Suzanne Olsen's Humor Blog - I don't offend some of the people most of the time

Month: September 2011

Lamenting the Foulness of Life

My dog’s stomach is growling. She had a batch o’ rib bones and now I can expect puddles of barbecued barf in my bed tonight. Disgusting, huh? But wait, there’s more.

This ten pound dog is by my side night and day. She’s lying snugged up next to me on the couch while I type, right in the path of the 340º heat blowing out of my laptop. She’s a heating pad strapped to my leg.

I generally like heat – love my car’s seat warmers. One of my relatives likes to drive my car when we go anywhere because it’s nicer, and in the winter I’ve got the seat warmer on. He’ll be sitting there in the driver’s seat, talking about his latest BM. Don’t ask me why.

“You should have seen what came out of me this morning.”

“I do NOT need to hear this,” I say.

“Black as coal and all of 12 inches, coiled up like a cobra, part of it floating like it was ready to strike.”

“STOP!”

“It was remarkable,” he’ll say. “Never seen anything like it. I got a picture of it here on my phone – take a look, you won’t believe it. Here, see? Owww, why is it so friggin’ hot? My nuts are roastin’!”

He says it every time we’re in the car – like the seat has launched a sneak attack against his scrotum.

As bad as his bodily function stories are, my dog barfing in the car while she’s sitting on my lap is worse. I hear this little burbing noise and a nano-second later she heaves, and there’s a puddle the size of a spilled glass of milk on my thigh – slimy and the color of the last nauseating thing she ate. Sometimes it’s grass in a clear slime like a sickening version of lemongrass soup. Other times it’s brown and lumpy.

The awful part is that you can’t do anything about it. I’ll be on the freeway going 65 mph when she Ralphs on me. I hear the sound, and I try to get her off my lap but I’m never fast enough. About the time I get my hands on her waist and snatch her up, I feel the warmth on my thigh, then the wetness.

Anyone who’s had bad timing snuggling a baby knows what that feeling is like. The baby’s happy and coochie cooing one minute, and the next minute you’ve got this foul wet vomity-smelling ooze heading south down your shirt.

At least the dog barf doesn’t smell so bad. Usually.

Oh my gosh. You talk about smells, I went into the ladies bathroom at the permit office the other day. Mercy! Women’s bathrooms, just after their morning coffee break, are worse than paper mills. Woo-whee! Brings tears to the eyes.

I don’t know what’s made me write about these things. Oh yeah, it was the dog’s growling belly, which led to this lament of the unwelcome bodily functions we all encounter daily, of which I seem to experience more than my fair share.

What’s Up with Democrats?

I just finished trashing Republicans, which was pretty easy, but for this to be bi-partisan, so as not to alienate half the country, I am obliged to also take a poke at Democrats. That’s pretty easy too.

Democrats believe that everyone deserves help – even the lowlifes who get pregnant to increase their welfare stipend. Actually, I’m not sure if that goes on anymore – surely even the most fertile dimwit knows that a child costs more in the long run than you’ll ever get from the government. But just in case there are people still doing this for a living, the Democrats should at least ask for a return on their handout.

Once you start giving people money for nothing, how many are going to want to go back to plucking chickens? I say give these able-bodied people money, but only in exchange for useful work. Make the welfare moms work in day cares. This would give them a belly full of children, in a productive sense. Make them work in grocery stores so they can see how obnoxious the people getting food stamps can be. Let them deal with those hearty eating, loud mouthed mothers in checkout lines with their carts full of cigarettes and assorted fried potato products, arrogant and entitled, chips on their shoulders – trying to sneak stuff by and arguing indignantly when they get caught.

These are the people the Democrats insist we American taxpayers ought to pony up and help. We taxpayers don’t mind helping those people who are temporarily down on their luck by circumstances beyond their control. We are sympathetic to the man trying to support his family after he’s had a job yanked out from under him, but we’re sick of those who milk us because they’re lazy and no account. They’re almost as bad as rich Republicans who milk us because they’ve figured out how to avoid paying even a penny in taxes.

Democrats want better health care for everyone. If you want healthy people, make them get off their couches and walk somewhere besides the refrigerator. Make food stamp people weigh in, or prove they’re buying vegetables for their children instead of marshmallow pies. Give them books on healthy living and test them once a week before they get our tax dollars. Force them to be healthy in exchange for their money so they won’t need doctors to treat the diet and inactivity related ailments that plague them and their innocent offspring.

Democrats want to help everyone without any accountability, so that people feel entitled, and Republicans want to help themselves get richer so that people feel entitled. In both cases, the general public becomes bitter.

Doesn’t anyone see this but me?

What’s Up with Republicans?

