I took the Pope into the bathroom with me a week ago, when he was touring the Mid-Atlantic States region. It was sort of an audience, but not arranged by his protocol directors. The Pope went into the bathroom because he was on the cover of TIME magazine that week. As we all know, we want to take reading material into the bathroom when we, uh, plan on spending some time there rather than making a quick papal visit. We would like this to be quality time, but that quality depends on the diet, productivity and output of the sitter.
So I look at the kindly visage of the Holy Father, and I cannot quite shake the notion that he is looking back at me, even though his eyes aren’t directly focused on me. It’s like all those magical media items in the “Harry Potter” movies, where not only do pictures and prints move and make noise, but they interact with you personally. No! Don’t let the Pope see me on the pot! I’m so embarrassed. I put my hand over the Pope’s printed face. To use a more religiously appropriate situation, like an Orthodox ikon this picture is a “window to the soul.” Pope Francis’s image, clad in clean white tissue, made smoother by the work of holy Photoshop, is a transparency. Would I take an Orthodox ikon into the loo? Would I take a lavishly illustrated cooking magazine into the place where the post-digested remains of its recipes ends up?
I have always had the primitive notion that things have consciousness. Depiction is communication. It is listening to me. And as our culture and technology get closer and closer to Harry Potter’s magical world (Internet connection for your dishwasher! For your underwear!) we will reach a point where the Pope could give us a blessing in our private quarters, and really mean it. If things have consciousness, can you insult them? I once said “Go away!” to “Siri,” the robotic voice of my iPhone, and she answered back, “What did I do to offend you?” I hurt a robot’s feelings! I know of people who take their Kindles and iPads into the W.C. with them, endangering their pristine shining screens with the splash of ritual pollution.
I fold up the magazine. TIME is out of time and I will have to attempt another devotional session, helped by more prunes and an apology to Siri. Yes, sorry….I’m TOO POPED TO POOP!
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
Monday, September 28, 2015
Food Rave
You've heard Rants here. A Rant is a complaint, delivering negative feelings. A Rave is the opposite of a Rant: it's an enthusiastic declaration of positive appreciation. So here's a Rave, this one about the foods I love.
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I am holding a little slab of pure deliciousness. It is Orange, of course, but it is not a citrus orange. It is a dried apricot, known as a “slab” because during the drying process the fruit piece settles into a flat puddle of sticky sweetness. You have to forcibly remove the slabs from me or else I eat the whole package contents and get a wicked bellyache. Same with prunes and other items of dried delectability.
I’ve talked about foods I hate (any green vegetable), now I’ll talk about foods I love. Start with appetizers. The “appetizer” word just makes me feel good thinking about it. It is not an “app” that you load on your smartphone, despite how hipster menu-makers describe it. It is a collection of nodules of happy flavor that you and your friends devour first. Whenever I hear the word “jalapeño” in any food description, I know I’m in the right place. The time-honored thing to say when you get a plate of appetizers, especially nacho jalapeño appetizers is, “It’s a whole meal on its own!” Which of course is more than true, but you’ve already eaten it and are going on to the main course. Take a swig of your micro craft draft brew and continue.
Meat! Let’s meat up! There is no food more satisfying for me than meat. I am a confirmed carnivore. I tried being a vegetarian for 6 weeks one year and by the fourth week I was ready to slaughter the next Whole Foods customer I saw. I will never do that again (not slaughtering the customer, that is purely theoretical my friends!). You can prepare meat however you want it, and I will slink up to it on silent paws, waiting for my share. But it’s not just meat that occupies my plate ‘o’ plenty. I will eat potatoes done any old way, even though I hear that a potato comes from a plant. The secret is….cheese.
Cheese! Wonderful fermented curdled crumbly slimy moldy essence of the primal whiteness of dairy! I will eat any food over which cheese has been applied, even tofu. Bleu cheese looks like zombie remains, smells like a swamp, and I adore it. Brie is covered by white fungus: More please. See how the Cheese melts its way through everything I love to eat! I am never without it, except while traveling, when I cannot keep it cool on the road.
