Get it right people!
Tuna casserole takes cream of mushroom soup.
Tuna SALAD takes mayo or Miracle Whip.
And while we're at it,
tuna salad has celery,
NOT peas.
If you HAVE to use peas,
use a bag of frozen peas.
Canned peas are for tuna casserole,
not tuna salad.
Get it?
Got it?
Good.
As long as I'm on the subject
canned peas are the worst peas
AND the worst canned vegetable,
not that there are any good canned vegetables.
This morning
someone brought fresh snap peas
still in the pod for our snacks
and it is all I can do
not to take them all,
they are SO wonderful
I may have to write
an ode to peas
fresh from the garden
why not?
They've written songs
about homegrown tomatoes
Bottom line;
casseroles are comfort food,
THEY can be soggy
Salads should be light and uplifting,
they should be crisp.
Meanwhile,
I don't care
what you native Midwesterners think,
Jello and marshmallows
are for desert,
they do not constitute salad
Now that we've got that clear-
Thank you for using
just the right amount
of mustard
in the potato salad
Mustard is for both
color and flavor
But next time
back off a little
on the onions
A good rule of thumb
is to use sweet Vidalias
you don't want the onions
to overpower everything else
Chives are fine
just be careful
how many
and how strong
the onions are really more about texture
than flavor, in potato salad
green onions
are about
color and texture
you could always
try red onions
but that's a whole different color
and then
you REALLY
need to be careful
about how much
and how strong
But definitely don't skimp
on the mustard
sour cream may seem
all fancy schmancy
and sugar is sweet
but nobody wants
their potato salad
too be too sweet
or too schmancy
I really can't overstate
that you really can't
over use
mustard
in the
potato salad
But for God's sake
back off of the damn peas
in the tuna salad
Showing posts with label humor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label humor. Show all posts
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
My gas guzzler puts around on the info super HWY
Taking a class to renew my teacher's license this summer, I decided to become one of those people who sit and use their laptops in Starbucks. Little did I know that this would be like taking my "trusty-rusty" small 2 wheel drive pickup out cruising on a Friday night- embarrassingly out of place.
I opened up my 2003 model Dell Latitude, with it's plug in D-Link card to take advantage of the Barnes&Noble free WiFi. I'd read a journal article and now needed to spend some time writing.
On the other side of a divider, at another table sat a couple of young turks playing with their smart phones and a brand new ipad.
I waited for my edition of Windows XP to load while they laughed and talked about celebrity gossip and the variety of new free apps they were exploring, all the while their conversation peppered with profanity.
Here I was a forty-something abandoning my family so that I could work on professional development, so I can keep my job to put a roof over their heads and clothes on my back- and these college-agers were planning a solo vacation to Washington DC, playing Eminem music as they did it. At least when people wore a Sony WalkMan or even an Apple ipod, their music was private.
I struggled to listen to the jazz that Starbucks plays, but felt like I was stuck at a stoplight next to teenagers in a "pimped-out" sports car blasting hip hop or heavy metal out to the whole neighborhood. Whereas I have to struggle just to hear the AM radio in my little truck over the knocking and pinging of the motor.
My truck has well over 200,000 miles on it. We bought it used at an auto auction.
My laptop doesn't have enough RAM to run Photoshop and a web browser at the same time. I got it for about $240 on eBay.
I take solace in the fact that my truck is utilitarian. It gets me to school and home. It can haul furniture, trash, lawn clippings, groceries and supplies for cheerleaders to the football field or the concessions stand at track meets. I can blog and compose tests and share pictures with my modest, hopelessly obsolete laptop. So who cares that I can't read ebooks on it or use it as a GPS device?
I remind myself that people are more important than things when I'm stuck next to teens and twenty-somethings in shiny new vehicles. I need to do the same with the adolescent techies and their expensive cyber-toys.
Okay, my Judeo-Christian ethos and Buddhist-ish political leanings can help me to maintain my non-materialistic values and not covet their toys. But my middle-aged, overweight, disaffected white guy personality REALLY finds their taste in music annoying.
Ah... finally they've left for the food court to fraternize with the all the female teen mall-maggots. Just me, my TAZO green tea and the Ella Fitzgerald muzak.
Aw shoot- a text from my wife asking me to call as soon as I get a break. Probably needs me to pick up something at the store or to hurry home so that our kids aren't left unsupervised so she can go to some meeting or something.
So much for the romanticized ideal or writing in the cafe like some kind of mid-twentieth century French Existentialist or a New York Beat poet.
"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are" ~Teddy Roosevelt ( I might add- and do it in what little time you have to do it.)
I opened up my 2003 model Dell Latitude, with it's plug in D-Link card to take advantage of the Barnes&Noble free WiFi. I'd read a journal article and now needed to spend some time writing.
