"Something with Chicken in it"

I found a wonderful website today. It discusses the suggestion made by Nevada Senate hopeful Sue Lowden about bartering chickens for medical care.

Following this pullet surprise, I immediately sent the link to Dr. G. I am the web master for the "pelvic aesthetics" part of his business and I told him I needed to know if we were going to have to recalculate the fee schedule on the web site. I notice that things like "vaginal rejuvenation" are not covered in the chicken converter at present, so I suppose that we are going to have to make our own calculations.

I do have some problem with the chickens-for-health care plan. I managed two medical offices and I'm struck by the sheer logistics of it all. We had trouble finding places for all of the midwives to see patients as it was. I don't know how we would do it if we had to have a chicken room to store all of the fees that showed up at the office, to say nothing of the fact that we were on the second floor and shared space with a general practitioner, and a pediatrician, all of whom would presumably have the same problem.

The question has been made about payments, and making a downpayment. Would pregnant women pay for their monthly visits in eggs rather than fully born chickens?

If I get hungry some afternoon and fix myself a deviled egg sandwich, would I be accused of embezzlement? Given that my specialty for dinner has for some time been "something with chicken in it," could I get away with sneaking a hen out under my coat?

What about vegetarian physicians? (Well, Mike Bell (R) of Tennessee likes the whole barter system too and points out that some doctors have been paid by Mennonites in vegetables.) Can I pay my bill with a big pot of vegetable soup, then? Is this an answer to all of those zucchini stubbornly growing in the back yard that I can't give away to my neighbors? Do I get reduced fee if I add dumplings?

(Somehow, knowing all the physicians I've worked for, I'm convinced that most doctors would rather be paid in paper lettuce, and in carets rather than carrots!)

If you think about it, though, this barter system would require total revision of our economic system. It's one thing to bring Ch3000 to your doctor (that's the abbreviation for 3000 chickens), but how am I, the office manager to be paid? Chicken wings? Do I get a vat of Buffalo wing sauce as a Christmas bonus?

It could, however, have a big impact on unemployment figures. Doctors would not only be required to hire managers and clerical people and nurses and other support medical personnel, but also chicken herders and chicken feeders and chicken killers and chicken pluckers, and egg gatherers and even chicken sexers, for those precocious eggs who insist on being hatched (I know there is a job of chicken sexer because I saw it on Dirty Jobs once).

Most importantly, we'd need to hire people to clean up chicken poop. Hey! Isn't there some sort of use for guano? Could we harvest chicken poop and have our own version of making lemonade from lemons?

This barter system thing does change the whole look at pyramid schemes, doesn't it?

What would the disaster at Enron look like if we lived on the chicken and vegetable standard rather than the gold standard? Would we cry "Fowl"?

I Want an Elf

8 December 2008

Get your Christmas Elf Name at JokesUnlimited.com

Yes, you may feel free to refer to me as Daffy Angel-Pants, your Christmas elf. Of course the name does bring up the question, what is an elf doing with angel pants? And what do angel pants look like? I thought they wore those filmy caftans and big wings. Are they hiding granny panties under all that flowing material? Or is there a kind of celestial Victoria Secret up there in Heaven where the angels deck themselves out in such finery that elves want to steal their undies?

Which brings up the even more perplexing question -- where do elves and angels meet? And what exactly does an elf do to separate an angel from her drawers? A little heavenly hanky panky? (Are there elves in heaven? or have I been watching too much "Touched by an Angel"?)

These are the kinds of questions one should not think about late at night with a headache already starting!

I actually don't want to be an elf...but I wouldn't mind having an elf or two around here. Think back at that wonderful story of the shoemaker and the elves. The overworked shoemaker cuts out a pair of shoes at night but is too tired to finish them and goes to bed. When he wakes up, the shoes are all finished and fit the customer so well, he pays more than the shoemaker asks, so the next day he buys enough for two pairs of shoes and in the morning the elves have come and made those shoes as well.

I could use a poop elf. An elf who comes in in the middle of the night and wipes up all the remnants of puppy poop I've missed, leaving the floor looking shiny and clean for the next day.

(Of course I came home from Cousins Day and found that the Poop Elf had actually been here and done that very thing. The next weekend, the Poop Elf was playing Santa Claus for Petco).

We know from Harry Potter that there are house elves, who are unpaid servants for the wizards. I'm no wizard, but who wouldn't want to have an intensely loyal unpaid servant?

Could I order up a Clutter Elf who would organize all my clutter for me? Use some of that elf magic to hide it all from sight, yet make it instantly accessible should I have a pressing need for a 20 year old newspaper article or a dust-covered business card from someone I met at a party somewhere?

