LIES!

My daughter had a book she got for Christmas from a relative. This book is called “Songs to Go.” It is a book that is nothing but random pictures and the lyrics to the songs that are included on a portable music player. Here are some terrible pictures to help demonstrate what I mean:

5-29-15 032

Notice Donald actually puts pants ON to go swimming.
Notice Donald actually puts pants ON to go swimming.
Who needs an iPod?
Who needs an iPod?

She loves this thing. Both the book and the music player. I keep saying I will never buy her Kidz Bop (which I until now had been calling “Kid Bops”), but here she is listening to the same lady sing the same twenty 30 second songs over and over and over again, like a reverse siren.

One of these songs is The More We Get Together:

5-29-15 038

This is nothing but extrovert propaganda. Horrible.

Your friends are my friends and vice versa? And they’re all in the same room? And I have to get to know them all at once? No.

I’ve written some shy introvert versions of this song in case you’re in need of one like me:

The more we have our own time
our own time our own time
the more we have our own time
the happier we’ll be
and I’ll have my own space
and you’ll have your own space
the more we have our own time
the happier we’ll be

or

I’ll see you all on Facebook
on Facebook on Facebook
I’ll see you all on Facebook
and I’ll like your posts
Then you can like my posts and
say “aw” to my photos
I’ll see you all on Facebook
and I’ll like your posts

or

I’m better one on o-one
on o-one on o-one
I’m better one on o-one
‘less you’re that way too
then an talkative buffer
can help conversation
I’m better one on o-one
‘less you’re that way too

or

Please don’t try and call me
don’t call me don’t call me
Oh Please don’t try and call me
please text me instead
then I can think a-head
bout what I am saying
oh please don’t try and call me
please text me instead

Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Which version of the song speaks to you or is there another version that works best for you?

P.S. When I say Lydia loves this thing, I’m not kidding. That music player has been a life saver on many occasions so I hate to bite the hand that feeds me but I did anyway.

First Name Hello, Last Name Kitty. Why would you assume I’m a cat?

In case you haven’t been following the “news,” it was recently announced clarified by the makers of Hello Kitty that she is, in fact, not a cat. Also, she apparently doesn’t have a mouth because she “speaks from her heart.”

Last time I checked you couldn’t eat with your heart, though. Check and mate, SANRIO! Also, in the children’s book my sister owns, the things Hello Kitty speaks from her heart have quotation marks. Is that grammatically correct?

Hello Kitty is also British, so I guess the  correct pronunciation is “Aloe Ke-ey,” and then you jump in the air, tap your heels together and sweep a chimney.

Anyway, at the store the other day I saw this, and I thought, “Well, I guess if Hello Kitty is a little girl, that would explain why this mouse hasn’t been slaughtered.”

hkitty

Except, you know, for the whole not having a mouth thing. I guess a cat without a mouth also couldn’t or wouldn’t have the motivation to slaughter a mouse. So I’m back to square one. Ooor, that mouse is really a 400lb Canadian man.

 

Teen Tragedy Songs. So many tragedies, so many teens.

I was listening to my cable providers music on demand station, the oldies station, and a song named “Patches” came on. There’s apparently TWO songs from the era named Patches, but they aren’t about the same Patches because one’s a boy and one’s a girl. This particular Patches was about the girl one. Dickey Lee sings of, “Patches my darling of old Shantytown,” with whom he was planning a summer wedding. Did this wedding happen? NO! His parents forbade it for no reason, sings Dickey. WHY!!?????

Well, it turns out, as poor Dickey overhears:

“I hear a neighbor telling my father
He says, a girl name of Patches was found floating face down
In that dirty old river that flows by the coal yards”

Uh, ok then. Dickey then sings of joining her that evening blah blah blah. Anyway, I looked at the album they had listed for it and it was: Last Kiss: Songs of Teen Tragedy. All the great teen deaths are there, from Leader of the Pack to Teen Angel! So many dead teens!

There are fourteen songs on this CD. Each more tragic than the next. But, they forgot a few:

1. “Braces,” about a boy (Johnny) and a girl (Judy) who made out and got their braces stuck together and starved to death.

2. “Sunburned Cutie,” sample lyrics:

She thought it’d be ok
just a few hours of sun and fun
but she was out there the whole day

When her momma came looking for her
all she found was a towel and sunglasses
she was just a sunburned cutie, a sun tanning amateur

3. “Lil’ Escalator Girl,” he never learned her name, he was at the mall and saw her from afar, then her shoelaces got caught in the escalator and all her skin came off.

4. “Prehistoric Rebel,” lyrics, the spoken climax:

But, Johnny didn’t want to sweep the cave floor
He ran away.
His sabretooth pelt got caught in a branch.
I saw him struggling, but there was nothing I could do.
A t-rex got him and ripped him in half.
Now I have to go to the dance….alone.