On the other side of a divider, at another table sat a couple of young turks playing with their smart phones and a brand new ipad.
I waited for my edition of Windows XP to load while they laughed and talked about celebrity gossip and the variety of new free apps they were exploring, all the while their conversation peppered with profanity.
Here I was a forty-something abandoning my family so that I could work on professional development, so I can keep my job to put a roof over their heads and clothes on my back- and these college-agers were planning a solo vacation to Washington DC, playing Eminem music as they did it. At least when people wore a Sony WalkMan or even an Apple ipod, their music was private.
I struggled to listen to the jazz that Starbucks plays, but felt like I was stuck at a stoplight next to teenagers in a "pimped-out" sports car blasting hip hop or heavy metal out to the whole neighborhood. Whereas I have to struggle just to hear the AM radio in my little truck over the knocking and pinging of the motor.
My truck has well over 200,000 miles on it. We bought it used at an auto auction.
My laptop doesn't have enough RAM to run Photoshop and a web browser at the same time. I got it for about $240 on eBay.
I take solace in the fact that my truck is utilitarian. It gets me to school and home. It can haul furniture, trash, lawn clippings, groceries and supplies for cheerleaders to the football field or the concessions stand at track meets. I can blog and compose tests and share pictures with my modest, hopelessly obsolete laptop. So who cares that I can't read ebooks on it or use it as a GPS device?
I remind myself that people are more important than things when I'm stuck next to teens and twenty-somethings in shiny new vehicles. I need to do the same with the adolescent techies and their expensive cyber-toys.
Okay, my Judeo-Christian ethos and Buddhist-ish political leanings can help me to maintain my non-materialistic values and not covet their toys. But my middle-aged, overweight, disaffected white guy personality REALLY finds their taste in music annoying.
Ah... finally they've left for the food court to fraternize with the all the female teen mall-maggots. Just me, my TAZO green tea and the Ella Fitzgerald muzak.
Aw shoot- a text from my wife asking me to call as soon as I get a break. Probably needs me to pick up something at the store or to hurry home so that our kids aren't left unsupervised so she can go to some meeting or something.
So much for the romanticized ideal or writing in the cafe like some kind of mid-twentieth century French Existentialist or a New York Beat poet.
"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are" ~Teddy Roosevelt ( I might add- and do it in what little time you have to do it.)
Modest, practical and utilitarian. That's the Iowan way. I should know how to be happy this way, after all I'm Lutheran. Guess it's just the curse of being an Irishman living among the Germans.
Time to pack up my archaic computer and head back home in the family minivan. At least it has air conditioning, unlike my pickup- which I left parked at home. Because minivans are so cool and manly for driving around a college campus in summer.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Borowitz Report
I think that Andy Borowitz is about the funniest political writer out there. He's a one man Onion, the Daily Show of the written word. Just take a look at some of his most recent columns:
Obama Quits While Ahead
Wall Street Salary Caps Drive Away Assholes
Obama Quits While Ahead
Wall Street Salary Caps Drive Away Assholes
Thursday, December 05, 2002
Murphy's Law & Order
In case you hadn’t noticed, Mallory isn’t German, it’s Scotch-Irish. My mother’s maiden name is Reilly. Shortened from O’Reilly, as Irish as you can get.
Now, I’ve known quite a few Irishmen in my time. O’Sullivan were good people, I can’t say as I ever got a long too well with any O’Briens, but most of the Murphy’s I’ve known have been really fun to know.
Most of them, that is, except for one. The one who was in Congress. At least I assume he was in Congress, because he’s got a low named after him. You know the one, "Murphy’s Law." It’s one of the shortest laws in the U.S. Code, all it says is "If anything can go wrong, it will."
I think it was co-sponsored by Congressman Morton. I think this because the box of Morton’s Salt reads "When it rains, it pours," these two sentiments inevitably go together, at least in my life.
For whatever reason, Ellie, our 11 month-old never needs a diaper change until, Gracie, our 3 year old has an accident. And for reasons I can not explain, Gracie only seems to have accidents just after my wife Bethany has gone out the door to some meeting at school. Does this kind of scenario sound at all familiar to any of you?
I think it’s time Murphy’s Law was changed. Maybe we could start a letter writing campaign to get this Murphy character removed from office. All I know is, we have to do something.
What I’ve learned to do is to obey the law. Better to go along with it and ride it out to the end than try to break it, you’ll always get caught. Here’s an example of what I mean-
So, I was trying to get this Thanksgiving dinner thing going for Church (huge thanks to all you LYF kids & parents for pulling it off by the way). At any rate, we had our computer serviced and in the process, last year’s notes and letters on the dinner got erased.
