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Best Western Hotel

420 Constitution Drive Livermore, CA 94550

 

Ideally situated between the Livermore Costco and Miss Fanny’s Gentleman’s Club, this Best Western Hotel is a 100% felon-free property (in all likelihood). Before graduating to a Best Western Hotel, the property began as a Good Western and then worked itself up to a Better Western Hotel before finally achieving Best Western status.

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Fun Priceline Fact: If at the end of Double Jeopardy all the contestants are in negative territory, the world ends.

 

The following are Certified Reviews by Verified Priceline Guests:

 

6.0    David Hardiman of Reno, NV

Pros:          Had a life-changing, boundary-dissolving experience where I transcended my body, journeyed to the Godhead and became one with the empyrean treasures of the universe.

Cons:         Could’ve used more towels.

 

8.8    Mahatma Adams of Brookline, MA

Pros:          Most of the Swastikas had been painted over.

Cons:         At the breakfast bar a business man was using the waffle iron to press his tie.

 

3.14  Physicist Calbert Martindale of Pasadena, CA

Pros:          Gravity functioned normally and, from my frame of reference, light seemed to travel at 186,000 mps

Cons:         Upon arrival there was urine in the toilet.

Management‘s Response: Well, where else would you want it?

 

8.5    Malcolm Gulliver of Lilliput

Pros:     I was unnerved by all the chalk body outlines on the floor

Cons:    Bullet proof window glass came in handy a few times during our stay

 

8.0    Mrs. Dalai Lama – Citizen of the World

Pros:          Mr. Lama had yet another boundary-dissolving experience where he transcended his body, journeyed to the Godhead and became one with the empyrean treasures of the universe. Ho-hum.

Cons:         Place could use some updating. Chamber pots didn’t flush. Not enough candles and I was hoping to bump into Rita Moreno.

 

10     Cindy Medici of Kitty Hawk, NC

Pros:          I’d give it an 11 if I could. Friendly staff helped me with my bikini wax for well over an hour. At least they said they were staff.

Cons:         Omelet station chef forgot to remove the plastic wrap from the cheese in my omelet.

 

9.0    Meeee aaand Mrs, Mrs. Jones (the one who’s “gotta thing, goin’ on” with the singer)

Pros:          Those sprinkler heads were so handy to hang clothes on.

Cons:         There was a guy in our bed.

Management’s Response: We apologize for the guy. But at least we’re pretty sure he wasn’t a felon.

 

5.5    Eleanor Rigby of Liverpool, England

Pros:          My key worked on all the rooms

Cons:       The supposed Hershey’s Kiss on my pillow wasn’t wrapped. In fact it wasn’t even chocolate.

 

10     Sildenafil Hardman of Stratford-upon-Pfizer

Pros:          I don’t know how a place can be “LGBTQ Pet Friendly,” but this place was.  

Cons:         Someone left their Service Turtle in the bathtub wearing its little “Please Do Not Turn Me Over” yellow vest.

 

10     Leni Riefenstahl of Bavaria

Pros:       Lock left open on adjoining room, so we managed to sublet it for 100 Euros.

Cons:      There wasn’t any hot water. In fact there was no running water. It barely walked.

Management’s Response: This is a supply chain issue.

 

8.0    Wally Walters of Walla Walla, WA

Pros:          Rusty water was great for my anemia.

Cons:         The door knobs and the remote were both sticky.

Management’s Response: We do that intentionally to promote a better grip. Yeah, that’s it.

 

7.0    A Real Housewife of Orange County

Pros:          Easily operable dials and switches on thermostat

Cons:         However there was absolutely no correlation between the room temperature and the thermostat setting. It actually seemed to do the opposite.

Management’s Response: This is pretty much standard at all hotels now.

 

10     Candy Apple of Syracuse, NY

Pros:          Somebody left some Gummies in the nightstand

Cons:         For a certified smoke-free room there sure we’re a lot of cigarette burns.

Management’s Response: That’s because the last woman who stayed in that room was smokin’.

 

7.0    Homer Simpson of Springfield

Pros:          Everything was very well run and extremely secure

Cons:         Night Manager insisted I refer to her as “Warden Kathy” and suggested maybe I’d be better off returning to my cell.

