My resolution? To stop calling people “bitches” all the time.
Archive for December, 2005
I believe there’s an expression in the armed forces for when a situation goes haywire, all at once, with many different things happening at the same time. I believe the polite version is “Charlie Foxtrot” and I’m pretty sure that stands for “cluster-fuck.”
What I experienced buying a present for ACWF can easily be deemed a clusterfucking of the douchiest magnitude. Granted, I don’t have to eat sand for dinner due to poverty, but I had a “rich-people problem” so I’m going to bitch about it in a rich-people way: on my blog.
It all started when I bought a book for ACWF at the local Barnes & Noble. A few days later I thought of a better book to get her, so I went back to exchange book #1 for book #2. The local B&N didn’t have #2, but the B&N in Annapolis did so I headed down there after the clerk at the local B&N asked the Annapolis B&N to hold book #2 for me. I was on the road down to Annapolis later that day. As soon as I got off the exit near the Annapolis B&N, I knew something was wrong. A normally open boulevard was now extremely busy and backed up through the light perpendicular to me. When I was able to turn left, I saw what the problem was. The police had blocked off the singular entrance to the shopping center and were only letting people exit. No one was getting in, and the traffic that was being diverted further up the road simply folded back into itself on the opposite side. It was a mess, but I needed this book.
I drove well past the traffic and parked in a nearby shopping center in order to walk back to the first shopping center. It was about half a mile. Down a highway. With no sidewalks.
Not knowing why the cops weren’t letting anyone in, my brain entertained strange ideas of fires, bank robberies, or escaped convicts. These disasters, apparently, were not enough to keep me from getting to the B&N to get a new book. In fact, I was so worried that the cops were going to turn me away that I opted to cut through a patch of woods in order to avoid going through the main entrance.Here’s a map of the route I took.
After wandering around in a swamp, in which I had to change directions about a thousand times, I finally came out the other side of the swamp in the shopping center about 20 minutes later. I walked across the parking lot and entered B&N.
I jumped in the long line immediately, and waited, and waited, and waited, and had a fruit roll-up, and waited. When I finally got to the register I told the guy that there was a book on hold for me. He turned around and started scouring the shelves. He spent a good 10 minutes looking for my reserve item before uttering the words that would probably be his last.
“I’m afraid I have some bad news. Your book is not here.”
He must have sensed the effect the news had one me, or he could feel his trachea being crushed, because he quickly followed with, “But we have about a dozen copies in the store.” A wave of relief washed over me, and I asked him where the book was. Of course, he pointed and told me that it was in the back corner of the store. And when I got there, it was actually in the corner at the very back of the store. The farthest point from the cash registers in the store.
I collected my prize, took it back to the register, and was on my way. Sort of. I still had to walk the half-mile back to my car. Through pissed-off gridlock. And rush-hour traffic. On a highway. With no sidewalks.
But I didn’t punch any faces, or rip out any guts, or create an altar of human sacrifice in the middle of the highway, so my parole officer would be proud.
By the way, ACWF loved the book and read it in one night. So now I’m thinking about returning it for store credit. Store credit! Woo!
If you celebrate Christmas, have a great day. If not, have a great day.
I must apologize. Over these last few days I have described soy nog as being one of the most foul substances that a human can ingest. My guess would have been that one would have to drink paint or used motor oil to compete with soy nog. I have found something infinitely worse than any of those.
Wandering through the store the other day, out of the corner of my eye I spotted those three beautiful letters that make the season bright. N-O-G.
I moved in closer to investigate. So what do we have here?
Oh, Frosted Eggnog. Well, I guess that’s got to be a nog-like substance, so maybe I should check it out. Let’s take a broader look at it.
Well, that’s strange. I’ve not seen eggnog served in a carton like this. And what is with the cup of nog in the picture? Is it garnished with green sugar and a cherry? What’s going on here?
Oh sweet unholy devil penises! It’s a bucket drink a la margaritas and rum runners! Good nog almighty, this is an abomination!
But alas, my imagination was going bonkers. I was wondering how they could condense nog flavor into bucket form. I was wondering how much or how little it would taste like nog. I was wondering if the doctors will laugh at me when they pumped my stomach, or if they would wait until they gave me the bill.
I was too late for me friends. The nog bucket was in my shopping cart and I was headed for the checkout, drawn inexorably by all things nog.
