surgical fools

my sweetheart is having surgery next week to remove his wayward gallbladder. this will require an overnight stay. talk about your expensive overnight stays; we could take that money and go spend a week at the four seasons' hotel, complete with total mini-bar access. thankfully, the insurance should pony up the bucks. if not, chris may need to sleep with his doctor.

in memorium of the cheese's gallbladder, i am setting up a trust fund to help us cope with this loss. it's always hard to say good-bye to a beloved organ, but i think some cash should make this grieving period less sorrowful. if you would like to contribute, please send a check made payable to myself. put the word "gallbladder" in the memo so i know what the money is for; i don't want to confuse these checks with the other ones pouring in from the time i had to throw out that fern.

your financial assistance is deeply appreciated during this difficult period.

$$$$

i think that, instead of dollars and coins, we should make mustard our currency. instead of wallets, we can carry around containers of french's mustard. "that'll be one squeeze," the guy at the bookstore will say when you purchase your magazine. he'll stretch out his hand as you prepare to plotz mustard all over it.

the spare change we keep in our pockets would translate into little pools of mustard in our jeans and jackets. we would probably have to start lining our pockets with saran wrap to prevent major staining. finding a discarded sandwich would be like finding a scratched instant win ticket in the street. is it a winner? is it full of mustard?

birthday cards would contain not checks but yellow smears. and only the very rich would eat egg and potato salads with wild abandon.

take us out to the ballgame


i always get the urge to sing the 'perfect strangers' theme song.


the field before the game, when the air is ripe with hope.


my favorite fan.


these assholes on waveland sure caught alot of balls tonight.


the field during the game, when the hope is dissipating.


swing like you mean it.

balls to the wall

cubs game tomorrow, unless it rains. gotta tell you, i don't get very excited about wrigley field. the other two fields i've been to (miller park and new comiskey), i have reasons to be excited.

miller park:

kosher hot dogs
that crazy fucking mascot
outside beer garden area
elephant ears
sausage race

comiskey:

churros!
fireworks
that guy who comes around with the backpack full of margarita

that's all i got. granted, i enjoy watching the cubs, but in order for a team to win me over, they really need to strap a margarita backpack onto some random dude and then proceed to make grown adults dressed as sausages run around in a circle. is that so much to ask?

nancyisms

my mother has taken to emailing me her blood pressure. she emails when it goes up, and she emails when it goes down. "it's at its highest," she writes, "when i'm forced to spend money."

she's getting weirder in her old age. the other day, during a routine visit, i noticed that there was a photograph of some little girl in the center of all the family photos. i did not recognize her, and i said, "who's this?" my mother replied, "i don't know. i found it in a library book. isn't she cute?" i put the picture back down, in its place covering a picture of my cousin. a stranger had trumped a blood relative.

her attempts at making conversation are also becoming odder than usual. here's what she does. she chooses two adjectives or a pair of opposites and then asks you which you like better. red or blue? coffee or tea? two-ply or single sheet? ducks or a sofabed? while you stare at her, dumbfounded, she'll tell you what she likes better, but not necessarily why she likes it or what made her bring it up. "i like sneakers better than galoshes," she'll say, then continue, "which do you like better- furniture polish or the spanish flag?"

i hate, have hated, and will always hate dealing with verb tenses.

daily news bite

FORT MYERS, Florida (AP) -- An 81-year-old woman preparing to take a test drive at a car dealership hit her husband, a salesman, a car and a tree before running into a wall.

"She must have panicked," said Joe Sica, sales manager at Honda of Fort Myers.

why do i find that absolutely hysterical? why? is there something wrong with me? i just picture this little old lady, nothing visible above the steering wheel but her best church hat, as she slowly, but wrecklessly, begins to plow over a series of unfortunately located objects/people. i can practically hear the sounds of her "oh dear"s as she knocks down one thing after another thing after another thing....

the best part about this quote is that she was "preparing" to take the test drive when all of this calamity ensued. if all of this happened beforehand, imagine how the actual test drive went.

i'll check the papers tomorrow and let you know.

oberweis says he's running for governor in 2008
-chicago sun-times

james oberweis, as we know, is the owner of oberweis dairy, home to some of the best ice cream this side of the mason-dixon line. what i think is really funny, though, is the following quote in the sun-times article:

he drew a sharp contrast between his ideas... and those of Gov. Rod Blagojevich, whom he said "looks at business as though it is a cow to be milked for more and more taxes."

a cow to be milked for more taxes? doesn't oberweis think of anything besides dairy??

i can only suppose that his slogan will be "moo-ve over for oberweis!" or "i scream, you scream, we all scream... for oberweis."

on a related note, isn't gubernatorial a fantastic word?

start of my photoblogging career- upside down




i realize this pic could look like i have some crazy hair issues. don't worry- just crazy gravity issues.

from the morning news

Scientists around the world were scrambling to prevent the possibility of a pandemic after a nearly 50-year-old killer influenza virus was sent to thousands of labs, a decision that one researcher described as "unwise."

