JusWondering… Do I Have A Heart? Surprisingly, Yes

I was at my mom’s house today for some free grub, and she was was watching a rerun of Oprah.  It was a compilation of old segments that wowed and moved her (Oprah, not my ma, as far as I know), and I was regarding it without being wowed and/or moved.  Sure, Criss Angel and David Blaine can be interesting, and Terry Fator and Paul Potts’ stories are inspiring, but otherwise, meh

Then Faith appeared (this is not the actual show footage, but you’ll get the gist of it):

Instant tears.  Let me say this: there is no amount of free food that makes my sudden outpouring of emotion worth it.  Almost no amount of food (a pepperoni pizza with Cajun crust and double cheese is a good start).

(SIDENOTE: In regard to Opie & Anthony, the third segment of the above video – I didn’t know assholes could walk on two legs.)

On the lighter side of doggy’s overcoming obstacles:

Drunken Recollection… Shopping At Target As A Morality Play

Seven seasons of septegenerian heaven

Seven seasons of septuagenarian heaven

If there’s anything I’ve learned in this life, it’s two things:

1) Don’t shop while hungry tipsy.

The second one I’ll share at the end.

Basically, I met up with some friends for a couple of drinks after work and opted to stop at Target because I needed a few things.  Those few things needed:

  • Laundry detergent
  • Vitamins and fish oil pills
  • Air conditioner air filters
  • Um… Charmin
  • And some food

On the way into the store, I noticed someone had left their headlights on.  I memorized the license plate and approached the cart guy outside the store.  He told me to head to the customer guest service desk, where this happened:

Me: Excuse me, but someone left their headlights on in the parking lot.
Worker: They’ll probably just turn off themselves.
Me: I don’t think so.  It’s an old green Escort parked in a handicapped spot.
Worker: I’ll get to it when the line is clear.
(I wandered off to look at the sales ad in case the worker wanted more information.)
Random lady (leaving): You were very nice for doing that.
Me: Well thank you.

Me Just Grim...

Me Just Grim...

Feeling victorious and uplifted, I made my way to the toy section first.  No real reason why, other than force of (forcive?) habit… of collecting.  Being in between a series of collectibles to search for, I’ve often eyed the animated Transformers toy line, and upon finally hearing the worker announce the Escort parked in a handicapped spot with its headlights on, I picked up a mini-Grimlock.  No essentials yet.  Just a small child’s toy.

I rounded the corner into the Lego aisle and what did I see?  Brand new Indiana Jones playsets.  Say what you will (and I have) about the last movie, the playsets from Raiders, Temple of Doom, and Last Crusade are pretty sweet, and in my hands in an instant (Ambush in Cairo almost made the cut).

Deflated and defeated, I put back everything but Grimlock and walked over to the electronics section.  Guess what I discovered there?

Every season of Golden Girls for $9 each!

I had a similar impulse a few weeks ago when the first four seasons of Saturday Night Live was on sale for $20 each, but this one I’d follow through.  Several weekends in September are about to be booked up.  Mjusayn.

I eventually gathered up my remaining essentials, plus a ton of food.  (Yay! Hard salami‘s back at Target!  For now…)  I put the bottle of Gain laundry detergent and a bottle of Liquid Plumr (‘cuz you never know) on the bottom of the cart, and a thought crossed my mind:

I wonder if someone will check the bottom of the cart…

At the checkout counter, the clerk brought something to everyone’s attention:

Somebody really must like Golden Girls.

I emptied the basket and pushed it forward to refill it with bagged items.  I noticed I had slipped the Gain and Liquid Plumr past the clerk.  I looked back into the eyes of the people that laughed at my must really liking Golden Girls, and a voice echoed in my head:

You were very nice for doing that.

I removed the two jugs from off the lower tray.  “I almost forgot something.”

After paying, I headed to my vehicle, past where an Escort with a dead battery could have been.  As I filled my trunk with purchases, the cart attendant approached to help.  I said thanks, and he nodded as he took the cart to add it to the returning basket train.

Finis.

Oh yeah, and the other thing I learned:

2) Don’t assume your friends ordered whatever beer was
on special, because it just might be regularly priced.

In My Brain While Sleeping… You’re Looking At The Creator Of “Ilusión Óptica Mexicana Brillante”

I’ve been on a bit of a drought in regard to dreams lately.  I’ve had a few false starts, such as:

  • A dream about a movie starring The Two Coreys (Haim and Feldman, back in the day in their prime) and they were trying to get their parents to marry each other à la the Parent Trap.
  • A dream where I went on a Muppet hunting safari but didn’t know it.
  • A dream where I realized how funny it is to put “The” in front of various subjects, like The Fonz, The Hamburger, The State, and The Sex.

