Freedom and bravery

I just ordered toilet paper via the internet. Talk about a brave new world. Free shipping!

Dakota and Jason send their best

 

Jason made the ballons, Dakota came up with text. I admire her font selection.

Had to stop because a certain little boy ventured out to see Santa

So I stopped complaining about parody and looked up the Clement Clarke Moore original on my blackberry, read it to Jason and followed him back to bed. Soon he had visions of monkeys and dinosaurs dancing through his head.

Blackberry blogging on Christmas eve with cookies left out for Santa.

Which brings me to what I was going to say before: "Dude, why do you
have to parody Christmas?"

I would rather see depressed people and haters before self satisfied ironists. The irony of damning ironists is not lost on me. Iron irony.

"iRon the new shoe from Apple."

What was I saying?

Yes... I was saying Merry Christmas. Enjoy your traditions in earnest.

The problem with Christmas parody...

...is that Christmas traditions are already a bit too long already to sit
through half-thought out puns on top is excruciating. The epitome of
this travesty is any parody of "12 days of Christmas" Especially odious are ones which change the lyrics. Your funniest joke in this milieu is always "and a
cartridge for the Atari" and that joke ain't funny 12 times in a row. And though the
original song is timeless the parody that you came up with in 1981 is not.

I'm using the 2nd person again. That's because I am talking to you, NBC writers! You had a whole season to be on strike, you could have used that time to think up thinking funny.

But Christmas is a time of love. So here's the teachable moment:

What would be much better is aphoristic use of parody for Christmas traditions. For example like:

"Merry Christmas to mall and to mall a good night"

There that's adequate. No need to belabor it with a:

"twas the night before Christmas,
and all through the mall,
not a vendor was idle,
not even a stall..."

yada yada yada

Peace on Earth

Dakota: Dad, did you ever notice that you belly is like a big, fat pillow?

Dad: Yes.

Dakota: you need to go on a diet because you are too fat. But I love you
anyway.

Dad: I guess I know my new years resolution ...

"We must not let daylight in upon the magic."

Supposedly Walter Bagehot said this in reference to the British monarchy. I think he was really referring to William and Dakota's writing.

Dakota's version of Chapter 4

She had a lot of had a lot of: and then he went "AHHH!!" and then they were like "OH NO!" and then the luggage went "CRASH" and hit scarecrow on the head, and the police were like "STOP!" and the ghost was like "NO!" and then the police guy was like "I'm going crazy!!!!" and then flappy got out and they all ran away.

Which is hard to write, I did my best.

Chap 4 -- This is where Dakota and I got stuck.

Talking on a cell phone while riding in a Jeep Wrangler would seem like an exercise in futility; between the wind, the road noise, and all.  But with a good hands free device, the sound quality is surprisingly good.  Hands free device or not, talking on a cell phone while driving can be dangerous, especially if you do not notice that a scorpion has climbed in while you were gassing up.  This was the situation that Special Agent McGinnis found himself in.

"Yes, I turned off Ranch Rd 169 a while ago." He said. "No, its outside the jurisdiction of Presidio County Sheriff but DHS said that they'll send a Border Patrol agent from Marfa station to meet me at the crash site."

 

Special Agent McGinnis strained to listen to the voice at the other end of the phone, then pulled a highlighter from his from shirt pocket and removed the cap with his teeth.  He flipped through his print-out and highlighted the names he was being told.

 

"Okay, I got it." He said. "No, I didn't see the lights; there's no such thing. Ouch. Damnit, I've stuck myself.  On my ankle. No, I don't see anything. I must have a pen or a knife down there or something. Damn that hurt. Oh, hey, I see it... let me call you back."

 

The crash site was not what he expected.  He expected a flaming wreck and charred bodies in a pyre with huddled survivors cowering under a makeshift hut fashioned from soiled undershirts and ski poles.  The reality was a featureless patch of desert with a 767 incongruously parked between two dunes.  The unreality was an eerie sense of foreboding and the vision of a tan warrior with a head-dress and an obsidian knife, shimmering in the heat. McGinnis' foreboding was replaced by abject terror, with a touch of normally suppressed homoerotic titillation, as the shimmering Meso-American warrior charged headlong towards his windshield. With a spray of gravel, the Jeep veered and screeched to a halt. Feeling queasy and disoriented, McGinnis stumbled towards the uniformed border patrol agent.