We are therefore building to a display of gourmand logic, built upon not those dreary food pyramid groups but on the feastable moment of my favorite treat foods. What has cheese, meat, starch, fried stuff, and peppers all at once, in one magnificent oozing cylinder? The CHEESESTEAK of course. Let me meditate upon this a while. It is a serious matter.
I simply won’t mention dessert. That is for another posting, another time.
I am holding a large container in my hands. It is my Offering to the Gods of Snack. (Or Slack, if you prefer.) It contains mixed dried fruit, almonds and cashews, and a few bits of milk chocolate. It is something I can always eat, as long as I don’t eat too much of it. (See above.) It looks like an old-time lottery or Bingo container from which tokens were picked. I hold the cover down and shake the container vigorously. Then I place it on the Kitchen Table and reach within. Behold, I have won the lottery. I have selected a PRUNE!
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I am holding a little slab of pure deliciousness. It is Orange, of course, but it is not a citrus orange. It is a dried apricot, known as a “slab” because during the drying process the fruit piece settles into a flat puddle of sticky sweetness. You have to forcibly remove the slabs from me or else I eat the whole package contents and get a wicked bellyache. Same with prunes and other items of dried delectability.
I’ve talked about foods I hate (any green vegetable), now I’ll talk about foods I love. Start with appetizers. The “appetizer” word just makes me feel good thinking about it. It is not an “app” that you load on your smartphone, despite how hipster menu-makers describe it. It is a collection of nodules of happy flavor that you and your friends devour first. Whenever I hear the word “jalapeño” in any food description, I know I’m in the right place. The time-honored thing to say when you get a plate of appetizers, especially nacho jalapeño appetizers is, “It’s a whole meal on its own!” Which of course is more than true, but you’ve already eaten it and are going on to the main course. Take a swig of your micro craft draft brew and continue.
Meat! Let’s meat up! There is no food more satisfying for me than meat. I am a confirmed carnivore. I tried being a vegetarian for 6 weeks one year and by the fourth week I was ready to slaughter the next Whole Foods customer I saw. I will never do that again (not slaughtering the customer, that is purely theoretical my friends!). You can prepare meat however you want it, and I will slink up to it on silent paws, waiting for my share. But it’s not just meat that occupies my plate ‘o’ plenty. I will eat potatoes done any old way, even though I hear that a potato comes from a plant. The secret is….cheese.
Cheese! Wonderful fermented curdled crumbly slimy moldy essence of the primal whiteness of dairy! I will eat any food over which cheese has been applied, even tofu. Bleu cheese looks like zombie remains, smells like a swamp, and I adore it. Brie is covered by white fungus: More please. See how the Cheese melts its way through everything I love to eat! I am never without it, except while traveling, when I cannot keep it cool on the road.
We are therefore building to a display of gourmand logic, built upon not those dreary food pyramid groups but on the feastable moment of my favorite treat foods. What has cheese, meat, starch, fried stuff, and peppers all at once, in one magnificent oozing cylinder? The CHEESESTEAK of course. Let me meditate upon this a while. It is a serious matter.
I simply won’t mention dessert. That is for another posting, another time.
I am holding a large container in my hands. It is my Offering to the Gods of Snack. (Or Slack, if you prefer.) It contains mixed dried fruit, almonds and cashews, and a few bits of milk chocolate. It is something I can always eat, as long as I don’t eat too much of it. (See above.) It looks like an old-time lottery or Bingo container from which tokens were picked. I hold the cover down and shake the container vigorously. Then I place it on the Kitchen Table and reach within. Behold, I have won the lottery. I have selected a PRUNE!
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
Jaw-dropping Internet fail! You won't believe what I...
I had a major internet failure. For some reason my connection to the Almighty was interrupted and I had no access to anything in the Cloud of Unknowing. I am ashamed to say that I went into a panic because important work and artistic resources were marooned there with no way to get to them. I am old enough to remember life without the Internet and made plans to resume writing letters, making telephone calls, and shipping art originals to clients. Finally I fled to Starbucks where I knew that the coffeeshop wi-fi would provide me with the caffeinated communion I needed. Yes, they get us one way and another too, with coffee and cookies as well as mainline disinformation injections.
