Blinding pain? That means it's working!

I finally figured it out…I now know why using Listerine mouthwash is about as fun as gargling with hot lava.

See, I never understood why, in this age of technology and science, we still have a product like Listerine. Listerine is like a mixture of battery acid and formaldehyde that you’re supposed to rinse your mouth out with. I’m not sure how a product like this ever made it to the market to begin with…imagine having to sell this stuff. “It feels like you are being burned alive from the inside out, but at least you’ll have fresh breath!” Hard to convince people to buy something that makes them feel like you’re holding an open flame to the inside of their mouth.

Given the fact that it doubles you over in pain each time you use it, it seems odd that Listerine is so popular. I’ve often wondered why they haven’t changed it so that I can use it without anesthetic.

And that’s when it occurred to me…the entire reason I use Listerine is BECAUSE it hurts me!

See, the people who make Listerine made a smart marketing decision when they chose to put leftover nuclear material in their product. They make it hurt ON PURPOSE so that you think it’s doing a good job. There are other mouthwash products out there that are probably just as effective, but they taste like melted candy and are pleasant to use…no burning, no watery eyes, no flinching in pain and grimacing. They don’t make you feel like you’re sucking on a hot coal. That’s where they make their mistake! The consumer thinks that these mouthwashes are not as “tough” or “strong” as Listerine simply based on the fact that they don’t hurt you! Listerine hurts and that gives me assurance that it’s doing its job. With Listerine I figure that if it hurts a being of my size that much, imagine what it is doing to the microscopic bacteria in my mouth!

Just thought you’d like to know! Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go take a shower with my Head and Shoulders shampoo that I know is working because it makes my scalp tingle.

She's a cutie!

Two nights ago, my three year old daughter found a sack full of video game tokens from Chuck E. Cheese and promptly announced “We’re rich!”

Let the false sentiment cease!

I just think this is hilarious. If there's one thing I hate, it's false sentiment. I don't know how or why people act like they care about things that in reality they couldn't care less about. I mean, if my cat dies, don't come over acting all crushed like you are devastated at the news when in fact you didn't even know I owned a cat (mainly because you've never seen said cat on account of his being permanently banished to the garage for mistakenly believing, on multiple occasions, that any carpeted area of our house was the equivalent of his litter box).

Stupid cat...

Monday morning thoughts

I have, on a few occasions, watched televised figure skating. I DO NOT recommend it. .

We’ve known since grade school about the concept of “not cutting in line.” Yet it never fails…when you have been sitting in line behind hundreds of cards waiting to merge onto another interstate or to exit, some loser will speed past you in the middle lane and right at the front of the line will turn his blinker on and enter the line far ahead of you. You waited your turn like everyone else, but this meathead thinks his time is more important than yours so he skips to the front and breaks the cardinal rule that we have all lived by since childhood. Now, it’s not so much him that I’m mad at – it’s you weak-willed types that LET THEM IN LINE AHEAD OF YOU! Have some courage sissy!

Have you ever noticed how people think that if they wrap a piece of bacon around a particular food that all of a sudden it’s high class? I mean, if you order the shrimp for your main meal, and it does not have bacon wrapped around it, you’ll get like 8-10 shrimp…but if you order it with bacon wrapped around it you get 3 and it comes impaled on a fancy toothpick. It’s just dead pig folks. Why does garnishing your food with the meat of a fat, lazy animal make it top shelf all of a sudden? Maybe if it were like eagle meat* or something that was hard to obtain I could see it, but it’s basically leftovers from breakfast.

*Eagles are one of our most precious species and I would not ever, ever, ever advocate killing an eagle under any circumstances. Not even if I were dying in the wild thousands of miles from civilization and had one land on a crude altar I had constructed from fuselage parts and a fire I started with my last match. I fully respect the rights of this animal as though he were a human being, and bestow upon him all of the constitutional life and liberty you and I are supposed to be able to enjoy but can’t due to special interests, corrupt politicians and whiny Americans.

Wanna know what I don't like?

I often see people discuss their musical tastes in their blogs, so I’ve decided to go with the flow. However, in my attempt to go against trends, I will be discussing music I DISLIKE. Just to give you fair warning concerning future posts on this subject - most of this will involve country and/or southern gospel music.

