Funny by association?

Check out this commercial. You've probably seen it before. It's in high (and loud) rotation on Fox.

The Elaine-and-Jerry Dude is in my ward (church congregation, for you no-Mos). His name is Ryan Hamilton. He's got a great stand up comedy act. I've never had a conversation with him, but we were at the same dinner a few weeks ago and, curiously, he was one of the very quietest people in the room. I kept expecting him to switch on at any moment, but like the limp Looney Tunes singing frog he remained stubbornly silent (except for one little joke about lycra leggings). Maybe he was in mourning for his newly flattened car tire. Or maybe -- more likely -- silently harvesting our quirks for his new act.

If he wins the competition with a new bit about a flabby chick committing social suicide by poking fun at a muscular, attractive young Ironman champion, I'm hitting him up for royalties.

So vote for Ryan! It's a vote for clean humor, missionary hair, and achy tummy muscles (no Pilates required!)

I'm an octovark -- what are you?

What kind of cross-bred critter are you?

You are an octovark. Elusive, quiet, and sensitive, you prefer to glide through life thinking deeply about everything. And as you ponder life's biggest questions (like where you can find some tasty termites on the bottom of the ocean) BEWARE to anyone who invades your personal space! They may get piddled on with ink. (The pen is mightier than the sword, you know.)
Take this quiz!

What would Miss Manners do?

What should I do, guys?

I was recently e-vited to a get-together by someone I barely knew. However, this was a person I rather admired, so I was jazzed by the invite. Flattered. Jumped right on board. I thought I detected a bit of surprise when I appeared, but I had a great time and they seemed to enjoy my presence, too.

However, a couple days later I figured out that I'd been invited by mistake -- a simple slip of the mouse. Marie felt very silly, and a little sad.

Now there's another get-together being planned by this same person, and they have invited me to this as well, probably out of politeness as much as anything. On one hand, I enjoyed the company, but on the other, both my ego and my sense of propriety are in turmoil. Should I have enough pride to only go where I'm really wanted? Is it wrong to play an innocent mistake to your advantage? Should I let this kind person off the hook?

Social Dufus needs your advice.

I beheld the great and spacious tower of tuna. And it fell. And great was the fall thereof.

My grandfather invented the stackable tuna can.

Sort of.

I'll spare you the long story on that, but the fact remains that but for him, your towers of tuna and cat food and what have you might still be tipping onto your head, pounding you into an early grave. I'm sure we've all lost a loved one to a fatal tuna avalanche.

So I've had a special pride in the technological marvel that is the modern tuna can. Until today.

I've been planting my veggie garden this week. As I'm an apartment-dweller, I reserved a plot in the local community garden, which is strictly all-organic. Now, I consider myself a fairly decent gardener, but the thought of facing nature without my killer sprays and space-age fertilizers was a bit unnerving, so I've been consulting a book written by a longtime organic gardener. She shares all her homey remedies for what ails yer veggies and I've been poring over her sage advice, hoping to save myself the heartache of holey tomatoes. She informs me that it is quite easy to deter a common ground-dwelling sweet pepper pest simply by removing both ends of a tuna fish can, lowering it around the pepper plant, and pushing it a little way into the soil. How simply elegant and elegantly simple! How wise and with-it I will look, putting little metal collars around my peppers! How abundant will be my crop!

Except there is no removing the bottom of a modern tuna can. Try it, and you'll see what I mean. In our effort to increase the ease of can stacking we have decreased the ease of providing essential pepper armor.

You call this progress, Grandpa? Forcing your favorite granddaughter to saw at the bottom of a tuna can with sundry cutting devices, all in vain? And what if I slipped and stabbed myself on the jagged edge of one of your newfangled cans? Bled myself dry and joined the martyred dolphins? How would you feel then, hmmmm?

No worse than I'll feel when my naked little sweet peppers are mowed down by creepy-crawlies. Oh, the humanity.

When a young lady's fancy turns to thoughts of pork liver.

More evidence of global warming: my annual braunschweiger craving has kicked in TWO MONTHS early. This is so messed up. The end of the world! Dogs and cats, living together!

Also in the news: I finally changed the irritating profile photo of the bucktoothed 9-year-old me making a face in a photo booth. You can see that I replaced it with a current shot of me from my very best angle, wearing flawless lippy. Don't worry -- I don't plan to blog on anything important just because my blog now appears to be the blog of a grownup.

Gadabout 3: Fun with Wet Cement.

Remember: the game of Balderdash is still very much on and you must keep playing with me, or I will cry. To get to it easily, click on the rainbow-colored Balderdash link in the sidebar. Oooh -- pretty rainbow -- you know you wanna click on it!



My neighborhood is such a wealth of weird -- I've got more photos.



Moral of the story: be sure you're not drunk or functionally illiterate before you start writing things in wet cement.
















On a first glance I thought a baby dinosaur had escaped from a dinosaur egg. On second glance I realized that a baby dinosaur had escaped from a dried-out gourd. Either way, baby dinosaur on the loose! Lock up your little yappy dogs!


On second thought....don't.













My dearsweet grandmother would always put random words in quotes. As in:

Happy Birthday! "We love you" dear Marie.

I come from a cynical generation and rather than lending the sincerity and emphasis that she intended, these gratuitous quotation marks always looked vaguely sarcastic to me, as if Grandma were doing air quotes when she said she loved me. By the same token, this address plaque seemed a little nudge-nudge wink-wink: "Now, dear visitor, what do you suppose 'F' could stand for? Hmmmm?"









Flag-flying yard artists have a flag for every season of the year. Apparently spring is now represented by flowers and BBQ. But mainly BBQ.

















This cat didn't move a muscle all the time I was shooting pictures of it. I think it was paralyzed with embarrassment, poor miserable critter. Or mourning the loss of its gonads. Or could this be a new low in bad yard art?












My sweet poochie friend with the spiked collar. If you'd met him, you'd realize how hilarious the spiked collar is. Picture the Easter Bunny with a mohawk and you've got the idea.






















Strange...the Jolly Roger and the Union Jack, side by side. Patriotic British pirates? THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE ARE LIVING IN NUMBER 318??













Sweet little tulips, sweet little yard, sweet little decorative fence that barely comes up to hip level, massive snarling Rottweilers running in the yard. Can anyone say "lawsuit"?






















Someone loves me! (Oh, wait -- this is dated March 1985, when I was nine years old. My admirer was a pedophile. Rats.)












Three charmingly cryptic headstones were standing side by side in this yard. I especially liked this one. Forget the "beloved sister, daughter, blah blah." If I'm spending thousands on a block of granite, I want people to pay attention.

Perhaps, "Step not upon my head, dear friend, or you will meet a gruesome end."


What do you want on YOUR tombstone?









To be continued....