The Sh*t L*st

A Wellerism:

"So did I miss anything? as Moses said when he got back down from the mountain."

I remember only coming up with one other Wellerism in my life -- on a rainy day at Disneyland years ago:

"Bloody fine day for a walk, eh bastard, as Gloucester said to his son out on the heath."

[If you're not sure what a Wellerism is, read The Pickwick Papers.]

I don't suppose CBS will be showing this commercial during the Super Bowl either.

Speaking of which, it pisses me off whenever John Madden's not in the Super Bowl broadcast. And because it's CBS this year, I suppose it will be that blowhard Phil Simms doing color commentary. Shit, I hope the surf is good this year so I can skip the damned ruse all together and get some good waves to myself.

And what's with having the Super Bowl in February? (Or has Andy Rooney already covered this?)

As a Shit List, we don't really have the facilities to praise those things that please us as we should. If we did, I'd give major ass sumo props to WD-40. Is there anything that this stuff can't cure? Over the weekend, the seatbelt on my car stopped working. The straps come out of the door top and bottom and the bottom strap all of the sudden wouldn't release. There was enough slack in the top strap to barely cinch the belt. But I could only do this because of the weight I lost recently from the flu and by taking a deep breath. Driving around like this, it felt like Rosie McDonnell was performing a heimlich on me. Friends and family were telling me to junk my car and just start over. And if I would have had to stop short, I think the belt would have snipped me in half at the waist.

Well, yesterday I picked up a can of WD-40, liberally sprayed into the lower slot from which the belt emerged and, lo and behold, minutes later, the belt was looser than... well, you can finish this line.

If everybody was as thoughtful as WD-40, this Shit List probably wouldn't exist.

Just when I thought I was out of things to fulminate about and against, I found a message on my answering maching this afternoon from one of the leasing office managers (I think everyone working there is a manager) reminding me that I had not returned the guest key that I had checked out and that "it is now over a week due [giggle]."

I immediately returned the call and informed the manager (who is named after a day of the week) that I had turned it on the day it was due. (Why we are not allowed a second copy of our keys is a matter too philosophical to be taken up here.) She replied, "Well, hmmm, the key is not on its hook and it was not recorded as having been turned in."

"I assure you that I turned it in," I said, assuring her that I had turned it in.

"Hmmm... I don't have any record of it," she replied, then paused as if to give me a chance to confess to whole disappearance. "Well," she continued, "I will have to look into this. Will you be signing you lease next week?" Because of some changes in the languages of the lease, brought on no doubt by tenant protests about something or other -- the flyer mentioned terms related to construction and additional residents -- everyone has to resign a lease. I told her that I would. "I'll let you know what I find out then." I can hardly wait.

Incidentally, this was the same key that unlocked my door to flu and misery during the holidays. If they were smart, they incinerated the key and scattered the ashes (but filed a record somewhere of their actions.)

Strawberry Jesus. Forever.

Nothing like a week of flu to tone that bod. My abs have never looked better.

Well, after my heroic efforts to finagle a flu shot three weeks ago, I got the flu! On New Year's Eve! I think I got it from a friend who stayed with me a couple days for the MLA just after he had recovered from what he described as a "24 hour flu." I tried to convince him that what he had was probably food poisoning as his whole family came down with it (and he said they had been served some funky beef stroganoff), but he insisted that it was the 24 hour flu. I admitted that one surefire falsification of my hypothesis would be if I caught what he had. Well, I'm not sure whether what I got was exactly what he had (it has gone on for much more than 24 hours), but it is suspiciously similar. Vomiting, headache, severe denial.

The fact that I had given blood the day before (then surfed that afternoon) may have been aggravating factors. I had planned to spend New Year's Eve at my dad's with my brother for cigars, whiskey, and darts (electronic darts -- brother's Christmas gift). I ended up spending it at my grandparents' house in my grandfather's sweater coughing and hacking (the vomiting started about 7:30pm) in front of the TV while watching VH1's Top 100 One-Hit Wonders hosted by William Shatner. Went to bed at 9pm. A restless night, my mind racing feverishly. I think my fever peaked at midnight, when I was awakened by the sound of fireworks and neighbors cheering. Improved after that and, in a way, I couldn't have had a better New Year's.

Happy New Year!