And I love YouTube!

Thank you people of YouTube, thank you very much.

Most times, when I have a small flashback of *whatever* and want to research it, most times I can find it on YouTube.  This week's flashback is musical, to be more specific, My Parents' Musical.  Being a child of the late 70s, I sure did get exposed to some very different music.  (The Parents also introduced me to Tom T. Hall.)

Here are a few examples of weirdness that have always plagued me.  Emphasis on plague.

The Edger Winter Group, Frankenstein

1. I covered this one real good a while back.
2. Actually I mentioned it twice.  I have issues with this song, these people!

America, Ventura Highway

1. I always took this as "venture a highway."  I was always exploring while singing this song.
2. WTF is an alligator lizard anyways??  And why in the HELL are they in the air?  HOLY CRAP!  They're real.  Wikipedia can be a very scary place!
3. Now that I'm a grown up (and not 7) I totally get the "nights are stronger than moonshine" bit.  I don't think my nose hairs have ever grown back from that one taste.  If you've had a night stronger than moonshine, how are you able to sing so pretty?
4. Totally the first place I heard about purple rain, I wonder if Price got it from them too?
5. I don't know what's wrong with my boyfriend, but I wish he'd play them more.  And Chicago too.  forget the cowbell, we need MORE HORNS!

The Who, Boris the Spider

1. I barely remember this song, but I do remember the scary voice scaring the crap out of me.  Its possible that my fear of spiders began with this song.
2. There are only a few words to the song, it's not complicated or long.  The only lyrics I ever heard were "HERE COMES THE SPIDER!   HERE COMES THE SPIDER!  CREEPY!  CRAWLY!  CREEPY CREEPY CRAWLY CRAWLY!!"  And it made me want to scream and run away.
3. This one time, at government-run junior college, I rode the Billy Jack bus to the free movies.  The movie was Arachnophobia.  I broke the seat in front of me because I was so creeped out, I would NOT put my feet on the floor.  I had my feet braced on the back of the empty seat in front of me and ended up cracking it after kicking it for 103 minutes.
4. Until today's lyric search, I never knew that the spider got smashed in the end.  Awesome!  The spider dies!!  Wish I'd have known that for the last 30+ years.

So what about you?  Do you have any music issues or am I the only freak around here?

Do you hear what I hear?

It's that time of year again.  Holiday jewelry commercials.

So Kay has started their campaign with a new piece called Love's Embrace.  Have you seen the commercial?  It's here, please go watch it.

Did you hear the last line being sung by the man, "Every kiss begins with Kay?"

DOESN'T THE MAN SOUND LIKE BUFFALO BILL FROM SILENCE OF THE LAMBS?

It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets love's embrace AGAIN!


And I don't think home boy is talkin' 'bout no jewelry either.

Don't you just hate it when....

....you're sitting at your desk, working your little Monday fingers to the bone and one of these crawls out from under your keyboard....

At least he's not all talky and irritating like this guy:

But yes, it would be nice if he made me coffee or brought me a snack or answered the phone or something.

Far Leather Flower Noun

She always ran late.  Late to work.  Late to dinner.  Late.  It was often said about her...she'll be late for her own funeral!

It was kind of true.  There were so many folks at visitation, the funeral did start late.

I'm dreaming about her.  They were casual, fun dreams until Sunday.  I woke up in a cold sweat Sunday.

She would live if she took this medicine.  She could have the medicine if requirements were met.

If I met the requirements.

It was not clear what the requirements were, but I did meet them for a while.

And she lived.

Then she died again.  And it was just as horrible as it was the first time.  But this time, unlike the first, brought the grief.  Six hundred sixty days later.

The grief is stacked on top of the stress.  The stress is large, uneven and unruly.  The stress is having a hard time balancing it's grief.  Tears spill almost constantly in an effort to minimize the strain.  Keep the dam from completely bursting.

I sit at the office and cry through the payroll, invoicing and production reporting.  I'm hidden away in the kitchen cooking dinner, washing dishes and crying.  I'm out walking the dog at night so I can cry and cry and cry some more.

