Have cape, will travel.

I’ve decided I want to fight crime for a living. Not like my friends and my husband who have to use a badge and a gun and a giant ego to fight it though.

I want to fight crime in a very caped crusader kind of way. I’m of the opinion that to truly be respected as someone who takes crime fighting seriously, a really cool mask and themed costume is quite necessary. That’s exactly what’s wrong with law enforcement today by the way. Too much badge and too little crazy cool mask.

I know I for one would be far more likely to behave myself if I were pulled over by a guy wearing bat ears and a black mask. Everyone knows attempting to flee from someone involved in a dynamic duo situation is futile.

I don’t want to fight crime by anybody else’s definition of what a crime is either. I want to pick and choose what needs fighting based solely on my whim and desire.

And I have lots of whims and desires.

For instance, this weekend the Evil Red-Headed Berta Lou wanted me to go with her to something called The Battle of the Bands. Because I do whatever the Evil BL tells me to, I went. Also in attendance at this insanely loud event were two people who we’ll call Thing One and Thing Two.

Thing One was a highly repellent looking creature who looked to be in her mid-fifties. Her hairstyle was circa 1973 and she had the graying complexion of someone who has been chain smoking filter less, hand-rolled cigarettes since kindergarten.

Pretty, pretty.

Thing Two was a wimpy looking guy around the same age who weighed just about eighty-five pounds with five of those directly attributed to the weight of the grease in his hair.

Yum.

Their crime? Their seemingly voracious appetite for one another.

Yes, I am a freak about inappropriate PDA’s (public displays of affection) and I admit it.

I can tolerate hand holding if it’s absolutely necessary… and by necessary I am assuming that one of the two is feeling faint and there is no motorized scooter or licensed EMS person readily available. But I can stomach nothing more.

When two people are all snuggly and touchy-feely in public I don’t think it’s cute, or precious or sweet. I think it’s gross and icky and completely criminal. These two Things were groping each other like perhaps they were wearing bubble wrap in their underwear and were playing a vigorous game of Pop It.

Gross as it was, I couldn’t stop looking at them. I do enjoy the Discovery Channel after all and as I missed the special on the mating habits of the North American Overweight Wildebeests, I felt compelled to see exactly how it all works.

FYI – the male wildebeest apparently arouses the interests of the female by constantly rubbing her back while simultaneously dangling a Marlboro out the side of his mouth and dry humping her leg.

I looked all around the concert area in hopes of finding anyone who might save the crowd from this repulsive x-rated exhibition. While I spotted several men in badges that could have easily shot these randy savages right in the head, they did nothing. No shots were fired and no one was handcuffed and taken downtown.

All that has to happen for ugly people to procreate is for those who have guns not to shoot them in the head.

Had I myself been certified as a caped crusader, I could have deployed my lasso, took them into custody and gotten the commissioner to throw them out of the city. Of course later on I’d have had to battle them after they fell into a giant tub of acid while trying to perform the Venus Butterfly, but I’d be willing to risk it.

Footnote: I still don’t know what the Venus Butterfly is. Curse you 80’s lawyer show.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Heard this the other day and remembered I loved it terrible back in the day.




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Queer eye for the Democrat guy.

Anderson Cooper, be still my heart.

Kids, if you didn’t see the Democratic Debates courtesy of You Tube and CNN, you missed the single most human thing to happen to politics since Old Bush said howdy to the Prime Minister of Japan by projectile vomiting.

Regular Americans and not so regular Americans alike grabbed their video cameras and via You Tube, asked a panel of Democratic hopefuls questions that came straight from our collective curiosity. Mr. Man and I sat with our mouths open staring at the TV, fully aware that we were witnesses to history in the making. We broke the stunned silence in the living room only occasionally with our brand of brief, albeit highly intelligent commentary.

“Shut the hell up! Did he really just say he was all for health care for undocumented workers because he doesn’t want them infecting the rest of us?”

Oh it was good stuff.

In much the same way Little Billy Clinton admitted he had smoked pot but never inhaled, I must admit I was once a Republican. However to the best of my recollection, I never started a war because someone pissed off my Daddy.

If I had, there would be lots and lots of wars. Actually, I’d have to bomb myself like a billion times and all my ex-boyfriends, husbands and my Mother would already have been blown to smithereens.

I loved being a Republican. It made me feel powerful, like that dorky kid of questionable intelligence who loves nothing more than watching ants catch fire under the big magnifying glass he stole from an even dorkier exchange student.

