Across the pure parabola of joy...

I have been trying to get Doug to start a weblog. The man has some amazingly funny stories to tell. He comes home from work and makes me guffaw with glee as he shares tales of nursing home employment.

But he won't commit. And the blogsphere is so missing out on what could be the second best blog ever (Mr. Garfield's blog would be the hands down greatest ever were he to at least sign up for free blogging at Journalspace).

If Doug ever does cross into the seventh dimension of cyberspace, I want him to name his journal "Across the Pure Parabola of Joy." It is a line from a poem by a haughty Canadian poet character in a P.G. Wodehouse story.

Everyone wants to know "what is a parabola exactly?" And, of course, he can't exactly explain it. (But dictionary.com can! Click here to find out what a parabola is and how it possibly can be... joyous?)

As the story moves on, someone decides to pretend he is this poet so he can gain access to a house and steal a necklace... so it gets even funnier when people start grilling the imposter for reasons why he wrote certain things.

We just think that the pure parabola of joy is funny. It's funny to say outloud, pretending it's something important whilst sweeping arm wide and looking towards the horizon.

So P.G. Wodehouse.

There isn't much to report today. Just one and a half funny anecdotes.

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I went to the drug store at lunchtime today to obtain certain feminine products for my personal consumption and for my daughter (yes, she did, she did start her period and that's an issue for me not to discuss here. She'd kill me if she knew I'd even mentioned it).

As is my wont when I go to CVS, I buy chocolate for the basket in my office. Usually three assortment bags of ... whatever chocolate strikes my fancy. So I did just that and approached the register.

And I am standing there with a huge basket load of tampons and pads, and three giant bags of chocolate.

I look down as I put it all out on the counter and think to myself, "Gah, that looks desperate and crazy, doesn't it?" and I start laughing.

The girl ringing me up looks at me funny (as do most people when I start laughing for apparently no reason) and I say "Yeah, this looks bad, eh? Forty dollars of feminine protection products and thirty dollars worth of chocolate. You must think I'm in a bad way right about now."

"Oh, we don't think about what the customers are buying ma'am," she states, "We're not here to judge."

I was surprised. She didn't smile and say "Uh, yeah, that does look funny." Or perhaps, "Oh, yeah. I know how that feels!"

She got all corporate and semi-preachy at me. And you know what, it broke my heart.

I'm sad that so many people have no sense of humor.

No parabola of joy (she says, sweeping arm wide with hopeful gaze to the horizon of the cabinets above the PC monitor).

I'm hoping that one or two of you, even the guys out there, found this funny and picture me laughing at myself while standing at the counter with an armload of two distinctly different yet inter-connected products.

And for your information, the Chain Supply Manager ate the most chocolate. He's a chocoholic... for chocolate! Again, stealing from the Onion.

Us girls did indulge, but not like this guy! He wondered if you ate 10 pounds of chocolate would you gain 10 pounds. We spent time theorizing what it would be like to eat 10 pounds of lettuce. You wouldn't gain 10 pounds because of the caloric value of the lettuce.

Depending on the caloric value of the Reeses mini peanut butter cups (my personal faves) we figured you may not gain 10 pounds, but you certainly would get sick as hell and puke, so you'd perhaps lose weight in the long run.

I invited him to try out his theory. He said he'd rather continue loving chocolate and never get to the point in life where the sight of it would cause him to recall a horrible day where he puked 10 pounds of chocolate up.

And I'll leave you with that unpleasant image, but let it be known, we were laughing heartily.