I forgot to order the potatoes from Staley’s, they agree to get them for us anyway, I don’t know how much to order for and between their move and personnel changes, they can’t find our records either. My mind remembers our Ash Wednesday Soup Supper and tells them we expect maybe sixty people. Not a problem, they’ll have the bags of potato mix ready for me to pick up whenever I can come get them.
Friday night I picked up a movie at Citgo and pulled in across from the Oak’s Club to pick up an order of Chicken. If Murphy’s law hadn’t already been in effect, it was just about to. I figured I’d only be a minute or two so why not leave the engine running, it’s a small town and a cool night.
I closed the car door and started for the bar, and start to saunter across the street, but get yanked back like a dog tied to a tree in the middle of the yard. The corner of my coat was caught in the car door.
"No sweat," I thought, "I’ll open the door and release my coat" No dice, the door was locked. "Well, okay, it’s just a few blocks, I’ll walk home to get my spare set of keys. Oh, yeah, I forgot, my coat’s caught in the door and it’s really cold. Hmmm. I could stand here and look nonchalant in my coat, and wait for Bethany to bring the extra set of keys, oh, yeah, I pretty much have to call her to let her know I need the keys."
"Hmm, Okay," I said to myself, "I’ll slip off my coat and nonchalantly, leave it on the ground next to the car and walk into the bar, pay for the chicken and ask to use their phone. Geez, there’s a lot of people in there. I don’t need the whole town knowing I locked my keys in my car- while it was running." Then I noticed the lights in the lobby of Staley’s- "Great, I thought, I can use their phone, isn’t there something I need there anyway? Oh yeah, the potatoes for Sunday."
Guess what, who ever was there didn’t answer when I asked if anyone was there. "Shoot, I can’t use the phone without asking, well, it’s not long distance, maybe they won’t mind- hey this way, even they won’t have to know how dumb I was." I call home, go figure- thanks to Murphy’s Law, Bethany is giving the girls a bath and can’t get to the phone. I leave a message, but our answering machine is downstairs in the den, she’d never hear it. I call back four times, hoping that one of the times she’ll at least hear the phone and check the messages. Each time my message was more anxious, the fifth time I called I was down right irritated- Murphy’s Law again, that’s the time she picks up, why would she want to help my when I’m so crabby? And, Murpy’s law, that’s when Allan Staley comes out of the kitchen with me on his phone.
Well, the happy ending is that she bundled the girls up in their pajamas and came with the keys so that I could bring the car, my coat, the potatoes and the chicken home without being too embarrassed. Of course I had to call the next day and ask Rick and Al if they would prepare the potatoes AND gravy for us, like they have every other year and make enough for 200, rather than just 60. Thank God, and Rick and Al, they could, would and did. Whew!
Best of all, no one except Bethany and Al Staley ever knew about the whole thing with me locking my keys in my car. Well, that is, until now.
Now, I’ve known quite a few Irishmen in my time. O’Sullivan were good people, I can’t say as I ever got a long too well with any O’Briens, but most of the Murphy’s I’ve known have been really fun to know.
Most of them, that is, except for one. The one who was in Congress. At least I assume he was in Congress, because he’s got a low named after him. You know the one, "Murphy’s Law." It’s one of the shortest laws in the U.S. Code, all it says is "If anything can go wrong, it will."
I think it was co-sponsored by Congressman Morton. I think this because the box of Morton’s Salt reads "When it rains, it pours," these two sentiments inevitably go together, at least in my life.
For whatever reason, Ellie, our 11 month-old never needs a diaper change until, Gracie, our 3 year old has an accident. And for reasons I can not explain, Gracie only seems to have accidents just after my wife Bethany has gone out the door to some meeting at school. Does this kind of scenario sound at all familiar to any of you?
I think it’s time Murphy’s Law was changed. Maybe we could start a letter writing campaign to get this Murphy character removed from office. All I know is, we have to do something.
What I’ve learned to do is to obey the law. Better to go along with it and ride it out to the end than try to break it, you’ll always get caught. Here’s an example of what I mean-
So, I was trying to get this Thanksgiving dinner thing going for Church (huge thanks to all you LYF kids & parents for pulling it off by the way). At any rate, we had our computer serviced and in the process, last year’s notes and letters on the dinner got erased.
I forgot to order the potatoes from Staley’s, they agree to get them for us anyway, I don’t know how much to order for and between their move and personnel changes, they can’t find our records either. My mind remembers our Ash Wednesday Soup Supper and tells them we expect maybe sixty people. Not a problem, they’ll have the bags of potato mix ready for me to pick up whenever I can come get them.
Friday night I picked up a movie at Citgo and pulled in across from the Oak’s Club to pick up an order of Chicken. If Murphy’s law hadn’t already been in effect, it was just about to. I figured I’d only be a minute or two so why not leave the engine running, it’s a small town and a cool night.