 

8.0    Cialis Valencia of Lilly, WI

Pros:          Rabbit Ears allowed for excellent TV reception

Cons:         Reflection in mirror didn’t do what I was doing.

 

4.0       Bernadette Cumberbatch-Humperdinck of London, England

Pros:          Good value

Cons:         Didn’t understand what I was consenting to when I agreed to make my own bed in order to save money. Then they gave me a hammer, a saw, some boards and nails and told me to go make my bed.     

 

Best Western Hotel Amenities:

• Our hair dryers blow
• Our vacuums suck
• Our donuts are holy
• Our irons are ironic
• Our breakfast bar proudly serves generic oatmeal and even well-behaved Belgians
• We still send and receive Telegrams <STOP>

 

 

Hotel Features

Happily situated just off Interstate 666, this Livermore hotel is within a 10 minute drive of 4 Urgent Care Centers, 3 Not-So-Urgent-But-Vital-Enough Care Centers, 2 We-Can-Wait-Awhile-But-Not-Too-Long Care Centers and 1 “for profit” orphanage. For hygienic free-spirits, the lobby features a communal bidet. The Fitness Center has been reimagined as a well-equipped Fatness Center where an honest chubby  person can go and “get your lipids on.”

All guest rooms come with free atmosphere, gravity and hidden webcams. Guest rooms at Best Western also come with 42-inch High Definition Microwave Ovens where nothing takes longer than 5 seconds to heat. A deluxe continental breakfast is served every morning. Unfortunately it’s served on the continent of Europe. The front desk is staffed 24 hours, although those hours aren’t necessarily consecutive. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is 2 miles away (follow the plutonium glow).

 

We hope you enjoy your stay at the Best Western and if you don’t agree this is the Best Western you stayed at, we’ll give you a coupon for a free Continental breakfast…served on the continent of Australia.

The Animal Kingdom is no longer depending on animalistic urges to incentivize procreation. The new critter-based dating app, Downward Dog, circumvents the need for far flung pheromones or the need for going into heat to promote hook-ups. Downward Dog promises feral fun and frenetic frolic for frisky fauna. Whether you’re a voluptuous vertebrate or simply a spineless sensualist, Downward Dog has a matching varmint for you.

See sample ads below:

1. Bi-Curious Monkey Swings Both Ways – I mean I’m a monkey. We always swing both ways, but you know what I mean 😉. Bi-Curious George awaits your response.
2. Forlorn Male Mutt – Seeks cute bitch for some canine fun. For a dog I’m a little kinky. I like to do it Missionary Style.
3. Introverted Snail – Willing to come out of my shell if you’re slimy enuf. OK if homeless (no shell). Likes roleplay where we cover ourselves in garlic and olive oil and play “Escargot.”
4. Open-minded Feline Seeks Extra Special Pussy – Into mutual tongue bathing and long walks by the fish market. Fur color no barrier.
5. Do Opposites Attract? – Well-hung Teacup Chihuahua looking to satisfy a Great Dane. Let’s make this happen.  
6. Black Widow – Seeks yet another male partner. I don’t know why I go through so many. They just seem to disappear after we mate. Hope to see you on the web.
7. Financially Secure Schnauzer – Seeks like-minded female Terrier for platonic pleasures. I like “going bye-bye,” eating my “wet food” and drinking from a large, white porcelain thing with a big hole in it.
8. Neutered Newfoundland – Seeks spayed Shih Tzu for platonic pleasures: sniffing, paw-holding and rolling over.
9. Aardvark with Very, Very Long Tongue – Prefers a female aardvark who likes to make mountains out of molehills. Also I’d like to meet your aunts.
10. Rhino Seeking RINOs – Horny Rhino (aren’t we all) seeks RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) for inter-species fun. Offering the best in bestiality.
11. Skeletal Tyrannosaurus Rex seeks Skeletal Brontosaurus for a Fun Night at the Museum – Would really like to jump your bones.

