Shocking discovery: Part II

Not so long ago, I alerted you to the dangers of the house cat.

(Tiny furry murderous killers, you are on notice.)

A gift of a chocolate bunny this morning reminded me of another tiny furry murderous killer.

BUNNIES

Maybe when you think of BUNNIES, these words come to mind: fluffy, white, brown, cuddly, hippity-hoppity happiness on tiny bent legs with beady murderous holes for eyes and razor-sharp fangs to sink deep into the hind quarters of even smaller, fluffier prey.

You're only half right.

BUNNIES KILL.

I know. I've seen it.

We had BUNNIES when I was small (but no less powerful). These BUNNIES had babies. Little fluff balls of cotton yip-yip-yipping around in their turd-filled cage.

I would stare at these BUNNIES, wishing I was as puffy and miniature and light. Then one day, the father BUNNY ate his baby BUNNIES.

Ate them. With his face. In front of my child eyes. Do I recall the first murderous stab into baby BUNNY? No. I remember the happening. And that is enough. (Lest you suspect this incident as pure imagination, I checked with kin and they confirmed the facts. Gung gung.)

Like the house cat, BUNNIES cannot be trusted.

Food for thought:

• Slaughter the lamb and not the BUNNY? What kind of BUNNY mafia is running this holiday? 

• Who's funding the BUNNIES? The NRA? (National Rifle Association, my ass. More like National Rabbit Association.) 

• Is it any wonder the hare is such an asshole in his race with the tortoise? 
• Wasn't Bugs Bunny kind of a jerk? 

• What measure of evil created the Cadburry BUNNY which clucks like a chicken and lays chocolate eggs? Schizophrenic little fuckers.

• Remember Peter Rabbit? Yeah, bad to the bone. 

• Thumper? No friend of yours. Name says it all, kids. Will steal your boyfriend. Can't be trusted. 

• Rabbit from Winnie the Pooh? Masking his murderous feelings with cleverness and irritability. 

• Trix rabbit? Spoon-feeding kids sugary balls of death. 

• We cut off their feet and use them as luck and you don't think BUNNIES have a vendetta? Find me someone who's benefited from a rabbit's foot. You cannot. Rabbit's foot: REJECTED. 

My Easter message to you is this. Beware of BUNNIES, rabbits, hares, fluffy cottontails, hopping down bunny trails with or without their rabbits' foots/feets. Shocking, but no less true for part two of shocking discoveries. You're welcome. 

The great thing about HIVES

The great thing about hives is nothing. Hives are bullshit. Doesn't everyone know that?

But look, if you're going to go through with hives, then commit to it. See those tiny red assholes through to the bitter, itchy end.

Frankly, I think hives could become the next big trend if enough people get onboard. Where are you, early adopters and influencers?

Imagine Bill Cunningham on his intrepid bicycle, combing the streets of New York for all manner of hives' incarnations.

Hives in fur!

Hives in culottes!

Hives in houndstooth!

Hives on hives! (Well done, sir. Well done.) 

Soon people will be going all black market to get their hives on. Bigger, more badass, more hives, please. The more intensely painful, long-lasting, pronounced, the better. Some lunchbox will inevitably tattoo a limb or torso or neck with hives. This is your future.

Before you tsk tsk or dismiss hives altogether with your judgy judgment, consider the upside of hives as I've layed them out here in this handy SANCTIONED LIST OF WHAT HIVES CAN DO FOR YOU IF GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY.

WHAT HIVES CAN DO FOR YOU IF GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY, A LIST

• If you miss that sweet sting of your first summer sunburn, get hives now. You can scratch your way to glorious hot hives in seconds.
  
  
• If you suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder and crave the warm warm sunshine, eat some corrupt shellfish. Preferably right off the truck and raw. Hives will ensue.
  
  
• If, on the other hand, you're one of those night crawlers inflicted with Xeroderma pigmentosum (allergic to sunshine basically), simulate the sunshine burning your face by picking up some hives and putting down the blackout shades.
  
