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  • Karen And Mindy: Unplugged

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    Well, it seems I screwed up.  Nothing so bad as to warrant a beating from E K… Well, scratch that, actually. E K never really seems to need a reason to hand out beatings… But, be that as it may, I think I escaped the wrath of the Evil Redhead for this particular infraction.

    Maybe…

    You see, I entered the wrong date into the post scheduler for my most recent blog (Mindy, Hold The Mork…) and therefore it deployed a day early. Now, normally folks would think of this as a Christmas in August sort of thing. You know, early present and all, but that just isn’t how my luck runs. Nope. Not in the least. It seems Anastasia, (yes, that Anastasia) who is apparently taking EVIL lessons from E K, informed me that if this premature post-aculation meant she was going to have to wait an extra day in between blog entries that I had better write a “bonus blog” or she would complain to E K and then help her do bad things to me. Of course, we all know where that will lead, and my insurance carrier is ready to drop me as it is…

    So, as an act of self-preservation, after spending much of the day cowering in the corner with Satan, who still can’t seem to shake this morning’s Redhead Rampage, I figured I’d better make something… errr… ummm… write something up. So, since I already had notes on hand for the continuing adventures of Karen and Mindy, I figured what the hell…

    It was a Thursday. A Thursday like any other Thursday, except that Mindy had dressed down for the day and Karen was in a mood. Now, granted, Karen was always in a bit of a mood, what with wanting to shoot everyone, but she was actually a bit more surly than usual. She might have even been carrying explosives in her purse, but I wasn’t about to ask.

    The conversation had been raging on about blog entries and humorless folks for several minutes, and was now starting to wind down. I had no more finished jotting a few notes about the West county water issues than Mindy pointed at me and exclaimed, “Murv! You aren’t going to blog about that are you?”

    I shrugged. “Why not? It’s funny.”

    “You want funny?” Big K asked.

    “Sure, but I think we’ve pretty much worn out the whole gun thing,” I told her.

    She huffed then cocked her head to the side and said, “Oh yeah, well what about underwear?”

    Now I was intrigued, but by the same token I was unable to hold back my compulsion to pun.

    “Depends,”  I quipped.

    “Yeah, real funny, Murv. Don’t make me shoot you.”

    “Yeah, okay, so what about underwear? I’m wearing tighty whities.”

    “Murv!” Mindy yelped.

    “Hey, I actually used to get that question and booksigning Q&A’s.” I shrugged. “Now I just get it out of the way from the start.”

    “People really asked you that?”

    I nodded. “Yep.”

    “Shoulda shot ’em,” Karen added on cue, just as I’d expected she would.

    Mindy spoke up again, directing herself to Karen. “So, is this about that guy? You know, the one you yelled at?”

    “I yell at everyone,” Karen replied.

    “I know, I know,” Mindy agreed. “But isn’t this the story about that guy with the pink pants?”

    “Yeah,” Karen answered with a nod. “Pink pants and bright green little boy underwear.”

    I was no longer intrigued. Now I was just mildly disturbed, however I simply couldn’t stop the words from tumbling out of my mouth. “I know I’m going to regret asking this, but how did you know what color his underwear was?”

    pants

    Karen’s voice was as deadpan matter-of-fact as I had ever heard. “Because he had his damn pink pants pulled down below his cheeks.”

    “Ass cheeks?”

    “Well yeah…” she answered, sarcasm heavy in her voice. “They’d look pretty damn weird up around his face cheeks, don’tcha think?”

    I held up my hands in surrender. “I was just asking.”

    Karen shook her head. “And you write books for a living? Sheesh. You been drinking West county water too?”

    I ignored the jibe and asked, “Okay, so I have to know… How did you see this? Did you follow him into the men’s room or something?”

    “No. This was in the meat department.”

    Now, there’s something I forgot to mention folks – Karen works in the meat department at a local market.

    “Rump roast then,” I said.

    “Wasn’t on sale that day.”

    “I was joking. Who’s been drinking the water now?”

    “My gun is in my purse you know.”

    “Yeah, okay.”

