Some levity is at times a requirement.

It’s been a rotten few days in the news. If that statement makes no sense then just run right out and look up “Aurora” on your favorite news aggregator site.

So let’s go somewhere else, shall we?

What is the most perfect way to defuse the world? Why, a pug-mug t-shirt, of course!

There. Don’t you feel just a bit better?

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If you missed this fellow then you are in for a treat. This is how people can non-verbally say “I am a broken toy”:

Yes, those are permanently attached. Yes, he’s in the news because some employees at a McD’s in Paris were stuck in their teens and decided to kick the crap out of him.

Yes, they beat him up even:

After Mann presented the employee with a doctor’s note he carries with him that states he needs to wear his headgear…

What kind of doctor, exactly? A psychiatrist?

What the guy needs is a little less validation in the “craves attention” department and a little more supervision in the “requires medication” department.

Seriously, I could not make this up if I tried

Mann then tried to calm Perpetrator 1 and showed him his doctor’s note, which the employee showed to two coworkers, whom Mann nicknames Perpetrators 2 and 3. After Perpetrator 2 crumpled up his doctor’s note and Perpetrator 1 tore up some other documentation he provided, Perpetrator 1 then allegedly pushed him out the door and onto the street, damaging his gear.

“My Glass started acting a little erratic but I could still see to some degree, but with crosshatches and kind of a freeze-frame like motion as the Eye Glass stopped and started intermittently,” Mann said. The alleged assault apparently loosened a ribbon cable within the device, causing the eye piece to malfunction and flood Mann’s eye with laser light.

However, the device was still functioning until Mann had an embarrassing bodily reaction upon hitting the street, which caused his circuits to short out.

“The actual cause of the final stoppage (which happened shortly after he pushed me out the door) is a bit embarrassing as what happened also is that I had had to really use the toilet, at the time, and it was that I’d been going toward using the toilet but got attacked, so as a result, later, it turned out that my pants became the toilet,” he said.

“My pants became the toilet”. (It was there that I just blinked three times – long slow numb-brained blinks.)

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Cruel Wife and I celebrated 17 years of marital bliss today. Seventeen calendar years, forty-five years subjectively.

Now, before you form an opinion about my insensitivity and gather up pitchforks, tar, feathers, and torches of all shapes and sizes, let me describe the anniversary card she got me.

Two asses (the beasts of burden kind) on the front of the black-and-white card are standing in a field in the shade of a tree. One says “How many years has it been?” and the other one says “Seems like FOREVER!”

Inside, the card says “It doesn’t matter, your ass is still mine!”

Whereupon she added “Your ass, your dogs, and your bats in the attic – all mine.” The second in the list refers to my remarks that “my canines are vocalizing”.

It’s all a matter of perception. She sees herself as owning me forever and I see forty-fi… uh… seventeen years of incarcer… uh… marital bliss.

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I would have posted another pic but I threw it towards Aggie Sith and she wants to use it. It has some words that shocked my tender sensibilities – such coarse and vulgar language – so I’m fine with letting her post it. That said, it exactly illustrates the withering scorn I have for people who can’t be bothered to look words up or learn the rules.

Dammit, if Aggie Sith can pick up English as a second language and speak it better than I can then people dam well aught too be able to (a) stick with words they know, (b) recognize which words they know halve homonyms, and (SEE) learn knew words awl the thyme. I don’t think that is two much to ask. I mean, Aggie uses words like oubliette, insouciance, and soirees. Granted, those are all French in origin, but she uses them in the right context when writing in what is for her a secondary language. I’m impressed as hell.

While we’re on the topic of words we may or may not know – quickly, without looking it up, define “contemn”. Did you know the definition? I’m currently reading Swiss Family Robinson to my daughter, Lemurita, and ran across the word. Believe it or not, I found the bottom corner of the page creased/folded from the first time I read it when I was ten. Even then I had that nasty habit of tabbing a page when I found a word I didn’t know and wanted to look up later. I guess the definition didn’t stick with me, but how often do you hear it used at a party or on the radio?

I would like to make a comment about the book – even at the age of ten I knew that having all that shit down and being on the ball was just so much utter bullshit, plus having everything go off so well without a hitch, but I’m having fun challenging her with a more archaic usage of the language and I can tell it is keeping her on her toes. I asked her if she wanted to keep going with the story and she nodded earnestly while she said “Oh, YES!”

Back to command of the English language…

The inability to properly write is especially troublesome when it comes from writers, supposed English majors, who should know better. But, they let spell-checkers do the heavy lifting and don’t bother after that to check the other things that are hallmarks of the mastery of the english language. Just as I expect optics folks to understand dispersion, diffraction, and wave equations, I also expect English majors to know how to write. Before you heap scorn upon my writing here, let me say that I see blogging as a different beast than that which is farmed out by a reporter because as a blogger you get to make it up as you go – you are allowed to wax metaphorical, contrive colloquialisms, and smith words to your hearts content. Reporters need to be factual and to dot their t’s and cross their i’s, so to speak.

Just keep an eye on H&B, as I think she was going to use that graphic there. You’ll know the pic when she posts it.

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From the “I think my brain became the toilet” files.  

At least 21 treated for burns after trying to walk on coals at Tony Robbins event

It was a motivational speaker event.  Now I ask you:

So you walked on coals.  What does it prove?

You could have the rosiest can-do “No ‘I’ in Team” “I’m a winner” kind of attitude and if you don’t use the proper technique, you’re gonna get burned.

In the article:

The San Jose Mercury News reports that at least three people went to a hospital and most suffered second- or third-degree burns.

Jonathan Correll, 25, told the paper that he heard “screams of agony.”

“It was people seriously hurting, like they were being tortured,” he told the paper. “First one person, then a couple minutes later another one, and there was just a line of people walking on that fire. It was just bizarre, man.”

This isn’t an exercise in tapping the power within.  This is proving that you have no spine and are pliable human clay.