You must be able to find Harrisburg on a map of Pennsylvania.
You must be able to find Pennsylvania on a map of the United States.
You must be able to find Pennsylvania Avenue on a Monopoly Board.
If you roll doubles three times in a row, you have to go to jail.
You must purchase a lot of maps and board games.
Petition circulators must attest to the validity of petition signatures in a notarized affidavit.
You have to know what an affidavit is.
In some instances, you may have to sacrifice a small animal under a full moon.
You must be able to say name of, Intercourse Pennsylvania, without giggling.
You absolutely must be able to deal with bureaucrats without flipping out and stabbing someone in the face with a bayonet.
See what I mean, and this is just the first page.
Then I had another thought (I’ve been on fire with thoughts lately) I need to think like a politician: I just need to convince a bunch of willing dupes to pursue my vision, let them do all the work, then take all the credit when the initiative passes.
Brilliant.
I will keep you updated.
“Hello, I’m Jack Elam, and every day is punch an idiot in the face day for me, idiot.”
Erie, Pa—The Erie County Health and Safety Department has released a set of safety tips for this year’s trick-or-treat season. It is vital your children must wear a mask while trick or treating. Whether the mask is a part of a costume or just a mask in general, be certain your child is wearing one. Remember this: most of your children are ugly–some bordering on hideous–their faces should be covered. Some trick-or-treating will occur during hours of darkness, and you will be crossing streets and roadways, so it is imperative that your children have high visibility. (Except for their faces–we don’t want to see their faces.) Inevitably, at some point in the night, you will come to one of those houses that are giving away pennies, walnuts, or dental floss. At that juncture, you will be required by law to egg that house. Raw eggs can be a source of salmonella, so be sure to take care. In recent years there have been claims of roving bands of inbred cannibals out on the night of trick or treating, looking for a snack; those are wild and unfounded rumors. That being said–the cannibals will pick off a few kids. However, the likeliness of your child being taken by a cannibal is very low. Frankly, your child is far more likely to be taken by a coyote than a cannibal; those freakin’ coyotes are everywhere. Should you make it through the night unscathed (it happens), don’t allow your child to gorge themselves on candy. It can cause a myriad of health issues, and it is important to note: coyotes go after the weak ones first.
Had Wile E. Coyote plied the Roadrunner with candy, his fortunes may have been better.
North East, Pa.–A local vineyard owner has made news this week after launching a lawsuit against grape tester Myron P. Fox. It seems the vineyard owner in question, Glenn A Farmer, has contested Mr. Fox’s assessment of the grapes in his vineyard. Specifically, Mr. Farmer has taken issue with Mr. Fox’s assertion that the grapes contained an abnormally low sugar content.
“This is ridiculous,” Mr. Fox, said, “the refractometer doesn’t lie.”
“The refractometer might not lie,” Mr. Farmer responded, “but the sack of crap using the refractometer does. He didn’t even properly test the grapes, he just declared them low in sugar content.”
“First of all,” Mr. Fox said in his defense, “when I arrived to test the grapes, there was nobody to be found. I waited around forever before Mr. Farmer bothered to show up.”
“I was running a little late,” Mr. Farmer admitted.
“He’s always running a little late,” Mr. Fox said condescendingly, “It was over an hour before he arrived. When he did arrive, he was completely unapologetic.”
“Mr. Fox can shove his refractometer up his butt,” Mr. Farmer said bitterly.
When it was pointed out to Mr. Fox that there seemed to be animosity between the two that went beyond a simple grape testing, Mr. Fox had an explanation: “Mr. Farmer and I used to work together and one day he accused me of stealing his lunch.”
“I could smell the marinara sauce on his breath,” Mr. Farmer asserted.
“Okay. I may have eaten his lunch the one time,” Mr. Fox acquiesced, “but it wasn’t very good; I threw most of it away.” He then paused reflectively for a moment. “And I might have been banging his wife at the time, but is there really a need to hold a grudge.”
When told of Mr. Fox’s admission, Mr. Farmer scowled and muttered several curse words under his breath.
“The bottom line,” Mr. Fox said, “if I don’t have access to the grapes, I have to assume they’re sour.”
“If he didn’t want he lunch eaten, he should have hidden it better.
idiotpruf 