Ever notice how it's the little things in life that amuse us so much? More to the point, ever notice how it's the silly little idiocies in life that amuse us more than anything else? Well, this is not as much ''the little blog that could'' as it is ''the blog that enjoys going up the down escalator in your local mall.'' Will it have anything of real importance? No, probably not. But enjoy the ride never the less!

 
Today finds me officially amused.

It also finds me $200 richer than I was yesterday, and with one less pair of socks thanks to a quartet of Shih-tzu puppies who mistook those socks for chewtoys. This does admittedly bring my now not-so-numerous sock population to a near endangered level. Socks for me always seem to be in a near-constant threat of extinction, even if 4 Shih-tzu puppies are not around to help wipe out the species. It boggles me whenever I try to comprehend how two days ago I had 7 healthy pairs of socks, and today I now have only 2 pairs.

Did they migrate to Florida? Did they spontaneously combust? Are those unscrupulous sock gnomes to blame for this?

The world may never know.

Back to my amusement, it all came out of a peculiar urge a few days ago to start watching the Indiana Jones movies. Ah, the classics of my childhood! I could spend the next twenty-six-and-a-half paragraphs gushing about what makes Indy's film adventures so great, but then you could just as easily surf an online film review site. And they get paid to gush about Indy for twenty-six-and-a-half paragraphs. My logic: if you're reading a review I wrote which is that long, I should be seeing some sort of financial return. Unless I'm that obsessed and have clippings of Harrison Ford glued onto photos with me in them. In which case, you all should probably back out of this little bit of nowhere, bearing in mind I can in fact smell fear.

This afternoon was spent watching "The Temple of Doom", and in the opening act we see Indy running afoul of some ne'er-do-wells, and after making a few comments with his fists, Indy discreetly leaves the night club through the nearest third-storey window. Now I'm sure someone else has noticed this before. I'm more than willing to bet that this in-joke was first noticed in the theatres years ago. But I only just noticed it now, so humour me, okay?

Given how the Indy movies are a collaboration of actor Harrison Ford, director Steven Spielberg, and writer/producer George Lucas, it seems only fitting that someone slips in a Star Wars reference somewhere. In "Temple of Doom", it's that Shanghai night club. Of all the names it could have been, they chose to call it:

Obi-Wan.

Yes indeed, I am officially amused.
posted by Phillip at 4:55 PM

 
For a moment, the word of the day could very well have been: "AAAAARRRRGGGHH!!!" (Give or take an exclamation point, of course)

This was brought on by an inherent lack of mayonnaise for my sandwich at lunchtime, which unto itself was a problem since the deli meat in question was chicken. And not just any sort of generic chicken deli meat, but black forest chicken meat. I'm not entirely sure what breeds of flightless poultry live in the forest wilds of east Europe (as the term "black forest" would tend to imply), but they go very well with mayonnaise. Upon discovering the mayonnaise and lack thereof, I went through the usual stages of panic:

1. Curiousity. ("That's funny, I could have sworn it was here on the top shelf.")

2. Consternation. ("Dammit, this is no longer funny. Where is it?")

3. Denial. ("There must still be mayonnaise here. I couldn't have finished the jar that fast!")

4. Withdrawal. ("Can't...breathe...without mayonnaise...on sandwich!")

5. Fear. ("Did someone steal my mayonnaise?!")

6. Even more fear. ("They could still be in the house! My mustard could be next!")

7. Self-preservation. ("Well, better the mustard than me.")

8. And finally, calm logic. ("I swear I'll hunt down the bastard responsible, and give him a lesson in tantric yoga with this 2x4!!")

In the end, someone had just left the mayonnaise out on the counter, and I in my blind panic and homicidal notions had simply failed to notice its innocuous presence. So all was well, and the potential "AAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!" day was averted.

