Sometimes

SOMETIMES…

Sometimes I eat my snacks,

I always eat my treats.

Sometimes I eat my blazer,

and one time I went on eating spree and ate

all my underwear.

My mom was mad;

She said I should have washed them first.

I have been forbidden to possess a dresser.

♦

SOMETIMES CONTINUED…

Sometimes I do not eat my tasty edibles,

While often I bake cookies out of pure Crisco.

Sometimes I bathe in pure lard.

I purport to make a banana fruit cake,

but I eat all the ingredients

(mainly raw egg and uncooked beef).

♦

LASTLY SOMETIMES…

Sometimes I stuff my pants with roses,

I always digest Digestibles.

Sometimes I get truly delicious cookies,

Other times I sneak into the bakery at Safeway

and lick

the cookie batter off the floor.

♦

VERNACULAR

Who am I but a paucity of fervour,

like a giggly beast who tickles his tervour.

I am illimited to fruity yum-yums,

I consummate my dream of eating tums.

I am a consummate master of Smith-Kline Beecham.

I purport to leave a septic tank

in my kitchen.

But I am being deceptive when I affirm that I am

a cowboy.

I obfuscate the truth.  I have a donkey.

My donkey loves my bedroom.

I ejaculate ridiculous words.

Who am I to ejaculate, but a man?

The pit of my stomach turns to ice,

perhaps because I am breathing pure liquid nitrogen.

A Fly in my French Toast

My French Toast has a fly on it.

An earthworm burrows through the stacks of Pancakes that I fried up in my bland cookware.

The Bacon on my table top.

♦

My days pass by

like a slow boat

to my own home,

where I already sit.

♦

My face is shiny

from the eight showers

I have taken this morning,

to pass time.

♦

Alone in the barn,

I try to rid my food of the small vermin

which are destroying what was supposed to be one more

joyous morning of eating

and a morning, again, of waiting in the barn.

♦

I still must wait.

While my mornings of waiting and too many showers

are the only true facsmile of a life,

I cannot bear much more time

of no true action in my life.

♦

The bland sameness

of the house is interrupted

only by those insects

disrupting my food.

♦

I shall let them stay.

Net

The net was so tight.

Taut like I have never seen before.

Hooking it up was like

my mix-master

when I dropped a spoon in the mix and deformed the mixers.

I must pump super-cooled

liquid nitrogen

through the poles.

I have refined it

to a science.

Internet.

Basketball net.

Safety net.

Security net.

Fishing net.

I am a master of nets.

We are ready to play.

Play on!

Tanking up

I tank up.

Gasoline fumes bubble over and tickle my nose.  I am tickle-me-elmo.

I am in heaven with Bino, my uncle.

I pull the cord…………yank! yank!…….grrrrrrr…………yank!

Nothing growls out.

yank! yank! extra hard!

The monster roars into cranking and

I am cranked up,

so I wheel my load onto the calm, long, dark, real nice spreadth of grass

in my yard.

As I run back and forth over it,

chewing on a moccasin I bought at a garage sale,

like an old donkey in the old mill that my old father used to work at in the old days,

The grass shoots off, I lose my socks in the snow blower.

The grass flies, tumbles away to the moon growing above.

I am calm.  The sun sets and the dew settles.

I blow the carbs out of my car.

I park it at a Jiffy Park and acquire a free shirt.

BY DAWN.

Weather is seasonably warm

With not a cloud in the sky and temperatures reaching a high of 12 degrees-Celsius, residents expressed amazement today at how seasonably warm the weather was.

“Is it just me or is this weather exactly what you’d expect it to be for the middle of October?” asked one local, causing others to nod in agreement that the weather was indeed surprisingly normal for this time of year.

Even climate experts were baffled by the seasonable balminess.

“Our models predicted we’d be experiencing weather that was pretty much in line with what we saw today,” said Channel 5 News Meteorologist Dan Danly.  “But it’s extremely usual that we’d be getting this level of seasonable warmth.”

Residents are advised not to make the most of it because the end of the normal spell is far off.

Said Danly: “As we head into winter we can expect the temperatures to drop and the weather to become very cold.  In fact, we’re expecting this winter to be particularly seasonably chilly.”

How many hoots do you think I should give about that?

Is That My Shirt is pleased to introduce a new guest contributor, Ruth Chapman.  If you have ever had trouble figuring out how many hoots you should give about something, worry no longer.  Ruth is here to help.

“My co-worker Linda was ten minutes late for a meeting I was holding.  Later she came up and apologized and launched into a string of excuses, including that she had a kid staying home sick from school and the car wouldn’t start.  I just wasn’t sure how many hoots to give.  Please help.” – Liz Delfino, New York, New York

Ruth’s take: 4 hoots.

