In an attempt to get my inane drivel off of the top of the page, I bequeath unto you all…the incomparable Yakov Smirnov’s cameo in the ’80’s juggernaut, “Night Court”!
He truly was a gift from above. RIP if you’re dead. Vaya con dios if not.
Archive for the 'General Observation' CategoryPage 4 of 24
So we’re headed back to Indy now, after an utterly fantabulous visit to Chicago. SUCH FUN! We stayed at Swissotel, where we got to stay in a corner suite that had unbelievable views and where they also have cold bottles of water waiting for you in your car when they fetch it from valet parking. We are such brats.
Last night, we went to Fogo de Chao. I don’t know if you guys have ever experienced this Brazilian steakhouse, but if you’re into eating meat in a big way, I would highly recommend it. They have this stop/start method whereby you are given a two sided coaster - one side’s red and the other’s green - and when you want them to bring you some slabs of meat, you flip it to the green side. This is AFTER you’ve had as much salad as you want for your first course.
At this particular Fogo de Chao, the servers are like an army of meat-bearing soldiers, and if you have your coaster flipped to green, you are literally descended upon by swarms of men with skewers. And they keep coming to you non-stop until you flip the coaster to red. It’s kind of awesome. By the time we decided to flip to red for the final time, I’m fairly certain that Mr. Mock had consumed an entire cow. And that’s IN ADDITION to the chicken, pork and lamb he sampled. I ate a lot too - don’t get me wrong - but at the risk of sounding totally inappropriate, let me just say that Mr. Mock is quite gifted in the meat department.
We were so totally stuffed at the end of this meal that we couldn’t even bring ourselves to particpate in any sort of nightlife activity. So we collapsed in our obscenely soft giant bed and watched fireworks from our window. SO great!
Have I told you guys how much I love Chicago? LOVE. I got a few good photos of freaky people on Navy Pier which I will share with you once I’m back home. And, naturally, there will be more mocking. Oh, so much mocking.
There is no better way to celebrate the Fourth of July than by grilling Twinkies, eating the green potato chips and remembering the fallen heroes who died protecting our right to type silly words on this magical machine without fear of a governmental teabag.
So it is with great pride that I celebrate our independence by doing the very thing that distinguishes us from the oppressed…the freedom to have a total blast. So join me by clicking the image and “Pulling America’s Finger!”
Happy Independence Day!
Zits. There is absolutely NO REASON why, at my age, I should still be breaking out. And I’m not saying I have the same sort of acne crisis as the dude in this picture. In fact, if I did, I would have figured out a way to off myself a long time ago. But every now and then, I will get one of those ridiculous and painful deep-under-the-skin zit mountains. You know the ones I’m talking about, right? You can’t pop them, and so all you can do is rely on various potions and creams and concoctions that really do nothing except make you FEEL like you might be helping move things along, when really if you just left it alone it would go away in approximately the same amount of time.
Not to embarrass them or anything, but Bunny and Dame have both complained of the same problem today. Bunny complained earlier this morning, and Dame complained at lunch about a constellation forming on the side of her face. And while I totally sympathized, I also was kind of thinking, “Phew. I’m so glad I don’t have any zits right now. Zits suck.”
So what do you think happened the moment I got back from lunch?
Yyyyyeah. A new underground mountain has formed on my chin. It’s as if having that fleeting moment of gratitude somehow jinxed my face into busting out a giant tumor. It’s like one part of my brain said, “YAY! I have no zits right now!” and another part said, “Attention, pores! Discontinue Operation Clearskin. Commence Operation Oil Overproduction immediately. Subject’s positive self-esteem must be eliminated.”
In the case of both Bunny and Dame, neither of them have the kind of zits where you want to point and mock. They’re the kind of zits where they, as the zit owners, feel intensely aware of them but no one else really notices. I don’t know if the same can be said of the new mountain I’m growing.
Ugh.
Thanks to a small spot on the morning news, I learned that in Spivey’s Corner, NC, there was – and I swear I am not making this up – a HOLLERIN’ CONTEST last Sunday. What’s more is that this is an ANNUAL event, and to the small town of Spivey’s Corner and aspiring hollerers worldwide, it is a BIG DEAL. Apparently the contest raises lots of money for the police and fire stations, so it’s for a great cause…and because of this, I will try not to mock it.
I give up. I tried. I can’t help it. I have to mock. Luckily, someone has saved me lots of time by producing a video which adequately captures all the mocketacious mockability of this contest. Watch it. At the very least, it is powerful evidence for the theory of evolution. And it makes me think of all the fun Weird Al could have mocking Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl”.
Hey - do you guys remember the first school/home computers that came out forever ago? Like the Apple IIe and its various predecessors? I was just thinking this morning about how totally dependent I’ve become on technology to do most everything, and how different things used to be back in the day. You know, in olden times. The days of yore, if you will.
Like - I remember being in middle school and first taking an Introduction to Computing class on a big bulky computer that looked a lot like the one pictured. And I remember thinking that the whole idea of computers at the point was completely retarded. We were taught DOS commands, which were essentially strings of c’s and colons and backslashes and all sorts of other secret code symbols that took forever to type exactly right, and all we’d get out of it was like - a shape of a butterfly or something on the screen. It just seemed to take an awful lot of work to do the tiniest thing. I remember asking my teacher, “Why do we have to type all this gibberish? Why can’t we just type ‘make a butterfly pattern’ if the computer is so smart?” I didn’t do well in Introduction to Computing.
