This year’s last installment of IT comes with my greetings for the season. Here, in this most festive of seasons, is a picture I took at Six Flags America a year or so ago, which I think summarizes the spirit of the holidays:
Seen at a Wal-Mart:
I have often contended that there is something perhaps culturally or perhaps linguistically straightforward about the Spanish language. I had assumed at first this was simply because my knowledge of the language is based on two semesters in high school and my vocabulary is mostly limited to “things found in a classroom”, but from time to time I have seen evidence that this trend may exist out in the real world. For example, and I an finding it hard to believe Google when it tells me I haven’t already told you this story, I once caught a commercial for some spanish-language comedy show, and, where an American show might use a word like “zany” or “laughtacular” or “supercalifragilisticexpialiawacky”, the whole of their sales pitch seemed to be “Es muy divertido.” (It’s quite entertaining).
Which is why I found this sign at a JC Penney’s in New Jersey, a lot of fun:
Seen outside a Ruby Tuesday in Columbia:
When you install a toilet, you actually place it directly on top of the finished floor, not against the subfloor.
The reason I point this out is because when I moved into my house, I had to cut about an inch off of the bathroom door. This is because years upon years of flooring had been installed without mining though previous generations. The floor in my bathroom is sheet vinyl. Under that sheet vinyl is vinyl tile. Under that, I believe, is a strata of linoleum, and beneath that, I dunno, maybe dinosaur fossils or spam or something. At the lowest layer is pine, which was the original floor of the entire house. As far as I can tell, the pine is still in fine shape, but many of the other layers have started to deteriorate. The result of this is that over the past few years, my toilet has started to cant to the right. A full repair of this is going to require reflooring the entire bathroom, a task I plan to undertake as soon as Leah and I can sort out exactly how we want it to look.
Unfortunately, though, earlier in the week, the tilt reached a point where it damaged the seal where water goes into the tank. Since this was kind of an urgent repair, I decided to go ahead and do it straight away rather than waiting for the weekend. So, I removed the supply pipe to the toilet, replaced the cracked plastic nut, and reattached everything, checked for leaks, and, right around eleven PM, Eastern Standard Time, Tuesday, November 4, 2008, I pulled myself out of the toilet.
And so did America.
Not bad for a night’s work.
Addendum: Proposition 8 is up in California. In a hundred years, teachers are going to be explaining how the same day we elected our first African-American president, we also voted to officially declare a whole class of citizens to be inferior and took away the right to marry which they had enjoyed for several months. Teachers will stress the irony of this. The students will probably think that Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama were childhood friends,
Seen in the Tremont Grand hotel in Baltimore:
None of our enemies are afraid of Obama; why would they be? On the other hand, all of our enemies are afraid of John McCain
— Ed Rogers
The problem is, most of our allies are afraid of him too. And a pretty fair percentage of us are afraid of a Palin vice-presidency.
In other news, the McCain camp has recently discovered that Osama Bin Laden is a big fan of breathing an oxygen-nitrogen mixture. They have moved immediately to remove the substance, commonly known by its street-name, “Air”, from their campaign headquarters. The inexplicable choking deaths of several staffers has delayed the release of their new series of attack ads, titled “Obama: He performs many of the same biological functions as OSAMA BIN LADEN. And HITLER.”
In a shocking twist, however, certain republicans are now backing a dark horse independent candidate, Leo the MGM Lion, after discovering that while America’s enemies are afraid of John McCain, they are freaking terrified of lions.
Years ago, when I was in High School, the paper covers we were required to put on our textbooks started featuring advertisements from various local businesses. On the inside cover, it said “These businesses have contributed to your local board of education. Please patronize them.” And so I did.
On a note not entirely unrelated, when I was young, there was a restaurant in my home town called “Golden Corral”. It was a normal family style restaurant, sort of similar to Sizzler. The things I recall the most were their very nice salad bar, and the incredibly delicious buttered toast slice you got with your meal.
Well, Golden Corral closed down at some point, after being robbed at gunpoint like three times in as many months, and the restaurant has since been converted into a sporting goods store.
So when, a few months ago, Leah and I went into a Golden Corral restaurant, I was surprised to find it was nothing like I remembered; it’s just a supergiant buffet now, which is awesome in its own way, though I do miss the toast.
But as a buffet, the rules are a bit different than a traditional restaurant: namely, you stand in a line at the door and when you get to the end of the line, you pay a rate based on the number of diners, and are led to a seat, and this is pretty much the end of the waitstaff’s involvement with you, other than to clean up your wreckage from time to time.
Here is a sign posted by the register, where you pay your bill before you have received any service:
