When your loving wife is out of sorts all evening, and you finally find out that she’s upset because the grocery store she makes a quick run through to pick things up for dinner has been re-organized and she had to hunt for things, do not, under any circumstances tell her she’s being silly.  Even if she is indeed being silly.  Actually, especially if she is being silly.

Also, when you find yourself in a hole for telling her she’s being silly, do not invest in a good pick and shovel by shrugging your shoulders and saying “I guess you’ll just have to figure it out and change your pattern.”.  She’s not looking for advice, she’s looking for a sympathetic ear.

I really ought to just build my own shun bench for the living room.  Something in a nice walnut would do nicely, I think.

how much marriage is like the Act of Contrition?

What have I done?
What have I failed to do?
In thought, word, and/or deed?

I am wholly sorry, and I humbly repent.

Please stop crying. Please?

NASA’s wayward satellite is projected to rain fiery death upon the children of Earth this week.  Or not.  Depends.
Overwhelming odds are that this will drop into a big wet blue thing or hit some unused dirt out in the back of someone’s beyond.  Of course, it would be entertaining if a big chunk of it landed in Central Park or on the lawn of the White House. 

Here are some tips for the impending rain of space debris:

• Stay off of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.  Everyone is saying that’s where it will probably land.
• Lightning sometimes strikes twice.  If you’re in Western Australia, look out.
• Make yourself a good protective garment for your head and stand upright to minimize your exposure and protect that which is exposed. Your headgear should be composed of:

Layer 1 – Tin foil – Self Explanatory
Layer 2 – Ball Cap – Comfort and shade for the eyes
Layer 3 – Kevlar – Self explanatory
Layer 4 – Black Duct Tape or a light fighter Cabbage Patch Hat – Break up your outline

• No matter how good a center fielder you were, do not attempt to catch bits of satellite as they fall.  Wait for the first bounce.
• Same goes for you soccer players.  No headers, unless you’ve done a really good job with your headgear.
• You will however gain unheard amounts of street cred of you’re successful in shooting down satellite pieces as they fall with your skeet gun and get it on film.
• Satellite pieces may be dangerous, so let them cool completely before gathering them up and reselling them to the local scrap yard.
• If any of the pieces glow, use them to make designer jewelry.  ThinkGeek would jump on that in a New York minute.
• If after handling pieces of the satellite you are detained by the government, assume that it’s an Andromeda Strain kind of situation and you are doomed.

So there you are!  Good luck, and I’ll see you all at the Lord Humongus costume party after all the excitement.

Dear Jerks,

I’m glad to hear that you have been released from your confinement in Iran.  I’m sure that your family and friends here in the United States will be happy to see your ignorant butts after so many months away. 

Now that you and the young lady that accompanied you on your little nature hike in the mountains of Northern Iraq are safe, I have a few things to say:

You went for a bit of hiking in a war zone next to the border with a country that distinctly dislikes people from our country, and seemed shocked that you ended up in a jail cell.  What in hell were you thinking, and what were you thinking with?  Northern Iraq is safer than the rest of the country, but that’s like saying that Hollywood is safer than Compton.  Both are a bit scary for skinny little college kids like you. 

Oh, I see from the news report that you all went to the University of California at Berkeley.  That explains a lot.  Now that I know that, I can see why you would have believed that the world outside of the parts controlled by the United States are a great place to go wandering.

I sincerely hope that the government sends you a bill for all of the time and money spent trying to bribe your way out of whatever hellhole you were being held in.  It is my sincere hope that you spend the rest of your life trying to pay off that quite sizeable debt.  Personally, I would have left your ignorant asses to rot in whatever cesspool they threw you in until you were nothing but a memory as an example to whatever other rich hippie-wannabes that think going to the mid-east for a camping trip is a good idea. 

In the future, when a bit of wanderlust comes over you, and you need to head to the mountains, might I suggest the Appalachian Trail, the Wasatch Front, or the Sierra Nevadas as a destination?  Yeah, you won’t  be able to boast that you hiked through the third world, but at least when you do something stupid we can use our own resources to pull your asses out of a crack.

Wing over at On A Wing and A Whim has landed herself a job!

She’s having quite a year.  She started it off by returning to Alaska and finishing the work to restore and shake down her airplane, then flew it solo from Alaska to her home in the middle of the continental USA, and now she’s back to being a regular taxpayer and supporter of our benevolent welfare state.

Go on over and congratulate a lady who’s found herself a job in this economy!

A kindergartener in Missouri really wowed his teacher at show and tell the other day.  When told to bring in something that’s important to the family, he brought in his mother’s crack pipe and her stash.

Of course, that pipe may be the most important thing in his mom’s life, but she probably ought to have kept it out of the kids’ reach.

Things like this make me wonder if we deserve to be at the top of the food chain.  Here’s hoping the little tyke is an only child.