    “Tell Murv what you did,” Mindy interjected, trying to avoid bloodshed. She seemed far more excited about the story than Karen. But then, Mindy was definitely the excitable one. Karen just approached everything with calm detachment before pulling out a gun and killing it.

    “I went and got my knife,” she said.

    “No gun?” I asked.

    “I was at work. Can’t bring guns into work, dammit.”

    “Oh, I see.”

    “So, I got my big knife. Not the little one. The really big one. Then I went over and told him he needed to pull up his pants because the rest of the customers didn’t want his butt germs on their dinner.”

    “So did he?”

    “Nope.” She shook her head. “He gave a bunch of attitude. Told me his butt didn’t have germs, which is a crock because everybody’s butt has butt germs. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that.”

    “And you put up with him giving you attitude?”

    “Hell no. I showed him my knife.”

    “Ahhh, so then he pulled up his pants?”

    “No. Then we had a wet cleanup in that aisle.”

    I raised an eyebrow and began considering my options for escaping the table if I started feeling any more alarmed than I already was. I tried to keep my voice calm as I asked, “You killed him?”

    “Oh hell no. Didn’t have to. He peed all over himself.”

    “Ahhhhh… Okay.”

    Karen shrugged. “Yeah, it was kinda funny. Anyway, then I went and put out some more chickens.”

    “You mean like whole roasters and fryers?” I asked.

    “Yeah.”

    I took the opportunity to divert the topic toward recipes. “Since you brought up butts, have you ever made beer butt chicken?”

    chicken

    “You mean where you stick the can up the chicken’s butt? Oh yeah, love it.”

    “I just don’t know how you do that,” Mindy announced.

    “What?” Karen said, incredulity in her voice. “You just stick the can up its butt and put it on the grill. It ain’t hard. You do have beer out in West county, right?”

    “Ewww,” Mindy replied, scrunching up her face then shuddering. “I couldn’t do that. I’ve never even bought a chicken.”

    “You haven’t? Are you a vegetarian?” I asked.

    “No,” Mindy replied. “I eat chicken, I’ve just never bought one.”

    “Well what the hell do you do?” Karen asked, coming upright in her seat. “Steal ’em?”

    “No,…” Mindy began, trying desperately to explain.

    “I shoulda known,” Karen continued, talking right over the top of her. “Damn West county people. I bet you wear green underwear too…”

    More to come…

    Murv

  • Mindy, Hold The Mork…

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    alligator Some of you have been asking how the “Coffee Talk” blog went over with my “College Girlfriends.” Well, I have to say, it seems that it went over well. Mindy shall be remaining Mindy, unless we slip and call her Muffy, which could possibly happen. I mean after all, the last day of classes she did haul off and show up wearing an alligator embellished polo shirt and packing a shopping bag from Whole Foods Market. However, the bag and its contents are fodder for a different blog. The point I am trying to make here is that we don’t have to call her Miffy (yet). She actually got a good laugh out of the “Coffee Talk” entry, as did Karen.

    In fact, the two of them found it even more amusing than I had imagined they would… As in Laugh Out Loud funny… To the point of calling friends, relatives, and even writing to their congressmen to tell them they should read it.

    Some of them did, and I now have a senator calling for an investigation of me. Something to do with “illegally purveying satire to the humor challenged.” I’m not quite sure how that is going to pan out, but I’m not really allowed to talk about it at the moment. All I can say is that my attorneys, Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe are on the case.

    dchowe At any rate, much to my delight, because of a single entry on Brainpan Leakage, my college girlfriends effectively provided me with even more blog fodder…

    Mindy topped the stairs, plodded across the mezzanine, then plopped down in her chair at the C4K “Coffee Talk” table. As she leaned back and slid down in the seat she let out an exasperated sigh.

    Karen looked over at me, then at Mindy. “So, did you get a gun yet?”

    “No,” Mindy replied, brushing off the gun reference as old hat.

    “West county people,” Karen grumbled, shaking her head.

