I jumped online before church to check my email and see if the person I'm designing a site for had sent me what I need to finish their product (while they keep bitching at me that I'm not done, but I don't have all I need... Catch 22 of sorts) and there was a big headline on google news announcing the former Iraqi leader's capture.
I'm not sure what this does for the state of the war there, whether finally with the lassooing of their overlord the people will fall in line and get with the program and put forth their best foot to rebuild their nation instead of constantly blowing stuff up and thwarting any efforts by ANYone, western or eastern, in fixing stuff up. It sure takes the attention away from the Halliburton oil price inflation for a wee bit. Hmm. Nicely timed, my liberal conspiracy-theorist friends might say.
Regardless of what it means going forward, I know what it means looking back. His regime is truly over, there will be no triumphant return to Baghdad with his supporters. Hopefully the coalition can build a democratic entity that can rule all the feuding factions justly and equally. Who am I kidding though. I'm a pessimist when it comes to this region. And I've long held a rather hands-off policy. Since we got into it, and we're there, I'd like to see it all finished up and over with and us getting out. For good. Doubt that will happen anytime soon though. This capture brings us one step closer, and for that I'm grateful.
Geoff's new obsession is Mad Libs.
I guess they have some at school, and he filled up a whole book of them there. He's got his grammar thing down pat, knows each of the categories (noun, verb, adjective, adverb...) and I can thank School House Rock! CDRom games for that.
So Jessica pulled a book of mad libs out for Geoff and he's been doing them non stop.
I did one with him the other night, and the blank that he needed to give me was "Famous Person."
His answer?
"Brian Wilson."
I started laughing. "You mean as in 'I'm lyin' in bed just like Brian Wilson did," by BNL?"
"Yes. You told me Brian Wilson is a song about a famous singer who went crazy. So he's famous. So I pick Brian Wilson."
Good answer.
So that is now our immediate fill in whenever it asks for "Someone Famous," or "Famous Person (Male)" or any other kind of famousnessness.
I'm still laughing about that. Too darn funny. My son, a mini-me BNL fan.
Today at church we had the first rehersal for the Christmas pageant. Jessica gets to play Caesar (speaking of despots) and Geoff is a shepherd. He has no lines because can't listen, obey, follow through and do what he's supposed to do. Quite annoying for me, as I've now seen the need to volunteer to be a sheep and be in the pageant. There are four shepherds. At one point they do a little star gazing and try to figure out what's that up in the sky. Shepherd one says "It's a bird!" towhit Shepherd three says "Nah, too big for bird." Shepherd two then says "It's a plane!" towhit Shepherd three then says "We don't have planes yet."
So what do you think should naturally come next after bird and plane, for a big laugh?
Well, in the script it doesn't. Whoever wrote this piece tried to write some humor into it and only took it to one level instead of to utter chaos and hilarity, where kids want to go.
Geoff yells the line, "It's SUPERMAN!!!!" in rehersal and they tell him not to. Well, why not. It's funny as heck. I'm disappointed that they won't allow him to be a clown and throw the funniest line ever out into the audience.
He'll do it anyway, I know he will. He got a huge laugh off of it in rehersal, so the bait is set in the humor trap and Geoff will not be able to resist it. I guess I'm the sheep that is supposed to clamp my cloven hooves over his big mouth during the performance, but I doubt it'll work.
Makes me think of Ben Folds Five and the song "Regrets"
"I thought about
sitting on the floor in second grade
I couldn't keep the pace
I thought I was the only one
moving in slow motion
while the other kids knew something I did not
but if I acted like a clown
I thought it'd get me through
it did,
but that don't work no more..."
It wouldn't be so bad if he stopped with "It's Superman." But then he starts dancing around yelling "AAAAH!! Superman's attacking! Superman's attacking! AAAAHHHHH!!!" and it kind of ruins the moment.
We'll see how it goes.
And as for me, I need to find a sheep hat and maybe a cow bell. I'll take the dinger out of the bell but wear it around my neck. And I have a white sweater, but it isn't wooly enough, so I'll have to figure out what to wear to pull off a convincing if not incredibly large sheep.
Any suggestions?
Speaking of church, Doug and I both busted out laughing (almost) during the prayers for the people. The Episcopal church has a Book of Common Prayer, and in it are prayers for everything, every possible condition of life or need or praise and thanks for whatever.
Today's prayers, read by my coworker who makes too much noise in the office and I've whined about her before (but she really is a wonderful nice person and I need to not whine, but that's a whole other story) included prayers for people who travel and it reads as such:
For those who travel on land, on water, or in the air [or through outer space], let us pray to the Lord.
And we both just found the bracketed [meaning it can be omitted] portion about outer space hysterical. I started to giggle, and looked at Doug who already was giggling himself, and the two of us couldn't really proceed with the prayers.
Our reader did omit the part about outer space.
How funny is that? I guess it is really good and nice to pray for astronauts. There are people up there now... perhaps we shouldn't have skipped that part? What if they need prayer, they need our mojo to be sent to them?
But it is funny.
No mention of people who travel under water, as in submariners in the Navy. And no mention of those who travel through time in addition to space. No prayer for Jean Luc, I guess.
I'm still giggling. I'm such a dweeb.
Anyway -- lunch is ready, football is coming on soon. Another class five kill storm is approaching, so I have to make sure we have enough beer to go with all the bread and candles that I bought, and that I have a shovel to bury the bodies of my neighbors when they come to steal all our beer and bread because THEY didn't take the forecast seriously. You know they won't and I'll have to fight them to the death to protect our pumpernickel loaf. And the babka. Chocolate babka because cinnamon is a lesser babka.
No comments:
Post a Comment