“My friend likes to read those trashy tabloid magazines and occasionally I’ll pick one of them up and flip through it.  I guess they’re kind of entertaining to read if you’re bored, but generally speaking, I’m not really sure how many hoots I’m supposed to give about this kind of celebrity gossip stuff.  What do you think?” — Deborah Sandling, Fresno, California

Ruth’s take: 1 hoot

“Ruth, I am 78 years old.  How many hoots should I give about the popular music kids listen to these days?” – Jean Haley, Victoria, British Columbia

Ruth’s take: Don’t give any hoots.

“Ruth, I need your help.  I am trying to encourage my sister to recycle, but she says she couldn’t give two hoots about the environment.  How can I get her to give more hoots?” -- David Daniels, Crumpton, Maryland

Ruth’s take: David, I really couldn’t give two hoots.

His Love is Manifest, a poem for Charles de Gaulle

The world of dreams
Allows mortals to be queens,

But the dreams of one

Were a lot more fun;
And powerful

The man, a dreamer
The hero, a keener.
He was no ordinary man.

He was a dream come true
He was our dreams realized
We dreamed of love and we got…

CHARLES DEGAULLE
His love is manifest.

A general was He
Of the finest degree
The world was at war
And so he slammed the door;
On Hitler

The man, a dove
The hero, pure love
He was no ordinary man

He was a masterful man
Who hated Japan
We prayed for him and we got…

CHARLES DE GAULLE
His love is manifest.

When evil hit France
He said “there’s not time to dance.”
The men he was arming
Boy was he charming;
And sexy

The man, a hero
The hero, a man
He was no ordinary man.

Our land is now free
But under grass is he
The time has come
For the people to be one
With Charles

The man, so great
The hero, a saint.

He’s in all our hearts
And all the parts of France
We called for an answer
To put down the chancellor

We called for him. May he rest in peace.
CHARLES DE GAULLE His love is manifest!!!!!!!!!!!!

Man dealing with mouse problem given a deeper appreciation for the movie Mouse Hunt

Though originally calling it forgettable and “not very funny,” Don Squigley has developed a stronger appreciation for the movie Moust Hunt after spending several frustrating weeks trying to deal with his own mouse problem.

“It’s been almost a month now since I first heard scratching behind my fridge and but no matter what I do, I can’t seem to kill this mouse,” said Squigley, adding: “I really have a new found empathy for what the characters in that movie went through.”

According to reports, Squigley has spent over $86 on various rodent traps, ranging from the iconic spring-loaded-bar model, which featured heavily in the 1997Nathan Lane vehicle, to more advanced sonic-based devices.

“I have this one where you put some peanut butter inside this little dome and when the mouse goes in to get it, it supposedly gets trapped inside.  And I’ve got a whole bunch of these sticky-tape pads, though I hear they aren’t very humane because the mouse  will chew off its legs to escape.  I just don’t care anymore though.  I’ll do anything to get rid of this god-damned mouse.”

Though the 38-million dollar, Gore Verbinski-directed film wasn’t a hit at the box-office and failed to win over critics, Squigley suspects it would be a different story if more movie-going audiences knew first hand how plausible the films plot really was.

“Remember in the movie where they have mouse traps literally covering the entire floor and the mouse sets them all off with a cherry — well, it’s not that far off.  Seriously, I have so many mouse traps set up I don’t know how it could possibly avoid them all.   And sometimes one or two of them I find discharged with the food gone.”

Four of Donly's ineffective mousetraps.

In the film’s climax — which at the time seemed silly and lacking any real laughs but now packs an emotional whollop — Nathan Lane’s character ends up levelling his home in a last-ditch effort to kill the mouse.  When asked if Squigley would go to similar extremes, he responds:

“No, I’ll probably just tell my landlord to hire an exterminator.  But wouldn’t it be amazing if it turned out to be a real weird guy like Christopher Walken’s character in the movie?”

Excuse me, but can you recommend any good video game boxes?

Oh hello there.  No, no, I’m just exploring, thanks — quite content to be left to my own devices.  Of course, I shall beckon  if I need any help.

Well actually, sir, before you turn to leave, maybe you can be of some assistance.   I suppose you’re right — why fly blindly through such a large store when I can just as easily appeal to your experience and intellect.

Tell me please, what new and exciting video game boxes can you recommend?  Yes, that’s right, I wish to leave here today with one or two very enjoyable boxes.

For which “system”, you ask?  I’m not sure what you mean.  An Xbox?  No, I certainly don’t have one of those.  A PS3 — from what dimension does that hail?  A Nintenko Wii?  Gamecubes?  A PSP? No, no, no….I do not have any of those things.  Why, sir, the only “console” I have is right here, between the ears and behind my pearly blues.

You seem confused.  Ah, I think I know what’s going on, and I pity you, my friend.  You are so encumbered — enslaved really — by modern devices, you’ve completely lost the ability to use the most powerful gaming system of all.