Thanks to J.R.R. Tolkein, we know that elves are ambidexterous, which may be why they get their work done so quickly. They speak their own language. In fact, there is even an Elvish Linguistic Fellowship on Yahoo, which appears to be rather exclusively testy:

It is not the purpose of this list to help anyone "learn Elvish", only to study and discuss Tolkien's languages in a scholarly manner. General requests for information will be rejected.

Rejected? My! That's certainly not very "elvish," is it? Nothing more high-fallutin' than an exclusive club dedicated to the scholarly discussion of the eccentricities of a language that doesn't exist.

A bit more accessible and friendly are special Christmas elves. Magic Elves encourage an upbeat Christmas animated through nightly adventures and daily play to help children instill memories, have fun and reinforce the true meaning of Christmas and family values.

Nothing like an elf to evoke the true meaning of Christmas. We may all have heard angels on high on that o holy night in the little town of Bethlehem, but you may have missed that tell-tale verse in the Christmas carol, "Away in a Manger" ...

The cattle are lowing,
the poor Baby wakes,
But little Lord Jesus,
no crying He makes;
The elves in the manger
look up from the sty
And stay by his cradle
so naught goes awry.

I don't think it's too much to want my very own elf for Christmas. Maybe I'll leave out some unmade shoe parts tonight and see what happens.

Good to remember

This is an old joke, but somehow in all the frenzy around Sarah Palin, it feels appropriate to reprint it:

While walking down the street one day a US senator is tragically
hit by a truck and dies. His soul arrives in heaven and is met by St. Peter at the entrance.
'Welcome to heaven,' says St. Peter. 'Before you settle in, it seems there is a problem.
We seldom see a high official around these parts, you see, so we're not sure what to do with you.'

'No problem, just let me in,' says the senator.

'Well, I'd like to, but I have orders from higher up. What we'll
do is have you spend one day in hell and one in heaven. Then you can
choose where to spend eternity.'


'Really, I've made up my mind. I want to be in heaven,' says the
senator.

'I'm sorry, but we have our rules.'

And with that, St. Peter escorts him to the elevator and he goes
down, down, down to hell. The doors open and he finds himself in the
middle of a green golf course. In the distance is a clubhouse and standing in
front of it are all his friends and other politicians who had worked with
him. Everyone is very happy and in evening dress. They run to greet
him, shake his hand, and reminisce about the good times they had while
getting rich at the expense of the people.

They play a friendly game of golf and then dine on lobster, caviar
and champagne.

Also present is the devil, who really is a very friendly guy who
has a good time dancing and telling jokes. They are having such a good
time that before he realizes it, it is time to go.

Everyone gives him a hearty farewell and waves while the elevator
rises ...

The elevator goes up, up, up and the door reopens on heaven where
St. Peter is waiting for him. 'Now it's time to visit heaven.'

So, 24 hours pass with the senator joining a group of contented
souls moving from cloud to cloud, playing the harp and singing. They
have a good time and, before he realizes it, the 24 hours have gone by and St.
Peter returns.

'Well, then, you've spent a day in hell and another in heaven. Now
choose your eternity.'

The senator reflects for a minute, then answers: 'Well, I would
never have said it before, I mean heaven has been delightful, but I think I
would be better off in hell.'

So St. Peter escorts him to the elevator and he goes down, down,
down to hell.


Now the doors of the elevator open and he's in the middle of a
barren land covered with fire, waste and garbage.


He sees all his friends, weeping, dressed in rags, picking up the
trash and putting it in black bags as more trash falls from above...

The devil comes over to him and puts his arm around his shoulder.
'I don't understand,' stammers the senator. 'Yesterday I was here and there
was a golf course and clubhouse, and we ate lobster and caviar, drank
champagne, and danced and had a great time. Now there's just a wasteland full
of garbage and my friends look miserable. What happened?'



The devil looks at him, smiles and says.......



'Yesterday we were campaigning. Today you voted.'

Russell Crowe is Hot

My friend Judy will be so disappointed, if she ever finds this entry, that she hasn't been following my journal daily. We have had discussions about Russell Crowe in the past, which have not always been pleasant. She likes him, I don't so much. So for me to write a journal entry called "Russell Crowe is hot" is quite a stretch!

I'm on a roll with Morning Stories and have transcribed several of them this past week. It's a fascinating project, not only because the stories are interesting -- some funny, some touching, some informative -- but because the stories themselves make me want to take a break, rush to Google and do some searching to follow up on a point that the story teller has made.

