Leezer

I stole this questionnaire  from Scarlet.  Please cut and paste the questions with  your own answers (as opposed to Tom Selleck’s) into the comment section.

1. DESCRIBE ONE OF YOUR SCARS, HOW DID YOU GET IT?  On the inside of my left thigh; I crawled through a barbed wire fence.  I could hear my skin tear as I crawled through.

2. WHAT DO YOU WANT MORE THAN ANYTHING RIGHT NOW?  A talking parrot, an emery board and a can of Molson Canadian.

3. DO YOU KNOW WHAT TIME OF DAY YOU WERE BORN? 3:35 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon. Mom, is that right?

4. WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE TOY AS A CHILD? Boogie the sock monkey.

5. THE BEST TV SHOW EVER CREATED: Tie: Arrested Development and The Office.

6. THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO?  Jaques Chirac.

7. DO YOU GET SCARED IN THE DARK? No.

8. THE LAST PERSON TO MAKE YOU CRY? My husband.

9. HOW MANY WISDOM TEETH DO YOU HAVE? None. Got them pulled when I was 14.

10. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE COLOGNE / PERFUME?  I don’t have one, but I love the smell of my daughter’s hair after she comes inside from the cold.

11. WHAT KIND OF HAIR/EYE COLOR DO YOU LIKE ON THE OPPOSITE SEX? If the person has eyes that’s good.  Hair is optional.

12. WOULD YOU RATHER BE SMART OR FUNNY?  Funny.  Funny people are always smart but smart people aren’t always funny.

13. COFFEE OR ENERGY DRINKS?  Coffee.  Coffee is always an energy drink but an energy drink isn’t always coffee. 

14. IF YOU COULD EAT ANYTHING RIGHT NOW, WHAT WOULD IT BE?  The Hope Diamond.

15. WHO IS THE LAST PERSON YOU MADE MAD?  See answer to number 8. 

16. DO YOU SPEAK ANOTHER LANGUAGE?  You could call my rambling diatribes another language. 

17. DO YOU LIKE SOMEONE?  What grade are we in?

18. WOULD YOU FALL IN LOVE KNOWING THAT THE PERSON IS LEAVING?  I don’t understand the question.  If a person was leaving to buy gas and return to me twenty minutes later, well, I see little risk of hearbreak in that.  But if he was leaving to jump on the Hale Bopp comet with that Applewhite fellow, then I’d probably reign-in my ardor a bit.

19. WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO TELL SOMEONE HOW MUCH THEY MEAN TO YOU?  You don’t. You keep them guessing.  Or if you’re a complete fool, you confess it on the jumbo-tron at a major sports stadium.

20. WHAT ANNOYS YOU MOST?  The Seattle Times; the local news media; the fact that the Giant Palouse Earthworm – which no one can find - is on the endangered species list; misuse of apostrophes; people who won’t stand up for their convictions while letting someone else do the dirty work for them only to run for cover when the going gets tough; ostentatiousness; celebrities who are famous only for being famous; totem poles.

21. HAVE YOU BEEN OUT OF THE U.S.? Mexico, Canada, Italy and China.

22. YOUR WEAKNESSES?  Wine, bacon, butter, magazines, iTunes, the Lululemon store.

23. IF YOU COULD GET PLASTIC SURGERY WHAT WOULD IT BE? Hmmmm.  I think I’m adequate the way I am. But ask me again in ten years.

