I don't have a degree in it, but I have studied mannequinology a bit.
If so, you might want to call Cheryl. Or not.
There must be a segment of the population that would, right?
Methinks Cheryl gets handicapped parking on account of being delusional.
...it's going to be a 5-second job. Just grab a toilet seat and go.
And then I'm in Menard's and find this:
That just isn't fair. I didn't study for this kind of test.
Turning to Google, I find out that cardinals are the unofficial bird of Christmas. They can’t get free meals at Cracker Barrel, at least not now, not until they’re official. Why are they the Christmas bird?
Most “why” questions can be answered with this word: Money. But not this one. The cardinals are not bribing Hallmark.
They’re red, that’s why. Red equals Christmas. Plus, the campaign on social media – started by whom? – to have us believe that cardinals come around to show us that Aunt Bessie, who died last year, isn’t really gone. She sent the red-winged guy to remind us that she loves us.
We’ll be seeing more of these critters on Christmas cards in the future. Aunt Bessie will see to it.
And while we’re forecasting the future, there is this: If history has taught us anything, sometime soon we can expect the females to organize protests and chirp their way to equality. They’ve been underrepresented on Christmas cards and they’re just a bit pissed about that.
Comes a time when we take another look at the December cards we received, and that time came last night. Two piles: keep, recycle.
This one is in the keep pile because it’s unusual. I’m assuming the dude is Santa, although I have to allow for the possibility that it could be Jesus.
Nah, it’s Santa all right. The long white beard nails that down. There are no photos of Jesus with a white beard.
But Santa isn’t delivering toys, and he isn’t wearing his red uniform. Instead, he’s taking a stroll through the woods in the snow, resplendent in his white robe, pale blue jacket, and pine cone necklace. His destination is unclear. Is he delivering a wreath (left hand), an owl (right hand), or a bunny (sack slung over his shoulder)?
Wait – I don’t think Santa has a destination at all. Just posing for a portrait. Those aren’t work clothes, right?
Kudos to the photographer for catching Santa, the owl, and two rabbits all with their eyes open. And kudos to the owl for pretending he isn’t aching to rip the rabbit’s throat out. Must have been a Christmas truce.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
So spoke Macbeth. Well, Shakespeare said so anyway.
More than 6 decades ago, I was required by Mrs. O’Brien to memorize those lines for an English class. Today, I could remember most of those words; Google helped with the rest.
Excluding the short-term variety, memories are stored in the hippocampus, the neocortex, and the amygdala. The Macbeth quote must have been scattered around those 3 places, because I couldn’t quite extract it.
Another memory that sprang forth today, from whatever dark corner of my brain it has been lying dormant for several decades, is this one:
The angle of the dangle is proportional to the heat of the meat, if the mass of the ass is constant.
Back to Google, where I learned that there is a website called urbandictionary.com, and therein you will find several pretty cool variations of the dangle angle maxim.
As a boy, I went to a Presbyterian church regularly. I suspect that my mom sent her kids there so that she could do some godawful sex thing with my step-father. I have no proof, but there is evidence. She did have another kid when I was 4, and then again when I was 14. And 18. It was a small house and Sunday morning was about the only time they had the house to themselves. But that’s a story for another day.
When the family visited my grandparents in southern Illinois, we spent Sunday mornings at Ten Mile Baptist Church, where my grandparents were regulars. Most weeks, the only miles driven by Grandpa Carr in his rusty 1934 Chevy were the church’s round-trip miles. I think his speed on those gravel roads topped out at 23, but that’s a story for another day.
Whether it was the Baptists or the Presbys, I don’t know, but one of their hymnals contained a song called “I Will Make You Fishers of Men.” Not that anyone in those pews used a hymnal; everyone knew the tunes and the words, which are:
I will make you fishers of men,
Fishers of men,
Fishers of men,
I will make you fishers of men
If you follow me;
If you follow me,
If you follow me,
I will make you fishers of men,
If you follow me.
If I had heard the words clearly, I would have been confounded by “fishers of men” because that would not have made even the slightest sense to me. Fishers I got – had to be someone who fishes. For fish. I had done that. Men are not fish (or so I thought at the time), so fishers of men wouldn’t have made any sense.
In church, they made a big deal out of a virgin birth and I tried to understand what that meant. But without knowing what virgin meant (nobody, in 1952, would provide real insight into virginity to a 9-year-old), my confusion just increased. Not making any sense was indeed the prevailing atmosphere in church, but that’s a story for another day.
I misunderstood the words “fishers of men” – I thought I heard the congregants singing “fisher cement.” Which made no sense. Every time that song got sung, I went home wondering what the hell (and I did know the word hell back then, although saying it out loud was a punishable offense) fisher cement was. I thought I knew what fishers meant, and I thought I knew what cement was, but I couldn’t think of any, even oblique, connection between the two.
Maybe I asked my mother, or maybe I didn’t. She was fond of answers like “To make little boys ask questions.” Pressing her for a reasonable answer was generally not conducive to my health and safety, but that’s a story for another day.
Fisher cement. I wondered many times: What could that mean? I was born into this world. I didn’t design it, just tried to understand it. I didn't know what fisher cement was, but I knew I didn’t want to be any kind of cement. When church became optional for me, I quit going.
