An important rule of Owl Chatter is, if you are confused about something, rather than calmly thinking it through, say something as quickly as possible to make it clear what an idiot you are.
Here’s an example. Linda and I drove 300 miles to Dubois PA yesterday and settled into a nice restaurant called Station 101. (It’s off of Exit 101 on Route 80 — what are the odds?) We sat down, decided what we wanted to have, and I dashed off to the men’s room. When I returned, Linda got up to go to the ladies’ room while a woman was dropping off some napkins or something. So I said to her: “I can order.”
Now here’s where things got sticky. She asked me, “You’re not waiting for her to get back?”
The thing is, I didn’t know whom she meant by “her.” It didn’t occur to me that she meant Linda. Because it had to be clear that by saying “I can order” I wasn’t waiting for Linda to get back, right? It seemed (to me) to be “baked into” my statement, that I was able to order without Linda. So it had to be, I reasoned, that this woman was not our waitress — she was a hostess or something. And our waitress must have come by to introduce herself while I was in the men’s room. So when the hostess asked me “You’re not waiting for her to come back?” the “her” must have referred to our waitress, and the hostess was asking me if I wanted to wait till our waitress came back to place my order. So I said “You mean our waitress?” And she said “I am your waitress.”
D’oh!
When three Democrats were up for expulsion from the Tennessee legislature this week and the two young Black men were expelled while the white woman wasn’t, Owl Chatter grew concerned that race might have been a factor. After all, all three engaged in the exact same action — protesting the legislature’s refusal to act on gun control after the shooting deaths in Nashville earlier in the week. But Jody Barrett who only voted to expel the Blacks cleared this up when asked by NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly. He said “It had absolutely nothing to do with race.” Absolutely! He went on to clarify his position:
“I’m an attorney, and Ms. Johnson was the only representative that showed up with legal counsel, and their legal counsel made an opening statement pointing out deficiencies in the resolution that had been filed that we were voting on. And once those deficiencies were pointed out, in my view as an attorney, then it was incumbent upon the debate to present evidence to correct that and to establish clearly what it was that Ms. Johnson did to rise to the level of expulsion. I just don’t think that we established that during the debate.”
Convinced?
At least Barrett stuck around to spout that bullshit. When CNN’s Van Jones asked Jeremy Faison, Chair of the Republican Caucus, repeatedly why they didn’t bring the matter up before the Ethics Committee, he fumphered around a little and then said he had a long commute home and bolted.
God Bless America.
I had to have my bladder checked out for reasons too disgusting to go into. Everything is fine, kinehora. But let me tell ya, folks, if you need to have one thing checked out — try for it to not be your bladder. Because, fellas, the way they get in to check it out is through the exact last thing you want them messing with. When I awoke from the procedure, the doc explained that she placed a stent somewhere in there for some reason I have no idea about. I trusted her, so I wasn’t paying attention. She said to come back in a week and she’ll just pull it right out, like it’s nothing.
When I came back a week later, Allison the assistant told me to remove all my clothing from the waist down and to lie back on the examining table. She gave me a flimsy little paper blanket to cover up with. Then she walked out of the room after telling me: “Don’t go anywhere.” Funny.
A few minutes later she came back with the doc. How to describe it? Well, first of all, it’s not nothing. It’s the extreme opposite of nothing. Here she is talking to Allison while poking around in me. “There it is. Okay, so now I just need to angle it to guide it out. There it . . . ” and I missed what she said next because I was going Yow Yow Yow pretty loudly, and I vaguely recall kicking out with my left foot. Like that could help. But the pain and my yowing just lasted a second or two. It was out. She wanted to show it to me but I closed my eyes and said, “No, I don’t want to see it!” Like I’m supposed to be friends with it now?
TMI? Maybe someday I’ll tell you about the rectal MRI I had about ten years ago. You don’t want one of those either. No sir. No ma’am. Get that thing away from me.
In Brookville PA, where we stayed last night, in our favorite dump off Route 80 on the way to Michigan, there are only two FM radio stations in reach overnight. So I could not resort to my usual sports-talk nonsense to get back to sleep after a bathroom run. One station plays country music, and the other an endless string of soft rock songs. I went with the latter. I recognized about half of them. One was a Taylor Swift song, I Knew You Were Trouble. Here’s her acoustic version. If you can take your eyes off of her for a second, what’s with the hair on the guy on the right?
We had a great meal today with little grandson Morris at Gandy Dancer, the classy Annie Arbor eatery discussed in Owl Chatter a while ago. Loved it! When the photos get back from that little orange shack in the K-Mart parking lot, I’ll post a couple.
Thanks for popping by!
The Wellington Files 