Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Anal Retent

(Click photo for hugh size)

I am proud to announce the latest academic addition to Worm University:

The Institute for Anal Retents

While I'm ecstatic over our acquisition of the art movie house down the street as the venue for the Institute, the Bored of Directors is not. Cheap bastards. Their suggestion, to add a few useless retentivity courses to our already Useless College of Psychology, enraged me.

"The Useless College of PSYCHOLOGY!" I screamed, enraged. "Sure, we retentives have our problems, but we sure as hell aren't NUTS!"

The photograph is of our main lecture hall, which I admit needs a bit of a fix up. That will have to wait, however, until the Institute has an enrollment over three. I suspect that, after the publication of this announcement, enrollment will skyrocket. There's a billion anals out there, or as we refer to them in the U.S., assholes.

So, prospective student, who is an anal retent? According to Wikipedia,

"Freud theorized that children who experience conflicts during [toilet training] may develop 'anal' personality traits, namely those associated with a child's efforts at excretory control: orderliness, stubbornness, and a compulsion for control."

I don't know about you, but I've NEVER been fascinated with poo. Since I don't remember anything about my own toilet training, I assume that the four or five years it took to fully train me up went fairly smoothly.

Nevertheless, somewhere along the line I picked up Freud's personality trait of orderliness. Was it from Mom the Neat Freak? Or the sisters at Catholic school? Or the Army? Or did I fall out of my crib one too many times, telling me that I had to get my shit together one of these days?

Yes.

I have failed the test for Perfectionist about a million times and, after more than half a century, I've given up trying to perfectionate. Fifty years, a million tries: I finally realized I'm never going to make it. But still, there are some things that make my rectal area itch.

1. Pictures. Hanging on the wall. CROOKED. How in the world can people live that way? At the Worm residence, I use a pocket-size level to keep our gorgeous but cheap wall hangings on the horizontal, uh, level.

2. Lists. There MUST be lists: grocery, family names with their relationship to us, drugs, Chinese-made crap at Walmart, doctor appointments, beauty supplies (Mrs. Worm), books to read, Chinese-made junk at Home Depot, 28-day cycles for those using the rhythm method—the list is endless.

3. Spelling. On the Innertubes. Does ANYONE know how to spell "definitely"?

These three examples are an introduction to our dynamic course number AR103, "What sticks in your anus?" If you have something sticking in yours, you are welcome to share it with us.

Friday, March 18, 2011

A Baby Announcement


I bet a couple of you nearly went poo in your pants when you read the headline. Well you can relax—-I'm not pregnant.

And no, we didn't adopt another critter. But my sister Cathy (of the New York Cathys), also known as Pootsie (of the New York Pootsies), did.

According to Pootsie's communique,
Pansy was born on January 4, 2011, on the Jersey Shore. She is a purebred Mi-Ki and will be 5 to 8 lbs. at adulthood. The breed is known to be calm, sweet, intelligent, low energy and sociable. They are non-shedders and love to travel. Pansy is the first dog in this branch of the Callahan family. Wish me luck!
26 million dog breeds and Cathy chooses one that I've never heard of: Mi-Ki.

I'm also dumbfounded: Ever since we were kids my sister has been a cat person. Didn't know a dog from a barn door. Either she's lost her mind or had one of those "awwww-isn't-she-precious" attacks all of us animal lovers are prone to.

Since I do know a little bit about canines, here are a couple tips:

1. Do not go about the house in your bare feet.

2. Be careful not to lose track of her when you're shoveling coal in the basement at midnight.


Everybody welcome Pansy with a "awwww-isn't-she-precious" comment.

Friday, March 11, 2011

Life

Life


Life is precious. It is fragile. It is beautiful.



Life is to be protected from harm. 
All life.



But tyrants don't care about life.



That is our job.
To care about life.
To protect it.
And to remember those who have lost it.

Otherwise, we are no better than the tyrant.



Remembering the innocent dead of Iraq, Afganistan, Libya, and the Allied troops who die trying to protect life.