Newport Mouse

That mouse thing the other day made me think of this.  I should have posted this with that, but I didn’t.  I’d like to see you remember everything all the time.

A couple of years ago, we rented a house in Newport, RI and found a dead mouse half sticking out of a bag of chips that had been left in the cabinet from the last guests.  The lady who owned the place was really embarrassed when we told her, as you can imagine.  We did a little investigative work to determine the cause of death ("too many chips") and then wrapped the little guy up to send him on his journey to his final resting place.
Anyway the recurring theme from last month is this: mouse in the trash—hot button issue.  Is Laine compassionate and kindhearted for not wanting the furry roach to end up in the garbage?  Am I cold and heartless for not caring?  The answer?  “Throw it out the window.”  And I’m the bad guy.

Are we cool with this now?

I don’t want to be a stickler for political correctness or social decency or anything (what am I, some kind of nerd?) but NBC putting money in Chris Brown’s pocket to use his song during the Emmys last night seems at the very least, insensitive.

But what do I know, I can’t keep up with the kids these days.  Are we cool with dudes beating up their girlfriends now?  Someone has to tell me these things, I’m not on Twitter.  Can I get some sort of newsletter or something?  Good thing this Emmy producer is more on top of things than I am.  (His wife tried to tell him that it might be nice to pay a musician who doesn’t bash their girlfriend’s head in, but it’s really hard to understand someone with a fat lip.)

I assume you're kidding

"I love this picture of you two! Idiot*, you have married one amazing man! Moron*, I am SO happy for you!"  was a Facebook comment on a photo of a certain newly-married couple yesterday.

I would never wish anyone ill will or anything, and I don’t really care what goes on with this couple or the amnesia victim who wrote that comment, but for God’s sake, someone be honest here.

Saying "you have married one amazing man!” about a guy who consistently cheated on his first wife and led a double life with a girlfriend on the side, is like saying “you have married someone who definitely won’t stab you to death!” about OJ Simpson.  I don’t wanna ruin the surprise or anything, but…no, you haven’t.
 

*names have been changed.

Marcel the Shell

MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON from Dean Fleischer-Camp on Vimeo.

I invited some friends from upstate to come eat salad. 

I don't think you're cute

There are a lot of reasons to live in New York. A billion people live here (I tried to walk through Chinatown the other day--a billion seems like a conservative estimate) despite it being vomit-inducingly expensive, so there has to be a reason. I love it. I really do. I “heart” NY or whatever, ok? What I don’t “heart” (other than people saying “I heart…” things--honestly, that needs to stop) are mice. Also poor people, waking up early, and the blind. Sunglasses inside? Come on.  But right now, mice. They run too fast, their teeth can cut through titanium, the long tail and that claw-paw are scary and they look like Joanna Garcia. And Sunday night, we came face to pointy face. Most girls are afraid of mice, but I’m a strong, independent woman. You can’t come into my house and push me around. Who do you think you are? So I got off the chair, put my fears aside, tucked my pajama pants into my Hunters......and called Jeff to come over and get this thing out of my apartment, because *ear-piercing shrieks*.

After taking 68 bags and 112 pairs of shoes off the floor of my closet (and realizing I might be a hoarder) we finally found him behind the bed, and devised a plan of sticky traps and pathways that too ironically resembled a 50’s science experiment that ended with toxic glue instead of cheese.

Some people get all up in arms about glue traps being inhumane (*see idiots below) and even Jeff had a look of guilt on his face as he picked him up and took him outside to the trash, but I don’t share that sentiment. They’re rodents, not pets. Movies make you think they’re cute and friendly, but I didn’t hear one note of "Somewhere Out There," and he wasn’t wearing a hat or a jacket or anything.

I thought about doing whatever it is you’re supposed to do to free them from the glue (if there is such a thing) so that he could spread the word about 1B and the terror he had endured there, but then I remembered that my campaign platform is “tough on crime." 



*This isn't helping, PETA.  It's just embarrassing.  (Is that one girl topless?)

You, your kids and your Johnson

I guess a lot of people have seen this already. I hadn't until Rick and Kristin forced me into being in the loop, but that's no surprise. I'm really skeptical of things like this, but by all accounts, this really was a commercial in the 80s or whenever. Are there any old people who read this who can confirm? I was way too young to remember.

Also, maybe I didn't pay attention to boating commercials because we didn't have a boat. Now that I think about it, I didn't have a pony or a bouncy house growing up either. I'm not saying we were on food stamps or anything, but sometimes the pool would take a really long time to heat up in the winter. I want to swim NOW!

WTF is going on, China?

The CNN widget on my phone only shows the first couple of words from a headline, and yesterday (I started to write this yesterday and never got around to it, ok? I’ve got other stuff going on, I have my own life, stop suffocating me!) it said, "Meat cleaver used..."

Since "Meat cleaver used...to cut meat" isn't really newsworthy, and "Meat cleaver used...to slay Perez Hilton" doesn’t seem likely, you know the rest of that sentence can't be what you want to hear. What it said was, "Meat cleaver used in China school attack."

Holy shit.

A man with a kitchen cleaver hacked to death a teacher and seven kindergarten students -- five boys and two girls. He then returned home and committed suicide, state media said.

I don’t know how I never heard about the 4 times this happened before (I said I’ve been busy! And also, they never put “meat cleaver” in a headline before this) but apparently this is the fifth time this has happened since March.

(CNN) -- March 23: A man stabs eight students to death and wounds five others at an elementary school in Fujian province. The attacker, a former community doctor, was executed.

April 28: A male teacher barged into a primary school in southern Guangdong province, wounding 16 pupils and a teacher.

April 29: An unemployed man stormed into a kindergarten in Taixing city in Jiangsu province with a knife. At least 28 children were injured, most of them four year olds.

April 30, a man armed with a hammer injured five preschool children in east China before setting himself on fire in a classroom suicide, a government spokesman told Xinhua news agency. The attacker held two children in his arms as he poured gasoline over himself, the spokesman said. Teachers in Weifang City, Shandong province, pulled the children away, as the man died, the spokesman said.

May 12: Seven children were killed, and at least 20 others wounded after an attack at a kindergarten in Shaanxi province.

Frankly, all these knife attacks are a little cliché. You’re all master swordsmen, we get it. Everyone saw Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Actually, I didn’t, but I assume it has something to do with the Chinese and I think the girl fights someone with a sword at some point.

I don’t know how anyone could do something like this, or what makes crazy people crazy, but maybe there’s a logical explanation. The first guy to do it on March 23rd said he was frustrated by "failures in his romantic life...” It sounds extreme, but Chinese kids are adorable and who needs that kind of competition?