There's Hope For The Next Generation

Ring...ring...ri

"...PJTT...hey, hey, Quinn, how you doin'? I haven't heard from you since that Girl Scout cookie fiasco last year, what's new, buddy?...yeah...yeah...hey, so what's new in the legal world?...no shit...hey, how's Octavia?...great...she still pissed?...yeah, I'll bet...so what's up, what can your Pope do for you?"

As the Supreme Commander of the Galaxy, I am in charge now, wait, that's the wrong title, hang on...okay, here we go:

As the Pope of the All John All The Time World Church, I have the opportunity to meet all sorts of interesting people, and many space aliens as well. One of my favorite "meetings" was with a young man from Chicago named Quinn Tupletts, an attorney by profession, and a slightly crazy guy by disposition. We met some years ago at a Hooters Bikini Girl Contest out in San Diego; I was there representing the AJATTWC (no, really) and Quinn was there, acting as agent for one of the contestants, a young lady with two rather remarkable claims to fame: a) well, let's just say that her bra size needed more letters than numbers and b) her name was Rub Meallova. (The "Rub" was short for Ruby; nice girl.) It was an interesting three days.

Anyway, Quinn is a judge now and behaves himself. Mostly.

He's married to great gal as well; her name is Octavia (we all call her Oc for short), and she's a three-handed Scklorn Mutant from the Anopholes Nebulae (no she's not) and her fun-loving husband and I had an occasion some years ago, at a 4th of July backyard barbeque/gerbil golf tournament, to have some fun with the lovely Ms. Tupletts.

It all started when Quinn bet me 5 bucks that I couldn't roll a quarter off my forehead, down my nose and into a funnel tucked into the front of my pants. (Ever have Vodka Lemonade Slushes? You know, a quart of Stoly, three drops of lemonade and crushed ice to taste, right? Ever had one of those? Yeah? Then you know why this was happening.) That we were in collusion prior to the bet is an important factor to remember later in this story.

So I pulled a quarter out from behind Harley's ear, (see pic -->) which he hates, because he can't figure out how I do it, and Oc went in the garage and came back with a 6" funnel. I placed the business end of the funnel in the waistband of my surplice (hey, I'm the Pope Dude, remember?), and the game began.

I stood back from the crowd, tilted my head back, rested the quarter on my forehead just above my nose, took a downward glance for aim, and let'er rip.

First try, nothin' but net.

The lovely Ms. Oc was watching all this with some fascination (she also was suffering from the effects of SEVERAL Vodka Lemonade Slushes), and as her scheming husband and I had predicted, within seconds of my digging the quarter out of my pants (I asked for volunteers to assist me but got no takers; wait 'til that bunch tries to get into heaven, hah.), Oc says, "Hey, let me try that." (Thank you, P.T. Barnum; there's one born every minute.)

So I handed Oc the quarter and the funnel, explained the rules again (no hands, no body English and no iguanas) and bade her good luck. She positioned the funnel properly down the front of her shorts, set the quarter on her forehead and...

...while Oc and I had been talking and getting her ready for her attempt at coin-rolling immortality, with of course the enthusiastic support of the 12 or so other drunken revelers in the backyard, Quinn had walked quietly over to the "refreshment" table and grabbed the metal pail we had been using to chill some beers. It was your standard, everyday "metal pail with handle", and it was about two-thirds full of ice and melted ice. (That would be very cold water. And no beers.) So Quinn, equipped with the aforesaid bucket, snuck around from behind Oc, and...

...just before she could release the quarter, he stepped up and calmly dumped the entire contents of the bucket into the funnel.

Needless to say, the reaction was immediate and violent. Now you understand why I asked Quinn if Octavia was "still pissed" back there in the first paragraph.

Full disclosure: this all happened prior to my becoming the Pope of the AJATTWC.

"I heard an interesting case last week, a divorce/custody case involving a little eight-year old boy from Berwyn," he told me, and I could tell by his tone of voice he wanted me to ask.

So I did.

"Okay, what's so special about that?"

"Well, it was a custody battle between these two goofballs who were the parents of this poor kid. The kid didn't want to be with either one of them, and they were fighting over him just to be assholes."

"So I get everybody in court last week, and the lawyers start arguing and the parents are pointing fingers and I finally said, enough, and I had the bailiffs escort the parents out of the courtroom. When they were gone, I had the bailiff bring the little boy up to bench, and sat him in the witness chair."

"I said, 'Mikey, where would you like to live, with your Mommy or your Daddy?'"

"Mikey kind of shrugged his shoulders and didn't say anything."

"'How about with Mommy?' I asked him."

