Spooky UFO?

My hometown's goddamn UFO car is in the news again.

Read about it in the Fargo Forum.

Thanks to Lisa at ttravel.com for the heads up. Consult Lisa for all your travel needs! Please! We don't want her to go broke, because then she'd move in with us!

Knob!

I'd like to announce that my stovetop is clean.

It doesn't happen very often so an announcement is warranted.

The knobs are clean, too. However, they're damaged. I once (okay, more than once) set a hot cookie pan on top of them and they melted in an unattractive way. They work fine. They just look like we live in a rental.

Now, those of you who've been to my house know that the appearance of my stove knobs is the LEAST of the aesthetic deficiencies in my home.

Doesn't mean it doesn't bug me.

It does kind of bug me that a stove part is so easily...meltable. Maybe I was expecting vulcanized plastic or something.

Anyway, looking for replacements, I'm running into the usual problem. No problem finding a web site that sells appliance parts, but they always want the fucking MODEL NUMBER. My house is fucking 16 years old! How the fuck do I know what the model number is?

You'd think that searching "GE electric cooktop black replacement knob" would turn something up, but NOOOOO!

And I know how it would go if I went to a store looking for them, too.

BP: Hi. I need replacement knobs for my GE electric cooktop. They're black.

Minion: You need what?

BP: Knobs for my cooktop.

M: Oh. A cooktop, you say? Gas or electric?

BP: Electric. Like I said earlier.

M: Do you have the model number?

BP: No.

M: Because you can find the number under...

BP: Um, I didn't bring the cooktop along. But I'm here now, and I'd like some new knobs.

M: What brand is is?

BP: GE. Like I said earlier.

M: Well, here's some GE knobs.

BP: But those are for a gas stove. Plus, they're white.

(Several minutes later.)

M: So you need replacement knobs for your black GE electric cooktop.

BP: Exactly.

M: Why didn't you just say so?

At which point I would stab him in the temple with a temperature probe from a nearby Amana Radar Range. It doesn't damage him because he's really an android and he's been hiding the stove knobs in his pseudo-cranial storage cavity the whole time.

Happy Halloween!

Brian Vickers, Riki Rachtman, Tony Stewart.

Wal-Mart AND Arkansas...

I got this from one of the admins at Club Smoke (a Tony Stewart fan board).

"From Little Rock...

We had a 'going away' party yesterday for a lady at our Little Rock claims office. One of the supervisors called a Wal-Mart and ordered the cake.

He told them to write:

'Best Wishes Suzanne' and underneath that write 'We will miss you'.

As the picture shows, it didn't quite turn out right. It was too funny not to keep it."



Thanks, Gretajean!

Party addendum: the aftermath

When we were speculating at the party how to get the wax stuff out of Dave's hair, someone said Noxema. That's when I realized I not only didn't have Noxema, I didn't have cold cream or even baby oil.

"CVS!" suggested Sharon Tate. "Open all night!"

So we stopped at the CVS at the corner of Coit & McDermott. Dave didn't want to go inside, dressed in costume, so I went.

There I am, the Bride, Madeline Kahn...shopping. I eventually found what I needed and went to the checkout. I had to wait a while for a checker to show up. Meanwhile there was a couple nearby sort of arguing.

The checker checked me out, then turned to the arguing couple as I left.

NO REACTION! From any of them. As if women with vertical black and white hair, dressed in a neglige and fur mules walk in and shop all the time.

I was dissappointed.

But if that's sort of normal around there, maybe I should break out the costmes more often.

Buffy didn't invent vampires. Well, maybe one.

We went to a Halloween party on Saturday as Madeline Kahn and Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein. The party theme was "Dead Man's Party" and you were supposed to come as someone deceased.

So there we were, my honey with his head extra-bald and green, wearing a leopard-print pajama top, with reading glasses and a Wall Street Journal, and me with the classic Bride of Frankenstein hair, in a lovely white penoir set and fur mules.

We've been going to this party every year since 1995. Some of the guests, we only see on Halloween and New Year's and sometimes a couple of other key party dates, but it's always a crowd of old friends and usually a few new ones.

Such as it was on Saturday, with one exception.

In party circulation, there was a particularly drunk woman. I was chatting with my friend Nancy, and this Hellvira woman was showing signs of already being a little sloppy.

'K. Now I have NO problem with drunkenness, as y'all well know. Just making that clear.

She was supposed to be a vampire. I could kind of tell from her white shirt, red scarf, and...well, because someone pointed out that she was supposed to be a vampire. The woman loudly announced that she had already lost her teeth.

Granted, I had loudly announced just a bit earlier that this was the first Halloween party, to which I had ever worn a bra. Hey, in context, it was funny.

A bit later, someone asked Nancy if her husband Sid was wearing her jeans. He was.

