Do you think fingerless gloves are weird and don’t fit your needs? Do you want to have your palm read by the fortune teller but want to protect yourself from germs? Do you want to keep your fingers and the back of your hand covered but still want to feel your own skin against the warm face skin of the person you’re slapping?
Ed the Dog has the solution for you! Introducing, just in time for Christmas, the amazing Palmless Glove (TM)! No more hassling to remove your glove to jerk off. Now, you can spy on your neighbor in the bushes, jack off, and still stay warm!
Palmless Gloves will revolutionize winter high-fiving. Get a pair for Grandma (better grip, less falling down the stairs!) and a pair for yourself!
Right now we only have the prototype, which was found on the living room floor, lying there like a money-making angel. But, if there’s enough interest, Ed is more than willing to do his part to be sure that everyone who wants a pair can have one under their Christmas tree this year.
While in the picture, it doesn’t look like he’s very proud of his creation, and it may make you think that Palmless Gloves are not as awesome as they seem, I assure you, he looks like that most of the time, particularly when he’s being held. He’s a maven, an innovator, an accessory genius. The little shit.
Yesterday was a dreaded day. It was a day I hat to put my cat in a carrier to get him to the vet.
He’s now 14 years old, and he’s definitely mellowed in his old age. I’m not sure if it’s slightly easier to get him in his carrier now because of that or because we’ve perfected the two-day, multi-stepped process of accomplishing it.
My cat is an asshole. And by that I mean that he has had us hiding in closets before. So, when it’s time for him to go to the vet, I have a little anxiety.
Here’s the process:
1. The night before – clip his front nails (he will not allow back nails)
2. Get carrier out of closet, hide it in closed bathroom (it has to be in a very small room so he has nowhere to go if I miss on the first try), propped up against the wall with the door already open.
3. Wait overnight for him to forget that he saw me get his carrier out.
4. Next day, pretend there’s nothing up until time to make my move.
5. Say a prayer, and grab him, hopefully while he is relaxing in an easily accessible spot.
6. Briskly move to the bathroom, scruffing him and weathering the thrashing.
7. Hold on for dear life as he sees the carrier; shove him head first into it, adjusting the placement of his legs as he tries to straddle the opening.
8. Apologize once he’s in there, because he will eventually be out.
This time I sustained very minor injuries – no blood!
We made it to the vet, bonus points for bringing one of the dogs, too. The vet visit went fine, which is a huge improvement – this is the big area where you can tell he’s gotten older. Young Elliott would have screamed and hissed a lot.
Once he gets back into his carrier (which, when at the vet, is like an upscale resort he can’t wait to get back to), we drive home. And, after about three minutes of realizing the next stop is home and out of the carrier – he starts to yell at me. So the ride home is usually me singing along to loud music while he tries to be heard. This time was no exception.
As mentioned previously, this introvert did used to dress up for Halloween without any hang ups about it. In that post, I mentioned two costumes: Wonder Woman and Punk Rocker. Since I’m visiting my mom, I could dig up the pictures for a better context.
I thought my mom had made the Wonder Woman costume, but she didn’t. She made many other costumes, though. For this costume, my dad made the bracelets and the headpiece out of coat hangers, cardboard, and aluminum foil-y paper stuff. They were so well-made, my sister wore them years later. My dad was awesome.
A few years later, we enter the lazy bones era of Halloween costuming. I was a “punk rocker” for several years, and the costume was pretty consistent every year. It was so convincing – let’s just see if you can pick me out between these two pictures:
This is actually a “Madonna fan with sensible, responsible parents” costume. But, somehow, “punk rock” was always the descriptor. It’s probably what started all the “Avril Lavigne is a punk rocker” bullshite. I’ve created this chart to help you create an actual punk rocker costume:
Tom (my husband) and I are going through a lot of old stuff, trying to stem the tide of becoming pack rats. We’re about to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary, and were together for six years before marriage. So, a lot of our “old stuff” is also shared memories. Tom, who is much more of a paper pack rat than me, is going through boxes of paper, and it’s been quite fun finding things I thought we never kept. More on that later, though.
