Loose Stool

Thursday night, I had dinner and wine with Jaclyn, Lori, Chi, Doug and Daniel.

During desert (which we did not partake in), Daniel and I began discussing our healthy eating habits. I related how I try to shop the perimeter of the grocery store and that it is rare to seem me consume packaged foods. Admittedly, my only weakness is Pringles (somewhere in Heaven, God has a warehouse of them waiting on me) but we all have our breaking points.

During our conversation, the subject of chemicals additives in packaged foods came up; more specifically, Olestra. This is the ingredient in some snack foods that makes your favorite goodies "low fat". It never ceases to amaze me that that people will willingly put chemicals into their bodies in the name of "low fat". I guess it hard to blame them. With a tempting warning label like this, it would be insanity NOT to dig right in.

Mmmmm.. cramping and loose stools. Boy, that makes that big-grab bag of Cheetos well worth it.

I don't know about you, but I'd rather eat the fattening stuff and maybe do an extra 10 minutes on the treadmill to make up for it. At least then I would not have to worry about loose stool sneaking out the back door when I am completely unprepared for it.

After further research, I discovered that the official name for this phenomenon is "anal leakage" as described in case studies.

"Also, olestra sometimes causes underwear staining due to the greasy fecal matters and a phenomenon called anal leakage (leakage of liquid olestra through anal sphincter)."







Basically, I have three choices:

Eat the fatty goodies and gain a few pounds
Eat the chemical goodies and shit my pants
Show some restraint, eat real food, and get healthier

I suppose we should thank the makers of Olestra for making this decision so easy. Now let's just use some commmon sense and make the right decision.

Note: I know this isn't new but it's still worth mentioning.

The Wedding Crashers

Last night, Jaclyn and I went to the wedding of our friends Amanda and Jake. We did not "crash" the wedding like my blog title suggests. We were offically invited guests.

It was a nice wedding. Considering that I hate most weddings, that is quite a compliment coming from me. I consider it a success because they planned the wedding they wanted and not the wedding they think they should have. Yes, there were elements of tradition but there were also fun moments that I am sure had some of the elderly attendees wondering what this world was coming to.

For instance, it is not often that a bride and groom strut their way back down the aisle to "I Got You (I Feel Good)" by James Brown after being presented as husband and wife for the first time. Up until that point, it had been quite traditional. An outdoor wedding by a lake, a string quartet and a beautiful bride in a classic dress. The "James Brown touch" led way into a fun and interesting reception. There was plenty of wine to go around, the food was tasy, and there was even a "candy bar" by the dance floor where you could fill your goody bags with sweets personally selected by the wedded couple.

Congratulations Amanda and Jake! Here's to a splendid wedding and a happy marriage!

Here are a few candid moments..


The cake! A towering temptation of chocolaty goodness.


The picturesque reception!



Jaclyn and the bride!


Here we have Jaclyn and Janet sharing a loving embrace.



I caught Jaclyn red-handed in her boogie-shoes.

The (Over)exercise of Power

The liberals are getting desperate..

The (over)exercise of power

Pain

I've only been at work 1/2 hour and already my elbow is numb, my shoulder hurts, and my back is aching.

Deep Tissue Massage

After work today, I received a deep tissue massage from The Body Center in Costa Mesa. Years of sitting behind a keyboard with my shoulders in a shrugged position has left me with a wide variety of knots and other little gremlins in my shoulder muscles.

Aside from being tossed around on a cold slab of marble like a dead fish by some Eastern Indian healer, this is the best possible massage imaginable. The therapist puts her body weight behind it and really digs with her elbows and forearms. Sometimes painful but from pain will come pleasure.

I do not quite understand how some will choose to have "relaxation therapy" or a "swedish massage". When I am being rubbed, I want to feel it. I want to feel my muscles beg for mercy as expert hands wrench them into submission.

At times during the session, I noticed repressed memories freeing themselves from the tangled web of constricted muscles. Ok maybe not repressed memories but my mind started wandering off to different moments of my life.. especially when she was working on my shoulders and neck area. It felt like some drug-induced hallucenation (not that I would know what that is like).

At the end of the massage, I found myself so relaxed that I could not think straight. It was literally hard to speak or steady myself. After sitting for a bit and drinking two glasses of water, my composure was regained and I headed for home.

I think I will have to do this more often.

I Hate Lawyers

As we all probably remember, last month 3 young boys suffered a tragic, yet accidental (albeit preventable) death when they became trapped in the trunk of a car in a backyard.

