Legitimate Business Expenses

-paper clips
-fax machine
-H2 Hummer
-hookers
-desktop computer

What's this you say? An H2 Hummer is not a legitimate business expense? Au contraire, my misguided reader! Au contraire, indeed.

Today I was driving home in my modest sedan thinking of more ways to screw the government. 1) Buy a hummer for my business and write it off as a legitimate expense. 2) Take over government with said hummer. I mean, that's what hummers are for, are they not? Warfare? Hostile takeovers? Anyone?

Right.

So I think we can all see how absolutely RETARDED it is that Berryhill Tamale Grill, 95.9 The Box, and 713-TICKETS--to name but a mere few--- each have a Hummer as their company vehicle. What tax professional is gonna look at this "company car" and be like--"Oh yeah, totally legit! Why just the other day at Berryhill, some terrorists came in and got in our pieces about Allah before they bombed the joint!" ???

And at the Box? "Yeah we were giving away tickets to some stupid concert, but only if you came out to the jungle, through the bush, over a pyramid of pygmy peops."

713-TICKETS: "But we're located near the Astrodome." While this may give some of you pause, as the Astrodome is indeed a frightening little 'hood (what with huddled masses of teens teeming from Astroworld alone!), 713-TICKETS is on South Shepherd.

In conclusion, your business does not need a promotional hummer. And further, your tax dollars are paying where hummer business tax dollars left off because these hummers were written off. Once again, it is clear that the hummer, while a fat lot of help in combat, is the most evil personal automobile ever and a sign that there are people I really, really dislike a lot.

Pigs are flying. Hell is frozen. E. has 12 children. And so on.

My fans, it is time to come clean. But first, some background...

About two weeks ago, my car "stereo" broke (it was little better than beast to begin with, and certainly nothing of the funkified audio systems so popular among the lame set). I put in a tape that I made my junior year of high school (I'm on a roll here, so I will go ahead and admit that one of the songs was the Macarena. It was 1996. It was on everyone's mix tapes, ya pinko!). The tape was old. The stereo was old. Together, they were wyld stallions. No, seriously, my car ate my tape. (Let us not have tears. Partings are a natural part of life.)

Okay, so when the tape is in and won't come out, despite the sticking of pointy things, including your fingers in the stereo, there is no radio. There is no music. There is only silence. Now, I (heart) silence as much as the next person, and perhaps moreso, having been the neighbor of ChickyB. But no radio? Come on! Even my 63 year old mom (who is, by the way, too cool for school) was like: Yikes. That's horrible. I'll buy you a new stereo. (MaryT note: Yay!) Now, as I drive often in my line of work as children's chauffeur, I had to have a quick fix. With some tape, I rigged it, so I can at least listen to radio. Now, I won't go through the whole dance of why I have still not obtained a car stereo, but I will mention that it has a little to do with the fact that one to five lanes of traffic were closed on Westheimer at the Galleria last weekend making Galleria traffic slightly more hellish, and therefore, completely intolerable. Oh, and also that I am a convenience enthusiast.

All of this is to say: I have been listening to the radio lately more than usual, even though I usually listen to it a lot. (No one makes mix tapes for me anymore, :( I am sorry to report. ) So, like everyone else in greater Houston, I take Shepherd to work in the morning, meaning, of course, that a 3 1/2 mile drive takes me somewhere between half an hour and an eternity.

I have five pre-sets: NPR, Oldies, The Point (80s), Mix 96.5, and another one that is rarely used and therefore need not be named (just know it is NOT 104 KRBE--please, I do have some boundaries).

So this morning, I was switching around and finally settled on 96.5 and started laughing hysterically. After that, I listened to impossible trivia on 107.5, as I do quite often. And then it dawned on me. I listen to morning shows. And I like them. Shall I put the KRBE sticker on my car now, or later? Or just, you know, rip my toenails off with ice picks?

Sigh.

Innovation Part Deux (Electric Boogaleux)

The following conversation (with special guest stars E. and M!) proves a few items:
1) I am on a one-way train to hell...and you know this.
2) I believe that revenge is a dish best served cold.
3) I am, as the Spanish say, en fuego.

The scene: MaryT ponders sending a response email to her nemesis from Innovation (part I) stating, in brief, that he is in fact, a gigantic a-hole who deserves to die of ghonnorhea and rot in hell (not unlike Dan Marino for the whole laces in/out incident). E. says: bad idea. M! says: bad, but hilarious idea. In order to resolve this moral conundrum, MaryT ponders the age old question: WWJD?