Now some of you may be scratching your heads right now and asking yourselves, "Why not just go with the mustard then?" Well, black forest chicken is not spicy, and as such I have found that its taste is better complimented by mayonnaise. That's just me, so don't sic a 'Mustard Is Better!' crusade on me, okay?

As a footnote, the rest of the day has come and gone without another "ARGH!" moment, so I am quite content. I have also learned a valuable lesson about putting away your condiments after you're done using them. I feel sufficiently enlightened and enthralled that I shall sleep much easier tonight, and I hope all of you out there do too.
posted by Phillip at 5:20 PM

 
This morning I sat down to have breakfast at the not-so-breakfasty hour of 11am. This unto itself is neither a mind-boggling nor ground-breaking concept, as I'm fairly certain that somewhere in the world, right at this very instant, someone is eating breakfast when it is in fact closer to lunch. This of course presumes that one has lunch around the noon o'clock mark, and that said lunch does not consist solely of a pack of Skittles.

Back to breakfast, though. As I removed a bowl from the cupboard, I was given pause to reflect on yesterday's bit of nowhere. I had tried something satisfyingly different then by adding chocolate milk to my Special K. And being a slave to recent trends of all shapes and sizes (the current shape being a dodecahedron), I thought to myself: "Hey, I could have sworn I was wearing pants."

But that's another story.

I then thought to myself: "I liked yesterday's slight change of pace. What can I do today to make it even more interesting?" So I stared first at my bowl, then at my box of Special K cereal, then at my carton of chocolate milk. And after a moment I came to a decision. Instead of having a bowl of Special K with chocolate milk, I'd just eliminate the proverbial middle man, and go with a bowl of chocolate milk.

Currently I can feel the sucrose flowing through my system, much like how hypochondriacs claim to be able to feel a virus spreading from one part of their body to the rest. I'm sure to be wired for the next few hours. Likewise I'm also sure that no good can come of this. But what's important is that I tried something new today. At least that's the theory, anyways.
posted by Phillip at 7:27 AM

 
The philosopher Thoreau once said, "Simplify, Simplify."

I readily and heartily agree with this.

Sadly, though, simplifying anything--an issue, a life, a problem--does not make some things any easier to solve or change.
posted by Phillip at 6:22 PM

 
This morning I dared to be different and try something radically new. Well, it wasn't exactly radical when compared to, say, nude bungee-jumping into a large pool of lime-green jello, and it wasn't exactly new, as I'm sure there have been others (most probably between the ages of 4-10) to try this stunt before. And it wasn't much of a daring thing, either, since it was was borne more out of necessity than sheer recklessness.

Just to be different, I had my morning's bowl of Special K with chocolate milk. Mainly because we ran out of regular white milk, and I felt it a great injustice to go through the effort of pouring the cereal into my bowl, only to have to pour it back into its box. That just seems insulting somehow to the Special K, as if I suddenly decided I was too good for it. So, I decided that I might as well try the chocolate milk on my cereal instead.

All I can really say is that it had the effect of a hit of expresso, and I'm very wide awake, thank you very much, and hey let's go ride our bikes! However, I'm suddenly wondering how wired kids are who pour chocolate milk on their cereal and then add 2-3 spoonfuls of sugar. Do their classmates realize that the strange roaring noise they hear isn't in fact some distant ocean but their friend's blood-sugar levels hitting hitherto undiscovered heights? Do their teachers wonder how they managed to get sneaker treads on the ceiling? Does the class gerbil even care?

The world may never know.

posted by Phillip at 6:41 AM

 
It seems appropriate, given the intent of this record of the strange little surreal things in life, that we begin with an observation a friend of mine once made:

History is not alwys penned by the victor. Look at Khublai Khan and the Mongols: because they had no indigenous script (layman's terms - they were all illiterate), they commissioned the recently-conquered Uygurs to invent a Mongol script. This became known as Phags-pa, and was used to write the history of the Mongols. The moral of this entry: history isn't always written by the victors. History is often by those we spare.
posted by Phillip at 2:40 PM