Best of The Ramblings

As far as I can tell, here’s the best of my “Ramblings” posts from ’02-’08. Enjoy.

The Best of the Ramblings

+ i have a hunch the original lyrics to James’ Taylor’s “shower the people you love with love” song was actually “shower the people you love with money”. But then he liked the way that “love with love” rolled off the tongue, so he changed it up.

+ Why do grocery store cashiers ask me if i want my gallon of milk in a bag? I couldn’t care less. Stick it in the cart, stick it in the bag, stick it in a huge treasure chest with fake gold coins and a hermit crab. Seriously, with all the decisions that must be made in a day, do I really need to make this one? Same with my receipt. Just stick in in the bag. If i want it in my pocket, I am perfectly capable of locating and retrieving it from the bag, thank you very much. None of us have time for these irrelevant questions. I’m going to start asking the cashiers if they’d like me to hand them my credit card with my left hand or my right hand. Maybe then they’ll get the point.

+ what would happen if all of the world’s pushpins just fell out of their walls all at once? probably total anarchy.

+ Why is it that whenever someone does something blasphemous or wrong, people joke around about God striking them with lightning? When was that precedent ever set? I’m no biblical scholar, but I don’t believe God ever used lighting to kill someone in the Bible. Besides, lighting strikes only kill about 80 people a year in the U.S. whereas horse-related injuries kill over 200 people a year. So maybe next time someone does something wrong, instead of saying “watch out for the lightning bolt!” say something like “Ride ‘em cowboy!”

+ It still amazes me that aluminum foil doesn’t get hot in the oven. Every time I pull something out of the oven with foil, I always touch it just to see if it still doesn’t hold heat. I’m just waiting for the one time that it burns my finger so I can scream, “I knew it! I knew this didn’t make any sense! It was setting me up for this the whole time!”

+ I think it would be fun sometime to just walk around a restaurant and go up to other tables and ask “How’s everything today?” like those restaurant managers do from time to time. And then if people actually had a complaint I would say “Oh, I don’t actually work here, I was just wondering how you were doing.” Am I the only one who gets that urge?

+ Speaking of restaurants, I hate it when servers, use the phrase “let me get that out of your way”. Look, maybe my plate’s not in my way, ok. in fact, if it was in my way, i would have moved it out of my way. you know why? because i have hands, and that’s what hands do, they move stuff out of my way. So next time stick with “are you done with this?” or “are we all finished here?”, but please don’t insult me or my hands with your cute little phrases.

+ If you stick a pen in your pocket during the day at work, the chances that you’ll forget to take it out and end up throwing it in the “pens and other random crap” drawer at home are about 94%.

+ it’s a good thing birds are stupid. i mean, they’re faster than us, they have pointy beaks that could rip us to shreds, and they can move in 3 dimensions when gravity has confined us to 2. If they ever got together and had some sort of brainstorming session with the top bird minds, they would probably get past this whole “what can we poop on next” thing and move to “let’s destroy the humans”. like i said, i’m glad they’re stupid.

+ the guy who created the paperclip was a genius. he basically took a useless piece of wire, bent it 3 times, and changed the world.

+ Is there an amish buggy equivalent of running out of gas? Do the horses ever just stop trotting because they’ve got nothing left? “Amos, did you forget to feed the horses this morning?”. oops. I suppose if this was a recurring problem, then they would also carry along some extra hay, which would be the amish equivalent of a gas can. What if one of their horses dies? Do they carry a shetland pony in the trunk like a spare tire?

+ Boy, the alarm clock really put the rooster out of business, didn’t it? I mean, before alarm clocks we were completely at the mercy of the rooster. It was either that or let your body sleep until it was ready to get up. You ever try sleeping through a rooster wake up call? Well, me either, but I bet they’re really tough to sleep through. And the worst part of it all is that no one has the heart to tell the rooster that we don’t need him anymore. He just keeps on with the cock-a-doodle-doos like we’re all amish or something. At this point in civilization we eat the chickens, get eggs from the hens, and the rooster is pretty much useless. All it’s good for these days is posing for country decorating knick-knacks.

+ Speaking of the rooster, what’s the deal with weathervanes? Do we really need to stick a wrought-iron rooster on top of a roof to tell which direction the wind is blowing? What genius was sitting around one day and said, ‘you know, it would sure be a lot easier to tell which direction the wind was coming from if we had a tin chicken on top of the barn!’ And besides, why is it so important that we know which direction the wind is blowing anyway? Unless your steering a sailboat or a professional paper airplane flyer, I don’t see why it even matters. The whole thing is utter nonsense.

+ You have officially grown up when the word ‘puddle’ goes from carrying a good connotation to a bad connotation.

+ Gotta hate being at work the week after a nice vacation to the beach. The worst is when you open your wallet and sand falls out of it. Not only are you ripped that there’s sand in your wallet, but the reminder of where you were exactly a week ago feels about as good as a vaccination.

+ If i was a terribly mean person i would go up to a beggar with a $5 bill in each hand and offer him either one of them. Then when he went to grab for one of them i would say, “uh uh uh…beggars can’t be choosers” and i would give him the other $5 bill. In the end, he still gets $5. But since I’m not terribly mean, i would never do that. In fact, this wasn’t even my idea.

+ What is the origin of the expression “he’s going to eat us out of house and home”? Can someone please explain to me what this means? I understand that if someone quite literally did not stop eating, that eventually the cost of the food alone would cause you to miss mortgage payments and lose your house to the bank. So now you have no house, I’m with you to this point. But the home too? Can someone actually eat so much that it will break up the very bonds of the family unit? Might the very fibers of love that hold our families together be torn asunder by an insatiable hunger? I’m gonna say no. And I’m gonna ask you to never use this cliche again, just for me.

+ Sometimes I think I might grow my hair out really long and ratty for a few years just so I can cut it and say to myself “Wow, why didn’t I do this years ago?” I’ve always wanted to say that.

+ You know those signs that say “Pass with care”? The funny thing is, the people who are doing the passing are never doing it with care. They are either late, annoyed, or just jerks. Either way, the last thing on their mind is the word ‘care’. Then again, maybe that’s why they put the sign there. Just so they can say I told you so when the guy ends up going off the road to miss a head-on collision with oncoming traffic. The police officer inspecting the carnage can only shake his head and say “Didn’t you see the sign, man?” Just once I want to be on long straight road and come across a sign that says “Pass with reckless abandon and no regard for the sanctity of human life”. Now that would be fun.

+ Of the many activities that would suffer a rapid decline in participation in a world without gravity, I think the act of spitting might be one that takes the biggest hit.

+ Has the “you just passed so-and-so’s deli and restaurant” sign ever worked on anyone? Has anyone ever driven by a restaurant, seen it, made the semi-conscious decision that they were not going to stop and go in, then suddenly a half-mile later seen one of these signs and thought, “What was I thinking?”. Here’s a hint. If I didn’t bother to go in when I was actually there, do you think I’m going to go through the trouble of going back there to go in? Whenever I go past one of these signs I like to agree with it. It’s kinda fun. “‘You just passed Regina’s House of Ammo!’ Yes, that’s right I did. But thanks for reminding me once again that there’s a place I’ll never step foot in under any circumstances.”

+ Can someone please tell me who is responsible for naming the continental breakfast the continental breakfast? What is so continental about it, anyway? You get some stale donuts, some cereal rations, crusty bagels, and room temperature milk. Am I supposed to get excited by this? Is this what they’re serving on other continents? Is that why it’s continental? Because if it is, that explains why I haven’t been to Europe yet. I’m not flying 5000 miles to be served warm orange juice when I wake up.

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