Why bother?

Random quote of the day:


"I can’t understand why a person will take a year to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars."

—Fred Allen, quoted in Robert Taylor, Fred Allen: His Life and Wit







( Illustrated version. )

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

High and inside strangeness

So, wow, last night I got to live out an iconic sitcom joke moment. It wasn't nearly as funny as it's made out to be on TV. Because unlike the days of Wally and the Beave, no shamefaced boys were brought by their dad to the front door to offer restitution by working all summer at a newspaper route.

About eight o'clock I hear the distinct sound of glass shattering. Oops, I think, Min must have broken something. This is reinforced by the sound of the roommate's inchoate yelling. I leap to my feet and run into the living room only to see the roommate disappearing through the door to the backyard.

"What did you say?"

"Somebody shot out a window!"

By the time I get to the back door, the roommate is already up a ladder peaking over the six foot wall back there, then down the ladder and disappearing back of the house. "Go into my bedroom!" she commands. "Check out my back window!"

As soon as I pull up the blinds, it becomes evident that someone really must have shot out the window. "Yep, there's a big hole in the window and glass all over everywhere." It's one of those shatter-resistant windows, fortunately, so after making a hole about ten inches in diameter, the window splintered and stayed in place rather than turned into carnage, but that's still a lot of glass. It's sprayed all over the floor, the bed, and every inch of the room.

The roommate comes running in and spots something nestling amongst the clothes piled on the chest in front of the window. "Huh! I just found the bullet."

"What??"

She reaches into the fabric muddle and pulls out a baseball.

I'll spare you the fuming and fussing, the cleanup, but I will add that although it took the roommate only a few minutes, at most, to get out the door and up the ladder to look for the little miscreants, there was not a soul anywhere in sight. I can just imagine the speed with which they hurried to hide, the little bastards.

I will also note that the roommate was watching the Dodger game when this occurred and Manny Ramirez had just come up to bat. Since no Wally and Beave confessions were forthcoming, since Manny does hit the ball really far, and since a lot of grumpy people in Boston liked blaming him for everything including the Apocalypse, we've decided that Manny did it.

The other irony, of courrse, is that Manny got suspended today for using an erectile dysfunction drug that has been banned by baseball. Oh, the ironies pile high, my friends, the ironies pile high.