Recently in Humor Category

Is it an artifact of Moore's Law, I wonder, that a TV show recorded and broadcast merely six years ago seems like ancient history when the characters "beam" information between Palm devices and use Nextel phones to communicate with one another?

I remember when I first watched a particular episode of NCIS in which these things took place, I was all, "Oh, cool, they use Palms and, hey! That's a Motorola phone! I had one very similar to that!"

I saw it today on -- it may have been ION, or possibly USA -- and when Dinozzo beamed an address card to Gibbs, then Kate used her Nextel's dispatch capability to let McGee know she was going to investigate a noise in the kitchen, it felt to me as though I were flipping through an issue of Archaeology News.

There are a lot of MacBook Pros on the TV shows I watch regularly, the most current episodes. When I see a show recorded two years ago, they were Dells, but those look so ... clunky and archaic now.

This is not the first time that's happened. Star Wars movies? No, won't talk about those because I was a teenager when Episode IV came out yet in my mind they're all only a few years old so I can't be THAT old.

Not that I feel old, mind. Aside from noting the lines around my eyes and mouth that I tell myself are very fetching, I really don't get the feeling I'm old. The infant who sits in the cube next to mine at work -- he's really only a few years younger than I am.

In 2012, when I'm watching reruns where the characters use flat panel displays and iPhones, I'll probably think I'm watching shows recorded when King Tutankhamun was born.

[unrelated aside: a simple typo when Googling how to spell King Tut's name turned up this. Not relevant, but, oddly, not surprising.]

A while back this blog had a regular reader who came here by way of a newsgroup I no longer frequent. He liked to style himself as a crusty, belligerent, opinionated, intolerant old cuss who "told it like it is" and loquaciously dispensed the wisdom his long years of living had deposited, bird-splattishly, upon his creased soul.

The reason I mention this worn, leathered footware of a person is because of the way he interacted with me and with this blog.

He kvetched. He kvetched about the fact that I liked to write about the stuff that was impacting me, which tended to be, well, the little things, the irritants of the day. It bothered him that I would spend my time writing -- no matter how hard I worked at trying to make this small stuff entertaining -- about gripes.

Either he was being ironic, or the fact of his hypocrisy escaped his notice.

I don't see his locale in among the IP addresses logged by sitemeter, so I suspect he is no longer coming 'round to read my blog, which is a shame. The fellow gave me loads of entertainment. If he were still coming here, this post would probably make his heart pop, because I am about to gripe.

If I could make a wish for all people, it would be that we would all of us become both aware and courteous. Simultaneously. It's difficult to be courteous if you're not aware, hence pairing them.

I went out shopping today, and several of the stores I needed to stop at were lined up along one side of the mall. While I am not the most courteous, nor the most aware person on the planet, I did deliberately park centrally, a bit of distance from each of the stores. That's courteous, right? Not wasting gasoline? Not adding extra carbon stuff to the air? Leaving the up-close spots for other people? I chose to walk in the 102 degree sunshine rather than continually start up my car to move it to the next spot. I walked to one end, intending to make my way through each store to the other end, knowing I'd have to walk half way back when I was finished.

By the time I got to the final store, I was hot. I was tired. My lower back hurt. I was cranky. And the little things were starting to piss me off. Like, for example, the moron who failed to stop at the stop sign, yielding to the people who were trying to cross at the crosswalk. He treated the parking lot as though it were his personal motorway.

Or the group of women who were so absorbed with their shopping and with one another they didn't see that not only were they blocking a bunch of people, but their tendency to randomly shift direction (reminded me of flocks of birds, they did) totally screwed up other people's attempts to navigate around them.

It didn't help that I could not find the shorts I was looking for -- the store did not even carry the clothing line I was sure I had gotten from there originally. I did find some other stuff that had prices that were too good to pass up, though. I took my selections to the cash registers.

Ten cash registers. One checker. Two women with the checker bickering over some luggage one of them was attempting to return. Another woman standing, with her cart, in the middle of the aisle where they usually have guide ropes set up to indicate shoppers should wait there for the next available register. Ordinarily I would've gone right up to the one open cash register and waited behind the two women, but decided to stand behind the waiting woman with cart.

While we stood there, looking forlornly at every floor clerk in the hopes they'd open a register, a gaggle of women came yakking up, looked at all of the registers, looked at the two of us, looked at the one register where the two women were still bickering with the checker, and promptly went to stand behind the two women.

I called out to them, "Excuse me! Line over here!" They stared, looked grumpy, then started toward us.

At that moment, two store employees came up and went to two additional registers AND a bunch of other shoppers came up. At that very moment.

The gaggle zipped to one newly opening register as though a magnet had pulled them there. The other shoppers that had just arrived went to another register. I looked at the woman with the cart, who looked very upset. I looked at the two cheaply made, overpriced pieces of crap clothing in my hand.