MaryT: I think even Jesus would call Nemesis an a**hole (This is a family site, folks.)
MaryT: I mean, JC was nobody's doormat
MaryT: well, except Pontius Pilate's
MaryT: and maybe a random crowd of Jews with stones
M!:Yikes!
E.:Yeah, I think Jesus would probably do the "other cheek" item.
MaryT: other butt cheek maybe
E.: You're going to get struck by lightning, woman.
MaryT: This I know.
E.:M! and I agree that God is going to smite you.
MaryT: (sigh)

P.S. See? Jesus is always funny. And awesome! Keep up the good work, J-man!

Innovation

When you dislike someone so much that you can neither find a term/metaphor bad enough to describe him, nor can you think of something bad enough to do to him, I recommend herpes.*

*I do not recommend you contract herpes, yourself, to give it to your nemesis, but I will certainly not discourage anyone from voodoo.

I just mean to say that, as B. so eloquently put it: When you can only describe someone as being like herpes ( a painful, itchy type of hell you relive over and over), then--wow--he must be a total a-hole.

A note to my fans: I do not have herpes, and despite the appearance of this blog, I do not place a value judgement on you if you do. Sucks to be you, though.

P.S. This blog was not based on Chickyboom, but a man not totally unlike him.

Junk You Can't Respond To

Today while eating lunch with my 5 year old charge, S, she said through a mouthful of peanut butter: your teeth are really yellow.

I mean, here is stuff that I was thinking:

"No they're not. Eat your sandwich."

"You don't even have all your teeth."

"Why did you say that?"

But the truth is, you just can't say anything. It's kind of like being told your fly is down, except you can't just zip it and go on, a little red in the face. You have to be like--dude, a 5 year old thinks my teeth are yellow. Public ridicule is in my future.

P.S. My teeth aren't really yellow.

P.P.S. I hope.

Chickyboom is back!

Not really, but you know you've missed hearing a good chickyboom story, haven't you? I haven't missed the disturbances of the peace, but the stories, well--they were fun. The 2am phone calls to the police? Not so much of the fun.

July 17 will henceforth be known as Chickyboom Day in which you may re-reap the fruits of my displeasure. Try a bite--you'll like it!

Chicky explained.

Meet Chicky's Band of Riffraff.

Chicky responsible for world hunger, war, poverty and more.

Chicky amd MaryT throw down.

"God is dead." --Chicky "Chicky is dead." --God

The excommunication that wasn't.

Old Possum's Book of Practical Chicky: Applications for Daily Life. OR-- Rethinking the Chickyboom.

Is it M! calling...or just Duran Duran?

There is a reason that we don't have the synthesizer-tastic music of the 80s around much today. The reason is none of the following: 1) better sound effects equipment (you know you thought it was totally real-sounding when Ferris Bueller used his keyboard to make wretching noises!), 2) tastes have improved (tastes, will, in fact--always be bad; I give you Avril Lavigne.)

The reason is cell phones, which as you know only existed in the form of a GIGANTIC walky talky-like gray item in the 80s. Now that cell phones are prevalent in elementary schools across America, it's more difficult to enjoy such classics as: Walk Like an Egyptian or Money for Nothing, because you're constantly like--is that my cell phone ringing?

Even when you *KNOW* that Under Pressure has some crazy synthesized junk goin' on, you're still thinking: I could have sworn I switched my ring to the A-Team or who is it this time? I am so popular!

Artists to watch out for (with phat synthesized beats):
The Bangles
David Bowie (and Queen a la Under Pressure)
Dire Straits
Duran Duran
...and even Sir Paul McCartney during his Wings era.

And now for some 80s love. When I went to Pine Cove overnight camp at age 8 (summer '89), all of the counselors went by a nickname. The only counselor I remember besides my own (Charmin) was a boy counselor whose appellation was Casio. Casio! That is so, so rad.

Get Well or Get Stuffed

I realize that my methods of animal care are what some might call a bit unorthodox, but I saw something last night that even E. agrees is a little bit of the creepy.

Some animal hospital on Richmond also offers: Taxidermy services.

"Well ma'am, we're really hoping Fido will pull through, but in case he doesn't, have you considered a decorative wall mount?"

I guess if you're a really sucky vet, you can't lose, but the whole thing is a little too Norman Bates for me, not to mention the fact that unlike Gaston, I do NOT use antlers in all of my decorating.

