The Brain is a Battlefield

You know how you’re belting the words to Pat Benatar’s Love is a Battlefield while on the toilet, and your husband asks you: “Hey, wasn’t that song in a movie?”

And you reply: “Yes, yes it was. It was in the Legend of Billie Jean starring the sibling sensations Helen and Christian Slater plus the voice of Lisa Simpson, Kingsley Shacklebolt.” And then you realize you couldn’t name all nine U.S. Supreme Court justices even if the condition of your brother’s scooter depended on it. You know there’s that jerk Tony and that other jerk Little Tony and that jerk who allegedly put pubic hair on a Coke can, and some dames.

This is me. This is the state of my brain. It is packed with useless knowledge and devoid of any real value.

Hey did you know that Ricki Lake was in a movie with the villain dude from Some Kind of Wonderful and they each ate bags of sugar babies so Ricki thought that meant love and the movie was called Babycakes? No, well it’s true because 15 years ago I watched it 735 times on Lifetime.

What was the War of 1812 about? Um…….sugar babies famine? Too many sugar babies? I have no sugar-babies clue.

There is so much I don’t know. Here is a short list:

• Any dimensions – When you say “It’s about 2 square miles long” I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about. I might look like I do because I’m nodding my head and saying “Yeah, okay. Yeah” but that’s because I’m trying not to look stupid.
• Any sewing in any capacity – How do you hem pants? Beats me. I think they should just make clothes with a series of perforated edges, and you can just tear off swatches until you get to your size. This is why I don’t buy pants and wrap a tablecloth around my bare legs.
• Geography – Believe me, I’m with you public school teachers, when you lament that kids don’t know nothing ’bout geography. When you say “They don’t even know where Idaho is,” I shake my head in disgust right with you–but here’s the thing. I don’t know where Idaho is either. I know it’s in the United States and that it’s oddly shaped and potatoes are grown there. That’s all. Is it by Wyoming? Maybe.
• Constitutional amendments – I don’t even know how many there are. I know it’s likely more than 19 because the 19th amendment gave women the right to vote as their husbands tell them. I know there’s that one about speech and guns and…um…the right to paraglide?
• My real bra size – I can’t believe that the underwire is designed to cut into the skin. That can’t be right, right? I know I must have been sized up for a bra at some point, but I have no memory of it. I can tell you the number of Ralph Macchio posters I had on my wall when I likely went to get fitted for a bra. Forty-seven.
• How to adjust the heat in the house – One shouldn’t need a Phd in heating, ventilation and air conditioning to turn the heat up, but when I press the up arrow to turn the heat up, nothing happens. And then I die from hypothermia
• Spelling – I can spell some words–like I spelled all the words correctly in this sentence without the WordPress autocorrect. But there are lots and lots of words I cannot spell. Initilizie. Statisitic. Preemplotry. Buttpluggs. And the autocorrect didn’t even step up to help me.

I swear what I don’t know could fit 10 square miles of Idaho farmland if I knew what that looked like.

Here’s what I do know. I know the cute little kid from The Christmas Story, the one who stuck his tongue to a frozen pole, did porn. I know Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson, is a scientologist.  And I know verbatim the exchange Judd Nelson has with himself in The Breakfast Club: What about you Dad? Flip you! (I watched the edited for TV version a lot)

I recently gained knowledge of this picture:

We are doomed.

When someone asks “Hey, what was that Gettysburg Address rap all about?” I will respond: “I don’t know, but I do know that one day in April 2012, Kayne West had his pants partly pulled down. And it was equally if not more important.”

To Sweet Mother with Love

I am not one to toot my own horn. In fact I could barely toot that trumpet I played in the school band with those lovely braces on my teeth and my uncontrollable giggling at the word diaphragm. But I would like to direct my readers to one of the greatest blogs on Earth, Saturn and the Planet Formerly Known as Pluto: Sweet Mother

For the last couple of weeks, Sweet Mother has chosen one of her regular readers–Reggies–to profile and bestow love and praise because she is her name. And today, she chose me: Reggie Profile #4

She did this because I sent her a doctored photo of Samantha Brick, the woman who is trying to get a book deal struggles with over beauty and said it was me:

Yes that is a bag of Corprohagia treats on her knee.

Since she did such a nice thing for me, I’d like to return the favor by encouraging my legion of fans (the word legion now means between 10 and 20, you don’t need to look it up. Trust me, that’s what it means. Why are you going to an online dictionary?) to read her.

You may be familiar with her. She was recently Freshly Pressed with the terrific post Did My Post Suck Today? The answer is no.