But, after 9-11 and hurricane waters and a war some of my friends were bound to fight, I began to think maybe I was playing for the wrong team. So, I did that which would cause Ann Coulter to spontaneously combust. I took a deep breath, held a super secret and completely pointless ceremony and declared myself a Democrat.

Imagine my delight this evening when my brand new party stood before our country and acted sort of half way like real people. Sort of.

Questions from citizen journalists, questions I myself wanted to ask, came one after the other. Candidates had no time to think it over or have a team of political spin doctors decide how best to answer. Would you do your job for minimum wage? What about gay marriage? What are you personally doing about global warming? Have you talked to your kids about sex and if so, did you call your dangle a pee-pee or a penis?

Even more interesting than the questions sometimes were the candidates themselves. The former Sen. Mike Gravel (Alaska) was angry about pretty much everything. He put me in mind of an old boss I used to have who would scream at you if the Coca-Cola he asked you to bring him wasn’t served on a tray with a napkin folded perfectly in half. I felt I should phone a hotline and tell them to do a welfare check on his wife.

Joe Biden insulted a YouTube guy who referred to his giant gun as his baby by saying he was probably too insane to even own a gun. After realizing that he had just publicly talked smack on a dude who possessed the ability to shoot him in the head from a tremendous distance, he told Anderson Cooper that he hoped the guy wouldn’t shoot him.

I thought that was smart. Nothing appeases a crazy, gun-toting person like insulting them again.

But probably my favorite moment as a virgin Democrat came when John Edwards was asked to say something he liked about Hillary Clinton and something he didn’t like about her. Who remembers what he liked. It was probably something about her ability to effectively stifle her late night sobs while her husband played Hail to the Chief with White House interns. What he didn’t like however was what she was wearing. “I don’t know about that jacket.”

For those of you that don’t speak North Carolina, allow me to translate. “Although I am a straight man who opposes gay marriage because of my religious beliefs even though I swear my religious beliefs will not influence my presidential policy, I used to watch a lot of Queer Eye and I try to live my life each day by asking myself in every situation, WWCD. What would Carson do?”

Oh, John. Damn your passion for fashion.



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Just chilling... making nature his bitch.

“Hey there fella. Because we think you’re so super-dooper fantastic, we here at the Discovery Channel would like to give you your very own TV show.”

“Wowee! That’s just peachy. So what will I be doing? Singing? Dancing? Telling jokes? I know some really funny jokes. There's this one about a rabbi, a priest and a monkey walking into a bar. No wait a minute. Maybe it's a monk, a Baptist preacher and a lizard and it's not a bar, it's a Walgreens.”

“Umm, no. Actually we’re going to drop you off in the middle of nowhere every week and then pretty much leave you for dead. You won’t have any food, so you’ll have to pick up big, fat jungle worms and bite their heads off now and again when you feel hungry.”

“I’ll be doing what now? What did you say about worms?”

“Oh don’t worry. We’ll give you plenty of water so you won’t die from dehydration.”

“I guess that’s good. Fresh, clean water is important.”

“I’m sorry. One of my producers just told me the water thing is a no-go. Looks like you’ll have to try and collect rain water in leaves and suck on them. No biggie."

“What if it doesn’t rain?”

“Then you can build a big fire and boil some chunky swamp water until it’s good to go.”

“So I’ll at least have matches?”

“Matches? No. No matches. But, you will have rocks and twigs and other pieces of nature that might light on fire if you rub them a lot. A little advice from me to you, Dude. I would learn to do the whole fire thing asap if I were you. You’re definitely going to want a fire at night because of the giant bears and other man-eating beasts that will relentlessly want to bite you in half while you sleep.”

“Did you say something about beasts devouring me? I sort of went blank after I heard bears.”

“Hey don’t worry. The Discovery Channel's got your back.”

“So I’m getting a gun with which I might defend myself and murder the bears who will nightly seek to dine upon me?”

“Oh sweet lord, no. Nobody said nothing ‘bout no gun. You’ll need to fashion beast-proof sleeping quarters out of piles of leaves.”

“You mean to tell me the only thing between me and a bloody death at the hands of giant bears or rabid wild bores is going to be a layer of leaves?”

“A lot of leaves. We would encourage you really not to skimp on the leaves.”

“Listen guys, I’m not too sure about all this. I mean, I want to be on TV and everything but this whole Man vs. Wild is sort of over the top, don’t you think?”

“We are prepared to offer you the sum of one zillion dollars and your own line of branded gourmet sheep’s eyeballs which will be sold in grocery stores nationwide and in some parts of Italy. You’ll be a big, big star.”

