This Post Will Make You Blush

People hate being embarrassed. I remember reading an article about choking in restaurants. It stated one of the main reasons people died is because they left the table to deal with the choking in the privacy of the restroom so as not to embarrass themselves in front of others with all the gasping and eye-bulging. It embarrasses me that I cannot remember the name of the article or find a link to it.

In 10th grade, I was walking and waving to a group of friends on the front lawn of school. My head was not turned in the direction I was going, and I fell over a bicycle rack. To make it even better, the boy I had crush on witnessed the entire event. I immediately left school and joined a nunnery in the Himalayans. Here’s the kicker: There wasn’t a nunnery there. I was so mortified that I tried to pass myself off as a curvy monk, but my bright red cheeks and excessive sweating gave me away. And I’m not even curvy. Why did I say that? Oh my god. I’m completely humiliated.

Some sciency people say embarrassment is a good thing (is sciency people the right word? What are they called? Sciencers? Sciencence? This is mortifying). It’s a sign of virtue. It shows you can be trusted, and it makes motorists stop when they mistake your bright red face for a stop sign.

So what does it mean if you’re someone who is not easily embarrassed? Does it mean you’re an untrustworthy asshat? The sciency folks could not say for sure, but maybe would look into it in the future.

Well let’s look into it now, shall we. Let’s examine the behavior of one Donald Trump.

Donald Trump cannot be embarrassed. Just look at him:

He knows his hair looks like cotton candy run through a taffy pulling machine then set on fire and extinguished by a pound of cat fur mixed with sawdust.

His hair alone should cause his face to be the color of a fire hydrant. But the reason his face is the color of a fire hydrant is because he’s always blowing hot air out of his yawping maw.

“Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!” he screams like an over-sugared toddler.

He recently blathered some nonsense about Trump steaks. No wait. It was about his many bankruptcies. Nope. I’m wrong again. I’m totally blushing right now.

He said: “Celebrity Apprentice just ended, and I need to be on TV again so how ’bouts I prattle on about President Obama not being a U.S. citizen? Yeah, let’s do that. I’m fired…up. Did you see what I did there? Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!”

See, I would be embarrassed to say something that’s been so obviously refuted that it’s on par with saying something like “Donald Trump is virtuous.”

But that’s me.

Donald Trump said this right before hosting a fundraiser for Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney said he believed Obama was a natural born citizen, which was very big of him. Using the word “believe” means there could be a tad uncertainty about it. Well done.

I believe Mitt Romney escaped from the Chuck E. Cheese automaton band, and is full of ricotta cheese. But that’s just what I believe, man. You can believe your own ride.

I also believe that Donald Trump is actually a robotic megaphone coated in spray tan and axe body spray.

It would explain the inability to be embarrassed.

And the hair.

But what I do know for certain is that he is an untrustworthy asshat.

Science!

Reason #34 Why I Will Never Visit Florida

Some questions remain about why a naked man on a Miami causeway tried to rip flesh off another man’s face, according to today’s Miami Herald.

I’m not sure…could that headline be a little bit of an understatement? Maybe. One naked guy attacked another naked man on the MacArthur Causeway, and proceeded to chew his face. Passing motorists tried to get him to stop by honking and yelling things like “Stop!” and “What the fuck am I looking at right now? Did I just wander onto the Walking Dead set?”

A police officer arrived and ordered the man off. A passing bicyclist described the scene like this: “The guy just stood, his head up like that, with pieces of flesh in his mouth. And he growled.”

So yes, I think there might be a few questions that need to be answered.

Police theorized that the attacker suffered from cocaine psychosis, which causes the body to bake internally and would explain why he was naked.

Okay.

But what about the face-eating? I think, and I feel comfortable speaking for the entire world here, we are a little more concerned about the face-eating part. If I passed by a naked person biting into the face of another naked person, my first thought would not be “Oh my god! They’re naked! The horror! I feel shame for them.”

No. It would be more “Oh my god! That guy is eating that guy’s face!?!”

You see? I didn’t even mention the naked part.

The face-eating. Yes, that’s what we would like explained, and please, let it be an explanation that does not use the word “zombie”.