Trudging home from Starbucks I called one of my trusted friends, the net expert who set up my home system in the first place, and begged him for help. He walked me through the protocols for re-setting my router and modem, and lo and behold, with his bidding the Cloud parted and my steady diet of celebrity breasts, cute cats, and Republican propaganda returned to tempt me with lists of "digestive destroyers" and celebrities who are religious. There was no cause for this whole kerfuffle; certainly my internet provider has an endless supply of plausible deniability. Perhaps, as my expert said, a random power surge confused my connector gadgets, sending them scurrying under the bed rather than face the fiberoptic whiplash.
But now they are sitting there flickering away with their eerie greenish rows of glowing eyeballs, delivering videos of more cute furry creatures that can rip your face off. I want my celebrity sharks, my lurid crimes, and the Pope, all sharing the same screen!. And why not an earthquake or two as well.
Trudging home from Starbucks I called one of my trusted friends, the net expert who set up my home system in the first place, and begged him for help. He walked me through the protocols for re-setting my router and modem, and lo and behold, with his bidding the Cloud parted and my steady diet of celebrity breasts, cute cats, and Republican propaganda returned to tempt me with lists of "digestive destroyers" and celebrities who are religious. There was no cause for this whole kerfuffle; certainly my internet provider has an endless supply of plausible deniability. Perhaps, as my expert said, a random power surge confused my connector gadgets, sending them scurrying under the bed rather than face the fiberoptic whiplash.
But now they are sitting there flickering away with their eerie greenish rows of glowing eyeballs, delivering videos of more cute furry creatures that can rip your face off. I want my celebrity sharks, my lurid crimes, and the Pope, all sharing the same screen!. And why not an earthquake or two as well.
Saturday, September 19, 2015
The American Parking Lot
THE AMERICAN PARKING LOT
The parking lot where I shop for groceries is like a large inclined chessboard crowded with huge chunky pieces that weigh tons. Inside each of these pieces is angry, frustrated chess player who can’t get out. They got on the board, but now they can’t find a space. Time to run the Parking Lot Game, also known as “Is that green pepper really that necessary?” The Parking Lot was built about 30 years ago, when cars were boring little boxes, a design transition from the enormous flat wheeled platters of the ‘50s and ‘60s. Now, the lot is filled with our version of cars as TANKS. Yes, our cars want to look like they could go to war, and the Parking Lot is one of our battlefields.
The basic family car unit here in the USA is the SUV, and with the attitude of the frustrated driver within, the true designation is “F.U.V.” which you may be rude enough to figure out…Of course I nicely view that “F” as standing for Futility, that is, “Sport Futility Vehicle.” So you rush along the shrunken alleyways between the rows of family armored personnel carriers looking for a space to put your own conveyance and LOOK THERE’S A SPACE! Here comes the face off. Someone else, at an equal distance, has their eye on that space too. But knock it off, Volvo jockey, I was here first, by at least two seconds. So I am now faced with the geometric problem of fitting a large rectangle into a smaller rectangle which leaves enough room for me to squeeze out of my car without crushing a limb or two. Which means I have to do a 27-point turn, backing up, and back, and up, and back, and up, and watch those parking lot lines on the pavement, they’re there for a reason. You get one foot (that’s 12 inches) on either side of your car which you have somehow managed to leverage in between the Lexus and the Acura wagons. Here we go! Don’t hit any of those giant baby carriages, black armored tanks in which somewhere is a baby, hidden away with the rocket launcher.