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Break::::: A Catnap, some Kibble, and maybe I’ll tickle my tongue with Wrigley’s Fruit-striped gum. We now resume more Downward Dog ads:

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1. Every Day is Hump Day for this Dromedary Camel – What’s your pleasure madam? – One hump or two.
2. Venus Fly Trap – Seeks flies for quick, snappy visits
3. Misbehaving Malamute Likes to Do It on the Paper – I’m chipped, STD free and told I am a great panter. I behave best when I’m kept on a short leash.
4. I’ll Admit It, I’m a Leg Man – Male centipede seeks female centipede with great legs – at least 100.
5. Single Cell Narcissistic Protozoa – Hopes to divide myself in two and fall in love with my better half.
6. Angelfish – Seeks amphibian for a breath of fresh air. I’m tired of dating big fish in my small pond. Maybe you’re the toad I’ve been waiting for.
7. Sexy Seahorse Seeks Horny Horsefly for Adult Horseplay – Riding bareback is the mane thing
8. Gay Parrot – Seeks birds of a feather to flock together. Hope you like flocking as much as I do.
9. Weiner Dog Looking for the Right Bun – If we fit together then my condiments to the chef.
10. Abominable Snowman Looking for an Abominable Snow Woman – I’m dreaming of a white Christmas with you.
11. Frisky Ostrich Would Like to Bury His Head Into Something Besides Sand – Would prefer an ostrich that has spent time at a Petting Zoo or even a Heavy Petting Zoo
12. Playful Mink – Seeks a nice Beaver (so what else is knew). Will also answer glossy-coated sables, chinchilla and even weasels.

George Grossman died of natural causes at the age of 33 – if you consider being struck by a meteor “natural.” George’s bewildering demise occurred while he was walking into the hospital to witness the delivery of his second child who would turn out to be a son named Joe. Fatherless Joe (his mother Shirley never remarried) grew up longing for the father he never knew. Joe vowed that when he died, he would seek out his deceased father in the afterworlds.

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And one day, many years later, it came to pass that Joe did pass. Upon ascending to the vault of heaven (evidently he’d been a Good Joe) was pleased to find himself in the company of his long since deceased sister Kelly, his mother Shirley and a few family pets all gathered in a gorgeous iridescent meadow. But where was dad? He’d waited his entire life for this moment and dad was a no show.

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“What gives,” Joe exclaimed? “Where’s dad,” he lamented in the shimmering ethereal waviness of the afterlife?

Just then a Yoda-ish guardian angel appeared and explained to Joe that when his father George died (meteor to the head), George’s soul was placed in the body of his newborn son, Joe Grossman.

“You mean,” Joe gasped, “I’m a motherf…”.

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“No, no, no,” interrupted his guardian angel. “I wouldn’t use that term exactly. I mean yes, you did, but she was your loving wife at the time. Oedipal complexes aside, I’m here to tell you that you are your own father. That’s why he didn’t show up in the afterlife despite your lifelong yearnings. Now Joe, this rarely happens in the reincarnation business I superintend, but consider this snafu from my perspective. You had just been born and you had also just died, and there was no time to implement the usual Bardo protocols. To keep the supply chain moving, we took a short cut with the code of interdimensional reincarnation birthing procedures and placed your soul directly from your meteor-flattened body into your son’s newly born body. I hope you’re not too upset. We didn’t want to leave you in Limbo.

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“As a reward for enduring our production snafu, in your next lifetime we’re allowing you to get in line twice when they pass out brains – or any other organ you may want to double in size. You’re also scheduled to inherit the handsome gene from your mother’s side,” declared the angel. And with that crude gesture of frontier reincarnation justice, the little oracle evanesced into the ethers and returned to God’s After Party.

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Moral of the story: No matter how dirty you might be, never take a meteor shower.

 

Background: In one sense Carbon–14 dating is a forensic method of determining the age of organic matter by measuring the decay of the Carbon–14 atom. In another sense, Carbon-Dating is a method for unscrupulous professors to groom unsuspecting Carbon-14 atoms for personal gratification. In either case it’s a ready way for professors (be they studious or depraved) to gain access to, and fraternize with, Carbon-14 atoms.  

