The Jackie Blog

I think we’re too hard on pigeons.

We treat them like they’re the scum of the earth – flying rats who have come to steal our leftover hamburgers and give us hepatitis.   But the fact is that we invaded their space.  They’re birds: they were flying around our downtown area before we plowed away all the trees, leveled the mountains, and went sprinting after pigeons, screaming obscenities.

Like Seagulls.  Listen – they were there first.  The sea is pretty much their thing, so I don’t know where else we expect them to go.  We come out to the shore and lie in the sun and eat potato chips and then get upset when they do a fly-by and snatch our Ruffles.   What do we expect?! They’d stay within their regular diet, but when faced with that or potato chips, they’d rather have potato chips.  Especially if you’re going to go to the store and bring them back.    We do the same exact thing.  I can’t tell you the last time I passed up an abandoned potato chip bag.

But I have a pretty special spot in my heart for the poor, trampled pigeon.   I find something beautiful about the slight teal and purple glisten in their neck feathers.  I am always amused at how they have to thrust their heads forward to get enough momentum to move about.  It’s a terrible, highly amusing cycle.     

I just don’t understand why we decided pigeons are ugly and gross.   A lot of folks tend to think they’re huge contributors to the spread of disease, but that’s simply just not true.   In fact, the only real worry you should have with pigeons is the slight possibility of bird flu, but that’s, oh, I don’t know – every bird.   And I don’t see you going around kicking white doves in the face.

Do you even know what pigeons are capable of?  There are homing pigeons, carrier pigeons, and war pigeons.  War pigeons!   There are pigeons that have been awarded medals of bravery in wartime.   Yes, that’s kind of ridiculous.  But hey – I don’t see you strutting around downtown with a wartime medal.

Maybe it’s because we call them pigeons.  We should stop that.  It seems to have a negative connotation.  Instead, I propose we call them by their true name: rock doves.

That’s right – rock doves.  It’s almost royal.   And rock star.

I’ll bet you’re so stoked to have this newfound information on pigeons.  I’m sorry – rock doves.    I’ll bet you’re starting to feel bad about how you’ve treated them all these years, huh?  After all the fighting they’ve done for our country and the secret letters they’ve carried away to foreign lands in our name.  I’ll bet you feel silly now that you realize they’re rock doves and not pigeons.

It’s like Aladdin finding out Jasmine’s a princess.  ♣

Tags: 365 Project, Humor, life, musings, postaday2011

I saw my first 2011 Oompa Loompa yesterday.

I’m not sure what kind of crazy juice these women are on that makes them think being orange is better than being pale, but it must be a delicious and powerful hallucinogen.  

I kind of applaud the chicks who get their orange glow from a bottle instead of a tanning booth.  At least they won’t be cancerous Oompa Loompas (a sad image indeed).  But these ones who go to a tanning booth over and over again until they’re extra crispy and emit an orange radioactive glow confuse me.  It doesn’t look natural, it doesn’t look sunkissed, and quite frankly it doesn’t look human.  Is that seriously considered to be more attractive than being pale?!

Okay, I’m just a little biased.  Not only because I prefer my Oompa Loompas to sing and stay in cult classics, but also because I have haddocks for legs.   I find absolutely nothing unattractive about pale skin.  Honestly.  I think it can be lovely.

When the final snow melted at long last, I did a jump of joy for the fact that I wouldn’t have to see those stupid freaking skinny black leggings anymore.  I’ve seen so many unattractive butts smooshed into a pair of leggings like casings around sausage that I could projectile vomit on cue just thinking about them.  

I remember I saw a girl about a month ago walking down a popular street who didn’t understand the difference between leggings and stockings.  For any of you are still confused, one is opaque and the other is transparent.   So there she was, walking in broad daylight down the sidewalk with a shirt that came just above her butt cheeks, which were glistening in the sun with a slight shade of black cast over them as if only a shadow.

I pointed it out to Dave, who promptly crashed the car.

Almost.

But now that winter has finally released its ugly, wretched claws from around our tired, scraggly necks, I have to exchange one ugly evil for another.   Leggings out, orange skin in.   For the past few nights, I’ve been lying awake in bed, trying to confront my newfound fear:

What if leggings don’t entirely disappear? What if they hang out for the transition of the season?! What if there is someone in my town who will wear leggings just slightly past their time and start orangifying themselves just slightly too early?  Upon such a sighting, the car swerve will not be a near crash.

It will be certain. ♣

Tags: 365 Project, Humor, life, musings, postaday2011

Yesterday I failed at a variety of rudimentary human skills.

It was one of those really rough days. The kind where you put the milk in the cupboard and the cereal inthe fridge, put your underwear on backwards, and confidently walk out your front door.

It still amazes me that in spite of the fact that I do these things with a high level of frequency, I can still completely foil my attempts at basic higher functions. Later in the afternoon, I failed at chewing. I actually failed to masticate properly. Enjoying a simple lunch at my desk, I bit down fast and hard on the left side of my inner cheek.

There’s nothing like eating yourself from the inside to make you feel like a motor skills master.

My day was littered with these little nuggets of suckery. I reached for the grape jam from the fridge and pulled out grape juice instead. I had difficulty navigating the contents of my purse. At moments in conversation, my brain suffered severe meltdowns wherein I was unable to even communicate anything at all. Instead, I just stared straight ahead catatonic.