    I picked up my cell phone from the table and checked the time. Mindy was actually running a bit late. We’d expected her a good ten minutes ago. Not only that, she didn’t look to be her usual Mindyish self. By that I mean, no polo, no sweater tied around her neck, no pearls, no Star-Make-A-Bucks… Nada… As a matter of fact, she was wearing a baggy t-shirt, her hair was pulled back into a short tail and the rest was covered with a baseball cap. I  studied the uncharacteristic look for a moment, then laid the cell phone back onto the table and nodded toward my newly arrived girlfriend.

    “Casual Thursday?” I asked.

    She sighed again. “You just wouldn’t believe the day I’ve had.”

    I expressed an appropriate modicum of concern. “Anything wrong?”

    “Can’t be much,” Karen grunted. “She’s sittin’ in her chair.”

    “But look at her…” I replied. “I mean, slum city here…”

    “Hey!” Mindy objected.

    Karen gave her head a dismissive shake. “Finally dressing normal for a change. Besides, she still doesn’t have a gun. If it was real trouble she’d have a gun.”

    Mindy tapped her fingers hard on the table. “Hey! I’m right here you two. I can hear you, you know.”

    I turned my attention back to our disheveled cohort. “Yeah, okay, so what gives? Why the bad day?”

    She breathed heavily. “Well, you know that blog you wrote?”

    “Yeah,” I said with a nod, a bit of concern now creasing my forehead. “I thought you liked it?”

    “Oh, I did,” she told me with a typical, animated Mindy nod.

    “She still shoulda shot that idiot who was using the expired milk,” Karen mumbled.

    “So what’s the problem?” I asked Mindy, leaving Karen to complain to herself.

    “Well, I told several of my friends they should read your blog.”

    “Okay…” I said, waiting for the other shoe.

    “So, two of them emailed me about it,” she explained.

    “How many did you tell?”

    “Everyone in my email address book.”

    I raised an eyebrow. “Roughly how many is that? I’m assuming more than two?”

    “Not many,” she told me with a shake of her head. “Only three thousand four hundred and twelve people.”

    “I see.” I shrugged. “But only two responded, so that’s your issue?”

    “I’m still waiting on the others. The issue is what they said.”

    “Okay, so did the two that wrote back to you hate it or something?”

    “If they did, just shoot ’em,” Karen offered.

    burn notice “You know, Karen,  everyone who reads my blog thinks you’re that killer woman on Burn Notice,” I said, glancing over at Big K.

    “You mean the hottie with the gun?” she asked.

    “I dunno,” I replied. “I’ve never seen it myself.”

    Karen nodded and grinned. “I saw a commercial. Yeah. I can be her. I’m good with that.”

    “Can we get back to my problem?” Mindy appealed.

    “Yeah, yeah,” I said with a nod. “You’re right. So what’s the deal? Whaddid they say?”

    “That’s just it. Not much. One of them said, ‘ewwww, what did corporate say?‘ And the other one just said, ‘what did corporate say?‘.”

    “No ewwww on the second one?” I asked.

    “That’s not my point.”

    “Did you…” Karen started.

    Mindy cut her off, “No Karen, I didn’t shoot them.”

    “You should have.”

    I shrugged again. “Okay, so what’s the problem?”

    “These are funny people,” she replied. “They both have a great sense of humor. But all they focused on was wanting to know what the Star-Make-A-Buck’s Corporate Office said.”

    “Are you sure they’re actually funny?” I asked. “Sometimes it’s easy to mistake an attack of gas for a smile you know. They could just be digesting some serious roughage or something.”

    “I was pretty sure they were funny,” Mindy told me with a shrug. “But now I just don’t know. I think maybe they just didn’t get the joke.”

    “What is it with you West county people?” Karen asked. “Not getting jokes that even a three year old can understand. Is something in the water out there affecting your brains?”

    “Karen!” Mindy admonished.

    “Hey, I’m just sayin’,” Karen replied with a shrug. “So… You want me to shoot ’em for you?”

    I still don’t know if Mindy has heard back from any more of her friends, and I haven’t seen any news reports featuring Karen barricaded in her chair with a gun, so I’m pretty sure things are okay. Still, I hope Mindy remembers to let me know if she does hear any more from her funny friends.

    I suppose it all depends on that West county water.

    More to come…

    Murv