 

The uniformed border patrol agent introduced himself. "Special Agent McGinnis, I'm Special Agent Gomes, and well, we're it."  

 

"What do you mean?" asked McGinnis.

 

"I mean," continues Gomes, "that you're the federal guy and I'm the local guy, even though I'm really a federal guy too, but the point is: there will be no additional first responders or more other responders of any kind.  Actually, that's not entirely true. I called to a local charter bus company. They'll come eventually, but apparently their bus is on its way back from New Braunfels; something about seniors at Schliterbaan, but after they clean up the vehicle, we can transport everyone out of here.  In the meantime, we can survey the scene and interview all the witnesses.  Here's how I think we can reconcile the differences between 6 CFR and 49 CFR for you.  First of all, our respective agencies have different but not entirely incompatiable missions..."

 

McGinnis fought back waves of nausea as he listen to Gomes synthesize the Code of Federal Regulations for two agencies into a hybrid set of standard operating protocols.  While the topic was itself excruciating, he was extremly worried about the waves of searing pain pulsing from his ankle. McGinnis did his best to fight through the agony and instead focus on the soft and hypnotic voice of the DHS agent. His seductive mustache wiggling up and down like a little fuzzy caterpillar.  McGinnis shook and coughed up some vomit.

 

"You know, at first I just tought you just some suit from Washington who was uncomfortable to be away from his desk, but now I think you might be sick," remarked Gomes as McGinnis collapsed to the ground, stripped off his left shoe and began thwacking it into the desert sand. "Oh hey... that looks like a scorpion bite. 

 

Two hours and one 50ml vial of Anascorp later, things were finally moving along with interviewing passeners and crew. After determining that there was a curious lack of need to give any first aid (other than for Special Agent McGinnis), the two federal agents separated the passengers into two groups: those who had given statements and those who had not.  The passengers were suprisingly chatty with useless information about what they were late for, how they felt about their home lives, and speculation about the odd mannerism of certain members of the crew. Gomes recorded all conversations using a microphone attachment that he happened to have for his iPod, but McGinnis wrote down the critical comments. 

 

As the day wore on and became dusk, McGinnis was starting to see a profile of a prime suspect through a confluence of similiar comments. He circled some phrases in his notepad:

 

male... blond hair... dark eyes... double-jointed in multiple places ...English? (stiff upper lip... dry sense of humor)  ...claimed to work in agriculture ...pet bat?

 

McGinnis glanced up from his pad. Someone had positioned the emergency ramp under the belly of the plane and was jumping up and down. At first it seemed comical, even more so when a flurry of luggage spilled out the bottom of the plane and nearly buried the man. Then McGinnis came to his senses and shouted, "Gomes! Stop that man."

 

"That's Special Agent Gomes," replied Special Agent Gomes, as he dashed past Agent McGinnis, and in whirling dervish of patriotic fervor, flashed his DHS Border Patrol badge with his left hand and unholstered his Advanced Taser M26 with his right while proclaimed "Stop in the name of the Department of Homeland Security and the Government of the United States of America!"

 

Then Gomes charged, leading with his extended arm towards the far away man, who was frantically digging through the pile of luggage. With a clearly practiced flourish, Gomes about 40 feet away from the man, dove forward into a somersault, and came up in the kneeling position behind a medium-size rock, getting a negligible amount of cover, Taser trained on the man the entire time. 

 

"Last warning,  Jefe." he cried. 

 

Having made such a racket, all of the passengers and flight crew of had turned their attention to the showdown underneath the plane.  The man in the luggage had just picked up a beige pet-carrier when he heard Special Agent Gomes and their eyes locked. The man in the luggage lifted, clearly startled, raised one arm in the air and held the cage aloft with the other. The rest of his body seemed to scrunch in on itself. In a shaky voice he said, "I... I am just trying to get my pet, Flappy. He might die"

 

As the dancing red dot of the laser sight from Special Agent Gomes's Taser danced on the sternum of the quivering man, the pet carrier rotated the cage slowly back and forth in the man's hand. When the front faced McGinnis, McGinnis saw through the bars of the cage, a fluttering of black wings.  Everything clicked and McGinnis accidently blurted out, "Oh my God, that's him!"