 

 

Dateline: Cambridge, MA — Harvard University’s Archaeological Board of Ethics has accused some tenured professors of engaging in unwelcomed Carbon-Dating, and that this so-called “Carbon-Dating” lacks proper supervision or safeguarding chaperones. In their defense, the Union of Concerned Scientists maintain that any Carbon-Dating has been completely consensual and absolutely necessary for carrying on their work in the field of dating antiquities. The board also accused the professors of dating antiquities without their consent, but that’s another story for another Age.

 

 

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More specifically the board has charged Prof. Adam Askew with some questionable Carbon-Dating practices. Professor Askew admits he’s dated hundreds, perhaps thousands of Carbon-14 atoms, but that in each case all his Carbon-Dating has been entirely consensual for both himself and the particle of matter in question – even going so far as to get permission from the molecule it was attached to. As expected the reaction of the atom community has been positive, negative and even neutral on the matter – isn’t that just like an atom.

 

 

One Carbon-14 atom declared, “This whole Carbon-Dating thing just doesn’t matter.” But then later admitted, “Well, maybe that’s just my anti-matter talking.” Several board members warned that humans engaging in any kind of merging or fusion with a Carbon-14 atom risk nuclear catastrophe in the form of one helluva a Big Bang, should they somehow manage to merge.

 

 

Professor Adam Askew admits that when he first looked at a Carbon-14 atom under an electron microscope it was, “love at first sight. Adam loved atom. And my affection is limited to the carbon atom and only the Carbon-14 isotope specifically. I could care less about sodium, strontium or antimony. Although I will admit, Cesium-137 looks quite fetching under the e-scope. You can read all about this in my book Up and Atom: Successfully Dating with Carbon-14.“ 

 

Pros and Cons of Carbon-14 Dating

1. It’s hard to tell if a particular Carbon-14 atom is male or female. Sometimes you find out after it’s too late.
2. Carbon-14 dating can determine the date of a 5000 year-old mummy within 3 weeks
3. It’s a cheap date: Carbon-14’s eat nothing and its favorite movie is Honey I Shrunk the Kids
4. They decay very slowly and generally have a mid-life crisis only about once every 22,000 years.

 

 

Some say this basic building block of life lacks soul and shouldn’t have protections on how they’re treated, so if some academic-type chooses to get his rocks off with an inorganic, rocky mineral that’s his business. It’s not like minerals are woke or anything. In any event there have been some shenanigans going on in Harvard’s labs. Electron microscopes have been used indecently in ogling Carbon-14 atoms in the buff – clothed only in a scanty shell of electrons. Heck, some Carbon-14 atoms have had their shells knocked-up to Carbon-16 atoms. When professors were asked how this mysterious electron augmentation occurred they sheepishly said, “Hey…isotopes happen.”

“This is plain wrong,” board member Prudence Goodwater inveighed. “A Carbon-14 atom cannot give consent until it’s at least Carbon-18.”

 

 

Scientists concerned about the Union of Concerned Scientists say this Carbon-Dating scandal has given the entire scientific community a black eye. Well it is sooty carbon, so what else would you expect. Maybe this story is true or maybe it’s just Harvard lampooning us. Meanwhile, be happy that even though you can never have this 3 minutes back, you invested it very wisely. I mean I hope it generated plenty of interest for you.

Holy Sheet – Yes, It’s That Time of Year Already?

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This year’s 3K Race is a must for all you Racists out there. Racists from all sorts of backgrounds are welcomed: be they White, Caucasian, Aryan or just plain Anglo-Saxon. You see with the Klan, it doesn’t really matter where you’re from as long as you’re, y’know …melanin deprived. In the words of Matthew McConaughey, “All white, all white, all white.”  

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So come rally ‘round the cross.

When: Friday the 13^th January 2023

Where: Col. Judice’s Plantation in Ezra Swamp, Alabama

Length of Race: 3K – Run 1K at a time K-K-K

Activities: Run at 4, BBQ at 6. Cross burning to follow.

Note to Burning Man Fans: We know you like the cross burning, but we’re gonna ask y’all not to come this year until you better understand what we’re all about. As they say…not a good fit.