Molly, Frankie and I will forego the two-for-one for now, I do believe. I'm not trying to be the boss of you, my reader, or anything, but seriously: skip this one.

P.S. Would it kill y'all to leave some freaking comments? I'm treading alone out here. Be kind: holla.

"Congradulations," you're wrong!

Congratulations was not, contrary to popular belief, derived from the word graduate and or graduation. You use it, one would think, on other occasions.

And now a bit of word fun: congratulations means with (con) extra satisfaction/favor/support (grat, which you may recognize from such words as gratuity, gratuitous,gratifying), wishes (lations, but I am making it up at this point). Now, who wants with-a graduate-wishes? That's just dumb. T. Not D. Unless you're trying to be funny. In which case: stop it, you smarmy bastard. You're irritating me. Kind of.

Felicitations is the French word meaning: with felicity, which means happiness, not that dopey show on the We Network.

Love,
The Cranky Linguist

Drive Friendly

A MaryT hallmark is complaining about traffic, but it might surprise you to know that I actually enjoy driving sometimes. Today I drove back to H-town after a thoroughly relax-tastic weekend in that most cherished of all homelands, Mineolapalooza--a trek of about 240 miles and roughly 4 hours and 15 minutes. I find it an enthralling drive. The scenery of East Texas is really something to remark on, no matter the season, so give it a whirl before you chalk Texas up to being made of only a couple of less than gorgeous cities. I got another perk this trip, though-- a driving buddy.

Molly the Dogg was my only car companion, but I acquired a road pal--one who sticks with you for long stretches of highway. A vehicle with whom you share a sort of bond. You let each other in. You follow one another through the tangled web of RVs, tractor-trailers, and blue hairs out for a 10 mph stroll. A highway wingman, if you will. You remind each other of speed zones and should one of you go down with the Po-Po, the other must carry on, yet with a little sadness for this stranger, who has been pulled out of the highway game.

My road buddy and I covered 300 miles together today and even stuck together in the insanity that is 59 inside the city. I got a little sad when I eased toward my exit, realizing my wingman was not going to follow. With a brief wave farewell, I hopped off 59 and on to Shepherd, leaving my wingman for today--a dark green Acura legend-- to find another second.

It's a highway love story. Two cars. Two lanes. One way. (sniff)

Silver Spoons Ahoy!

Did you all ever see that cheesey show Silver Spoons with Ricky Schroeder and Erin Gray, the woman from the Anushka info commercials? (Don't ask me what Anushka is; the only thing I know is that like thneads, everyone needs one!) This post has nothing to do with that show.

This morning I had the, uh, unique opportunity to attend a birthday party at the River Oaks Country Club. The second I got in there, this neatly-uniformed and amazingly polite, teenage girl asked if she could get me anything and called me ma'am. I had to look around to see who she was talking to, and decided that it was either me or the five year old I was accompanying; and what went through my head? This line from Walk Like an Egyptian: "You drop your drink and they bring ya more!" The pool was kind of the fabulous and even the teenybopper lifeguards looked like they had nicer cars than I have. It was very beautiful, but also very surreal, like maybe if a regular country club (is there such a thing?) got a boob job. This of course is coming from a girl who's idea of "country club" was a 9 hole golf course and a pitiful pool and a concession stand out in the country. I think there was a club house, too, but it was closed a lot because no one could ever make any money off of it. And when it was open, it was the sort of establishment where you ordered almost everything with fries or "slaw" and threw your peanut shells on the floor.

The highlight of course, aside from the abundance of zealous junior-leaguers (barferoo, if you please), and the guest appearance made by Malibu Barbie (the mind reels) was this crazy old loon who was the grandmother of one of the four birthday girls. I told her I just graduated from college and she asked about my sorority (none, and I told her as much); she looked aghast with this news and said something like, "Well, I'm sure you're very nice anyway, dear," and patted my leg. Please, patronize me. That is so helpful. Then she asked where I live and when I told her Montrose, she adopted the "my word!" look again and said, "THAT dangerous place?!" I explained that I really was just across Shepard from River Oaks and that I have a dog and no problems with safety or anything. Her reply? "The kind of people that live there will throw poisoned meat to your dog. I hope you have a security system." Excuse me, crazy, old lady, but I am the kind of person that lives here. There are tons of dogs in the neighborhood and no one is going around giving out poisoned meat like some kind of demented ice cream man.

