Monthly Archives: January 2018

Let Me In So I Can Go Out

 

Pssst. Over here. KEEP YOUR VOICE DOWN!

I’m secreted away in a bunker fortified by steel and wood. To be more specific, I’m in my home office with the door closed.

No matter. Esme still takes offense. For the dog of a writer, she seems to hate when I practice my craft. I guess that shouldn’t be surprising; she’s the first dog I’ve ever known to have a look of condescension. As if to say: Come on, simple human; you can do it. 

So it goes with my writing. She hates it. Or at least she refuses to be around when I’m attempting it.

And I’m not sure why. Perhaps I used to yell at the computer when I was struggling with a story. Or cursing the keyboard when the Mac froze.

Whatever the case, she hates to be around when she senses stress. Her big brother, Teddy, used to be a notorious ruiner. He’d chew on jeans til there was a hole the size of a softball. Shoes were simply the tenderloins of rawhides. He once chewed my wallet to pieces — along with all the cash inside.

So perceptive was she that she would leave the house the moment I awakened and walked into the living room — she knew the shock and awe of Teddy’s handiwork to come.

I’ve tried everything to soothe her nerves, to keep her comfortable on the couch: music, a space heater, four blankets and a pillow (I never said I was a logical dog owner).

No matter. When the keys are a’clackin, she gets to packin.

Like right now. She must have heard you reading and headed for the door. Thanks a lot.

 

But I’m No Super Genius…or Are I?

 

Watching cable news lately is a bit like walking into the home of parents with third graders. There’s gonna be crap on the fridge.

Similarly, you’d think Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson had just spawned  a pre-teen after Donald Trump’s fitness “test” at the White House. You can almost see them jostling for fridge real estate, so Junior can see who posted his latest masterwork.

First, try to get that image out of your head. Sorry about that. No one should have to picture either of those fleshy men copulating.

Now, though, consider the awkward position in which that doctor must have found himself, as do all people caught in the orbit of Trump: Utter the ridiculous, or pack. Do even the most ardent Trump supporters believe that, with a few fewer Big Mac and Filet of Fish sandwiches a day, he could live to 200?

For some reason, that sounded particularly absurd, if there’s a way to distinguish one utterance from another. We expect a press lackey to proclaim the Earth’s largest inauguration. We expect a toadie to hail Trump as the force to “revolutionize reality TV.” We’d even expect neo Nazis and the religious right (sorry for the redundancy) to, well, vote for him. You expect crazy shit.

But this doc probably has friends. Maybe doctor friends. What do they say when he comes to poker night? Do they tease him for a Biblical diagnosis? Raise the nickel-a-hand game to $5,000 a card? SeanTuck either didn’t know or didn’t care, so proud were they with Donnie’s perfect score.

Just for kicks, I looked up the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), a test usually given to Parkinson’s patients. While lots of folks have reprinted the image above, what’s interesting is the stuff below: the rest of the test. So here it is. All of it. Try NOT to get a perfect score: 

Now, for some factslaps our baboon-in-chief could likely not read, let alone know:

  • In the Norwegian town of Longyearbyen, it is illegal to die.
  • In a study following the lives of 19,000 kids for 10 years, video games had no negative social behavior effects on the children.
  • In 2010, a group of 15 monkeys escaped a research institute in Japan by using trees to catapult themselves over a 17 ft high electric fence.
  • Stifling a sneeze by clamping your nose and mouth shut can rupture your throat.
  • During the Columbine massacre, two 20 pound propane bombs were planted in the school cafeteria right before lunch. Had the bombs not fail to detonate, it’s estimated that 488 students would have been killed or severely injured.
  • A sophomaniac is a person who’s under the delusion that they are extremely intelligent.
  • In 2015, a man sued Red Bull stating that after 10 years of consuming the product, he received no wings, enhanced physical nor intellectual performance.

5 of 193

Confusing Shitholes for Pieholes

 

A special factslap edition, particularly for presidents from shithole frontal lobes:

  • Haiti is the second oldest independent nation in the Western Hemisphere, after the United States.

 

  • The place where Hitler killed himself is now a children’s playground.
  • Jackie Chan trains his stuntmen and pays their medical bills out of pocket.
  • Cacao plants are slated to disappear by as early as 2050 thanks to warmer temperatures and dryer weather conditions.
  • Director Guillermo del Toro owns a house called ‘Bleak House’ in which there’s a room with a never-ending rainstorm projected onto all windows and audio to match. He often uses this room to write.
  • In China, 171,000 people perished in 1975 due to the collapse of the Banqiao Dam, an event hidden from the world until 2005.
  • Phonophobia is the fear or aversion to large sounds.
  • A 2017 study found that the faxaccounts for 75% of the country’s medical communications.
  • In France, it is illegal to to publish photographs of handcuffed suspects, as they are not to appear guilty until proven so.
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