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My computer needs a breathalyzer with a lock-down function. There's no way I should be allowed anywhere near it after I've had even one glass of red wine. The horrendously offensive venom that spews out of me clearly doesn't make the world a better place. And it turns out that my supply of horrendously offensive venom is like water in a trick cup that never gets empty, so letting it out doesn't make me a better person, either.
Branding an entire group of people, like Christians, in an inane blog is the height of immaturity and meanness. Even if a few of them do irritate me. Hell. Those are the ones who irritate everybody.
After I wrote "Go to Hell, Potluck Lovers" I had terrible dreams all night. In one of them, a person left a comment saying: "Why do you even blog here anyway? It's a site for people to post their MOVIES, not their stupid offensive blogs. Go find a blog site and post your crappy blogs there." Actually, that might not have been a dream. I think at some point in the evening I commented on my own blog.
But the thing is, I like it here at FOD. We're all the kid who got beat up and made fun of in school, which always makes for a witty adult who doesn't take things too seriously. Even if we do all have the off-putting habit of darting nervous glances over our shoulder at social events.
So after deleting my umpteenth blog, I've decided I'm only going to write yippity-skippity, light-as-air things about kittens, fluffy clouds, and the joy in a child's eyes when he or she gets a nice tight hug after competing in the Special Olympics, which even Satan would be hard-pressed to say a mean thing about. And when I say "kittens," I don't mean blogs like the one I wrote and deleted called "How to Torture a Kitten." I mean blogs about how fluffy and cute they are.
And I really mean it this time. Seriously. I swear.
I'm also going to stop using words like "fuck" and "cunt," even though they are my favorites.
But I'm not saying anything nice about clowns even if I get water-boarded by an entire troupe of them. Or mimes. Or mimes and clowns in a parade. I HATE a parade.
Oh, damn. See? Trick cup.
I moved into a nature-ridden jungle straight from the bowels of Hell's Kitchen in New York City. News flash: the Big Apple is a fucking amateur when it comes to weird noises and filth.
I sometimes indulge in the occasional cigarette, which is bad for my struggling lungs but good for my morale. Since I own parrots, whose bodies are full of delicate air sacs, I smoke outside, on my screened porch. I don't want to kill them. I just want to leave them homeless when I die from emphysema. Because I'm thoughtful that way.
So when I sit on my screened porch in the far north, I hear a lot of strange shit. New York's noises were rhythmic and comforting. Like taxis running over loose manhole covers or the 50th Street bus revving its engine every 15 minutes or the pepper of playful gunshots. Nature doesn't care about schedules or comfort or gunplay. She has her own agenda.
For instance, just now, while puffing away and touch typing with the skill of an angelic court stenographer, I heard a weird scraping noise. I heard it last night, too. Was it a fox in heat? A fisher killing its prey? A moose stomping through the scrub? A succubus coming to suck out my soul? Who fucking knows! That's nature for you. A total conundrum. It's all still a huge yet enticing mystery to me. It's the call of the underbrush.
I set my dog after the noise, but he returned, wet from the woods and shaken. Poor bastard. My dog is kind of a freak. His picture is on my profile page. Can you see him smiling proudly? That's because he has flags stuck in his collar and I'm taking his picture. He loves to be the center of attention and he loves dressing up in costumes. I believe he's proud to be American because he doesn't know how to read.
But back to nature, that cunning, sneaky love goddess! Since moving here, I've become an amateur gardener of sorts. So my nails are always dirty. I was able to stay clean in New York, but it is now truly beyond me. I don't wear gardening gloves - probably for the same reason young men don't wear condoms. They just don't feel good! Therefore, I always have filthy hands to match my filthy heart.
So during the day, I'm unclean. And at night, I'm confused by the raucous and constant call of nature. And I'm still unclean.
Nature is so loud and dirty! I'm getting used to her, though, crazy bitch that she is. At least she's full of surprises, and when you get to be my age, you appreciate a good surprise because you see most things coming from a mile away.
It just occurred to me that I'm happier than I thought. Which makes me miserable, since I'm used to being unhappy and I don't like change. But still. Nature. Maybe she's worth a second look-see.
As a parrot owner, I've also become a collector of parrot jokes. What I love best about them is that the good ones are all, without exception, either filthy or denigrating. Here is my all-time favorite:
A pirate ship has been out to sea for months. Finally, it pulls into the harbor and the horny pirates rush into town to satisfy their desires. One of them brings a lady of the evening back onto the boat with him. As he and the woman walk by the ship's resident parrot, it rudely squawks to the woman: "HEY! How's your cunt?"
The offended woman swings around, eyes flashing, and snaps, "SHUT UP!"
The parrot says, "Yeah! So's mine. Must be the salt air."
Classic, right? The sad thing is, I actually had to have it explained to me. But once I got it, I laughed and laughed. Here's one more great parrot joke:
A lady buys a new parrot and puts the cage in her bedroom. One day, she is walking by it nude on the way to the shower. The parrot calls out, "Wow! Nice tits!" The woman is irate. "If you use that bad language again, you'll be punished," she tells it. A week later, the same thing happens, except this time the parrot points out: "Heeeey! Sweet ass!" She warns it once more that if its foul language continues, it will be punished. On the third week, as she walks by naked, the parrot squawks: "Beee-autiful vagina!" The angry woman snatches up the bird, brings it to the kitchen, and says, "I told you that you'd be punished for talking like that! I'm putting you in the freezer for five minutes!"