"He looked up at me on the bench and said, 'No, my Mommy beats me.'"

"Now everyone in the courtroom knew that this statement wasn't true; the child had never been harmed by either parent. But I decided to play along with him."

"'Okay, Mikey, how about if we send you with your Daddy then? How would that be?'"

"'No, Judge,' he says, 'please not with my Daddy, he beats me too.' Mikey let a small tear roll down his cheek as he told me this."

"Now I thought maybe the father was the final choice, when Mikey told me about his mother; now I'm not sure where I'm going. I think what he really wanted was to go back to his grandmother's."

"'Okay, Mikey, I'm sorry, but you can't go back to Grandma's, and you don't want to go with your Mommy because you say she beats you, and you don't want to go with your Daddy because you say that he beats you. Mikey, where do you want to go, please tell me?'"

"And so help me, Pope, he sat and thought about it for a long moment, then he looked up at me and got this real solemn look on his face."

"'Judge,' he says, 'I want to go with the Chicago Cubs. They don't beat anybody.'"

"I tried for several minutes to get the courtroom back in order, then I finally gave up and adjourned for the day. Mikey is still with his Grandmother for the moment. She's a White Sox fan."

He swore to me that it was a true story; I think I got hosed.

Love and homeruns,

PJTT

copyright 2011 Krissongs, Inc.

It's The Little Old Lady From Pasa, Err, Loudon NH

Now I don't want any of you to look at the picture above until...I said DON'T look, you gooses...well, it's just too late now, isn't it?

Since all of you already looked, even though I asked you all not to, as punishment, I'm not going to tell you about the picture until later in this post. You couldn't behave, so now you'll just have to wait.

***AND NOW, THE 2011 WINNER OF THE O. HENRY SHORT STORY AWARD***

"Once upon a time, there was a Pope Guy named John The Tall, and he was the Popeamundo for the All John All The Time World Church. He's the one writing this essay.

The end."

Okay, it's a real short story, much like the list of appearances in the World Series by the Chicago Cubs. Or like the length of time the Lakers spent in the playoffs this year.

But the real story here today is getting old, well, the story isn't getting old, it's ABOUT getting old, a subject with which I am well acquainted. Too well, in fact, for my money, although, considering the alternative, I guess I can take getting old.

As I suspect was the case with most of you, I was a) very young and b) very naked when I was born, or so I'm told, since my recollection of the whole experience is vague. Given that we only actively use about 10% of our brain capacity, with the Washington and Hollywood crowds working on closer to -62% of theirs, I've often wondered if somewhere, back in the deep, hidden recesses of our brains, that there aren't memories, maybe even vivid memories, of every moment in our lives, our birth, our first meal, our first step, the first time we puked after being overserved by some inconsiderate bartender, everything we've ever done as a person, stored away in some kind of organic hard-drive that we've just never learned to access properly.

Anyway, I'm getting old; I hit ** on my last birthday, back in February, and all of a sudden, it seems like I'm in the fast lane to Forest Lawn. (For you non-Southern California types, Forest Lawn is a HUGE local cemetery, with all sorts of tacky advertising and celebrity "residents" and has been the subject of all kinds of SoCal insider jokes for years.) I have never in my life been more aware of my own mortality then I have been recently. I wouldn't say that it's gotten to the point of fixation, but it's become a common theme in my nightly assessment of my life and my activities. (After I reread that last sentence, I realized that it sounded a lot more introspective than I intended. Or that I'm capable of, for that matter.)

I come from a long line of old people, on both sides. Shit, if my family were trees, we'd have a boatload of those internal rings scientists use to determine a tree's age on us, believe me. Three out of four of my grandparents made it into their 90's (other than my paternal granddad, who took the last, long step in his mid-60's; according to the death report, he died of a heart attack, but I knew my grandmother well, and I'm pretty sure the real story is that Grandpa bailed out to get away from her), I have a number of aunts and uncles who are in or have made it into their late-80's or early 90's, my dad was almost 89 when he passed away and the best one of all is my mother, who is still alive and ornery as ever (and still living by herself) at the ripe old age of 96.

I've become preoccupied with my age, and isn't it interesting that so many of us become preoccupied with our age when our preoccupation with sex starts to wane, although mine hasn't, even if I have slowed down some. Yeah, I don't think about sex NEAR as much as I used to, no more than 3 or 4 hundred times a day, compared to THOUSANDS of times a day when I was younger and could still do more than just think about it. (The proverbial "they" claim that sex is just like riding a bike; once you learn how to do it, you should have a complete understanding of nuclear physics, ah, sorry, you never forget how, and I'm praying that's true, because I'd hate like hell to FINALLY get lucky, and then, at the most critical moment, forget what goes where. A good friend of mine once told me he thought it was pretty much "insert Tab A into Slot B" and proceed accordingly. Hell, even I can't screw that up too bad, and I could screw up a two-house paper route.)