I know I should not talk about politics. It’s a total waste of time – you can’t convert anyone – you’re either preaching to the choir or talking to a brick wall.

Nonetheless, I have to ask, what is freaking up with Republicans? The ones I know are either wealthy and don’t want the government to take any of their money, or they’re dirt poor and fiercely prejudiced. They despise everyone who isn’t like them.

It’s funny to listen to fat cat Republicans fretting about taxes. The ones I know have two houses, drive Lexus’s, send their kids to private schools, take several vacations a year to Hawaii and Mexico, and so forth.

Yet they get very angry when anyone talks about raising taxes. They don’t want riff-raff sucking away all their hard earned money. I can almost understand the rich guys – at least they’re sensible. They’re trying to protect what they’ve earned.

It’s the poor Republicans I don’t get. They resent everyone and feel they’re superior because (insert some dumb reason, like they are white, or drive a pickup, or have more than 50 percent of their teeth). They are perfectly contented to send their kids to crumbling schools and packed classrooms because they think education is a waste of time anyway. After all, it never got them anywhere. They’re not worried about the condition of roads because their beaters rattle the same whether the pavement’s smooth or potholed.

As long as they’ve got a cold beer after a sweaty day at work, and something to complain about, they’re pretty satisfied. They don’t want to help anyone else because, dammit, let the freeloaders fend for themselves.

If the rich Republicans paid fair taxes, then the poor Republicans could have better schools, roads, parks, libraries, police protection, early education for their children, health care, etc. But the rich ones want to stay rich – they don’t need public schools or libraries, or even protection, they can buy what they need – and the poor ones don’t care about these things. They wear their lack of ambition like a badge of honor.

These two groups have nothing in common, but they rely on each other to fight the battle against those who want a to raise the standards for everyone. When Republicans control things, the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. Therefore it’s hard to understand why poor Republicans are so hell-bent on being worse off. And rich Republicans have no remorse about hoarding their wealth and living the good life when they could share some of their blessings and make things better for everyone.

Dictators and wicked kings always gather the money to themselves. But in a country where people are free to choose, we ought to have better sense. However, the poor will spite their own selves rather than helping others, and the rich, understanding this, will egg the poor on and rile them up against illegal aliens or welfare or whatever notion they despise at this point in history. Then the rich laugh all the way to the bank. This, my friends, is why I don’t get Republicans.

I also don’t get Democrats, and I’ll explain why later.

Happy as a Clam

I am a crazy person – crazy for doing what I did, and even crazier for telling you about it. But I said I’d write something tonight and I’ve procrastinated until it’s late and I’m tired and woe is me. This story I can do quick.

Here’s the back story. While we were at our friends’ vacation house in Olympia, my husband bought a bunch of live clams and cooked most of them, but decided to cull out some for us to take back home the next day. When he got ready to cook the rest of the clams, he found a broken one and decided all the clams could be bad, so he chucked them in the garbage.

I was livid. Why didn’t he just cook them all at our friends’? Why did he buy them in the first place because there was already way too much food and we couldn’t’ plow through it all? Why wasn’t he more careful bringing them home? These are all things I made sure, as a dutiful wife, that he clearly understood after he tossed those clams.

But those weren’t the reasons I was so irritated. I was P.O.’d because I knew good and well that I’d think about those clams in the garbage, dying a slow miserable death as the summer heat got to them, wondering what they were thinking in their little clam brains as the life oozed out of them like the yellow goo from a festering pustule, and knowing that they were calling, in their tiny clam voices, “Somebody please help us.”

I knew I’d lose sleep, and I knew I’d remember it with remorse all the days of my life and into the very grave. This is what made me mad as a hornet, fit to be tied, angry as a Tasmanian devil caught in blackberry briars.

Late last night I went out to that filthy, stinking garbage can and fished out those clams, one by one, amid the coffee grounds, corn husks, and used feminine hygiene products, and put them into a bowl in the refrigerator because, according to Google, that’s how you keep clams alive. I planned to drive them to the beach and put them back in the bay.

So this morning I talked my daughter into going with me and we headed to Netarts, two hours away. We waded into the ice-cold Oregon bay, full of squishy mud and pointy rocks, and I gave those poor clams back to the clear brown sea. I don’t know how many survived the ordeal in the cooler, garbage can, and refrigerator. I don’t know what will happen to them or whether they will be able to make a home where I left them, or if the seagulls and crabs will feast on them when the tide goes out, but I do know I will sleep tonight because they aren’t in my garbage can screaming silently for help.

And if that trip to the beach makes me a crazy woman, I’d rather be crazy than wrestling  with guilt for the next six hours. In fact, you could say I’m, well, uh, happy as a clam. Snicker, snicker.

Copyright © 2021 by Suzanne Olsen