I STILL don’t really understand why programming languages have to be so hard. I’m looking forward to the day when computing will be purely based on voice commands. And instead of typing, I’ll just be laying in bed orally dictating my blog posts. Or better yet, I’ll just THINK them really hard and they’ll magically appear on the screen. That’s how lazy I am - I dream of a day where I can do everything horizontally.
You know what class I totally kicked ass in? Highschool typing. It was by far the most useful class in my entire school career. And that includes college. Nothing has helped me more, on a professional level, than learning to type. Classes like calculus and statistics were, I believe, created for the sole purpose of tormenting drunk and/or hungover college students. I had the WORST instructor ever for Calculus in college. She was lanky and overweight all at the same time and she had blond hair that was simultaneously hideously greasy and also frizzed out and fluffy. And the armpits of her clothes were all stained this disgusting yellowish color. I don’t know what she ate, but whatever it was apparently caused her to sweat mustard. My nickname for her, in fact, was Greasefluff McMustardArms. That nickname alone is basically all I remember from that entire semester’s worth of calculus. Oh yeah - and there was something about the function of x.
Uncanny.
Weather forecasters. They lie all the time, and they’re wrong all the time, and yet they never get in trouble for it. This is one of the only jobs I can think of where this level of inaccuracy and error never results in any sort of consequences.
A few years ago, when I had the good fortune to travel to Australia’s east coast with my husband for 10 days, I would turn on the news while Mr. Mock was showering and the local weatherpeople would describe the day’s weather outlook as “fine.” I loved this. “What’s the weather going to be like today?” my husband would shout from the bathroom. “They say it’s going to be fine,” I would shout back. And it was. It was always fine. Australia is so totally awesome.
Anyway, in Indiana, the weatherpeople should be trained to just say they don’t know what the weather’s going to be like, because then at least I could have some respect for them. They should say, “You know what, Indiana? Weather here sucks a great deal of the time, and it may or may not suck today. Take some sunscreen, a raincoat, and a sled with you when you leave the house, and you should be all set. Oh yeah -if there’s a severe thunderstorm threat, you can count on us to interrupt any and all tv shows that you like so that we can blather on about it for way longer than we need to. However, we won’t KNOW if there is a severe thunderstorm threat until golf ball sized hail is in the process of damaging your cars. Have a great day!”
This video has nothing to do with weatherpeople and everything to do with people who annoy you with nothing but talk of the weather. I had to post it, because I’m pretty sure Holmes has wanted to give the same speech like 17 different times in his career here. Enjoy!
I hate when store/restaurant names are spelled wrong or the names have dumb tricks in them on purpose.
For example, Chick-fil-A. What is the purpose of the hyphens and the big A? Does this somehow generate more business than it would otherwise?
Or Kut ‘n Kurl. That’s a horrible one. I’m going to assume I don’t need to tell you that it’s a hair salon. You know what I think when I see that sign? That if the people in there can’t even spell “cut” or “curl” correctly, I sure as hell am not going to trust them with a pair of scissors near or around my head.
And look at the picture here. That is an actual name of a gas station chain that scatters itself around the midwest. I avoid it whenever possible because I get giggle attacks whenever I see it. This is the level of my maturity. In fact, an old co-worker of mine and I saw this on a business trip once and took pictures of ourselves under the sign because we were so giggly about it. But did we purchase anything? No. Which proves of course, that this kind of marketing ploy is useless.
Do you guys have other examples?
Tomorrow’s my birthday, and I’m going to be all sorts of old. I don’t FEEL all sorts of old, but I’m like the kind of old where people will card me because they feel sorry for me, after I’ve given them that look that says, “Please for the love of God, card me - I’m not ready to give up my youth.” Perhaps some of you know the look I’m talking about.
It’s weird really, because I will meet people who I think are super mature and adult and the kind of people in general who you look at and think, “That person has their crap together” and then think, “Someday I too will be a full-fledged adult like that person” and then I find out that the person is YOUNGER THAN I AM.
This happens all the time.
Conversely, I also meet people who I’m absolutely sure are in my age group - you know, give or take 5 years - and I will want to befriend them and hang out with them, and then I will find out they are only talking to me because they they’re not old enough to drink and are hoping I will buy them liquor. I’m serious. That’s how warped my sense of self is.
One time, I was at a club in Vegas hanging with assorted people from my company, and the karaoke band started playing Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” and I was totally singing along and chair dancing to it. And one of the girls I was with, who I was absolutely sure was in my age group, looked at me and said, and I am not making this up, “Who sings this?” and I said, incredulously, “Prince - you know, from the Purple Rain soundtrack.” And she said, “Hmm. I’m not familiar with his work.”
That night, I checked myself for wrinkles, varicose veins and age spots.
The greatest example ever though - was with Dame herself. Dame is a wee bit younger than the rest of us mockers, but she’s one of those old souls who grew up with older sisters and therefore was subjected to 80’s pop culture and totally gets all the references. At lunch one day, I started talking about the good old days when I used to have gobs of people over to watch Melrose Place and we all collectively freaked out about that crazy scar on Marcia Cross’ head that no one saw coming - waaaay before she was on Desperate Housewives, and I turned to Dame to say, “Did you ever do that?” and she replied:
“I wasn’t allowed to watch Melrose Place. I was 11.”
That night, I took Geritol. There was no fighting it at that point.
Anyway, happy birthday to me! Expect slower posting tomorrow, as several of us mockers are taking the afternoon off to celebrate the birth of me. A really long time ago.
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