TWIR - Vacation Edition

Well, kids, I'll be on vacation until September 2.

1. The Olympics have been truly exciting to watch. Granted, the diving gets a little boring and I still don't get water polo, but I even found myself riveted to a badminton match. As usual the announcers got a little intrusive but for the most part they didn't exceed their expected levels on nincompoopery.

2. Yesterday at work a kid we fired went postal and threatened to kill me, the other manager and the new guy. He then ran through the parking lot like he was in some Chappell Show skit. As far as I know he spent last night in jail. I know somewhere in there there's something funny...

3. I hope Barama picks Joe Biden for his Veep. OMG, how funny will this fall be if we have Joe Biden in the news everyday? BTW, if he in fact picks Biden, I predict Barama will go down in history as the guy who was a worse presidential candidate than Michael Dukakis.

4. Did I mention that we're pretty sure this kid was serious?

5. Dear John McCain, Please pick either Bobby Jindall or Mitt Romney since you don't have the wisdom or the cajones to go after Steve Forbes or Michael Bloomberg.

6. We're leaving tonight at 11:00 PM. We will drive through with planned stops in Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia. Since I am driving with three women, I imagine we'll also stop in New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina and Florida. We'll get to Orlando around 5:00 tomorrow afternoon. I will eat Pemmican and drink Mountain Dew and listen to Miles Davis, Sinatra and Coltrane. I would have made an odd trucker.

See you in September.

Gotta Love Those Jersey Girls

So I'm walking from my car to the store yesterday to buy my NY Post to read during lunch. I always read the NY Post at lunch, but that's not the point of the story. Ahead of me, maybe twenty feet away is a twenty-something female-type. She is on her cell phone. She is fighting with her boyfriend, loudly. I love when people are clueless about themselves and their surroundings. I did not slow down, but I could not help but listen because she was so loud.

Here, as best as I can remember, is her end of the conversation: "I don't [expletive deleted] care you [expletive deleted][expletive deleted]. No, I'm not the same person I was three months ago. I'm in a different [expletive deleted] place you [expletive deleted][expletive deleted] and I told you I am [expletive deleted] not going to [expletive deleted] put up with your [expletive deleted][expletive deleted][expletive deleted], you [expletive deleted]."

"Wow," I thought. I bought my paper and walked back outside. Now this lively young thing was talking to her girlfriend, recapping the whole sordid affair. Basically, from what I could gather from what she was telling Nichole was that Paul called back to apologize and that was when "[she] just [expletive deleted] felt the [expletive deleted] like letting the [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted] have it."

I report this out of a sense of duty. It was obvious that Paul's (I guess) ex-girlfriend who is currently BFF's with Nichole felt her personal business needed to be heard by the world, and since I fancy myself a writer, well, I guess it's my cosmic responsibility...

Oulsham Is Just Like People From China?

So there's this Oreo Cookies commercial with a red-haired, low-melanined little girl. She is obviously American. She is sitting with her equally low-melanined American mom on a train. On the next train is a Chinese girl. She is probably from Los Angeles but the good folks at Oreo Cookies would like us to believe she is from China.

Lo and behold the ignorant, culturally challenged low-melanin American girl is shocked! Shocked I tells ya! To learn that this Chinese girl makes silly faces, breathes air, sits on trains, looks out windows and eats cookies too!

What is most fundamentally insulting about this commercial is the fact that there is a strata of our culture who believes that the rest of us would find it hard to believe that Chinese girls are not so different than girls who are not from China (or Los Angeles).

Things I am tired of:

1. Racial stereotypes in the guise of re-educating the masses about multi-cultural ism.
2. People who have spent their lives learning everything they know about cultural differences from television, movies and insulated college professors relentlessly teaching those of us who have lived our lives in the actual, multi-cultural world about the differences between people.
3. People who confuse race with culture and then open their mouths and allow their stupidity to dribble out.

TWIR

This week's The Week In Review is brought to you by I'm Thinking Arby's Five For $5.95 Meal Deal.

1. When did volleyball become a sport for bad-asses? It won't be long before bikers and Allman Brothers fans throughout the country start streaming to volleyball matches. Seriously.

2. Yesterday I encountered the first full-blown heroin addict I'd been anywhere near in twenty-five years. He was so far gone he passed out standing up. It was incredibly sad on a number of different levels. Just pathetic and wasteful.

3. Hardball Chris Matthews is actually promo-ing his show by showing the hard-hitting questions he asked Barama. Interesting. Is there a sea change afoot? Barama looked none too happy, but hey, that's life in the big leagues.

4. Why do all the swimmers in the Olympics look so odd when they have their speedy little bathing caps on? Each one has the most peculiar moon-face, and then when they take the caps off, voila! they look normal. Might those caps be a bit too tight?

5. Speaking of oddness in the cranial area. I've said it before and I'll say it again, that thing on Bob Costas' head is fooling no one. Well, it might be fooling someone, but it's not fooling me. He's had the same boyish little bangs on his forehead for four years. I wish my actual head of hair could ever look the same from day-to-day.

6. Circuses scare me a little so I avoid them.

I have to work the entire weekend so I hope it rains. Have a nice week.

Oulsham Answers The Phone

WARNING: If you don't think about this or you are superstitious you will probably be offended.

After twelve different calls in two days from the same number:

Oulsham: (meanly) Hello.
Person On Other End: Is (insert name of SO here) there?
Oulsham: (meanly) Who is this?
POOE: Adrian.
Oulsham: (meanly) Adrian who?
POOE: From one of her charities.

Let it be known here that my SO counteracts me by being nice to small kitties, children and strangers on the telephone.

Oulsham: (snottily) What charity?
POOE: Children With Cancer.
Oulsham: (sarcastically) All children or specific children?
POOE: Is (insert name of SO here) there?
Oulsham: (wearily) Did you just call here five minutes ago?
POOE: Not me.
Oulsham: (meanly) You've called eleven times in two days and I have told you to stop calling here. So, stop calling here.
POOE: But it's for children with cancer.
Oulsham: (meanly) Write in your notes there that I asked you to stop calling here, even if it is for children with cancer.
POOE: You don't want to help children with cancer?
Oulsham: No, and I told my wife she's not allowed to help them either.
POOE: (click)

John Edwards Is Better Than You Think

In the all-time winning rationalization of poor behavior, John Edwards actually said that he cheated on his wife "while her cancer was in remission." Nice.

I mean, seriously, what kind of guy do you think John Edwards is? The kind of guy that would cheat on his wife while her cancer was flaring up? Get out of here, man, not John Edwards!

The Olympics

The opening ceremonies were awe-inspiring, and I feel sorry for those of you who let your cynicism get in the way of enjoying a true spectacle. There certainly were a lot of people performing. I'll say.

I like that the French swimmer-dudes had to eat their words. Dopes. Really, seriously, why do we love it when we take it to the French?

Beach volleyball is the sport for me this time around, whether male or female.

Synchronized diving is beyond me, and quite frankly, the swimsuits the guys wear make me just a little uncomfortable. That's right I'm secure enough to admit when I'm a tad insecure.

The bike races through the mountains were fantastic, I think in large part because of the scenery.

Michael Phelps eats between 8,500 and 10,000 calories a day while he is training. Yikes.

Thank God for 1080i, because even if the sport is boring, the picture looks great.