So, I made no purchases at that store that day and the floor clerks will have a little extra work putting away the clothing I flung to the floor as I strode out the door.

Felt a little bad about that last, in retrospect, but it felt good in the doing.

Boots, if yer out there still: here's to crankiness!

Leroy Jethro Gibbs -- whose lurve child I wish to bear -- doesn't believe in coincidences, and if he doesn't, well then, neither do I.

Y'all know the phenomenon, right? Let's say you buy a 1961 Corvair. You start driving it, and suddenly there are, like, tons of Corvairs out there. You never saw Corvairs around your area before, not much, but there they are. Like people had them all along and were hiding them until you got yours, then in a mad conspiracy started driving theirs, just to fuck with ya.

Let me shift gears, so to speak, for a moment -- this all ties in, really. At the start of this year I determined this would be The Year Of Paying My Dues. It's been several years since I have seen my parents in person. I've been remiss on visiting them. They haven't let me shelve that fact away conveniently, either.

Back in April I looked at the calendar and thought, "I should go see Mom around Mother's Day. That'd be cool." Mom lives in a tiny resort town up on the Olympic peninsula. It's a pain in the ass to get to. I don't really care much for my step-father. I was hoping to find a way to draw Mom away from her burg and into the open, somewhere more interesting. As luck would have it, Mom was planning a get-together with some friends in Seattle for the first of June.

PERFECT!

I really enjoy Seattle. It's a pretty and quirky city with lots of interesting stuff to see and do. So here it comes. As soon as I got all the reservations and dates sorted out, Arleen announced she was going to spend some time in Seattle.

'k. That happens. It's not too weird.

I listen to NPR podcasts, and especially enjoy "Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me", a comedic "quiz" show about current week's events that normally broadcasts out of Chicago. I plugged my iPod in to the car on my drive home from the airport after returning from Seattle and, guess where that week's show was conducted?

<cue eerie music> Seattle

Fast forward to tonight. I finished watching a show I DVR'd and sort of mindlessly skimmed the channel guide to see if there was anything on that didn't suck. I passed the Lifetime channel. I saw ... <eerie music crescendos> "Sleepless in Seattle.".

Gotta be a conspiracy. Is BP trying to redirect attention from its oil leak? Are the Tea Baggers planning something? Could it be the Liberals are about to announce their intentions to have Seattle named the new nation's capital? Are Moon Sprites messing with me?

[Update]: I saw no Corvairs while in Seattle.

One of my co-workers is a forty-something year old woman who had her first (and so far only) child two years ago. She along with the father of the two-year-old (also a co-worker) and I were talking about the joys of children this age-- their yearning for independence, their energy levels, and, of course, their belief that they rule the universe.

They do. Just ask my co-workers. You know the toddler rules:

1. If I like it, it's mine.
2. If it's in my hand, it's mine.
3. If I can take it from you, it's mine.
4. If I had it a little while ago, it's mine.
5. If it's mine, it must never appear to be yours in any way.
6. If I'm doing or building something, all the pieces are mine.
7. If it looks just like mine, it's mine.
8. If I think it's mine, it's mine.

I left the co-peeps to continue the conversation among themselves -- as parents they tend to throw in a lot of cute, goofy, lovey commentary regarding how adorable their son is and while I empathize, frankly, I have more urgent things to do (like write poasties!).

I do my work in a cube farm. That is, our "offices" comprise a maze of little soft-walled boxes that fill vast open bays. My cube is spacious and sits in a corner of one bay so that I have two hard walls instead of four of the 5' partitions. Just through the nearby door to this bay is a refrigerator and a microwave.

Possibly due to the high status afforded by my cube size and placement, or possibly due to my proximity to the appliances, I have acquired a sense of proprietary rights regarding them.

It irritated the fuck out of me when, at the start of my lunch hour, some fuckwit was bending over putting some noxious looking food into my microwave oven, and waving his ass directly across the front of my refrigerator. Next time someone does that, I bring out the big guns!

Next: gekko throws a temper tantrum complete with throwing herself dramatically on the floor and kicking

... finds it disturbing -- incongruously, if not irritatingly -- when fifty-something-year olds post comments like "yum, i need me some a that lol!" on the intertubes.

OTOH, perhaps there is something disturbing when fifty-something year olds let those sorts of things bother them.

Needz chocolate fix naow.

Disclaimer: It makes not one whit of difference. I know that for many, if not most men this does not matter to them when it comes to the women they care about. But it makes no difference.

Disclaimer 2: I am simply offering this, not looking for any sort of feedback.

This is it. A secret, for you. A glimpse into the mind of a woman. At least one woman. Possibly many women. This flickers through our brains when we see another woman, particularly if the woman is, shall we say, really really "healthy." As it were.

"Dear God in heaven, is my butt as fat as hers?"