People! The twelve days of Christmas ain’t over yet! The pipers haven’t even started piping! The wise men are on a pay phone at a rest stop asking for directions! Put those lights back up!
Get back in the Yuletide freaking spirit.
Outside the Baby Bubble
Somewhere in Mesoamerica, around 2000 B.C….
“Dude, are you still working on that calendar?”
“Ugh-huh.”
“You need to take a break. A bunch of us are going out tonight. It’s ladies’ night at the Temple 16. All the corn wine you can drink, and the girls are going huipil-less.”
“Sweet! Who’s going?”
“Me, Kukulcan, Itzananohk’u and Xpiyacoc.”
“What about Kan-xib-yui?”
“Dude, didn’t you hear? He got sacrificed to the Sun God last week.”
“Awww, man. That’s rough.”
“So come on. Let’s go!”
“Nah. I really should finish this calendar.”
“Where’re you at?”
“Let’s see…I started it at August 11, 3114 B.C., and right now I’m up to December 21, 2012.”
“Holy Quetzalcoatl! When will you be done?”
“I don’t know. When I get tired, I guess.”
“So…aren’t you tired yet?”
“Actually, if I see another calendar I’ll start knocking down pyramids.”
“C’mon. Leave it. I got a pound of cacao and twelve seashells in my pocket.”
“That’s good, cause I got zero.”
“Zero? WTF’s that?”
“It’s nothin’, man.”
“Whatever you say. Let’s slash and burn!”
And with that, the mystery behind the ancient Mayan calendar is revealed.
Happy New Year…and many more to come!
Giving to charity makes me feel warm and tingly.
Stationed at the entrance of Stop & Shop today was an elderly man collecting for the American Red Cross, As he stood there in the freezing cold ringing that bell and smiling through three layers of scarves, I had to stop. Fishing around for singles in a purse that Anna dissected all over the kitchen floor moments before, all I now had was a $10 bill. (Well, maybe it wasn’t my ten dollars. Technically, everything in my purse is property of the Bank of America.) Bursting with the spirit of Christmas and good will toward men, I stuffed that whole $10 bill in the donation box anyway, and I felt good about it. After all, the CEO of the Red Cross has a family to feed, too.
Has anyone seen my GPS locater?
It’s under $50 and fits in the palm of your hand, and it’s guaranteed to change life on earth as we know it. Yesterday a good friend of mine unveiled the invention I’ve spent my whole life waiting for. It’s called the Audiovox ECCO Keychain Personal GPS, and at first glance, it is the magical device that is finally going to restore order to my chaos. And I found it right on the QVC website.
Click on it, and it comes with a promotional video. Right away, a handsome yet effeminate QVC representative had me hooked.
“Ever been to the mall and forgot where your car is?” he began.
I leaned a little bit closer to the computer screen.
“Ever been to the beach with your friends and forgot where everyone was sitting?” he continued.
A line of drool started to form from my bottom lip to the keyboard.
“This is a great item for those of us who are a little bit bird-brained,” he quipped.
If I was still single, this guy would have himself a stalker.
All you do is stand at your destination and hit a button, he explained. Walk away, and when it’s time to return, a little compass and GPS tells you which way to go.
My precious, what took you so long?
We all know that everything that’s not attached to a chain should come with a locator—pens, purses, wallets, glasses, marker caps, steaming coffee cups, keys. I’ve been watching Animal Planet for six consecutive days because I still can’t find the remote control. Yet the only thing that comes with a locator is a cordless phone. Without it, I’d have to buy a new phone every week.
It’s not that this device would help me find any of these things. But it was guaranteed to locate the one thing in my life that winds up lost the most: me.
I couldn’t order that keychain GPS locator fast enough. But in the time it took me to locate my purse and fumble through it in search of my credit card, it occurred to me that a keychain locator is, essentially, attached to a keychain. And it is a rare occasion that I can tell you, at any given moment, where my keychain is.
The only solution, of course, is to wait around for someone to invent a keychain GPS locator locator. And after I lose that, a keychain GPS locator locator locator. You can see where this is going.
And with that, my love affair with the QVC representative and his mesmerizing sales pitch ended even quicker than it began.
When it comes right down to it, the final solution lies in a satellite-controlled, microchip mind-locator surgically implanted somewhere between the hemispheres in our brains. “Lost your mind again? Turn left.”
So overdue is the mind-locator 2000 that I’m not going to bother to patent it. I’ll leave its creation to someone of a more efficient, non-birdbrained caliber. And as soon as it hits the market, I will be the first one to pull out my credit card. That is, if I can find it.