Today’s example of musical homicide is (drum roll)…Loretta Lynn! While I hold no personal grudge or dislike for Mrs. Lynn, her work is a shining example of everything I hate about country music and her exploits will help us define some of country music’s most annoying features. (for proof, check out the lyrics to her songs mentioned below)

Country music usually falls into 3 different categories – corny joke songs, songs of destruction and betrayal, and songs that are blatant attempts to jerk "a lone tear from your eye" by being stupidly and disgustingly overdramatic.

For example, in the corny joke songs category, Mrs. Lynn gives us the following gems: “You’re the Reason Our Kids are Ugly”, “This squaw is on the warpath” and “I burnt the little roadside tavern down” Country musicians like to write songs that they think people will find funny, but I can only imagine the most brain-dead members of our society getting a good chuckle out of these mentally-challenged romps. If you have any alpha waves at all, your mind will puke this back up faster than spoiled milk. Perhaps the live audience at a taping of “Hee-Haw” would find themselves struggling to breathe between the guffaws, but to the rest of us it's like having our pinky toe smashed by a flaming hammer.

Next, there are songs of destruction and betrayal. These songs cover topics such as infidelity (that's "cheat'n" for our country music readers), drunkenness, lost love, dead pets, etc. Loretta gives us, in this sub-genre, titles such as “Another man loved me last night”, Playing house away from home”, “Don’t Come Home A Drinkin If you Got Lovin on your Mind”, “Taking the Place of My Man” (a touching number about how wine has replaced the love of her life) – really in this category there are too many titles to mention. 75% of the songs in her repertoire fall into this category. If you like listening to music about people being mistreated and/or undergoing unrealistic amounts of hardship, then this is the category for you. If life was as bad as these songs make it out to be, I'd be slugging down the whiskey myself.

Finally, there are the overly-dramatic songs that force suspension of disbelief in copious amounts. Good ole' Lo-Lynn has plenty of this in her music. You’ve all heard these before...they take some object, like a person’s feet or a tree in the yard or an old picture frame, and correlate it to some lost love or moment in their life. The storyline is usually something like this: “Every time I rub mamma’s feet, I see the feet of my long lost lover. He was on his way to making it big in the decorative plate business and had one last meeting to go to across country before he came home with a wad of money and we’d get married and live in bliss forever. As the train was leaving the station, he stuck his head out the window to blow me a kiss and throw me a rose, but he got stuck and couldn’t pull his torso back inside the railcar before they reached the tunnel. He died and I picked up the petals from that broken rose and kept ‘em till this day, but they are starting to fade.” Only in country music could a person find out from the police officer who's arresting her for fighting with "the other woman" that both her childhood sweetheart and favorite dog died moments ago while trying to buy a keepsake gift for her. The art of gross overexaggeration is not lost on these folks.

How stuff like this ever got such a large audience I’ll never know. They say millions of people can’t be wrong, but after looking at this stuff I’m not so sure. As for me, I will avoid this stuff like a roll of poison-ivy toilet paper and suggest you do the same.

Nuggets of parental joy

Had to share this little nugget of parental joy...

My wife just called to inform me that my 3 1/2 year old daughter got her head stuck in the merry-go-round at Wal-Mart. It's one of those kind where the three horses are really close together. Apparently, she tried to climb between the legs of two of the horses to get on, and got her head and two arms in there and then couldn't go any further. She also couldn't get out! Needless to say, crying and freaking out ensued...but Regina managed to extract her without too much incident.

We're thinking of enrolling her in the gifted school next year...

Hey! It's magic snot!

Breathing – one of the many things we take for granted in this life!

I’ve got one of those massive sinus infections that get passed around every now and then…you know, the kind where it feels like someone has jammed a tennis ball inside each of your nostrils?

Here’s what I love about these things…the membranes in your nose are so swollen up that even air cannot pass through them, but somehow you still manage to have a runny nose. It’s so crowded in there that AIR can’t get through – and yet I find a constant stream of snot pouring out. Where the heck is that stuff coming from?

I need air!

nikj0y-mku7o;nk (slammed my head on the keyboard to see if it would loosen things up - didn't)

Supersize my frustration please

Ok, so you're at the drive-thru at and the person in front of you has one of those orders that makes you groan because it's far too complex for the uninterested teenager working the window. There are like 50 people in line, and just taking the order from this person eats up 3 or 4 minutes.

