Takin' care of business

As I reluctantly sat there in the grimy bathroom of a greasy spoon liquefying my insides (resting comfortably on my nest of toilet paper lining), I prayed for the sweet release of death to come only after the immediate banishment of Papa John* and his minions to the deepest circle of hell.

Through my confused haze of rage, agony, and relief, I somehow managed to detect a poorly tuned radio station's attempt to bludgeon me with the melodious strains of Bachman-Turner Overdrive's landmark hit, Takin' Care of Business.

As my business took care of me itself, I couldn't help but realize that this song was made to be played in 30-second snippets at the absolute longest. It has a clear message to communicate, it's catchy, and it's said pretty much all it has to say in about half that time.

To sit and actually listen to the entire song in one sitting, so to speak, is torture enough, but to have it coming in and out --crystal clear one minute, fading quietly into mild static the next-- is like forcing someone to work next to an unshowered, incontinent, alcoholic hobo at the Customer Service station of Wal-Mart the entire week after Christmas.**

Just when it seems that 35 additional iterations of the refrain is all that those many commercials and movies have been sparing you these past few decades, the radio signal comes back clear as day so they can do a quick 10 more before it fades back to lie in wait ominously.

If I tried to work as many hours of overtime as these guys claim they have, I'd have been converted to a salaried position before the single was even released. But I guess, "Takin' care of business / And continuing to work until everything is done enough for my boss, regardless of the number of hours worked vs. dollars paid, and without concern for the long-term effects on employee morale or efficiency / Work out!" doesn't make for such catchy lyrics.

Anyway, you'll be happy to know I've survived my ordeal so far, although the song is still firmly stuck in my head.

Just be glad you caught that instead of the other thing.

---

* It can't be a coincidence that "Papa" John's last name is Schnatter. As in, "Oh my God, where's your Schnatter?!? I just finished lunch at Papa John's!"

** Having logged thousands of unhappy hours shopping at Wal-Mart in my lifetime***, I feel qualified to offer the following skit starring Clem, my generic hillbilly voice:

"Yeah, I got this here shotgun fer Christmas, but ever' time I try to shoot it, it won't DO nothin', no matter WHAT I's pointin' it at. I'm pretty sure Santa bought it here, wink-wink, so y'all need to take it back an' gimme one thut works when I go like this. ... Whoa, thar she is!! Nevermine, I guess. ... I s'pose you gotta go call somebody to have that looked at, huh?"

*** There are extremely few alternatives in Presque Isle, Maine, but now that we moved back out to Chicago, my personal visit count has likely stopped forever.

Classic quotes, Vol. 9

Here are some of the latest quotes from around our house (M- is my 22-month-old daughter and D- is my 4-year-old son):

M- (pointedly, almost any time we ask her if she can do something): No, I'm too busy right now.*

D- (after being reminded about how M- will be 4 some day): And then we can have a FIGHT!!

M- (whenever she sees D- or I getting dressed): Bye, penis!

Me (with predictable disbelief and disgust): M-, do not eat food off the toilet seat.

M- (to my mom, uncharacteristically not doing whatever M- wanted her to at the moment): No! You make me saaad!!

---

* As I had to swear to my sister, neither J- nor I have ever in our lives said this to either of our kids, though of course many times we've thought it.

Thanksgiving's done, now on to Christmas, right?

I'm going to be brutally honest with you all* right now.


Why has no one told me all these years that someone out there was manufacturing giant, lighted, inflatable Santas with bitchin' shades on a sweet hog??

I've been making an idiot out of myself all this time by NOT having one of these in my yard! For how long am I now doomed to rue these wasted years??

You have brought shame upon us all with your deception.

---

* Or should I say, those of you who aren't doing your patriotic duty right now elbowing old ladies in the face at fire sales down at the mall. You're all off the hook, as I'm crying a single red, white, and blue tear for your brave sacrifices.

What are turkeys thankful for?

As my American readers know, today is Thanksgiving.* On this day, we are expected to give thanks for the plenty of food and family/friends we are lucky enough to have, and we are meant to celebrate this by ridiculously overindulging in both.

Because of this extreme ritual, we can manage as easily to last an entire year at a time without eating corn-syrup-soaked cranberries jellied into the shape of a can and as we can go that same year without again speaking to or otherwise acknowledging those most distant relatives whose branch of the family tree you can't easily trace.