“You had me at sheep’s eyeballs.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

My obsessed love only grows stronger. My Michael is so much good I can't even stand it.





Copyright © 2004-2007, Sherri Bailey
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You asked. I answered. When do I get to ask?

Dear Sher,

I read your blog every day and I love it. You’re so funny and I think you should have a book.

Dear person who thinks I’m funny so I like you,

As I’ve said many, many times before, I have lots of books. Sadly I didn’t write any of them.

Dear Sher,

I'd like to suggest an idea for a blog that is based in part around a song I co-wrote with Billy Livesay, who performs it. I think its lyrics will provide you with material for humorous pop culture commentary.It's called "Pop Star” and is about a person who sees signs that the end of the world is near and just wants to be a pop star before it all comes crashing down.

Billy has had numerous songs featured on network primetime television and also played lead guitar and shared vocal duties in the Clarence Clemons Band. Clarence of course was the great saxophone player in Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band. You can hear "Pop Star" for free by going to the direct link of http://free.napster.com/view/artist/index.html?id=12351878 .

Dear guy who writes songs for people who sing them,

Number 1- Humorous pop culture commentary is hard. I write the easy stuff known as barely funny to even the drunkest of drunken people.

Number 2 – The fact that you know someone who knows someone who knows The Boss makes me want to marry you. Since I consider any words from a man strung together in a sentence a legal and binding marriage proposal, please make sure Bruce is invited to our wedding. (Which is coincidentally the same time I will leave you to become Mrs. Springsteen.)

Number 3 – I actually LOVE the song and strongly encourage the three people who read my columns to go and listen to it right away. Any time someone uses the word sycophant in a song…and can make it sound good…I’m an automatic fan.

Dear Sher,

I have OCD too and I like it when you laugh at yourself for it. My favorite OCD persona on TV was the one on Scrubs played by Michael J. Fox. Have you seen it? I do wish you wrote more about how it really feels to have it sometimes.

Dear Obsessive-Compulsive Sistuh,

Dr. Kevin Casey. Dr. Kevin Casey. Dr. Kevin Casey. It’s my favorite, too! Just saw a rerun the other night in fact. I think it gives a nice balance to the funny and the terrible and a pretty accurate look at the disorder.

I appreciate that you would like me to talk more about it, but that part is very hard for me. It’s easier to make myself the joke before someone else gets to make me the joke. Besides, if I were to actually tell it like it is my readers would run for the hills.

A little advice from me to you: only spill the whole of your reality to those closest to you. I have only one person who gets as close to the crazy as you can without having it rub off and even he doesn’t get the whole enchilada.

Dear Sher,

I can't. I'm sorry. Soon though.

Dear Code Talker,

I can, so I will, and you'll be even sorrier when I enjoy it and you have to hear about it. Which you will. In detail. With flourish even. And pictures. Lots of pictures. Some that I colored. Not with that little cheap box of welfare crayons that aren't really Crayola's either, but colored with the big box of crayons that have a sharpener in the back. I'll probably even use the gold and silver ones. That's how awesome it's gonna be.




Copyright © 2004-2007, Sherri Bailey
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The Bubbles Tickle My Nose

I can’t see without my glasses. But, because I’m both incredibly vain and hopelessly optimistic about a miraculously spontaneous eye-healing, I try every day to see without them anyway.

Not wearing my glasses when I am supposed to…which is every single minute of every single day…sometimes leads to a misunderstanding.

For example, as I shopped for the exciting new brand of tampon I’d seen in an advertisement, I was disappointed when a helpful Wal-Mart associate explained that as far as she knew, there was no such thing as a carbonated feminine hygiene product.

Upon further research and with my spectacles on my eyes this time, I found the word cardboard does indeed have some letters in common with carbonated.

Despite the present unavailability of this effervescent merchandise, I remain convinced that the carbonation of products not routinely prone to bubble and fizz would add much needed excitement to a boring group of manufacturers whose last big development involved adding wings to something that will never fly.

Word to your mother, Madison Avenue.

One place I can never indulge my vanity though is when I am behind the wheel of a car. Not wearing glasses when I drive is no longer an option for me as I have dangerously swerved to miss one too many a phantom moose, gorilla in a matching dress and Easter bonnet, or giant pre-historic pterodactyl.

In addition to the nuisance of having to balance specs on my nose (which has been medically proven to be way too small for my face), the taking them off part is nothing nice either.

Something mysterious happens to my eyes when I’m wearing glasses that causes them to go all crazy immediately upon removing my corrective, yet fashionable, eye wear.

