T-Rex: The Menace of the Afterlife

As you begin to grow older, the idea of mortality looms over your head, creeping up on you when you sleep and of course any time you just aren’t paying attention.  We all know how distracting infomercials for the shake weight are…  Some ponder the existence of life after death, but just as a basic post-survival-survival issue, I think we should follow the logical algorithm:

It is important that we address the  pressing question here: Will there be tyrannosaurus rexes in the afterlife?

Rubbish you may say!  But I pose this argument to you.  The name tyrannosaurus rex arises from kingly origins.  Tyrannosaurus comes from the Greek words for tyrant and lizard.  Rex means king in Latin.  Tell me, have you known of any tyrannous king who was not evil?  Does not the word tyrant convey a meaning of evil incarnate?  One who oppresses and rules unjustly certainly would be evil in my perception.  To speak of a tyrannous lizard king, how can the phrase itself not elicit thoughts of an animal with a soul?  Something cannot commit evil acts if it has no soul.  Evil without a soul is just an unfortunate mishap with no meaning.  Envision a t-rex chasing down a pre-historic person or an innocent vegetarian dinosaur.  To prey on such innocence is no unfortunate mishap!

So how does one prepare for encounters with t-rexes in the afterlife?  Very carefully.  Be sure to explicitly instruct your loved ones on how to prepare you after you have died.  I have drawn up a rough list of what needs to be buried in your casket with you:

1.       Banana peels.  Tripping a t-rex is obviously the best anyone can hope for.  With those tiny arms, there is no way he will ever be able to catch himself before he falls flat on his colossal face.

2.       A lasso.  Another good way to evade being eaten to death by an enormous lizard is to hitch a ride on his tail.  With limited flexibility and agility, he will never be able to remove you from his tail without harming himself.  I submit that a lasso is the best ride hitching equipment available. 
 
3.       A helicopter.  Quick escape is an essential survival tactic, and the helicopter can take you far away from the reach of a t-rex’s tyrannous jaws.  Since a helicopter obviously won’t fit into the casket with you, there are two ways to arrange its arrival to the afterlife with you.  First, have your family bury you in an Egyptian pyramid.  A helicopter will obviously fit in there.  Or, you could substitute the traditional casket for a helicopter.  It would at least make for a very interesting funeral.

4.       Last but not least, an Indiana Jones hat.  I mean really, what harm can it do to at least look like a BAMF while you’re evading enormous lizards?

Although there is really no way to know whether or not there is life or lizards after death, all we can do is diligently prepare and hope for the best.

Misadventures of the Humorous Type

There are some moments in life during which you can’t help but think, “Is this seriously happening to me?”  I had one of those moments yesterday.  I had just gotten home from work and I had a productive evening all lined up: house cleaning, exercising, other menial yet necessary tasks…  Anyway, Lady, our Labrador, had her Husky friends over to play in the back yard while I was at work yesterday.  In the usual fashion, the dogs managed to remove one of their collars, and this time, it was Lady’s turn to be nude.  So after AJ picked up the Huskies, I let Lady into the house and I went to the backyard to retrieve her collar. 

Much like an idiot, I closed the door behind me, completely forgetting that we did not yet have door knobs on our newly installed French doors.  Now, usually we utilize a little ghetto-ingenuity to open the door by sticking a flat head screwdriver into the internal door hardware, and rotating the screwdriver, using it as a door handle.  I didn’t take a screwdriver with me into the back yard (I mean really, why would I need a screwdriver for that task?).  So with collar in hand and no screwdriver to reenter the house, I began my resourceful thinking.  

First, I looked for any sort of tool that might have been accidentally left in the backyard.  No such luck.  Then I searched for a small piece of wood I could use in the same manner I had been using the screwdriver.  I found one and carefully poked it into the square hole and turned.  This caused the wood to disintegrate in my hand.  Okay… next idea… Maybe the side door was accidentally left unlocked.  I walked over and turned the door knob.  Dang it!  No.  

It is imperative for you to understand that we currently have no working gate to our back yard.  One was broken and made Lady a flight risk, so Nathan screwed it shut.  The other side is a brand new fence, and the addition of a gate is on the to-do list, but has not been installed yet.  

At this point I was running out of options.  As somewhat of a last resort, I decided to climb our 6 foot wooden fence.  Barefooted.  I was teetering at the top, trying to position one of our city issued garbage collection blue plastic dumpsters on the other side of the fence so I could step on it to get down without overturning it and necessitating an emergency trip to the hospital—impaling the back of my neck with untreated pine dog-eared fence picket did not seem like an enjoyable outcome to me.  I couldn’t just jump down because I feared the rocks and sticks on the ground 6 feet below would not have been kind to my bare feet, and the concrete sidewalk didn’t look any more inviting. 

As I was putting my right foot on the top of a Big Blue, I heard from the neighbor’s front yard, “Uhhhh, do you need some help?”  I then proceeded to tell him the story about the door and the screwdriver and the tragic lack of gates.  Then, I climbed down from my perch and in a pitiful and slightly embarrassed voice, I said, “Do you have a flathead screwdriver I can borrow?”

The end.

Papers for the Bees!

