Famous (Doctor Who-themed) NYC Restaurant

(A photo of a kimchi and spaghetti squash dish I made because I didn't have any restaurant photos...because I never take any with my phone.)

So, like I usually do, I'm sitting here clicking away on stupid crap people shared on Facebook because I'm a pathetic loser and can't seem to muster up the intelligence and wherewithal to write my book I keep saying I will write.

Anyway, I click on this one about a "famous NYC" restaurant trying to figure out why they seat the same amount of people as they did back in 2004...only now it's 2014 and they don't understand why they keep getting bad reviews and people are complaining about how long it takes, blah blah. So they pulled out an old surveillance tape and compared it to a recent one, after hiring some firm to do some research, and they were bowled over by the findings.

Um...first off, if you are seating the same amount of people you were seating in 2004...and it's 2014...and all you do is complain about how much longer it takes as everyone is using their cell phone -- this doesn't add up. If you are getting the same amount of people in your restaurant as you did a decade ago...and you are serving the same amount of people...and you didn't add a whole other room or anything...this doesn't make sense. If you are complaining that you are getting half as many people and it's taking the same amount of time as everyone is pulling out their phones, then that makes sense. You can't do both. If you hired more waitstaff...and you serve the same amount of people...um...walk around the restaurant your own damn self and see what is up.

Secondly, I've gone to restaurants - it takes me forever to shut up and make my mind up. I don't need a phone to make me indecisive...I can do it all on my own. I don't see the problem with me taking 10 minutes to peruse the menu and talk to whomever I am with. If you have a problem with that, I advise you to get a fast-food chain instead.

If people are taking photos of your food (and themselves enjoying eating it) and talking about you on Facebook and Instagram and you have an issue with that -- YOU have the problem. It's called "Free Advertising" and you are complaining? Seriously???

I could add three more things here, but I'll save you all the boredom...the article was written 21 July 2013 and you have 2014 figures? You should have known this ahead of time if you are capable of time travel. If you are capable of time travel - just pick the winning lottery numbers and get out of the restaurant business.

So...I call "bullshit" on this entire story...which can be found here:

Famous NYC restaurant

Jailed Man's YouTube Video Reaches One Million "Self Hits" in Two Months

Photo of Paul Bremis inside police cruiser.

A man in prison posts a YouTube video - and it gets a million hits.  Most of them his.

Yes, believe it or not, a man in a Chicago prison uploaded a video of himself watching a video of himself and it went viral - but not in the way you'd think.

Paul Bremis, who is serving a six-month sentence for a traffic violation in which he not only failed to yield to merging traffic but also did not have a valid license, decided he would make the most of his incarceration. "I figured I'm in jail, I have a lot of time on my hands, why not do something fun?"

The video which Bremis, 24, uploaded to YouTube, shows himself being pulled over by police and subsequently led away.  But, Bremis decided to give the video a bit of spin by changing the dialogue and then showing himself watching the video ranting and raving that everything he said on the police dashcam was altered.

Confused yet?  Hold on, there's more.

Bremis then set out to get the video to go viral but all his attempts at directing traffic to it (no pun intended) via Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter failed to yield (again no pun intended) the desired hits.

"I thought it was a funny video.  I see a lot of stuff on Facebook and other social media sites that really suck and they go viral.  I figured if mine goes viral, maybe I can get a bunch of sympathetic stupid people giving me money and then I'd be able to buy a new car or something." Bremis said yesterday.  "Seems like people will give other people money over the dumbest things they do wrong, and I figured I might as well jump at my chance.  Hell, for all I know this might be the only time in my life I'll ever get arrested."

But, Bremis' plan backfired when, after a week, the video only had 12 hits...10 of them his own.

  

"That's when I got an idea." Bremis said.  "I figured if I can keep clicking on the video, I can keep getting hits registered and then when it gets enough hits, it will go viral and I'll end up on 'Good Morning America' where the big money is.  I wasn't going anywhere all day and night anyway, so I got nothing to lose."

After two months of constant clicking his video finally reached one million hits.  "I thought it was going to take a lot longer." Bremis stated, "I'm no math whiz, but I thought I wouldn't be able to pull it off.  They always told us things in school like it would take you 2000 years to count all the interest a million dollars makes, you know, if you started counting it right now.  And, as a kid, you believe that stuff.  But this totally proves them wrong.  I mean, here it is, two months later and I have over a million hits, most of them my own."