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Press Release from the offices of our leader and Grand Cyclops, Harmer Gullet:

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My Fellow Klan Members and Other Bigots,

If you love being a racist (and I’m pretty sure you do) have we got a 3K race for you. For obvious reasons 3K’s have always been the Klan’s sweet spot. It’s kinda like our Goldilocks distance.

 

Racists should note that for the first time our fundraising rally will be held at the Judice Plantation. Pre-Judice it was run at “Big” Ed Ott’s Manor aka BigOtt’s.

 

The Klan will use a portion of the funds raised to underwrite contour sheets for fashion-conscious Racinistas who don’t like to be seen in shapeless, billowing sheets. We try to keep up with the times and some of our snootier, Instagram Racinistas are quite particular in the sheets they wear. Heck some won’t even wear white after Labor Day. It’s a real problem at rallies.

 

The KKK reminds participants that anyone who runs in the race is, by definition, a racist. We will however, allow joggers – but they must be at least anti-Semitic. Participants are also reminded there’s a $35 entrance fee payable in cash or Confederate scrip.

 

New this year is the Marilyn Monroe “Seven Year Itch” station, where frisky lady Klanners can stand over a grate and have gusts of air blow their sheets above their waists just like naughty Marilyn did. Participants must wear show pants – no bareback and no men. 

 

A barbecue and cross burning to follow. As always, BYOC (Bring Your Own Cross). And please remember to have your sheets treated with flame retardant spray before the BBQ – we don’t want a repeat of last year’s fiasco.

 

Well, that’s as best as I can tell you. I mean that’s asbestos, I can tell you.

 

I’m 3 Sheets to the Wind,

Grand Cyclops, Harmer Gullet

Perhaps the fastest (though not the pleasantest) way to journey to the “other side” is via an NDE or Near Death Experience. NDEs are a transformative event where the souls of temporarily flatlined stiffs leave their bodies, behold otherworldly dimensions and then are miraculously ushered back to their once lifeless bodies. Some say an NDE removes all fears about death and replaces it with an unshakably affirming knowingness, more real than anything found on Earth.

• Pinterest user Sally Klein, who had a near death experience when a blowfish recipe went terribly wrong, said of her NDE, “OMG. It was like you were permanently perfumed with pumpkin spice. Can you imagine? It was no longer seasonal. It was Pumpkin Spice fulltime! Fulltime all the time!”
• Comic Con fanboy Calvin Turlock said of his Marvel-ous NDE, “The Marvel Universe is real. Superpowers are real – I took down Dwayne Johnson.”
• Amazon boss Jeff Bezos recounted his NDE, “It was amazing. I compared my financial situation with the Almighty’s and it turns out I have more money than God…no wait. That was my regular life here on earth.”

 

When we go over to the other side it seems we all go where we expect ourselves to go. Hmmmm. What if we had no expectation? Where would we go then?  

 

 

Whose Side Are You On?

 

Well currently we’re all on this side – at least for now. But eventually we’ll all be on the other side where we discover it’s all one; and there really isn’t, and never has been, an “other side.” Are we clear? NDEs are just the miraculousness of experiencing everything, everywhere, all at once. But is all this heavenly hyperbole really miraculous? – Meh. It’s only miraculous to us earthbound creatures pondering it all from this side.

 

 

It’s Just a Job

 

I’m sure the entities that superintend this cosmic function of bringing souls into and out of this world, don’t come home teeming with tender stories of mythic miracles like NDE experiencers do. More likely they come home smelling of the souls they’re shuttling back and forth all eternity – like a fishmonger might come home smelling of fish or a florist like flowers. It’s a hazard of the profession. Hustling souls in and out of the 3^rd rock from the sun is just a job for some. This supposedly extraordinary bookkeeping process of managing departed souls (of which NDEs are probably just a kinked glitch in the system) is only a portion of the overall operating system of the universe and merely the bailiwick these superintendents oversee. (You don’t have to believe any of this, but it’s probably true anyway.)

