If You've Got a Slumlord Try Fashioning a Blistering Onion Poultice

In some states it is a building code requirement that elevators be stocked with leeches, in case of fever and elevator malfunction. 

Foreigner-ism of the Week

"The weather is messy," meaning it's raining out.

Worrrrrrrrrd

"What I like about experience is that it is such an honest thing. You may have deceived yourself, but experience is not trying to deceive you. The universe rings true wherever you fairly test it."

--C.S. Lewis

Word

"For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees. And to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I don't want to sell my life for money, I don't even want to come in out of the rain."

--Mary Oliver

Two Failed Alaska Puns

I'll ask her!  [With a NY accent: "Al ask uh!"]

Alas...
...ka.

I'm Sorry, Our Internet Is Lolcats Only

Guest: Where are the computers?

Me: Down the hallway there on your right-hand side.

Guest: And can I get emails on them, or just send emails?

Me: [Pause] You'll have the whole internet.  So you can do both.

Guest: [Smiles] Thanks!

What I Miss

Iris: [On training her puppy who likes to chew everything] We have like a stick that we wave in her general direction and she doesn't like that.
Me: [Laughing] A stick you wave in her general direction?
Iris: Yeah but then she chews it so we have to get a new one.
Me: I'm imagining you like lying on the couch waving a stick all lazy.
Iris: Like a conductor.  Yeah, like how does that affect her behavior.  'It's a magic stick.  We bought it online.'
Me: [Cracking up] You bought it online.

Kinks as Rorschach Test

Misheard lyric:

Am I / condemned / to be with you / in the daytime?

Actual lyric:

I'm not / content / to be with you / in the daytime

Anecdote vs Writing

"You get no points for the living, I tell my students. It isn’t enough to have had an interesting or hilarious or tragic life. Art isn’t anecdote. It’s the consciousness we bring to bear on our lives. For what happened in the story to transcend the limits of the personal, it must be driven by the engine of what the story means."

--from here

Try

On Wednesday night I played kickball.  The rule is, you have to be holding a beer in one hand at all times.  Kickball's played in the softball field in town.  This is one of the signs in the field. 

Interesting Approach, Nature

Baudelaire, Vegetables, Pleasure

"He who clings to Pleasure, that is, to the Present, makes me think of a man rolling down a slope who, in trying to grasp hold of some bushes, tears them up and carries them with him in his fall."

--Baudelaire

In Which I Imagine Terrorizing Foreigners for Not Liking Cat Power

Me: What are you listening to?
Janitor: Is Bulgarian pop.
Me: Can I listen?
Janitor: You will not like it.
Me: Maybe I will.

I look down at my iPod which is on shuffle and skip ahead til I find a song representative of my music, Cat Power covering Bob Dylan's "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again".  I put my earbud in his ear and put his earbud in my ear.

GEL. In my HAIR.

Co-worker: I'm running so late.  I didn't even have time to wash my hair.

Me: It's okay.  A lot of people skip a day between washing their hair.

Co-worker: But I never do, so it's going to get super greasy.

Me: Just tell people you put gel in it.  If you see them staring.

This reminds me of a story my friend told me about her friend, who wore a purse to the mall that was missing one strap, and she was so self-conscious about it she said to anyone who looked at her, "It broke," apologetically, and no one knew what she was even talking about.

"There's gel in it."

"...What??"

All Y'all

Anyone is a cautionary tale.