And the Chicago City Jail collaborates those figures.  "I wouldn't have believed it myself." Chief Warden Anthony Bruglia, stated.  "Bremis is right about the math they teach you in school.  It has to be wrong.  I never would have guessed he could click that many times just sitting here in jail.  It kinda gives everyone else here hope in a way, I think.  You know, that they can achieve something no one ever imagined."

As far as that money for a new car?  Donations to Bremis' PayPal account are already totaling in excess of $54,000. 

Facebook 'Goes Down' in History

Millions of people were left stranded in their cars, in their houses, and at area businesses earlier today when Facebook had a malfunction.

As insane as it may sound, people actually had to drive with both hands on the steering wheel or sip their morning coffee staring blankly at their cereal boxes (a phenomenon which has not happened since the social media giant took the Internet world by storm back in the "'00s").  Some people could not even get dressed as their pleas for "What should I wear today???" were met with "try again in a few minutes" prompts over and over again.

Sally Bergeron, from upstate New York, had this to say, "I got up this morning and Fluffy, my cat...this one...in this photo and this photo...and isn't she just sooooo cute here as she's a photo diva for sure.  Um...wait just a second...there she goes again...oh, she's showing me her butt!  How cute!  I gotta post this up to Facebook, just a second..."

Grant LaPierre, a long-time San Francisco resident, said he had gotten up early to check his email and to see what cat photos had been posted by his Facebook friends, but was shocked to learn he couldn't give a "Thumbs Up" nod to any of them.  "Hey, this is how you lose friends" he said, "I can't begin to tell you how many people 'unfriended' me back in September 2010 when Facebook crashed before.  It was horrible.  They thought I didn't like their cats.  It was all the more gut-wrenching this time because they knew I just got a dog.  I guess I'll have to do a bit of back-tracking to make it all right.  Thanks a LOT, Facebook...you'll be hearing from my lawyers tomorrow."

According to the Chicago Tribune, Facebook acknowledged the problem, but insisted it was only for a "brief period of time"...even though service was down for several hours across the globe.

"We're sorry for the inconvenience" a Facebook representative stated, "We know how many of you rely on Facebook for news of the world, of your friends and family, and of their cherished pets.  We honestly had no idea the global impact of not seeing a link from a friend of a YouTube viral video of a cat playing with a laser pointer...would have on the world.  We are sorry...and we will strive not to have anything like this happen again.  Honestly, it was our server guy.  It was his fault...not ours.  I hear he doesn't even LIKE cats!"

Facebook service did resume to its full capacity after a few hours although their stock did plummet in the early morning hours.  General Mills stock, ironically, gained a few points and finished nicely at the end of the day.

Simply Absurd

Today's prompt over at "We Work for Cheese" is "Absurd". And while I could go on and on about a story about my butt (for the umpteenth time) - I will spare you, and go straight to just things I find absurd. I'm not really deep thinking here and I'm right smack into the newest episode of "Ripper Street" which I think is the exact same premise as "Copper" only with a different set of actors, which, in itself is kind of absurd...but I'll throw in a few things that I find absurd.

Thirty-three things I find absurd...in no specific order...other than numerical. I decided a nice "round" number like 33 would be good so you would have to know how far to scroll down to in order to comment. :)

1. How nobody batted an eye (other than Jeannie on "I Dream of Jeannie" and that was on another network) or did a double-take at all when they switched the Darrin character on "Bewitched".

2. How dumbass things like the girl burning her hair with a curling iron manages to go viral on the Internet.

3. How dumbass I was for falling victim to clicking to watch the dumbass video of the girl burning her hair with the curling iron on the Internet.

4. How reporters on the Internet can get a job, yet I can't get one to save my life.

5. Why anyone abbreviates the would "you" -- it's only TWO MORE LETTERS, people!

6. Why anyone would take that psoriasis medicine they advertise on television considering it might give you seven different types of cancer, anal leakage (which may or may not be severe), liver failure and mild to moderate death.

7. Why people ask you how you are doing while you are on the elevator at the hospital either going to or leaving a doctor's office. Like how the hell do you think I'm doing...I'm IN the friggen hospital either going to or leaving a doctor's office! Dumbass.

8. Why someone would get inside of a laundry basket and slide down an overpass hill on a make-shift sled, literally inches away from traffic usually going over 55 mph (when it wasn't crawling at a snail's pace because of the weather) when it snowed a whopping two inches in Birmingham, Alabama a few weeks ago...considering they aren't at all familiar with snow at all as it rarely does in this area...and also the facts: 1) Snow is slippery when wet; 2) there is no ledge or berm-type structure separating you from getting run over by a car after you pummel over the railing head-first; and, 3) laundry baskets are not equipped with brakes.