I may be in the minority here, but I am not a fan of zombies. I don’t like the guttural moaning, the dirty fingernails, the shuffling, the human-eating, the decaying flesh. I don’t like how they seem to find each other and then find your house, and they start to swarm around your front window and beat on the glass and you see a mouse scurry out of the mouth of one and you know they’re seconds away from getting inside and you only have a spatula to protect yourself.

See? This looks terrible. And he even has guns. I don’t have guns. I have a spatula, and it’s not even a high-end Williams-Sonoma spatula, it’s a plastic Dollar Store spatula. I’m totally screwed.

I don’t know if I want to wait the requisite six to eight weeks for the attacker’s autopsy report. I’d rather start preparing myself now.

And thus I present Speaker7’s Zombie Apocalypse-avoiding Checklist™*.

1. Purchase high-end pointy spatulas.

2. Never go to Florida.

3. Remain ignorant of everything at all times.

*This works in 98 percent of all emergency situations with the exception of tornadoes. For tornado preparedness change #2 to Never go to Kansas.

“It’s Been Fun”

This is a weekend for traveling.

More than 5 billion Americans will jump into their cars and drive to some destination so they can watch a parade, wave a flag, buy an inflatable Angry Bird™ balloon manufactured in China, and drink too much. I am doing all four things right now so my estimation of the number of American drivers might be a little off.

The recession is beyond us, according to Triple A, aka AAA not to be confused with AA or ABC. Gas prices are down, the three As declared, and promptly forgot to tell all the gas stations in my hometown since yesterday I spent $55 to fill up my Toyota Camry when it still had one-quarter of gas in the tank. But apparently, I will use all that “extra” money to buy me some entertainment in the form of restaurants, furniture rental stores and dollar stores.

I am using my savings to buy these at the Dollar Tree:

Snap-on feather hair extensions are extremely useful when the chemicals contained inside them cause one to lose 75% of one’s hair.

Mine will be red, white and blue.

The people-travel-on-holidays is a news story in the NY Post, and I am all too familiar with these non news stories that a reporter is forced to write to fill news holes on a long holiday weekend.

In Memorial Days of yore, I would be a lucky American non-traveler holed up in a cubicle on a Saturday covering four events that would eventually lead me down the path of obtaining an MLS so I would never have to interview people at the annual soap box derby ever again.

So. . . why are you at the soap box derby?

My daughter is racing.

Awesome. Grrl power. . . I’m sorry I said that. Um. So, what do you like about the soap box derby?

The fact my daughter is in it.

Yes, great stuff. Let me make sure I’ve quoted you accurately.

By the way the winner of the race “likes to race” and “enjoys the competition part.”

You’re welcome.

Then I would rush over to the annual wheat festival 20 minutes away to report on festive wheat. The ole’ timey wheat thresher would ole-timely thresh, and people would consume switzle–a concoction of vinegar, sugar, water and ginger–and vomit profusely.

Here is a direct quote from an news article I wrote about it:

“It’s been fun,” said one of the organizers. “We chose this weekend because of the weather and because it would be a patriotic weekend.”

Where the fuck is my Pulitzer?

Then I would write a story about oxygen being required for people to breathe, and inevitably someone would stick the inflatable parade balloon somewhere it should never be, and I would write about that when I did my police calls, and I would call it a day.

But this year, I’m free, people.

I’m free to join the 399,000 or 4 billion other drivers on the road to more happiness or more nowhere.

If only I can kick my switzle habit, I’ll be home free.

Wife Swap: Klondike Bar Quandary

Editor’s note: The act of blogging follows a consistent path. There is the coming up of ideas; the writing of ideas; the hiding under the table while one weeps; the drinking of coffee laced with rum; the self-loathing followed by self-congratulating and then more self-loathing; the watching of TV; the shaking of the fist at not getting Freshly Pressed; the drinking of rum laced with coffee; and the eventual publishing. But sometimes a giant roadblock is thrown up on the path that causes the entire system to break down. This is called writer’s block. This is something all bloggers experience, and if you don’t, please do not tell us because we will wish ill of you. This was something that happened recently, and from despair, an idea was born. Life in the Boomer Lane and Speaker7 decided to swap posts that lingered for centuries in draft form to see what would transpire. Would it be as brilliant as the time Gary Busey and Ted Haggard swapped wives and caused the downfall of civilization? We don’t know. But we do know that no hair pulling or fingernail scratching or bloodshed ensued. So that’s something. The rest is up to you.  

