Not the Max I Wanted to Know About

Thing #118: My company uses crude advertising tactics!

The Chef was greatly distressed today. He was working in his place in the print department which was toward the rear of the retail establishment where the Chef works (it shall herein remain unnamed).
He was merely minding his own buisness, when a customer walked past him and inquired where the location of the bathroom was, he pointed toward it and she looked up and said, where it says "Taking Your"?

He looked and also saw the phrase displayed prominently above the hallway to the bathroom, "Yes," he said, "that's it."

She walked past him toward the bathroom, and the Chef continued about his buisness. A few moments later however, he found himself over by the hallway entrance shaking his head as he stared at the rest of the phrase in utter bewilderment.

"Buisness to the Max" It boasted in bold lettering. "Taking Your buisness to the Max" sitting right above the hallway to the bathrooms...

Mork, Mork, Mork

Sweet Home Alabama . . .

Thing #117: The south is insidious.

I thought after more than a decade in Alabama, my family and I were relatively unscathed by the influence of the South. Sure the occasional 'ya'll' might escape our lips, but my dad still drinks unsweet tea, my mom talks like a Yankee, and I REFUSE to eat any part of a pig (except bacon) let alone EVERY part of a pig!

Sad but true, the south has finally reached us. I went outside tonight to find my dad and nephew shooting his newly acquired bb gun at empty playdo cans on the back deck. My husband and I came out and joined in the festivities. I'll point out when we came out, neither of my aforementioned relatives had been successful. My husband hit one of the containers on his first try, and I on my second.

Somewhere in the midst of all the fun, my nephew, dressed in his Alabama Crimson Tide shirt and matching baseball cap, said "Yep, this is what we do for fun here in Alabama." That's when it hit me . . . We are turning into rednecks. The next thing you know I'll be eating grits and saying fixin' and reckon . . .

The only way it could have been more southern is if they were beer cans, but being my nephew is underage and none of us drink, playdo cans were the next best thing.

The Chimp

Balloon Wars, Continued...

Thing #116: Balloons are naturally given to escaping.

As my colleague Kiwifruit mentioned earlier, balloons can sometimes be difficult things to deal with, however, what those difficulties pertain to can be be entirely opposing factors, for instance... Kiwi mentioned the malicious and destructive nature which some balloons possess, taking every opportunity to lash out at the world around them, on the flip side however, I would like to say a word about the elusive nature of balloons

To illustrate this I will use a few true childhood stories...

It was a Sunny Sunday afternoon, a group of children stood at the far end of a lobby inside of a church, at the other end a group of kid's camp counselors had just finished blowing up balloons and one of them stepped to the forefront, calling out that the kids may "proceed in orderly fashion over to where the counselors were and that they could each take one balloon of their choosing".

One boy (a.k.a. The Swedish Chef) was especially fond of balloons and was standing toward the front of the crowd, as soon as the "come over here and grab a balloon as fast as you possibly can" order was given the entire group of happy children surged on mass toward the balloons The Chef was younger than most and so was trampled underfoot by the throng, by the time he recovered his senses and stood back up on his feet all the balloons had been accounted for and the poor young Chef was out of luck.

Another time that same young man actually got a balloon and took it all the way home, once home he happily jumped out of his car and accidently tripped and fell, in dismay he watched his balloon drift down to the ground and touch the very tip of a single blade of grass... POW!

As if this isn't enough to illustrate the point...

Just recently the Chef was shopping at a prominent retail establishment on a certain holiday which embraces love, and romance, and all those wonderful mushy concepts... he was shopping for his wife and selected a large balloon in the shape of a big red heart which said "I Love You" simple, and accurate thought the Chef. He seized the balloon by the string and happily walked up to the awaiting cashier, still oblivious as to the transitory nature of his esteemed prize.

The cashier, snatched the balloon, yanked it forcefully downward, scanned it, and let it go... It flew up, it's string drawing tight, it's string not holding, it's string falling down the the ground as the actual balloon floated all the way to the very, very high ceiling...

The cashier didn't notice at first and after she did she and another lady began suggesting that the chef take a large ugly frog balloon which was holding a heart as a replacement... The Chef was very sad.

