Get Your Drink On... While You Still Can

I was driving home when I got the panicked voice mail from my best diving buddy KK (who is also a fellow Margarita enthusiast).  She was gasping for air and I couldn't quite make out what she was saying.  It sounded a little like:  "AAAAAAAA ....shortage.... tequila.... must.... get.... more.... not... going... to.... make... it... send... reinforcements."  

Did you'all hear this?  Several news sources announced last week that because Mexican farmers have raced to plant more corn in response to the growing demands of ethanol makers, we may experience a Tequila shortage in the near future.  Holy Shit Drinkman!!! That announcement sent me on an all night tequila-fest bender which ended in my singing a slightly (ok, really off-key) off-key rendition of Shelly West's beloved ballad "Jose Cuervo You Are A Friend of Mine" and my cats pleading for sanctuary (or at least earplugs) on the steps of St. Sauza and the Sacred Shot Glass.  The next day armed with a killer hang-over, the feeling of a fuzzy sock in my mouth, dark sun glasses and a fist full of Benjamins, I cleaned out the local liquor store of every rot-gut-brand Tequila I could find (and one bottle of some really expensive shit I can't pronounce just cause the label was cute).  

Now I am all for alternative fuels and lowering our dependance on oil, but when you are standing between me and getting my drink on... Well, you have gone way to far.  I don't know who I am going to have to "have a little talkin' to" about this miss direction of our priorities, but you had better believe I am writing a strongly worded letter to the Mexican government asking them to intervene. 

As for the U.S.A., we got 10 states that produce corn.  That's 1/5th of the country.  Two of which I have personally lived in and can attest to the fact that there really isn't much there BUT corn. SOOOO its time to step up and boost that corn production.  I don't care if you have to spray on every pesticide, insecticide, herbicide within a tri-state area while planting every genetically altered strain of seed known to man in order to meet the demands.  Just get your plant on and let the country of Mexico get back to doing what they do best:  Creating a drink that makes me think that the guy with four missing teeth and a belly bigger than Buddha is cuter than a bucket of kittens at closin' time.  

Kill Bill

Or To Mute Or Not To Mute

In my past life I was a "consultant".  Which translates into: If you aren't a part of the problem, you can make a shit load of money prolonging the problem with bullshit "solutions" that will cause even bigger, more complicated problems and make other people's lives a living hell.  

At some point in time I decided that being on the outer level of Dante's inferno wasn't as much fun as being IN Dante's most inner circle of Hell and made the leap to an in-house Analyst position.  Translation: I was now the poor SOB who's life was made a living hell by consultants.  Yeah, I never said I made smart career moves.

One of the things I learned about corporate America is "THE MEETING".  The Meeting is code for: we are going to either sit in a conference room or sit on the phone and listen while someone from management either:

a) Tries to get us to drink the Kool-aid and think that whatever Bull-shit idea he/she is presenting is going to be the orgasmic life changing event they say it will be.

Or

b) Shows us just how long a person can hold on to their will to live while being shown endless power points before jumping out of the 3rd floor window. (Which BTW is just high enough to cause some major damage, but not high enough to kill you.  And you had better believe that my Satan-run former employer would have brought me a laptop and asked me to work on shit while I was being wheeled into the ICU.)

Anyway, I had to attend a big meeting one day with the "vendor/consultant/pain in my ass".  This meeting included several members of my team and  since we were all feeling especially lazy that day everyone dialed in from their own desk.  (Instead of getting our fat-asses up and walking to the conference room to do the one speaker phone call.  Our little passive-aggressive way of sticking it to "The Man" and his pocketbook.)  Since I worked in cube-ville not only could everyone hear me on their phones, but the sound of my voice in real time as well.  

The best part of the meeting was that I was now the "Client" and not the vendor, which really saved my bacon.  During the call, Mr. Pain~in~My~Ass~Consultant (we'll call him Bill) was going on and on and on and on and on about something that was going to make my life seem like it was going to go on and on and on and on.  Not to mention that "Bill" had a way of being condescending to even a post-it note and talked to you as though you had never heard the word college, let alone graduated from one.  So, after about ten minutes of "Bill" talking and my nerves being shredded, I clicked what I thought was the code for muting the phone... and said "I AM GOING TO KILL HIM!!!!".

