This might not even be funny...

I just read this joke in the comments section of Sour Bob's blog and I laughed so hard, there's a good bet I peed a little. In all honesty, it's probably not even that funny, but I have always been partial to the kind of jokes that people's dads who wear knee socks and Hawaiian shirts, tell. It's just the kind of girl I am. With that in mind, enjoy. Maybe.

A College professor was doing a study testing the senses of first graders using a bowl of Lifesavers. He gave all the children Lifesavers
and asked them to identify them by color and flavor. As the children tasted each one, they said:
"Red..................cherry",
"Yellow...............lemon",
"Green................lime",
"Orange...............orange".
Finally, the professor gave them all honey Lifesavers. After sucking on them for a few moments none of the children could identify the taste.
"Well" he said, "I'll give you all a clue. It's what your mother may sometimes call your father.
One little girl looked up in horror, spit hers out and yelled,
"Spit' em out - they're buttholes!!!

Then again, *any* use of "butthole": funny.

P.S. New poll.

Boo-YAH!

It's been a long weekend, y'all, but after 2 calls to my landlord and 3 to the police (the po-po, if you will), Chickyboom has been evicted. He's out of here in less than 2 weeks.

Mary T. in the hiz-ouse!

Could I *be* anyone else?

The results are in.


Which 'Friend' Are You?Find out!

Awareness.

Some people make me sick.

The Origin of Love

Hello friends and enemas--

I forgot to post on Valentine's Day, a rebuttal to all those peops who are cranky about the day. For some reason, even though Christmas causes many people to get suicidal (no, seriously), everyone's like-- "Oh, they're just bad sports!" Yet people who are all hatey of Valentine's Day are just highly evolved? Whatever. Sour Bob even agrees. And for you diligent readers, you know SB and I have certainly gotten the shaft in the (romantic)love department recently.

There is nothing *more* evolved than showing your love for your fellow peops. While I agree that you should actively celebrate your love of everyone every day (though we all have our days when we decidedly hate everyone--me perhaps more than others), there is something kind of heartwarming about everyone coming together to celebrate love on a day marked just for the occasion.

And hello-- there's candy involved!

I gave all my friends and family Valentine cards and candy this year in personalized sandwich bags and I am happy to report that not only were they *not* all cranky about the holiday, they received the candy enthusiastically.

I love pink. I love red. I love candy. I love cards with old school cartoon characters. And no matter what I sometimes say: I really love you, too.

Sketch? I think so.

So we all get spam. That's just how it is. No one likes the mail or the meat. I have a junk filter for this purpose, but when i am bored, I open the stuff that lands in the junk folder.

After briefly noting how I could enlarge my penis, I found this *hilarious* information about email removal. This is a direct quote and i did not change one, priceless spelling.

Enjoy!

"Don't want to receive our emails anymore?  It's very easy to oppt out.  And yes, doing so really will allow you to opppt out.  We aren't just saying that so that we can put on the facade that we're legitimate advertsers, whilst laughing away, blatantly ignoring remvve requests.  If you remove your name from our list, you definitely will be remm,oved.  Your name will be marked as r,emoved in our email database, and you won't receive mail again.  We don't really know how more clearly we can explain this.  Just take our word for it.  Otherwise, continue to receive these emails.  Now is your chance to opp,t out.  Do so by clicking this "UNSUBCRIBE" link.  P.S. - It really works!!!"

When Gallery Furniture Does NOT Save You $$$$: Never

If you're like me, you find Mattress Mac to be: hilarious. If you're not from Houston, this is just another one of those local flavors to file under "Slime in the Ice Machine." But I am using M.M. as a segue into a more universal theme: the year-round sale.

Coming up on Monday (in the U.S. at least) is Presidents' Day (Observed). Basically, this is a holiday thought up because two pretty popular presidents (one depending on your status as a confederate or not...) both have birthdays in February.

What?

You know, I have a lot of friends that have birthdays in February. Three close friends and my grandma. I think maybe we should have a "Mary T's peops' Day" (Observed) on some Monday, too. The point I'm getting at: this is a non-holiday and yet, every retailer out there is making the most of it.

For you locals, you realize that Gallery Furniture pretty much always has a really stupid reason to have a sale. Right now, for Mac's 52nd birthday (month), 52 items are marked down sixty! seventy! even EIGHTY! percent. So we're used to that by now. They have a superbowl sale, an April Showers sale, and all kinds of crap like that.

Now other retailers are getting in on the act too with their Presidents' Day sales. It's not long before we can expect, "It's rainy and bleh, it's Wednesday, so come buy stuff" Sale. Seriously. Why can't retailers just come to grips with the following:
1) Post-Christmas sales are always kind of low
2) The economy is pretty freakin' sucky
3) No one needs that much furniture and/or crap.

What's the lesson here? You can invent a sale, but you can't fool me into thinking it's a holiday, by golly!

Larry, Curly and Me or Why *not* me?

E. is quite familiar with this rant because she hears it from me every time that I hear the error in question. What is this error I speak of? Hyper-correction. Many educated people completely blow their credibility with me, the moment such a phrase comes tumbling out of their mouths.

