Leezer

When I was little I used to love scavenger hunts. Usually we did them at birthday parties or slumber parties, and the participants were given a list of ten or twelve things to collect and bring back to the party.  The first person or team to arrive with a collection of all the items was the winner. 

While I loved the game itself, I usually thought the items we were supposed to collect were a little too easy, which made the game go too fast.   What eleven year old can’t quickly find a coat hanger, a pine cone, or an empty milk carton?

I’m going to give my daughter the best scavenger hunt ever for her eleventh birthday.  The mother of all  scavenger hunts.  The kids will have to bring back the following, in forty-five minutes or less:

• Spit-valve from Herb Alpert’s cornet; 
• Scaffolding;
• A lactating woman;
• A Dider Comes autograph (I’ll provide the hint that Dider Comes is a Belgian comic book illustrator);
• A cat-o-nine-tails;
• Ennui;
• An uncircumcised octogenarian;
• One smoothbore cannon from the USS Nyack;
• Apathy;
• A human head;
• A pinecone.  

 This seems a little hard.  Maybe I’ll wait until her twelfth birthday.

I think so much that I think about thinking.  My mind races like a stampede of horses, each horse traveling in a different direction.  Each horse has a job to do, only to return to the same destination with the same conclusion.  My mind is not a Lippizan Stallion clip clopping from point A to point B.    It is not neat and orderly, but spontaneous and entertaining to me, its owner.  I wonder, however, if I can do better.

Most of the information on my C: drive is useful to my everyday life.   However, there’s a lot of crap there too.  I’d like to find an amnesty program where I can leave the crap on my C: drive that doesn’t do me any good – a depository for useless information that prevents my mind from running more efficiently, free of additives and junk that doesn’t burn clean.

For example, there’s a woman in my office who doesn’t swing her arms when she walks.  She has Magilla Gorilla arms that sort of hang at her sides, knuckles down, as she shuffles through the office.  I think she’s an accountant.   Every day at work, I spend no less than thirty seconds an hour wondering why she doesn’t swing her arms when she walks and fifteen seconds an hour berating myself for being at all interested in why she doesn’t swing her arms. If I had this forty-five seconds an hour back, unfettered by matters having no impact whatsoever on my life, I might be a better attorney, wife, mother, daughter, friend, or luhvah.

Also preventing me from having clean-burning brain fuel is useless information, opinions, and trivia:  Charo was once married to Xavier Cugat but they’re divorced; the Germans are reputed to be highly organized and technical peoples; Lacey Chaubert, formerly a cast member of “Party of Five,” has rather large breasts; goats are not indigenous to the Hawaiian Islands; there are generally always too many volunteers at the Washington State Special Olympics; the chemical formula for Pepto Bismol is C₇H₅BiO_4;  when my Dad was little, an adult cousin stayed at his house overnight and when my grandmother stripped the bed the next day, she found a hot dog in the sheets; Old Spice deodorant smells like a cookie after wearing it for a few hours; etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. 

There are many other nuggets of crap floating around in my brain, I will not enumerate them all here.  Suffice it to say that without the aforementioned waste, I may have enough RAM to enable me to be a diplomat, an oncologist, or a designer of highly advanced prosthetic devices.   

I remain steadfast in my hope that I will someday discover the answer to clean-burning brain fuel, and answer that does not involve meditation, yoga, or other relaxing enterprises.   

Leezer:  . . . . and besides having more money than God, she lets herself be photographed getting out of limosines wearing no underwear. ..

Dark Ages Guy:  In all Christendom, methinks the account you have thusly place before me to be the work of Satan!  And others pay homage to such a Jezebel?

This is a picture of me on my first birthday.  My Mom and Sister gave me a “cake” made out of my favorite canned food.  They put cupcake sprinkles on top, lit a candle and sang “Happy Birthday” to me.  My Dad rolled his eyes while my Mom made him take pictures to memorialize the stirring event.  I love my family, and I love my dog food.

Another thing I love is pooping inside.  Following is a list of my all-time favorite places to poop, in no particular order:

1.  Right next to my grandpa’s bed so he’ll step in it when he gets out of bed;

2.  In front of the fireplace;

3.  In my sister’s playroom right by “Babycare Center”;

4.  In Leezerslawpartner’s fancy carpted law office right next to the big mahogany desk;

5.  Under the desk in the office; and

6.  By the mailbox on the corner of Andover and Chilberg.

 I also like peeing in various locales, but the pooping is much more thrilling. 

