GSD Blues

It's true. A normal man can only be a Gum Sugar Daddy to one woman at a time.

I realized this as I watched a pack of Strawberry Splash bubble gum fly slowly across the room spinning like an abandoned satellite, headed right for my head.

"I asked for Watermelon Wave you imbecile!"

She was right. I had confused them.

Now I am down to one.

The way it's supposed to be.

Tomato Bird

I had a dream last night that birds don't really hatch from eggs. They hatch from ripe tomatoes. And if you hold the tomatoes up to the sun you can see the baby birds trying to eat their way out.

Yea it turns out I am quite an accomplished scientist in the Dream World. I'm always discovering things like the tomato bird and inventing cool stuff. (You might try picturing the mattress car that floated about 6 inches off the ground and went 120 mph)

And when I return from my expeditions to the far corners of the Dream World and give lectures at the National Geographic Society, I sometimes give my talks completely naked.

I don't know what that's all about.

Phum Trapeang Chum

I have been walking around all day wondering what exactly "tongue chum" is. And I was wondering if anyone had ever used the phrase "tongue chum" when they were speaking with me. I can imagine a peculiar bully in grade school informing me in a loud voice that he was going to turn me into tongue chum if I didn't hand over my lunch money instantly. I can imagine it. I just can't remember it.

I don't want to think that my brain is just throwing random words together just for the hell of it or because it doesn't know any better. I want my brain to make nice with the rest of the world and use words in a socially acceptable way. I have been calling my cats "butter monkeys" for years and when you tell a friend that the butter monkeys are in the kitchen eating tongue chum you will get a strange look.

This is clearly a slippery slope when words that don't belong together start spending all their free time slow dancing with each other. After a while you start thinking you'll never open your spit hanger again...

But whenever I think I might be crazy I just fire up the old internet, drag out my favorite search engine and do a search. When you do a search for "tongue chum" on Google any thought you might have that you are crazy just goes up in smoke. Tongue and chum are kissing cousins on the internet. Google proudly presents 72 results for that particular search. Granted "tongue chum" is no Brittany Spears. But give Tongue Chum implants, and insane sense of rhythm and the voice of an angel and see what happens.

These are four of my favorite results.

There is a band named Chum that has a website and on that website is a picture of Bob the lead guitarist. The caption to the photo is "Bob shows some Tongue." Let me just say Bob is no Gene Simmons...

There is an unnamed MTV movie that has a character named Joe whose boyhood Chum is called sharp Tongue.

There is a Salmon called a Chum salmon that has no teeth at the base of it Tongue. (Who knew fish had tongues?)

This is my favorite. There is a village in Cambodia called phum trapeang Chum where a cow is known to cure it's owner by licking it with it's Tongue.

Thank God I'm not crazy although I am a little afraid to Google "Butter Monkey". I mean what if a Butter Monkey is another name for the Devil. Knowing my cats that would just make too much sense....

Spit Hanger? Tongue Chum?

I was on the living room floor watching the Steelers. The annoying cat had been standing a foot from my head for the last hour staring at me...wanting something...annoying me.

I turned and stuck my tongue out at him and instantly he takes a swing at it. Five years ago there would be a bloody chunk of tongue chum on the floor but the four-legged fuzz ball has lost a step and I was able to roll that big pink thing back into the spit hanger just in the nick of time.

But it was a close thing and from now on I'm just going to give him the finger.

Steelers lose.

Black Sun

Kistling...Kissing while Whistling.

Whissing...Whistling while Kissing.

Duh?

To me it's obvious but no one sees the black sun that hides in the tree in my back yard so I guess I am just going to have to spell things out from now on.

Kistling or Whissing?

I prefer whissing. It seems more spontaneous. But the chicks really seem to dig kistling. I guess it all comes down to the song.

I'd Pay To Watch Her Park

A new person has moved into my building recently and she has brought with her a Ford Ltd station wagon from the early 70s. This car is enormous. This car should be in a museum. This car should have F-16s landing on it's roof.

Watching her parallel park it in front of the building is one of the finest pleasures in my life. The patterns this car traces on the street as it tries to safely land would look something like an etcha-sketch drawing done by a churlish chimp on speed. Just when you think she has it safely home the universe slips and the car winds up perpendicular to the sidewalk.

At first I thought it would cost her a fortune to put gas in this monster from the Land of Watergate. Then I realized that whenever she wants to go somewhere all she has to do is get in the back-seat of the car, wait a little bit, and get out of the front door at her destination.

It has wood paneling on the outside for style and speed, and a kitchen and a chef on the inside, in case you become famished during parking. (I seem to recall something about Ronald Reagan firing most of the Ltd chefs in 1984 but that could be one of those false memories)

I wonder where she gets her 8-tracks?

I wonder if she has Hello It's Me by Todd Rundgren?

Welcome Exaggomom.

I just had the greatest cheese sandwich. I made it myself. I used lactose free cheese like the scary doctor said.

(Exaggoman's exaggomom just got her first internet computer and I want her to see that my childhood wasn't a waste of time.)

Tomorrow I plan on practicing my trumpet but not until I clean my room.

And I plan on cutting way back on spinning till I pass out. It's time.

To whom it may concern.

27

I am sitting on a piece of explosive news. I think it is possible that less than 1000 people on the planet know what I am about to tell you. Someone....something, has added an extra D to the alphabet.