She writes every day. And every day I look forward to seeing her name in my email because I know I’m in for something that is 5,000 times better than Corprohagia dog treats (and those things are good, they taste like dark Milky Ways).

You want to know how eagle feckin’ and customer service is related? Read this.

You want to learn the new name for the One Million Moms group? Read this.

You want to know what ITGMFLAA stands for? Read this.

That is all. I will put my trumpet away.

Gift Ideas for Every Mom

It used to be so easy with Mother’s Day. You took a frozen orange juice container, glued a piece of shag carpet around it–and presto instant carpet-covered frozen orange juice container.

But moms want us to “step up our game” apparently, according to Cosmopolitan magazine, and Cosmopolitan magazine is rarely wrong. Its expose on the “50 Things to Do With Your Boobs” was revelatory (#47 – Shuck corn), as was its expose on the “50 Sexy Ways to Sexily Shuck Sexy Corn” (#26 – Go heavy on the anal bleaching).

Not all moms are the same. Some like overpriced gunk made by the tiny fingers of orphans working in non-ventilated sweatshops while others like products that need to be included in the magazine per the advertisers marketing agreement.

So what if you’re unsure of your mom’s type? Luckily Cosmo breaks it down into 12 essential categories of motherhood. I have lumped some together and narrowed it down to four, having learned much from Cosmo’s expose on “50 Sexy Ways to Reduce the Amount of Sexy Time Spent on Sexily Writing Sexy Blogs and How to Keep Him Coming Back For More” (#26 – Limit the number of crotch shots to 9)

Sentimental/Techy/Stressed Out Mom

Got a mama who tears up over cat food commercials? That goblet containing the ocean whitefish reminds me of my third wedding *sob* … Does it then remind her she has a fifth wedding to plan, and she needs to decide if she’s going to go with the candied almonds in a mesh bag or the engraved toothpicks for the wedding favors and she starts to get so stressed out? And you have to say Chill out, mama, and she screams back You were a mistake!! A beautiful mistake *sob*. . . and the cycle repeats for another 17 hours.

So if that’s her, then get her this:

Ionic Salt Bowl Lamp

Girly/Party/Trendy Mom

Does your mother speak in vocal fry? Wear her hair in pink pigtails and pink ponytails and pink whaletails? Does she rock ‘n roll all night and party everyday? Does she say the latest catchphrases like “I’m da bomb diggety dog doody wad dilly bum bum noodle noodle casserole stew”?

She sounds wonderful.

Then get her this:

Perfect for wet T-shirt contests.

Sporty/Artsy/Quirky Mom

Jesus–is this done yet? No.

Okay so does your moo-moo Zumba (Sporty Spice) while sculpting (Artsy Spice), but instead of using clay she uses Hamburger Helper (Quirky Spice)? Then this is the must-have:

Works with Hamburger Helper.

Adventurous/Traveler/Mommy Mom

Is your mom always out and about, wanting to visit the latest war-torn spaghetti factory or taste sea foam biscuit ice cream raisins? Is she also a Mommy Mom? And what is a Mommy Mom? Is she a mom who acts infantile and wants you to baby her? Or is she a mommy with a second or third family and that’s why she’s always leaving under the guise of being an adventurous traveler? Who knows?

Just get this and we’ll call it a day:

The Doppleganger is Not My Son

One should never indulge one’s doppelgänger.

I have one. Speaker7doppelganger was created when I cruelly packed my old blog address’s bag and sent it packing. She then appeared on my doorstep, calling me mama. She stayed a few days until we appeared on the Maury Povich show, and Maury revealed the paternity results. I am NOT Speaker7doppelganger’s father. Mau-ry! Mau-ry! Maur-y!

She still bothers me though. She insists that I let my readers know when she publishes a blog. She whines in a way that would make Fran Drescher’s voice sound like Vivaldi.

So I’m letting you know, she published a post.

She said anyone who reads it can take the image posted below and use it as a screen saver:

She is diabolical. Because America is soooo cute.

Putt-putt

If you’ve been reading this site recently or not reading it, which happens a lot, you are aware that some wires were yanked out or chewed on causing new posts not to appear in the reader.

The brilliant and macabre photo-lovin’ Angie Z suggested sending out a flood of quick posts to unclog the internet tubes. “You don’t have to write too much,” Angie said. “Maybe just ‘fart’.”

So that’s what this is. A fart, or putt-putt if you are sophisticated or easily offended by the word f–t.

There’s also this:

This was posted on someone’s Facebook wall. And, well, um, it’s. . . uh. . . nice? Sure, we’ll say nice and leave it at that.

Please excuse my putt-putt.