This holiday is our central teaching tool for that noble tradition our ancestors set in place so long ago: When blessed with plenty, burn through your stores like the freezer's broken; when tested by famine, may you begin to understand why.**

Amen. Now pass me some of those candied corporate profits-- I'm starving!

---

* Canadian readers: You may not be aware of it, but what you celebrated last month is rightly called "Canadian Thanksgiving". Please see that you correct your calendars.

** It's believed there was a followup proverb, lost to history, saying essentially that one can always guilt a bunch of Indians into sharing all their stuff whenever you need some.

Telegram from Hellegram

I just wanted to post a quick note of very sincere thanks to everyone for your nice comments and wishes for J-'s safe and speedy recovery.

She will be harnessing your words as fuel to cool the flames of rage and hatred for all of creation whenever the Earth absentmindedly rotates under her hip.

We spent Monday night and much of Tuesday in the hospital, instead of going right home Monday afternoon as they had hoped. This is because the universe loves J- so much it wanted to make sure she would sit down and take a breather for a good long time, with a paid, professional staff of enforcers on hand to play the heavies.

By now, she's setting land-speed records for crutch pilots, and she hardly feels those flaming fingers of death ripping her apart from the inside whenever she sits down, gets up, brushes against something, tries to scootch into a more comfortable position, or exhales.

On other fronts, the debilitating full-body itching that nearly claimed the lives of three nurses and one doctor has now subsided due to that trendiest of prescription painkillers, Taking Off Your Pressure Stockings Once Home Because When Pressed The Doctor Suggested You Could At Some Point Remove Them If Absolutely Necessary. Trade name: SorrybitchesIdowhatIwant-ycontin.

To sum up, I'll let J- herself have the last word, absolutely faithfully transcribed from her sudden whisper in her fitful sleep:

Fffucccckkk.

It's hip to be timely

I know I haven't had too much to say about my wife on this blog, but it's not for lack of amusing stories or anything else. I just tend to procrastinate when it comes to writing about important things, and on many occasions I've let opportunities pass by where J- would be revealed as the amazing and funny person she is.

After a month or two of procrastinating, things start to feel stale and tedious and they pile up in my Drafts folder.

Take our fifth anniversary over a month ago-- wouldn't you expect some sappy post with a scrapbook of pictures and such? Or, knowing me, some sarcastic post with one picture, two at most, and a handful of tangential footnotes? I actually have more than a few pictures and a ridiculous story to tell about that day, but there it sits, and probably will for a while longer yet.

But that's not what this post is about.

Since I haven't said all that much about her, you won't mind me completely mischaracterizing her in your minds by way of introducing the subject of this post: almost six years ago now, she violently ripped the lining of her right hip socket while kickboxing.

She has limped along ever since on her remaining hip, which wasn't so great to begin with, trying and failing for various reasons (including lovely insurance debacles and poorly timed pregnancies) to have the problem surgically corrected. As you can imagine, the pregnancies made that hip sing like a finely tuned machine.

She's sleeping as I write this, as I should be, but today at noon she will fall asleep again. While she's sleeping, she'll be sliced open and have her femur yanked out of the socket, to allow the doctors to scrape out the remaining shreds of labrum and grind into oblivion the pesky bone spur on the end of her femur that started all this mess.

Then, assuming all goes well, they'll stitch her back up and send her hobbling on her merry way, to slowly recover over the next month and a half as she avoids putting any pressure on that leg so the bone doesn't shatter before it's completely healed.

Such is the fun she's bravely facing this holiday season, starting with a Thanksgiving spent as the immobile centerpiece for my extended family's celebration at my parents' house.*

Why is this happening now, you ask? Because she wanted to be sure she'd miss as few school days as possible, while not passing up another chance to get this done once and for all by waiting till next summer. She fills me with faith that this world is not completely lost, as she slogs through everything life throws at her without wasting too much time regretting paths she might have taken.

In the last few weeks, she moved from Drone to Zombie mode in continuing to get up at 5AM while staying late into the evening planning* and preparing everyone around her for her absence at this crucial stage of the year, making plans and more, all to be sure that her extremely underprivileged, forgotten students don't stop the unprecedented (and thankfully, quantifiable in enough areas to buy her some leeway) progress they've made since she took this school by storm last year.