I squirm butt-first out of my car, flat against my neighbor, and I go to the market for my healthy, organic, everything-except-the-price low supplies. I drag my recyclable paper bags to the back of my own sportless vehicle. Then I squirm in again, kind of like a fancy wine cork opener. Open the door and it touches the shiny finish of that BMW HOPE THEY DIDN’T SEE ME did I make a mark on their German trophy wagon? Try to back out. Oh Gawd what if I hit the Explorer next to me? The secret about these expensive FUV’s is that they are surprisingly fragile. They are not made of steel. No flaming blast furnace created the chassis or armor of this would-be safari bomber. Its body parts and bumpers are made of plastic. Even if you bump it just a little bit, the plastic can lose its paint coating and crack. Where are those charging rhinos when you need them? At least they’re, like, natural, right? So it’s time to exit. But wait, there’s something in the way. You can’t see it, and you can’t hear it. It slinks along silently until you’ve nearly crushed it, or if you’re walking, it has nearly crushed you. Yes, it’s the Creeping PRIUS. Electricity and gas in an unnerving combination….saved for another later rant. Escaped! Escaped from the Parking Lot of Chaos! But oh no…I forgot to buy the toilet paper!
The parking lot where I shop for groceries is like a large inclined chessboard crowded with huge chunky pieces that weigh tons. Inside each of these pieces is angry, frustrated chess player who can’t get out. They got on the board, but now they can’t find a space. Time to run the Parking Lot Game, also known as “Is that green pepper really that necessary?” The Parking Lot was built about 30 years ago, when cars were boring little boxes, a design transition from the enormous flat wheeled platters of the ‘50s and ‘60s. Now, the lot is filled with our version of cars as TANKS. Yes, our cars want to look like they could go to war, and the Parking Lot is one of our battlefields.
The basic family car unit here in the USA is the SUV, and with the attitude of the frustrated driver within, the true designation is “F.U.V.” which you may be rude enough to figure out…Of course I nicely view that “F” as standing for Futility, that is, “Sport Futility Vehicle.” So you rush along the shrunken alleyways between the rows of family armored personnel carriers looking for a space to put your own conveyance and LOOK THERE’S A SPACE! Here comes the face off. Someone else, at an equal distance, has their eye on that space too. But knock it off, Volvo jockey, I was here first, by at least two seconds. So I am now faced with the geometric problem of fitting a large rectangle into a smaller rectangle which leaves enough room for me to squeeze out of my car without crushing a limb or two. Which means I have to do a 27-point turn, backing up, and back, and up, and back, and up, and watch those parking lot lines on the pavement, they’re there for a reason. You get one foot (that’s 12 inches) on either side of your car which you have somehow managed to leverage in between the Lexus and the Acura wagons. Here we go! Don’t hit any of those giant baby carriages, black armored tanks in which somewhere is a baby, hidden away with the rocket launcher.
I squirm butt-first out of my car, flat against my neighbor, and I go to the market for my healthy, organic, everything-except-the-price low supplies. I drag my recyclable paper bags to the back of my own sportless vehicle. Then I squirm in again, kind of like a fancy wine cork opener. Open the door and it touches the shiny finish of that BMW HOPE THEY DIDN’T SEE ME did I make a mark on their German trophy wagon? Try to back out. Oh Gawd what if I hit the Explorer next to me? The secret about these expensive FUV’s is that they are surprisingly fragile. They are not made of steel. No flaming blast furnace created the chassis or armor of this would-be safari bomber. Its body parts and bumpers are made of plastic. Even if you bump it just a little bit, the plastic can lose its paint coating and crack. Where are those charging rhinos when you need them? At least they’re, like, natural, right? So it’s time to exit. But wait, there’s something in the way. You can’t see it, and you can’t hear it. It slinks along silently until you’ve nearly crushed it, or if you’re walking, it has nearly crushed you. Yes, it’s the Creeping PRIUS. Electricity and gas in an unnerving combination….saved for another later rant. Escaped! Escaped from the Parking Lot of Chaos! But oh no…I forgot to buy the toilet paper!
Sunday, September 13, 2015
Night People
Night People
Goodnight, sweet people of the day, hard workers while the sun is up, obedient to Nature and how the world is run. Sunlight and a few moments of twilight, a well-deserved dinner, and goodnight as you sink into your soft bed and pleasant dreams.
It’s our turn now. We are the night people and we work in darkness.
We work in darkness where you don’t see us, but we are there when the terrors and beasts of the night come after you: First responders, police, firefighters, soldiers and sailors near and far, people used to the darkness.
We work in darkness caring for day people stranded injured or sick on the dark shore: nurses, doctors on call, emergency room personnel. We haul and roll out the boxes of goods to re-stock the shelves that you emptied. We clean things that you soiled.
