Kicking Dubya’s Butt with Haiku!

For Dubya’s birthday (July 6th), the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is sending him a slew of birthday haiku created by folks just like you and me! See this site for details.

Here are a few haiku I’ve submitted (some of them are birthday related, others just rants):

(this first one sounds like praise for Reagan, but it’s not. I promise)

even if you’re old
you’re still no Reagan junior
bedtime for Bonzo

blow out the candles
on four years of blundering
that’s our wish, at least

celebrate freedom
with a new “patriot act”
kick bush’s ass out

guess for your big day
you will relax, “lie” around
just like ev’ry day

And, possibly my all time favorite haiku ever:

exploding “candles”
some Abu Graib “pinatas”
It’saddam party

this better not be a start to a plague or something

one three point three one
palindrome-ic rain amount
that’s wet AND creepy

So not only has it rained nearly every day in June, it’s now either a) raining leeches or b) turned my backyard into such a swamp that leeches are popping by to set up camp.

Of course, this disgusting, slimy, long, black creature may not be a leech. I haven’t actually seen one in real life before. But dang if this little dude isn’t the grossest thing I’ve ever seen on my porch. The picture doesn’t really do his grossness justice. You should see him lift up one end of his body like a tiny little cobra. *shiver*

I feel like an idiot

moron in aisle five
line snakes through store, makes folks mad
guess who’s the dummy?

I saved $76.23 today. But not in a good way.

I should preface this post by saying that the hubby and I recently discovered Costco. As far as mega big box stores go, it really does seem to have some pretty good prices on things. So the hubby broke down and got a membership for his company. That means, by default, I got a spouse card. Yay.

This morning, the wee one and I decided to go test out the Spouse Card and see what deals we could scrounge up at the local Costco. I even brought a calculator with me to prevent a spree of bulk-buying insanity.

We politely ignored the armpit smell and noxious pizza fumes that greeted us once inside the warehouse. I smiled as I choked down the nausea the smell induced. We plodded our way through the third-world country like crowds and carefully chose each item that might deem us “Smart Bargain Shoppers”.

I had diapers, I had bread, I had about 8 million peanut butter crackers, I had fruit bowls, bottled water… and with every item I hurled into the cart, I knew I was saving money. It was actually kind of fun.

So finally, I looked down at the calculator and decided it was time to stop. No sense in spending a zillion dollars especially when we don’t actually have a freezer large enough to contain a box of 35 hot pockets.

The wee one and I found a line, and unloaded the booty. The cashier rung up the booty in a jolly way… it totaled up to, you guessed it, $76.23. I whip out the trusty debit card and what? It’s the hubby’s debit card. The one with the unknown pin. Not to worry. I slide the card in the card sliding doohickey and wait.

“Say,” I ask, “How to you cancel the debit part and just use the debit card as a credit card?” This doohickey seems to be missing the appropriate buttons.

“Oh,” the cashier responds cheerfully, “You can’t use it as a credit card. You have to use your pin. Or write a check. The only credit card we take is Am Ex.”

All. The. Color. Drains. From. My. Face.

I hear a collective sigh and foot rustling of the growing line behind me. I swallow.

“So, uh, if I can’t remember the pin, then I guess I’m in trouble, huh?” I ask with a strangled chuckle.

The cashier looks at me like a) my hair is on fire or b) I am a criminal who has stolen a debit card. Then he leans closer to me, as I feel myself turn red and shrink before him, and says “You don’t remember your pin?”

It’s not that I didn’t remember the pin, it’s that I never knew it in the first place. It’s that my husband removed my debit card (the pin of which I know by heart) from my wallet and replaced it with the Useless Debit Card bearing his name. Seems the hubby needed to use a cash machine and instead of fixing his debit card, he swiped mine. Wonderful.

So I’m standing there at Costco, a cart full of $76.23 worth of stuff, and no way to buy it. A manager has to be called over. Manager explains there’s nothing he can do. I then have to lower my head in shame, lift my child out of the basket, and leave the store without any of the bulk bargains.

I must be maturing, because a few years ago this would have made me cry. Instead, I called my hubby and hulked out a little. He was very, appropriately contrite.

-sigh- maybe this was jeebus’ way of telling me not to spend money. Maybe HEB placed a voodoo curse on me to never be able to shop anywhere but their stores. Or maybe, before I spend a morning carefully shopping for bargains, I should check my wallet and see what’s inside. Apparently you never know.

just noticed something

the butts they haunt me
all shapes, sizes and colors
lurking everywhere

I have a lot of pictures of butts. And I’m not talking pictures of the cute wee butt belonging my toddler. I’m talking relatives’ butts. My butt. My husband’s butt. The dog’s butt. Strangers’ butts. Chances are, if you live in Austin, or if you’re related to me in some way, I have a picture of your butt.

Why?