24. WHY DID YOU FILL OUT THIS SURVEY?  I love questionnaires.  They help me figure out what I’m thinking.

25. ARE YOU TOO SHY TO ASK SOMEONE OUT?  Yes.

26.  WHAT DO YOU GET COMPLIMENTED ABOUT THE MOST?  Eyes then personality.

27. WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF ALCOHOL BECAME ILLEGAL?  Behave illegally.

28. HOW MANY KIDS DO YOU WANT?   The number I have: two.

29. WHERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? No. Mom, is this right?

30. WHEN DID YOU LAST CRY? Yesterday. 

 31. ANY BAD HABITS?  Well thank you for asking!  I complain too much; I like expensive wine; I can’t say no to a cute pair of shoes; I talk too much; my forwardness embarrasses people; I don’t give people enough slack; Ironically, I am judgmental about judgmental people; I say “um” too much; I can’t stick to a budget; I can dish it out but I can’t take it; I live way too much in my head; I complete people’s sentences for them; although I’m happily married, I find every man attractive in some way (that’s not a bad habit, is it?); I can never find my car keys; I can spend an entire Saturday watching the History Channel; I swing wildly between egotism and self-doubt; I could go on but that might lead one to think that I’m not altogether charming.

32.  IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON, WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU?  Absolutely.  I’m a hoot and I’m good in a crisis.

33.  DO YOU KNOW ANYONE FAMOUS?   No.

34. DO LOOKS MATTER?  Whether we care to admit it or not, I think they do.

35. HOW DO YOU RELEASE YOUR ANGER? Running or listening to loud music.

36. DO YOU TRUST OTHERS EASILY?  Please.  I’m a lawyer.  If someone other than a friend or loved one is talking to me, I assume he’s lying.

37. FAVORITE THOUGHT PROVOKING SONG:  She’s my Cherry Pie by Warrant.

38. FAVORITE DAY OF THE YEAR?  Christmas.

39. FAVORITE EXPRESSION?  Cheerfully detached.

So the other day I was wondering whether or not humans might exist in a parallel universe or universes coincident with this lifetime or whether time as we know it is linear only; but if it is linear then perhaps it is only linear within our cerebral cortex but to a more advanced intelligence it is possible to experience time in a non-linear fashion or, alternatively, experience time all at once which then would sort of contradict the idea of time as a unit of measurement.   For example, each day that I awake I am Leezer who is married to the same man I’ve been married to for twenty years, with two kids and a nice satisfying job as an attorney, who worries occasionally about growing old and paying the bills but is by and large a very happy woman; but who is to say that part of my psyche is not attached by an invisible thread to a consciousness in ancient Rome where I am a gladiator who likes to be fed peeled grapes while staring at young boys and worshipping gods that provide an abundance of wine and prevent hair loss? 

 But then I don’t think knowing the answers to such questions will help with any of the day-to-day tedium such as my proclivity for confusing the words prostrate:

with prostate:

Or in emptying the viagra-spam from my e-mail account at work or in ensuring that I remain a vigorous and physically appealing woman despite approaching the second half of my life and figuring out how to get my kids to eat more vegetables.    I am forever bored by many things such as putting gas in my car and getting my hair cut and listening to people complain about the government and worrying about taxes so the idea of a parallel universe is a welcome escape. 

My head hurts so much now that I must go drink a caffeinated beverage and contemplate the international markets.

Are You More Yin or Yang?

Today I had the distinct pleasure of meeting the Dauphin, more commonly known as King Charles VII.    I pursuaded the Governor of Vaucouleurs, Robert Baudricourt, to write a referral stating - more or less - that I’m not a completely mad woman suffering from PMDD.   I know visions are unusual, but come ON!  Why would I voluntarily subject myself to ridicule and contempt, not to mention dirty looks at Starbucks.   So I convinced Bob to take me to the Dauphin in order that I might relate God’s plan that I place myself at the head of the French army and drive the British out of Orleans.  

So we arrived at Chinon in the afternoon and I was led into a room full of smelly, horny men.  What happened next still pisses me off - Charles was no where to be found because his courtiers choreographed a trap of sorts for me.  To test my paranormal attributes, the courtiers disguised Charles as one of them.  I was supposed to figure out which of the smelly, horny men was in fact ordained by God. Not hard to do, as the Dauphin’s preference for womens’ clothing and makeup is known throughout Christendom.  I mean, look at the guy - he looks like a tranny:

So I immediately walked over to wear he sat looking at his shoes and said, “hey DOLPHIN,” to which he replied, “I am the dough-fan, Merci.  If it please God, you will follow me to thy chamber.”