We maintain through the dark night of the technological soul the electricity and gas that keep you warm or cool, keeps your food in safety, keeps the water pure. We are there underneath day’s happy home, like secret animals burrowing in the dirt.
But that is easy. Easy to praise a nurse or a firefighter. Easy to praise the people who are required to work through the night, for one noble cause or another. Saving lives is obvious. Good enough.
Who populates the night? Who works in shadows? Once again, the underworld of transgressors and thieves, prostitutes and dealers, makes it easy to separate your sunny self. Bad people work in shadows.
Still too easy. We work in shadows. Your breakfast is our dinner, without the pleasantries. Our pillows are lit with morning light. Our clock settings would appall you…Ohmygod he goes to bed at 9 AM!! Wakes up at 3 PM! What a lazy bum! Or weird, like a vampire or an owl fleeing the light of reason.
Meet the night shift: At restaurants and gas stations and convenience stores open 24/7. Security guards and watchmen. Entertainers and gamers and casino workers. The casinos and the gamerooms never close. The computer programmer trying to make a deadline. The sysadmin waiting for trouble. The night clerk at that luxury hotel where you sleep soundly. The technicians at communication centers, telephones, television stations, power plants. The truck driver on the big road, the engineer on the night train, the prison guard. You may not know these people are there, you may even dislike them, but they are on the job, and you wouldn’t do it even if someone paid you.
But the worst are those “creative” types. There they are, drawing on that comic book page, writing a chapter of a mystery novel, composing a piece of music that may never be heard. Why are they up doing that stuff at 3 AM? Or even 6 AM? A “good” writer will keep 9 to 5 hours like a “good” worker, right? What justification do these low-earning parasites have for working after midnight? Because their day job keeps them occupied during the “real” workday, someone might sensibly say. But some of them don’t even have day jobs. It’s one deadline, one contract, one gig after the next. And they CHOOSE to work through the quiet night and into the harsh morning light. Perverse and unhealthy.
The sky is turning a sickly shade of greenish blue. The chapter remains unfinished, the frame as yet unfilled, the color unmixed, the notes unharmonized. Here comes that mean old sun. Hide, night friends, don’t let the grinning burning sun see you, until your time mercifully returns.
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This “Night People” rant was inspired by a piece by the great American humorist Jean Shepherd (1921-1999) published in MAD magazine in April 1957. It was illustrated by the brilliant artist and cartoonist Wally Wood. The article was titled “The Night People vs. “Creeping Meatballism””. In it, Shepherd riffed on the absurdities of his day, whether silly car designs (now treasured collectors’ items!) inane advertising, or deceptive product packaging. It was not about the literal “night people” who work through the night, but about conformity and lack of imagination which “night people” rebelled against and “day people” dumbly accepted. I am writing about a more literal, real night world. There are plenty more absurdities for many a night’s orange rant.
Friday, September 11, 2015
Healthy Eating
I am in the produce section of Whole Giant Harris Weg Safe Joe’s and I am paralyzed. Not that I am incapable of moving; if the store was on fire I’d certainly be able to run away, holding whatever I could save from the cookies section. But I am in the produce area, and apples are not usually cited as inducing paralysis, unless you’re staring at them with the intent on eating something but cannot make a decision. Here I am, ostensibly grocery shopping, but in reality I am having an epic moral conflict, which is something I have every time I go into a food market.
I’m told by anything that emits words that I must “eat healthy” and put more fruits and vegetables in my diet. Here they are, but I can’t bring myself to buy and eat them. Why’s that? Because most of ‘em taste terrible to me, and some of ‘em have a texture I can’t even swallow, like apple skin, which I am convinced is some sort of natural plastic coating. Broccoli, squash, cucumbers, green stuff: it all tastes like DIRT to me, even the frozen ones. People who are privileged to go to farmer’s markets and bring back real life-like vegetables assure me that if I ate enough of these, I’d get used to them. Well, I’ve tried. Over and over and over again. Not only do vegetables taste bitter and dirty to me, they give me a bellyache if I eat more than one or two “servings.” They get me coming and going, if you know what I mean. I don’t even like carrots, and they’re ORANGE!