[ASIDE: You can hear some morning stories yourself, by going to the web page, and especially by searching through the Archives. The show has been running since 2003, so there are a lot of stories there, in wide variety. Something for everyone. The longest episode I've come across is 12 minutes, so it's not like it takes a great deal of time out of your day. New stories come out every Friday.]

But back to Russell Crowe.

The morning story I was transcribing last night was by a blogger named Betsy Divine (whose husband Frank Wilczek, is a Nobel prize winner in Physics), who writes a blog called "Betsy Devine: now with even more funny ha-ha and peculiar." (Now how can you not be intrigued with a title like that?) The title of the morning story was "Blogging in Boston," and I chose it to transcribe for obvious reasons: I'm a blogger and Jeri lives in Boston. Seemed logical to me.

As I typed, she was reminiscing about starting her own blog and how after a week, she noted that it was "quiet out there," and how disappointed she was that nobody had stumbled across her blog yet. She was excited when she got her first comment after three weeks of entries.

But then one day she checked her stats and discovered that she had somehow attracted "hundreds of visitors." What had attracted them, it seemed, was that she had written an entry about a company (SoundDogs) which sells sound effects. She had apparently been in the market for the "sound of happy, laughing children" when writing a computer game several years before.

She mentioned in passing that she discovered that this company sold about twenty-five different sound effects for dropping pieces of armor.

[In case you are interested, they are: Put Down Belt, Put Down Boot, Put Down Boot, Put Down Broken Armor, Put Down Broken Shield, Put Down Buckler Shield, Put Down Chainmail Armor, Put Down Chainmail Armor, Put Down Chainmail Armor, Put Down Cloak, Put Down Glove, Put Down Glove, Put Down Helmet, Put Down Helmet, Put Down Helmet, Put Down Large Shield, Put Down Leather Armor, Put Down Leather Armor, Put Down Leather Armor, Put Down Medium Shield, Put Down Plate Armor, Put Down Small Shield, Put Down Belt, Put Down Boot, Put Down Boot, Put Down Broken Armor, Put Down Broken Shield, Put Down Buckler Shield, Put Down Chainmail Armor, Put Down Chainmail Armor, Put Down Chainmail Armor, Put Down Cloak, Put Down Glove, Put Down Glove, Put Down Helmet, Put Down Helmet, Put Down Helmet, Put Down Large Shield, Put Down Leather Armor, Put Down Leather Armor, Put Down Leather Armor, Put Down Medium Shield, Put Down Plate Armor, Put Down Small Shield.

Apparently gladiators put down boots a lot, and, I guess, in a lot of different ways!]

She questioned why anybody would need twenty-five different sounds for armor and speculated, humorously, that the only reason she could figure out would be if Russell Crowe were to do a gladiator strip tease. Apparently all the crazed Russell Crowe fans flocked to her site and her reputation was made.

So I figured what the heck. If it can work for Betsy, maybe it can work for me. What kind of fans will I attract if they are able to find me by googling "Russell Crowe is hot" ?

Previously my most consistent search engine query is "urethral play" (from the days, I guess, when I was writing about working in a gynecology office and reviewing shows!). "Russell Crowe is Hot" has the potential of attracting quite a different class of internet voyeurs, don't you think?

Taking Mike Huckabee's Picture

I tried to get a photo of Mike Huckabee today and it was extremely frustrating. I had to take an article down to the newspaper office and Walt showed up in this huge black van and said he was coming with me. At some point we stopped, near Ellen and Shelly's house. Huckabee was there, talking to a woman and I thought how cool it would be to have a picture of homophobic Huckabee in front of the town's best known lesbians.

But as I tried to surreptitiously get my camera, more and more people kept coming to hear what he was saying. He was in rare form. He even pulled out a guitar and did a Johnny Cash impression.

I was trying to figure out how to turn off the flash so that he wouldn't know I was taking his picture, but even though I'd done it a number of times, in my haste to try to get it turned off, I couldn't remember which buttons to push.

I finally took a few photos, but every single time I went to take a picture, someone walked right in front of me, so all I got were pictures of half of his face or the top of his head.

He didn't seem to mind, though. He just went on talking and talking and talking, as the crowd kept getting larger. He talked so much he woke me up and I discovered I was sitting in the recliner, with Bissell in my lap like Chunk always was, and Mike Huckabee was the guest on Face the Nation. (I also remembered that just about the time I went to sleep, there was a bit about Johnny Cash on the Sunday Morning show.)

Dreams are very strange.

