Dear Guru: Winning Easter Eggs
Q.
Dear Guru,
How will my child perform during this year’s Easter egg hunt? How can I guarantee The Win?
Signed,
Holy Redshirter
P.S. Oh yeah. Almost forgot… Praise Jesus!
A.
What astute questions! Rest easy. You have come to the right place. Clearly if anyone ever deserved The Win it is your precocious child. Something is cracked and/or smells around here and it’s not just the eggs.
The answer, of course, depends on a complex variety of factors including your child’s gifts, level of motivation, and unfortunately, no small amount of luck. With proper planning, however, the nefarious element of random chance can be minimized.
What I mean to say is, just how far are you and your child willing to go? How badly do you really want those coveted eggs?
Guru’s Little Helper
I’ve talked in the past about how negativity saved my life. And you can, too!
Come to think of it, that was the day I became the self-entitled self-titled “Guru” of Negativity and earned a Participant ribbon. That was the red letter date in Guru history.
But, if you think about it, negativity can do so much more than simply save your life. I’m talking about the really important stuff. Forget trivialities like staying alive! (Unless you are one of Bee Gees. That’s the only exception and even they don’t do it right.)
Negativity can do the little things, too. Like brightening your day.
I’ll try to think of an example.
Over on yonder shelf sits a massive jar of some life-giving substance that you desperately crave. For the sake of argument, let’s say that it contains granulated sugar. Yeah, that’ll do.
The top of the jar has a screw top lid. So what do you do?
Naturally you reach out and grab that jar, using your krav maga death grip with your overly tiny little hand, and, this is the important part, leech a hold on nothing but the lid.
This is a natural instinct among humans. (Or so I’ve heard. I’m not actually one of you.) It’s an act of faith and trust. It’s a little voice inside you shouting for all to hear, “See? I trust the person before me put the lid back on and secured it tight. I have faith.” This is silly, but especially so when you live alone and are talking about yourself. (That’s the last person you should trust.)
Then what do you do? You hold that sucker out at arm’s length. The jar weighs .01 metric tons and the physics of holding it out that far exponentially increases the amount of force required to keep it aloft.
If that lid comes off what happens next is a certainty. The jar will impact the floor, glass will fly outward in a shrapnel pattern, both eyeballs will be cut out of your face, and the sugar will reach critical mass causing a mini-nuclear explosion that, albeit sweet and delicious, will make one permanently sticky.
This is where negativity comes in. It says, “If you pick that up, you will fail.” It then invites you to picture in your mind what was just described in the previous paragraph.
To negativity you should listen. Get off your ass, walk all the way across the room, grab that sucker, and screw the lid back on tight before attempting anything foolhardy and foolish, fool!
You’re welcome.
Lard Fail
Out in the street in front of our drive was a sawhorse festooned with a garish sign and, get this, a festive baby blue helium balloon dancing playfully in the air.
My wife knows how to throw a party.
“A balloon,” I said. “Where the hell did you get a helium balloon?”
“At the dollar store.”
“Huh. How much did it cost?”
Dripping with more sweat than Mike Rowe driving a Ford Truck, I had just muscled tons of our most useless crap out on the front lawn. My normally well-oiled brain wasn’t exactly firing on all cylinders.
Weird how it was that moment the heavens decided to deluge our asses and stuff. I welled up with despair as I watched the rain beating down against that little helium balloon. I’m proud to say it didn’t fight back much. Soon it lay there, on the ground, like a fresh chunk of roadkill.
It wasn’t a winner, but I knew how to handle that. I dashed out in the rain and pinned it with a “participant” ribbon taken from my trophy collection. It popped and was gone for good.
Our “yard sale” was officially underway.
Continue reading →
V is for Vexting
There I was, laying in bed this morning, and minding my own business. Suddenly a shot rang out.
Oh, wait. No, scratch that. Sorry, I got a little too carried away there for a moment.