Clementines.  Seedless.  These two words should be paired by all reasonable deduction.  However there are instances when upon opening a cute little clementine, expecting to experience a delightful citrusy taste fiesta, I have found something less than delightful.  Seeds.  That’s right, this citrus fruit which is marketed as being seedless often contains seeds.  So instead of eating my fruit effortlessly, it becomes a battle of trying to remove the seeds without annihilating the little fruit wedges.  Unless I am fully committed and use a knife and a plate to remove said seeds, it usually doesn’t end well: sticky, orangey hands, smushed up clementine pieces, and frustration to boot. 

“How does such an atrocity occur?” you may be asking yourself.  Well, I have the answer.

Rogue Bees.

That’s right, I said it.  As each year passes and more generations of clementine trees come to be, the cross-pollination with other fruit trees, such as tangerines, causes the seeds to sneak into clementines.  It is not the farmers who are at fault here.  These bees go where they want and do what they want.  It is my opinion that the bees are trying to get back at us.  There has been a buzz for the last several years about the waning bee population, and there are a few theories as to why this is.  Some say it is habitat destruction.  With more and more of the natural landscape being taken over by shopping centers and parking lots, there are fewer places that bees are able nest.  (Do bees nest?  What is the proper verb here?)  Another theory states that the radio waves emanating from our cell phone towers and other such devices are causing the bees to be confused.  Confused?  I think not.  That is what the bees want you to think.  However, they are dangerous, scheming little guys who dress in yellow and black.  They are so bold that they don’t even try to camouflage themselves.  They say “I’m a bad ass bee, and I don’t care who knows it.” 

So apart from the swarms of angry bees driving anyone who dares to pester them into the nearest body of water, they have limited avenues through which they are able to seek their revenge.  They are sticking it to us where we least expect it: in the clementines.  So next time you open your clementine to find some rogue bee is trying to destroy your delicious care-free snacking experience, remember.  They are out to get us.  I believe the best way to ensure our national security against the bees is to make them carry papers.  Bee papers.  Then we will be able to track them and monitor their activities.  No more sneaky bees I say!  The road to civilian safety is paved with the monitoring and controlling of the unknown.  Just ask Arizona.

Warning: This post contains an obscene amount of cliches.  The majority of which I wouldn't be caught dead using in my writing. (Bwhahaha, #1)  Anyway, you've been warned.  Proceed with caution.

Yesterday my coworkers were talking about being down on your luck, and one lady said "When it rains, it pours."  Then the other said "All you can do is find a big bucket."  So in honor of that mediocre twist on an idiom, I am going to devote an entire post to taking a more real life approach to each and every one of the idioms we all know and love.  Also, I am going to interject as many cliches as possible.  The person to find them all and tell me how many there are gets a prize.  But let's be forthright, even though idioms are a dime a dozen, an original coherent thought in the hand is worth two in the proverbial bush, and any single written word is just a drop in the bucket when compared to the meaning words in groups can convey.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves.  So, back to square one.  It's no piece of cake trying to apply practicality to the sayings which make us want to pull our hair out.  Let's take the phrase "at the drop of a hat," to begin with.  When we say "He was ready to sell the house at the drop of a hat," we mean that he was eager to do it and did so immediately.  But in reality, what sort of hat dropping would make someone eager to do something?  If someone wanted a favor from me, and started dropping hats, I'm afraid they'd be barking up the wrong tree.  There's no point in beating around the bush.  If you want to motivate me, drop a twenty dollar bill, or you could even try dropping a hint.  A hat however, isn't going to get you anywhere in my book.

If you are still reading, I have to point out that curiosity kills the cat.  If you aren't already groaning, what is coming may drive you up the wall, or even push you over the edge.  At this point, the cliches are so terrible that my readers are probably dropping like flies, and the ones who are left are drinking like fish.  I've said about everything but the kitchen sink.  Bear with me though as I take on another one: flipping the bird.  If you mention those words to a small child, he might envision some circus parrot doing awesome trapeze work, which is a far cry from the reality of the situation.  It usually involves at least two very angry people who are at each others' throats, typically over a petty matter.  In fact, the situation may deteriorate so quickly that you could say they are going to hell in a handbasket.  A phrase that would hit the nail on the head might be "in your face."  No bones about it though, if you liquor someone up, he or she will be more likely to let bygones be bygones, and let sleeping dogs lie.  Unless, that is, the person is a loose cannon, in which case you will be walking on eggshells, especially if you got off on the wrong foot.

Before you pull the plug on my blog, I'll wrap it up and make a long story short.  It's almost time for me to hit the hay anyway.  After all, it does take two to tango in a reader/writer relationship.  This is where I'll wrap it up; I'm going for broke.  In fact, let's eighty six the idioms.  I just want to point out there are some people who seem to only speak in idioms.  Why is it that those people are always complaining while smiling and dropping cliches like it's 1999 (sorry, I couldn't help myself).  Maybe they think the smiling will make up for the lack of originality and general negativity they bring to the table (Okay, now it's getting out of control.  I wasn't even trying on that one).  The conversation goes something like this. 

"My friend is excited about her new job, but I told her not to count her chickens before they hatch."

"But that really is a lucky break.  She'll be making double what she did at her last job."

"You need to bite your tongue.  You know she'll never be able to cut the mustard."

Aggh!  The person who talks like this works down the hall from me!!!

Anyway, here's one more for the road.  Come hell or high water, the idioms will survive, even if we cannot survive them.