Wha….?
Hmmmm….interesting. I received this email tonight from the Boston Bruins Executive Vice President. Interesting approach. Looks like he opted for the straightforward route. Click on the pic if you can’t see it clearly enough.
Are You “Suri”ous?
I’ve said it before, but I’m saying it again. Oh, how I love Defamer.com. If it weren’t such a low-paying, factory style blogging job, in fact, it might be my dream job. I offer nothing tonight except this slice of near-perfection, in reference to Suri, the freshly minted female offspring of Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise.
“Somewhere deep within Tom Cruise’s compound, one of the hundreds of bio-vessels gathered in the estate’s silent birthing stadium has finally pushed forth into the world an offspring bearing enough of a physical resemblance to the actor (think the classic monkeys-and-typewriters scenario, but with stainless-steel turkey basters and female Scientologists in their prime reproduction years) not to arouse too much suspicion about the infant’s true parentage.
In other words: The Miracle Baby has finally arrived, a 7 lb. 7 oz. girl named Suri, which we assume was the name of some futuristic seafaring vessel from an obscure L. Ron Hubbard novel.
According to a press release, “both mother and daughter are doing well.” We assume they’re referring to Katie Holmes, not the actual biological parent who’s tending the child while Holmes tries to chew through her wrist restraints and escape during the bedlam following the birth announcement.”
How can you not love that?
This Time Put Your Sweaty Palms Up……
OK, so this topic might seem a tad strange, but tonight I was driving over to a friend’s house with my wife to watch the Oscars and I realized that despite the car being sufficiently heated and my wearing gloves, my hands were still cold. Very cold. I told my wife about this and she simply said, referring to the gloves, “take them off, then.” Her common sense is as sharp as anyone you’ll find, really (and I mean that), so I took her advice and not three minutes later, my hands were comfortably warm.
Can anyone explain this? You see, I’ve always been under the impression that the main purpose of gloves was to keep the hands warm. Yeah, yeah, I understand the whole thing about why people wear gloves vs. mittens, so gloves do have additional purposes, but how is it possible that my hands warmed up only after I removed what are supposed to actually warm them up? Honestly, am I stupid? Has it really taken me 34 years to find out that gloves don’t the serve the purpose I believe they supposed to serve?
Steph’s answer is simple: she just always wears mittens. My answer is more simple: let’s move somewhere warm. Now, I’m not sure about you guys out there, but I’m not eager to don mittens, myself. I don’t do mittens. I’m not sure if its a masculine thing, but it’s just not happening. OK, it’s a masculine thing.
Ray Bjork
8 Inch Floppy Drive, Anyone?
I was driving home from work recently and a song I was listening to reminded me of old words and phrases we used to use while we were growing up. There was the obligatory “dork,” which I believe many kids still use today. Things like “geek” and “awesome” probably still weave their way through the high school and elementary hallways, too. But digging deeper, I tried to think of some other words that definitely didn’t make it past the early ’90s.
For example, I don’t think “airhead” or “ditz” get much play anymore, but back then it certainly did. I also remember using the word “bodacious” quite a bit to describe something or someone (see: girls) that was very, very good. An easy one to remember is “rad.” I can’t say I used that one so much, but there were definitely a group in school who did. Here’s a good one: for a while in grade school (maybe 6th or 7th grade), we used the word “dipstick” a lot to describe someone who did something stupid. Origin: The Dukes of Hazzard. A few that I truly miss: spaz, poser, grody, dweeb and one of my all-time favorites: “ta-ta’s.” I probably don’t need to go into that last one, but you can probably figure it out.
I don’t ever remember a single time ever using any of the valley girl stuff like “gag me with a spoon”or stuff like “totally tubular” and I don’t remember many other people using it, either.
Then, of course, there were the words we invented on our own. If you’re not from Bolton, Lancaster or Stow, Massachusetts and you didn’t go to high school in the 85-87 range, you have no idea what “rant” means. Based purely on hearsay, the word was invented by one Jon Shapiro, graduate of 1985, who also happened to live three doors down the street from me. He was gone by the time we were freshman, but his invention lived on with us, particularly during the 1985-1986 school year. It was initially used to describe a girl who, uh, got around. But after a while, the scope of the definition expanded and you could use “rant” to describe any woman for any reason. I mean, in retrospect not many freshman girls got around, but the word was so good that the definition just needed to expand.
It wasn’t just calmly uttering “rant,” either. You had to pronounce it a certain way, always making it fairly loud and, of course, as obnoxious as possible. Often you’d simply leave out the “t” because the “RAN” part was enough if you stressed it. Sometimes you could just make a completely ridiculous noise that any human outside the high school would think you were just doing an impression of a farm animal and we’d know it was “rant.” Just because. It was brilliant.
I’m sure I’ve left some out as it’s coming up on 17 years since I graduated from high school. Did you make up any good words or can you remember any others?
Am I a mean, dressed-up coal miner?
As evidenced by my fairly infrequent posting here lately, I have been involved a nearly month-long process for work that took up so much of my time and thoughts that it was simply overwhelming. I was dreaming about word documents, excel spreadsheets, presentations and anything else related to work. I barely did anything else, barely saw my wife, barely ate, barely everything. It ran the gamut of many emotions: excitement, frustration, impatience, exhaustion, satisfaction, exhilaration and finally, yesterday, the relief associated with closure. The project is over.
With that, I retreated to my hotel in NYC last night at about 11pm, placed the camera on top of my own head, set the timer and let ‘er fly. The look on my face says it all. This morning I woke up and felt like I’d lost 100 lbs. And I did – figuratively.