I was a wee bit nervous as I am a virgin (no comments from the peanut gallery, please) and I wasn’t about to give it up for an inbred clothes horse with overly plucked eyebrows.  But I shouldn’t have worried because after we went into his office he said he wanted to test my ESP just a little bit more before he placed the future of his country in my hands.   To this end, he asked me a series of questions that “only [he] could answer accurately”.  If I was clairvoiyant, he said, I would know the answers.    These were his questions:

• Is Hannah Montana a real person or a fictional character?

• Who cuts your hair?

• If I hand you a thumbtack, a bagel, and a comb, and you give me back the comb, how many things do you have?

• Where does venison come from?

I’m no rocket scientist, but how do the answers to the preceding questions shed any light on my paranormal abilities?  No matter, I answered them, received my commission to take 3,000 men and a crate of maxi pads into Orleans, and drive out the pasty faced, gnarly-toothed Anglos.  Done and done.

let’s toss a bean bag

at little baby jesus

no wagering please

1.  Drunk-dialed CNN and asked if the media was aware of Nancy Pelosi’s previous conviction for assaulting JCPenney sales person with a flashlight;

2.  Organized my collection of vintage pasties by size - small to large;

3.  Waxed my van with Colonel Conk Mustache Wax;

4.  Relaxed in my cognac leather wingback chair attired in my smoking jacket and ascot, my pipe in my right palm, a snifter of Courvosier in my right, my Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Dolly by my side, and reflected upon the vast literary works of Jackie Collins;

5.  Inspected my throw pillows for dust mites;

6.  Installed a heat-sink on my microdigital processor then cried out in shame when I discovered that a synthetic diamond cooling sink would have achieved greater cooling efficiency;

7.  Put underpants on my dog;

8.  Alphabetically organized my nude photos of Ambrose Burnside; and

9.  Watched It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the best show since Arrested Development.

Because we recently moved to this neighborhood, our kids have discovered the mecca that Halloween can be.   One hour of trick-or-treating filled our house with more candy than we can ever eat, especially when combined with the stuff we didn’t give away.   I don’t really care for candy, preferring the caloric equivalent in butter and bacon, so all the sweet stuff is kind of annoying me.   It’s in the way.

Last night my seven year old and her friend decided to sell candy door-to-door.  Using one of my largest mixing bowls, they set out through the neighborhood with such entrepreneurial spirit I didn’t have the heart to suggest that their timing was off a tad.   So I bought the only candy bar I really like - a Butterfinger.  See, it’s salty enough to satisfy my butter/bacon/salt preference without being too sweet. 

What are you doing with your leftover candy?  Can anyone help me with this vexing issue?

By the way, the man in the picture is no one I know.  This is something my Dad sent me.  No, it’s not him either. 

I wrote the following on July 11, 2006.  It is reprinted here because I’ve got to rebuild a semiconductor then get my eyebrows waxed.

On this day in 1804, Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. No one really knows exactly what tipped Burr over the edge, because the two men had hated each other for decades. Their contempt for one another was so renowned that local restaurants named entrees after their infamous relationship, most notably the Anger Ball Burrger and the Hot Head Hamilton Ham Sandwich. Some say the last straw was Hamilton’s unfortunate remark that Burr had the hips of a woman. Burr did have a girlish figure, which he attempted to conceal -  unsuccessfully - with waistcoats that grazed his fingertips and dark colors over his ample behind, but no one was fooled. In any event, the two rose at dawn and met in Weehawken, New Jersey, kissed each other on the lips, and then Burr blew a hole the size of a baseball in the abdomen of the father of American capitalism.