So what does all this have to do with the AJATTWC and your good Pope John?

Not a damn thing, but I needed something to lead into my main story, which is coming up next, so ease up, okay? Geez.

So, ever wonder what you'd like to do to celebrate your 100th birthday? No, I haven't either, but Rachel Gilbert, who recently celebrated her centennial, was given a hell of a gift by her family on hers: a chance to hit 100 again, this time on the racetrack at Loudon NH behind the wheel of a NASCAR vehicle. Interestingly, according to the report from NewsCore, Gilbert gave up her driver's license back in 1995, so had to be driven to the track by her family, who arranged the entire event with track officials. Not that she has much business driving around at 100 anyway, either age or MPH.

After whizzing around the course for several laps, Ms. Gilbert pulled into the infield and did several doughnuts, and then brought'er into the pits, then after shuttin' her down and wriggling out of the driver's side window, she received a birthday card, a NASCAR jacket autographed by her favorite driver, Carl Edwards, and a magnum of champagne roughly the size of Cleveland, which she proceeded to chug down until she passed out and was then carried from the pit area, laughing maniacally and muttering that she could drive rings around Jeff Gordon any day.

You gotta' love this old broad, and I say that in the most respectful way possible.

I once outraged my beautiful daughter, Hiram, (which, by the way, is quite common; I outage her on a fairly regular basis), by telling her that I wanted die at 90, in bed naked with a 21-year old blond with enormous hands. On the downstroke.

Okay, at 90, the sex probably won't be great, but it might be enough to make all those years of struggle to get that far worthwhile; hey, Rachel Gilbert got to hit the century mark in a hot car on her 100th, so why not, right? Stranger things have happened.

And don't tell me they haven't, okay, because I know better. Want me to prove it?

The citizens of this country elected George W. Bush to be President of our country.

Twice.

In both instances, Bush did well with the "over 60" demographic, which would lead one to believe that, in a lot of instances, getting older might make you a little crazy (see above) but it doesn't necessarily make you any smarter.

Or in my case any better looking.

Love and Geritol,

PJTT

copyright 2011 Krissongs, Inc.

Shopping In The Pope's Department Store

As those of you who follow the daily posts on my blog, "...from the desk of Pope John The Tall..." know, I check in with my staff and department heads here at the All John All The Time World Church periodically, to determine the pulse of the world, so to speak, and also to check up on these guys to make sure they're punchin' the old time clock. Hey, the AJATTWC is a charitable, "not for profit" organization, (as opposed to some companies out there, who are "can't make a profit" companies), so we're careful with the benjamins; we throw nickels around like manhole covers. (I started to make a really crude joke there about "manhole covers", but for once, my very slight sense of decorum kicked in...and I didn't. Aren't you guys proud of me?)

(You want to hear it anyway? No, no, never mind.)

So after returning from whatever godless, forsaken shithole the Bored of Elders of the AJATTWC sent us to most recently, the us being myself and the Harley Dog, my sidekick and back-up navigator onboard my atomic powered rocket ship, the Royal Unionship Kidding, I got a hold of my head of department people, and here's some of the reports I received:

-From the Oh, So Now He's A Marketing Maven As Well As The Pope Department:

            I was watching the Dodgers/Marlins game the other evening, and I noticed on the huge advertising sign they have behind home plate at Sun Lite Stadium, where the Marlins play, an ad for the company Waste Management (who, totally apropos to nothing, were once the darlings of Wall Street), hawking one of their new products, an enormous bag-thing that you can have WM deliver to your home so you can throw out all kinds of unusual debris, like old sinks, and rusted pipes that have been removed from walls, construction debris, old mother-in-laws, etc.

            The ad was divided in half; on the right half was WM's name and a corporate message. On the left side, was the following message...

            Part Bag.

            Part Dumpster.

...and that was it. I thought it would be much more interesting this way...

            Part Bag,

            Part Dumpster,

            All Woman.

And now you can understand why they won't let me have sharp objects.

-From the Webster's Dictionary People Don't Need Any Help Department:

            New word whose use I'm promoting: "ralphitate". You guess the meaning.