9. Atheists saying "OMG!"

10. How I manage to write better when my brain is really whacked out on Ambien.

11. How people cannot readily calculate 20% of a number...yet have no difficulty calculating 10%.

12. Why any woman would want a guy who is really endowed. Seriously...hey, I saw a guy once who was really...um...built that way. No way would I touch that with a ten foot pole. Not that I could really...as, seriously...whoa boy. No way, ya know?

14. Why people who jump all over someone on the Internet for not spelling things correctly usually have a typo in their comment.

15. Why we had to put our ugliest presidents and other political figures on our American money. Why couldn't we have picked the better looking ones?

16. Why anyone still uses that "shaky camera technique" -- and just what are the requirements on that job applications?

17. Why anyone would want to be a proctologist. (Sorry...had to throw a butt one in there someplace.)

18. Why anyone would want a television service that allows you to record five shows at once. I can't even find one good one to watch at any given time. Five??

19. People who feel compelled to use two question marks in a row...as if it somehow makes it funnier that way.

20. Why the guy who head butts anyone on film never gets hurt, too.

21. Infomercials.

22. People on Facebook who get annoyed at me because I'm not eating meat during Lent on Fridays...like it's inconveniencing them somehow.

23. How Spiderman managed to swing from place to place in the old cartoon, yet none of the buildings were higher than he was.

24. Doors that open inwards in public rest rooms.

25. People who tell you "Don't mind the mess" when the most you can see that is remotely "messy" in their house are those two magazines on an end table.

26. Why people would think four faces carved into a mountainside is prettier to look at than the way the mountain was before they started carving it.

27. People who tell me that all red wine tastes the same.

28. People who tell me that all bottled water tastes the same.

29. People who make fun of people for being "ugly" - as if they played any part in how they were born.

30. People who pronounce "absurd" - "abzerd".

31. Everyone complaining at how music sucks nowadays yet it keeps on getting worse.

32. Everyone complaining at how bad all those reality shows are and how they never watch any...yet the networks keep making more.

33. How some of you are still with me after this many absurd comments...and those of you who did or did not notice that the number 13 comment wasn't there.


Ta-da!  All done.  And aren't you glad?  Oh shuddup...some were true and you know it.

A Random Act of Mindless (Part II)

This is Part II of my foray into making up "Random Facts" to post on Facebook. I had to split them into two groups because over the course of a few days there were more than I realized. If you didn't catch the first part, this part probably makes less sense, so go over and read Part I first.

After realizing people actually were commenting to these things and liking them...and my newfound joy for writing them...I publicly acknowledged this fact (as was appropriate as it was a fact and was randomly inspired)...

"I am having a lot of fun making up "Random Facts". I cannot speak for those who are reading them...but I'm enjoying this a lot."

And then I went right back to making them up...again, hopefully you will smile a bit...

"Random Fact #15: Sophocles dedicated "Oedipus Rex" to his mother."

"Random Fact #12: Avocado pits will only sprout with three toothpicks - if you put a fourth in them (suspending the lower half of the seed in a glass of water) - they do not sprout."

"Random Fact #23: Women did not have the right to use a surname until the mid 1500s. Before then they were only referred to by first name and the place they were from...such as "Anne from Dover"."

"Random Fact #19: "The Bridge to Terabithia" was written only while the author watched episodes of "Bewtiched"."

"Random Fact #20: If you record a cat's purr and play it back to them backwards they will run away and hide. There is no explanation for this other than they are cats and cats like to f*ck with people."

"Random Fact #38: Most people whine in the key of C Minor...this is why most composers chose to write symphonies in this key -- they were whiney little bastards and found the key soothing."

"Random Fact #33: If you pick up a good-sized turtle and hold the underbelly of it up to your ear, you can hear the seashore...but only when the legs and head are fully inside the shell; otherwise you will hear the sound of you dropping it when it scratches you with its really long nails."

"Random Fact #4: The reason most people are lactose intolerant is because cows are notorious methane producers."

"Random Fact #12: The battery evolved from a one-celled organism."

"Random Fact #2: New Jersey is the only two-word state which is also commonly referred to in one word: Jersey. (West Virginia being called "backwards" does not count.)"

"Random Fact #16: The Mayan Calendar was originally invented to show women which days they were most fertile."