Fortuantely the Chef went shopping with his wife in that same retail establishment shortly after that and he pointed out to her the balloon he had meant to get... She seemed to enjoy it, even from far away...


Mork, Mork, Mork

We Can Finally Afford That Toothbrush You Wanted So Much

Thing #115: Nothing stimulates the economy like good dental hygeine.

So we finally got our much lauded "Stimulus Check." So what did we do with our hundreds of dollars in free* money. We bought new toothbrushes! YEAH!

The Kiwifruit

*-To be paid for by future generations at a later date.

And Then There Were Three . . .

Thing #114: The key to consistancy is getting other people to do stuff for you.

That's why we added at least one (1) new writer and possibly two (2). Now, let me just assuage any concerns you might have about our blog lower its standards. We don't have any. You know that. But, seriously, we have made sure that our new additions to the Things I Know family have all the qualities that make this blog great: a fascination with life, a random sense of humor, relation to the current writer by marriage and the inability to post on a regular basis.

Actually part of the idea is that if there are three (3) or four (4) of us posting here the liklihood of going long period without posting (i.e. 2007) go down at least a little. We'll see how that goes. At any rate, we welcome Sweet Talker, who just happens to my wife.

Kiwifruit

Man Vs. Balloon

Thing #113: Balloons are really wild, untamed beasts, bent on our destructions.

So, here it is, the previously foretold balloon post. About a week or two ago my wife and I were shopping for a new, used, cheap car. This, because she is looking at getting a new job that's not around the corner from the house. We had found a car she liked and thought nothing could get in our way. We were wrong.

We walked over to the car (which was on the opposite side of the lot from where the lady there sent us) and began checking it out. Of course, being a car lot it was filled with brightly colored balloons, streamers, and various other attention grabbing devices. I wondered which car was having a birthday but decided not to asked. This is when things turned nasty.

As I approached the car I noticed an innocent looking bright red balloon, which was tied to the car's antenna. I noticed it, because it was lunging straight at me. Naturally I thought this might be a good time to use my karate skills, but it's been many years since I took karate, so I just stood there dumbfounded while the balloon pummelled me several times before retreating back to its corner. I actually think I saw another balloon pouring water over its head and massaging its shoulders.

I know what you're thinking, "Man, this guys crazy. That balloon was probably just randomly blown by the wind." (If you weren't thinking this, go back and read that again while thinking it, so I can be right.) That's what I thought too, then it hit my wife. She pushed her way through and, before following her I looked the balloon squarely in the eyes, or rather where the eyes would have been, if it had had eyes and told it to back off. And then, it came at me. Wham!!! Needless to say I retreated as far away from the balloon as possible and stayed out of its range for the rest of the day. Next time, I'm carrying a safety pin with me.

Kiwifruit

One Tree at a Time . . .

Thing #112: There is more than one way to cut down on waste and save the environment.

I know this, because my mom has come up with a new way of reducing the waste we throw away each day.

You see, my family has a long history of being pack rats . . . sad but true. I myself have unfortunately fallen prey to this nasty little habit, but I am not so deeply entrenched in the need to save things as is my mother.

It all started a few days ago when I found a CD sitting on the CD rack by the computer. I pulled it out, and there, in said mother's handwriting, were the words 'Bad disc'. I had a good laugh about why it was labeled and not thrown away, showed it to the rest of the family, and then stuck it back in the CD rack . . .

But this was only the beginning! The next morning I woke up and was milling around the house. There had been a pot of oil on the stove in which my not entirely healthy husband had some oil to fry chicken, french fries, dog treats, and whatever else he could find to deep fry.

So . . I'm milling when my mom walks by and says, "Don't use the oil in the white pot, there is a fly in it!"

I am at this point thinking, "Oh, so she is warning me because it's still on the stove and she just hasn't gotten around to throwing it out yet."

I made my way to the kitchen to wrangle up some breakfast, and there on the counter I saw the pot of oil with something strange over it. I walked closer to find a piece of paper lying across the pot that said "Do not use, there is a fly in it!"





Yeah . . . what more can you say?






The moral of the story? We could all do our part to cut down on waste by keeping it in place and labeling it as trash instead of actually throwing it away.

The Chimp