"None of his own jeans were tight enough to look like a punk rocker! There's some lycra in there! So they're punk-tight."

"Tight enough to see his religion," I said. The other ladies twittered, and some laughed, particularly the Swedish Gwenivere. "Not that I looked. Well, maybe."

Hellvra made incoherent noises of confusion, disapproval, and outrage. Um, what? Okay, whatever. Maybe she was too young for the 80s when you really COULD see a guy's...religion clearly. Maybe she's never seen an uncircumcised penis. She definitely didn't quite know what I meant.

Later I was back in the room where Hellvira had Swedish Gwen trapped (hey, it's where the punch was!). Hellvira suddenly turned to me and said, "Who are you supposed to BE, anyway???"

"Have you ever seen the movie Young Frankenstein?" (Or any Frankenstein movie, for that matter, or seen a tv show about movie monsters, or classic horror flicks, or...well, you know.)

"NO." Pronounced with two sylables. As if it was a ridiculous question.

"Well then it would be IMPOSSIBLE to explain it to you then."

I left the room and decided to switch back to beer.

A bit later I questioned Nancy. "Is that woman..."

"Neighbor," she said, indicating the direction she lived.

"That neighbor. When she's sober, would she possibly get a basic pop culture reference....?"

Nancy was already shaking her head. "No. No brain. No life. Classic example of...vapid."

"Okay. I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Drunk, fine. Great, acutally. Ignorant, fine. But drunk, ignorant, AND bitchy? No. Just, no."

Nancy laughed.

Farmer Foundation Fun

Yes, it is.

Almost funny

Not one, but two of my cousins sent me this cartoon. Oh, those crazy North Dakotans!



Back in the day, I used to encourage my shelvers to shelve books by size, and then color.

And they were allowed to throw out the Grisham books.

Why would anyone want to steal a 1996 Ford Contour?

My brother-in-law, my former Indentured Servant, lives in a not great/not bad neighborhood. To say he lacks direction and ambition is putting it mildly.

But he has a job. He pays his bills...we assume. His apartment smells like a dirty ashtray left in the restroom I was once in at a gas station in Hollywood, but he vacuums before we come over. He hides anything illegal. He has an unhealthy addiction to World of Warcraft, and his best friend is a guy he's never met in person who lives in England.

He doesn't have anything of value outside of his computer...and the car we gave him a year ago.

We were getting a new car. He needed a car. Our old car was worth $500 on a good day. Being we don't give him money--ever--giving him the car fit within our parameters of "helping him out."

But apparently, last week his car was stolen. By the girlfriend of a friend who crashed at his place for a couple of nights. She had access to his spare keys.

He didn't know who she was, really, but she had apparently used his computer and left all kinds of information about herself in his web browser history. The car was recovered, and of course, impounded.

The Jesus of Cheese drove him over to get it un-impounded. I don't know if it was any the worse for wear, but with that car it would be hard to tell.

Now let me say again: Why the fuck would anyone want to steal a 1996 Ford Contour?

I don't think I want to know the real answer.

Up and Die of Not Surprised

Y'all know I would have loved to see Tony Stewart win today but...

Wasn't that a smooth move by Jeff Gordon? Damn, that guy can drive.

(If Jeff weren't so boring, I'd probably be a fan.)

Good on ya, Jeff.

I Love my Friends

...because they send me e-mails like this:

"I had a nasty fall involving a doll stroller and a hamster cage. I broke my wrist and.."

Kansas, part II

Here's my rant.

1) There were two red-flag rain delays (where they stop the cars and park them on pit road until it blows over...or doesn't) The second delay, the rain was severe and there was lightning. It also washed all the rubber off the track.

2) It was at least a 3-hour delay.

3) They decided to resume the race even though a) none of the drivers had their cars set up to safely race on a track with no old rubber on it; b) the track was still wet; c) there was ZERO chance of finishing the race in daylight, and the Kansas track has NO lights.

4) They finished under caution in the dark, and then awarded the race to a driver who ran out of gas and couldn't maintain caution speed. NASCAR claims that he WAS driving an acceptable speed, but any of the thousands who watched the race could tell you that it wasn't true.

Now I'll speak as a Tony Stewart fan. He was fuckin' ROBBED! He would have been the winner, had they called the race after the huge thunderstorm, which for safety's sake, they should have. He had a great car. He was driving clean, and he hadn's pissed off anyone (well, except for ESPN the day before, but whatever). Then he got caught in a couple of accidents that weren't his fault, but as they say, That's Racin'. However, after one of those he got a cut tire and was waving his arm out the window to let the drivers behind him know he had to get off the track immediately, and Kurt Bush plowed into the back of him.

I think Kurt did it on purpose. Because he's a weenie.