 

We poor slobs however, marvel in wonderment at this-couldn’t-be-happening-to-little-ole-me experience. NDEs are not something special happening to you, for you. I surmise NDEs are just part of a process to move souls in and out of bodies around the cosmos. There’s no reason to feel special or anointed if it happens to you. Don’t underplay it either. Just consider it. You’re a big part of the whole shootin’ match whether you think you’re tragically inconsequential or fabulously magnificent. You see the truth doesn’t require your belief. And I mean that in a good way. You don’t have to believe in something in order for something to happen. For example, I don’t believe in Santa Claus, but I still get presents at Christmas.  

 

On this earth, where we tend to get lost in the need to make permanent our personal identity, we’re regularly privy to maybe 2% of all the magnificence operating on the other side. Why this magnificence of the hereafter is so apparently distant and hidden from us I’ll never know. But it is – generally. The hereafter (hereafter referred to as the hereafter) is kinda like electricity. Most of us relate to electricity through on and off switches; barely cognizant of the humming transmission lines, generating plants and the eons it took to produce the gas, coal or oil (fossil fuels) firing them. The hereafter contains all the hidden electrical infrastructure. We aren’t allowed to see all of God’s electrical magnificence so we can stay focused on our jobs here on earth – whatever that may be. This model I present might not accurately describe matters, but it does provide 2 dimes – I mean “a paradigm.” That’s my 2 cents anyway. Moving on. Read the rest of this entry »

1. Wilma Cantwell groaned to death after reading my pun: “I was going to write this list in Times New Roman font, but it’s really not my type.”
2. In Compton, Dylan Barrett Browning was crushed to death in a vicious drive-by poetry slam. Investigators say there was no rhyme or reason to it.
3. Swami Baba Ganouj died when, after an out-of-body experience, he couldn’t get back in to his body again. In 3 attempts he failed to identify all the bicycles in a cosmic Captcha Code and got locked out. Enjoy the Astral plane Baba.
4. 

   Picture I always include in my resume. So what if I haven’t worked in 9 years. It’s who I am.

   In 1985 Sheena Loman was flabbergasted to death after sampling New Coke

5. A Marilyn Monroe impersonator died when she tried to reenact the famous subway dress scene from The Seven Year Itch and an unexpectedly powerful burst of air from the subway grating lifted her and her billowing dress into the path of an oncoming bus.
6. Finn Atwater died from being morbidly alphanumeric. Her Pinterest User Name was $5@H²0 (“$5” = a fin and “@H²0” = Atwater). RIP Finn.
7. In 1952, the actress Rita Hayworth was instantly vaporized by paparazzi when they simultaneously took 22 glimmering shots of her. She was gone in a flash.
8. Caleb Cushing of New York City turned to salt after accidentally seeing his grandmother doing naked hot yoga. He briefly became a pillar of the community – a salt pillar – till that same powerful burst of air that killed the Marilyn Monroe impersonator, blew Caleb to smithereens.
9. Patrick Dunder, died when he was peering down a railroad track to make sure no train was coming and the barricade arm came down and conked him on the head.
10. An absent-minded Grateful Deadhead dyed today when he realized he was wearing a white t-shirt. He tie-dyed.

While touring in Jerusalem, I got into a confusing conversation with my tour guides Said Abdullah and his brother Aviv.

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I asked Said if people from Yemen were friendly.

Said said, “There are no enemy Yemeni. Any enmity with the Yemeni is cockamamie.”

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Me: You’re sure there are no enemy Yemeni?

Said: Yemen, I’m Syrias.

Me: You’re Syrias? OK. Does your brother know about all this?

Said: No, but I plan to Tel Aviv.

Me: Interesting. Well allow me to Babylon. Did you know that when you tell a lie it’s “instant bull?”

Said: No. Istanbul is in Turkey.

Me: It is? I can’t keep my Bosporus Strait. Do you remember that Beatle song where they sing ♫Strawberry Fields Nothing Israel ♫?”

Said: Iraq my brain, but I don’t know that song. However I do know the Beatle song where they sing, ♫You say Dubai and I say Hello ♫.

Me: After this can we visit the pyramids in Egypt?

Said: Well we could go, or we Kuwait.

Me: What do you think of the pyramids at Giza?