But the store is full of stuff I love to eat. Tuna fish out of a can. Mayonnaise. Campbell’s Chunky Soup. Frozen meatballs. Cheese of every variety. Triscuits, in multiple flavors! Guacamole and hummus. Chili in a can. Chocolate chip cookies. Great stuff and all of it notorious. It’s too fatty. It’s too sweet. It’s too salty. It’s full of empty carbohydrates. (Who emptied them?) It’s not fresh-made. I have a rule that I follow for “healthy eating.” It goes like this: “If I love it, it’s bad for me. If I hate it and it tastes like dirt, it’s good for me.” Biological science backs this up. The food-industrial complex wants to sell us on stuff we are evolved to crave, blah blah blah. So not only do these prepared foods taste good, they are part of the Evil Empire of Evolution.
What to do, Mr. Cabbage, what to do? I know I should eat this or that colorful dirt spawn, but I still haven’t bought anything and it’s getting dark outside. Little old ladies are asking me if I’m OK. I gotta get moving. And, yes, I’m hungry. What goes in the basket? The same old thing. Cheese. Sparkling water. Two reddish apples, in various states of solidity. Hummus. (A chick pea is a vegetable, sort of, right?) A box of Triscuits, the low salt kind that looks and tastes like an outdoor woven chair cushion. Nothing green. At least not tonight.
I’m told by anything that emits words that I must “eat healthy” and put more fruits and vegetables in my diet. Here they are, but I can’t bring myself to buy and eat them. Why’s that? Because most of ‘em taste terrible to me, and some of ‘em have a texture I can’t even swallow, like apple skin, which I am convinced is some sort of natural plastic coating. Broccoli, squash, cucumbers, green stuff: it all tastes like DIRT to me, even the frozen ones. People who are privileged to go to farmer’s markets and bring back real life-like vegetables assure me that if I ate enough of these, I’d get used to them. Well, I’ve tried. Over and over and over again. Not only do vegetables taste bitter and dirty to me, they give me a bellyache if I eat more than one or two “servings.” They get me coming and going, if you know what I mean. I don’t even like carrots, and they’re ORANGE!
But the store is full of stuff I love to eat. Tuna fish out of a can. Mayonnaise. Campbell’s Chunky Soup. Frozen meatballs. Cheese of every variety. Triscuits, in multiple flavors! Guacamole and hummus. Chili in a can. Chocolate chip cookies. Great stuff and all of it notorious. It’s too fatty. It’s too sweet. It’s too salty. It’s full of empty carbohydrates. (Who emptied them?) It’s not fresh-made. I have a rule that I follow for “healthy eating.” It goes like this: “If I love it, it’s bad for me. If I hate it and it tastes like dirt, it’s good for me.” Biological science backs this up. The food-industrial complex wants to sell us on stuff we are evolved to crave, blah blah blah. So not only do these prepared foods taste good, they are part of the Evil Empire of Evolution.
What to do, Mr. Cabbage, what to do? I know I should eat this or that colorful dirt spawn, but I still haven’t bought anything and it’s getting dark outside. Little old ladies are asking me if I’m OK. I gotta get moving. And, yes, I’m hungry. What goes in the basket? The same old thing. Cheese. Sparkling water. Two reddish apples, in various states of solidity. Hummus. (A chick pea is a vegetable, sort of, right?) A box of Triscuits, the low salt kind that looks and tastes like an outdoor woven chair cushion. Nothing green. At least not tonight.
Tuesday, September 8, 2015
Welcome to Orangeness
ORANGENESS has arrived!
"--ly Ballou here, introducing the revival of Pyracantha's humorous rant blog. Is this thing on?" Tap tap tap buzz "It's Google, everything runs perfectly and the instructions are crystal clear! Right, Bob and Ray?" With this I honor the immortal Boston comedy duo of "Bob and Ray" who filled the radio world with giggles for decades, making fun of the very media which supported them. If they had known about Google, they would have made fun of it, too.