"Random Fact #81: No one knows how a snail can excrete that much mucous to leave as a trail. Scientific tests speculate the snail's body is like a wick of a humidifier and depending on the humidity level...determines how far it can travel."

"Random Fact #38: The "optimal" time for falling in love happens between the ages of 16-24. After age 24, the capacity to tolerate the irritating things people do declines drastically, thereby lessening the chance you will find them "ideal". Also, on the average, most people will fall in out of love four times in their life and remember those more fondly than a relationship later on. This is also the reason posited for why you have better childhood memories then your adult ones, i.e., life was better, food tasted better, television and music was better, etc. It's not that things were better so much as you tolerated more back then."

"Random Fact #4: Tablecloths were originally used to sop up/cover up the blood from the previous patron as there would usually be all-out brawls in most inns/restaurants. It was easier to cover up the blood than to go outside and pump water, bring it back inside, clean the table and set it back up."

"Random Fact #77*: The average person consumes about 3000 potato "eyes" in their lifetime. While potato eyes are indeed poisonous as they contain glycoalkaloids...it takes a great deal of them to actually make you sick...but as little as three of them can send you to the emergency room if you are hypersensitive. It is always best to toss ANY potato out if you see visible sprouting.

*This random fact brought to you by the "National Potato Council"."

"Random Fact #3: The human skeleton contains 206 bones...but that was not always the case. Early hominids had only 200 bones - anthropologists have determined that as we evolved our bones became more diverse and thinned slightly causing some to actually branch off and form two bones instead of one. The bones of the inner ear, for example, were once much denser and thicker possibly to hear frequencies of predatory animals which we do not need to fear anymore."

"Random Fact #97: If Dorothy Parker were alive today (and on Facebook) her witty comments would have been replaced with things like "Awwww...look at this kitty photo, it's sooooo adorable!" and "I'm stealing!"

Progress...sometimes one step forward is still two steps back.

Then my fun culminated on the 29th of February with this last one:

"Random Fact #29: The first "Leap" year was started after the Gregorian Calendar was implemented in 1582...but not officially adopted by England and the American Colonies until some 200 years later. The origination of the word "Leap" is not what most people think...that the calendar has to "leap" ahead one extra day once every four years to make the calendar work, but it is from the Old English/Latin word "lepre/lepros" as in "leper". It was customary in the late 1500s/early 1600s to burn effigies of lepers on this day to cleanse villages from the scourge of leprosy...hence the name "Lep Year" or, as it is now called "Leap Year"."

All in all, I had a lot of fun...and I think I did two really witty ones -- altho I'm not sure if you thought any of them were witty...but two? Eh. Who knows. I'll see if anyone comments.

And for those of you who were curious...I did indeed mention a number twice - two times. Numbers 81 and 33 were repeated. There's probably a random fact to explain this, and when I get around to thinking of it, you can bet I'll let you know.

A Random Act of Mindness

I am not sure any of you know of this thing they have online called "Facebook". Facebook, for those who don't know (yeah, I'm being sarcastic), is this online "social networking" site...many times more like an anti-social networking site, but, nonetheless, it is online and about a billion plus two people are on it at any given moment.

People, being of either the trusting (or more likely, stupid) sort...tend to believe anything you post up there. Just think of it as the "early Wikipedia" of the Internet. Wikipedia, if you don't know (again with the sarcasm), is like a vast encyclopedia of "stuff", which, in its early incarnation...allowed anyone and their cat...to post up "factual information" which people, in turn, assumed was real information and turned right around and would do things like quote from it, copy/paste whole sections of it into their homework, and would "impress" anyone around who would listen to them. Consequently, it was the perfect opportunity for people to reinvent history. And invent they did. Way back when it was a witty person's dream: Think of something, the more plausible sounding the better, and post it up on Wikipedia and sit back and see how fast people start transferring their made up stuff, i.e., convoluted creme de la crap, to their websites and other websites and even more websites. It was fun while it happened. Now they require you to pass some test of fortitude or something in order to post stuff on Wiki...but, if you are imaginative, you can now turn to Facebook.

Sure, it's not posted up there for eons for all to see...it's a fleeting bit of silly...but, as all the world's a stage...I'm going to be a player.

Enter people and those "Random Facts" -- usually posted on background type of card or poster to make it seem "legit". It seems anything you put on a poster type thing will make the rounds no matter how mundane or totally unimaginative it is. So...when I started getting a bunch of these "random facts" showing up in my Facebook screen...I decided I was game...and started making up some of my own.