-From the A New Career In Retirement Department:

            One of my staff members suggested that, after I retire from my Pope gig, I could launch a whole new career as "Mr. Phone Love", which would be kind of a reversal of those 1-900 sex-line places you see advertised all over late night TV. In my version, senior citizens (preferably women) would sign up for my service, and then, unscheduled and unannounced, I would call them up and breathe in their respective ears and whisper disgusting, filthy things I would like to do to them, if they weren't 857 years old and wrinkled like a cotton shirt that was left in the bottom of the dryer after the final cycle. You know, a little cheap thrill for Granny once in awhile, just to keep the juices flowing, so to speak. (Do you think the "manhole cover" joke would have been any worse than this? Geez.)

From the Maybe He Came In To Get Warm Department (In FL?):

            According to MSN.com, a Palmetto FL woman recently discovered an unwanted visitor in her bathroom; a seven foot long alligator, who apparently has a bladder problem.

            Alexis Dunbar, the lady whose bathroom the alligator decided to visit, believes the animal used a doggie door on her back porch to get inside the house (Ms. Dunbar, according to the report, has no dog, but two cats who use the door, both of whom escaped the nocturnal bathroom visitor with no apparent injuries). Dunbar, who lives in Palmetto, which is south of St. Petersburg, told WFLA-TV reporters that she also believes the 'gator hung out at her house for several hours after getting inside; some of her things had been "rearranged" so to speak. Her visitor was subsequently removed by local wildlife authorities, after her boyfriend propped a chair against the bathroom door, trapping the guest inside.

There was a quote in the report from one of the wildlife guys who "rescued" the alligator, to wit: "Spring is mating season for alligators and wildlife officials urge people to be extremely cautious, especially around water." (I assume that means "water" occurring in nature, like swamps and lakes; I suspect the people in FL would like to think their pools, drinking fountains and lawn-sprinklers are safe.)

            You know, not knowing that you have an seven foot long alligator in your bathroom has to make getting up to pee in the middle of the night a much more interesting experience.

From the Is It Loyalty Or Stupidity? Department:

            Last week, on April 22nd, the Dodgers played the worst franchise in baseball, the Chicago Cubs, at their home field in Chicago, Wrigley Field, which is almost as bad a joke as the team that plays there.

            At game time, 1:15pm local, it was raining vigorously, so the game was delayed. (The temperature on the north side of Chicago was also in the mid 40's at this point.) After a 45-minute delay, with the temperature still dropping and the rain abated, the game got under way. There were several other rain stoppages, and the game proceeded haltingly through the sixth inning, with the Dodgers ahead 8-2. That's when I turned it on, and here's how the game ended after nine:

            -it was by then in the low 40's, with wind gusts off Lake Michigan, which is only a few miles east of the stadium (knowing Chicago weather, as I do intimately, the wind chill at that point had to be in the mid 30's);

            -it was still drizzling rain periodically;

            -the Cubs were losing...ready...12-2; yes, you read that correctly: TWELVE TO TWO;

            -it is by now well after 7:00pm, with all the rain delays;

-AND THE STANDS WERE STILL ABOUT HALF FULL OF CUBS FANS.

Einstein is credited with the theory that doing something in the same manner repeatedly and expecting different results each time is the definition of insanity; I submit that a new definition is needed, and fans of the Cubs are happily providing it for us.

Insanity, thy name is Chicago.

-From the And I Can Prove It Department:

            I was looking at my didn't-shower-today-and-haven't-shaved-in-two-days face in the mirror last night, and it suddenly occurred to me, hey, I can prove, unequivocally, that Intelligent Design does not exist. Simply, the intelligence of any entity that can create that face, an ostrich and Rosie O'Donnell has to be highly suspect.

From the What's Next, Blue Light Specials At Neiman-Marcus Department:

            According to an ad I saw in the LA (pronounced LAH, you know, like "Doe, a deer, a female deer, ray, a drop of golden sun", etc.) Times yesterday, 99 Cents Only Stores now have a...bridal registry.

From the Classic Literature Department:

            While I was watching that same Dodgers/Marlins game from FL the other night, the Marlins, who had gotten behind in the score during the later innings, brought in a relief pitcher named Mujica, and I thought to myself, hey, if he's an only child, and has no sons, wouldn't that make him..."The Last Of The Mujica's"?

From the What? Department:

            Remember all those great pirate movies from back in the 1700's (???), where the characters would use phrases like, "hoist the jib mast" and "batten down the barnacles", and my all-time favorite, "shiver me timbers, matey".

            Okay, I give up, how exactly does one "shiver" his "timbers"?

Well, I can see from the sundial on my wall that it's time for my medicine, so I think I'll close for now. Harley and I have to prepare to go to, hell, wherever the Bored sends us next week to preach the soothing balm of Johnism. I hope its some place nice like South Florida, home of the North American alligator, or Lower Zimbabwe, home of the African ebert, a small, furry mammal with an enormous sex-organ. (Harley wanted to get an ebert to keep as a pet, but I said no. I hate to admit it, but I was envious. Hey, some guys are hung like stud horses; I'm hung like a stud chipmunk.)