 

Taking that has his signal, Gomes squeezed the trigger.  With a pop, compressed nitrogen jettisoned two small probes towards the man's torso which, improbably, folded neatly backwards out of the way. Special Agent Gomes cursed, as the man, holding the cage the entire time,  completed his backwards round-off flip-flop. McGinnis, already agape, felt an ebony wave of blackness pass through him and then out of him. Then he saw a black mist before his eyes form into the shape of the headdressed warrior. The shape became translucent flesh and the warrior raised an obsidian axe, smashing open the cage of the pet carrier.  The flexible man in the luggage, the translucent warrier, and the bat, sprinted away from the plane and disappeared into the glare of the sunset.

30 knights at the Day's Inn.

Somehow the astoundingly pretentious vampire title "30 Days of Night" manages to keep cropping up whenever my leg is swollen in my cast. I think of this stupid title and I come up with the above parody (my version is about a Knights of Columbus party gone terribly wrong) and wish tendon ruptures on everybody in culture who has ever produced something that I find to be less the totally original and entertaining. Hey cast and writers of "Friends" I am talking about you. Especially you, David Schwimmer.

A Capital Idea

Funny man says, "Why stop at having Leno on at 10!"
"What do you mean?" asks straight man.
"Well," says funny man, "NBC should replace their whole prime-time lineup with 5 nights a week late night personalities. Let's put on Carson at 9, Jack Paar at 8, and Steve Allen at 7"
Straight man exlaims, "but they're all dead!"
"So is NBC," replies funny man.

[[laugh track here]]

Triage Technique: Get Hurt

Kerry, this one is for you. So you know how its always difficult to get an accurate medical history from a patient because they are reticent to share? I have a recommendation: Get Hurt Nothing gets people sharing their history of illness, how they got hurt, when, what procedures they took, complications, meds perscribed, allergies, family history, etc. like a cast on your foot. In a different time in my life, this sort of oversharing would bother me. Something happened to me along the road that made me fascinated by the level of gory detail that people want to share with someone who is injured. People who never really liked me are suddenly far more comfortable to open up with these incredibly personal stories. And the people who do like you, do nice things for you and try to cheer you up. I noticed it today at work, but it was also in the airport and at the dr's last week and in general. That said, I am bushed from all the limping and hopping

The Associated Press: Goldman's family: Simpson prison time is `karma'

The Associated Press: Goldman's family: Simpson prison time is `karma'

Re my previous post: no it's not. You are misunderstanding Karma, Goldman family. What you meant to say was: "Schenfreude!"

The Hoppers Remembers the Statute of Frauds

 Remember when I said that TEAM USA soccer could be beaten by the Llagolen one-legged team? Well... karma baby. Freakin kharma.

I love how people have abused the idea of Kharma. For the record Kharma is not an O'Henry-like ironic plot twist, it's a Hindu and Buddhist concept dealing with the spiritual burdens that one must shed through a cycle of re-incarnation and progressively less kharma in order to attain Nirvana. But we don't care to investigate these ideas because... SHH! no talking "Friends" is on.... I think "Ross" is getting stressed out about something. He's so neurotic. Ha ha ha. Pass the Starbucks.

By "people" in the above paragraph, I mean "NBC." Darn that NBC.

Any how, the statute of frauds was enacted before the time of widespread literacy and it had a number of functions. Although the ostensible purpose was a rule of evidence to stop people "swearing they had an oral contract."  Anyhow, you must write it down if its a contract for

Marriage
Year or longer for the contract to execute, by its own terms

Land (Real estate transaction)
Executors something or other. I don't actually understand this rule
Goods above some dollar amount, varies by jurisdiction.
Surety- This is a promise to pay someone else's debt. Sometimes these take the form of bonds, sometimes these look more like insurance.

Look! I broke my leg!

Name alert? Call super personnel

Name alert? Call super personnel person! Disambiguating Michaels from Michelles and Dipetrillios for DiPetrelleous