Half the fun was thinking of something witty, half the fun was trying to make it believable. The last half was sitting back and seeing if anyone commented. Fun was born for a grand total of about three days. Then I decided it was time to move on...but at the risk of never having these seen by more than the three people who bothered commenting on them...I'm packaging them all up and posting them here. Yeah...there's a lot...and I'm doing it because I can -- plus I'm also curious if I repeated any numbers...since I did them all "at random" without having any plan.

Hopefully some are enjoyable...if not, sorry for the huge waste of your time. And because there were much more than I originally thought, I'm going to do a two or three part blog.

It all started out innocently enough with this one:

"Random Fact #27: If you saved up all the grit in your eyes when you wake up, by the time you reach age 75 you could have had a real hobby."

This one was fun because it got people thinking and commenting. I, naturally, added more and more specifications like "...uh...that is citrus" and "...that is yellow" as they kept disproving my fact:

"Random Fact #42: 'Lemon' is the only two-syllable named fruit."

I won't bore you with commentary on each one...so here they are (in half their glory):

"Random Fact 70: The apostrophe was originally written as a comma on the first typewriters. In order for you to make an apostrophe you had to manually adjust the carriage, type the "comma" in the higher placement on the paper and then readjust it back again to continue typing."

"Random Fact 191: Ladies underpants were invented a full 150 years before men's were."

"Random Fact #2: Statistically, because I'm not keeping track, each time I come up with another random fact's number (at random I might add), I'm 11.4 times more likely to use a number I used before."

"Random Fact #90: If $1.00 of each Disneyland/Disneyworld ticket were set aside...in 10 years it would be able to pay off the national debt."

"Random Fact #29: It is widely conjectured that the species of animal responsible for the most puns...is fish. For example: Salmon chanted evening. I did that for the halibut. I need an aspirin because I've got a haddock. Et al."

"Random Fact #57: The Lunar Rover was named after Neil Armstrong's dog."

"Random Fact #23: All English words have been either borrowed or the pronunciation bastardized from foreign words from other countries. No words in the English language, with the exception of those made up by Chaucer, Shakespeare and Snoop Dogg...are English or American in origin."

"Random Fact #92: Contrary to popular belief, Gordon Lightfoot was not that great a dancer."

"Random Fact #71: Approximately 1 in 280 milk cows are born with an extra udder. They are promptly sent to the slaughter house and sold as veal as the automatic milking machines only have four "milker" receptacles. Having a fifth teet makes it impossible to get the proper "suction sequence" going for the machine to work optimally, and therefore the cow will produce less and less milk with each subsequent milking...eventually becoming a "dry" cow. Slaughter not only aids in higher milk production but also ensures this gene abnormality is not passed to the next generation."

"Random Fact #22: The cheapest gas has ever been per gallon was in 1932 at 17 cents. The last time it was 25 cents per gallon (or cheaper) was 1947. Adjusted for inflation, that would be roughly 2.83 and 2.41, respectively. So, the next time someone tells you they remember when gas was "less than a quarter per gallon"...either they are really old...or they are lying."

"Random Fact #81: No one knows how a snail can excrete that much mucous to leave as a trail. Scientific tests speculate the snail's body is like a wick of a humidifier and depending on the humidity level...determines how far it can travel."

"Random Fact #43: Sharks do not have tongues and therefore cannot taste their food until it reaches their stomach...this accounts for the fact most human "prey" is not usually swallowed but spat back up."

"Random Fact #87: The word "garbanzo" as in "garbanzo bean" (otherwise known as the chickpea) means "testicle" in Aztec."

"Random Fact #33: Anthropologists have long deduced the fork evolved from an ordinary stick. It then took the shape of two prongs when mankind realized the stabilizing effect of the dual tine. Mankind further evolved the fork into a three-pronged implement...again further stabilizing the usefulness of the device. Science has proven that four tines is the optimal configuration for an eating implement of that type and that five would be pretty much superfluous. This fact has totally been lost on the razor/shaving industry altho it has been proven that the extra blades are unnessary and do nothing more than give the impression that 'more is better'."

"Random Fact #81: "Bubble Wrap" was invented after a scientist noticed how his foot's blister cushioned the underlying skin from further impact from outside stimuli even when pressed with extreme force."

"Random Fact #55: While most people know the "Guinea Pig" is neither from New Guinea nor a pig...most people do not know they used to only cost one guinea to buy (in England in the 1700s) and, when roasted, smell remarkably like bacon."

