Economy

For today’s entrant in the Non-Election Totally Out of Context Sports Quote Week, we turn to a story I covered over at Along The Rails, and the fact that if you own a lady horse in need of some lovin’ and foalin’, she can now set a date with the sire of Triple Crown threat Funny Cide for the low, low price of $225,000.  He’s on sale!  Last year at this time, it was three hundred thou!  ACT NOW!

The headline?  “Distorted Humor’s Fee Drops.”  Awwwww, Distorted Humor!  It’s okay!  This is totally normal!  It happens to every stallion.

I want the Obama people to put together an informercial on this, stat.  Get Billy Mays, Alan Thicke, that colon-cleansing guy, whoever.  There is no end to the marketing possibilites with this one.

lalalalalalalalala gun sales through the roof I can’t heeeearrrrrrrr yooooouuuu at:  mbe@drinktothelasses

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Hammy

Because I’m so focused on the major issues facing this nation, it’s Totally Out of Context Sports Quote Week here on Blonde Champagne.  And today we turn to Mr. Kiss Your Bicep:

“When I’m bending down, I’m making sure my buttocks are pressing to the outside.”

Words, I think we can all agree, to live by.

dry heaving this afternoon, but not because of buttocks to the outside at:  mbe@drinktothelasses.com

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Bob Davie And Way Way Way WAY Too Much Information

“We actually did have a deep snapper on our football team.  We called him ‘Cheeks.’”

-4th Quarter, ESPN coverage, Notre Dame vs. Washington

Then Bob kicked it over to former Bachelor Jesse Palmer in the studio.  Man, that ESPN has got it goin’ on.  It needs to have EVERY SINGLE Irish broadcast.

apparently, quarterback Jimmy Clausen also owns a white mink coat, for some reason at:  mbe@drinktothelasses.com

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Dear Various Parents:

You know what would be really great?  If you didn’t dress your children like pimps for Halloween.

I saw this with my own eyes at Air and Scare this weekend, because what truly cool people do is stand beneath the hung wreckage of failed prototype aircraft and offer small, chokable toys to children who display one of three reactions:

1) “You… don’t have candy?”

2) Backing away

3) Outright sobbing

So if these children were thus correctly judging me, you’d better believe I was judging them and their enormous, pink leopard patteren fur-trimmed hats right back.  The first little boy I saw dressed like this?  Okay.  Maybe his family is… different, and Mom and Dad’s idea of an adorable good time is trussing up a ten-year-old like a sex trafficker and escorting him to the nose of the Enola Gay.  But when there’s more than one?  Complete with enormous plastic gold dollar sign necklace?  Yeah, Western Civilization = OVER.

don’t even want to know what little sister’s dressed like at:  mbe@drinktothelasses.com

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Gun Show

Last week, I watched Will The Smaller Child Nephew put together a train track.  Will is two, and, of course, a genius.  He was most recently seen looking at a fall display over his mother’s shoulder at the grocery store, announcing “Onetwothreefourfive pumpkins!”  Yesterday he set the table for the entire family.  In other words, he is way way ahead of his aunt in the… everything department.

As I lay next to him on the carpet, he fitted two little track parts against one another.  “Good job, Will,” he congratulated himself as they snapped together.

Man, there’s a lot to learn from there.  I don’t congratulate myself over anything, because if it’s not a total and complete eff-up, it’s the bare minimum.  Meat loaf not done after an hour at 350?  Eh, a little raw meat in the center won’t hurt me.

I did a video workout the other day which issued the invitation.  “Every time you complete the bicep curl,” the host yelled, “I want you to kiss your bicep!”

Good job, bicep.

lactic acid at:  mbe@drinktothelasses.com

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Spin Me Right Round

Sometimes I miss the roller rink.

When I lived in The Swamp, across the street from my apartment sat a middle school, still and hollow in the summer months.  At that point, I hadn’t rollerbladed since I graduated from college, but there in the wooly humidity I strapped on the skates again, first balancing myself by touching my fingertips to passing light poles until the wobbliness was gone, then building up speed, hurtling round and round the parking lot, down the smooth sidewalks, around the curbs.  I had a box of a job which I hated, a quickly emptied glass of fizz something on the weekends, and a hurricane-warped car.

But early in the morning or as the sun went down, that fell away in the face of the push-stride, push-stride. It went on for hours, sometimes; just me and the the blacktop and the whirr of the wheels.

Because I was, in those days, going in circles.

low impact at:  mbe@drinktothelasses.com

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Come on, Barbie, Let’s Go Horrify Small Innocent Children

UPDATE: Barbie no more. Below is the reason why.

The other day I mentioned that I am ramping down my sugar intake. I did not tell you why, although the reason is kind of obvious (for fun!)

Actually, I need to fit into a dress.

Barbie’s dress.