Of course the lawyers now have to swing in and turn this tragedy into a spectacle.

CNN.com - Lawyer:Boys were alive in trunk during search

I just love this sentence:

However, a lawyer for Anibal Cruz's family said responsibility for the deaths is now "squarely on the shoulders of the police."

Allow me to make sure I understand this:

The parents are not responsible.
The owner of the car is not responsible.
The boys themselves are not responsible.
The only entity responsible for their deaths are the police.

Hmmmm.. makes perfect sense! Why, the police should follow our children around on a daily basis to make sure they don't trip, scrape a knee, or bruise an arm! I think someone should propose legislation that every child should be assigned a police guardian to protect our children from day-to-day harm. One cannot possibly expect a parent/guardian to bear this burden.

Note: My wit and wisdom made me think of the old African proverb which teaches us that it 'takes a village to raise a child'. Just look at the success the African continent has enjoyed over the past century too!

I suppose this is what we should expect in modern-day America. Low-life, money-grubbing lawyers looking to make a buck and a name for themselves. They all make me sick to my stomach.

Ebonics in the Classroom

Great.

San Bernardino County Sun - Ebonics Suggested for District

Of course this "sociology professor" makes no mention of the disservice this would do these already disadvantaged black youth. Miseducating children and destroying opportunity before the opportunity even knocks is criminal. Encouraging black children to speak incorrectly is the worst-kind of racism.

But isn't racism at the core of the liberal religion anyway?

New Layout

I had to change the template. The old one was beginning to look too drab and I am too busy to create my own cool template.

Did you see where Bernie Ebbers (former CEO of WorldCom) got 25 years in prison?

That S.O.B. cost me several thousand dollars.

I wish I could have been there mocking him as he cried like a baby.

I hope that he rots in Hell.

Parallel Parking Rules

I do not mean rules as in "Hey man! Kiss rules!". I mean the rules of parallel parking. Even more specifically, I mean the rule about not opening your door into oncoming traffic after you have (not so)successfully parked your vehicle.

When I was in driver's education, I remember being taught that you do not open your driver side door blindly when parked on the side of a busy street. It even went as far to suggest that you enter/exit via the passenger side and slide over. However with the advent of bucket seats that "suggestion" went out the window (no pun intended).

Fast forward to modern day California. Cars are everywhere and it is very common for people to parallel park on neighborhood streets. Without fail, everytime I drive through one of these neighborhoods I am treated to someone flinging their door open into traffic. They don't even look (you can't expect them to take a break from their cell-phone conversation)! Imagine the shock on their face when one day an oncoming car knocks the door right off it's hinges.

One time, a Hispanic (ahem... Mexican) lad opened his door right in front of my car. I swerved to the center of the street and honked my horn. I saw the young buck in my rearview mirror thanking me by standing in the middle of the road with his middle-finger high in the air.

What is wrong with people? In his mind, did he really exact some revenge on me? Did he run and tell his homies how he kept their rep completely intact?

One of these days, I will completely give up on humanity. I feel the frustration of George Constanza unable to use the pay phone in the Chinese restaurant. He was right. We ARE living in a society. There are others around you. Think before you act. Please.

Them's Got Ears, Let Them Hear!

There's an airline plane
Flies to heaven everyday
Past the pearly gates

If you want to ride this train
Have your ticket in your hand
Before it is too late

If the world looks wrong
And your money's spent and gone
And your friend has turned away

You can get away to heaven
On this aeroplane
Just bow your head and pray

Well a lot of people guess
Some say no and some say yes
Will it take some and leave some behind?

But you will surely know
When to the airport go
To leave this world behind

Oh a lot of speakers speak
A lot of preachers preach
When you lay their salary on the line

You hold your head and pray
It's the only earthly way
You can fly to heaven on time
Fly to heaven on time

Your ticket you obtain
On this heavenly airline plane
You leave your sins behind

You've got to take this flight
It may be daytime, might be night
But you can't see your way if you're blind

Them's got ears, let them hear
Them's got eyes, let them see
Turn your eyes to the lord of the skies

Take that airline plane
It'll take you home again
To your home behind the skies

Funny Headline

I found this sports headline in the LA Times:

Mariners Win a Rare Stinker From Colon
Seattle scores seven in the first two innings and rolls to a 10-2 victory over Angels' All-Star.

Am I the only one who finds a headline about a rare stinker from the colon funny?