It’s the eternal question:

What would you do for a Klondike bar?

People do some really crazy things, according to my teacher TV. Guys will put dishes in the dishwasher! Guys will massage their horrible mother-in-laws’ feet! Guys will wax their balls!

Clearly people will submit to acts of humiliation such as putting dishes away for the chance to eat a block of ice cream coated in a chocolate that will end up all over their hands and faces.

A couple of Internet entrepreneurs or Intreprenets, as I call them, realized this too, and also realized that a box of Klondike bars costs around $4.50, and created Fiverr, a website where people can buy and sell “gigs” for $5.

You can pay someone $5 to be your girlfriend for a week on Facebook or $5 to read a scan of your palm. You can pay a guy to make his pectoral muscles dance or take a cold bath fully clothed while holding a sign.

Ah, the free market!

This got Renee of Life in the Boomer Lane thinking what she would do for $5. She came up with “executor of your will” and then grew tired of the subject and passed the eternal Klondike bar question to me.

So this got me thinking: What can I do for $5?

. . .

Hmm. I obviously needed help so I took one of those quizzes that tells you everything you need to know about yourself: What Kind of Cosmo Girl Are You?

Apparently “chicks these days” fall into one of four categories of fowl. What kind of bird am I?

The questions were intense and really seemed to get to the root of being a bird. Ex:

It turned out I’m a Foghorn Leghorn. This was fantastic news, but still didn’t help me with my quest. I looked to Fiverr for assistance and it said: “focus on serious offerings that will be beneficial to potential buyers.” I also consulted my brain and it said: don’t do anything that requires skill or takes a lot of time.

Okay.

Potential gigs:

The Wall Street experience – I will take your $5 and give you this in return and then take your house.

Awesome Drawing: I will draw you a picture of my choosing and take a picture of it.

They will all look like this.

Original Song – I will write and perform an original song and call it “_____’s Candle in the Wind”.

And finally,

This is What You Really Want Anyway so Why Go Through All This Rigmarole Gig:

Melting optional.

Oh the Places You Won’t Go

May is the month of college commencements. In fact the local college’s commencement is tomorrow, and I have been trying like crazy to be tapped as this year’s keynote speaker. It makes sense since my name is Speaker7.

The current speaker is a sack of potatoes. I’m not trying to be mean. It is literally a sack of potatoes with a mouth painted on it (Budget cuts).

I don’t want to toot my own horn, but I do I think I can do a much better job. In fact I have a commencement address already prepared:

I am speaking now. Shut up. It is truly an honor to be here today to share this moment of accomplishment with you, and an accomplishment it is. In just a few years, you have managed to incur the kind of debt that used to take a lifetime to achieve.

You are embarking on a new journey, one where anything is possible until you see your first loan payment and realize it is more than the cost of your $450 intro to sociology textbook that you just sold for $25 to buy beer. 

It is a time for discovery. A time for discovering that your degree in newspaper journalism was probably not the best route nor was that minor in DVD repair, and you should have listened to your mother and gotten something in health care because if one thing is for certain, Americans will continue to get fatter and sicker.

It is a time of endless possibilities. There is the possibility that one of the 200 resumes you sent out will lead to a phone call from a prospective employer or the possibility that it won’t.

I believe the children are our future. I truly believe that the future will be populated by the people being born now. Does that make me a soothsayer? Possibly.

What I mostly believe–occasionally I believe something different after say, 3 glasses of wine–is that the future is bleak.

Things are grim. Not grim in a good way like a Brothers Grimm tale where a witch tries to cook children. No this is much worse–like the television show Grimm.

Look at the person to the left of you. That person will be moving back in with his/her parents. Now look to the right. So will that person.

Where does that leave you? Also living with your parents.

One percent of you come from rich families so you’ll likely live off their hard work of inheriting money from other generations. To you, I say, try to be less awful than your parents. This can be done by a) not having a reality show and b) not having a reality show and c) never speaking.

