It’s Saturday, May 21 at 8:53 PM Pacific Time. If you’re reading this from the comforts of home, welcome to the Apocalypse! Thanks for coming out!

Yes, the Apocalypse looks a lot like the Prepocalypse, except our friends at the nonprofit Family Radio Network aren’t here with us – at least I hope not.  According to them, today was the day the Lord was gonna call the Chosen home, if you believe 89-year-old civil engineer Harold Camping, who treated the Bible like his own personal version of The DaVinci Code.

Now, I don’t blame the Rapturian Candidate for trying. Surveying the landscape of End Time Signs, I could be easily persuaded:

1. The New Orleans Saints won the 2010 Super Bowl.
2. Oprah Winfrey taped her last show on Tuesday, May 17, for broadcast on May 25: Did she know something we didn’t?
3. Our so-called liberal-softy president just took out Osama bin Laden – and for the record, our president is black and is a US citizen.
4. Sarah Palin just closed on a house in my Scottsdale ZIP code.

Taken together, I can only come to one conclusion: WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!

Continue reading The Rapturian Candidate →

My Sarah Palin toilet paper arrived in the mail yesterday.

As with the heavy feeling of relief you seek after downing the whole burrito (along with two baskets of chips, a side of refried frijoles and three margaritas on the rocks with salt), anticipation does not approach the sense of eager yearning I had to test-drive this two-ply.

Raring to release her on my rear-end, I prepared my turd-pushing training table: Bananas, grapefruit, dried plums, with a side of pistachios. Taco Bell gorditas. Tasty McRib sandwiches. Expiration-dated milk (smells a little off, but still tastes fine!) I decided to forgo the obligatory sprinkling of cheese on every entree, lest any small action prevent me from achieving my goal. A can of pinto beans doused in Tabasco-habanero sauce? Check. A hearty bowl of Kashi with a tall glass of TempE.coli Town Lake water? Of course! Steamed broccoli with a side of shoe-peg corn? You betcha!

And I had seconds on the corn, thanks! Don’t retreat – reload!

Tonight would end with three capsules of Metamucil’s finest fiber supplements, washed down by a cold, hoppy beer (opened with my new iPhone bottle opener / protective phone case). Tomorrow would begin with two cups of black coffee and a morning run before my eagerly awaited morning runs.

Now, excuse me while I go punish the guest-room toilet.

“Turn on the vent!”

“Yes, Pat. I’m turning on the vent.”

“Don’t be upper-decking, either! I don’t want to deal with this on chore-day. Clean up after yourself!”

“That’s what Sarah Palin’s for!”

Continue reading Potty Humor →

I gave up cursing for Lent.

Forty days and forty nights for a kinder, gentler vocabulary: A noble goal and nobler still, I decided to enforce the provision by charging myself $1 for every bad word – that’s $119 for every b-word, a-word, d-word, f-word, s-word and conjugation thereof since March 9, 2011.

I don’t know what the line was in Vegas, but I’m inclined to think the odds were against me: When she heard I was donating the proceeds to charity, my boss vaulted over my cubicle to volunteer Friends of Animal Care and Control’s Spay / Neuter Assistance Program as a worthy recipient. My foul mouth will cover spay / neuter services for two animals, preventing as many as 130 euthanizations from unwanted litters – maybe that’s why Nancy kept sending me emails about Sarah Palin?

So 40 days later, what have I learned? Curing cursing isn’t easy (or achievable), but self-improvement is an ongoing (and worthy) project.

Continue reading Curses, Foiled Again →

I need a paintball gun (with ammo) so I can hurt, but not permanently disfigure, a kid – not a little kid being an adorable knucklehead, mind you… a teenager.

A pimply faced 14-year-old teenager whose only life goals right now are scoring porn to relieve his carnal urges (it’ll fall off if you keep doing that!) … and wreaking havoc  on other people’s property.

On our morning run, the husband and I witnessed this habitual onanist loitering on a curb with his equally sinful comrades as they waited for a bus to take them to a school that my taxpayer dollars fund (and I will never use). As we were jogging along, our nation’s future swaggered out into the middle of our peaceful suburban street and deposited a Dr. Pepper can on the yellow lines.

“DUDE, DON’T LITTER! PICK IT UP! I SAW YOU PUT THAT CAN IN THE STREET AND IT’S GONNA GET ALL OVER SOMEONE’S CAR!”

“IT’S NOT FULL,” he whined (like he’d just been busted by his Mom in the bathroom, “I wasn’t doing anything.”)

“DOESN’T MATTER – YOU’RE STILL A LITTERBUG. PICK IT UP!”

He made some motions toward the can and made some faces toward me – accompanied by some one-fingered salutes and some choice words referring to me as a “bat-shit crazy old lady.” It is a badge I now wear with honor as I approach my 40th birthday – though I can’t say if said knuckle-dragger actually did pick up the can because we still had 20 minutes to go and were already running late and there were three of them and just two of us, though I can say that my MOST EPIC REVENGE FANTASY EVER did fuel the second half of my run… until I got side stitches and slowed down. 

Read on… unless you believe “What about the children?” is a reasonable thing to ask of any politician…

Continue reading Feel My Wrath, Teenage Wasteland! →

My football season is over.

In a soul-crushing span of 24 hours, both of my teams flopped around on national television and stomped my ardor back into the turf.

I admit it: After years of following Texas A&M and the New Orleans Saints, one would think I’d be satisfied with a Super Bowl victory and defeats of ranked Oklahoma and Nebraska teams in the same year… but like Icarus, we always want more – and when the bright light of expectation (and national television) shines upon us, we can bask briefly in its glory (maybe for a quarter) before we come crashing back to reality.

And this is the reality of a football fan in Arizona: Thank God that’s over, now I can go outside and do something worthwhile with my time.

As the rest of our nation suffers under the gray cloud of winter, the sun shines on our desert playground. With lows in the mid-40s, highs in the upper-60s, every Sunday is battle between the Red Zone Channel and the better angels of our natural environment: Our hiking boots, our mountain bikes, our endless skies. Now I don’t have to fret that dilemma – now my Sundays will be free from disappointment (the Arizona Cardinals, the Cleveland Browns, the Seattle 7-9 Seahawks? REALLY?) as I bask in the life-affirming goodness of tending my vegetable garden, reading books on my patio, or passing an afternoon accruing much-needed Vitamin D beside a swimming pool.

And if I keep telling myself that, I might actually believe it – because every summer, when the mercury scoots past 110, I long for the air-conditioned goodness of a TiVO’d early-season game (TiVO for 30 minutes, then watch football commercial-free). I also pine for the rare overcast day in the mid-50s (WINTER!) when we can make gumbo during the early game, taste it during the afternoon game, and eat it during the night game.

Damn you, football gods! I raise my fist in rage… and I resort to that sad balm of sportswriters everywhere – the 2010 Season Postmortem aka Closure for the Defeated. Bear with me, I’m a little rusty on this one. Continue reading Postmortem: Football in the Desert →