(Wanna' hear the "manhole cover" joke now?)

Love and Bloomingdale's (departments that is),

PJTT

copyright 2011 Krissongs, Inc.

The Facts, Ma'am, Just The Facts

(The following is a repost of my essay from 2/16/11, a day that I remember I was being particularly clever and witty; a rare moment indeed. I hope you like it a second time.)

I'd like to take a few moments today and point out some various and little known facts that may be of interest, or of some value, to you, the loyal followers of the All John All The Time World Church and me, your Pope Dude.

This information, in a few instances, is very esoteric, and possibly uninteresting to some of you, but you don't think for a moment that inapplicability is enough to stop me, do you? Mere irrelevance will never be a deterrent to my ongoing stream of silliness. Remember, your Popemeister has internal dictates to which he must respond.

Did you know-

-that the word for cetacean vomit is "ambergris'? That's right, party-goers, the formal word for whale puke is ambergris. I learned this interesting tidbit many years ago when, so help me, cross my heart, I stumbled onto a record album (do you remember albums? For those of you who don't, they were 12" round black discs made of vinyl with grooves in them that somehow, as if by magic, contained music. I've always thought they resemble anorexic Frisbees) by a rock band of that name: Ambergris. If memory serves, I'm fairly certain they actually explained on the album cover what the word meant, pretty much ensuring that nobody was likely to buy the album without being totally grossed out. Since I found the disc in a "remainder" bin, for the whopping price of $.99 (just like the store of the same name, you know, 99 Cents), you have to think there's merit to my argument. Or maybe the album, and the band, just sucked, which is probably more likely.

-that a computer keyboard does NOT have a "cents" sign, you know, like a dollar sign. I just learned that fact a few moments ago when I tried to type "99 (cent sign) Store" (see above) and had to type the word "cents" because I couldn't find the cent sign. I've got ^ and ~ and > and some others I hardly ever use, but no cent sign, at least, not on my keyboard. I swear, I never noticed that before.

-that as far back as the 1850s (EIGHTEEN, not nineteen) some scientist/inventor had the original, basic idea for the computer. Apparently, the only thing that stopped him from producing and marketing his idea besides some essentials like electricity, vacuum tubes, the silicon chip, plastic and a bunch of other high-tech sounding shit was his inability to come up with a really cute logo, like the little apple with the bite out of it that appears on the Macintosh machines. I forget where I read this, but it's probably a vicious lie, much like the libelous rumors that are currently being circulated about myself and several of the original Seven Dwarves. (There is absolutely no truth to that rumor whatsoever; maybe Snow White, she was pretty hot, but never the Dwarves. Well, maybe Sleazy.) (Okay, now some of you have got to be thinking, "Was Sleazy one of the...?")

-that the monetary unit in El Salvador is the "colon"? Yeah, and you always thought that the colon was the part of the large intestines that extends the cecum to the rectum. (Rectum hell, damn near killed him. That's the punch line to an old joke that I cannot remember the setup to.)  So, if the slang term here in America for dollars, among others, is "bucks", what's the slang expression in El Salvador for colons, "gall-bladders"?

-that my Dad, due to having suffered a fairly severe hernia, had to have his left testicle removed, back when he was in his mid-50s, and that I always referred to him after that as "One-Ball Bill", which was kinda' dumb, considering his name was Ezekial. I'm not sure how my mother reacted to this, or if she even noticed.

-that "colon" backwards is "noloc"? And that "mutorcs" backwards is "scrotum"? And that "scrotum" backwards is probably really painful.

-that you shouldn't use a seven-iron when hitting gerbils off your second floor balcony, that you should really either a) use a five-iron or b) move to the third floor balcony? And please, gerbil-golfers, always yell "Fore" before striking your gerbil, to warn any unsuspecting persons walking below.

-that the ebert is a...okay, you guys know that one, don't you?

-that "syrup" backwards is "purys"? And that "embargo" backwards is "ograbme"?

-that some lady in Massachusetts recently gave birth to a 13 pound baby? Yes, children, you read that correctly, THIRTEEN pounds. And the article I read about this indicated that the size of the child at birth came as a surprise to the woman. Now, being a typical male pig sleazebag, not to mention the Popester, I have no concept whatsoever about what a woman goes through when she's pregnant and when she gives birth, but I still have to believe that, if you're expecting a baby, and said baby has grown inside you for the normal nine-month gestation period common to humans, and that said baby weighs THIRTEEN (Holy Bathroom Scales, Batman) pounds when its born, that somewhere along the line, prior to it's birth, you must have had an inkling that your unborn child was going to be the size of a '57 Buick Roadmaster when it arrived. I mean, if she had been pulled over by the Highway Patrol a week before she delivered, the cops probably would have made her go through the truck scale. Geez, how could that have been a surprise? I bet they had to use a forklift to get her on up on the table to deliver the little monster.