To the rest of you, the 99 percent, there are two jobs available. One is at Taco Bell working third shift. It involves cleaning Doritos dust from the tiles of the bathrooms. You will smell like taco meat most of the time. The other is a life coach. Unfortunately this job is made up.

So what are you going to do? This is not a rhetorical question. Seriously, what the fuck are you going to do?

There are options.

You may want to take the easy way out like standing in line for days to sing “I Believe I can Fly” before Howie Mandel and then watch as your dignity literally flies from your body. Or you may sniff a stranger’s ass for $10,000 on Total Blackout and look like this:

Those are literally the only two options I could think of. 

Good luck and happy commencing!

Dora the Annoyer

Six o’clock in the morning is really rough.

It’s not the best feeling in the world to know every morning you will get up at 6 a.m. regardless of the time you fall asleep. This is the life of a parent with a 2-year-old. In the past two years, the latest I’ve slept in has been 6:30 (three times), and it wasn’t even on any of those Mother’s days or birthdays. It was because he slept in until 6:30.

What makes it worse is sometimes it’s 5:30 a.m. There are things one does–things one is not proud of–to try to sleep an extra five to 10 minutes.

Maybe you do that thing where you pretend you do not actually hear your child crying. That is impossible. It’s like his cry is directly connected to my central nervous system. I say my because my husband could sleep through me jumping on his head with a pogo stick.

Or you get the kid, throw him into your bed and turn on the TV after six requests of “Watch show? Watch show? Watch show?”

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no television for children under the age of two. This is because they are doctors who can afford to have someone else watch their children, and have never played two solid hours of “What’s that?”

I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing that my infant son would rip himself away from my breast whenever the theme for It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia kicked in so he could watch the opening credits. It is classical muzak after all.

I only wish that would placate him now. Because now, what he likes to watch at 6 a.m. is Dora the Explorer.

Ah, Dora…How do I describe your voice? Think of a beginning violinist scraping his unrosined bow across a violin with a shrieking cat strapped to it. Think of someone inserting a needle directly into your left eardrum while someone crashes cymbals against your right. Think of a cheerleader whose mouth is actually a megaphone screaming directions while 1,000 bagpipes play and 1,000 dentists drill into a giant mouth made out of aluminum.

And that does not even come close to Dora’s voice.

“My voice has broken the sound barrier!”

Dora is always excited and always going on adventures and always needs your help and always wants you to shriek along with her. It’s glorious. Especially at 6 a.m.

She drags along a monkey in red boots, and she talks to her backpack, and can catch stars, and I fucking hate her more than I have ever hated any cartoon in my life and that includes Scrappy Doo who is an unbelievable monstrosity.

There is a fox named Swiper, and guess what he does?

Swipes stuff.

Swiper, can you swipe Dora’s vocal box? Thanks!

Dora becomes very agitated whenever Swiper is around and begins to wail with the intensity of 13,000 ambulance sirens that we must stop Swiper. “SAY SWIPER NO SWIPING” she bellows over and over again while I begin to fantasize that I’m chained to some random restroom in Saw 17.

Dora is very big on audience participation and what you think was the best part of the adventure. At the end of the task, she scream/sings the “We did it” song and then asks what your favorite part was.

My favorite part was when Dora was not speaking, that .001 second of the show.

“Me too!!!!!!” she screams back. Then she shrieks and shrieks and shrieks some more until I lose all feeling in my face. And then we have another episode at 6:30.

And this is likely what I will wake up to tomorrow. And the next 300 or so tomorrows.

I have just written a check to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Good work, guys.

Writer’s Block is *insert word*

Writer’s block is soooooooo. . . um. . . green? No, that’s not it. Chalky? Viscous? No.

Let’s go with pfffffttttttttt.

jjkfljl’;jkjl?

So yes, I kind of have it, and it’s been something I’ve been trying to fix by taking a plunger to the head. But I am still clogged up with hair, toothpaste residue and foot odor cream. I have started many, many posts, and yup, they’re as finished as this sen–

Here are the top blog posts that failed to make it. Enjoy.

Lieberty University

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney gave the commencement address at Liberty University, one of the greatest universities to teach that the Earth is a mere 6,000 years old.

