Didn't ya see the blinkin' light??

Once my friend Juanita was stopped speeding in a school zone.

"Didn't ya see the blinkin' light?"

Actually, she didn't. It's happened to all of us--you're in just a position next to a truck, where it blocks all the road signs. She really didn't see the blinkin' light.

I share this story today because, the point is that the blinkin' light is where the school zone STARTS.

I'm talking to YOU, WHITE SUBURBAN!!! The school zone does NOT start when you have a child in your car and are on your way to school. It also does NOT start when you see your first crossing guard. IT STARTS WHERE YOU SEE THE BLINKIN' LIGHT! And also, for your convenience, the speed limit is marked right below the light, which is 20. TWENTY MILES PER HOUR.

NOT.15. Just NOT.

(So, yeah, the White Suburban drove fifteen miles an hour in front of me for two miles. I'm not kidding. Times like that, I drive slightly to the right, almost in the parking lane, so my fellow carpoolers behind me can see that I AM NOT THE ASSHOLE.)

To review:

1) Observe normal driving laws until you see the blinkin' light.
2) Drive the speed marked below the blinkin' light, but no slower.
3) Resume normal speed when there's another sign that says you can. For your convenience, the sign even uses the word "Resume."

Thank you.

Check isn't in the mail

Last night at supper time I got one of those recorded calls on my cell phone. It was from Dish Network and said that they hadn't received their most recent payment, and I could either hit star to be transferred to customer service, or call an 888 number.

Just one problem. We don't use Dish Network; we're DirecTV customers.

I'm wondering if it was the customer or the company who fucked up and put my number in their system. Next time they call, I might hit star and tell the real peoples that they've got the wrong gal.

Then again, I might not.

It's Really Not My Fault

Every year I watch the Academy Awards. I always have. One of my earliest memories is the time the streaker ran through when David Niven was presenting something.

There haven't been any streakers lately, though there are quite a few boobs (literal and figurative) that pop out on the red carpet. It's all part of the hype, I guess. The red carpet, the overdone opening, the inexplicable musical numbers, the death montage, and then some young actress will win Best Actress the first time she bothers to prove she can convey emotion in spite of not being able to change her facial expression because of the botox. Then some old guy will win for a phoning-it-in performance in a moderately good movie because they didn't give him the award years ago when he actually deserved it because they were busy giving some other guy his make-up Oscar.

I've found it's best to watch it drunk. Last spring, the death montage came on two thirds of the way through the program, and it was surprisingly short and the only death that really stood out was Heath Ledger. So I spouted off to The Jesus of Cheese that either they forgot a bunch of people, or this coming year is going to have a lot of old actors dying because they'll be working again after relaxing during the writer's strike/stress=death type rant.

It made perfect sense when I was drunk. Perhaps it was one of those random psychic moments I have. I don't even really remember exactly what I said, except that I predicted a LOT of famous deaths this year.

Now every time someone famous dies, The Jesus of Cheese tells me it's my fault because I predicted it.

I only wish my power of suggestion extended to politics.

Cows

Lo, these last 36 years I have long ruminated on the events of that morning, such a typical one in my idyllic childhood, which could only set the stage for the surreality that was to follow in ebbs and flows throughout my life.

(That my way of saying, "And one time, on the farm when I was little...")

BeerHound, The Boy, and I were ordered out of the house by my mother. Now, mom's always been crazy, but I like to believe that in the summer when she could order us out of the house in such a manner and get away with it, she was less crazy.

We decided to pass the time by pretending that our car was the beach. and off the car was the ocean.

We lay there on the windshield for quite a while, getting a tan. We lay there FOREVER, in kid terms--almost ten whole minutes. Part of this ritual was to be quiet while we lay there. I don't know why--maybe that's how we saw it in some tv show we'd seen recently. Let's just blame Hawaii 5-O.

"It's amazing what you imagine," said The Boy.

"Yeah," said the BeerHound. I didn't contribute to the conversation. Being the youngest, I learned long before that adding to a conversation in anything more than a "yes man" capacity often led to them questioning my intelligence, even when I was agreeing with them.

Meaning they'd say, "What do you know, you're just a little kid!"

Anyway, back to the beach. Um, car. Anyway.