The nog bucket sat around for a little while as we were saving it for a rendezvous with mokie and his self-addressed-stamped-envelope wife. We mixed the ingredients last night, and I was feeling trepidations from the start. We added the rum, the bag of sugar inside, and the bag of caramel coloring and nog flavoring. It looked like this:
That is NOT what nog is supposed to look like. Horse urine, maybe, but not nog. The tricky thing is, it smelled like for-reals nog! Could it be true? Could it even be possible? Could nog be condensed to such a degree that it could be later re-hydrated with rum? I was about to find out.
Well, that looks delightful, doesn’t it? It also looks nothing like nog, but still smells just like it. I took a sip, and at first my brain said, “This is nog!” but my mouth said “You fucking asshole! What the goddamn shit are you trying to do to me?!” then my stomach said “Don’t EVEN be bringing that shit down here or I will paint the inside of your underwear with it.” My guts then gurgled in solidarity.
But, for you people, I needed to go all the way. The flavor of the nog was overpowering. It was like nog squared. It was like looking at the sun through a telescope. I couldn’t even taste the 750mL of rum that we had added to it. So we added more ice to try to water down the overpowering nog flavor.
No dice. The “nog” was Skeletor to my poor palette’s Orko.
We added even MORE ice to the mixture, and even added some milk, but the nog chemicals were still busting through like the Incredible Hulk through walls on meth. This is what it looked like once the ice had been doubled and milk had been added.
Tempting, eh? Makes you want to go right out and buy a bucket of fake nog, make it, drink some, and then punch someone in their colon.
After sleeping on the issue, I believe the conclusion I have reached is that it wasn’t the nog’s fault that it was terrible. It’s Target’s fault for trying to harness the AWESOME power of nog. It’s like messing around with gravity by tying a bowling ball to your dangliest bits and then, before dropping it, asking “It can’t be THAT strong a force of nature, right?” Well, I’m here to tell you that, yes, it is that strong a force of nature. And my friends still call me Lefty if you have any doubts. Nog is that strong a force of nature. You can’t condense it, you can’t control it. All you can do is suck it down and wait for the roller-coaster ride of flavor to stop so you can get out and throw up with a smile.
I might be nogged out for a while due to the high concentration of nogness, but this is by no means the end of my nogventures. I saw another nog product in the store that I want to try first. ACWF wanted to go at it again right away, but I said, “Nog tonight honey, I have a headache.”
Yes, you filthy perverts, I am still experimenting with nog (much to Nancy Reagan’s chagrin), and frankly, it’s starting to make me feel a little squishy. Nauseous and squishy. And my sweat tastes like nutmeg. A my nipples have started leaking a nog-like substance. What? I had to taste it.
Anyway, this may not even count as an adventure in nog, except it’s a remarkably nog-like beverage that is sold in stores only once a year and it’s kept near the nog. And it has all the same ingredients as nog. No, it’s not a bacon-smoothie. It’s Colonial Custard!
What is Colonial Custard? Apparently it’s a Southern Holiday tradition.
I had absolutely no idea of what to expect with this nog-like beverage. Would it be horrid? Would it be delicious? Would it be thick like tapioca pudding with a flavor like David Hasselhoff? Would it give me the firmness and length my wife desires? Would it be lumpy and semi-sentient? Who knows?! This is what I do for you people.
I popped that sucker open and poured myself a glass, not failing to notice that it’s color and texture looked exactly like nog. I took a sip, and something strange happened. My throat closed up and my eyes bugged out and my guts exploded and my breakfast of Fruity Pebbles and sausages spilled out, half-chewed, onto the floor!
I’m just kidding. What actually happened was that I had an extremely visceral mental reaction to the custard. I said to ACWF, “This tastes how I remember nog tasting when I was little.” It’s like it was more “real” than other nog. It was noggier… somehow. It’s like when McDonalds brought back the McRib sandwich and you thought, “Hey, McRib! I loved those things when I was a kid!” and then you went to McDonald’s with your friend and you each got two because you knew they were going to be awesome and after your first bite you’re trying to figure out onto which family to spray your mouthful of half-chewed McFilth… except the opposite of that. Imagine if the McRib was exactly as you had remembered. That’s what the Colonial Custard was like.
I’m not sure about Colonial Custard being a “southern tradition,” because the only southern traditions I know about are thinking the Civil War is still being fought and cousin-humping (with some occasional pig-humping, cow-humping, and chicken-humping to break up the monotony), but I do know that Colonial Custard can be quite refreshing after a long day of trying to chase down relatives to have sex with.