Tom and I knew each other in high school, and became best friends when I was a senior in high school and he was a freshman in college. We were best friends for a year before becoming a couple. This year was the fun “what does he think of me, does he like me, does he know I like him?” era of our relationship. And by fun I mean torturous – I can’t stand ambiguity.
In going through my old stuff, I found the first thing I remember Tom ever getting for me. Trust me, I like weird stuff just as much as the next person, so it’s not that I didn’t LIKE it, it’s more that in obsessively trying to come up with what it could mean, I was very perplexed. So, I present to anyone who would like to give a gift that says “I got this for you. It may be because I recognize and appreciate your off-kilter-ness, or it may be because I’m trying say I’d like to give normal gifts to other women, buddy.”
In retrospect, I of course realize how lucky I am to have found someone that would get this for me, put it in a little cardboard box, decorate it, and give it to me for no particular occasion. And I appreciate it that much more because of its context and the hilarity of me obsessing over what it could “mean.”
Nice one, future husband.
P.S. And it’s a good thing she doesn’t have any nipples cause she’d totally be nip slippin’ after 16 years of her tube top slowly sliding down.
I love stuff from the 1950s and 60s (pre-hippie and avocado green). Specifically, I love Made in Japan ceramics from that era. Salt and pepper shakers, planters, figurines, Christmas decorations – I’ve got a good amount of it. Unfortunately, most of it has been packed away for a couple of years now because we tried to sell our house two years ago, I’m lazy, and we’re going to try and sell our house again someday. The upside to that is when I finally get to drag them all out of their boxes, I won’t remember half of it. It’ll be a nice surprise.
One of the reasons I really like this stuff is because it is weird. Very weird. It’s like everyone was on a post World War II high and decided to channel that through crazy kitchenware items. Luckily, two of my favorite things aren’t packed up.
First, my favorite thing, ever. This is a Holt Howard relish condiment jar (the Holt Howard line of condiment jars like this is called “Pixieware,” btw). Don’t even try to tell me you don’t want one. Back in the 1950’s, if you were a real hostess, you didn’t humiliate your guests by forcing them to accessorize their hamburgers with faceless, soulless jars and dispensers. You put condiments in a ceramic jar with a spoon too short to reach the bottom, and you put a whimsical face on that spoon, or you can fucking forget it, I’ll eat my hamburger plain.
There are tons of these jars. I own several. But this relish one is my favorite. Partly because of the colors and he has my favorite thing-that-represents-the-condiment-expression, and partly because it was a Christmas present from my sister and parents. The relish jar is rare, and my relish jar is in mint condition – so suck on that, it’ll make your breath fresh. But, I show you this only as a gateway to my second specimen. I don’t think you could have handled it by itself.
You know all those people who lament about how unequivocally awesome and more better “simpler times” were? About how “back then” you didn’t have to x, y, and z, and Back Then is the captain of the football team and Now is the slutty drop-out under the bleachers? And kick the can, apple pie, gingham tablecloths, lemonade, scooters, and Norman Rockwell? You can argue until you’re blue in the face that time moves forward, awesomeness is always a give and take/subjective – some people in the 50s thought it sucked, just like people think now sucks, etc. Or, you can just show them this picture:
Yes. That is a blond angel, dressed to the Christmas nines, holding a giant candy cane with one hand, and wrangling two tiny Santa Claus’ on chains in the other. My sister and I inappropriately call this the “Santa slaves girl.” That came from the 1950s, y’all. In the 1950s, somebody said, “Let’s make a figurine of an angel, and let’s have her walking one, no, two Santas, each attached to a chain. You know, for Christmastime.” A more innocent time, my ass.
There’s actually a lot of big-thing-with-two-littler-things-on-chains figurines from that time. Most of them are animals – a mama and two babies of the same kind of animal. Here is one.Here is another.
Here is a lady with two sophisticated children, I’m guessing. Weird, yes, but I can see that perhaps, like the real-life modern day child leashes, that this was done for safety’s sake.
But two malnourished, failure-to-thrive Santas? On chains? Look at it!
Ok, ok. How about this – anyone who thinks that the past was a more morally “pure” time than the present, admit that this figurine is totally and completely messed up, and I’ll do you the favor of modernizing it so that you can feel comfortable that the original version is less sick. Deal?
I’m just glad we could all come to an acceptable compromise.