 

Here Comes the Skeleton

It seems some women are a little obsessed with their wedding days.

Like this woman:

courtesy of the New York Times

She’s having a feeding tube inserted into her nose to maintain an 800-calorie-a-day diet. And she’s having a New York Times photographer take her picture while the procedure is being done signifying that she does not see this as batshit crazy.

Nosetube bride is not alone in her determination to drop weight before the wedding day. Other women use pills, colon cleanses, hormone injections or have their heads encased in cement to slim down so they can fit comfortably onto a gurney when they inevitably collapse into a coma on the dance floor.

Now normally I would be all like Girl please. Okay I would not be like that because I can’t pull it off. I sound way too awkward even when reading it silently in my head. I would be more like This is a bit extreme. Can’t you just buy a dress that already fits you? And then eat the food you likely spent a fortune on and just enjoy the goddamn day because it is just one day and your guests are going to be too drunk to give two squirts about the size of your butt? But I may soon be unemployed so instead I’m looking at this as a business opportunity.

And this leads me to my latest business venture:

Speaker7’s Guide to Pre-Wedding Shedding®

Attention brides!

Is this you?

Have you bought the perfect dress only it’s just a few sizes too small? Have you planned to slim down to a size you’ve never been solely to feel dizzy and irritable on the perfect of all perfect days?

Follow this guide and you will fit into this:

Actual size. Ken groom not included.

The great thing is this Pre-Wedding Shedding Program is not a one-size fits all, but is a one-size fits all program or isn’t! It’s that simple or difficult! Just choose the option that best fits your desire to emaciate yourself! All options just three low, low, low monthly payments of $19.99.

Option 1. Pre-Wedding Shedding Dietpalooza

Food is the scourge of the earth, amirite ladies. Yes, it may be necessary to sustain life (as far as I’m concerned the science is still out), but it also contains calories, which when consumed in large amounts leads to weight gain (source: my scale). The key is to eat less calories than you burn. Follow this simple diet plan and watch the pounds drop off:

Breakfast – water sandwich. Take a glass of water, put two slices of bread around it and drink. Repeat for lunch and dinner every day until the most perfect day of the most perfect month in the most perfect year.

Alternative option – We bury you up to your head in a sandbox, and give a group of toddlers the task of feeding you. Toddlers are notably unreliable and do not have the greatest fine motor skills so you will only ingest two or three cheerios a day. Cost: an additional $1,000 for sand cleanage.

2. Food-Aversion Slip ‘n Slide Therapy Ride

So maybe you’re one of these people who believes people should eat. Fair enough, but something needs to be done to tear your hand out of the bag of deep-fried Twinkie Ho-hos and into a glass of water infused with celery string. In our Food-Aversion Slip n’ Slide Therapy Ride, we take a page from Stanley Kubrik’s Clockwork Orange and show you gruesome images alongside pictures of your favorite foods.

Here is a sample:

All of the images feature Dr. Phil and Madame Puppet in various erotic poses.

Option 3: Pre-Death Organ Donationporium

Organs are great–don’t get me wrong–but they take up so much dern room, and some of them we don’t even need. Think of all the weight you would lose if we removed your stomach and replaced it with the plastic breadbasket from the Operation board game! Buzzer optional.

Option 4: Movies Come to Life But Not the Ones You Wish Would Come To Life Fun-funhoopla

Many packages to choose from. Our most popular include:

• Silence of the Lambs underground dungeon theme complete with lotion basket
• Hunger Games wilderness survival theme complete with group of career tributes bent on your destruction.
• Saws 1 – 3,345 torture chamber theme; limb removal optional
• Trapped in the Closet chapters 1 – 700 literally trapped in a closet theme while forced to listen to the Trapped in the Closet soundtrack. Disclaimer: we are not responsible for any descents into madness.

Order now!

My Site Stats Suck Seashells

I never got much traction to begin with, but now I’m beginning to believe the tractor is broken down in a fallow field.

My site stats have plummeted dramatically. Why just yesterday I saw a tumbleweed blow through my dashboard. Two days ago when I posted a new post, I only heard crickets. And they say nasty, nasty things.

I am a reasonable person so reasonably this should be no reasonable big deal, but it’s unreasonably making me unreasonable.

But I’m not alone. With things like blogs, social networking and rain dances, we expect immediate gratification. In fact, we get a dopamine rush when we see a little 1 or higher number in our wordpress feed (why is it never higher than 1?). The opposite (that cursed 0 again!) causes anxiety that scientists are not all studied up on so they can’t give it a name like wordpress non-response anxiety syndrome duplex. But it must not be good or else I wouldn’t obsessively check my wordpress account to a point where I don’t remember my son’s name. It’s WordPress, right? Go to bed, WordPress. Mommy has to blog.