If there’s one thing that can send you into a panic, it’s seeing your blood all over your hands.
It dripped, crimson, into my palms and splattered my wrists, shirt, and the floor. A pattern emerged that appeared to be some sort of combination of Rorschach and Pollack. Instead of ink, it was my blood, and instead of paint, it was my blood. I thought I saw the constellations in the pattern. A sanguine Orion. An imbrued Virgo.
The tile was cold and hard, and yet I was sinking into it like it was no more than sand. I turned my head to verify that I was still on solid ground and saw the blood soaking into my shirt.
“That is not going to come out,” I thought to myself as the blood continued to flow. Then I laughed as I realized I had bigger problems to worry about than my shirt. As if to reinforce my worry, the blood coming out of the hole in my head started to drain more quickly, and if possible, thicker than before. It was now oozing.
Blood was everywhere. It even got onto my lips and into my mouth. I’m not sure if it was the loss of blood, but I wondered if I would be okay if I could just get some blood back into my body. I could taste the blood on my tongue and it was creating a copper film inside my mouth. It was like the remnants of some metallic syrup, slick and insoluble against the saliva that I could tell was slowly staining itself red.
Time continued to pass. I wasn’t sure how much blood I had lost, or how much I had left to lose, but I was overjoyed when one of my coworkers found me and sprung quickly into action.
“Nosebleed?”
“Yeah.”
“I had one yesterday.”
“Yeah. Sucks.”
“Here’s more toilet paper, if you need it.”
“Thanks.”
My nogventures have finally begun to steer me back in the direction of normalcy. I tried cannog and it nearly brought about the end of western civilization. I tried soy nog, and it’s left me with a hankering for infants.
Now I venture boldly into the arena of Organic Nog.
From the outset it seems that it has all the benefits of soy nog (low in fat, low in sugar) with none of the drawbacks, like the taste of a dentist’s latex glove shoved into your mouth. Plus, I was happy to have played a part in the enslavement of animals in order to get some creamy milk and delicious egg whites back into my nog. Seriously, that soy nog was hella bad.
ACWF and I poured ourselves some glasses, fully expecting to be wiping orally projected nog-spray off the cabinets, cat, and each other a few minutes later, and mixing up a batch of mothballs and bleach to burn an horrendous taste out of our mouths.
It smelled like nog, the first sip tasted like nog, and the aftertaste had the distinct taste of nog, though you could tell it was low-fat. I adventurously took a second sip (I’m really quite the hero for you people), not believing that I could have actually stumbled upon a non-nog nog that actually tasted like nog.
The second sip was ALSO good! No latex glove taste at all- not even a pinky’s worth! I quickly polished off the whole glass while having irreverent thoughts of tap-dancing on the deflated carton of soy nog, arterial soy-nog spray going everywhere. I was going to go back for another glass, but Sherlock* had crammed his face into my cup and was desperately licking the last droplets of nog from the bottom of the glass. He looked like a shrunken cat head in a mayonnaise jar, and that put me off my want for nog long enough that I put the carton of Organic Nog back into the fridge.
As far as a rating goes, let’s just say that I wouldn’t marry Organic Nog, but I would definitely call her up for a little “menog a trois” action.
*Oh, yes. My kitten is also a lover of nog. And even he made horrible face at the soy nog. It was something between “This liquid kibble tastes like feet” and “Get this vets’ finger out of my butt”.
I went to a lil’ trivia thing with some bloggers the other night. I’m not sure which of them want to remain anonymous, so I’ve used that little, black anonymizer bar to make sure that no one’s identity is revealed.
In this picture, you can see eBill and Zenchick conferring about an answer to the trivia question. eBill was concentrating so hard that the little vein you can see on his forehead actually popped. The room was sprayed with blood!
In this one Snay was watching Fool pick something up that she had dropped, but it looks like he was looking at her boobs! Ha ha!
This scene was really something to behold, and I’m glad I can share it with you. SupaMB was lounging, all pimped out in her pimp chair, while Zenchick and Linda fetched her cookies and Bohs. It was all just a big joke about them being servants until the two of them actually supplicated before SupaMB. You can see them doing just that in this one.
Ha! In this one NPRJunkie was actually riding Eric like a horse and calling him, “My sweet and precious unicorn!” while Jwer videotaped. I’m not sure what this had to do with trivia, but their team won, so I guess I can’t really criticize.
