An Open Letter to the Loud Engine Dickwads Who Drive Past My House

Dear Dickwads,

Okay, I get it, you have small penes. But there are many quieter alternatives to an unmuffled exhaust system for letting everyone know that. For instance, you could just walk around pantsless wearing a t-shirt that reads, "Hey everyone, I've got a small penis!" Or, if that's too direct for you, what about silk shirts open to the navel so that everyone can see your copious chest hair and gold medallions? Gold medallions + chest hair + unbuttoned silk shirt = small penis. That is math anyone can do. Another idea is to join a glamrock Toby Keith cover band. See? I'm full of ideas here and all of them are quieter than your goddamned engines!

The thing is, when you drive by I can't hear my husband speak, I can't hear the TV or the radio, I can't hear myself think. Sure, I know you have a small penis (your obvious goal in all of this), but I can't, in point of fact, see you because - and this is crucial - I'm inside my house. So you have not actually achieved your goal at all! I know someone has a small penis, but it could be your neighbor, Silk Shirt Steve. Or any of your biker buddies, or the guys in your Assholes of America Car Club. See? The pantsless thing would work way better! I mean, I can’t see you when I’m in my living room trying to watch Miss Marple on OPB anyway. So there’s no need to alert me to the passing-by of a truly tiny John Thomas. But if you did the pantsless thing, or the cover band thing (I do live next to a live music venue!), the laughter of the people who could see you would alert me and make me come to the window. Then, voilá! You would achieve your goal of me knowing about your less than mighty member!

In conclusion: GET A GODDAMNED MUFFLER, ASSHOLES!

With ire and lip-curling, homicidal frustration,

Sydney

PS Maybe check the comments section for other ideas as to how you could more quietly share your little longfellow with the world. I have found the people who read my blog to be most helpful in all respects.

Cap'n Ferret Fancier

Nothing can make you mean like watching a documentary on people who "show" ferrets. Like a dog show. But with ferrets. Pete and I went from kind, caring, gentle shows, to the meanest, most judgmental jerks in about five minutes flat. It was the horrible ferret song sung by one of the ferret ladies. Seriously, though: if there is a real cross-section of America that "shows" ferrets, this show (on OPB) did not give it fair representation. But if the OPB show is representative, ferret people are almost universally obese 60+-year old women who either had children who have grown up and moved away, or who never married and never had children. They're weird. They like country-style furnishings and those tapestry pillows with scenes of rabbits and flowers. And tie-dye. And turquoise. I'm not kidding: even if you only have one mean bone in your body, ferret ladies will turn you into a trash talking ass hole.

Pete said at one point, "I bet there's one ribbon per ferret at that show." Here's how OBP ended the program. "327 ferrets entered the show. [pause-wait for it...] 400 ribbons were awarded."

Things in books that are lame

Hey, I remembered (all on my own!) what I wanted to blog about last night: Things That Bad Authors ::couDANBROWNgh:: Do That Both Drive Me Nuts And DEFINITIVELY PROVE That He Or She Is A Bad Author. See, this is why this wasn't the title of this post; I was feeling very strident about it last night. So I invite you, the reader!, to comment and add to the list the things that frost your cookies when it comes to bad writing. But here is my list (so far), and please to note the asterisks indicating the "stylistic manoeuvres" employed in "The DaVinci Code." (God I hated that book.)

• *People don't speak, say or tell nearly as often as they "grin." ::aaaARRGgggh::
  
• *Eyes are always twinkling.
• *Everyone speaks English.
  
• INTENSIFIER: *****!There is a stupid, contrived reason as to why non-English speaking characters are speaking English.
• [This one is actually Pete's, but I whole-heartedly agree.] Non-native English speakers say everything in English, except for "yes" and "no" which they say in their native tongue. Da, darlink.
• Oblique cultural references meant to let you know how smart the author is. (Dan Brown probably did this too, but I was so incensed by all the eye-twinkling and grinning with French accents that I didn't notice at the time.) For example, in a book that talks about Dracula, it isn't enough to point out that the movie version might not be an accurate historical representation of Vlad The Impaler, it has to be the Bela Lugosi version. Specifically.
• Settings that come with a full, contextual set of obligatory actions (like restaurants: waiting, ordering, sitting, eating, drinking, waiting, paying, tipping, leaving) that are completely ignored. For example: characters arrive at a restaurant and are somehow seated without ever seeing a waiter, and their food arrives without ever ordering, all the while they're having an uninterrupted conversation, and then they pause to eat a single bite of food, a couple more lines of dialog, and suddenly they're helping each other put their coats on and leaving. If your characters converse throughout a meal, and you record all of the conversation for the reader, then it better actually be a meal's worth of talkin'. Please to note: J. K. Rowling does not make this mistake. When her characters leave a meal midway through, they're hungry later. If they fight, but finish their food, she lets you know that they finished their meal in awkward silence.
  
• Over-the-top oddballness as a proxy for intelligence or a good up-bringing. Characters who proclaim that they never went out as teenagers because they grew up in the Orient with their diplomat/archaeologist/ninja parents, but they were never interested in that sort of thing anyway. Because the children of bankers and postal workers are always dull and uninteresting.
  

Okay, your turn!

Newt Gingrich is an A-hole

Seriously, that guy ought to be tied to a chair and forced to watch his family suffer the indignities that his proposed policies would inflict on others. I don't even know where to start on this one. The fact that bilingual education has been scientifically shown to make kids do better not just in language classes, but in all subjects? That a bilingual society is not a weak society? That it's illegal in many states (like Oregon) to provide English-only election materials? That it's flat out immoral to even want to do so?? ::pant:: ::pant:: I'm just not going to start anywhere. I can only hope that he and his entire clan are kidnapped by Mexican radicals who put them in a living tableau where they have to obtain false papers, work crappy jobs for less than minimum wage, are given no help in learning Spanish, and then are asked to sign important papers and vote in local elections all in a language they barely understand. Even better - let's make it Chinese kidnappers, to simulate what it's like for illiterate people to try and hazard their way through our society.