It's not surprising I was having weird dreams early on a Sunday morning. After our marathon floor cleaning session and the heavy Chinese meal, I had pretty much passed out in the recliner while watching something on television. It was midnight when I woke up and staggered into the couch.

So when I woke up, wide awake, and it was still dark, I wasn't upset because I had obviously had a lot of sleep. I checked the clock, without my glasses on, and saw that it was only 5 a.m. But I was wide awake, so I got up, and took Bissell (whom I had left out of the cage, since he was sleeping so soundly in the recliner) outside, hoping he'd pee (he didn't).

I came back inside and settled down to watch the Biography program about Anne Landers, which was an hour show I had recorded earlier in the week (fascinating lady, by the way!). Bissell happily snoozed in my lap. When the show was over, I checked the clock and, to my amazement saw that it was only 4:30. I don't know how I'd thought it was 5 and hour and a half earlier!

I think that, even though I was getting it in broken up segments, I probably had more sleep last night than usual--but it was a weird night.

Bissell is a funny little dog. Very skittish, especially after being attacked by Sheila last night. He only wants to live in a lap. If he can't have mine, he'll take Walt's. By 9:30 a.m. he still hadn't peed since he took off across the kitchen trailing urine behind him. I've taken him outside several times, but he only wants me to pick him up so he doesn't have to put his little paws on that cold concrete or the wet grass.

He also wouldn't eat breakfast, which is not surprising given how painful it was for him the last time.

I tried taking him into the laundry room with me and closing the door, but he was still too nervous.

He didn't eat until mid-day, when we distracted the older dogs in the living room. We eventually found a big pee puddle on the newly washed floor (sigh) (he also left some nicely formed piles, which are NOT the consistency of applesauce, which I very much appreciated!), so at least all his systems are working

He seems to have "nested." He found an old magazine, tore it into shreds at my feet, curled into a ball on top of the pieces, and has been sleeping there ever since, unless I move, when he follows me. When the other dogs come near his little nest, he barks a warning bark and they go away.

He may be little, but he seems to be fierce. Already my protector!

I Have F.S.S.

We received notice of a lovely quasi-gift from the supermarket where I do most of our shopping. They sent a card which you could redeem for a poinsettia plant the next time you did your shopping.

My initial thought was that I could take it out to the cemetery to put on the boys' grave until Christmas, when I have a little tree that I got at Big Lots yesterday (and decorated to match the article I was working on all day!)

I checked out the plant display, took a look at the size pot that the poinsettia was in and realized that it was about 10x too big to fit in that little hole they give you for flowers and plants. There only seemed to be only one size available.

I thought about picking up a plant anyway and bringing it home, but then I realized that my F.S.S. prevents me from really being able to enjoy the lovely plant. Walt has F.S.S. too, which makes it that much worse.

What?

You never heard of F.S.S.

Around here we call it "Flat Surface Syndrome." People with F.S.S. have this strange aversion to seeing any bare flat surface, so any flat surface becomes a place to lay "stuff."

I remember back before we moved to Davis, when we ordered a new mattress for one of the kids' beds. There was something wrong with the mattress and it had to be returned. We moved it out into the living room, awaiting the guys who were going to pick it up.

Within a matter of a few hours, you couldn't see the top of the box that held the mattress. It was covered with toys and clothes. It was a new flat surface that had to be filled.

There is another problem that people with F.S.S. have. Once you put something on a flat surface, it immediately disappears. It exists only in some dusty portion of your brain which vaguely remembers putting it down, but until you've searched the house for an hour looking for the slip of paper with an important phone number on it does the dust clear and suddenly you remember putting it on top of the box that's on top of the platter that's inside the salad bowl that's on top of the trivet on top of the kitchen counter.

I watch Oprah periodically, and I've seen other "organize your life" TV specials. Sometimes they are very comforting because occasionally the F.S.S. sufferers who are helped are actually worse than Walt and I are.

Some gallant, inspiring employee of some television program goes into the home, works with the tearful victim, gets him or her (usually her) to sort things into things that have to be thrown out and things to keep. And then they send the victim off on a spa holiday and when she returns, the house is pristine. There is a place for everything and everything is in its place.

I want to revisit those houses in six months. I'll be willing to bet there are piles all over the house again. It takes more than the housing equivalent of a Super Nannie to cure a long-time sufferer of F.S.S.

People have occasionally helped me organize my life. Or, on rarer occasions, I have tried to get things organized myself.

It's awful.

See, this house may look like something you'd see on a local news expose, while you shake your head and mutter "I had no idea she lived like that...." but when it gets cleaned up, I can literally find nothing.