Below is a transcript of his remarks:

To the graduates, the children are our future. Except the gay ones. Your college’s founder Jerry Falwell was a great man. I remember how great he looked when he said that teletubby was gay because it carried a purse. Marriage is a sacred covenant between a male teletubby and a female teletubby. How do you know which is which? Look at the genitals and accessories. Amen.

Continuing Failure

Ah…summer is just around the corner and now I know how I’m going to spend it. The local college just mailed out its continuing education course list. There are people jumping around in potato sacks on the back cover possibly portending a course on Brady Bunch trivia. Q: How many times did Alice and Sam do it in the meat locker?

A-ha! I found the course that will help me transition to a new career:

Vintage Costume Jewelry.

Learn about its varied and bloodied history while contemplating the fact that you paid money to do so. Bedazzlers optional.

Donnie Deutsch for President

Donnie Deutsch is a professional ??? and carves out a few precious moments to share his wisdom on the Today show when it needs to fill seven minutes because the woman who has a cat that can beat box has canceled. Today Matt Lauer wants to know his thoughts on the death penalty particularly this situation involving a 9/11 widower who offered to speak out against the death penalty in the trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

Donnie gave this thoughtful response:

“To me, you know, it’s easy to say, look everybody has a right to their opinion, and the death penalty or not the death penalty to me I thought it was an incredible insensitivity to the other families that lost family members that maybe didn’t feel that way. I don’t think it’s the place to grandstand. He is one of this very, very tragic group.”

Well said.

What the @#!@&! is Yahoo! Shine?

Sex survey! This was performed by a magazine in collaboration with Yahoo! Shine, “the leading site for women’s lifestyle content.”

Here are some of the findings:

– 94% of women say they have never heard of Yahoo! Shine.

This Post Will Cost Me Followers

Holy Samoa!

The Girl Scouts are teaming up with Nestle to create Girl Scout candy bars. This is the beginning of a journey that will ultimately end with me being extracted from my house by a forklift.

The bars are inspired by my three favorite cookies: thin mints, tag alongs and samoas, also known as the devil cookie.

I have gained five pounds just from viewing this picture.

I don’t know about you, but when I rip open a box of thin mints, I don’t eat the suggested serving of 2 cookies, I eat the non suggested serving of 2 sleeves of cookies thereby enabling me to put the empty cardboard box in a recycling bin in a timely manner. I do this for the environment.

Since I like candy way more than cookies, I imagine I will be eating the weight of my house in thin mint bars. I am excited.

But do you know who isn’t excited?

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

They have launched an intensive inquiry into the Girl Scouts much in the same manner they left no stone unturned in the Catholic priest sex scandal.

Wait, am I remembering that correctly?

Oh right.

So that was sort of swept under the rug a tad, but now they’re making up for it by examining whether the ingestion of Do-Si-Dos causes abortions. I’m sure if they find a connection, the bishops will just move that box of Do-Si-Dos from one warehouse to another. Problem solved.

Bishop and evil identifier Kevin Rhoades wrote a letter to the Girl Scouts requesting the organization clarify whether or not its programming turns girls into dirty, dirty whores who like unmarried sex, condoms and community service, but hate babies (I’m paraphrasing).

I should add that the Girl Scouts is a secular organization not run by the Catholic Church so this investigation makes perfect sense just the way my investigation into whether or not the Catholic Church leadership is out of its gourd is getting the attention it deserves (The results just come back: Yes it is – evidence).

“There had been some complaints about the Scouts, and the bishops couldn’t turn a deaf ear,” said Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a spokeswoman for the bishops.

Oh yes, I remember that guy. He looked up stuff on the Internet and concluded that the Girl Scouts was a communist organization hell bent on propagating Planned Parenthood’s pro-abortion agenda by going hiking and camping.

Yes, never ignore someone who looks like this:

“I look completely normal, right?l”

“I think you do.”

Um…I have a few complaints so maybe the bishops would like to keep their non-deaf ears turned this way.

Ok so here’s just a few, granted they are not as serious as the programming of a youth organization that attempts to instill the values of honesty and friendship, but hear me out:

1. Why did the pope say condoms would make the AIDS crisis in Africa worse?
2. Why did the pope reinstate a bishop who believes Jewish people were not sent to the gas chamber during the Holocaust, and said this about women: “A woman can do a good imitation of handling ideas, but then she will not be thinking properly as a woman”?
3. Why did the pope criticize a group of nuns for focusing too much on poverty and economic injustice rather than focusing on cementing up lady parts, the root of all evil?