But last night, I had a vision about a vision like no other… I had inadvertently developed a new art form dubbed:

Ilusión Óptica Mexicana Brillante

Okay, I’ll admit that I don’t know Spanish, and I don’t exactly remember the hack job that went on in my subconscious (although it was kinda close to the above Babel Fish translation), but for you gringos it means:

Shiny Mexican Optical Illusion

Turned out I wasn’t the one that originated the name.  There once was a Mexican artist/philosopher that initially proposed the possibility of what I accomplished.  His theory:

Two images can be created on top of each other.  One will be visible in reflective light, and one will be visible in non-reflective light. – a Mexican artist/philosopher

So in some alcoholic stupor reeking of brilliance, I drew a picture that looked like this in “reflective light” (whatever that means):

yellowcar

And in “non-reflective light” (again, whatever that means), the artwork looked like this:

3dmap

I drew it as a doodle.  A throw away scribble on crinkled scrap paper.  But someone – the right someone – saw it, and heralded me as a mathematical genius for pulling off the Ilusión Óptica Mexicana Brillante manually. 

In fact, it was a forgotten art theory, and I was thrust into the limelight, not unlike Andy Warhol.  My fifteen minutes were beginning after my scribble was purchased  for $500,000 by an unknown collector.  Duplicates of my work were sold in bulk at mall stores built just for my Shiny Mexican Optical Illusion.  The hype was similar to the interest over those pictures you stared at to see sunken treasure ships and sharks.

But I couldn’t live up to the expectations and failed to duplicate my success.  14:58, 14:59, 15:00 minutes hit, and I woke up.

Here’s the thing… I feel I could duplicate the Ilusión Óptica Mexicana Brillante  in real life.  I only need to figure out to create “non-reflective light.”

INGREDIENTS: Two cold pieces of pizza and a couple pitchers of Blue Moon.

In My Brain While Sleeping… A Trio Of Deliriums

I don’t even know if there’s an interest in the strange things I dream about, but it’s my blog and I can cry write about it if I want to.  I look at it mostly as the catalog I always meant to keep, but um, now do.

Over all the years, and even the months of this site, I know many odd and wondrous things have slipped through the cracks.  I collect here those that made it past the brain fade into oblivion, or the ones I care to share, which honestly are almost all… For example, I exclude those that are merely half ideas or lack narratives, like the dream where I had a motorcycle again (whoo hoo) or owned a gun that was combined with a bullhorn (a loudener, if you will).

For the sake of avoiding specifics on these dreams, I simply made montages.  In one case, it’s a Montag.

DELIRIUM 1

elephantdream

INGREDIENTS: Penn & Teller, two elephants (one pictured), a giant spatula, and buckets of fake blood.  It was one of their acts.  It was initially horrifying, then not so much so.

DELIRIUM 2

ocarinadream2

 

INGREDIENTS: Well, more of an explanation is needed here… there was this baby that had oily (pre-acne) skin, and depending upon how you touched the infant’s back, the child would make musical note sounds like an ocarina.  So as you held the baby in your arms, instead of crying, you heard elevator music, or the stylings of Kenny G.

DELIRIUM 3

speididream

INGREDIENTS: Spencer and Heidi Pratt and the cast of Kappa Mikey.  Man, those two don’t know the meaning of the word overexposure… and yes, they were in this cartoon.

OVERALL INGREDIENTS FOR DELIRIUMS (OR DELERIA, IF YOU PREFER): Velveeta cheese after beer and Pizza Rolls before beer.

Drunken Recollection… The Difference Between Wants And Needs

I learned a couple new things about myself the other night, courtesy of pouring fermented hops down my throat, of course.  Discoveries are rare as they are, so here are my findings.

There Are Things That I Want

Such as t-shirts that broadcast products that I like…

mtndewtshirt

Hey ladies, guess what I drink?

seinfeldtshirt

Hey ladies, guess what I've watched?

And There Are Things That I Need

Such as definitely bullhorns on my Honda Civic…

civicbull

InASense, Lost… Commercials For Quote-Unquote Religions

I remember being a lad of about 29 years old, and I finally gathered the nerve to ask my mom, “Where do babies come from?”

I often think back to my childhood, and remember Saturday mornings as a kid.  Rolling out of bed from underneath my taped together Garbage Pail Kid posters.  Grabbing a box of Cocoa Krispies and the biggest bowl I could handle.  Turning on the TV without a remote control because we had none.  Zoning out to crappy yet awesome cartoons and the commercials that sold me on Transformers and Star Wars and Centurions and M.A.S.K. with little to no effort.  Then there would come along one of these ads:

Granted, it’s not one of the most heartwarming, but very often, they’d catch me by surprise and effect me on a personal level.  Gee, maybe I should help my neighbor shovel the snow instead of throwing snowballs at them from my fort, I might consider.  What I didn’t realize at the time was that it was a COMMERCIAL FOR A RELIGION!  If I wasn’t born and raised Roaming Recovering Roman Catholic, seeing Jesus H. Christ’s name up there might have been a red alert, but I was, so it didn’t.  (Also, I wasn’t raised in a way that told me we were the only ones that were right, so at least I had that going for me.)

