Mom called the other day to check whether her Christmas package had arrived yet. I told her it hadn’t, we talked about various other family things, the state of health of elderly relatives and so on, and eventually ended up discussing the best way to deliver biological agents, from the terrorist’s point of view. We agreed that although the antrax in the post thing was extremely well-done, spreading anthrax, botulism or something else would probably work even better through the food industry. She was thinking about sprinkling it on the produce at a supermarket, while I, on the other hand, remembered a summer job at a cannery and figured a person inside a processing plant of some sort could, were he at the right point in the process, contaminate a lot of packages.

what’s wrong with 911 sympathy songs
car door frozen shut
“Error reading from the control connection!”
Pinworms+Candy, Euro hoax, cat vomit
frozen car doors
“8-ball” magic photo “don’t ask” later outlook
feral sponge
frozen car doors, door frozen shut
how do I keep cats off my cars?
“Charlize Theron Naked”
car door frozen shut
save world my has doctor excused due
fiat doblo reviews
car door frozen.

(When two or more search requests are on the same line, I have seperated them by a comma. Click on the link in the title for more information about search request poems.)

1. Different goals: bunnies concentrate on the three F’s: frolicking, fucking and feeding on cabbages in Mr. MacGregor’s garden, while a big, mean German Shepherd wants to rip your face off.
2. Elicit different verbal reactions: a father, when he sees bunnies, will say to his small daughter, “Look! Bunnies!” On the other hand, when a big, mean German Shepherd runs up and starts sniffing the same small daughter, the father says, to her, “look out,” and “get back in the car until this dog goes away.” To the person walking the dog, with a leash in her hand that is for some reason not clipped to the dog’s collar despite the fact that she is walking her dog past a daycare center, the father says, “you know, that dog really should be on a leash, at the very least to avoid frightening children and parents even if you are so deluded that you believe it would never bite someone, which is, let’s face it, it’s job in life,” although the father is by this point so apoplectic with fury that what he says sounds more like, “OOGA-BOOGA leash!” Then, when safely out of range, he adds, “Moron!”
3. Different long term effects: after spying bunnies, that same father might feel slightly lighter and more playful for the rest of the day without remembering why, and might even think about turning on the old lava lamp when he gets home. In the case of the dog, so much adrenalin has been pumped into his system that the same man grows a thick layer of hair all over his body and grunts like Lon Chaney the day before full moon.

Vampires . Energy vampires . Energy sucking, dirty, rotten psychic vampires of the worst kind:

The humor vampire.

Some of you have complained that Feral Living hasn’t been funny in the last couple weeks. You asked whether I was feeling alright. This is what happened: I had a run-in with a humor vampire. I was unable to make a funny joke for over two weeks.

You have, I’m sure, heard about energy suckers. These psychic vampires, whether the occult kind who actually drain your life force or the… everyday kind who actually drain your life force by complaining, making you angry, and boring you are well-known. But the humor vampire took me entirely by surprise.

HumorVampire: Hi.
Victim: Hey. Happy New Year. How’re you doing?
HumorVampire: Oh, okay.
Victim: So, what’s new?
HumorVampire: Oh, nothing much.
Victim: [Wits already starting to wane] Um, uh…
HumorVampire: What are you doing?
Victim: I’m, uh, trying to chat and work at the same time.
HumorVampire: Oh, that’s nice.
Victim:…
HumorVampire: Weather’s been gray here.
Victim: That’s nice. Cold here.

And so on. This is your warning. Be on your guard against the humor vampire.

The scene: warm kitchen in cozy house somewhere in Central Europe. Mother and Father are sitting at table drinking tea. Daughter, who had been dozing in bed because she was feeling sick, enters kitchen.

Daughter: I just vomited a gigantic amount.
Father: In your bed or in the toilet?
Daughter: In the toilet.
Mother and father: [wide grins, give thumbs-up sign with both hands].
The End

Go and nominate your favorite sites at The Bloggies. All we Euro Snobs are, this year. I have no special recommendations though: that’s what it’s all about – your favorites. I would, however, like to point out that Bulletproofpunk is funny, new in 2001, well-designed, has great non-blog content, and is European.

“Out on the ice, there are no big people and little people, just people who can skate and people who can’t.” That was today’s paternal sermon to Gamma, who went skating for the first time this afternoon. I don’t think she believed me, but she was polite about it.

You know what? Her skating lesson wasn’t horrible. We’d feared it would be. We’d feared a crying, cold little kid, sick of falling to the ice every other step. But she enjoyed it and hardly ever fell because she had a mother and a big sister (who can skate fairly well) watching out for her. And, later on, after I got used to being on the ice again, a father watching out for her too.

But most of the time, I was watching out for myself. I learned to skate when Beta started skating, about 8 years ago, so we could do that as a family. Then when Gamma was born none of us had the energy to skate. So this was my first time back on the ice in about 5 years.

There are big people and little people on the ice – but they are big people who can skate, and those who can’t; same for the little ones.

Any skill divides people into new groups – those who have mastered it to various degrees and those who haven’t. I was reminded why I always enjoyed skating at this particular rink – the wonder of seeing people who looked boring or dorky waiting for the train or ringing up your purchases at a shop gliding across the ice backwards, dancing on the ice, skating arm-in-arm with their sweetheart.

The enjoyable thing about skating, for me, is the joy of doing something poorly but doing it anyway. As a child I received so much praise for the things I could do well – get good grades at school – that I became crippled by the Fear of Fucking Up, afraid to try anything I wasn’t so good at.

I finally got over that when I learned to skate. The Fear of Fucking Up is the enemy of the Joy of Doing Something Poorly. Just enjoying an activity for the playful childish pleasure of it, free of any need to achieve.