-that since the Chicago Cubs last won the World Series, the following events have taken place: manned flight, manned space flight, two World Wars, the invention of the radio, television, computers, telephones, White Castle hamburgers, automobiles, vacuum tubes, vacuum cleaners, electricity and electric light bulbs, bikinis, thong bikinis (and a big ten-4 to the inventor of the thong; there must be a special place in Heaven for someone of your courage and vision) and a whole other plethora of shit that I can't think of right now. NINETEEN OH EIGHT, or ONE HUNDRED AND THREE YEARS ago as the crow flies. (If you look in a dictionary for the definition of "futile", there's a picture of Wrigley Field, which is the home of the Cubs, next to the word.

-that I was in my late 20s before I learned to spell the word "February" correctly; coincidentally or not, I was 22 before I reached pooberty. (I'm thinking there's a connection there somehow.)

-that Lindsay Lohan is NOT, contrary to popular belief, an alien from the planet Xanthous in the Hoolar Nebulae, but that she, and her goofy father, have to be two of the dumbest human beings ever to draw breath, and that a bill was introduced recently in the CA Legislature (commonly known in CA as the Home Of The Room Temperature IQ) calling for the immediate sterilization of Ms. Lohan, as a preventive measure to her becoming pregnant and propagating the world with any more stupid Lohans. (According to persons who follow the CA legislature closely, the bill is expected to pass.)

-that your Pope has written enough for one day, and that he is tired and is now going to go take a nap. (I just flew in from El Salvador in the RU Kidding, my rocket powered space ship, where I spent a ton of gall-bladders on a new seven-iron.)

Love and WikiPedia,

PJTT

copyright 2011 Krissongs, Inc.

The Facts, Ma'am, Just The Facts

I'd like to take a few moments today and point out some various and little known facts that may be of interest, or of some value, to you, the loyal followers of the All John All The Time World Church and me, your Pope Dude.

This information, in a few instances, is very esoteric, and possibly uninteresting to some of you, but you don't think for a moment that inapplicability is enough to stop me, do you? Mere irrelevance will never be a deterrent to my ongoing stream of silliness. Remember, your Popemeister has internal dictates to which he must respond.

Did you know-

-that the word for cetacean vomit is "ambergris'? That's right, party-goers, the formal word for whale puke is ambergris. I learned this interesting tidbit many years ago when, so help me, cross my heart, I stumbled onto a record album (do you remember albums? For those of you who don't, they were 12" round black discs made of vinyl with grooves in them that somehow, as if by magic, contained music. I've always thought they resemble anorexic Frisbees) by a rock band of that name: Ambergris. If memory serves, I'm fairly certain they actually explained on the album cover what the word meant, pretty much ensuring that nobody was likely to buy the album without being totally grossed out. Since I found the disc in a "remainder" bin, for the whopping price of $.99 (just like the store of the same name, you know, 99 Cents), you have to think there's merit to my argument. Or maybe the album, and the band, just sucked, which is probably more likely.

-that a computer keyboard does NOT have a "cents" sign, you know, like a dollar sign. I just learned that fact a few moments ago when I tried to type "99 (cent sign) Store" (see above) and had to type the word "cents" because I couldn't find the cent sign. I've got ^ and ~ and > and some others I hardly ever use, but no cent sign, at least, not on my keyboard. I swear, I never noticed that before.

-that as far back as the 1850s (EIGHTEEN, not nineteen) some scientist/inventor had the original, basic idea for the computer. Apparently, the only thing that stopped him from producing and marketing his idea besides some essentials like electricity, vacuum tubes, the silicon chip, plastic and a bunch of other high-tech sounding shit was his inability to come up with a really cute logo, like the little apple with the bite out of it that appears on the Macintosh machines. I forget where I read this, but it's probably a vicious lie, much like the libelous rumors that are currently being circulated about myself and several of the original Seven Dwarves. (There is absolutely no truth to that rumor whatsoever; maybe Snow White, she was pretty hot, but never the Dwarves. Well, maybe Sleazy.) (Okay, now some of you have got to be thinking, "Was Sleazy one of the...?")