It may take me a long time to find some things, but I know which pile I probably left it in and so I can spend half an hour sorting through a pile or two and generally find what I'm looking for.

When the house is organized there is no place to look. There are no piles. I don't know where to begin looking for that elusive slip of paper.

But of course, it does present a problem. You can never entertain because only your best friends and the people who take care of your dogs really know what the house looks like.

And when some store offers you a beautiful poinsettia, you can't accept it because there are no more flat surfaces left and so you have no place to put it.

Sometimes it's a bitch, having F.S.S.

---

I'm going off to Cousins Day tomorrow (yay!!!) so don't look for the next entry of this journal until the late afternoon. We're finally going to drink those pumpkin martinis!

When Juices Flow

In the second month of this journal, April 2000, when nobody was reading it, I posed the following question:

why is it that baseball people (players, coaches, umpires) spit? Especially on camera? What is there about the game of baseball that makes a grown man feel that he can send a big wad of spittle flying out into space with every third breath? Do we see accountants spit? "Here, Mr. Jones. I’ve gone over your tax forms and ... ptui! ... this is what you owe the IRS." Do we see surgeons spitting into their masks during tense moments in the OR? "Nurse! Scalpel! Spittoon!" Does Jose Carreras let fly a big one between arias?

I thought a lot about that entry while I was watching the first game of the World Series (yay, Sox!). I think baseball is a really good reason not to get a high definition TV set. It's bad enough seeing all that spit flying everywhere on a regular TV set, but to get a chance to watch it sparkle as it catches the light and makes that arc from the mouth of the spitter onto the ground is just more "reality" than I want to think about. They seem to spit compulsively. It's like they all suffer from salivary Tourette's. It gives new meaning to "shooting your wad."

There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the spitting. They spit everywhere. Some fans think it would a big treat to be invited into the dugout on game day. You wouldn't get me there for $1 million. Imagine what the floor looks like.

I tried to think of other sports. Do they spit in cricket? I can't believe that a sport where the players take an official break for tea would allow its players to spit. Nor can I picture golfers spitting before making a crucial putt.

Game 1 of the World Series, with the Red Sox racking up all those home runs, actually got sort of boring — Ho-hum. Another double. Ho-hum, the pitcher walked in another run — that I finally started paying less attention to what was happening on the field and more attention to what was coming out of the mouths of those involved...and how.

Perhaps it is a greater awareness of the potential cancer risk of chewing tobacco that has caused gum to be a substitute for some. It seemed that it was about 2/3-1/3 tobacco to gum chewers. And not just "a" piece of gum, but a huge wad of it. Oh for the Wrigley's concession at the ball park! But whether it's tobacco or gum, they all spit. Some spit forward. Standing upright, head facing forward and out comes a big one flying out onto the field.

The coaches tended to bend over and spit big globs onto the dugout floor (see previous statement about the questionable "fun" of visiting the dugout!). There was one guy I looked at who didn't seem to be chewing anything at all, and then suddenly this little spray of spittle squeezed out from between his upper teeth like a fine mist. I was impressed at the distance it achieved.

There are also different ways of handling the wad of chewing material in your mouth. Those in the dugout seem to roll the wads around in their mouths. Looks like there's a hamster in there turning round and round and making a nest in their cheek. It just sits there making the chewer look like he's coming down with a case of mumps.

Then there are the real chewers. The more tense they get the faster they chew. Like a mouse with a piece of cheese (I don't know why all my metaphors are of the rodent variety!)

The coaches engage in synchronized chewing and individual spitting. The jaws work in unison. Chew...chew...chew. You imagine there is a coxswain calling out the rhythm.

The gum chewers occasionally blow big bubbles instead of spitting, which I think is definitely preferable to spitting. One guy was taking his gum out of his mouth and playing with it before popping it back in again.

My cousin Kathy turned me onto the Discovery Channel program, "Dirty Jobs" recently. I don't watch it all the time, but just enough to get good and nauseated watching the host attempt all these completely disgusting tasks that we don't want to think about. (I'll bet you don't know how to sex a chicken, do you?)

I wonder who cleans the baseball dugouts. And perhaps even more important, how do you clean spittle out of Astroturf? With more and more stadiums using fake grass, what happens to all that spit when the game ends?

Spit is a good excuse for not wanting to be involved in professional baseball. I can't imagine what it must be like sliding face first into home plate right after the batter the catcher, and all the guys hanging around home plate have been spitting on it.

It must be a "guy" thing.