My father-in-law the retired mechanic was helping my sister-in-law clean her car, which she wants to sell. It’s got a lot of miles on it so they were getting it really clean inside and out.

Then they opened the hood to clean in there, and [in order to fully appreciate this next bit you should know that when they were kids, my wife used to terrorize her younger sister by reminding her that she had a skeleton - she had bones, right inside her own body! An idea that freaked her out.] they opened the hood and there was this, well, I’ll let my father-in-law tell it:

“This dead animal.”

They weren’t sure what sort, exactly. Four legs and a tail. Fatter than a weasel.

It had been there for a while, but then again not so long. “It wasn’t too decomposed,” said my father-in-law.

My sister-in-law ran away eeking. “Dude,” I said to him. “Take it to the taxidermist and give it to her for Christmas!” I had visions of it in a little suit, you know, with green visor and a royal flush in one paw. But alas, he’d run it out to the dump.

“With baseball,” I explained to my wife, “the action in the game progresses from base to base, with a concomitant increase in excitement and arousal, both in participants and spectators. Action is clearly divided into distinct stages: first base, second base, third base and home base, and each stage dictates a unique strategy and approach.”

“Whereas with soccer, the point is getting the ball into the goal as fast as you can,” she replied.

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My new fighting technique is unstoppable at Raising Hell:
my daughter beat me up this weekend.

Bill of Rights, Amendment I:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

[via U.D.N.]

The papaya on my desk was billed as a “giant papaya” at the store where I purchased it on my lunch break. It weighs in at, let’s see, 2.564 kilos (here, you weigh your produce yourself, push a button and a sticker comes out of the machine, with weight and price and barcode, you stick that to your papaya) and cost

“…Americans are in a state of fear, and that fear has been manipulated by militarists and political opportunists to lead ordinarily decent people to the conclusion that we can be safe only by wiping out others.”

[via BKO]

Main Entry: ap.o.ca.plec.tic

Pronunciation: “a-po-ka-‘plek-tik

Function: adjective
Etymology: French or Late Latin; French apoplectique, from Late Latin apoplecticus, from Greek apoplEktikos, from apoplEssein, from English apocalypse
Date: 2002
1 : state of extreme agitation over the end of the world
– ap.o.ca.plec.ti.cal.ly /-ti-k(&-)lE/ adverb

Example: “George became quite apocaplectic when he discovered that the genetically-altered virus targeted his genome.”

[Originally posted at Feral Living, which is now sort of broken.]

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