This Is Not A Test...

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!

This is not a test of the Emergency Blogcasting System. This is the real thing. We interrupt this the irregularly scheduled programming of this blog to bring you an important (to me anyway) news flash. Due to inopportune bureaucracy hassles and other real life business (kids on vacation, busted watering system, awning to fix, and hey, even bloggers need a little time away...), this blog will temporarily be on hiatus. For how long? That's a good question, but since this is only a pre-written message, there is no one here to answer it. You are urged to follow the following instructions which blog authorities (namely me) consider vital for your survival:

1. Leave lots of comments on this post (vital for the survival of this blogger).

2. Visit all the blogs on the expandable blogroll that can be found on the righthand side of this blog.

3. Go to Scrivel to stock up on humor to tide you over through this blog's dry spell.

4. Visit HumorBlogs.com for further emergency instructions.

5. Come back and check this blog periodically for signs of life.

This concludes this post of the Emergency Blogcasting System.

All Roads Do Not Lead to Rome

It has been said that "all roads lead to Rome." Well, this one doesn't. Some time ago I wrote a post on my entry for Fnac's mini-story contest. Well, they've finally chosen the twenty finalists out of the over 5,000 entries. Mine is not one of them. Not that I ever expected it to be, but it was fun to dream about that fabulous trip to anywhere in Europe that they're giving away as a first prize. Oh well, Rome will have to wait.

But still, it's disappointing to think that my story will be lost forever somewhere in Fnac's virtual wastebasket. So, I'll share it with you. It's in Spanish, but there's a translation at the end:

Librofagia

En todos sus años como comisario, Martínez nunca había visto nada igual. Ya iban siete muertes por librofagia esta semana.

¿Cómo había empezado todo?

Nadie tenía muy claro de donde había salido la absurda idea de que las pastillas hechas de cenizas de libro tenían beneficios para el que se las tomaba. Seguramente el bulo empezó por Internet. Que si las pastillas hechas con libros eróticos tenían efectos afrodisíacos, que si los problemas personales se solucionaban con las de libros de autoayuda. Menuda chorrada.

Pero la gente se cree todo lo que lee en Internet.

Miró al hombre que tenia delante. Un escritor de poca monta. Buscó inspiración en los grandes autores. En su lugar encontró la muerte por una perforación gástrica, después de tragarse una caja entera de pastillas hechas con el Quijote.

Martinez siempre había sospechado que el Quijote podía ser mortal, pero no de esa manera.


Bookphagy

In all his years as Chief of Police, Martínez had never seen any thing like it. This was the seventh death by bookphagy this week.

How did it all start?

Nobody was really sure about the origin of the absurd idea that pills made with book ash are beneficial to those who take them. The rumor must have started on the Internet. That pills made of erotic novels have aphrodisiac effects, that personal problems can be solved with those made of self-help books. What stupidity.

But people will believe anything they read on the Internet.

He looked at the man in front of him. A would-be writer. One who had searched for inspiration in the great authors. Instead, he found death by gastric perforation, after swallowing a whole boxful of pills made with Don Quixote.

Martínez had always suspected that Don Quixote could be deadly, but not quite in this way.

Okay that's my best go at translating it. Doesn't quite work as well in English as it does in Spanish, and makes me really appreciate the work of all those translators out there. Some stuff just does get lost in translation, I guess.

If you want to read the 20 stories that made it, check them out here. But a word of warning, they're in Spanish...and I am not translating them.

At HumorBlogs.com the humor never needs translation, just a crazy mind.

I know your nostrils by heart...

No, that isn't the start of some very strange love poem. That is something I could say to my orthodontist, not that I ever will, but it is true. Her nostrils are becoming all too familiar to me after all the visits to have my teeth pushed and pulled with varying instruments of dental torture. By now I could probably even draw them from memory, right down to the very last hair.

P, if you're reading this, they're quite nice as nostrils go, not at all too hairy.