Said: The pyramids are perfect, but the Sphinx stinx. See the thing of it is is israel wants us to stay.

Me: Is it true that when in Jerusalem you do as the Jerusalemanians do

Said: This Israeli true.

Me: What Israeli true?

Said: That we are not going to the pyramids. We went once and got ripped-off by a fellow tour guide – Egypt us.

Me: OK. I’m just glad the COVID scare is over. Da masks were Syria-sly bad.

Said: Yes. Damascus, Syrias.

Me: Oman. That Israeli true. Hey Said, what do you call someone’s father who works for Ziploc?

Said: That’s easy. Baghdad.

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My father’s peculiarities were prodigious. Of course when you’re young and in thrall of your father, you see no peculiarities – it’s just Saturday with dad. So I never really noticed them till I got older. I knew he was a smart guy, but in many ways he was also a functioning non sequitur. And I attribute most of his eccentricities to his mother Helen’s benign malfeasance (I think she dropped him on his ego – a lot). Inside the bosom of this bleak and scolding woman beat a stingy heart pumping out precious little affection. Consequently, my forsaken father looked askance at all he surveyed and fought mightily to compartmentalize his wounded emotions. The poor guy. It turns out that choosing the right parents is a very important thing. Why so little is done about this is beyond me.

 

 

My dad was a depressed person, but he never visited his dysfunction on others. No “woe is me” from that guy. He just withstood the incongruities of life, waiting for someone, or some entity, to respond to his bedrock assertion, “I never asked to be born.” My dad’s philosophy was a slightly darker version of Disney’s. Whereas Disney might be the happiest place on earth, to my dad, life was “the inconvenient-est place on earth.” In his eyes life was such a bother, for something so inconclusive. For better or worse, some of his nuanced take and skewed analysis didn’t fall too far from the tree.

 

 

My dad was not a hater. He was a withstander. He was the Chuck Norris of enduring things he’d rather not contend with. And I loved him because, because…oh, I don’t know why. It’s just what you do in this universe of God’s trickle-down Lovenomics. I mean the Almighty is rollin’ in the stuff and we (his adoring children), residing far down stream, get the briny runoff – just enough to hydrate us and motivate us to search for its source in hopes of further slaking our cosmic thirst. Enough I say! I rise up and proclaim “Occupy God,” but that’s perhaps another story I’ll write at another time. For now, this quaint and foible-filled feature is what I want to share with you.   

 

 

I’ve chosen to highlight only one of Dad’s oddities because if I listed them all, this chronicle would need to be retitled The Never Ending Story. The following goofily aberrant father-son playdate was indicative of his refracted perspective. In 1970, in the midst of their divorce, my caring, warm-hearted mother arranged a Saturday night sleepover for me with my father. She had to arrange it because he sure as hell wasn’t capable of organizing it himself. Though he may have desired some quality time with his adolescent son, he was genetically incapable of doing anything that wasn’t statutorily required or absolutely necessary for survival. Bowing to convention would be anathema to this man of apathetic appetites – plus it would be way, way too inconvenient. Read the rest of this entry »

1. 

   Self e-face-ing?

   The birth rate would drop to 0

2. You’d hear a lot more “Y’know, you remind me of somebody”
3. People would be a lot nosier
4. 10 Most Wanted Posters would generate a lot of false positives
5. It would’ve been a lot easier to chisel Mount Rushmore
6. Spice Girls a lot less popular
7. In the TV show Streets of San Francisco, it’d be real hard to tell Karl Malden from Michael Douglas
8. Stunt doubles would no longer have to hide their faces
9. There’d be no cute Beatle
10. Christianity in jeopardy. Worshipers would find it hard to pray to Karl Malden.
11. We’d all have faces only a mother could love
12. Porn industry would come to a screeching halt
13. The Phantom of the Opera wouldn’t bother with a mask
14. 90% of doctors would go into rhinoplasty.
15. Stocks of facial recognition companies would tank
16. The movie Titanic would definitely lose its edge
17. Police sketch artists…out of business
18. Interest in Kate Upton would drop significantly.
19. And of course, Chuck Norris would still look like Chuck Norris