I still have a bagful of my favorites around here somewhere. Happy Birthday Barbie’s, I’m thinking, and Diana Ross Barbie’s sparkly red gown, and the one the Peaches ‘n Cream Barbie arrived in, complete with sherbet-colored organza boa. My plan is to one day become rich enough so that I can take the tiny little garment to a seamstress and say “See this? I want one of these. Only, slightly larger.”

Once I was married, I thought my size-body-to-clothing days were over, but no. This Barbie’s dress is a six. I am not, at the moment, a size six. I am a size four to twelve, depending on the cut of the clothing item, ab suckage, and the time of the month.

See, I belong to a marketing group which places people for public speaking, education, and marketing jobs, and last month there was a call for Caucasian women with blonde hair who appear in their early twenties.

First of all, this is quite possibly the first time anyone has ever wanted me to be pale. Secondly, it is a long-butt time since I’ve been carded. And third of all, how incredibly racist and lookist and sexist and oh look, it pays a hundred dollars.

The position is sponsored by a charity called Barbie Cares, and what happens is, little girls line up at their local Wal-Mart clutching their used Barbie dolls to donate. In exchange, they receive a Bag O’ Assorted Plastic Crap, and also a wave-smile, wave-smile from me in a purple dress that, from the looks of it, was last seen wadded up in a corner of Liberace’s closet, rejected as “too out there.” Anything for The Children, and also one hundred dollars.

When my profile was approved for the call, I felt extremely smug about myself (early 20′s, that’s an entire decade off !) until repeat calls were issued with increasing panic: “We’re offering travel reimbursement!” Then: “We now have a hair dye budget!” And now: “We will fly you in to stand in a Wal-Mart for four hours and collect snot germs!” I am thinking they’ll bust out Black Barbie and Polynesian Barbie and Heavily Tattooed Barbie after all.

November 8 at the Culpeper SuperCenter. Yes, you may come too, if I haven’t gotten into a kickfight with a seven-year-old first. Yes, somebody actually thought that placing me in a Wal-Mart in close contact with many small children at once is a good idea. Yes, my dressing room is probably to the left of the Home and Garden Center, right around the corner from the gerbil food. Yes, I am immensely underqualified for this position.

taking the string-powered townhouse elevator at: mbe@drinktothelasses.com

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The Smithsonian and the Holograms

I officially heard something intelligible during my Smithsonian training last week:  The curator speaking to us referred to one of the Museum glider’s wingspans as “truly outrageous.”  But he did not clarify as to whether or not said wingspan would properly qualify as  “truly truly truly outrageous.”

Also outrageous is the fact that I am having a rollout, so to speak, as an educator at the Udvar-Hazy annex.  Air & Scare is going down on Saturday from 4 PM to 8 PM, and I have been assigned to hurl candy at small children beneath the Museum’s Langley Aerodrome A display.  Because I’m not a salaried federal employee and am therefore eligible to do so, that’s why.

If you’ve never heard of an Aerodrome, you are in the blondest of company:  Until last week, when I was informed that I would be informing others about it, neither had I.  Anything which remained in the atmosphere in these early training stages pretty much falls under this category, and the Aerodrome didn’t even get off a houseboat.

I’ll be in costume, but, unfortunately for all, entirely recognizable.  Bring your magic earrings, and I’ll see you beneath the wreckage.

no one else is the same at:  mbe@drinktothelasses.com

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It’s Just Not Your Time of the Month, Is It, Dear?

I’m attempting to ramp down the sugar in my life, which means consuming only a quarter-can of icing at one sitting than the usual half.  It’s a constant struggle, what with the doughnut-pushing Lutherans and all, which means that the new Special K commercial really REALLY PISSES ME OFF.

What happens is, this mom is making a chocolate cake with her son, and she’s about to consume a great heaping fingerful of the batter– and she pauses.  Because you know what would be way better than chocolate cake batter?  Partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil, soy lecithin, and cocoa processed with alkali.  So she sits blissfully down with a big ol’ bowl of that instead.

Most.  Unrealistic.  Cereal.  Ever.

skim milk at:  mbe@drinktothelasses.com

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Ecumenical UPDATE: Lutherans R Awesome!

Today’s Gospel reading, in the Catholic Church as well as the Lutheran, was the whole bit about rendering to Caesar.  And today at Josh’s church, the pastor decided to use a prop, which was… one whole dollar.  He didn’t just wave a buck around in the air, no sir.  Everybody got his own dollar, tax free, to keep.

This brings the grand total of swag from Josh’s church to the following:

-one coffee mug

-one pencil

-many doughnuts

-two magical color-changing tee shirts

-$1

See, I think they’re on to something here:  Show up, because you never know when you’ll walk away with cold, hard cash.   We Catholics have been toying with this option for a while now, in the form of endless raffles and the occasional $500 coverall.  But listen– that’s all pay to play.  Meet us in the middle, is all I’m saying.

rendering unto the 9:30 service at:  mbe@drinktothelasses.com

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