One such example: "Please contact Larry, Curly, or *myself.*" Would you say please contact...myself? Nein!
That is just wrong. I'm sorry if you like to use such a phrase to sound smart, but not only do you not sound smart-- I think you're an idiot. It's kind of like pretending to be the Queen of Sheeba by speaking Sheebease, only to discover that your grammar is all convoluted, showing you to be more of a phony than perhaps you already are.

What is the lesson here? Don't be afraid to use *me.* It's not like "ain't" which has come to be in the dictionary through "popular" usage. Me is actually the correct pronoun in some instances. Gasp!

Please contact Larry, Curly, or me.

This also happens often with the exchange of I for me. What is everyone's issue with me (not me as in Mary T., just the pronoun for now), anyway? I would rather someone use me incorrectly (i.e. Me and Curly are going to the store.) than to be all pretensious and funny. "Suzy is going with Sally and I." Wrong again.

In summary: An ounce of pretension is worth a pound of manure.

And the winner is...

If you haven't heard the Oscar nominations, you can find the ones everyone watches for here.

These are my picks (not that they're gonna win, but you know, if the world were fair):
Best Actress: Nicole Kidman The Hours
Best Actor: Adrien Brody The Pianist
Best Supporting Actress: Catherine Zeta-Jones Chicago
Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Walken Catch Me If You Can (this category, I think, had the best nominees of any)
Best Director: Roman Polanski The Pianist
Best Picture: The Pianist

As you can see, I found The Pianist to be one of the most excellent films of all, and I have seen almost all of the nominated movies for all the categories. Also, the fact that I picked Polanski for Best Director is a big maturity move for me considering I have sworn him off because of some of his other pictures (Macbeth's head on a stick, anyone?). I would also like to laugh really heartily at the fact that slimey Richard Gere was excluded from any honors, despite Chicago's 13 nominations. To the Academy: I thank you.

Help An Old Lady Across the Street

Hi peops. As some of you know, I am a Big Sister for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Houston. During the months of February, March, and April, BBBS is collecting pledges for a program called Bowl for Kids' Sake. I am participating in this event in April, but I need your help! BBBS has not been able to make any local matches since November because of financial problems. This is a really great program and if you can pledge per pin or a flat fee, that would be awesome!

The minumum/pin is $.10 (low scores will be rounded up to 100 by BBBS) and the minimum flat fee is $10.00. I don't like selling things to people, so I am putting this information up here as a way to raise awareness without making you feel guilty if you cannot contribute. However, if you can volunteer your money or even your time to this event, please contact me!

Thanks SO much everyone!

The "Man" Upstairs

Okay, so this morning as I showered and listened to the usually grunting and stomping going on above, I started cracking up at the expression "the man upstairs," sometimes used to refer to God. I don't know who is living upstairs from y'all, but for me, the dreaded, evil Chickyboom is the "man" (I prefer to call him the wicked entity instead of man) upstairs from me and as you all know, he is the devil incarnate.

By the way, thanks for all of your support in matters of the Chickyboom. In the last week, I have called the cops on his sorry self twice for rattling my ceiling with his trademark boomchickyboom music and I think he has finally taken the hint. A couple days ago he gave me *such* a dirty look, but I was just looked at him like-- come on, go ahead and say something you rat bastard. Here is what *I* would have said to him. "Oh, you know, you're right. I am so sorry for calling the cops on you, wonderful neighbor! I should have called them on the jerk whose friends drop their cigarette butts all over my back steps, who never empties the garbage and fills up everyone else's, who makes a mess of the laundry room, and whose "business associates" are always over getting drunk, parking in resident spaces, and rattling the ceiling with their stupid video games, bad guitar playing, and electronic music. Oh wait. That's you. Beeotch."

An Ode to Mr. Ed

You know what I like about Mr. Ed? "Mr. Ed will never speak unless he has something to say."

People always want to be able to comment to other people on something or the other, even if that comment is basically a non-sequitar or occasionally, completely inappropriate.
Person one: My daughter is a Brownie girl scout.
Person two: I ate a brownie once at my Aunt Millie's.

So today I was in Petco (because it's where the pets and their moms go) and a guy in there had two 12 week old pit bulls (everybody: awwwww!) Of course, I found out he breeds them (grrrrrr...) but anywho, the cashier heard me say that I have a pit. So when I get to the front of the line, he says "So you have a pit?" Me: Yep. He: "My mom don't like those dogs much. She had one, but it jumped a lot so she had to get rid of it."

What the *hell* am I supposed to say to that? People, if you don't have something worthwhile to say, how about you just shut your mouth? Everyone will appreciate your respectful silence. Especially me.

And on a final note: grrr.

Weird Science

Have you ever had a disagreeable stomach that you could kind of feel in your ears? If so, please contact me. M! and E. think I am making this up, and also, I want it to go away.

Punxsutawney Phil and Me

Ok, so it's Groundhog Day. Hope you had a good one. Here's my question.

If Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow, it's probably because the sun is out, right? But that means six more weeks of winter. But if he doesn't, that means it's probably cloudy and miserable and so spring is just around the corner?

How does that make any damn sense? Do people take that seriously? Here is the official web site. Rent the movie. Get ready for Valentine's Day.

Happy Groundhog Day! And to all a good night.