Fun With Play-Dough

Obama responded to McCain’s nasty Hamas comments by saying their policies weren’t all that different, and that McCain “lost his bearings”, and this pissed of the McCain camp?  Now they’re asserting that what Obama really meant was that McCain is old?

Hold the ballot. First of all, since when is “losing your bearings” the same as “old”? If Obama wanted to say that, he would have. It would have sounded like this: “John McCain is old.” But he didn’t; instead he said, “Lost his bearings.” That means you’re nuts, John. Why don’t you get mad over that?

Enough about McCain; it’s almost Mother’s Day!!! Are you excited? I sure am. Maybe this year, my husband will finally give me a Vermont Teddy bear. They only cost about $100; It’s what every self respecting grown up woman wants; a damn teddy bear with clothes on. Besides, I can’t wait to find out why the hell the gift box needs an air hole.

Certain Australian orchids are going pretty far in their pollinating schemes, researchers have found. Some flowers grow to resemble female wasps, thereby attracting male wasps and messing with their heads. Or, as the case may be, that other body part. The wasps, excitable creatures they are, think they’ve won the jackpot: a female that doesn’t move! They jump on, ejaculate, only to come to the realization they’ve just done the dirty not with a member of their own species, but with a smutty, deceitful flower. Yuck. We have to wonder, is the Cryptostylis Orchid the floral equivalent of the girl that says: “Really, I just want to be friends”?

To be honest, I don’t really see the problem. The wasps that fall for this trick aren’t the smartest; it could be good for the wasps in general to not have these idiots reproduce. Survival of the fittest, if you please. Plus, what’s the result? More orchids, less stupid wasps; what’s not to like? We’re not talking about humans here; imagine trying to get your wife pregnant, and getting distracted by that pretty rosebush in the backyard. Now that would be a tragedy.

Rewind about 12 ½ years; I am brand new to America, and I turn on what I think is Public Radio:

Husband: “What on earth are you listening to?”

Me: “I think it’s stand-up. This guy is doing a really over-the-top impression of some right wing asshole. He’s pretty good.”

Husband: “No, sweetheart, that’s Rush Limbaugh”.

Me: “Who is Rush Limbaugh?”

Who is Rush Limbaugh, indeed. Oh, how I wish I could return to my pre-Rush, naively happy days when I had never heard he existed. When the pill popping came out, I sighed with relief; surely now he would lose his job, crawl back into his hole and die bitter and alone. But no, for some strange reason this man is still on the radio, spouting nonsense, and dangerous nonsense at that. What’s worse, he actually acts like his opinion matters. Shutting him up is like trying to kill a cockroach with a ballet slipper. Maybe, when Obama wins in November, he will have a heart attack; dare to hope.

Meantime, sorting through the FLDS family tree is harder than trying to make sense of Anne Rice’s Mayfair connections, and considerably less fun. Meantime, www.2wives.com continues to thrive. It’s a useful site for those people that watch all this unfold, and think, well, I’m not that religious, but polygamy is something that sounds attractive… But watch out: they don’t want to help you if you don’t plan on telling your wife she’s not the only one. They also don’t service women that want more than one husband. Bastards.

   Recently, my daughter has been asking the tough questions. What brought this on, I’m not sure. Children grow in leaps and bounds; they’ll wear a size 5 for six months straight, then suddenly they’ll go through size six, seven, and eight all in three months. I guess their brains are the same way. Just this month, we’ve had to answer inquiries about the Holocaust, Menstruation, and the electoral process, to name but a few. Now she’s added the difference in life span between men and women.

This latest curiosity stems from the fact that both my husband and I still have one grandmother, as well as several great-aunts. Isabella is obsessively fascinated by the fact that there are no old men to be found in our families. We have a picture of my grandparents on their wedding day in the dining room; she often points at it and asks about my grandfather. She wants to hear the story about how he shoved a Nazi soldier’s head in the icebox when he came to steal food they didn’t have. She wants to know where he hid, and even though I’ve told her often I don’t know, she keeps asking. She wants to know why the flowers in the back are so scrawny, why the wedding dress was borrowed. She wants to know if he was in love with her (he was) and whether he was happy (not really, it was 1941; nobody was happy in 1941). She stares at his picture with such intensity that I wonder if she’s seeing something I don’t. Perhaps she wants some assurance that, once upon a time, he existed. I can understand that.

“Women live longer than men,” my husband tells her.

“Oh.” She ponders over that for a few seconds, then asks: “So by the time I have children, Uncle Martin will be dead, but aunt Majorie will still be alive?” Martin is my brother; he is 42.

“Your generations are a little off, honey,” my husband tells her. “When you have grandchildren, Uncle Martin will be dead, and Aunt Majorie will still be alive.” The answer satisfies her enough that she drops the issue for a little while. Sometimes that’s all you can hope for. Still, my daughter having more questions than we can answer is, I have to admit, a luxury problem.

Jim Gibbons was married, then he wasn’t, then he got married again, and then he moved out and filed for divorce from his second wife. Still with me? In addition, the FBI is investigating him for corruption, and a cocktail waitress has taken him to court, claiming he assaulted her in a parking garage. Who is this classy guy? Well, he is the Governor of Nevada, and yes, that’s the Governor’s Mansion he moved out of.  Now he wants back in, because it’s kind of awkward to go to work there during the day, only to have to go home to your own house at night. It’s embarrassing. Tell me again why nobody trust politicians? On the other hand, if national politics were this exciting, maybe we’d actually care a little more. We certainly watch the news more religiously when there’s a nice juicy scandal.

On a different note, why are the commercials so illogical lately? Take the E.D. thing for instance: can anybody tell me why in half the commercials you see old people taking a bath outside? Do they take their Viagra or what-not and drag those tubs outside into the dunes, then drag buckets of hot water, what??? And who has two loose tubs sitting around the house? As if you take one of those pills, and then say: “you know, I don’t want to have sex; I’d much rather take a bath. Outside.”

And what about those old people in scooters, those snappy looking wheelchairs that are so handy you could drive them all the way to the edge of the Grand Canyon? Are you kidding me? Who would put a whole nest of old people in wheel chairs on the edge? Grandma pushes one wrong button, and she’s history!