As it happens, I had brought the latest Harry Potter, which I have already read, just to peruse at my lie-zhuray and fortunately I had stopped listening to said loon because I was SO not gonna take any lip about my boy HP. There was still fun to be had, though. I had to laugh to myself when a woman tried to explain the plot of "The Hours" to her 4 year old daughter as a story and its two sequels all in one ("You know, honey--like you read Little House on the Prairie and Little House on the Prairie Part 2.") Somewhere, Virginia Woolf --and probably Laura Ingalls Wilder, too--is turning in her grave. Mrs. Dalloway Part 2, indeed. It's not like the Karate Kid, Danielson!

Notice that Robin Leech has never introduced his show as Lifestyles of the Rich and Brilliant. Education-yay!

Evil, Thy Name is Nacho Cheese Doritos (and John Ashcroft)

I know I am looking at some serious copyright infringement as well as referring to a completely different brand, but betcha just can't eat one, indeed!

More stuff that is fitting....

I stole this from Adam's blog.

Ok, well the dealy is not an image and my blog is rejecting all of the HTML garble, so I will just tell you. I took a quiz to find out which number I am and surprise, surprise. I am one. The loneliest number.

You can take the quiz here.

Notes from Grocery Shopping or High Blood Pressure Part 1

I would like to begin by saying that I am *fully* aware that this whole blog encompasses bouts of high blood pressure and could justifiably be called Blood Roast, but frankly, that's grossy. Onward...

Paper or plastic?
I bet you never thought this question would be anything to get all fussy about, but my God, if you've been reading this blog for any amount of time and you're just now realizing that I blow ordinary snippets of life into monumental irritants, you might want to think about investing in a short bus for personal use. So, to the question at hand! When the bagger asks you this, have you ever noticed that it doesn't matter what your answer is? What they really want to know is, what kind of *outer* bag you want because if you ask for plastic, they will wrap everything ( a la glass pasta sauce jars) in a paper bag first or if you ask for paper, they will wrap everything ( a la glass pasta sauce jars) in a plastic bag first. I bought $35 worth of groceries this morning, which, for those of you who know the kind of snobby junk I buy, is not that much of groceries and I left with no less than TEN bags. How many? TEN!!!! I barely bought ten things. A note to baggers: environmental comeuppance is a bitch.

Ye Olde Kart Korral
Why the odd spellings? My friends will laugh. That kind of stupid krappe makes us kringe. (A more elaborate blog on this topic is forthcoming...) Have you ever read the cart corral signs? They say stuff like "Help us keep costs down by returning your cart, blah blah blah." (Note to my peops: Yes, I resisted calling them buggies, even though you know they are buggies.) Well apparently at Central Market, they have no desire to keep costs down because there is not one damn cart corral in their collossal parking lot. I can't decide if this is because a large portion of the clientele at CM are stupid a-holes* who will not bother to walk 10 feet to the cart corral or if they're naive enough to think that every person wants to walk their cart from 12,000 yards away to the store entrance, which seems to be the only acceptable gathering of carts. Amazing people leave carts everywhere, what with their precious, overpriced Hummers around. Of course, a Hummer was designed for intense warfare, so I guess the CM parking lot is really no thing. And further, it's not like anyone has to have consideration for *others'* cars. Consideration for others? Outrageous!

*And now a stupid a-hole anecdote, aka, MaryT shot her big, fat mouth off.
Yesterday I was at Pottery Barn (Yes, I realize this was a big mistake already as it was a Saturday following a holiday during the summer sale! Ye gods, it sounds worse out loud!) and noting the insane crowd, I made a beeline for the exit. However, I was not raised in a barn or the a-hole sense of entitlement that seems so prevalent among inner-loopers, so seeing a person right behind me as I was exiting, I held the door open for her. Not only did she not say thank you, but she brushed past me, hitting me with both of her full bags, nearly knocking me over, all without a word. So as I released the door (unfortunately, not on her cosmetic surgery-sponsored face), I turned around and said as I cleared my throat loudly, "You're WELCOME!" She of course sighed disgustedly as if to say "Good help is so hard to find these days." Annoying? Yes, but I consider myself lucky. This is Texas, home of guns, and one day, well, you know...

Fitting

I am the number one Google site for "leashes for children."

That's awesome!

Also, thanks for 10K+ hits to my site!

My, You're Dapper...danoween

Now showing for a brief (but ecstatic period), the first celebrants (minus camerawoman E.) of Dapperdanoween in festive tuxedo t-shirts.