The Big DumpTruck

When I dropped Junior off at his "before school" care program, a little kid, maybe in the first grade, ran up to him.

"How come you aren't wearing a hat like mine?" The hat in question was a green plastic leprechaun hat covered with green glitter. It was truly a thing of beauty, probably the nicest green plastic leprechaun hat you can buy at a party store. My son just stared at the boy.

"Where is your hat? And where is your shirt like mine?" Junior was wearing a green shirt, but it did not say "Kiss me I'm Irish" with a fuzzy shamrock in the middle.

"Ya, where is your hat?" I asked my son in an accusatory tone, in support of the short child in front of us.

Junior just looked at me.

"You should be wearing a hat." The small boy smiled at me.

"I don't have a hat like that," Junior explained to him.

"You should totally get one." I told him as the small boy and I nodded conspiratorially. "It's a really awesome hat."

Labels: holidays, odd

Saw an article on FoxNews.com (I know, I know) that totally enlightened me on how awful my life must be.

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — A judge has brushed off a Connecticut woman's claim that
L'Oreal Inc. ruined her social life when she accidentally dyed her hair brunette with one of its products.
Charlotte Feeney of Stratford said she can never return to her natural blond hue, a shock that left her so traumatized she needed anti-depressants.
She says she suffered headaches and anxiety, missed the attention that blonds receive and had to stay home and wear hats most of the time.
A Superior Court judge dismissed Feeney's 2005 lawsuit Monday, saying she never proved her allegation that L'Oreal put brown hair dye in a box labeled as blond. The company also had disputed the claim. Feeney's attorney, David Laudano, declined to
comment and she could not be reached after the judge's decision.

I had no idea that my life sucks because I am a natural brunette. I seriously had no idea. I mean, I pretended I was blond that one day, but it wasn't like I was making a major life change.

So I'm just going to start staying home and wear hates "most of the time." Because obviously, having brown hair is a horrible, horrible affliction. I did not know this, but any headaches I get from now on, I'm going to just know it's from brunettitis.

By the way, someone will have to explain to me how a woman who was buying hair dye and using it is concerned that she cannot ever get back to her "natural blond hue". How natural was her hue if it came from a box? Besides, I'm pretty sure a halfway decent salon could resolve that issue.

Okay, off to go hat shopping!

Labels: cranky, News, odd

I have a lot in common with Sarah Palin, you see at least according to the line of questioning by Katie (Amy Poehler) Couric when she interviewed Sarah (Tina Fey) Palin "for the 4th time". When cornered, I too become increasingly adorable.

That's a good thing, right? Everyone loves adorable. Look at how popular Fur Real Pets are. My God, you can own your own baby lion cub! How adorable! I mean, it doesn't get more adorable than a fake baby lion cub, does it? Unless it's a fake puppy, but anyone can do a fake puppy. I think the fake baby lion takes the cake. I want to be THAT level of adorable. Maybe at my next meeting I'll wobble my head a bit and purr. That would do it!

p.s. You iPhone users - http://m.nbc.com/iphone/ for full eps of NBC televsion shows. Woo!

Labels: iPhone, odd

If I can say "Well, at least my ass didn't grow around my toilet seat" I'm having a good day.

Labels: fun, holy_crap, News, odd

Okay, quick, tell me what this is:

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If you guessed "Mr. Dump playing Guitar Hero with the television muted" you'd be right!

My God, that is just a horrifying treat for the whole family if only one person is playing and the others are surfing the web on their laptops while they sit in the recliner, pondering the meaning of life and re-doing the household budget so that there is a small amount of cash available so that you can eat dinner at Chilis because you have a fierce addiction to their chips and salsa. (Yes, I am reduced to wanting to spend money on chips and salsa. I think that's better than trying to figure out how to get $400 to buy a replacement video camera, anyway.)

Anyhoo, thank you for playing. And someone promise me that a version of Guitar Hero for Wii will come out with something other than "Legends of Rock" or whatever this is. I hate 80% of the songs on here, and if I have to listen to Miss Murder one more time I'm going to scream. I have an idea. They should come out with a classical guitar version of G.H. You could play like Andres Segovia or something.

Labels: fun, music, odd, wii

Had an interesting few moments at UNO last night for Junior's birthday dinner. We were sitting in the bar area because Junior and I like to play the trivia game and Mr. Dump wanted to watch the San Diego football game.

For some reason, Step-Junior noticed something under the table that Mr. Dump confirmed was [ewwwww] thong underwear.

There was a thong on the floor under our table.

SO many thoughts on this, I almost had a complete mental shutdown. But in summary, I will stay on the innocent side: how spicy do the buffalo wings have to be that you find yourself removing your underwear to cool off?

And no, we didn't tell anyone. I wanted the staff to assume they were mine.

Labels: odd, restaurants

Sorry, server problem followed up with user error. I think I'm all set now. You can let me know if I'm not. You always do.

Television recommendation: If you aren't watching "Reaper" on the CW network (around these parts I think that's what used to be Channel 56). Best. Show. On. TV. If Ray Wise doesn't win a Best Actor Emmy...