-that the monetary unit in El Salvador is the "colon"? Yeah, and you always thought that the colon was the part of the large intestines that extends the cecum to the rectum. (Rectum hell, damn near killed him. That's the punch line to an old joke that I cannot remember the setup to.)  So, if the slang term here in America for dollars, among others, is "bucks", what's the slang expression in El Salvador for colons, "gall-bladders"?

-that my Dad, due to having suffered a fairly severe hernia, had to have his left testicle removed, back when he was in his mid-50s, and that I always referred to him after that as "One-Ball Bill", which was kinda' dumb, considering his name was Ezekial. I'm not sure how my mother reacted to this, or if she even noticed.

-that "colon" backwards is "noloc"? And that "mutorcs" backwards is "scrotum"? And that "scrotum" backwards is probably really painful.

-that you shouldn't use a seven-iron when hitting gerbils off your second floor balcony, that you should really either a) use a five-iron or b) move to the third floor balcony? And please, gerbil-golfers, always yell "Fore" before striking your gerbil, to warn any unsuspecting persons walking below.

-that the ebert is a...okay, you guys know that one, don't you?

-that "syrup" backwards is "purys"? And that "embargo" backwards is "ograbme"?

-that some lady in Massachusetts recently gave birth to a 13 pound baby? Yes, children, you read that correctly, THIRTEEN pounds. And the article I read about this indicated that the size of the child at birth came as a surprise to the woman. Now, being a typical male pig sleazebag, not to mention the Popester, I have no concept whatsoever about what a woman goes through when she's pregnant and when she gives birth, but I still have to believe that, if you're expecting a baby, and said baby has grown inside you for the normal nine-month gestation period common to humans, and that said baby weighs THIRTEEN (Holy Bathroom Scales, Batman) pounds when its born, that somewhere along the line, prior to it's birth, you must have had an inkling that your unborn child was going to be the size of a '57 Buick Roadmaster when it arrived. I mean, if she had been pulled over by the Highway Patrol a week before she delivered, the cops probably would have made her go through the truck scale. Geez, how could that have been a surprise? I bet they had to use a forklift to get her on up on the table to deliver the little monster.

-that since the Chicago Cubs last won the World Series, the following events have taken place: manned flight, manned space flight, two World Wars, the invention of the radio, television, computers, telephones, White Castle hamburgers, automobiles, vacuum tubes, vacuum cleaners, electricity and electric light bulbs, bikinis, thong bikinis (and a big ten-4 to the inventor of the thong; there must be a special place in Heaven for someone of your courage and vision) and a whole other plethora of shit that I can't think of right now. NINETEEN OH EIGHT, or ONE HUNDRED AND THREE YEARS ago as the crow flies. (If you look in a dictionary for the definition of "futile", there's a picture of Wrigley Field, which is the home of the Cubs, next to the word.

-that I was in my late 20s before I learned to spell the word "February" correctly; coincidentally or not, I was 22 before I reached pooberty. (I'm thinking there's a connection there somehow.)

-that Lindsay Lohan is NOT, contrary to popular belief, an alien from the planet Xanthous in the Hoolar Nebulae, but that she, and her goofy father, have to be two of the dumbest human beings ever to draw breath, and that a bill was introduced recently in the CA Legislature (commonly known in CA as the Home Of The Room Temperature IQ) calling for the immediate sterilization of Ms. Lohan, as a preventive measure to her becoming pregnant and propagating the world with any more stupid Lohans. (According to persons who follow the CA legislature closely, the bill is expected to pass.)

-that your Pope has written enough for one day, and that he is tired and is now going to go take a nap. (I just flew in from El Salvador in the RU Kidding, my rocket powered space ship, where I spent a ton of gall-bladders on a new seven-iron.)

Love and WikiPedia,

PJTT

copyright 2011 Krissongs, Inc.

On Being A Cub's Fan And Not Understanding Vaginas

It has come to my attention recently (and you thought that coming to attention was strictly a military thing, right, like armored troop carriers and synthesized, gamma ray-generating 56mm harmonizing laser cannons) that there are a number of you folks out there that are the proud possessors of vaginas; apparently, for many of you, this is standard equipment, so to speak, much like air conditioning and cruise control on automobiles.

Now for some of you, this revelation might beg the following question: "Gee, Pope Guy, given that you're well into your 130s, how did this bit of information escape your notice previously?" My only explanation was that I just wasn't paying attention. (As you might imagine from this, the Pope of the All John All The Time World Church leads a lonely existence. I spend my days in deep contemplation, attempting to understand the world around us, so that I might best lead, as well as serve, my flock of followers.)

You buying into that?