(Wouldn't want to get on her bad side, now would I? After all, she is the one with all the wires and pliers and stuff).

But there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and it's not the one on the ceiling of her office. Catgirl and Princess V's teeth are finally free, and that's an incentive for me to keep dragging my butt down there and plunking down the cash for the next adjustment. The truth is that my jaw is much better...probably because my brain is now focused on how hard it is to eat anything without getting it stuck in all this #*%$ing metal (nothing like braces to bring all the rude words to your mouth, or in my case to my blog). Hey, I'm even having a hard time finding my teeth under all the shackles. My brain is in fact focusing so hard on all this, that nothing is coming to mind for a new post....damn, just when my blog's been in the paper too. Oh well, it's a good thing I'm over at Scrivel today. I'll be bringing you some exciting news about remote control contraceptives. You really don't want to miss this. And if you do, don't come whining to me nine months from now.

...Hey, would you look at that, I wrote a post after all.

At HumorBlogs.com you'll never have to look up anyone's nostrils...well, maybe only sometimes.

The "gato" is out of the bag...

My blog is in El Diario de Navarra (the local paper)! WTF? How did this happen? My husband came home with a print-out of the article that one of his workmates pointed out to him.

I wonder how they even found me, since I even have trouble finding me. Kind of bizarre, really. The whole thing is about bloggers in Navarra, and for some reason they included me as "una madre en Zizur" (a mother in Zizur). Well, they got the mother part right, but I wonder where they ever got the idea that I live in Zizur. I guess this is a clear sign that you should only believe half of what you read in the paper, eh? Keeping that in mind, I wonder what should I make of the following headline: TV Team Abducted by Al Qaeda-Linked Militants in Philippines? Maybe a TV team was abducted by an angry horde of anti-Al Gore fanatics in Philadelphia. Or it could mean an all-girl football team was abducted by Al Qaeda for not covering their heads. Hmmm, I wonder which would be more likely. And how about: Bush talks of troubled economy. Which part should I believe? That Bush talks? Or that the Economy is troubled? I guess I'll go with the troubled economy bit. Then again, just because Bush talks it doesn't mean that what he says has to make sense.

Anyway, that's not really the point. I didn't tell most of the people I know about my blog, so I guess now the "gato" is out of the bag. Not that I mind really, but I guess I'll have to warn them that I'm not always as nice as I seem. For some reason I think this is going to get me in trouble somewhere along the line. Oh well, "de perdidos, al rio" which is a Spanish saying meaning more or less "since we're lost anyway, we might as well go to the river." Why to the river? Beats me, but I guess it's better than standing around looking stupid.

Help! I've been abducted by HumorBlogs.com!

Rindercella and the Cotton Runts

An visiting English friend shared this with me yesterday, and I nearly passed my pints off. Listen to it while you read the story below the video for the best effect...and make sure to have an extra pair of pants nearby. This is hicking fularious!

This was originally shown on BBC TV back in the seventies. Ronnie Barker could say all this without a snigger (though god knows how many takes). Irony is that they received not one complaint. The speed of delivery must have been too much for the whining herds. Try getting through it without converting the spoonerisms [and not wetting your pants] as you read ...

--------------------------------------------------------



This is the story of Rindercella and her sugly isters.

Rindercella and her sugly isters lived in a marge lansion. Rindercella worked very hard frubbing sloors, emptying poss pits, and shivelling shot.

At the end of the day, she was knucking fackered.

The sugly isters were right bugly astards. One was called Mary Hinge, and the other was called Betty Swallocks; they were really forrible huckers;they had fetty sweet and fetty swannies. The sugly isters had tickets to go to the ball, but the cotton runts would not let Rindercella go.

Suddenly there was a bucking fang, and her gairy fodmother appeared. Her name was Shairy Hithole and she was a light rucking fesbian. She turned a pumpkin and six mite wice into a hucking cuge farriage with six dandy ronkeys who had buge hollocks and dig bicks. The gairy fodmother told Rindercella to be back by dimnlight otherwise, there would be a cucking falamity.

