Mailbag

In which your humble narrator remembers to answer the queries in the mailbag.

Dear Rotten Baby,
I live near the St. Croix River and there's this weird smell around my house lately. Sort of like charred Gouda? What's up with that?
                                                  -Cheesily Confused
Dear C.C.,
The offending odor wafting over the frozen St. Croix is the state of Wisconsin going up in flames. Since "America's Dairyland" contains the highest concentration of cultured dairy products in the nation, you're experiencing some off-gassing from the labor struggles of our neighbors to the east.
You see, C.C., in the past election everyone decided that they were pissed off because a historic financial collapse 15 years in the making wasn't solved in 18 months. Therefore the peoples were filled with anger and decided pretty much to vote against incumbents all over the place to "send a message." That message was "I is super angry! Also dumb! Mostly I just want someone to validate my feelings because I am a whiny, petulant crybaby electorate." And now everything is perfect forever. Hooray!

Dear Rotten Baby,
Will the stupid winter never end? Seriously? 74.9 inches of snow so far this winter. I'm tired of looking at it, driving in it and shoveling it.
                                               -Tired of The Snow
Deat TOTS,
Your imitation of a repining weasel leaves me breathless. Of course winter will end. What apparently won't end is your constant litany of complaint about things over which you can exert no influence what-so-ever. Please, learn a lesson from the local Scandihoovians and bear this burden stoically for a change.

Dear Rotten Baby,
While it's clear to everyone that you make up letters to answer in this feature, you seem especially vituperative lately. Does setting up imbecilic straw men to pummel make you feel like some sort of big man?
                                             -Concerned Reader
Dear C.R.
Yes.

Nobody Nose the Trouble I've Seen

In which your humble narrator titles a post with an excruciating pun, curses evolutionary biology and slowly returns to the land of the living.

Having caught yet another cold after only a month of relative health, last week, I proceeded to get another infection of my maxillary, ethmoid and frontal sinuses. Fortunately for me my regular doctor had referred me to an Ear, Nose and Throat specialist after the last round and my appointment conveniently fell just as I got sick with the latest plague.

The charming ENT doc numbed up my face and shoved a large scary metal thing up my right nostril to have a bit of a look around while making the ever reassuring comment "Yeah, it's pretty gross in here." I shouldn't complain, she was really very pleasant about the whole thing, and she vacuumed out my sinuses free of charge, leaving me without congestion for at least a half hour. After a sample of some snot from somewhere in the vicinity of my right eyeball and a few blood tests, it was concluded that I was severely infected with some hideous bacterial agent. After a few days of unpleasant antibiotics, I am at least feeling human again.

Evolutionary biologists have not come to a consensus as to the adaptive purpose of the sinuses in the human head, to which I inquire: "What the hell are you evolutionary biologists spending all your research dollars on? 'Field research' in Vegas? Coke binges? Betting on the ponies?"

Morality Play in One Act

In which your humble narrator relates the spirit of goodness in Child #1.

To begin, some background. Child #1 goes to the local liberal Jewish preschool. We picked this school for several reasons. First, it's only 2 miles away. Second, they offer generous financial assistance. And third, and most important, the preschool teachers at this school are ladies of a certain age who have been teaching preschool since your humble narrator was a wee tyke. Preschools should be run by sweet little old ladies. Child #1's teacher is named Joannie.

The Scene: our car on the way home after preschool. 

Child #1: I have to do a good deed.
Me: What?
Child #1: Joannie said I have to do a good deed. I have to.
Me: Okay. So what are you going to do?
Child #1: A good deed. Joannie said so.
Me: Yeah, but what kind of good deed?
Child #1: I will brush my teeth politely. (Yells) It's a mitzvah!

I'm so relieved that we won't have to endure the trauma of him being rude to the tooth paste. And I know the tooth brush couldn't handle it.

It's a New Year in Hate

In which your humble narrator brings the mad dizdain* to five offending abominations.

1. My house, she is the structural equivalent of  the type of crack-addled, welfare queen that only exists in Republicans' imaginations. She always needs something. A roof, a furnace, a new water heater, new toilets, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum.
2. The intimation from students that I'm supposed to respond to emails sent after 9:00 p.m. within an hour or two. Here's the deal students, my kids go to bed at 7:00. Then it's Me time which involves equal quantities of beer and Netflix streaming. Then I go to bed. 
3. Using** the word "utilize" instead of the word "use." Seriously, why?
4. George Stephanopolous. This one isn't entirely rational. He just bugs me.
5. The recent decision on the part of Child #2 to stop saying "no" and "yes" but rather to say "nope" and "yep" which are, in case you didn't infer it on your own, completely impossible to distinguish between when she's got a damn pacifier in her mouth.

*This is an intentional misspelling for comic effect. I can spell. This is a quality blog. Tell your friends.
** See? If I had said "utilizing the word 'utilize'" I would be a heinous douche.

Why would you replace one perfectly good preposition with two?

In which your humble narrator decries creeping colloquialism.

One of the odder, at least to my ear, verbal tics endemic to the laconic, Scandinavian or German inhabitants of this God-forsaken windswept tundra is the change of the idiomatic construction "based on" to the bastardized alternate, "based off of". This variation doesn't seem as jarring when spoken as it does when written, but it still frosts my grammarian posterior.

In assignments for my class, students are constantly declaiming that an idea or practice is "based off of" some pertinent theory. This makes no sense from a metaphorical perspective. A house can successfully be "based on" a foundation, but it cannot be "based off of" the foundation and retain its function.

In conclusion, get it right, people, or pay the price.

January Can Suck It

In which your humble narrator crowns a new most heinous month.

Named for the two-faced, Roman jerk deity, Janus, January is our most iniquitous month. It's cold. It's dark. It's still snowing, and it's long.

The furnace needs to be replaced. The new roof is leaking in at least one place, maybe two. There is nowhere else to pile snow from the driveway or the garage apron. I've taken to shoveling at night, filling a wheel barrow with filthy snow and surreptitiously dumping it on the property of neighbors who have offended my delicate sensibilities in some way.*

The newly Ph.Deeded wife has still not gotten a raise.

The children have been sick all month. Everyone had a horrible cold last week and both kids got pink eye. This morning I woke up unable to open my left eye. It was cemented shut with dried eye filth. Thank you, so much Child #2, who thought "NO TOUCHING DADDY'S FACE" was some hilarious invitation to a game of "smear mucus into Daddy's eyeballs."

It's an inauspicious start to 2011. February's probably going to suck too, but at least it's short and it can't possibly be colder and darker than it has been.

*"What a hideous jacket, you get three wheel barrows full of dirty snow on your doorstep."

Happy Birthday, Ernest Borgnine!

In which your humble narrator celebrates the life of a featured guest star on virtually every network television program aired during his childhood, including Magnum P.I.

Happy birthday, Ernest; he's 94 years young. Also he was briefly, disastrously married to Ethel Merman. So there's that.