I think my site stats are down because I recently changed my blog address, and it’s caused all kind of haywireness in the blogosphere or in my head where all of you exist. But if you exist solely in my head, why don’t you worship me more?

My posts don’t appear in my Reader. They appear for an instant on a radio show in Marion OH and then vanish into the ether. If you’re like me, which you are if I created you in my image, you ignore your emails and then wait to read the blogs you follow in your readers.

I can’t deal with my email. I get so many posts from MarryaSugarDaddy.com that I believe I can find a sugar daddy to take care of me or I will become one and take care of someone who is awful.

The weird thing is when I change my blog address, it created a whole new speaker7 identity. Eric from WordPress told me I had nothing to worry about after I emailed and said “I want to marry a sugar daddy and also my blog does not show up in my reader.”

He said the engineer from Thomas the Tank Engine would get on it immediately. But my doppelgänger still exists. In fact it’s this:

And it’s posting:

Evidence 1

Evidence 2

Evidence 3

The worst part? It show up in my blog reader.

RIP Bully McMully

Bully McMully is dead.

That’s not his name. His name has been changed to protect the living–mainly me. His name was something that didn’t rhyme, but we changed it so that it did. We thought it was clever, the “we” being me, my brother J and my two cousins K1 and K2.

Bully McMully had a strong presence in our lives in the late 1970s. If I was anything like Angie Z, I could tell you a blow-by-blow account of our dealings with Bully McMully and provide photographic evidence, but my memory is just a giant sinkhole of bits and pieces of things I likely made up or saw on after-school specials, and should not be trusted. It took a lot of therapy to realize I had not grown up in a little house on a prairie. The only way I know for certain that Bully McMully existed is because his obit ran today in our local newspaper.

It’s an odd feeling to see a childhood bully’s name in the obituaries. But there it was.

And it was so sparse. No mention of what he did or what and whom he loved.

He lived in a house that bordered a section of my grandparent’s backyard. J, K1, K2 and I would play there unsupervised. Where were the parents? It was the 1970s. No parents, no car seats–heck, no seatbelts. Halloween? Go wherever. Take that candy from strangers.

Bully McMully would yell things at us. His bratty little sister Bully-in-training would yell things at us. He appeared to be 100 years old, but was likely in his teens. As anyone knows, for a child, anyone older is 100.

He looked like this:

Must. Crush. Children.

One day, we yelled back at his little sister. He was nowhere in sight. Possibly we felt protected by the invisible barrier of the yard or the fact our grandparents were somewhere in the same city if not the same vicinity as us–when suddenly Bully McMully appeared behind us, and grabbed my much younger brother by the throat and hurled him through a tree. That very last part might not have happened.

I asked my brother today what propelled us to yell things at Bully McMully’s sister knowing full well we could be in for an ass-kicking. He had no idea. Nor any memory of the throat grabbing. He’s more useless than me.

I think the main reason we did it is because we were odd. We invented strange games like “Drug Dealers.” I pushed weed, and had a hefty supply since maple samaras were the stand in for my chronic. I collected fistfuls in my sweaty hands just to get one eensy weensy black beauty, the red, likely poisonous berry found on a yew tree, which was hawked by my cousin K2. Let me be the first to say that none of our parents were actual drug dealers.

We played “Slaves,” a game that consisted of me and K2 doing whatever our older siblings ordered. “Stay on the back porch.” Why? “Do it slave!” We spied on the Baptist church that also bordered a section of the backyard. My familiarity with church was as such: It happened on Sundays. It lasted 15 minutes. You got there late, stood in the back and left early. K1 & K2 didn’t attend.

These people went to church all the time(!). Obviously something was afoot. It’s a cult, announced K1. Being the oldest, K1 knew everything so we decided her plan to infiltrate the church made sense. We lied down in the grass to conceal ourselves, and waited until the people entered the church. Then we ran to the door, gave it a half-hearted tug, and ran shrieking back to the grass.

So we likely thought taunting a bully’s sister was a good idea in the same vein a worm circus is a good idea. It seems to make sense to throw a bunch of worms on a slide on the hottest day in July and leave them be so they could “practice” their circus act, but really it just gets you shriveled or choked by someone much bigger and stronger.

I guess now I will never know the cause of our cantankerous relationship with Bully McMully, but one thing’s for certain.

It is never too late to investigate a church.

This Post is Brought to You By Metamucil

There are heroes out there people.