So now this little vid is making it’s way around the web.  I recieved it via a link in an email from frequent idea spurner Dave, and I watched it in similar wonder to the old LSD, er, I mean LDS commercials.  It was beautiful, and in fact made me happy to be alive.  Damn YouTube and their header captions:

I guess what I’m saying is it’s much more effective than this old thang:

In other words, how can so many inches of Tom Cruise can be wrong?  (My guess: 60 of his 67…)

In My Brain While Sleeping… Kermit The Frog Escapes From Rosie O’Donnell!

For some reason, the world was all aflutter in this dream.  National news, tabloid shows, late night talk fests… everyone was going crazy about how Rosie O’Donnell ate the Muppets.

(Now let me state this here: I have no problem with Rosie-O whatsoever.  I like women in the media like her and Roseanne that speak their minds, even if people don’t really want to hear it.  Don’t know why this is so, but I just thought I had to give this disclaimer.)

Anywhatnot, the media jumped all over the story.  Word was that she had already devoured Miss Piggy and Gonzo, and that she was well on her way to swallowing Kermit.

Dramatization of my psychosis

Dramatization of my psychosis

 But then, against all odds, Kermit showed up at a Hollywood premier.  Interviewers pressed him for a what, and a why, and a how, and all he said was that he climbed out of Rosie’s gullet.  Overnight, this poster was found in offices everywhere:

On Sale Now! (...nowhere...)

On Sale Now! (...nowhere...)

 INGREDIENTS: Booze and a patty melt (minus onions) plus garlic mashed potatoes.

Worth 1002 Words… Effing Gross Edition

Dinty Less

Dinty Less

Some alternates:

  • Canned Laughter
  • Chef Boy-are-deez-teeth?
  • The Stuff

(Thanks Dave… no not really)

In My Brain While Sleeping… Loud Noises, Where-Wolves, And A Bounty Hunter Makes A Correction Regarding His Name

Since this blog is an open book to all my weaknesses, it’s sorta turned into my (NERD ALERT!) Xavier Protocols.  Of my weaknesses (vanilla-scented anything falls high on that list), loud noises while I sleep smacks near the top.  On the night of these particular dreams, I fell asleep with the television on only to be awakened by a loud lawyer commercial.

Okay, it wasn’t that one, but imagine if the explosions were audible, then you’d get the picture.

hulkblonsky

Anyambulancechaser, in the first dream, I encountered a new breed of night creatures… the WHERE-WOLVES.  How were they different than werewolves?  Let me explain with a (NERD ALERT!) toy from the remake reboot whatever second Hulk movie:

You see, in the flick, which I have not seen, the dude on the right mutates into the monster on the left.  This toy, called the Hulk Deluxe Mutating Abomination, does not mutate at all.  Instead of either really mutating by adding water, or by simply imagining that it happens, the little guy fits into a compartment on the back of the big guy.  Dumb?  You bet.

Well that’s pretty much how where-wolves worked.  Wolves merged with their host humans so both could exist.  To recombine, humans hovered over the wolves.  Now that you’ve pictured it, moving on…

My other dream involved a (NERD ALERT!) Star Wars character.  Growing up, I knew this bounty hunter…

4lom

…as Zuckuss and this guy…

zuckuss

…as 4-LOM.  But as it turned out, the original Kenner toy line had it wrong in the 80’s, and with the re-releases of the toys in the 90’s, they rectified the problem and named each of them correctly.  To me though, Zuckuss will always be 4-LOM and 4-LOM will be Zuckuss.  Until I was corrected in a dream.  This guy…

4lom

…showed up to tell me his name really was Allen.

INGREDIENTS: Turkey and provolone on a bagel and a Mountain Dew.  And beer.

In My Brain While Sleeping… So Long, Tiny Zebra And Tiny Cougar, I Will Miss You

I don’t know of any better way to convey this oddity of a dream that stuck with me.  So here it is chronologically.  Now with 100% more pictures!

cruisecopter

I started off on a cruise ship that went to an island (of course), and I took a helicopter out to sea.

 

 

Dramatization (not an actual plier-mouthed porpoise)

Dramatization (not an actual plier-mouthed porpoise)

And because I was afraid of heights (from being in the helicopter), I jumped into ocean, hitched on ride on tandem jet ski, and saw huge porpoises with wrench-like teeth and giant dolphins leaping  over row boats and other jet skis.

 

 

 

 

simplemathOnce I reached dry land found, I found a tiny zebra and a tiny cougar (both were pocket-sized).

 

deepimpactI carried them around we me (in my pockets, natch) until I witnessed a tsunami coming ashore from opposite directions.

 

bedpanThen it suddenly turned into “real life” and I was at one of my company’s clients that sells medical equipment.  I gave my tiny zebra and my tiny cougar to their employees, so they could be cared for.

 

 

hamburgerdressI ended up finding out that the medical supplier had started manufacturing meat products out of zebras and cougars in general, so I narc’d reported them to the authorities.  

 

 

 

roadkillI thought they were marketing the meat as ‘hamburger,’ but in fact, they were selling it as ‘wild game’ to a restaurant near my office.

 

 

INGREDIENTS: Jellybean Nerds and Mountain Dew