pandemic.... killer.... virus.... .... unwise?

oh boy.

the marlboro girl

i have had love affairs with many items. mold-a-rama, for instance, and those sugar packets with the sepia pictures of boats on them. there is one love affair, however, which will always occupy a special place in my heart and lungs. i am referring, of course, to smoking.

i know it's bad for you, and that's why i'm quitting- for real this time. this isn't like last time when i said i was quitting and then immediately went out and bought a dozen packs to hide in my closet, in my glove compartment, in my desk at work. man, i went through those "emergency" packs in record time. this time, i mean it. it's time to say good-bye.

this love affair with smoking blossomed right after high school, during a period of my life where every event had to be immortalized in a poorly written poem. i was drawn to cigarettes because of the poetic quality i percieved in them, because of the swirling smoke and the beautiful way they could dangle between two terse lips. i had an obsession with the cherry that grew bright with inhalation and dim with the release and how a dark room filled with smokers could look like a constellation of stars shining through on a foggy night. i liked ash in the breeze and a filter that grew brown with every puff, and i loved the flick of the wrist when the cigarette was discarded. maybe this is unbelievable, but this is the truth; i hated the smell of smoking and even the taste, but it was everything else that i was attracted to. i was, for a very long time, just a casual smoker; during the past two and a half years, however, i have turned into a full-fledged addict, requiring a cigarette upon that first sip of coffee in the morning and then not stopping until shortly before bedtime.

i threw up on saturday afternoon after enjoying a cigarette outside. it came up so fast i couldn't even make it to the toilet; the sink in the vanity area filled up with my blood, and while i would pause after every retch in order to catch my breath, i would only end up gagging and then puking harder. it was a low point in my day, to put it lightly. later that evening, chris and i went out with friends, and i smoked, because that's what i do. when we returned home, that familiar feeling returned, only this time, nothing would come up. i felt something hard in the back of my throat, and i kept coughing to try to force it out, but i only succeeded in sounding like a very old man. "i'm quitting," i said, and on sunday i went with a friend for a long walk around lincoln park and by the lake, breathing in the air and knowing that the love affair had to really, truly come to its end.

yesterday, the lack of cigarettes made me so fucking crabby. but now it's tuesday, and i really feel like i can do this, like i am doing this. i will miss the feel of the slim white stick between my fingers, the sound of puffing, the beauty of smoke and fire and ash. it really meant a lot to me- but i think i've finally hit the filter.

i'm sure i can buy this anywhere, but it's still one of the best souvenirs i've ever recieved. for obvious (i hope) reasons.

palindromific

i'm going to write a novel wherein each sentence is a palindrome. i already have the first sentence:

em, no poop on me.

it's going to be about two people, one named "em." both have poor grammer. the character that is not em is afraid that em is going to poop on her. this particular character does not like being pooped on.

this is all i have so far. i'm trying to figure out how to incorporate "lid off a daffodil" into the plotline. somebody, probably, is going to have to poop on the daffodil and then put a lid on it. i'm not 100% sure on how this will play out.

the power of awesome!



this plastic wrap is not really as awesome as you might be led to believe. although it does do a nice job of covering my leftover mac-n-cheese.

the gall!

after we left the emergency room, and after chris had been diagnosed with a gallbladder disease, i stopped off at mcdonald's for breakfast. chris was sitting next to me clutching his directives for a low fat, bland diet, and there i am- the person who's supposed to be his support system- eating an egg mcmuffin and hashbrowns. "i'm sorry," i said as i stuffed the gooey egg and cheese into my mouth. "i'm just so hungry."

"that's okay," he said, his voice slurring a little from all the medicine. "i have a bran cereal at home."

he looked like hell, bandages on both of his arms from various i.v. needles and a hospital i.d. bracelet taped around his wrist. because we are a couple of sick fucks, we found his appearance not disturbing, but mildly amusing. his bedhead and filthy jeans just added to the comicalness. it also was because of this sick fuck mentality that we decided he should try to "save" his prescription vicodin for a time when neither of us needed it, but simply wanted it. you have to do something to while away those boring evenings.

all joking aside, i am seriously concerned for the cheese's well-being. however, since he's embarking on a low fat diet, can i really continue to call him "the cheese?" should i change his nickname to something less fatty, such as "the carrot" or "the legume?" maybe he can start calling me "the insensitive prick."

oh, how i love him, how i will learn to cook low-fat meals for him and eat my fast food burgers and extra cheesey-cheese fries (with ranch dressing) in the bathroom when he's home, under the ruse of taking a shower so that he doesn't have to look at me enjoying myself with those tasty fat grams. for him, i can make that sacrifice. for him, i will eat chicken nuggets while sitting on the lidded toilet seat while the room steams up with hot shower water. this is what a relationship is all about. that, and sharing the prescription meds.

i apologize in advance. and i come across much more crass than i really am.




can you find the duodenum in this picture?