Let's go do some crimes!

Happy Festivus and muchos felicidades to all y'all -- here's to a happy and blog-filled 2013! With that, I give to you with much bogglement:

A Small Handful of Things That Happened While My Wee Fam Was In Texass Over Xmass

--It was a weird, still, humid, tornadoey 80 degrees when we got there, the kind of weather that makes you A) scan the skies nervously and B) mightily -- MIGHTILY -- regret the wearing of jeans because goddamn the way they stick to your skin in these conditions.

--Three-ish days later,* it was 16 degrees and spitting snow-ice. My mom's house, where we were bunkered, is over 100 years old, with 12-foot ceilings, original windows, and hardwood floors built nice and high over a hollow and ancient foundation. The heating, such as it is, consists of open-grilled gas space heaters, the same ones in continuous use since at least my own early childhood. I will leave you to draw your own conclusions as to our physical comfort and our peace of mind w/r/t the toddling Danger Baby and his consuming lust for new peril.

--Just before midnight one chilly eve, we were all awakened by the sound of seven (7) gunshots in the relatively near vicinity. A 911 call produced two cop cars in the drive within about 45 seconds, which is pretty great service (also the house is "in town," about four blocks from the courthouse square and three from the police station so there's that). Other neighbors had called the cops also, and after a look around the property, the officers concluded it was "probably just some dumb kids." Firing off lethal weapons, in a populated area, for fun, at midnight during Christmas week. So obviously we were totally relieved.

--First-degree blood relations of mine agreed that the proper response to this incident was for them to get their own concealed-carry licenses and the firearms pertaining thereto. Mr. Gleemonex and I agreed that the proper response to this incident was to not ever go back to the town of Cowburg or indeed the state of Texass again without a funeral-level reason.

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*I never know what day it is or how many days have passed while I'm there, the whole fucking state is a wormhole on the time/space continuum.

How are they going to deliver a bowling alley HERE?

Things I Received As Xmas or Bday Presents Before the Year 1992

Guess which ones were given to me by my late father?* (Mr. Gleemonex is exempted from this game cause he already knows.)

• Large jar of Hellman's mayonnaise
• Single can of tennis balls
• One-gallon jar of maraschino cherries
• Used copy of the Webelos handbook
• Four king-sized Snickers bars
• Live, actual puppy with red bow around its neck
• Pair of Russian-made pointe shoes
• Tickets to Andre Agassi / Jimmy Connors charity tennis match
• Book of sheet music of "today's popular hit songs," including numbers by Duran Duran and their contemporaries, to go with my kickass new Casio keyboard from my grandmother
• Garfield keychain with bottle opener

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*Answer: All of them. It's virtually a chart of the family's fortunes and/or my pop's sobriety, eh wot?

You know the deal with those tiny little carts they got

A Few Things About and Around Whole Foods Market

--It costs me sixty American dollars to get out of that store, every fucking time, and I am not even kidding. It's like this weird wormhole in space where the tab always magically adds up to within a couple bucks of the number 60. Doesn't matter what I'm buying -- fruit and some pizza dough plus a bottle of wine? $58. 67. Milk, some breaded chicken breasts,* little cloth baggie of bulk pine nuts, couple of tiny pastries? $61.30. Shitload of Annie's pasta, some odds and ends from the cheese case, ciabatta, more fucking fruit? $60.09. And btw, fuck you, nine cents, for standing between me and perfect harmony with the universe.

--If you want to know where all the body-positive, gender-fluid vegan hipsters of the ass-end of the Silicon Valley earn their legitimate bucks for spending on tattoos, ear stretchers and art supplies, I can tell you: It is at the Whole Foods Market. And incidentally, though one may have been conditioned to expect Attitude directed your suburban SAHM way from such hip, artsy-seeming folks, these gentlepersons are really nice and extremely professional in the performance of their jobs. It's a pleasure to interact with them, honestly.

--Just saying something is a bagel does not make it a bagel. This is not only a Whole Foods problem -- some of these are national brands of breadlike round food product -- but I notice it there because I spend a stupid amount of time in their bread section trying to find something edible for less than eight dollars, and goddamn it, those fucking things are not bagels. They're just not.

--The local ordinance banning single-use plastic bags seems to have effected a revival of the lost art of grocery bagging. You BYO reusables (at all stores, not just WFM), and since you get a 10-cent discount per bag for the BYO (instead of buying paper bags on the spot), the checkers are encouraged to use the fewest possible bags -- it's actually really neat, how efficiently, quickly and thoughtfully the bags get packed, instead of everything just getting tossed randomly into fifty flimsy crappy bird-killing plastic trash bags.

--Oh, the sad/hilarious '70s "health foods!" The whole store (and indeed, half of your local Safeway, these days) is full of amazing, appetizing locally-sourced/sustainable/minimally-processed yada yada yada, which is the way we understand healthy eating these days, but every once in awhile you come upon a product which has not had a graphics redesign since its 1974 launch from Jim & Helen's yurt on the commune, some terrible bricklike cake of grain/vegetable/carob pressings from which you can actually feel the waves of good-for-you obligation emanating out of its game little hippie label (featuring sunbursts, way too many words always including "nature" and "earth," and/or the resigned mug of some poor kid whose parents are determined shall never ever taste the vile poison of Wonder Bread). You mock it in your head, then you are shamed, thinking of how it's Jim & Helen et. al. who started us all on the path to this point in space and time while everyone played a couple decades' worth of "Let's Laugh at the Hippie!" ... but still you're not buying it. Because yucko blucko, man.

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*Because I have done cut up my last chicken, y'all. I mean it. HOWLING FANTODS.

There's NO FILM IN IT, DENNIS!

What.

The FUCK.

Is this fucking bullshit waterheaded fuckaround with making books that are only in Kindle?

Twice in the last week I've tried to buy books that I FUCKING WANT (Sepinwall, Takei), and THEY'RE ONLY IN FUCKING KINDLE.

Somebody tell me I'm just being a goddamned old lady all "Where's my glasses? Did you put the cat out? How do ya work this here thingamajiggy? Why can't President Hoover fix my vacuumer-machinerator? He built it!" and it's just that I can't figure it out. Please tell me that, and show me, with the patience of my own great-grandson indulging his beloved old daffy Grannykins, how to find the print products on the Internets because it's just well-hidden to force me to buy Bezos's stupid numbnuts whirligig, would you?

Because if this is the fucking future -- as in, they're not making paper-based books anymore -- then

I FUCKING QUIT.