Hopefully you know that Alexander Hamilton was Washington’s Aide De Camp (bitch) during the Revolutionary War and was appointed by Washington as the nation’s first Secretary of the Treasury. Having witnessed first hand  Revolutionary War soldiers’ dirty underwear and filthy socks, Hamilton set out to assure successive generations that second in importance to a fiscally strong central government would be a well funded militia. Burr, on the other hand, will be remembered through the ages only as Ironside’s pudgy ancestor:

Serves him right for killing America’s HOTTEST forefather. Interestingly, Burr also resembles Potsie from Happy Days:

 Duelers had seconds, which were like golf caddies who didn’t carry clubs. The role of the second was to clear the underbrush at the dueling ground and to start the duel by dropping a hankerchief. Sometimes fights broke out between the seconds when no agreement could be reached as to which second would drop the hanky. (These disputes were resolved through dance offs).

Seconds’ job descriptions often included, “other duties as assigned,” and Burr’s second was required to peel the sunburned skin off Burr’s shoulders and read out loud the more erotic passages from Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying.

Procedures were implemented to ensure the seconds’ and other duel participants’ plausible deniability in the face of prosecution. For example, pistols were transported to the dueling site via portmanteau (leather suitcase, but the French word is so much more impressive) and the rowers stood with their backs toward the duelers so they could truthfully say under oath that they had seen no pistols. Sometimes the duelers themselves were blindfolded so that they could truthfully say they had seen no pistols, but this practice quickly proved unpopular because participants had to outfit the dueling ground with snacks, bathroom facilities, and board games during the several days it took for the duelers to hit their targets.

Prior to his duel with Burr, Hamilton participated in ten duels, all “shot-less.” According to the Code Duello, duels could be fought with pistols or swords. When traditional weaponry wasn’t available, duelers smacked each other with gym towels. Hamilton’s son, Philip, was killed in a duel on November 23, 1801, when Philip lost a bet that he could incorporate the term, autoerotic asphyxiation into his annual performance evaluation at work. Philip’s death reportedly took an emotional toll on Hamilton, who grew to find the dueling morally repugnant; his belief apparently caused Hamilton to pen the following the evening before his duel with Burr:

I have resolved, if our interview is conducted in the usual manner, and it pleases God to give me the opportunity, to reserve and throw away my first fire, and I have thoughts even of reserving my second fire.

When Burr read the note left by Hamilton, his response was, “Contemptible, if true.” What an asshole.

At approximately 6:30 a.m. on the morning of July 11, 1802, Hamilton and Burr stood with their backs to one another, walked thirty paces, turned, and fired. All first-hand accounts of the duel agree that two shots were fired; however, Hamilton and Burr’s seconds disagreed on the intervening time between the shots. Hamilton fired first without hitting Burr. Burr’s shot hit Hamilton in the abdomen. After killing Hamilton, Burr moved toward Hamilton in a speechless manner before he was hustled away by his rowers to his barge; he then ate breakfast in the city. And justice seems to have prevailed -  the man who could so easily eat a bowl full of Rice Crispys after killing a man is virtually unknown today, while his victim’s face is on the ten dollar bill.

Dueling began to fall out of favor in America in the early nineteenth century. Benjamin Franklin denounced the practice as uselessly violent, and George Washington encouraged his officers to refuse challenges during the Revolutionary War because he believed that the death by dueling of officers would have threatened the success of the war effort. Instead, Washington required the disputes to be settled by way of the Penis Game.

Most state constitutions prohibit dueling as a form of legalised murder (again, the word legalised rather than legalizedsounding so much more intelligent).   The wisdom of such prohibitions I question in the face of prison over-crowding and an overly liberal Supreme Court (read: the Washington State Supreme Court), which cares more about defendants’ rights than efficiency of process and bona fide local police power. One possible solution to prison over-crowding? Mandatory pistol duels starting first with death-row inmates and working down the chain to petty thieves. We reduce at least fifty percent of the prison population, then start over with the winners, until we get to the final four. Then what? Another dance off.

I’m just sayin.