I'm Beginning to Understand my Father

When I was a kid, we would occasionally get firecrackers on the 4th of July. When we did, we never got the extravagant kind. Mostly we purchased things like bottle rockets and lady fingers.

As my Dad has never been a man to frequently throw away money on frivilous items, there were years we did not get any at all. In fact, I remember my sisters once lamenting one year in which they did not get any firecrackers. To avoid the embarassment of being the "only kids on the block" without them, they had taken some hard-cover books to bang on the driveway once it was dark enough where they would not be seen (yeah.. THAT is not embarassing at all is it). I guess in those days it wasn't the appealing visual show as much as it was the loud bang that was desirous.

On one holiday, my Dad took his gun out in the backyard and fired it a couple of time to appease us "bang-hungry" children.

As I got older, our firecracker purchasing grew less and less. They way I see it, my Dad figured we were getting old enough to get by without them. Besides, we should know they were essentially a waste of money.

When I became a teenager, that fact became even more apparent. The last thing I wanted to throw my hard-earned $3.35/hour on was some damn firecrackers.

Luckily, I have carried that attitude on into my adult life. Unfortunately, many in my city have not as every July 5th morning I am treated to scores of debris on my street.



These people have enough drive and strength to go and purchase the things, but they cannot bear to bend over and sweep their mess out of the street and into a garbage bag? I wish the city would ban them altogether. The mess is unbearable and the firecracker stands are unsightly.

Please don't get me wrong; I love a good professional firecracker show. But having my city look like a slum just so a small percentage of the population can "celebrate" is not worth it.

Venus Stopped the Train

Venus stopped the train
While the brakeman lost his place
Satellites were spinning
In outer space
They televised her feelings
While the light
The light struck terror

I kept my distance
Because she fell in love with everyone
Smoking grass and taking Christmas trees
She fell in love with me
I was polite to her
A soft sadness had her much more than her loneliness

Attention Husbands of Fat Wives!

Your wife may go to the gym, but she is not working out. She is doing 3 minutes on the cross-trainer at the lowest resistance level. She is riding the sit-down bike on a steep decline. She may be there, but she is not getting any exercise.

The next time you hear her complain that she "just can't lose any weight" even though she "works out", go ahead and hug her, sympathize, etc.. But secretly, you will now know the truth.

Bacon Grease

I like moist lips. My lips. I don't care about your lips unless you plan on kissing me.

In fact, I once became addicted to Chapstick. During that trying time, my lips had become welfare lips. They refused to function on their own without a multi-daily slathering of Chapstick. Eventually, the overdose of took it's toll and my lips became like two raw pieces of beef. I was constantly miserable. These days, a youngster might be compelled to seek out therapy or counseling but I was adamant about beating the addiction on my own (which I did).

Where it all started though was my necessity to apply Vaseline to my lips before I left for school in the morning. The Chapstick came into play when I decided I would need a "fix" while away from home. I do not think you could get the little Vaseline tubes in those days and I was not going to carry a big, Michael-Jacskson-size jar of Vaseline around with me.

One particularly 4th grade morning, I applied (what I thought was) my usual amount of Vaseline to my fresh morning lips. During the roll in my first class, Mrs. Ferbee took note of my overly-shiny lips:

"Tiny Elvis! You have bacon grease all over you lips. I can't believe your mama would let you come to school with bacon grease all over your mouth!"

She sent me to the restroom to wash all the "bacon grease" from my mouth and I was left with dry lips for the rest of the day. It may have been that day that I decided I would never again be without a lip moisturizer.

Years later, I always have a small tube of Vaseline lip therapy somewhere in my vicinity. Not Chapstick... not Blistex.. my handy little tube of Vaseline lip-goop.

Happy Third of July!

I guess that does not have as nice a ring to it as "fourth of July".

What if our forefathers had declared independence on August 13th 1776? Boy, that would be a mouthful:

"Happy thirteenth of August!"

"It's the annual 13th of August sale!"

"Stock up and save this 13th of August weekend!"

I was re-reading the Declaration of Independence a few days ago. Wow! It's so powerful, so inspired and so to the point. There was no political pandering and no worry about hurting someone's feelings; just straight talk. It's a thing of beauty. Why can't modern-day leaders have the balls that the founders of this country did?

Can you imagine how different history would have been if Ted Kennedy and the Exalted Cyclopse Robert "Sheets" Byrd were in charge of our fledgling colonies?