I may be looking right at you from behind the lenses, but the moment I lay them on the table, my eyes start rolling around in their sockets like spinning marbles. I look like a cartoon character that has been bonked in the head so hard my eyeballs were knocked loose.

I know what you’re thinking. Why not get me some of that fancy eye surgery that fixes all vision wrongs, right?

Well according to my eye guy, I am not a candidate for the procedure. But even if I were, there is no amount of valium that could calm me to the point of allowing someone to poke me in the eye.
Even if I were to go south of the border and buy myself some industrial strength, un-tested and wholly illegal mind-numbing drugs, I feel reasonably certain that about the time a doctor were to make a move toward my eye ball with something sharp, I would make a move toward his groin area with something called my knee.

In closing let me say that I sincerely apologize for the use of the words tampon and feminine hygiene here today. While I try to always obey the law of pretending women are magic and babies come from a big bird who sells pickles on the side, sometimes I accidentally let one slip. I don’t have my glasses on right now anyway, so for all I know I wrote about pompons or Grey Poupon or some girl named Tammy.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
More than a feeling...




Copyright © 2004-2007, Sherri Bailey
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Light something on fire for your country.

I was awakened this morning by the sound of children and wanna be children lighting money on fire. Today is the 4th of July and in our small town, despite the tragedy of flood waters, the tradition of firecrackers from morning to well past midnight is in full swing.

When I was a child, the sale, purchase and use of firecrackers was strictly verboten. The truth is that even if we’d had the option of buying them at every corner store, Pop would never have allowed it. The idea of spending good money on something that you take a lighter to didn’t make much sense to him.

One 4th when I was young, two of the neighborhood kids went running from door to door, yelling at the top of their lungs. They were going to have a big Independence Day fireworks show at their house and we were all invited to sit outside and watch it as soon as it got dark.

My brothers, sisters and I were tickled to death and all afternoon, wondered aloud to each other what kinds of things we’d see. We’d never seen a fireworks show before and although we expected “the law” would probably come arrest our neighbors for blatantly disobeying the ban, so long as they didn’t get hauled off until after they’d entertained us, we didn’t care.

I guess we figured so long as we fed their blue ticks and looked after their trailer while they were in the county lock up, it was all good.

That evening, Daddy carried lawn chairs to the yard for him and my step-mom and us five kids spread out old electric blankets with the cords cut off to sit on. We were a little early for the extravaganza, but when something so big is about to happen right across the street, you don’t want to risk missing a minute of it.

Once we were settled, Pop went back in the house to get his shotgun and my step-mom to get some mayonnaise crackers and sweet tea.

Yes, I said shotgun.

Although we never had any fireworks, I guess Daddy had enough boy left in him that he needed to at least make some kind of noise to mark the holiday. Twice a year, on the 4th of July and New Year’s Eve, he’d pull out his shotgun and at some point during the evening without warning, he would fire it straight into the air as if he were trying to shoot down a star. A single blast and he was done.

Yes, I said mayonnaise crackers and sweet tea.

I grew up poor so rather than bags of store bought potato chips, we made do with other things. As only a mother can, my step-mom managed to convince the five of us that there was nothing better than Duke’s Mayonnaise on saltines and of course sweet tea was as much a staple as water or milk. More so, really.

While I now know that tea had enough caffeine and sugar in it to keep an eight year old awake for three days straight, back then we didn’t give any thought to such things. A big glass of ice cold no-doze right before bed helped me spend countless nights as a child planning my escape from the Jolly Green Giant who lived under my bed and plotted to eat me.

As dusk turned into country dark, our excitement was almost too much to contain. With mouths full of crackers, we began shouting and clapping our hands to encourage the pyro-experts to hurry it up. Neighbors all around us joined in excitedly. Had any of us known what a “wave” was, we probably could have pulled one off.

On second thought, the wave is dangerously close to dancing and dancing leads to eternal damnation and hell fire, so I suppose I should retract that last statement.

With great drama, the front door of the only mobile home on our street slowly pushed open and the two kids filed out, Momma and Daddy right behind them. I thought how lucky they were that their parents bought them illegal fireworks to play with. We weren’t even allowed to say “butt” in our house.

We watched wide-eyed as the four huddled around the back of their pick up and I shushed my little brothers who were doing something entirely annoying, like breathing in and out. Before I even had time to smack one of them and make it look like one of my sister’s had done it, I saw sparks and my attention was drawn to the night sky.

I was puzzled to see nothing more than stupid old stars there.

“Woo-hoo! Look at this!”

These two offspring of what I had been previously convinced were the coolest parents in the universe were dancing and prancing all around their front yard with a single sparkler in each hand.