She was not my daughter so I don't grieve for her the way my grandma does.

She was not my sister so I can't grieve for her the way my mother does.

She was truly my friend, confidant, partner in crime, co-event manager, yen to my yang.  We used to have a happy hour/bitch session almost every day after work.  In about an hour we were able to listen or bitch, get it out and move on.  When I remarried, those "therapy" sessions decreased in number and that was OK with me as I had a husband to tend to.  Then I got pregnant.  Then she had a surgery and got "diagnosed."

The tumor came from where?  What do you mean more surgery?  Why didn't you do your job the FIRST TIME, on THIS surgery?

And two weeks later I had a baby.  At the same hospital.

Then we needed to buy a house.  Then we moved to the other side of the river.

River Yankee.  We thought we were pretty clever when we decided to call her boyfriend that.  Now I'd become one.

I loved the area we all used to live in, but when bought on the other side of the river, that commute back "home" seemed so far away.  And a pain in the ass to get to.  Visits became much less frequent.

And her hair fell out.  She told Junior they were going to have a race.  Who could grow their hair faster, longer.  Junior's had another six hundred sixty days to grow his hair out, it's almost to his butt.

She had a stroke.  With all that radiation and poking about in her brain, it's no wonder.  She was weak, yet determined.  She and Junior would assemble wooden puzzles at the dinner table.  I could never be sure who I was more proud of, her for telling her brain to make her hand grasp that small knob and place it in the right hole or Junior, for not being afraid of how she looked and still playing with her.

He has the puzzles.  He's pretty good at putting them together now.  It sucks to know he won't remember how he came to own them and who he played with them first.

660.

Food jerk.

The husband and I were food jerks today.

The Big. Game. is tonight.  High school - RIVAL - football.  Both boys went to the game.  They'll hang out with their women, eat stale boxed popcorn and stadium hot dogs.  These delicacies will be washed down with watered-down fountain sodas in plastic green cups.  GO TROJANS!!  (the football team, not the prophylactic)

While the husband and I were executing the weekly Tactical Grocery Discount Extravaganza Tour through town, we realized it would be just he and I for dinner and decided to treat ourselves to steak.  Bossman gave me a couple of pounds of shrimp and we still had some left to cook  after eating a mess of boiled shrimp last night.

Yep, we went deliberately deviated from the Food Plan.  I'm fairly OCD about the Food Plan.  The Food Plan  has an Excel file.  The Food Plan is printed out, in grid form, and displayed on the Master Calendar on the fridge.  You are responsible to check the calendar and the Food Plan for yourself.  I study weekly ad papers from seven stores compiling a menu from sale items.  The Food Plan is Serious Business.

With just the two of us eating (I don't care what you're eating, unless it's a hot dog or cake, Junior is not going to eat it) steak and shrimp was just too good not to pass up.  We went for it.  We agreed to be a food jerks.

We did get a little food jerk karma thrown back in our gullets.  After I got the shrimp peeled and swimming in the garlic and Teriyaki sauce the skies got dark.  Very dark.  And the rain came down.  Not good for grilling steaks and shrimps.  We opted to have George Foreman cook our dinner for us.  While George cooks mean burgers and dogs, he's not really our preferred Go To Guy for steak cookin'.  In the end he did alright but we did miss the fire taste.

We finished off dinner with a batch of scratched-out-of-the-box brownies.  Mmmmmmm!  I'm ok with being a food jerk.

Business Email 101

Dear Bossman,

This gold floor lamp you have at the office, are you interested in having it back at your home? 

I was running the vac and when I picked up the lamp to clean under it, the bottom of the lamp kind of fell out/off.  The base is filled with concrete.  Which is now grinding up and falling out all over the freaking place.  I have not yet yelled like a gorilla and swung the lamp over my head, but I do feel close to that point.

I never use the lamp.  Do you want it back or can I escort it to the trash can?

Frustratingly,

Me

Hipping and Hopping

I really love Alicia Keys.  I don't know what the hell Jay Z is chapping on about but after this performance at the VMA's I bought the single.  (The live version is WAY better.)