5. “Goodbye My Bicycling Baby,” about a responsible teen who thought motorcycles were too dangerous but ironically dies in a bicycling accident.

6. “Scattering Susie’s Ashes.” That’s pretty self explanatory.

7. “My Little Teen Funeral Girl,” this is about a girl who’s at another teen’s funeral (parachute didn’t open) who dies in a freak folding chair accident at the cemetery.

8. “Mama, Since You’re Dying Anyway, Can You Get a Message to Johnny?” lyrics:

Mama, I’ve got a message for Johnny
I’ve written down every word
If you end up croakin’
can you pass it on to him?

The bible says you can’t bring
personal possessions to heaven
but maybe, just maybe,
you can bring
other peoples’ notes

9. “I’ll Never Forget You (Because the Death of A Boyfriend is Just Generally Something You Don’t Forget)”

10. “Soda Shop Angel,” this would have been the saddest of all the teen tragedy songs if there weren’t three verses about the singer continuing to send his food back for various reasons.

11. “Angel Angel,” about the ghost of a dead teenager (running with scissors mishap) being exorcised from the house he was haunting, thus “dying” again and becoming a double angel, very rare.

12. “Why Couldn’t the Fire Ants Have Swarmed Me, Instead?” a young man’s lament at a romantic picnic gone wrong.

Any others?

If we go missing, you’ll know who it was…

Two houses ago, when we moved into our first house in Georgia, after we’d been there a while, we found a couple of odd things in the backyard. Mainly, it was the occasional discarded  Almond Joy wrapper.

Seeing as how I do not like coconut and there’s no reason Tom would be secretly eating coconut candy in the backyard (I’m not a candy dictator), the only logical conclusion to make was that we were being stalked. Stalked by someone who like to eat Almond Joys while he watches people watch TV, apparently.

The Almond Joy Killer, we called him (or her, don’t want to make assumptions).

We were never murdered (I guess they only “kill” Almond Joys), and we eventually moved. We moved on with our lives. And we moved AGAIN, to a different state.

We lived in our naive little bubble, thinking ourselves safe from a chocolate-smeared Peeping Tom (not my Tom, a different, peeping, Tom).

All that changed last weekend when Tom came inside after mowing the lawn. What did he bring with him? THIS:

almond joy

DEAR GOD! He or she is back! I wonder if they went through a Mounds phase in the years between, and then they went back to feeling like a nut, and fell into their old ways.

Anyway, welcome back Almond Joy Killer, we’ll try and be more entertaining this time. Please don’t murder us.

There’s still time to disappoint someone for Valentine’s Day!

Everybody calm down. I know, you’re scrambling, trying to come up with something extra special to give your lady on Valentine’s Day. It’s only two days away, but don’t panic, I’m here to help. I’ve curated for you only the best, most finest, lovingest, romantical, guaranteed smooch-getting gifts you can bestow upon your better or lesser half.

The first obvious Valentine’s Day gift is flowers. But I didn’t want to recommend plain ol’ flowers, we all know about those. So I did an Amazon search for “flowers” and this showed up so why not:

Smurf Fan
“Baby, I think more of you than the roses every other woman gets. Here’s a Smurf fan pull for you, my special lady.” (NOTE: I would actually like this more than real flowers, so I can only assume all women would).

 

The second obvious gift is diamonds. Everyone knows diamonds are a girls best friend, but you know what? That educational song was written way back in the 1940s, well before the development of GIGANTIC LIGHT UP RINGS.

Gigantic Ring
Do real diamonds have flashing light effects? No. Do real diamonds come in lady-pink cardboard boxes with delightfully literal descriptions? No. Are real diamond rings so small that they end up lost down the drain? Yes. She will never lose this flashing, giant symbol of your love for her.

 

The high class art lover deserves the finest, most classy of gifts.

Whizzer
The FINEST urine.

You want to recognize and embrace her feminine side, but you also want to celebrate her professionalism. DUH:

Maxi Pad Sticky Notes.
Maxi Pad Sticky Notes.

Has your lady been bothering you to teach her how to change a tire but all you have at your disposal are regular tools and you’re a tool? Have no fear, the solution is here!

Ladies Wrench
It is a wrench just for the ladies! She doesn’t actually have to use it, she just has to hold it up to some nuts and it will nag them into unscrewing themselves. Women, am I right!?

Remember that time you and your honey went on that long weekend to Colonial Williamsburg, and she got a terrible case of diarrhea, and you tried to comfort her by saying, “at least we aren’t in the REAL colonial times Williamsburg, you’d be stuck on a chamber pot!” but she really wasn’t amused? Well, remember that moment forever by adding a charm to her charm bracelet!

toilet charm
Women LOVE jewelry!

I’ve found you six wonderful options and statistically there’s no way your lady won’t love at least one of them. Get ready for some major gratitude if you know what I mean (finally, the couch all to yourself!).

Good Valentimes, everybody.