“Hey, Jerry! Do like this!” The girl instructed her brother in the ways of sparkler showmanship by making big circles in the air while hopping on one foot and then the other. Occasionally she would run toward the front of her yard and bend down on one knee like Elvis, sparkler held high in one hand while using her free hand to wave.

My siblings and I whispered to each other and finally to my Daddy. “Where are the dang fireworks? That’s just Tina and Jerry running around the yard with some dumb old sparklers.”

Yeah, we swore but in our defense, we were very upset.

Without a word, Pop racked his shotgun and fired a single shot. I guess we could have taken our Mason jar glasses and gone inside, but it was North Carolina. Even watching two kids systematically burn up what was surely more than enough sparklers for the whole neighborhood while yelling, “Look at me!” and “I’m gonna do three at one time!” was better than nothing.

(And between you and me, I’d have watched them burn matches if it meant stalling my nightly encounter with the green bean and corn monster.)

Happy 4th of July!

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Hank Jr...



Copyright © 2004-2007, Sherri Bailey
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The Kansas Beach: A Travel Channel Top Ten Pick for the Undead.

I’m afraid of zombies. There’s no shame in that so don’t think you’re going to humiliate me by pointing and laughing and telling all my friends on the playground I am a zombie-a-phobe.

Some people are afraid of the dark (count me in) and some people are afraid of heights (color me terrified).

I am horrible scared of zombies.

If you’ve just flown in from the Australian outback where you have lived in a cave with a bone through your nose for your entire life, you may not know what a zombie is. (Politically correct disclaimer! I have some very nice Australian readers, so I do not actually know if people in the Australian outback live in caves with bones through their noses, but I’m sure they are lovely people either way.)

For those of you naively unfamiliar with zombies, Wikipedia defines a zombie as an animated human body devoid of a soul.

I would say that my first husband was by definition a zombie, but in truth he was the exact opposite of animated. Although he was most certainly devoid of a soul, he would not actually qualify to join the Local Zombie #502.

The thing about zombies that most frightens me has nothing really to do with the fact that they are dead people. In fact, I have nothing against dead people at all. Ask anybody. Casper was a dead guy and he was nice. Vampires are dead and I find them highly attractive. (Doesn’t hurt that vampires are always rich, too.)

Conversely zombies appear to have no pride in themselves whatsoever. They are always dressed horribly…clothes all torn and nasty and their hair is perpetually crazy and dirty. Don’t even get me started with their teeth.

Just once I’d like to see a zombie in a nice suit who had taken a couple minutes before walking out the door to eat the flesh of the living to maybe comb his hair or swish a little Listerine.

The thing that totally freaks me out about zombies, though, is the way they walk and make those guttural zombie noises. I threw up a little just now even thinking about it.

Would someone please explain to me why it is necessary for them to always have their heads tilted at a freakish angle, arms outstretched, dragging their feet as if they were wearing cement shoes? I could maybe understand it if their reanimated body were one whose manner of death involved a broken neck or perhaps had suffered from some type of palsy prior to being buried. I mean, sure. You have to play the hand your dealt.

But no one is going to convince me that among the hundreds of thousands of zombies that inhabit the US alone, every single one is occupying a jacked up body. Odds say that at least some of them were great athletes or super models or at least walked straight and held their own heads up before they kicked the bucket.

So why am I so focused on zombies today?

Well for one thing, there was a zombie movie on TV and even though I knew it would make me sleep with the lights on, I watched it anyway. The biggest thing that turned my mind toward zombies however was when my ex-wife-in-law called to tell me all the water currently on the Kansas shore is no doubt going to un-earth all the cemetery dwellers who will then float down Main Street.

I know better. They aren’t going to float. They are going to crawl out of their holes, one boney hand at a time, and walk around in that stupid zombie way searching for decent air-sucking people like me.

For all I know, I could be a zombie by tomorrow morning. That’s how it works, you know. It’s like dead people chicken pox, only there is no lotion that can make you stop being undead. If there were, I would own a barrel full of it and slather it on every night before saying my prayers.

Until these flood waters have subsided and I am notified by State and Federal Officials that the risk of a zombie attack has subsided, I plan on staying indoors and away from windows. If you never hear from me again, know that I went out fighting. If you do hear from me again, but notice my column is loaded with words like, “uuuuuuugggggg” and “gggggggrrrrrrruuuuuummmmm”, step away from your computer and go wash your hands. No sense in you catching it, too.






Copyright © 2004-2007, Sherri Bailey
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