Peace out,

Ernie

Dear Tom:

I am usually not one to hold a grudge, but it has been two hundred and three years since my death and I’ve got to get a few things off my chest - a few things I should have said to you while I was alive.     I’m a wee bit tired of you getting all of the school children’s attention during President’s week and of seeing countless tourists flock to that sh** heap you call Monticello.   It’s time for us to face facts and admit that I am the best founding father.

First, let’s talk first about military service.  While you puttered around in your greenhouse trying to cross-pollinate an orchid and an azalea, I fought alongside General Washington during the Revolutionary War.  While you removed the State capitol of Virginia to Richmond so as to enable more convenient travel by you and your massive entourage, I led an infantry battalion against the British fortifications at Yorktown, thereby ending the Revolutionary War.  And you dare to call me an elitist.

Which brings me to my second gripe, speaking of elitists.  You accused me and my fellow Federalists  of encouraging a pseudo-monarchy comprised of lawyers and landowners.   Curiously, I- not you - helped draft  a document designed to prevent a monarchy and the eclipse by one branch of government of any other; it’s called the United States Constitution. Rather than helping with this document, you bailed after that Declaration thingy in 1776 and fled to Paris to drink champagne, rewrite the Bible to remove any objectionable stuff such as the book of Revelations, and hide out along the Champs Elysees. 

Third:   By 1790, our young country was flat broke.    I wanted the federal government to assume all the states’ debts incurred during the War and repay our neighboring countries.  You wanted each state to repay the amount borrowed.   You thought that federal assumption of the debt would create too strong a federal system at the expense of states rights.    We did it my way.  I founded the First National Bank, the First National Mint, and repayed all our creditors.    Doing so furthered my goal of creating a wealthy nation of industry and commerce.   I also created the stock market, creating a method by which corporations and enterprises can be financed through the public sale of individual stocks.  Boy, that sure turned out to be a lousy idea, huh?    

You, on the other hand,  proposed an agrarian society of yoeman farmers.  You opposed a national bank, a national mint, and the the sale to the public of shares of stock.  If your view had prevailed, this country would have collapsed under its own weight long before construction of the transcontinental railroad.  

Then there is that pesky matter of individual freedoms.  You criticized the Constitution because it initially contained no bill of rights.   Your Declaration of Independence argued for freedom and the “pursuit of happiness,”  yet you held slaves and believed that only property owners should vote.  I, on the other hand, founded the recorded first abolitionist movement in our country’s history.  How ironic.  A reminder for the pansy-assed liberals of today to walk the talk.

 Which brings me to my final and most important grievance - Maria Reynolds.  Maria Reynolds - for those of you who aren’t aware - came to my home one dark evening claiming to be a widow and penniless.  She asked for some money.  I gave her money and she seduced me.   The brazen hussy and her husband - yes, husband - extorted money from me in exchange for agreeing to keep quiet about the matter.  Yet you and your cronies accused me of taking the extortion money from the national treasury.  You can hurl insults at me all you like, but be careful when you tarnish my loyalty to my country and its purse.   You hired a journalist to scandalize this unfortunate aspect of my life in the press.  You were not the best founding father, but you were the best founding father of tabloid journalism.   And were you above reproach?  What about Sally Hemings? Care to discuss that little matter?  At least I committed adultery with a willing extortionist.  You, with a slave. 

 In case you’ve forgotton, I’ve placed a picture here of the rock upon which I laid my head when I died.   Your Vice President shot me here.   But I’m on the ten dollar bill and you’re on the two dollar bill.     Fitting.

Luv-N-Stuff,

Alex

When I was seven or eight,  my next door neighbor, who was a year older and had four brothers, decided to ride her bike down her very steep, gravelled driveway.   Not to be outdone by someone who I considered dull and unimaginative, I made sure followed her but twice as fast with my legs off the pedals.  The bike I rode had no rubber tips on the handlebars, and when I crashed at the bottom of the nearly 30 degree grade, one of the handlebars stabbed me in the abdomen.  It literally knocked the wind out of me and when I didn’t get up for a minute, my Mom promptly took me for medical care.   I was told the handlebars stabbed me only a fraction of an inch away from my spleen.  Or maybe that’s what he told all of his patients. In any event, my Mom was happy I wasn’t in intensive care waiting for a liver or a kidney.