I've been wanting to revive my old humor rant blog, "PyRants," for some time and now almost 8 years later, why not. Unlike my venerable "Art By-Products" which will continue to provide worthy visual sketch content, "Orangeness" is about the laughs and the absurdity. Ten things I'll be talking about on "Orangeness" (Number Eight will melt your heart!): 1.fashion, 2.food, 3.writing, 4.pop culture, 5.music, 6.trendiness, 7.weirdness, 8. cheesesteaks, 9. coffee, and 10. random stuff that happens to me. I might talk about politics and religion, but it better be funny, because nothing is funny about religion nowadays. I don't know much about politics, but that doesn't stop anybody from talking about it, so why not me too.
Since I've spent at least fifteen Google-icious minutes setting this Blog up, I fan myself with tiredness, with the vapors in front of this awesome heat-producing Apple iMac Truck. And my first post I plunder from Facebook because this is the kind of stuff I plunder from my own archives. I wrote it just yesterday, except this is today, but I'm still up, so it's still yesterday even if it's well past midnight if you get my drift.
BEING ORANGE: The jacket.
Orange Jackets. I have 4 of them. One is black and orange and is a Baltimore Orioles fan jacket. (Baseball dual citizenship if I follow the O's.) The next is a Lands End quilted jacket which can be worn on September 28. Earlier than this, it's too warm. Later than this, it's too cold. Next is a durable bright orange L.L. Bean Jacket with two and a half tiny pockets. It says, "Don't shoot me. I am not a deer." Last is my Lands End winter jacket which is a marvel of orangeness and can be worn in the winter time while the hook and loop closures on its numerous pockets shred my orange scarf. I never have enough orange stuff and since other people hate it and don't buy it, I always get it at a discount. And that's all the Orangeness for tonight.
New posts to Orangeness about once a week, more or less, until I run out of humor or get tired of it.
"--ly Ballou here, introducing the revival of Pyracantha's humorous rant blog. Is this thing on?" Tap tap tap buzz "It's Google, everything runs perfectly and the instructions are crystal clear! Right, Bob and Ray?" With this I honor the immortal Boston comedy duo of "Bob and Ray" who filled the radio world with giggles for decades, making fun of the very media which supported them. If they had known about Google, they would have made fun of it, too.
I've been wanting to revive my old humor rant blog, "PyRants," for some time and now almost 8 years later, why not. Unlike my venerable "Art By-Products" which will continue to provide worthy visual sketch content, "Orangeness" is about the laughs and the absurdity. Ten things I'll be talking about on "Orangeness" (Number Eight will melt your heart!): 1.fashion, 2.food, 3.writing, 4.pop culture, 5.music, 6.trendiness, 7.weirdness, 8. cheesesteaks, 9. coffee, and 10. random stuff that happens to me. I might talk about politics and religion, but it better be funny, because nothing is funny about religion nowadays. I don't know much about politics, but that doesn't stop anybody from talking about it, so why not me too.
Since I've spent at least fifteen Google-icious minutes setting this Blog up, I fan myself with tiredness, with the vapors in front of this awesome heat-producing Apple iMac Truck. And my first post I plunder from Facebook because this is the kind of stuff I plunder from my own archives. I wrote it just yesterday, except this is today, but I'm still up, so it's still yesterday even if it's well past midnight if you get my drift.
BEING ORANGE: The jacket.
Orange Jackets. I have 4 of them. One is black and orange and is a Baltimore Orioles fan jacket. (Baseball dual citizenship if I follow the O's.) The next is a Lands End quilted jacket which can be worn on September 28. Earlier than this, it's too warm. Later than this, it's too cold. Next is a durable bright orange L.L. Bean Jacket with two and a half tiny pockets. It says, "Don't shoot me. I am not a deer." Last is my Lands End winter jacket which is a marvel of orangeness and can be worn in the winter time while the hook and loop closures on its numerous pockets shred my orange scarf. I never have enough orange stuff and since other people hate it and don't buy it, I always get it at a discount. And that's all the Orangeness for tonight.
New posts to Orangeness about once a week, more or less, until I run out of humor or get tired of it.
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