We might disagree over what makes someone a hero. I personally think it’s butt-accentuating tights. You might think a hero is someone who has the ability to blog about heroes wearing butt-accentuating tights while simultaneously watching The Voice without pouring cement in one’s ears.

You might be onto something, although I’m not sure because someone is shrieking into a microphone and it’s hard to concentrate. That is some voice.

But I think we can all agree that the act of heroism is elevated by the right product placement.

Take our latest hero who went against the grain by not donning a cape. Instead he used a handful of “cheese”-flavored Pringles to fight crime. He is Snackman.

I learned about him from the Today show where Matt Lauer is paid tens of millions of dollars to explain it all. It wasn’t Matt doing the story, but rather one of the female anchors who kept trying to get Snackman to “pop off” his shirt. She would make a great Awkwardwoman because this exchange could not be more awkward.

Snackman diffused a fight on a New York City subway by getting between the kicking legs of a man and woman, all the while never breaking his stride of munching on his stack of Pringles. Did the dried potato flakes have something to do with Snackman’s heroism? Or maybe it was the Pringle man’s pristine mustache? Or the buckets and buckets of salt? Who knows?

In fact, according to Awkwardwoman, Snackman has approached Pringles about possibly getting some kind of endorsement deal. “Next time we’ll get you to pop that top!” she cackles and cackles.

Please, please stop.

He left with a gift basket of Pringles, and he carried it very heroically.

Wouldn’t it be great if other heroes did the same?  Not carry Pringles baskets, but sought out advertisers. Like, maybe it would make history less dullsville and more wowsville.

Take Paul Revere. Booorrrrriiinnnnnggg. He rode a horse and bellowed about the British coming, which–granted–was important information. But what if he also could have let the general non-Loyalist public know about some outstanding solutions to their dilemma of what to serve for dinner?

Just think if he had to deliver those pizzas in a 30-minute window? Pretty freakin’ heroic.

Or George Washington. He had shitty teeth. I could forgive that if he crossed the Delaware with his fingertips caked in Cheetos’ dust.

Or Harriet Tubman. She was pretty bad ass, but wouldn’t it have been awesome if she shared some tips on how she evaded slavecatchers?

Or take Lincoln. What the frick does that Gettysburg Address even mean, yo? I don’t care, because now he looks like a dude who could just hang and play hackysack.

See, don’t they seem so much more hero-y?

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I see things different because I’ve added fiber to my diet and now I can shit with the best of them.

I’m Speaker7, and I fight crime with Metamucil.

New World Order

The times they are a-changin’ as Kevin Dillon sang on Entourage. As much as we try to cling to the past, we must sometimes set something we love free and then drink ourselves blind until we pass out in a gutter.

That is why I have said goodbye to ramblingsandrumblings.wordpress.com. I chose that blog address when I was a wee lass of 3- back in August, and felt that I had so much rambling rumblings to give to the world. Six seconds after I chose that name and purchased the upgrade to get rid of the wordpress part, I realized I fucking hated that blog name. You don’t ramble or rumble. Who do you think you are? Some banjo player on Prairie Home Companion? I thought angrily to myself, It would be more appropriate to call this the antiramblingsandrumblings.wordpress.com, you stupid jerk. . . awww, I didn’t mean it. Don’t turn away from me, you know I get mean when I drink mimosas.  I removed the sock puppet I use when I talk to myself and decided to live with the stoopid name.

Until today.

Today I was thinking how much I hate how my blog looks and hate how it talks back to me, and then storms out of the house dressed like a hussy. I wanted to make a change–for once in my life. Gonna feel real good, gonna make a difference, gonna make it right. (Too soon?)

So I figured out how to change my address, and incidentally figured out how to finally get rid of the wordpress in ramblingsandrumblings.com for a blissful 10 minutes. Best $25 I ever spent!

This blog will now be known as speaker7.wordpress.com. This is nearly as exciting as when Madonna renamed herself BulgingArmMonster or when the WB network changed its name to something I can’t remember.

I’ll take some questions.

From what I can gather no one cares. 

Is that a question?

No.

Oh.

Will having Howard Stern as a host on X-Factor make it watchable?

No.

Which Sex and the City character are you most like?

Howard Stern.

How do I unsubscribe?

Hit the Like button and write “This is the most awesome blog in the universe” and share with 400 friends.

I see you added some drawings to the masthead. 

Yes. Thanks for noticing. Most of these comments have been off the mark.

Well my question is did your toddler son draw them? And if yes, does he have a developmental disability when it comes to drawing? 

I think we’ll stop the questions for now.

Welcome to the future everyone. For your viewing pleasure:

Also contains my dreams, youth and Oscar the Grouch.