"Random Fact #102: A typical five pound bag of grits usually contains 1/2 pound of non-corn-based grit -- mostly road-based and/or the wearing down of antiquated machinery-type grit."

"Random Fact #48: "Global Marketing" is in fact a misnomer as no one ever markets anything for Antarctica really."

"Random Fact #17: Wikipedia was originally a database of Wiccan information and was originally entitled 'Wiccapedia'."

"Random Fact #59: Shakespeare's title for "Love's Labour's Lost" was originally 'Eat Pray Love'."

"Random Fact #27: Scientists have calculated that the temperature would have to dip down to -256 degrees K for Hell to freeze over. Ironically, this is the number of pages in "Dante's Inferno" and exactly the same temperature it takes for the creme inside a Twinkie to solidify fully."

"Random Fact # 31: If you drop a compass from a great height above at the North Pole - the needle will spin erratically until it hits 4,000 feet. This is caused by the interference of the Coriolis Effect on the gravitational pull in the stratosphere. When the compass enters the troposphere...it regains the correct reading."

"Random Fact #2: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was only 4' 8" tall and was the inspiration for the "Munchkins" in L. Frank Baum's "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz". A lifelong feud between the two has typically been said to have produced some of the greatest written material of all time."

"Random Fact #1: No matter what kind of bread...or how expensive your toaster, no one in history has ever had their toast "toasted" correctly on the first try."

"Random Fact #4: You can sing any song to the tune of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" except Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody"."

And, on that note...I'll stop until Part II.

What the Dickens?

When I was a young, whenever I got slightly out of hand, my mother would say, "Oh, you little Dickens, you!" Now, I still have no inkling where that phrase originated...I'd like to think it has something to do with the unruly children in Dickens' novels...but a search on Google will probably ruin it for me...so I'll remain none the wiser and keep the mystery going.

Another mystery to me, is why, on the 30th of January, I started posting up my versions of Dickensian Facebook update statuses. Certainly it had something to do with the fact I finally got around to watching "Great Expectations" (the 1946 version) a day or two earlier. But, truth be told, I did have this film recorded for about six months, so it wasn't like it was "Dickens Week" on the TCM channel or anything.

I must say, however, that I could not have timed it any better...because today just so happens to be the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens.

The premise for most of this is self-explanatory...but, in case it's not...I basically updated my Facebook status...but with a twist (pun intended): I "penned" them in the manner of what I envisioned Dickens' characters would say...if they were thrust into today's society...and doing their own Facebook updates. Hopefully you will find some of them mildly amusing...and if not...well, a solemn egad to you, sir!


It all started late the evening of January 30th...and into the early morning of the 31st...and yes, I try to be silly on purpose on Facebook. To me, everything on Facebook is just fodder for a writing gig for a future comedy show...the key is timing it right so someone sees it and is willing to hire me. Unfortunately, I haven't yet found that key. Anyway...I was in a silly mood and it started like this. (Be forewarned, these are only my comments...I removed everyone else's...to respect their "privacy". Oh, yeah, right...they are ON Facebook...there is NO SUCH THING as privacy anymore. By the way, I left typos in...it lends an air of authenticity that way.)

Wondering about the lost works of Dickens...like "A Christmas Bob", "A Christmas Ted", and "A Christmas Alice".

I was thinking that I should start doing Dickens type books. I mean it's about time someone does that again. I have to put dandy guys in it and foppish rogues. Is that okay to do or just too old a concept?

(Removed comments here.)

"Lines in my proposed new Dickensonian novel:

"I dare say, Mr. Slipwort, your buttocks peering out like a timid doormouse owing to the fact your trousers are lower than your waistcoat...is more than mildly arousing to a young man of my demeanour."

(More removed comments here.)

"ROFL Nothing actually. I watched "Great Expectations" last nite and thought how we really should talk more like that. It would really make people just stare."

(Yep...comments...yadda yadda...)

"You come to me, lad, with the countenance of someone much more refined than yourself and with some reservation, attempt to beg my forgiveness for indiscretions heretofore dispensed...and ask for more text minutes? A solemn egad to you, sir."

(This is where someone stated they were going to use "A solemn egad to you, sir" in their conversations the next day. I was, needless to say, honoured.)

(Then it kinda morphed from Dickens to Shakespeare.)

"It is with some foreboding that an item of particular interest was shown to me under the guise of a fictitious nom de plume...and interspersed among a certain morally corrupt group gathered in society known to assist in the dissemination of such correspondence with the words "I am soooo stealing this!" attached and then, with a click, dispatched thusly."