Because of the wee one. As The Most Photographed Child in History, he presides over almost an entire roomful of pictures. Not only that, the computer is full of pictures. I know this isn’t extraordinary. Every baby has a million pictures taken of him. The problem is that I suck as a photographer. I guess I never learned to frame a picture, or to kneel to get a good shot of my kid. Nearly every picture we have of the Wee One (at least since he’s been walking) is of the top of his head and the ass of whoever happens to be standing next to him at the time.

I also don’t assert myself enough while taking pictures. Instead of jumping to the front of the crowd, I lag behind. This means I get a partial shot of the top of my child’s head, and about 42 butt shots of all the people standing in front of me. It’s trouble.

Not only that, but when the people standing next to the Wee One are actually facing forward, I never manage to get their head into the frame. The wee one looks great, standing there with a goat, or chasing after the dog, but the person grinning with him could really be snarling, or, in fact, have the head of a lizard. No one will ever know, because as far as my library of pictures go, they are headless.

The only way I can think of to fix this problem is to inject my son with growth hormones so that he’ll grow taller in a very rapid fashion. The taller he gets, the less buttage our pictures will have.

Just kidding.

We’ll stick with the butts. Just know that if you’re ever near me and see me shooting pictures, you better check those panty lines and unsightly stains. Cause your posterior is going down in history.

(side note: the blogger spell check tried to replace “camera-ing” with “Sumerians.” For some reason, I find this hysterical)

car-nage

poor little froggy
your bones lie under my tire
not so spry, were you?

Good news and bad news

growing veggies, yay!
cooking them, yay! (burning them,
ruining pots. Boo.)

I have good news and bad news regarding the garden (I’m sure you’ve been dying for an update). Well, despite the ravaging effects of roly-polys, stink bugs and rampant grass growth, the garden is, in fact, growing real fruits and veggies!

Here’s the good news:

Check out the tomatoes:

And here are a couple black-eyed peas:

Here’s the bad news:

In my overzealous attempt to whip up a batch of old-school black-eyed peas, I attempted to cook them without actually having enough of the little suckers. The results were, well, less than appetizing. So, of course, I took a picture. I’ll link to it, though. That way you can take a gander at your own risk. Just be glad you can’t smell them, too. It’s amazing how burnt black-eyed peas and a poopy diaper have many of the same olfactory consequences.

Here they are. The green thing is a spent jalapeno pepper. I’m probably gonna have to throw that pot away. (By the way, the picture isn’t compressed all the way, so you can really get a good look at the mess. Luckily, though, I didn’t hurt myself with this cooking adventure.

terrible rhyming haiku

rain, rain go away
drown my plants another day
drown bugs? Yes you may.

Like a Phoenix from the ashes…

Thanks to the patronage of a very generous benefactor, Haikuterbury Tales has FIVE NEW STANZAS! That puts us almost half-way to a haiku across my forehead (and, of course, to a well thought-out epic tale of neighborhoood shenanigans).

So take a look at the new stanzas, revel in their haiku-ness, be glad you’re not my neighbor and then become a deMedici yourself. All artists need partons. Even artists who hijack respectable forms of poetry and turn them into cheap entertainment.

Huzzah!

new obnoxious poll!

For those who are interested, here are the results for the Preferred Way to Edit Your Cursing poll:

you republican! 35%
you chalksucker! 25%
you turkey! 20%
you fargin bastich!10%
you evildoer! 10%
you bleepin’ punk! 0%
you toad! 0%

This is the only time, ever, you will hear me say “Congratulations, Republican!”

Thanks for voting, everyone. I hope you enjoy the new poll. It’s as lame-o as ever!

have you heard about this?

super strong baby
has wild, mutant muscle mass
the X-Files live on

Have you heard about the German Super Baby who was born with incredible muscle mass and is like a real-life superhero?

From the New York Times:

The moment the little boy was born, the hospital staff knew there was something unusual about him. His muscles looked nothing like the soft baby muscles of the other infants in the nursery. They were bulging and well defined, especially in his thighs and upper arms.

“Everybody noticed,” said Dr. Markus Schuelke, a pediatric neurologist at Charité University Medical Center in Berlin.

The baby, it turned out in the first such documented case in a human, had a double dose of a genetic mutation that causes immense strength in mice and cattle.

The child’s mother was strong – she had been a professional sprinter in the 100-meter dash – and she came from a strong family. Her grandfather, a construction worker, had unloaded curbstones by hand, hefting stones weighing at least 330 pounds. (There was no information on the baby’s father.)

The little boy is healthy and very strong, able to hold two 6.6-pound weights horizontally with his arms extended. But while the muscles in his arms and legs are twice as big as the muscles of other children his age, Dr. Schuelke said, “he is not extreme: you wouldn’t recognize him if you saw him on the street.”

All I can say is, yes, it’s cool to be strong and everything, but can German Super Baby eat an entire can of corn for breakfast?

I didn’t think so. That feat is reserved for only my little super hero.

(Here’s the link to the whole story if’n you want to read it:
Very Muscular Baby Offers Hope Against Diseases You’ll note that I removed all of the interesting facts from my snippets and just left in the sensational stuff)