After five minutes she takes the parrot out of the freezer and tells him, "Next time you use a dirty word, you're going in the freezer for twice as long! Do you understand?"
The shivering parrot says, "Y-y-y-yeah. I understand. Double the time. So t-t-tell me ... what did that chicken say?"
I finally thought of something good about getting old.
It's so much easier to fuck with people's heads!
By the time most people are 47, it's expected that they've reached a certain level of maturity and decorum. Sadly, maturity and decorum passed me by. Happily, when I make deadpan comments that are societally abnormal, it really blindsides people. And who doesn't love a good blindsiding? (The people being blindsided probably aren't crazy about it, but that's not the point.)
While he was doing my taxes, my new accountant revealed that he and his "lady friend" were living together sans a marriage license. I said, "Morally, that's a problem for me. I don't want someone who's living in sin to prepare my taxes."
There was a long silence. You could tell that part of him was thinking about what a total douche I am - and I am - and part of him was thinking: 'Damn, I already did half the job.' Finally he said, "I understand and that's your prerogative."
I snorted obnoxiously, and told him I was kidding, and that he could be getting it on with a herd of sheep for all I cared, as long as he saved me money. That comment sort of surprised him, too. Maybe because of its sheer tastelessness. Or maybe because I hit on something. You never know with accountants.
The downside is that I wonder if he'll do my taxes next year but, oh SNAP, that's a small price to pay for blindsiding a kind person who was trying to help me out!
Other people who won't see it coming if you're over the age of 45:
bagboys
teenagers
members of the White-Glove Ladies Gardening Club
your veterinarian while he's giving your dog mouth-to-mouth resucitation or pulling porcupine quills from its snout
Jehovah's Wtinesses
people in grief support groups
most children, but my advice is don't waste a lot of time on babies and toddlers because sarcasm usually goes right over their heads
Symbicort is an asthma medication. One of the warnings the commercial contains is: Symbicort may increase the risk of asthma-related death.
Finally! A medicine that assists your disease in killing you. Why didn't I think of that? Well, I did. But it was for a specific person, not an entire demographic.
Asthma doesn't need Symbicort's help. There are big clouds of coal dust floating over here from China. And let's not leave out the magical and hilarious improvements the Bush-Cheney administration has made to the Clean Air Act.
What's next for Astrazeneca? A few suggestions:
Bloggnot - helps people write stupid blogs, like this one! Side effects may include blindness and a crippling inability to use the QWERTY home row.
AmazingGOPstopperz - increases smug self-satisfaction in neocons. Side effects include IRS audits and possible impalement by flying debris at firebombed abortion clinics.
Freshblush - gives happy couples even higher levels of oxytocin. Side effects include marriage, which sucks oxytocin out of the brain faster than a one-inch-wide shunt.
Hofflar - improves productivity in marketers at drug companies. Side effects include guilt.
(And I had to come back in and make a quick comment on SLIMshots, a weight-loss product whose spokesperson asks: "What could you accomplish if you weighed 30 percent less every day?" Wow. A lot! Until I disappeared into nothing on the ninth day. And then she concludes the ad with the confusing tagline: "Weight loss just got 30 percent easier." Fun with numbers. For people who despise math and everything it stands for.)
Paying for sex is illegal in most states, which is ridiculous. Consensual crimes are none of the government's business. Actually, a lot of the things the government shoves its big, fat, super-ugly, bloated, veined McFace into are none of its business.
Why should any legislative body have the right to know what library books I take out, who I send email to, or how much I made at my last tag sale? ("Fun With Patio Plantings," a caterer I'm trying to hire, and $56, you bastards!)
Anyway, the question on my mind now is whether you're allowed to trade sex for things like plumbing, minor engine repairs, and parrot sitting.
Not that it matters. It turns out that nobody wants to trade sex for work with a 47-year-old. In fact, nobody wants to have sex for free with a 47-year-old. Unless they're really drunk. (I mean the person being imposed upon for sex, not the 47-year-old, because a drunken 47-year-old is even less sexually appealing than a sober 47-year-old. Or so I've been told.) That's just one of the joys of getting old - becoming "invisible" to people with useful skills. Another is having to hold things at arm's length in order to see them clearly.
Like tonight, I was having dinner with a girlfriend and I picked up her ugly purse, which had fabric the color of a jaundiced frog and white patent leather trim. It also had a medallion imprinted with teeny tiny letters. I had to hold it three feet away and then tilt it so the light hit it just right. It said: Liz Claiborne, since 1977, for all lifestyles. That inspired me to model the purse and do a little ad for my friend: "Liz Claiborne. My lifestyle involves feeding the chickens, rollering cat hair off my clothes, and calling my mother five times a day for unwanted advice and then slamming the phone down. Do you have a purse for MY lifestyle?" Which, of course, they do. It's green with white patent leather trim! At least losing my vision has made growing a mustache a lot easier to ignore.
But back to the point. Is bartering for sex illegal? I wondered about this when I was young and hot, and finding out might have been beneficial. I still wonder now, but in a hypothetical way. I guess I could google it. But I'd rather just ponder it while I lazily run my fingers over my mustache and squint to see the TV. Some mysteries in life should remain.