The worst part was the communication breakdown. It felt as if everything I said was misinterpreted as offensive or awkward. Basic sentence-forming didn’t come easy, so social graces were out of the question entirely. I ended the day feeling as if everything I came in contact with throughout my day
was tainted by my stupidity. Somehow, I was jaunting through the universe sucking intelligence from every interaction I had.

I was a big, fat, suck-banshee.

But you know what? That’s okay. I mean, I only wished I would have caught on earlier. Little can be done in retrospect, but had I noticed it happening along the way, I might’ve deduced some way to harness this power. I’m not sure how, but there’s gotta be a way to apply that temporary skill set. I
will have to devote my time to discovering practical applications.

Then the next time I find warm milk in the cupboard, I can know that my stupidity will be a force to be reckoned with and I am about to achieve great things. ♣

P90X Update: Super fail.  Didn’t do anything yesterday but eat cookies.  Houseguests have thrown me off my routine and I’m headed to my parents’ this weekend.  I shall find abandoned wagon and hop back on Monday.  And feel like a fat slug until then. 

Tags: 365 Project, Humor, life, musings, postaday2011

Oh man, it’s Lollipop Tuesday.  YES.

This week I took Caitlin’s suggestion on the “What’s Lollipop Tuesday?” page – Take a lesson in something from someone on YouTube.

The something: Origami.  The someone: Old man hands.  The medium: Dirty Hooker Money.   Or is it stripper money?  Yeah, that’s it.  Something like half of all one dollar bills have been in a stripper’s G-string.

That makes for a pretty hot and heavy elephant.

The thing about Origami is that it takes time and patience and zen and things – none of which I have been naturally blessed to possess.   I’m really trying to work on the patience thing.  It takes about four annoying repetitions of a noise for me to be entirely fed up.  When staying at other person’s homes, I will strip the guest bedroom of anything that ticks, hums, or whistles and murder them in a pile of comforters and clothes.  I’ve got no time to waste on unnecessary noise, stupidity, questions, or idling.  So sitting down for an evening to slowly stop-and-go through a tutorial on how to give stripper money a new life as an elephant is not exactly on my list of soothing activities.

Actually, I started out pretty calm.  I slowly played and replayed confusing parts of the tutorial.  I’m pretty sure I replayed the tail section about 15 times before I considered hurling my laptop across the room and instead settled for my pathetic nub.  And when I played it through all the way to 7 minutes of the 10 minute video, I realized I messed up and started all over again, even though I was tempted to write it off as an anteater and call it a night.

So I got all the way through and am actually pretty darn excited about my little piece of artwork.  This stripper single has been born again as a well-balanced, folded-eared, nub-tailed elephant.

Check out that eye in the triangle lining up to be the elephant eye. Win.

So if any of you are so inclined to turn your ones into interesting tips for waiters everywhere, you can check out the tutorial I used here.

But since mine took so freaking long, I think I’ll hang on to it for a while. ♣

P90X Update: Last night I came home from work, made dinner, fashioned an elephant from a dollar bill, and then did P90X.  I started working out at 10:30.  12/90 Complete, and one seriously large cup of caffeine to look forward to today.

Tags: 365 Project, Humor, life, musings, postaday2011

Hallelujah, it was nice out yesterday.

I woke up and little bunnies with soft tails wiggled their cute little noses and handed me a basket of rainbows and sunshine to brighten my day.  And brighten it did.

Apparently when you complain and cry out to the blog gods that you are fed up with not having any beautiful days on the weekend, the blog gods reciprocate by smacking down some beautiful sunshine.   Either that or you all vigorously campaigned for me.

I woke up late, smiled a big bunny-and-rainbows-induced smile, and proceeded to draft a blog post about how bathroom water tastes better than kitchen water before going out to embrace the green, rolling fields of hope and opportunity.

You know, I’ve gotten rather comfortable with you all just buying a ticket and hopping on my crazy wagon.  I have announced a number of strange thoughts on my blog and have been fully supported in plenty of them.  You stuck with me in my complaints about Unavoidable Underarm Swamp and Stench (U.U.S.S.).  You shared with me the contents of your Emergency Underwear drawers (Emergency Underwear Day).  And when I taunted the idea of nudity in the workplace, you put on a bunch of cheerleading outfits (The Nude Hour).   I even started up a slow, painful death to P90X and get some hurrahs from the comments section every once in a while on my progress.

But you simply weren’t having it with my bathroom water conjectures.

I started to wonder if I really had manufactured a box of nutty nut and went to Google to type in the same thing I pondered: “Why does bathroom water taste better than kitchen water?”  Just like that – Ask Jeeves style.

Turns out I’m not a nutty nut.  Or at least if I am, there are enough of us for me to feel somewhat validated in my claims.   You can observe the size of our underground society here, in the search results.

I just wanted to let you all know that it’s okay.  I’m really okay.  I’m not walking around my house, shaking violently and muttering something about magical bathroom fountains.

But if I were, I have a whole slew of search engine results just waiting to be sifted for my cult followers. ♣

Nutty Nuts Cereal: It's a cult classic!

P90X Update: 11/90 complete. The first half of Yoga X makes me want to spoon my brain onto the tv screen, so I went for a run and then did the second half of Yoga X – the balance poses.  I like my way better.  I would like to be skinny soon, thanks.

Tags: 365 Project, Humor, life, musings, postaday2011