Only, muting the phone had about a ten second delay.  Just long enough for my homicidal feelings to cross the sound barrier and the inter-state phone lines.  Now, my boss couldn't hear me ask for a raise when I was standing two feet from her, but you can bet your sweet ass she heard THAT comment.  After some really quick back stepping and some incredible Bullshit that even I am amazed I pulled out of a hat, the meeting concluded.  I quickly checked my insurance policy to see if they covered "Foot-in-Mouth" disease and any injuries that I could incur while being  incarcerated. Later I got to have a nice little "chat" with my supervisor about "appropriate" talk which included something about playing nice with other kids and how I should monitor my "inner voice" a little better.  

But we all know how well that has worked in my life... :-)

Damn Good Thing They Are Cute

I love my cats dearly.  They are the cutest things I can cuddle with and have collectively cost me more than a brand new BMW.  But they are not the smartest kittens in the caboodle.  

Bud E Phat and Elsa, both love to lounge on the patio.  Which requires I leave the door open for them to enter and exit at will.  Along with a few of flying friends.  For those of you who do not know about my extreme issues with all things entomology please see http://www.lisatastrophies.com/2008/03/help-im-buggin-out.html 

So after purchasing what amounts to enough extermination chemicals to rid the entire state of anything even thinking about flying (including 747's, small birds and Green-skinned-ruby-slipper-stealing witches) I gave up and bought a screen door cover.  Only it's not a door.  I can't have a real screen door since I currently live in an apartment complex run by former Nazis and they frown on any form of home improvement.  So I got this cool screen that hangs from the top of the door frame and mimics a door.  Thank GAWD for velcro and spring loaded poles on this thing or it would have never made it out of the box.  Anyway, to get in and out, all the cats have to do is push their way through the hanging screen.  Simple enough, right. RRRIIIGGGHHHTTT...

Now I am not sure who is going to get the award for being higher on the evolutionary scale: the cats for sitting there staring at the screen for over an hour straight trying to figure out how to get inside. Or me for sitting there for an hour straight watching them watch the screen trying to figure out how to get inside.  At this point I leaning toward it being a tie.  

After three days of the Great Screen Door Stare Down and me repeatedly shoving their rotund bodies through a flimsy screen in a vain attempt to teach their cat-brains to comprehend the physics of cat-in-the-door : cat-out-the-door (I even made some rudimentary slides on the concept of inertia), I thought they were starting to get it.   

Until tonight and Elsa sitting outside the screen meowing like she was never again going to get Fancy Feast.  After about ten minutes of Meow-a-polousa I started to wonder if things were o.k.  Was she dying?  Had she gotten her tail caught on something?  Was the house on fire and she was trying to bravely save my life by alerting me to the coming danger? 

No, Miss I-hope-she-marries-well-cause-she's-dumber-than-a-box-of-rocks had forgotten how to push the screen aside so she could get back inside.  

So much for my brilliant teaching skills.

S & N

Has Nicholas been knockin' up the neighborhood?

Has Sassy been sashaying her was across the mean streets?

Heather been in heat longer than summer time in Texas?

Then it's time to step up and join the Spay & Neuter bandwagon. (I know what you all were thinking ~ and you should be ashamed :-)  That's right boys and girls; time to get those nuts knocked off and tie up some lose tube ends. Cause knowing that you can reproduce faster than Tribbles on the Starship Enterprise is not high on the Things To Be Proud Of List.  Now is the right time to stop your grinnin' and start your licking'   ~~where your balls used to be. 

It's not like Fido knows he's shootin' blanks.  And Miss Kitty is a bitch wether she is in heat or not.  Not to mention that the care and feeding of these oh~so~cute dependents will not get you a huge tax break at the end of the year.  Hell, that trip to the vet alone will cost you less than the puppy paternity suit when Boxer bones that cute poodle down the street.  Or the shame of having the most tail in the hood when Princess starts pushin' out those precious pretty kitties. So help do your part to reduce the number of feral, shelter and stray animals and try a walk on the S&N wild side...

Because if Hercules ain't hanging and banging blanks; he's just not bad to the bone.

Public Service Announcement brought to you by the good people at Bonerol.

 

Farts on a Plane!