OK, then why don’t you let me show you.  Hmmm…here…this looks like an exciting box, good as any to begin with.  Yes, go ahead and grab that one off the shelf.

Now tell me what you see.

An alien creature? Yikes! What else?  A giant spaceship, you say? How exciting.  Is it a warship or a craft of exploration?  No doubt it’s hurtling through the infinite abyss at impossible speeds.   How delightful.  What else?  Oh my — a planet housing a long forgotten civilization?  I’m already getting chills.  An endlessly explorable universe with upgradeable weapons and the latest in computer graphics? No, no, no, son, how can such things impress you?  Ah, of course, you have yet to discover how many gigaflops your imagination has.

Oh, now how about this one.  Yes, grab that box. What do you see this time?  A wizard surrounded by blue flame casting an incantation?  Wonderful.  Orcish-creatures brandishing huge rapiers and ghastly looking tools of destruction while heroic knights guard the castle! Ha ha! Brilliant.

Chose from over 20 character models?  Tsk, tsk.  I’m sorry to shake my head at you; I don’t mean to condescend.  But why limit yourself to 20, my friend?  Why not limit yourself to infinity.

Try this.  Close your eyes.  Go ahead; trust me.  That’s it, close them tight.

LOOK OUT, MY FRIEND! My soul, that creature nearly took your head off.  But I slayed it just in time.  You must be more cautious, my Lord.  Ah, look at you — a dashing young Earl ordered to protect the King and uphold goodness and peace in the realm.  As for me, I seem to have donned the robes of the King’s sage.  No doubt with this towering staff I can cast enchantments ten times as powerful as that mage on the box.

Did you hear that?  Yes, a scream.  But where did it come from?  There it is again and this time I’m sure it came from there: the Forbidden Forest.  We must throw caution to the wind if we wish to get there as soon as possible and rescue the lass.  How, you ask?  Why isn’t it obvious?  Atop the backs of these majestic stallions.  Where did they come from?  Haven’t you figured it out by now?

Yes, exactly.

Oh, you have to go now?  OK, no problem.  I think I’ve decided on my purchases anyway.  I’m off to the bookstore next.  Oh no, I can’t read, I’m just meeting a friend there.

Yes, you guessed right:  My friend is indeed an imaginary one.  And oddly enough, he looks exactly like you.

Lesser known rights guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution

1.) A little-known amendment from the Bill of Rights regarding the legality of tomfoolery: Congress shall make no law causing twenty-nine Asian elephants to be imported into these States United for the purposes of buffoonery nor costumery; nor shall any law require Mr. Thos. Buckston of Beer Lane, Boston, Massachussets, to insert ninety-seven quills into his forearms and parade about the town square declaring himself to be the finest turkey in all of these States United; nor shall any law be made outlawing skylarking shenanigans, antics, nonsense, clowning, fandango, or mischief by young scoundrels enjoying a mid-summer’s eve on the common.  Monkey business, however, is strictly forbidden in these States United.

2.) A little-known right regarding the legality of prohibiting the way one wears a hat: Congress shall pass no law which infringes on the manner which a resident of these United States deems appropriate to don head wear, foppish or otherwise, irregardless of millinery experience.  No, no, we cannot take that away from said individual.  Additionally, should an individual choose to sip his tea or hold a knife in a fashion not considered traditional or standard, the Executive Branch shall take no action to proscribe such activity from taking place. No, no, we cannot take that away from him or her. And while custom may oblige one to frown upon dancing until three, singing off key, and having a smile that beams, it is an unalienable right for citizens of a free country to engage in such activity.  Pursuant to the rulings in The State vs. Gershwin, the haunting of dreams remains an offense punishable by ten years incarceration.

3.) A little-known directive on those qualified for government: Neither Congress nor the Executive nor the Judiciary shall be in the hands of eggheads, elitists, latte-sipping commies, old-Europe-style socialists, wine-swilling France lovers, arugula-chomping professor types, cheese-plate-serving lefties, or tax-and-spend military-hating pacifist hangers-on.  Thou must needs love these States United or, perforce, leave them.

4.) A little-known protection regarding the freedom to poo-poo:  Should something strike a legal resident of these United States as untoward or unsavoury, that individual shall not be ordered by any branch of government to refrain from turning their nose at it.  Providing the notion is suitably undesirable, a reasonable amount of poo-pooing will be allowed without a permit.

5.) A little-known right regarding filling your water bed with pudding: Filling your water bed with pudding is a really, really great idea.  Jefferson tried it first, and he wouldn’t shut up about it, so the rest of us ended up giving it a shot, and it’s just so comfortable.  We really can’t recommend this highly enough.  Seriously, you won’t regret it.  LIBERTY!!!