At the ball, Rindercella was dancing with the prandsome hince when suddenly the clock struck twelve. "Mist all chucking frighty!!!" said Rindercella, and she ran out tripping barse over ollocks, so dropping her slass glipper.

The very next day the prandsome hince knocked on Rindercella's door and the sugly isters let him in. Suddenly, Betty Swallocks lifted her leg and let off a fig bart. "Who's fust jarted??" asked the prandsome hince. "Blame that fugly ucker over there!!" said Mary Hinge. When the stinking brown cloud had lifted, he tried the slass glipper on both the sugly isters without success and their feet stucking funk.

Betty Swallocks was ducking fisgusted and gave the prandsome hince a knack in the kickers. This was not difficult as he had bucking fuge halls and a hig bard on.

He tried the slass glipper on Rindercella and it fitted pucking ferfectly.

Rindercella and the prandsome hince were married. The pransome Hince lived his life in lucking fuxury, and Rindercella lived hers with a follen swanny.

What's in the box?

Okay, I'm back. And I have the pics I promised. I picked out some of the boxes we have stored downstairs and decided to take a peek at what's inside. It's been years since those have been opened. Maybe they should have been left shut....but, oh well, here goes nothing. I may regret this, but let's see if there's anything to throw out.

This is the first thing the kids fished out. Catgirl wasted no time putting these on and now she wants to keep them. I should have known better than to do this with the kids around.


And this helped me pass high school chemistry. We were allowed to take in notes to the final...as long as they fit onto the periodic table. You can still kind of see my tiny penciled-in writing. There's more on the back...stop trying to turn it over and pay attention. I ended up with writer's cramp, but I passed. And the stupid thing is, after writing all that, I knew it so well that I didn't need to look. Craming in all that stuff actually got us to study. And here we thought the teacher was throwing us a bone.


Essay on Ode on a Grecian Urn. Got an A+ so I can't quite bring myself to throw this one away.


I drew this after going to see Les Miserables. These days I have a hard time drawing stick figures.


Button from elementary school. Go Lions! Okay, we didn't have a team or anything, but I did try to join cheerleading once. I really don't know who we were cheering for, not having a team and all, but cheer we did. Didn't work out...thankfully.


And this is something I found in my grandmother's old sewing box once when I was a kid. I know what it is now, but back then I didn't have a clue. I just thought it was neat. Anybody guess what it is?



Well, that was...useless. Fun, but useless as far as cleaning out the closet is concerned since everything is going back into the box. I'll be back with more tomorrow. In the meantime, go see what's buried in the HumorBlogs.com closet. I'll bet there are more than a few bones in there.

Nothin'

I got nothin'. Actually, I've got a lot of things. Too many things. My house will soon be buried under all the stuff that comes in here. Every time I throw something out, more stuff comes in; especially unidentifiable doodads that my kids find and bring home. Then I find all these little screws, buttons, and doohickeys all over the place, and since I'm not sure where they came from I save them. I mean, what if I throw something away and later discover that it's a really important piece to some essential thing that we can't live without? Hasn't happened so far...but better safe than sorry. Unfortunately, if this ever does happen, we probably won't be around to see it, since we will have been crushed under the weight of all those "important, essential, albeit unidentifiable items".

Okay, that's really just a lame excuse for not writing anything. I really don't have anything today. And we're having a guest over for lunch, so I have to shove all the doohickeys into the nearest closet, and hope it won't explode.

I'll be back. Maybe even with pictures of all the stuff I find when I finally decide to clean out that closet. Whoever helps me figure out what it is gets....

....the satisfaction of figuring it out. Hey, I just spent a fortune on Princess V's communion, what more do you want from me?

Okay, I'm done. Just go over to HumorBlogs.com for some unidentifiable, but essential humor.