My Dad has always loved music, and he’s always had a nice stereo system.   At the time of my bicycle crash, we had a pretty sophisticated system complete with a set of headphones not unlike those worn by the landing crew on an aircraft carrier.  As I had every night, a few hours after seeing the doctor I put those headphones on and turned the volume way up, throwing my head around like Ted Nugent.  My parents yelled at me to stop, worried that I would jar something loose that was - forunately enough - intact despite my mishap.

Thirty years later, the headphones are smaller, but I am still as addicted to them.   While a good share of my free time is devoted to the fantasy that Clive Owen is sent from the future to save me from aliens and that the world has been destroyed and we are the only two people left to repopulate the planet, I do spend a great share of my day listening to good music.  Following are some suggestions concerning accompanyments for various life-events.  From me to you:

 1.  Sexiest music of all time - to listen to while kissing your sweetie: 

• Samba Pa Ti - Santana
• Closer to You - The Wallflowers
• Romeo and Juliet - Dire Straights

2.  Best music to play to while in front of the bathroom mirror singing into your hairbrush:

• Damn - Leanne Rhimes
• My Immortal - Evanescence
• Ain’t No Other Man - Christina Aquilera

3.  Songs I’m ashamed to admit I like (I won’t tell my priest, rabbi, or clergyman):

• SexyBack - Justin Timberlake
• Shake That - Eminem
• Closer - Nine Inch Nails

4.  Songs to cry to:

• Look What You’ve Done - Jet
• Lullaby - Shawn Mullins

5.  Music that will make you feel good, no matter what:

• Starlight - Muse
• Island in the Sun - Weezer
• It’s All Been Done - Barenaked Ladies.

 There’s more. There’s always more. What’s on your list? Why?

So last Tuesday I was shopping at Whole Foods and this guy totally cut in front of me in line.  So I’m like, “Um, excuse me. The end of the line is back there.”  And the guy goes, “Where?” And I’m like, “behind me.”  And - get this - the guy goes, “Like do you think you’re the center of the universe or something?”  And I’m like, “Dude.  Everyone knows the sun is the center of the universe.”  And I got in my Prius and drove home to feed my cat, Darlene.

 So that night there’s a knock at the door and I open it and this guy goes, “You’re wanted by the Holy Catholic Church in Rome.  You’ll want to pack for a long stay.”  I’m all like, “What the eff?”  I ask for a warrant or a summons, and they show me this piece of paper and, hell, I don’t know what it was so I decide not to be a dick about it and go with them anyway.  And they stand there watching me put on my hemp sandals and my “Indigo Girls, World Tour 1994″ T-shirt and we’re off.   After about an hour or two we’re through airport security, but not until I pour out all my hair gel and gulp down my Chai Tea latte cause they won’t let me take it on the plane.  Then like a gazillion years later, or so it seems, we’re in Rome and this pimped-out limo takes us to the Ritz Carlton.

But then the fun came to an end the next morning when the pimped-out ride took me to the palace of Pope Urban VIII - now that is one amazing crib - and some white dudes took me to a dungeon and Urby was there in his black and white pajamas waiting for me.   Basically he told me to make a public statement to the peoples of the world to the effect that the earth - not the sun - is the center of the universe.  And I’m not down with that cause I’ve done the math and there’s just no way the earth is in the middle.  So I told him as much.  Here’s a picture of the Pope screaming at me, and what you can’t see in the picture is how gnarly his breath is or all the hair growing out of his ears:

So he’s like, “I’ll give you one last chance to recant!  When I count to three, you must say, ‘I recant’ or you’ll be so sorry!”  And then he’s like, “one, two, thr-” and I totally interrupt him while he’s on three and I go “Can’t make me! Neener neener, neener!”  That was a huge mistake because I’m totally writing this from my laptop while I’m under house arrest and I don’t have wi-fi so I’ve got power cords everywhere and I don’t have my mouse with me so my hands are all cramping up. What’s even a bigger bitch is that the Man says that when I die, I’ll be in purgatory.  Whatever that is.

 All I can say is that tomorrow I hope I’m back in Florence with the babes.  There’s just no action here.