(By the way, for the record, pardon the pun, "Flock Of Followers" was the original name of the Eighties rock band, Flock Of Seagulls, whose lead singer had one of the stupidest-looking hairdos, even by '80s standards, that I ever saw.)

Okay, here's the truth: I've always known about vaginas; I've just never understood them.

And I also don't understand an article I read yesterday about the recent defacing of the statue of Harry Carey that stands outside Wrigley Field in Chicago. For those of you who don't follow major league baseball, Wrigley Field, which, by the way, is the second oldest baseball field in America, only surpassed in age by that horror in Boston, Fenway Park, is the home of the worst sports franchise in the world, the laughable and totally hopeless Chicago Cubs, and Harry Carey was their play-by-play announcer for many years.

Now I imagine at this point, many of you are wondering exactly what vaginas have to do with a statue of Harry Carey and Wrigley Field in Chicago, and the answer is, absolutely nothing; I just needed a good lead-in for my Cubs/Harry's statue story.

Got your attention, didn't it?

According to ESPNChicago, the statue of the iconic Cubs announcer and major lush (the humorist Will Rogers once remarked that he had never met a man he didn't like, which sounds like bullshit to me, but whatever; apparently Harry had the same point of view vis-a-vis beer) was vandalized recently by some brain-dead asshole using white spray paint to emblazon the word "Sox" on the statue, the Chicago White Sox being the other, and much more successful, major league baseball franchise in town. It was also damaged last November when an employee smacked into it with a tractor while preparing the field for a Northwestern University football game, and I don't really get how that happened at all, because the statue is OUTside the stadium, and the field, no surprise, is INside; anyway, it was hinted at in the article that the unnamed employee responsible for damaging the statue had taken Harry's point of view towards imbibing on the job to heart. The difference is that all Harry ever had to do was announce a baseball game when he was hammered; he wasn't operating heavy equipment. (Actually, that wasn't hinted at in the article; I made that part up.)

But that was an accident; the vandalism was deliberate. In fact, this is the second time the statue has been vandalized; the ESPN report also mentioned an incident from back in 2007 when a dead goat was found hanging from around Harry's neck (the statue Harry, the real Harry was dead by then). This was apparently done in an attempt to remove the Billy Goat's Curse, which was placed upon the Cubs back in the 1945 World Series by the owner of the Billy Goat Tavern, a man whose name escapes me at the moment, when he was refused admittance to the park to see a game. (I don't remember all the details; look that one up, will you? And by the way, '45 was the LAST time the Cubs even appeared in the Series.)

Although I was never a big Harry fan, he did have his moments. And he had a great gig; he would announce the pre-game starting lineups, then do the first three innings, at which time whoever his "color guy" was at the time (Steve Stone and Milo Hamilton are two I remember) would take over and do the fifth, sixth and top of the seventh innings, while Harry went down into the bowels of the stadium someplace and hoisted a few cold ones. Sometime around the beginning of the seventh inning, Harry would stagger his way back to the broadcast booth to lead the crowd in the singing of "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" during the seventh inning stretch and then finish doing the game. (For those of you who never had the dubious pleasure of experiencing Harry's singing, imagine the sounds a mongoose might make if its genitals were set on fire; as a singer, Harry would have been a fine heavy equipment operator.)

So I don't understand this vandalism of his statue; I may not have been a Harry Carey fan (I always thought he was a bit of an asshole, frankly) but the people of Chicago in general, and Cubs fans in particular, loved this guy. He was, at one time, before he passed away back in the '95, as I recall, the embodiment of the Chicago Cubs/Wrigley Field experience; there was always this cachet about seeing a game in the "friendly confines" of Wrigley, sitting in the bleachers, soaking up the summer sun and lots of brewskis, etc. There had to be to get people in the stadium, because the team always sucked.

I get the goat thing; probably somebody thought that, hey, remove the curse, and the Cubs go to the World Series. Or maybe it was a sacrifice to the baseball gods. But spray-painting the word "Sox" over Harry's face, what's that all about? What, some crazed Sox fan wanted to rub it in a little that their team won the Series as recently as '03? I mean, why bother? The Cubs haven't won the World Series since '08; NINETEEN oh eight. So you wanted to make their fans feel bad about their team? Come on, if you're a fan of a franchise that hasn't won a championship in their sport in over ONE HUNDRED AND THREE YEARS, how much worse can someone make you feel by reminding you the other franchise in town is better? There's a little (maybe a lot) of the masochist in every Cub fan, make no mistake.

I thought the remark by Eugene Levy's character in the movie "American Pie" that some vaginas look much like tropical plants was spot on, didn't you?

Love and batting averages,

PJTT

copyright 2011 Krissongs, Inc.