  
• If you're a skinny bitch with a secret big person on the inside and have always wondered what your face would look like a bit fuller, rub said face in some bee stings. You'll be puffed and blotchy in no time. And, watch as those wrinkles disappear before your swollen, half-closed lids!
  
  
• If you have difficulty standing out in crowds and your friends are always texting "Where the hell are you?", hives can not only solve that social strait but also add significantly to your confidence and presence. (Hives are also great at clearing space on the dance floor.)
  
  
• If you enjoy very much a side of garage with your plate of punk, all the way from Sweden, then sink your skin into The Hives' only hit: 
  
  
• If you just don't have anything better to do today, or for the next six weeks, raid that medicine cabinet and let the mixology begin. Hives on the rocks or straight up, friend?

Not as abysmal as you thought, right? Hives have real potential to shake up your static life and lead to important self discovery. Hives may save the world. Imagine UN peace teams bonding with rebels, dictators, freedom fighters over the size, location, and scarring potential of hives. Feel the enemy's pain, to its deepest levels. We're not so different, at least when it comes to uncomfortable skin conditions. Hives forever, papi.

Get it together, girls

Ripped from the headlines. . . I hope Law & Order covers this shit:

Cookie hoax: Girl Scouts scammed out of $24,000

A girl's prank order for 6,000 boxes of cookies taken by troops in Oregon prompts a community bailout.

There's so much fresh-squeezed juice in this story. Where to begin?

First of all, I do not endorse the Girl Scouts as an organization and by extension any organization that promotes bunching, especially of identically dressed squirts. The Girl Scouts claim they build girls of courage, confidence, and character. But apparently zero street smarts.

Some questions:

          1. Who took this $24,000 order exactly?
          That Girl Scout should be fired. 

          2. Who orders $24,000 worth of Girl Scout cookies? 

          NO ONE. 

          3. Why do Girl Scout cookies taste so good even though they taste like cardboard?
          MSG probably.

Was this cookie debacle really a scam? Or better yet, was it a test of how gullible the Girl Scouts are? What practical skills are these girls developing if they can't spot a cookie fraud in progress? 

Get it together, girls. How are you going to make it in the business world where jerks are plentiful and infinitely more sneaky than this culprit.

And to think the fraud perpetrated was by a GIRL. I applaud her frankly. I mean, yeah she's a total jerk but at least she's owning her jerkness and by so doing, revealing the glaring flaws in the Girl Scouts organization. You'd never catch this jerk girl bunching. She probably hates cookies too. What a jerk.

“This was a really tough lesson regarding business ethics,” Sara Miller, spokeswoman for the Girl Scouts of Oregon and Southwest Washington, told The Oregonian.

Long-overdue lesson is more like it. Toughen up, 2.3 million tiny ladies in the making.

I don't feel bad for the Girl Scouts. Or for that jerk girl. I feel bad for the cookies. And for Oregon which most likely will experience a serious ramp up of diabetes soon from bailing out the Girl Scouts.

Gung gung.

Erin go Blah Blah Blah

St. Patrick's Day. Self-imposed sequestration for fear of encountering the green-clad hordes bunching drunkenly and disorderly, here and there. Although I'm not fraternizing with the inebriated masses, I hold a special fondness for the Irish. What better way to express my approval than this:

KISS THEM, BLESS THEM, TOAST THEM, HIGH FIVE THEM, HUG THEM WITH CAUTION -- THE SHORT LIST OF OFFICIALLY SANCTIONED STUFF ABOUT THE IRISH/IRELAND

1. Guinness: To quote my own genius: "the delicious Irish beer with the foamy cap that makes everyone smile and generally feel like a better person." Also a great source of iron and low in calories. BOOM.

2. James Joyce: Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist, Ulysses. Read something seminal. 

3. Potatoes: Taste explosion in every form. Is there a single human who doesn't like the potato? That person should be stoned. . . with potatoes. 

4. The International World Oyster Opening Championship: Held each year in Galway, professional oyster openers come from all over the world to shuck fast and clean. The best contest in the world. Should be an olympic sport. 

