farewell, mort! i'll miss you.

i fear that with this posting, mort will disappear. which saddens me, really. didn't anyone else think he was funny? what's wrong with you people? i laughed myself to tears during the hour it took to get a decent picture of my caller ID and subsequently figure out the magic of hello to post it. i say "magic" and you think, "wow, hello must be a dream to use." the reality is that i don't often post pictures simply because i can't figure out how i managed it in the first place ... and the so-called help screens are the opposite of what they claim to be. i've tried and tried and tried to post a picture of my water heater, and the software keeps having endless "conversations" with god knows what or who ... but then it gets upset with me when i try to interrupt. from now on i guess i'll just use flickr. i have a few pictures there, and from what i remember it never did anything to offend my ultra delicate sensibilities, so i'll try it again. not that i have a camera worthy of the effort. ah well ... who knows ... maybe mort will stick around a little longer.

honestly, i don't have anything witty, creative, informative, or even the least bit interesting to say. and, as you can tell by the date of my last posting, haven't had anything witty, creative, informative, or even the least bit interesting to say for a month. i'm only writing today to stop the argument going on in my last post. so there.

now to the question of why i haven't been missing ... i have it narrowed it down to two possibilities:

#1: i have severe writer's block. the evening news had been my main source of inspiration ... at least until i posted and immediately unposted a completely tasteless bit inspired by the terri schiavo case, having decided that i had no business commenting on nationally-debated news stories and should stick to the stuff no one hears about. it was at that unfortunate point that i reached my tolerance level for stupid people. do i really want to write about how much of a freak i think michael jackson is or how society only suffers with the announcement of britney's "confinement?" no. you already know that. i could actually give you my reactions to the pope's death, but it would be all sad and insightful, and would end with a lashing out at news coverage for spending hours upon hours asking doctors how much longer he could live without kidney function and counting down his final moments rather than remembering and celebrating his inspiring life and legacy. the only thing missing was dick clark.

#2: i'm dead. it's hard to tell the difference, i know, between living jody and dead jody. there are subtle differences like breathing, eating, response to stimuli ... when i ran my knee into a filing cabinet this morning, it hurt. that's a pretty good sign that i'm alive. i'm positive, however, that i'm not "undead." if that were the case, aaron would have flown up to shoot me in the head by now. he's been here inside a month, and neither did he shoot me, nor did i try to rip him in half at the abdomen. can you blame our mother for being proud? i can think of plenty of times as a kid, adolescent, and moments-younger-than-i-am-right-now-adult when i've tried to rip aaron in half; and i'm sure there have been plenty of times when he's wanted to shoot me in the head with all forms of random projectiles. that's just what it means to be family.

whew! this has really worn me out ... i better go take a nap.

see ya next month!

grave danger: "is there another kind?"

stop! put it down and back away ... slowly ... slowly ... good. very good.

you're welcome. you had no idea, but i just saved your life. from what? that thin mint you were about to eat ... that do-si-do ... that tagalong ... that samoa. i bet you didn't realize that girl scout cookies aren't salads. neither are they fruit nor vitamins.

i know! it's shocking! but it gets better ...

as it turns out, girl scout cookies are, in fact, tiny bits of sugary goodness filled with trans-fats and empty calories.

and because they're only sold once a year, they're a perfect target for the obesity police.

how can a respected and respectable organization like the girl scouts hawk mini heart attacks that taste best when they're frozen? how can little girls justify selling pure evil door-to-door in and effort to support a club that teaches them manners, solidarity, and important life skills such as patch sewing, fire-building, and *gasp* cookie baking? they must be destroyed.

i admit it ... even i have sold girl scout cookies. but i was young and left out of the "ulterior motive" loop.

girl scouts have been selling cookies for more than 50 years. i bet that's the reason our nation is the heaviest in the world. i'm positive it has nothing to do with 99-cent double cheeseburgers at mcdonald's ... it has to be the overpriced cookies that everyone buys a box of once a year. i don't care who you are. yesterday, melissa told me that she bought two boxes and doesn't even like them. why did she buy them? because mike's daughter was selling them and she wanted to help her beat the girl who sold the most last year.

let's face it. the true girl scout cookie era came to an end with the death of trefoils. that's a fact.

so, why do we continue to buy? well, for the same reason that melissa does: it's a competition; because everyone at the office has a daughter, and you don't want to leave anyone out; because it's your civic duty; because they're just so cute standing outside the grocery store. will you eat all the cookies you end up with before they go stale? of course not. will you care? of course not.
one solution to this apparently rampant problem is to ask the scouts to sell key chains on an annual basis. i have a keychain. i've been using it for 4 years. i imagine i'll need a new one in 2017.

the idea i'd like to propose is a meeting. with nabisco. how do they sell gazillions of oreo's each year without being told that they should rethink its ingredients and turn it into a zipper pull?

seriously, think of how much healthier our nation would be, not to mention how much thinner, if nilla wafers were dryer sheets, nutter butters were clothes pins, fig newtons were fly swatters, and oreo's were zipper pulls. just ask lands' end ... they may be choking hazards, but they have almost no sugar.

it's probably too late

i've said it before and i'll say it again ... and again ... and probably again: i don't know what's wrong with me.

i want to take the new SAT.

come on! it has an essay and you don't have to do those vocabulary analogies anymore.

472. aluminum: gravy; tolerance: _________

a. szechuan
b. anemia
c. platitude
d. france
e. ebay

this might be the extra push i need to get into the business of writing random essays and selling them on the internet to high school graduate hopefuls ... or to anyone who wants to buy them ... i'm not picky about audience.

according to cnn.com, one of the SAT questions you might get saddled with asks if creativity has a place in a contemporary world. holy hell! what are high schools teaching if anyone says "no"? i could totally write an essay about that in 25 minutes. i'm on the verge, actually. but i'll refrain. i'm sure you're not interested in my views on creativity. rather, you could probably guess them if you've known me for any length of time. 15 minutes qualifies as a length of time.

so! is that where i've been all this time? investigating the moral repercussions of selling my writing to high school students? nah. i've been doing things that are moderately less morally reprehensible than that. i've mostly been "working from home" and plotting the demise of a so-called "doctor."

to be perfectly honest, when i say "working from home" what i really mean is: working from home. i actually got a lot done last month from the comfort of my own kitchen ... with dial-up nonetheless! and you'd be surprised at the number of afternoons i spent at home without watching days of our lives. i don’t even know what those crazy salemites are up to anymore.

has philip been killed in iraq, enabling belle and shawn to get back together? is john a complete junkie or has he kicked it? is jack off the fishing boat? is mrs. h. still alive?

however, you might be a little less surprised to know how many afternoons i spent listening to back-to-back episodes of the family feud.

richard says, "name a talent you wish you had." and the woman says "communication."

how disturbing do i find that? let's just say i could write an essay.