the tree of woe

You can save money by buying used stuff, or by buying last year’s fashions. If you go back in time far enough with fashions, you can actually lap everyone by being retro, and therefore more hip than other people. Remember, 80’s cartoons are hip. 80’s clothing isn’t, yet. Here are some ideas:

• Instead of a new car, buy a used one.
• Instead of buying new clothes, see what your local Goodwill has.
• Instead of Swine Flu, get SARS. Haven’t heard about SARS in awhile? Well, be the first to make it popular again.
• Instead of putting effort into a blog post, phone it in and reward yourself with a nap.

We got a new phonebook yesterday.

Actually, I was a little surprised. Who uses phonebooks anymore? Certainly not I. Being the cutting edge, Web 2.0 fellow that I am, I always use Goog-411 to find the numbers I’m looking for. When that inevitably fails, (“I said HOME DEPOT… HOOOOOOME DEEEEEEE…) I go straight to Google. After scrolling through ten pages of useless, unrelated stuff, I give up.

I refuse to use a phonebook, despite its clear advantages. For example, there is a pizza coupon on the front. I’d never, ever use it, as I’d feel self conscious trotting about town with my measly phonebook coupon clutched tightly in my fist. If you have multiple places to look up, sometimes you can save some real time. Need a plumber and a podiatrist? Same page, my friend. Need a sign and a silversmith? Better yet, need a sign made of silver? The phonebook has it all and more. Take, for example, the wonderful ad on the back cover. It’s an ad for a law firm that specializes in (what else?) “serious injury claims.” They will help you with various injuries, such as:

• Automobile
• Slip & Fall
• Construction Site
• Dog Attacks
• Defective Products
• Pedestrian … ?

So if you’re ever walking through a construction site and you slip and fall, causing you to drive the Slim Jim you were eating into your eye, the scent of which causes some nearby dogs to attack your face, and then a pedestrian… steps on you… or something… you can really clean up with these people helping you out. Maybe by “pedestrian” they actually mean a boring, run of the mill serious injury claim. It’s hard to tell. I’d call them, but Goog-411 can’t find them, and I refuse to use the printed number out of pride.

I guess we’ll never know.

Firstly, for the uniformed: Patrick Stewart is now Sir Patrick, a knight of the British Empire. I’m pretty sure this means he has to stop acting, be fitted for a suit of armor, and start questing.

This has reignited my quest to obtain as many honorary titles, degrees and certificates as I possibly can. Top on my list? Kentucky Colonel. I am absolutely serious. If that were to happen, I would immediately purchase a white linen suit and go to law school. Geographically and culturally, I have a better chance at being a Colonel then being knighted by the Queen of England. Frankly, I’d much rather be a Colonel, anyway. Can you think of anything better than the title of “Colonel”?

For balance, I’d put being an honorary Admiral in the Texas Navy near the bottom of my list, along with anything that has to do with Ohio.

While I’m at it, I relinquish my title as “King of the Internets.” The crown was too heavy for my neck, and the pointed top kept popping all my balloons.

Seaworld still exists, which is news to me. I guess I had assumed they had all closed at some point, due to the closing of the Seaworld in Cleveland, which brings me to my point:

What was a Seaworld doing in Cleveland?

I’m pretty sure all the Seaworlds were in coastal cities, but Cleveland was the only one not on the ocean. Were they suggesting that they found that killer whale and all of those dolphins in Lake Erie? There are lots of things in Lake Erie, but healthy marine life is not one of them, let alone ocean-going, salt water marine life. At the age of eight, I failed to question all of this.

If we’re going to have inappropriately located theme parks, then I’m opening up a wildlife preserve in downtown Detroit, a year round waterpark in Fairbanks, and a Disney themepark in Paris. Ludicrous.

The image above consists of all the most popular words I’ve used on this blog, ever. The larger the word, the more frequently it has appeared. Apparently, my average post looks something like this:

Just like time, one something good people know Meijer.

That…  that actually sounds about right. I’m very pleased to see “Bezos” in there. I think this is something I’ll do every year or so. It makes me wish I could do one for every word I’ve ever spoken. I think that one would probably look something like this:

Yeah. That looks about right, too. Those are all my favorite words. How about you, dear reader? Any favorite words?