5. Freckles: I have them therefore they rule. You're welcome, Ireland. 

6. Unabashed winking: I'm making a generalization here based on my vacation to Ireland many years ago in which men, women, and babies all winked at me with wild abandon. I enjoyed it very much. 

7. Badass brogue: You may catch every other word if you're lucky. More likely, you'll pick up every third or fourth word but who cares because they sound fucking fantastic. 

8. Not including U2 on this list makes the Irish that much cooler.

9. Shitty weather doesn't get them down.  For real. The weather can really suck there and yet everyone is happy. Or tipsy. Or a leprechaun. It doesn't matter. 

10. My Left Foot. A two-hour film about a foot. True story. 

Bonus #11. "Nothing Compares 2 U," Sinead O'Connor. Someone once made me a mix tape of this song -- and only this song -- on both sides of a casette tape, playing over and over and over again. 

Slainte.

Thoughts on fitness

I hate running. I hate aerobics. I hate spinning, zumba, and whatever else ladies do in gyms these days. I hate the gym. I pretty much hate team sports too. I hate all of these almost as much as I hate drowning, which I fear will be my untimely end. Which leads me to why I can't swim. Can't swim because don't want to swim because I will die swimming — or not swimming as the case may be.

All of this is not to say that I don't partake in fitness and am not super fit. Because I am. SUPER FIT. Ask anyone what comes to mind when the word "fitness" is dropped in conversation and 9 times out of 10, it will be the image of me.

Back to drowning.

I can pinpoint the experience which led to my fear of drowning and death by drowning. My dad brought me into the raging ocean waves as a kid and I got knocked down hard.

A kid with glasses went into the ocean and got knocked down hard by some waves. Seems like an everyday occurrence. But my dad made me stay in the water. Not because he's a cruel master but most likely because he thought I could shake it off.

But listen, parents, kids with glasses don't want to go in the water and they probably hate the beach. We can't see shit without those things so not wearing them is not an option. Kids with glasses are wearing their glasses on the beach and usually in the water. Like a bunch of dorks. 

Maybe it was the humiliation of being that kid in the water getting knocked down by some fucking wave OR maybe, just maybe, it was the powerful combination of getting knocked down and not being able to see the prospect of getting knocked down because my glasses were covered in ocean.

Screw you, ocean.

Anyway, the CDC reported that between 2005–2009 there were an average of 3,533 fatal unintentional drownings (non-boating related) annually in the U.S. That's 10 deaths by drowning per day.

Now don't ask me what a non-fatal drowning looks like. Pretty gruesome I'd guess. All that bloating!

And don't ask me what the fuck the CDC has been doing for the last four years. Really falling down on the drowns is my guess.

I should feel reassured that those at the greatest risk for drowning are the following:

1. Men
That's right, nearly 80% of all fatal drownings are men. I'm breathing a huge sigh of relief. Too bad for you, dewds.

2. Kids
Squirts between 1 and 4 have the highest drowning rates among all kids. Thank God, I dodged that bullet.

3. Minorities
African-American kids drown at a rate 3x higher than white kids. Pretty racist, CDC.

The CDC goes on to list some factors that influence drowning risk. It's pretty much the worst list ever created, in terms of entertainment value and therefore usefulness. I do feel it necessary to point out the following paragraph:

What has research found?

• Swimming skills help. 

Way to go, CDC. It's comforting to know this top-ranked government agency really asks the hard questions when conducting life-saving research. I'd also like to point out that the CDC's tag line is:

CDC 24/7: Saving Lives. Protecting People.

I reject this tag line. What about those 3,500+ people who drowned a couple years ago? What about the people drowning RIGHT NOW?

I don't really care about those people.

I don't wear glasses anymore. I still can't swim well enough to save my life from a fatal, unintentional drowning. But I'm determined to get on the beach this year and in the ocean. . . and push some kid with glasses down hard. "I saved your life, rugrat. You're welcome."