From a “Knickerbocker Sturgell”: Too Pooped to Pop? And then some sort of misspelled pitch for little blue pills. “Too pooped to pop” is a phrase my mother uses, and it’s the only time you’ll ever hear the word poop cross her lips.
It still irks me that saying “crap” in her household got you an earful of admonition and a mouthful of soap. Didn’t she know that everyone else was out drinking Zima behind the barn IN MIXED COMPANY? Heck if I ever turned up pregnant or drunk after youth group Bible study.
Anylegalism, here is a list of things that suck, lest we let all this Grace in Small Things get out of hand:
1. Our tax bill. Before The Biz and joint filing entered my life, I viewed tax season as a sort of fun event where you do a few math problems, and then the government gives you a check. This year, there were way too many zeros on the check we gave the government. At least there was an accountant to do the math.
2. It has been raining for days, with no end in sight.
3. Due to my over-eagerness to bond with obscure branches of my family-in-law, I rsvp’ed to a stranger’s wedding instead of to The Dirty Thirty Cougar Coming Out Party of one Flashmistress Gogodancer. It’ll be calico jumpers and fruit punch instead of animal prints and cocktails.
As has been expected, Carol Ann Duffy was named the UK’s poet laureate, the first woman to hold the position in 341 years. Along with a small stipend, the honor comes with a “butt of sack” — 600 bottles of sherry to stoke the muse — which the Guardian says she asked for upfront after hearing the previous laureate Andrew Motion never received his due.
Thank goodness for British English, which gives us these treasures of language from time to time. A butt of sack is a wooden cask for storing wine and will hold about 126 gallons of such beverage. Shakespeare uses the term in The Tempest, wherein the shipwrecked Stephano explains his means of survival:
I escaped upon a butt of sack, which the sailors heaved overboard…(Act II, Scene II)
I think I may have a butt of sack of my own in out in the living room. It’s a wooden box with Portuguese wine branding, nailed shut, big enough for about 8 bottles. I keep my plants on it.
And that closes out today’s butt of sack post. Unless the 7-year-old boy in me wants to say “butt of sack” once more….why yes, he does. Butt of sack. I think it’s my new funniest word, supplanting “crapbag.”
You’ve got to admire the Japanese for their committment to keeping a clean undercarriage. Even public bathrooms and fast food restaurants have a shiny, automatic toilet equipped with a multi-function bidet. I tend to think of the bidet as a sort of nifty relic you’d find in a really old house, not a high-tech gadget you find in a high-tech country. Maybe your granny has one in her bathroom and keeps it covered with a crocheted potty cozy.
But this-
-this is a NASA potty.
I won’t post the photo, because it belongs to Bad News Hughes, but this album is funny. They can’t possibly be ballroom dancers, can they? Are they my forebears?
There are all kinds of trade-offs here. Bigger brain means bigger head means crotch-rippers. No exercise means fat mama means tiny, harmless head means stupid baby. So do you want intact ladybits or a smart baby?
I say get the pinhead out safely and then educate the hell out of it.
Let’s play a game with some interesting names of foreign publishers, shall we? Here are the most notable ones I encountered during my former stint in foreign rights.
You decide which is the stripper, the band or the STD. Personally, I’m wanting to vaccinate myself against both Chungbum AND Vagionakis. Both sound unpleasant.
Chungbum (Korean)
Vagionakis (Greek)
Iztok Zapad (Bulgarian)
This last one always reminds me of Zaphod Beeblebrox, from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which is the only sci-fi I can tolerate.
2. I quit my job last week. In the middle of a recession. I have further courted bad voodoo by choosing Friday 13 as my last day. But it’s been the best two weeks of my 5 years here, because I’ve had uplifting lunches with people I genuinely like, a clear idea of my exit strategy, and a significantly brighter outlook. I may be violating an Obama trademark on this word, but I actually feel HOPEFUL.
3. March is the birthday month of everyone I know, so there are things to look forward to all over the place.
4. My sister is in England! I’m delighted that she has slipped the frigid bonds of a long February in western New York. It may not be summer there, but at least there are delightful accents to listen to. Plus, unlike her first visit there, it is no longer necessary to pretend she’s Canadian. Now, people all over the world are buttonholing* Americans and thanking them for our regime change.