But...I'm still wondering why the whole thing surfaced in my head right before his 200th birthday. I'd like to think it's some type of a good sign...perhaps I'm actually channeling Dickens? (And not in the TCM kind of way.)

Okay, so maybe it's not up to par with the last thing he ever wrote...but he's been out of practice, so cut him a break.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Dickens...gone, but certainly never to be forgotten.

What Would You Have Done?

So, I'm on Facebook tonite...and coupled with the usual silliness and celebrity games/antics (yes, I am now a "friend" of people like Justin Bateman, Paul Rudd, James Franco [altho he did "unfriend" me], Bruce Willis and George Clooney) I ran across a most disturbing post this evening.

A person, let's just call her "Sandy Chatfield", had posted up something which a friend of mine (whom I never talk to - but, you know, everyone's a friend on Facebook) had commented to - which caught my attention. My friend commented "Please someone, go over to her house. Make sure she is ok."

This, naturally, caught my eye as it was scrolling by - and I decided to "click" on what transpired for her to say such a thing. Face it, we've all heard of people killing themselves online...and/or reaching out online for some type of intervention.

I took this as a sign from God...perhaps God wants me to intervene somehow - otherwise I probably wouldn't have seen it at the exact second it was scrolling past - but now I have...and I can't turn a blind eye to it. If this woman shows up dead tomorrow and the list of comments from people such as "I tried to call her and she's not answering...does anyone know her address?" goes nowhere and I'm somehow a cog that gets the gears rolling to stop this...well, I'm going to do what I can to make sure that happens.

With me still?

Anyway, I am not allowed to comment on her Facebook page because I'm not her "friend". So, either I sit and watch as time goes by and everyone isn't taking the action they should and this lady possibly dies...or I dive right in and get involved and say "at least I tried".

I decided to go with the "at least I tried" route. I won't have someone's death on my conscience...even IF I don't know that person.

I private message'd a few of the responders to her initial post...and for the record, no one has messaged me back..even tho it's been a few hours.

Now, bear in mind I'm sitting at home doing homely duties like making dinner and looking forward to a nice glass of wine...while this "plea for help" comes ticking across my otherwise mundane and stupid Facebook page.

Her message read as follows:

"Bye my friends!!! I am done with games etc,,,, about done with everything in life. So tired of trying so hard to get nowhere. It is time for a really long nap!....A very long one!! Love you my friends and angels on your pillows"

This is followed by a couple posts by her friends and then the following exchanges by her:

"so tired of everything honey!"

"Don't think I will wake up!"

Then absolute "radio" silence for an hour or so (and about 100 posts later) while her friends frantically try to call her, scurry around trying to find an address to go with a cell phone number, call the police to no avail, and plead with her to answer, when...finally, this woman comes back online and chortles, "Hey!!!! not trying to kill myself!!! feel like it but It is not my nature!!! Why is everyone thinking this>>>" and "What did I say that makes you think I would end y life???"

Her friends then try to justify their concerns while she is in total "huh...I don't get it" mode.

Then she proceeds to cuss out the person who sent the police around to her door as, according to her, they came by to make sure she was okay. This specific post of hers is now gone as she deleted it -- so I can't quote it verbatim...but it had the words "...to the person who called the police, **** YOU!!" -- or along those same general "grateful" lines.

All I can say is...if she were my friend and played this game...she wouldn't be my friend now. Talk about someone who is appreciative that someone cares, huh? And not just one person cared - but a whole slew of them. Hell, I'd be dead now waiting for Bruce Willis to respond back.

So, I'm wondering now if this was just a silly Facebook hoax she was playing...or if it was real...and if the players in the whole episode are real or if they were just part of some stupid larger scheme to see if someone would take it all seriously. I'm not going to waste any more of my time on someone who "cries wolf" on Facebook to illicit a response.

I wasted upwards of an hour on this woman trying to save her life. I was one step away from calling the Las Vegas police department on more than one occasion in that hour. I Googled, I found an address, I mailed that address to several of her "friends" who posted there, I stopped short of contacting a child she had listed as a family member to see if they could call to make sure she was alive. She basically put me through hell for an hour. Me...someone who will never know her...someone who cared enough to try to make a difference...for her and those around her who might actually care and love her.

I know the odds of this woman ever reading this blog is pretty much nil, but if, somehow, she does...I want to leave her with this thought: If this wasn't a sick game...choose your words much more carefully next time, and if it was...remember those choice words you deleted? I've got a couple for you, "...you, too".