Okay, so I was thinking about the worst class I took in college. I mean other than accounting. The worst class I took had great potential. It was called "Electronic music." So I'm thinking about Moog synthesizers, and keyboards and maybe being offered a job by Duran Duran.

This class took "electronic music" down to a level that only Phillip Glass could appreciate. Our instrument was a box with a couple of dials and a reel to reel player. We spent weeks learning how to wire up the two so that we could take sounds we'd recorded onto a cassette, get it into the box with the two dials, and then out into the reel-to-reel so that we could get our final project grade.

It is as horrific as it sounds. All I remember about mine is that one of the sounds I captured for my project was a toilet flushing. The two knobs on the box were basically controlling modulation and something else. One of you probably knows. Or cares. We just basically got it to make beeps and boops and screechy noises that I didn't think were anything like music at all.

Thinking back, I'm wondering why we didn't storm the office and demand this class be removed because it was such a ripoff. I think we might have been too young to realize that we could do that...after all, we were paying for the credit hours. But there's something about being 20 years old and a full-time student living on campus that doesn't make you think of yourself as the customer, as in "the customer is always right and that was NOT electronic music."

Ahh, good times.

Labels: college, memories, odd

(You young people might not catch this reference. So I think maybe I could call this post "Am I Being Punked?")

Yesterday was one of those days. Mr. Dump had an appointment for a small surgical procedure, and I had an appointment with my doctor. I also had Junior (I have him again today...last two days before school starts so no more camp). I used up a tank of gas just driving around from appointment to appointment yesterday. Junior got an invite to his friend's house, but she lives in Gardner, so that was 20+ minutes each way. What was great, though, is that it meant someone was watching him while I was in my appointment.

After Mr. Dump was out of recovery and I settled him back in at home, I went back to Gardner to get Junior. We decided to stop at the Hannaford at Twin City Mall on the way home to get something for dinner. While standing with my cart trying to think of the other things I wanted to buy (iced tea and potato rolls) a guy was standing about 6 feet to my right. I catch some activity out of the corner of my eye and see...a copy handcuffing him. Nothing was being said, it was all very quiet. I quickly made sure Junior was still standing behind me (and wasn't planning to scoot around the cart over to where this was happening. I could feel my blood pressure go up 20 points. I made eye contact with a couple of people standing in the 12 items or less line (which is what we were standing near) and we all had this "Are you kidding me?" look on our faces.

I can honestly say I have never stood that close to someone being arrested. I mean, to the point that I felt like I was assisting the cop...that's how close they were to me. Junior kind of took the whole thing in stride, like this stuff happens all the time. Maybe I should ask more questions about what goes on a summer camp!

Labels: errands, junior, odd, shopping

Saw a "news" article this morning that something is planning to sell Jerry Garcia's stereo speakers and bidet.

His bidet.

The thing he used to clean his arse with.

Okay, no offense, but why on earth would someone want to own such a thing? I know that there are people out there who are gigantic fans, still, of his, but really, do you need his bidet? What about his toilet, he probably used that a lot more than the bidet. Or was there a urinal cake somewhere that he peed on?

It looks like the proceeds from this sale will be going to charity, so I'll cut them a little slack, but please, people, if any of you want to buy my used appliances, contact me offline so we don't have to deal with the embarrassment of holding a public auction.

Labels: odd, stuff

I remembered what I was going to write about! I should probably save this for a novel or short story, but don't you think you have earned a special posting? I think you have. All 3 of you who read this site regularly.

Sunday night there were a lot of odd conversations. VERY odd. We had my niece and nephew over for a while, and then when my sister came to get them, we all went to TGI Fridays. So here are the things that occurred after we got the kids in the van:

1. I became an eastern European tour bus guide. I pointed out helpful things along the lines of "In front of you is road. Behind is road." I pointed out the rubbish barrels on the side of the road. I told them that if at any point they noticed the bus driver missing, they should "Press ding button". They seemed greatly amused by the whole drive.

2. There were two shows on the TVs in the TGIF bar - on one was a car race. On the other, I don't know because I could only see TVs with the car race. I pointed out that race car drivers probably wore diapers. There was some discussion about "pit stop" means something different in non-racing circles. We call it a pit stop when we want a potty break. Mr. Dump pointed out that race car drivers don't exit the car during the race.

3. Whatever was on the other television involved bees. I asked what it was about and Mr. Dump said it was a story about how they are training bees to sniff out drugs. We envisioned a world where they would release swarms of bees in airports to look for drugs. I thought maybe they meant farms where they were growing pot. We wondered if it would be helpful to attach little cameras to the backs of the bees. Then Mr. Dump admitted he made the whole thing up. I still think you'd get a lot more people admitting they had drugs on them if swarms of bees were circling their heads.

4. Nah, I'm saving this one for the re-write of the nano-novel. I have to have SOMETHING to replace all the crappy stuff I have to remove.

Labels: 01453, bees, bus, Leominster, odd