I’m sure you’ll get right on that.

I Now Pronounce You. . . A Giant Turd

When I see gay couples, I can’t help but wonder: Why do you insist upon ruining my life by being in love?

It’s really, really annoying. I want to be married so let me stay married. Don’t try to ruin it by living your own life and engaging in a committed relationship. Don’t you see how this hurts me?

Tami Fitzgerald gets it. She is the leader of North Carolina Has Finally Become Worse than South Carolina Values Coalition, and spearheaded that dandy new amendment that double-banned same sex marriage today in that state. I say “double-banned” because it was already banned so this ban works in the same way a dare becomes so much more of a dare when you triple-dog-dare it.

Tami says it’s all about people who believe in godly values. That totally describes me. Like take yesterday. I struck my slave with a rod, and it seemed like he was going to die, so I expected to be punished because my bad. But then my slave survived for two days and then died, and it was all good because he was my property (Exodus 21:20-21).

Godly values.

Tami’s not anti-gay, you guys. She’s pro-hate of gays marriage.

“And the point — the whole point — is simply that you don’t rewrite the nature of God’s design for marriage based on the demands of a group of adults,” she says.

Exactly. Why should adults decide things for themselves? Who do they think they are? Adults?

God’s design is so clearly spelled out in the Bible, yo. Why mess with it.

Like take last Sunday. My neighbor found a virgin outside and lied with her (which is Bible-speak for “did the nasty”). So he gave the slut’s dad 50 shekels to buy her vagina, and made her his wife (Deuteronomy 22:28-29). I would love to have a proposal story like that.

God’s design.

Lots of North Carolinians want to keep the design, a whopping 61 percent. Like Shane Cowell. He starts off saying “I’m a born-again Christian” and I immediately stop listening.  Then there’s Joe Easterling who says “procreation is impossible without a man and a woman” and gets an A in 6th grade health.

Tami says today’s vote sends a message, and I agree.

The message is this: Tami Fitzgerald, you are the Turd of the Week™.

How To Write the Greatest How-To Post

People want to know things.

Simply typing “How to” into Google generates interesting queries like “How to make head cheese,” “How to last longer in bed” and “How to breed a rainbow dragon.” Interestingly no one has created the query “how to teach a rainbow dragon to make head cheese while lasting longer in bed.” That doesn’t mean they don’t want to know.

In fact, I would like to know…er…I mean, my friend Friend, no, not Friend. . .uh. . . Plate, Plate Fork, would like to know. If anyone has any idea how to make that work, please write a how-to post on it. You will learn how to make it the greatest after reading this.

So how do you write the greatest how-to post? It’s surprisingly easy! Just follow these steps.

1.  Place your fingers on the home row of your keyboard. Type “How To. . .” except don’t use ellipses, fill it in with something like How To Smell a Wine Cork Without Looking Like an Idiot or How To Wrestle in Jello Without Getting Diabetes.
2. Brine the pig head overnight.
3. Go to sleep. Do not stay up and watch the Ab Rocket Twister infomercial. I can go from flab to fab in just five minutes? I might need to stay up. No, no, I should go to sleep.
4. Wake up. Drain and rinse the pig head. Place the head into a big pot, fill with chicken stock. Log onto your blog. Type something under your How To. . . headline. You didn’t change the ellipses yet? Change the ellipses into something like How To Change Ellipses into Words. Okay now write something underneath it. It should be something amazing.
5. Skim the fat as needed. After a few hours, pick off the edible meat from the tongue, nose and ears. Cover it with plastic wrap.
6. Throw up quietly into a bucket.
7. Mix the meat with parsley and other flavorings like MSG and barf.
8. Go back into your blog, write something even more amazing than the last thing you wrote. Like, make it super amazing.
9. Cover and refrigerate overnight.
10. Go to sleep. Don’t stay up to watch Blue-Eyed Butcher on Lifetime.
11. Remove the plastic wrap and serve with pickles.

If you followed all the steps, your greatest how-to post should look like this:

source: wikipedia

Whatever you do, do not eat this.