" /> BRAINPAN LEAKAGE » evil
  • Now Look What You Made Me Do…

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    Sarcasm It is a moral imperative that parents warp their children. Now, don’t get the wrong idea here… By warp I mean teach them the basics of sarcasm, satire, and acerbic humor.

    That kind of warp…

    Granted, we don’t want our kids being bitterly sarcastic with us. That only serves to make the old Mark Twain bromide about putting them in a barrel and corking the hole in the side when they hit sixteen sound like a truly excellent idea. But, by the same token, if you have a kid who is packing around an IQ that has the local chapter of MENSA handing them pencils and brightly colored bookmarks as incentives to join up, then you had best seize the moment and teach them about sardonic humor, otherwise they’ll just end up being boring people with big IQ’s. Trust me, I’ve met a few, and I prefer hanging out with the warped people with big IQ’s. They aren’t as… Well… Boring.

    And so, this is why I warp my kid’s sense of humor at every opportunity. I want her to not be boring because the operative not portion of that trait will serve her well later in life.

    Of course, you have to keep a close watch on this process and take note of when your child is properly warped; otherwise you end up with a smartass. I’ve met a few of those too. The general rule is that once you’ve put a sufficient bow in the lumber of the mind it will break free of the jig and smack you right between the eyes. This is the point when you can be truly proud of a job well done, and as of the other day, let me tell you,  I was beaming.

    corn5
    It was a Saturday as I recall, because E  Kay was home and it was the middle of the day. We were sitting at the table having some lunch before heading out to take care of grocery shopping and all that other jazz. As sometimes happens when the O-spring becomes a bit animated during a meal, some “foodgitives” escaped her plate. In this case, a few kernels of corn went over the wall and were trying to make their way across the tablecloth. At a point such as this it is the job of one of the parents to gently remind the kid that the food should go from plate to fork to mouth without any furniture or lap detours along the way. This is especially important if she ever wants to be invited out to a nice restaurant on a date (which is something we will allow her to start doing approximately 20 years after I die). This also goes along with the not chewing with your mouth open, not blowing bubbles in your milk, and not building scale replicas of Devil’s Tower out of your mashed potatoes.

    Anywho, since I was sitting next to her, with E K on the other side of the table, it was my duty to point this out. Which I did… Of course, I then promptly slopped corn off my own plate to join hers in a bid for culinary escape.

    Now I had a critical situation. I had just done exactly what I had just finished telling the child she should be careful not to do. Since I had yet to receive a sign as to the present “warpedness level” of the O-spring’s mind, I decided to punt.

    Pointing at the freshly emancipated corn kernels I said, “Look what you made me do.”

    Without missing a beat the child looked across the table and said, “Yeah Mommy, look what you made Daddy do.”

    E Kay’s brow furrowed with understandable confusion. She shook her head and replied, “I’m way over here. How did I make Daddy do anything?”

    hypnoredhead

    It was at this very moment I knew the O-spring’s brain was ready to take on the world, because once again without a single pause she answered, “That’s simple. You used your evil powers.”

    Even the Evil Redhead did a spit-take on that one.

    Yeah… My work here is done. 😛

    More to come…

    Murv

  • 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