I know what you are thinking. What's the big deal? ABCDDEFG...I can handle that. I'll just use one D for Dog and the other for Donkey. No big deal. Right? D is D...Well what if I told you that the extra D was added to the alphabet between the S and the T. That does complicate things a bit. The question becomes, when do I use the C flavored D and when do I use the S flavored D? Do these Ds sound the same? Is the new D a silent D? Are we supposed to trill all D words now? D-DanD-Delion. D-dermatologist. D-dermott.

And how about a word like doddering? Will the two Ds from the same zipcode on the alphabet get together and bully the stand alone D? Will we have to spell dodder with 4 Ds? Ddodder. So as to be politically correct? Will people have favorite Ds and will the bad Ds fans always have to take off their shoes in airports? Or what if the two Ds get together and try to suffocate B? And what about letter/gender issues? If it turns out that the new D is the same sex as the old D will they even be allowed in the same word? I'm sure you are all thinking of questions and potential problems.

The good news is that our President has a plan and is going on network television tonight. He is expected tell us where Homeland Security thinks the new D came from. At this point they have it narrowed down to either a volcano in Iraq or a crystal meth lab in Akron, Ohio. No matter where it came from the President will announce plans for the immediate extermination of the rogue D. The President is expected to urge calm and encourage chalkboard vigilance in schools across the country. First graders caught doubling their Ds will be gently warned. Fifth graders will be encouraged to be team players. Errant high school students will be relocated to same sex farms in the countryside where their "complete" reeducation will begin.

As you can imagine our President is quite annoyed with the prospect of learning new pronunciations for words with the letter D included. I expect historians will look back on tonight's speech and note with amazement the D-less nature of the speech. The new D will be described as tricky and sneaky but not deceptive and devilish. Liberal spin doctors are expected to announce this D "problem" as the letter that broke the Elephant's back and allowed the newly named Zemocratic party to sweep back into power in the mid-term elections of 2006.

My only hope is that tonight's speech doesn't set off panic buying of the old alphabet or drive the price of Chinese characters so high that no one will be afford decent Kanji tattoos. Stay tuned.

Intro To Old Sayings 101

The snow surprises the monkey. And the cold surprises him too. The jungle has always been a hot and noisy place. All he hears now is the hiss of the snow.

The blue sweater is almost finished but the brown monkey is troubled by the snow. He drops the sweater to the ground and starts to climb higher in the tree away from the white.

The sweater was a mystery. The snow is a mystery. He stops when he can climb no higher and starts to look from tree to tree through the thickening snow.

Now he is lonely and a little scared....wait...what's that noise? That screeching. The sound of a hundred furious wings coming ever closer.

Can it be? Is it true?

You guessed it. It's those damn Wizard of Oz flying monkeys wearing blue sweaters and ski goggles. They swoop down and snatch up the scared brown monkey. (You are way ahead of me.) They fly him back to the Wicked Witches Palace. (It is too late to draw the curtain now.) Watch as they throw the frightened wingless monkey in the pot of boiling water and cook him till he's so tender that the ears and tail fall off at a whispered chant. They always saved the tail for the cranky witch who would sprinkle it with salt and suck it down like a strand of spaghetti.

But you have heard the old saying,

"A melted witch gets no tail!"

And now you know where it came from.

Brown Green Blue

I see a brown monkey sitting in a green tree knitting a blue sweater. It's not snowing and the monkey isn't lonely. That's it.
I am totally blogstapated.

Upstairs

The apartment above me has been quiet for a week. The ambulance took James away one week ago. A couple of days ago a soiled mattress and a dresser appeared in the dumpster behind the building. Today the mattress was gone but on the ground around the dumpster were several pill bottles with James' name typed on the label. The bottles were all full or half full. A miracle cure? Or simply death.

A couple of months ago James collapsed in his apartment. I could hear the firemen at his door talking to him. Can you get to the door? Can you stand? He's right behind the door. James can you hear me? For the longest time James could not unlock the door and the fireman would not break in. Finally someone with a key came and they took James away in an ambulance.

Sadly the person with the key never came back. James' dog barked for four days. I left notes on his door with my phone number hoping that the person with the key would contact me and I could help with the dog. Eventually I called the humane society and they said they would look into it. But before that could happen my phone rang and James, in a shaky, shaky voice told me that he was back and everything was okay and thanks for worrying about his dog.

I never saw the dog again and I only saw James a couple of more times.

I remember when James first moved in. A man would visit him in his apartment and more often then not a horrible fight would break out. Screaming...crying...crashing.

Eventually the man stopped coming and the fights would be one sided over the phone.

Earlier this year even the phone fights stopped and days would go by when I wouldn't hear a sound from the apartment upstairs. And then the faintest footsteps and I would know that James was still up there, so wasted by the disease that to make even the smallest sound was just too exhausting.

The last time I saw James was a couple of weeks ago. I was reading in my apartment when I heard the sound of breaking glass. I looked out my front window and I saw James on the front porch staring down at a broken bottle of Yahoo. I watched him for a bit. Eventually he turned into the building leaving the broken glass and the drying liquid behind.

The ambulance came again last week and took James away again. The dog is gone. The footsteps are gone. The mattress is gone. I gathered the half-filled pill bottles and threw them in the dumpster.

Tonight as I came home from work I stepped over the fading Yahoo stain that looks so much like a bloodstain at a crime scene. Soon that will disappear too.

James was probably forty years old. He lived in the building for five years. The longest conversation I ever had with him was when he called to thank me for caring about the dog he could no longer take care of.

I know I will never see James again. That's okay. He was a stranger to me. But I hope there is someone somewhere that will remember him.