I was laying in bed and thinking ahead to this very post. What was I going to do with the letter “V” in the A-Z Blogger Challenge? In my mind I arranged different vowels after “V” and let different V-words come to mind. Eventually I settled on the word “vex.” Yes, I thought, mostly to myself. I can probably do something with “vex.” And then: discovery! I invented the word “vexting.”
Or so I thought.
Curse you, internets!
I fired up Google and punched it in. And there it was, on the Urban Dictionary, circa Dec. 16, 2009. Holy shit.
Why can’t any of my inventions ever be original? We’ve all got our special gifts, talents, and God-given abilities, right? Mine seems to be inventing things that already exist. A talent like that is a curiosity, a mere trifle. It doesn’t seem to do much when it comes to lavishing power and riches on yours truly.
By now, though, that’s something I’ve mostly accepted and adjusted to.
Vexting was gonna be another word in my so-called “demotivational dictionary.” It was gonna be something.
vexting – the act of making others angry while texting
Ex: “Did you see that son of a bitch? He was vexting all over the sidewalk – while pushing a baby in a stroller! That makes me sick!”
Well, you heard it here second, folks, and from a classic all-American duplicate. [dialing] “Hello, Universe? Yes, this is the little speck of an Earthling known as Tom. I’ll take another participant ribbon, please. Thanks.” [click]
I apologize. My treatment of the letter “V” in this challenge has been deplorable. I will therefore have to provide a bonus entry to try to salvage the situation.
Does anybody here remember Vera Lynn?
Does anybody here remember Vera Lynn
Remember how she said that
We would meet again
Some sunny day
Vera! Vera!
What has become of you
Does anybody else in here
Feel the way I do?
Says Wikipedia:
Dame Vera Lynn, DBE (born Vera Margaret Welch on 20 March 1917) is an English singer and actress whose musical recordings and performances were enormously popular during World War II. During the war she toured Egypt, India and Burma, giving outdoor concerts for the troops. She was called “The Forces’ Sweetheart”; the songs most associated with her are “We’ll Meet Again” and “The White Cliffs of Dover”. She remained popular after the war, appearing on radio and television in the UK and the United States and recording such hits as “Auf Wiederseh’n Sweetheart” and “My Son, My Son”. In 2009 she became the oldest living artist to make it to No. 1 on the British album chart, at the age of 92. She has devoted much time and energy to charity work connected with ex-servicemen, disabled children and breast cancer. She is still held in great affection by veterans of the Second World War and in 2000 was named the Briton who best exemplified the spirit of the twentieth century.
She’s still alive, too. 94 years old and still going. Wow.
This is my “V” post for the April 2011 “A to Z Blogging Challenge.”
2010 in review courtesy of the WordPress fairy
My inbox was visited this morning by the WordPress fairy who brought the following bits of good news. As far as I know, I’ve never once in my entire life been rated as “wow,” so that feels pretty good. I can’t help but wonder if everyone got that same rating, though. If so, then this merely represents yet another “participant” ribbon to add to my already impressive collection. –Tom
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.
Crunchy numbers
About 3 million people visit the Taj Mahal every year. This blog was viewed about 29,000 times in 2010. If it were the Taj Mahal, it would take about 4 days for that many people to see it.
In 2010, there were 516 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 694 posts. There were 489 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 19mb. That’s about 1 pictures per day.
The busiest day of the year was September 9th with 4,115 views. The most popular post that day was The Tuesday employee whiteboard.
Where did they come from?
The top referring sites in 2010 were reddit.com, WordPress Dashboard, wordpress.com, google.com, and melcarroll.blogspot.com.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for angry songs, misery motorsports, sideways 2, top angry songs, and best angry songs.
Attractions in 2010
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
The Tuesday employee whiteboard September 2010
11 comments and 1 Like on WordPress.com
My list of top five angry songs January 2010
8 comments
A crash and a mob August 2010
20 comments and 1 Like on WordPress.com
Sideways 2 – Merlot Strikes Back May 2010
6 comments
Ancestry.com can eat my ass March 2010
10 comments
Shouts from the Abyss 
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