What I love is when they get their order and decide to check it to make sure everything is in there before pulling away from the window. They make everyone else wait in line while they sort through each bag making sure they won't have to go through the tremendous trouble of removing a pickle from their Big Mac. They could pull into a parking place or even inch forward a bit so the rest of us could get on with our lives, but no - they sit there oblivious to the world around them while they rummage through food sacks and take a slug off of their diet coke.

You freaking special order fast food people kill me. You roll up with some offensively complex order and demand that every morsel is properly served. Doesn't it occur to you that McDonalds is not the best place to go if you want things special ordered? YOU DO KNOW that they make all the stuff before you arrive and keep it under heat lamps, right? Those commercials showing them cooking and preparing your burger fresh when you order it - that's a LIE. It's a sandwich assembly line and everything is made the same. So when you try to get a "slightly breaded chicken sandwich with extra tomatoes, light on the lettuce, no onions, no sauce, fresh bun with no seeds on it please" you mess everything up for the rest of us who don't have our expectations set quite as high for a sandwich we paid $3 for that is served to us through a window in our car. Besides, recent studies show that stupid orders like yours have about a .005% chance of being handled correctly.

Know this too...when you are placing an order like this (and we all know that you are because when you take longer than 2 minutes to order we all roll our windows down to hear what in the world you could be saying for that long) you are making enemies at the drive-thru. WE DO NOT LIKE YOU. When you get to the window it takes you much longer than anyone else to get your food, which makes us even angrier. So when you finally get your food, and yet your car doesn't move...and we see you checking the entire order and sometimes even having the gaul to hand it out to the passengers...well, don't be surprised if you are given no less than three (3) dirty looks and the occasional car cursing from your fellow food seekers.

Listen to me very closely now...get your worthless hindquarters out of the drive-thru and park someplace else to check your overly complicated order. Or, better yet, learn to eat your freaking hamburger with ketchup on it and QUIT SPECIAL ORDERING EVERYTHING!

Otherwise, I'm not responsible for what happens to you or your precious little "filet-o-fish, no onions, no sauce, extra ketchup with a coke with the cup only halfway filled up with ice..."

I hate potpourii...there, I said it.

I hate potpourii. There, I said it.

You know, potpourii...those little bowls of dead leaves and tree bark that people burn to make their house smell great? See what you do is you take a very nice container of some kind - a very elegant crystal bowl or ornate glass dish that you paid a lot of money for - and you go to the store and buy a sack full of leftovers from someone raking the leaves up out of their yard (you know, that little pile of debris that's too small for you to get up) and you put it inside the decorative bowl and burn it.

For a minute, let's pretend that burning dried up leaves and sticks inside your house is a good idea from a safety standpoint. Do you realize that you are paying money for old flower petals and sticks? How far gone are we from a fashion standpoint when we find ourselves burning leaves in our own homes to make a decorative statement? Why would anyone pay more than 1 cent for a 5 lbs. bag of this stuff? Somehow it's ok because they smell like a freshly made bowl of cinnamon oatmeal sitting in a rain-soaked field of lillies.

Arent we sending mixed messages to the kids? "No, little Johnny...don't throw a match onto that pile of leaves...wait until we get them in our best crystal bowl before you burn them!"

And hey...whoever came up with the word "potpourii" needs to be kicked in the head at every available opportunity. This is one of those stupid words that is spelled differently than it sounds and has all sorts of extra letters thrown in. It's pronounced "po-pour-i" but spelled potpourii - which should be pronounced "pot-pour-i" But it's not pronounced "pot", but rather "po". Why? I have never understood the idea of having silent letters in words...if you don't pronounce the letter, WHY HAVE IT IN THERE? What else do letters do besides help us understand how to say the word? What is that letter "t" doing in there? He's just collecting letter welfare...the rest of the letters are working hard to collectively mean something, and then there's that "t" just sitting there. Maybe he's best buddies with the extra "i" at the end of the word and they're on a sight-seeing trip! Why is the letter "i" shown twice at the end of this word? Are we supposed to say "po(skip the t)-pour-i-i?" NO! It's as though someone said "Ok. We've come up with a word that is spelled differently than it sounds. What else can we do to make it more inaccessible to the general public? Hey I know...let's add another letter "i" to the end of the word! People won't know what to do with it, and mass confusion will ensue!" In the immortal words of Paul Sr. (of American Choppers fame), "Come over here and turn around so I can slap you in the back of the head."

In light of all this, I hereby nominate the guy who invented potpourii for some sort of award. After all, he convinced us to burn his leftover yard trash inside our own homes - and to pay him for it!