"For instance, I just imagined that a cow just walked in front of the car."

It is important to note here that though it was a farm, it wasn't that kind of farm. We raised wheat, barley, and sometimes a third crop, but we hadn't had cows since 1969.

"Me too!" said BeerHound. "I imagined a cow walked right in front of the car!

I kept my mouth shut. Because though I, too, had imagined this specter, I wasn't going to 'fess up, in case later under interrogation by our parents, I would have been considered 'in on it.'

How we could get in trouble for imagining a cow, I don't know, but I wasn't taking chances.

We stood up. Our tans were good enough, anyway. Plus, we had this cow conspiracy to contend with.

So we climbed on the roof of the car. This was back in the day, when three kids could stand on the roof of a Chrysler Fury III 2-door and NOT cave the roof in. Hell, we didn't even scratch it.

We looked around the yard. To our astonishment, there wasn't just one cow, but several. Some were sampling the honeysuckle in my grandmother's garden, while others were heading into the long grass where the grove* started.

*Where I grew up, there were trees, but they weren't spread out. There would be a grove of 5 or 10 acres of trees at low-lying spots along intermittent stream beds. As land was settled, the homesteaders would build their homes near the trees. Therefore, EVERYONE had a "grove." They just did.

Meanwhile, still back at the beach, we were faced with a problem. We knew we should tell our mother, but we knew that 1) she wouldn't believe us; 2) we still didn't quite believe us; 3) if we did believe us, we were faced with the issue of jumping off the car and running to the house while there were killer cows on the loose. Don't think they were killers? Ask my grandma's honeysuckle. Oh, wait, you can't, because it was HEARTLESSLEY MUNCHED BY A RENEGADE BOVINE!

We finally faced our fear. My siblings and I managed this by them telling me to go and tell mom, which I refused to do in fear, upon which time they called me a baby and a scaredy-cat, at which time I said they were the scaredy-cats since they didn't dare do it either, at which time they proved me wrong by jumping off the car and running to the house, and I followed, because I was a scaredy-cat.

Hey, I never said I wasn't.

In the house, we accosted my mom.

"Mom, there's cows in the yard!"

"What cows? No. What kind of game are you playing?

"Well, we were pretending the car was a beach and..." I started.

"No really, there's cows in the yard!" BeerHound and The Boy glare"d at me. Didn't I understand the gravity of the situation?

"There aren't really cows in the yard," my mom said with some question in her voice.

"THERE'S COWS IN THE YARD!!!" Finally, the three of us were in unison.

Mom finally walked to the window and looked out.

"THERE'S COWS IN THE YARD!"

"We told you!"

She called the neighbor whose cows she was quite sure they were and yelled at him. Told him he'd better come and get them or we were having steak and roasts for supper for the next year. He came over and rounded them up.

But the problem was, we didn't dare go outside until they were gone, which BeerHound, The Boy, and I survived just fine, but I swear sometimes, my mom has flashbacks.

Checkin' me out. My brain, I mean.

I was sitting in my cube pretending to work when Angel poked her head in. Angel was on her shift on the info hotline, and was a little unsure of herself being she was an MBA candidate rather than an MLS. Plus, it was the first week of rolling out our new info hotline.

"Where's Madison?"

"In his grave, I hope," I said, putting down my outdated copy of Statistical Abstracts of the United States (yes I really DO read it for the hell of it, but anyway.)

"No, Madison, Wisconsin. This guy called the hotline and asked so I put him on hold. I think he's testing us or something."

I picked up the call while she listened in; I pretended I was her.

"Sorry about that interruption. Madison is in Wisconsin on I90, I'd say midway between LaCrosse and Milwaukee."

"But where IS it?" they guy asked.

"Southern Wisconsin in the middle of the state, but then again YOU KNOW THAT since that's where you are right now."

There was stunned silence.

"How did you know that?"

"I can see your area code, you know. We don't mind these tests like your office has been lobbing at us, but could you throw something our way that might actually make the company some money? I mean--we answer real questions, too."

"How do you know this stuff, anyway?"

"I just do. By the way, you have something stuck in your teeth."

"Wha?"

"Just kidding. Dilbert joke. Call us when you actually need to know something."

"Um. Okay."

You know what? He did.