All this leads up to her, a person about as averse to even the idea of surgery as you're likely to find, getting carved up with only the hope of feeling better at some point next year, even without that last little bit of handy buffer between the bones of her hip joint.

We may be back here some day down the road for the other hip, but hopefully it will hear enough horror stories from this one to shape up all by itself.

As for the kickboxing, no matter how successful her recovery is, I don't think she'll be dropping into any Thai cage matches or ill-advised college P.E. classes any time soon.

---

* Thanks to my parents, she has a place to stay that isn't up three flights of stairs, and thanks to them (and my sister), I'll have a little help managing the kids during J-'s recovery.

** Fifteen special-needs teenagers in one classroom equals 15 separate daily plans.

Who hsa time too prufread?

Let me start by saying you can't imagine how difficult it was to type out that title, and how painful it is for me to let it sit there as it is.

Now that I have your sympathies, I'll continue.

When I mentioned J-'s seemingly disastrous t-shirt purchase at the Obama rally in Grant Park, there was at least one request to see the offending shirt, and I'm nothing if not accommodating. 

Here is the front image, which as I said is interesting and unique enough, and actually impressive given the price:

I should jump in here to note that to compound my coming complaints, the salesman apparently misheard J-'s request and gave her an extra large shirt, so it's wide enough for the whole family to proudly wear at once.

And now, I forewarn you to choke back your vomit before continuing, because if you're like me, you may not be able to handle seeing the reason why it was only $5 without exerting tremendous self-control:


You know what my "New Hope" is? That sometime before the end of the Reign of Man, we will finally finish evolving enough that before even an everyday-schmo-just-trying-to-make-some-extra-money-capitalizing-on-his-fellows'-exultant-willingness-to-collect-memorabilia places an order for a few thousand t-shirts, he can manage to at least ask someone with a fresh eye to look over the design just once.*

And if we could keep things going enough to not make such errors on this tiny selection of text in the first place, that would just be icing. Right now, the only icing on this s***cake is the inexplicable use of a comma after the abbreviation of the month.

You may think I'm overreacting, but I don't know any other way to be. Life's too short to underreact to things like this. Plus, I've spent years of my life being paid to mercilessly deride people for boneheaded mistakes like this, so it's a hard habit to break.

Full Disclosure: That wasn't necessarily spelled out in my job descriptions, but it was always clearly encouraged. Or tolerated. Or quietly marveled at, in fear. Either way, it definitely seems called for here, because there's no red pen in the world that can wash this tragedy away.

---

* Barring that, maybe in this hypothetical nearly perfect world, the printer would notice the error and, since it's not his job to alter the design of his clients' orders, he would just print up a single shirt that says YOU ARE AN IDIOT - TRY AGAIN (SOMEWHERE ELSE).

Next up: Aquaman, The Czech Republic

This just goes to show you that stupid people exist in all countries of the world, and frivilous lawsuits are one of America's last remaining exports:

Batman's Latest Archenemy: Batman, Turkey

---

The mayor of Batman, a small oil-producing town in Turkey, has filed suit against The Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan and Warner Bros., the studio behind the record-shattering blockbuster, looking for a cut in the film's royalties in exchange for using the city's name without permission.

---

As the article points out, where have these people been for the past 70 years? I'm pretty sure no one's confusing Batman movies with travelogues for Turkey, and furthermore, I bet that town has made at least millions in tourism dollars from college students alone diverting their backpacking trips just to go through there and snatch up whatever they can get their hands on to take back home.

So that includes more than a few street signs and a couple giant Welcome billboards... is that such a high price to pay for having one of the coolest city names in the world?

Indisputable facts, Vol. 2

Here are more indisputable facts from the long list kept by the world's ultimate authority:

1. It's nearly impossible to support a family of four on a teacher's salary, particularly when that salary was agreed to by the worst union in the history of human society.

2. Kids are incapable of wearing a hooded garment without putting on the hood, regardless of weather or any other potentially dissuading factors.

3. I need to make some changes in my life.

4. If I were to get rid of every item in my house that has gotten inappropriate bodily fluids on it at some point or other, I would have very few personal belongings left. And definitely nowhere to sit.

Attention feed readers!

Apparently something is screwy with Feedburner and today's post does not show up as being published today, so I have a feeling a lot of you missed it. Here's a link to it.