(This was written last nite...but not posted until today.)

Of Facebook and Other Wonky...er...Wonka Things

Okay, I, against my better judgment and immense personal dislike of it...have succumbed to hanging out a bit on Facebook.

No, I haven't joined any "Mafia Wars" or "Vampire Covens" or whatever they call them. I don't grow virtual vegetables and I don't ask people to give me any sheep.

What I do is type things in my "status" line like "I'm having a chocolate truffle!" or "I wish onion rings grew on trees." - and people reply back.

Oh, sure, I reply back to their nonsensical posts as well...but it passes the time in what is a less than ordinary life...and the mere fact that people will reply back to my doing the laundry or smelling around for that "weird smell in my house I can't find" - makes me happy.

It makes me happy that people also have less than ordinary lives, too...and that we aren't all getting showed with flowers and wined and dined at the most ritzy restaurants. We aren't all jetting off for private showings at the Louvre...and I don't even know if there are such things, but I'll never get one, so I'm not that curious to Google to see if they do indeed...do such things.

But there's one thing which boggles my mind even more than people who are willing to reply back to my mundane antics...and that's the weird stuff that pops up on the right side-bar each time I go there. I copy/pasted a few below (and didn't alter anything)...and commented accordingly, not always according to what people think is correct...but c'mon, you know we're all secretly thinking them if we're totally honest here.

Here goes:

"Racheal Ray Lost 18 lbs"

rachaelrayshow.com

She cut down a significant amount of stomach fat by following these 2 old diet tips.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Rachael Ray likes to eat. She's also a little porky...and her fingers look like sausages about to burst out of their casings...but they're probably tasty, so I'm not faulting her. Rachael could probably lose 18 pounds just by skipping two meals. Oh, c'mon, it's true. Did you ever see the amount of food she puts down her gullet in that show on the Food Channel where she goes eating in restaurants all over the world? She's always saying how cheap these places are...but they're not that cheap if you order one of everything on the menu that's under $10. And those "2 old diet tips" they mention? One is "NOT EATING" and the other is "EXERCISE". There's no other magical way than those other than getting your stomach downsized or being extremely depressed.

Remember that old "Grapefruit Diet" from years ago. Why it worked is because no one can eat more than two grapefruits at any one sitting. No one in recorded history has ever bought more than two at any one time...ever -- that's why there's always a surplus of them at the store. Look around - all the plums and apples are gone and there are three oranges left, but there's like half a truckload of grapefruit all nicely stacked like there are "secret grapefruit fairies" on the ready - replacing one each time one is removed. But there aren't "secret grapefruit fairies" - plus you can't stick more than two in that plastic bag anyway -- and no one's going to expend the energy to walk back over there to grab another baggie in order to buy that third one.

Bucket List

groupon.com

365 Things to do in Montgomery before you die.

First off...I refuse ever to use the word "groupon". I won't use "staycation" and I won't use "interrobang". If you don't know what an "interrobang" is...good. You shouldn't. There's no earthly reason why anyone should. It's stupid and whoever coined the name should be taken out behind the woodshed, stripped naked, covered with honey and left for the ants to get. But only after their photo is distributed across the Internet with a "WTF?!" caption Photoshopped on it.

Secondly, there aren't 365 things to DO in Montgomery...and if there were I wouldn't want to do them all. I certainly don't want to die here...so at the very most I'd do 364 and stop. I'm not stupid.

And, if I'm not mistaken, I'm pretty sure I saw Rachael Ray eat what that guy's eating in that above photo on one of those shows of hers. She also washed it down with some Portuguese Kale Soup afterwards.

Faithful Women Wanted

seniorpeoplemeet.com

Single Men on Senior People Meet are complaining there are not enough women registered.They need female attention now.

Okay...so they know I'm old because I have my age listed somewhere online - but to assume I just want to meet some "senior" guy is a bit premature on their part, isn't it? I mean maybe I'm a "cougar" - and then again maybe I'm a "cougar who's NOT faithful". Again with the assuming on their part. And then that "...need female attention now" bit sounds a little too much like a horny Veruca Salt from that Willy Wonka movie if you ask me. "I want female attention from an Oompa Loompa, NOW, Daddy!"

Okay, that didn't come out right...but you get the idea.

I think.

Okay, I really have to hurry up and end this blog...so I can post this blog...so I can get back on Facebook to let everyone know. "Everyone" being my 268 friends I've never met...but who are anxiously waiting for me to say something.

I think.