Why the guilt? Buy now!

I got an advent calendar as a gift last week, and have been trying to devour the chocolates as fast as possible. This is not because I am hoping to curse advent, but because chocolate in advent calendars is never very good. I'm planning to refill all the chocolate molds before Dec. 1st.

But then I wonder, what if I keep eating them all in under a week?

I can't keep refilling the mold. I feel as though I'm already transgressing some sacred law of advent calendars by eating the chocolates every morning and night at random. It's becoming more and more disconcerting as I peak under doors and see no chocolate.

It doesn't help my feelings of regret that the tiny chocolates are conspicuously small and breakable like communion wafers.

Residual religious guilt is getting in the way of my nice economical arrangement where I demand more chocolate and more chocolate is supplied. It doesn't matter if I'm the one demanding and supplying.

To counter these unfortunate circumstances and draw more people into my irreverent display of gluttony, I'm selling an advent calendar that is designed expressly for you to glut and then refill. It's called the hybrid 50,000.

Why should you put this on your Christmas list? Advent calendars have been around long enough that people should demand more from their calendars.

But what is the secret to refilling them? If you buy the hybrid 50,000, I will show you how many people have been raving about the compulsively guilt-free chocolate they've been sneaking from their calendar, even from the baby Jesus' birthday eve.

"What I love about the hybrid 50,000 is how the ____ _____ refills on its own! It's like God is inviting me eat chocolate twenty four times a day."

For your guilt-free pleasure, the chocolates do not resemble wafers, wine, fish, coffee, or anything that might provoke a sentiment of religious guilt. Instead, they are shaped like celebrity heathens. You can't feel like you're sinning when you're waging war on enemies of the lord.

There is nothing wrong with breaking the rules of religious ceremonies. I want you to experience the miracle of a calendar that satisfies your needs and gives an outlet to your normal compulsive eating tendencies.

God says embrace them.

Not that 21 was so great.

What's good about being 22?

Aww, somebody else studied the French Revolution

Presenting, the Revolutionary Guillotine Cigar Cutter, or, the first thing on my Christmas wish list. Notice the tiny bucket for the heads. It's perfect for your desk or kitchen counter. The same website also offers a Richard the Lionheart Pewter Goblet, a Davinci Flying Machine, and an Equestrian Armour bookend. Why did I not take advantage of these fabulously elitist gifts when my Grandma tried to buy me bookends when I was sixteen? Why have I not memorized more quotes from the French Revolution? If I bought this little device, I would have to learn some for the purpose of role-playing. As Robbespierre, I think, once said, "Louis must die, so that the country can live," and, "Guillotine cutters will soon be available to the masses." The masses and, I would add, pompous, elitist-complex business folks I'd like to have a word with.

Using crow calls to make toms gobble

I have found the perfect re-usable metaphor. It was while searching Amazon that I discovered this incredible book:

Advanced Turkey Hunting: Turkey Hunting's Top Experts Reveal Their Secrets for Success (The Complete Hunter) Hardcover.

While there are no wild turkeys in Saskatchewan, Alberta, or Manitoba, I am tempted to believe that this book could be a best-seller in the prairies by a quick look at its index.

The Calling Turkeys entry might have been lifted out of a call-centre initiation booklet. The sixteen ear-marked pages include the “Sit & Call” strategy, How turkeys respond to calls, Call-shy turkeys, “Educating” turkeys, Pre-season, Calling competitions, Turkey reactions, and finally, When not to call.

If all those things fail, then one must learn to cackle.

Cackling, 31
When to cackle, 54, 100

One item in the list that disturbs me is “shock-gobbling.” Is this the Bush Administration equivalent to a turkey questioning period? I would guess it involves gobbling in an atrocious manner of a born-again, tongue-fluttering evangelist, so that the turkey suffers the “awkward pause” syndrome and is too embarrassed to run.

Another great way to stun turkeys is to simply imitate them, otherwise known as Calling Competitions - also a popular call-centre tactic (incidentally, this is also a good way to avert call-center callers). I can understand what is appealing in turkey hunting when it comes to imitation. That said, rather than take up hunting, I am going to incorporate what’s good about turkey calls and imitation in other parts of my life, such as in the office, and on the phone.

One fascinating index entry is called Putting turkeys to bed. If this is some sort of euphemism, guess what, it works, because I have no idea what the hell it is. Is it sort like when you put quiche to bed, and you fold it into another quiche? I can only assume turkey hunting Spartans are attempting to gain turkeys’ trust before the attack.

“If we tuck them into bed tonight, they’ll trust our breakfast-in-bed in the morning – which will make them extremely drowsy, what with all the saturated fat.”
“Brilliant!”

It screams James Bond villainy, as does the Run & Gun Strategy. Why does the run come before the gun? And what about the fun? And why do killing strategies rhyme?

If this review hasn’t made you want to buy this book already, maybe you need to learn about Turkey activities in cold weather. I’m a November baby so I know what I’m talking about.

Oh, one more thing, I hate hunting. But I relish the thought of men and women trying to kill turkeys by ruffling imaginary feathers, rolling around in leaves, and making crow sounds in order to attract them. It almost makes me want to say the hunters/potential call-centre employees deserve to win.