Ok, people, I am on VAY-CAY-SIOOOOON.  Which means when I planed my vacation, I was not including in these plans to sit on a plane at 30,000 feet having my nasal cavity assaulted by an over-weight, middle-aged man's ass gas.  I was planning on drinking heavily, sitting on a beach taking my chances at skin cancer and scuba diving my butt into a border line narc'd status. I was not planning on attempting to breath through an airplane blanket for 3 hours while hoping the fumes from Fart-Man did not cause the plane to break apart.  First off there is no escape at 30,000 feet, second the oxygen masks will not deploy just because some inconsiderate jerk ate his body weight in sauerkraut the night before and has decided to gas every passenger on a 747. There is no escape.  However, there is a way to fight back.... And the best line of defense against this onslaught - believe it or not - comes dressed in Gap kids and looks suspiciously like two boys about 10 years of age (I think that is how old they were).   

Anyway, fart-ass in the third row has gas. Not just gas, but G-A-S and could probably take out a small nation with one ass-cheek tied behind his back.  It was silent kind (at first).  The kind where they let loose about five minutes before everyone's oral-factory senses could figure out what the hell just assaulted them.  These sneaky little bastards were flying around the plane for about 45 minutes. Roughly one every 5 minutes or so, before Fart-Man fell asleep.  Then the fun really began.  

Apparently, Fart-Man had been making some sort of attempt at hiding the sneaky little pops while he was awake, because once he was asleep....all bets were off.  So every so often you would hear this "pppttthhheww" in between his snoring.  This guy was a double barrel shot gun: snorts and snoring out one end ~ toots and shoots out the other.  I don't know which was worse.  

But let's face it: Farts are funny.  Even to "grown" ups farts are funny.  Oh sure, we try to do the adult thing by ignoring them.  We even pretend that our eyes are watering from some sort of allergy to dust mites or tearing up over the in-flight movie.  We delicately try to breath out of our mouths in hopes of not getting too much of the offending gas.  YEAH, that lasted 20 minutes before people started making eye contact with each other and making faces. The guy next to me was about to have an epileptic fit trying not to giggle at the insanity of the whole thing.  I mean these farts were deadly and what could we do?  It's not like we could ask the guy to go spend the rest of the flight in the john?  Although that was one idea that we tossed around after about 2 hours into the onslaught.  Hell, the captain even came out of the cockpit and asked the flight attendant what the hell died in First Class.  So grown adults spent the most part of a 4 1/2 hour flight giggling,devising ways to get Fart-Man to stop, and trying not to breath through their noses.  Someone even suggested we could get the Air Marshall to arrest Fart-Man as a terrorist since he was definitely harboring weapons of M-ASS Destruction. Comments were made as to how much was in his "ARSE-enal" and conversation pretty much went down hill from there.  Yeah, we were gas-happy at this point and all bets were off when it came to making fart jokes.  It was pretty funny (but you probably had to be there).

Now, I love it when kids say things that they really shouldn't.  And I love it even more when they say things that embarrass the living shit out of their parents.  So here we are basically being held captive by Fart-Man and his peel-the-paint-off-a-wall fart attack and there are two kids seated in the fourth row opposite Fart-Man.  At first they were all whispers and little comments to each other:

Kid1 : "EEEEEEWWWWW did you smell that?"

Kid2: "AAAWWWW That was gross!" (followed by faces of choking to death and gagging)

Kid1: "You smelt it - you dealt it!!"  (I giggled because that was a favorite from my days as a kid and it's good to see the good ones never die.) 

These and other comments were followed by ssshhhhes by Mom and Dad.  As the flight went on, the comment started to get louder and louder ~ as kids tend to do when shut in a plane for four hours without anything to occupy their time besides Fart-Man and his toot-a-thon.  Then when things really started to get bad:

Kid1: "DUDE!! (all kids speak Dude - apparently) That was gross"

Kid2: "Yeah, Dad's farts don't stink that bad and he really farts a lot"

Kid1: "OH Yeah! Remember that one time when we were in church and Dad farted really, really gross and it smelled so bad that Mom's eyes cried and Mom tried to pretend that it was the guy in front of us and Dad was all proud of his fart and Mom was really pissed and we got in trouble for making strangling noises cause Dad's farts smelled gross?"

At this point, the couple in front of Kid 1 and Kid 2 were trying to simultaneously shut their kids up and sink into the seat cushions to die of embarrassment. Althoug I think Dad was secretly proud of his de-facto win in the fart competition.  If Mom could have made a hole to disappear into by sheer will alone, she would have.  Everyone else was doing their best not to laugh but that only added to the insanity of the entire flight.  

Somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico at 30,000 feet, 24 adults lost the battle of wills against fart-man and began laughing so hard it woke up the tooting terminator.  And my vacation began with a Toot.