Still not sure what it means but it's now my yahoo account

Apparently, I am not the only one baffled by the mysterious origin of Chinese Laundry Boots which I have sworn to wear with a retractable-dome T-shirt to the China Olympics (see post below). I was alerted that Wikipedia does not offer a useful explanation either. A search on Wikipedia reveals the following is true:

George Formby
100% relevancy
List of Marine Corps Acronyms and Expressions
95.7%
Fairy Tale Forest
94.8%
Bulletproof Monk
94.1%
List of Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers episodes
93.1%
Shit
92.8%
Buzzkill
91.7%
Tagalog Loanwords
91.1%



Why is "Shit" number six, and why does it have 92.8 per cent relevancy?

If George Formby is any indication to what this list means, then I can only presume that Chinese Laundry Boots were spawned from a horrifying Cockney ukelele player from the 1930s. Now Formby is 'shit'-in-your-pants scary.

The list would make a great writing exercise: use these eight words or expressions and write a short story, entitled Chinese Laundry Boots (CLB). Don't forget to include Chip 'n Dale Rescue Ranger episodes, and Tagalog Loanwords. No cheating.

Okay, I will explain the relevance of each of these words in one go: George Formby's had a grill called CLB; 'Git your chinese laundry boots' means abandon ship in the Marine Corps; the Grimm Brothers coined CLB in their story Little Red Chinese Laundry Boots (working title); Bulletproof Monk was a guy on tv/film who was racist, and whose laundry maid he kicked; Chip and Dale arrest convicts through footprint clues in an episode entitled 'Mission Chinese Laundry Boots'; Shit is relevant because CLB are sometimes used in elephant & yak cages; buzzkill is just an insertion on the part of Wikipedia, because if you had any buzz at the beginning of the list, it's long gone; and finally, Tagalog loanwords, because CLB was direct translation from Tagalog, and has nothing to do with the Chinese. The phrase is still on loan to English, and is not likely to be returned - sort of like my overdue library books during the strike.

The next post will be about Greece, or something

During recent escapades through the interweb, I discovered a fascinating article whose lede was this: "An embarrassing gaffe by China's usually staid state-run media has left a popular newspaper with onion on its face."

The article explains how a Chinese journalist, in the face of fierce competition from his peers and possibly stupid judgment, submitted an article to his editor that was lifted from America's Finest News Source, The Onion.

The story, published in the Beijing Evening News (according to the article, Beijing's largest-circulation newspaper), revealed that U.S. Congress threatened to leave D.C. unless a new Congress was built, preferably one with a retractable dome, as depicted in a photo with the article.

What's remarkable about the Onion article is that it sounds quite legitimate - costs are cited, and taxes, and a citizen is quoted in response. There are several glaring clues, however, that the article is tongue-in-cheek, such as naming Toronto as a possible site of relocation, and a senator complaining that the reason the capitol is not fit is because the sight lines are bad, and there aren't enough food concessions.

While this occurred in 2002, before the Onion was well-known as a satiric news source, the lifted story apparently ran adjacent to an article titled, "Sexual Tension Between Arafat, Sharon Reaches Breaking Point" and "Man Blames Hangover on Everything But How Much He Drank."

These stories are still there.

The most popular renovation proposal cited in the article was entitled, "'Halls Of Power,' a retro-futuristic design' .... that would feature a retractable rotunda for daytime sessions, a Dancing Waters fountain in the front courtyard, and 55 more luxury boxes than the current building."

The journalist may not be accurate (or fear plagiarism), but neither are his superiors, the editors, any the wiser. They assume a government demanding "Halls of Power" is normal business; why, you ask? Because this is what occurs in China?

Although the article was written five years ago, one can assume that China is still having a lot of problems pretending it's one of the popular kids of the West during pre-season Olympic charades. China is not the clean, well-dressed, well-mannered kid. It is the kid, who sometimes eats dirt of its hands, dirt called 'peasants' and doesn't worry about its excessive size or the intensifying stench of its flatulence, and by that I mean pollution and HR violations.

But enough about China and more about boots! I could never become a fashion guru because I could never remember the names of all the boots, just like I know I can't be a server because I can't remember the menu. For some reason, boots have the most intriguing names. If I ever own a mansion, I will name it after a boot. While scrolling down a list of sale items on PAWS, I noticed an ad for Chinese Laundry Boots (CLBs). It turns out these are not scrubby boots, and only boots you would do laundry in if you are a poor-digger like me. They have envy written all over them. And the name just perfectly articulates my swank pre-occupation with the proletariat (Here, I let out several slow, tense a-ahas). While I wouldn't name my mansion after this type of boot, I would definitely name my manse after Mukluks. But that is because the mansion would be a lodge. Extravagant, but all cedar logs. I would wear Mukluks while contemplating the sky-blue and black eyes of my lead Husky, like a black comet hurtling towards earth on a clear winter's day. That is how I would stare into them.

I googled CLBs, and the first five pages had nothing but ads to buy CLBs through the interweb. After five pages I gave up, seeing there were a million more, and I am a little OCD (got to watch for triggers). Nowhere, was there any etymological or sociological explanation for the bizarre name.

Maybe the boot's name began as a cynical joke among the super rich in China, and we, like, don't care, cuz it's fashionable, and that, let's not lie, matters more than political correctness.

To sum up, I know what I'm wearing to the Olympics to impress devilish Chinese statesmen. A retractable dome T-shirt and CLBs.


http://www.theonion.com/content/node/27828