I closed the car door and started for the bar, and start to saunter across the street, but get yanked back like a dog tied to a tree in the middle of the yard. The corner of my coat was caught in the car door.
"No sweat," I thought, "I’ll open the door and release my coat" No dice, the door was locked. "Well, okay, it’s just a few blocks, I’ll walk home to get my spare set of keys. Oh, yeah, I forgot, my coat’s caught in the door and it’s really cold. Hmmm. I could stand here and look nonchalant in my coat, and wait for Bethany to bring the extra set of keys, oh, yeah, I pretty much have to call her to let her know I need the keys."
"Hmm, Okay," I said to myself, "I’ll slip off my coat and nonchalantly, leave it on the ground next to the car and walk into the bar, pay for the chicken and ask to use their phone. Geez, there’s a lot of people in there. I don’t need the whole town knowing I locked my keys in my car- while it was running." Then I noticed the lights in the lobby of Staley’s- "Great, I thought, I can use their phone, isn’t there something I need there anyway? Oh yeah, the potatoes for Sunday."
Guess what, who ever was there didn’t answer when I asked if anyone was there. "Shoot, I can’t use the phone without asking, well, it’s not long distance, maybe they won’t mind- hey this way, even they won’t have to know how dumb I was." I call home, go figure- thanks to Murphy’s Law, Bethany is giving the girls a bath and can’t get to the phone. I leave a message, but our answering machine is downstairs in the den, she’d never hear it. I call back four times, hoping that one of the times she’ll at least hear the phone and check the messages. Each time my message was more anxious, the fifth time I called I was down right irritated- Murphy’s Law again, that’s the time she picks up, why would she want to help my when I’m so crabby? And, Murpy’s law, that’s when Allan Staley comes out of the kitchen with me on his phone.
Well, the happy ending is that she bundled the girls up in their pajamas and came with the keys so that I could bring the car, my coat, the potatoes and the chicken home without being too embarrassed. Of course I had to call the next day and ask Rick and Al if they would prepare the potatoes AND gravy for us, like they have every other year and make enough for 200, rather than just 60. Thank God, and Rick and Al, they could, would and did. Whew!
Best of all, no one except Bethany and Al Staley ever knew about the whole thing with me locking my keys in my car. Well, that is, until now.
Friday, November 22, 2002
Midwestern Boy
When I was in junior high, I was trying to figure out who I was. Isn’t that what every kid is doing in junior high? I looked around at my friends and all their lives seemed more exciting than mine did.
Lots of kids were dealing with their parents’ divorces; some kids had lots of money or knew someone famous. Everybody else seemed to have a more interesting life than mine. Mine was just too boring, too "Leave it to Beaver." I had both parents, they worked hard to make sure we had clothes and food and they loved us. We lived in a ranch house in the suburbs where my brother and I had paper routes. Boring-ville.
When I was in junior high in Phoenix, the Black kids had a culture; the Mexican kids had a heritage and a culture and great food. American Indian kids had all that and cool pow-wows and costumes and stuff. The Italian kids had great cooking and style.
I felt left out. I thought that White Anglo Saxon Protestant lower-middle class suburbia was boring. If only we were rich or poor or members of some oppressed minority group. Drama, passion, contrast. Could you imagine? Envying hardship. Other kids turned to teenaged angst, punk rock and pot. I turned east.
Hardly anyone in Phoenix is from Phoenix. My parents had left the Detroit area in 1968. Now there’s drama, it just took years and college classes about recent history for me to see it. They wanted a better life for us. Better weather, better economic conditions, and away from all the racial tension and political unrest that Detroit had come to symbolize.
What it meant for me was that I could say I was (sort of) from the Midwest. Suddenly I had a sense of identity. I had a culture, even if it was kind of bland. The summers we spent in Michigan I was introduced to such foreign, exotic and romantic things as twilight, casseroles home made pies, fishing, and Jell-O salads.
Then I stumbled upon a radio show that was all about my newly chosen ethnicity. Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" on National Public Radio. I’d savor it the way I imagine Eastern Europeans under Soviet oppression savored the Voice or Democracy on Radio Free Europe.
Keillor's self-effacing humor focused on what’s funny about the mundane. Like how the front-row for Lutherans is five or six rows back. Or his "Young Lutheran’s Guide to the Orchestra:"
"Many Lutherans start out playing clarinets in marching band and think of it as a pretty good instrument and kind of sociable…But the symphonic clarinet is different: clever, sarcastic, kind of snooty. It's a nice small town instrument that went to college and after that you can't get a simple answer out of them. It _is_ a French instrument, you know. Ever wonder why there are no French Lutherans? Probably the wine wasn't good enough for them."
I thought this was great stuff, especially since I played the clarinet in junior high and hated it. All the cool kids played trumpet or drums. But my older brother had played clarinet, so I played clarinet. Keillor made it okay, I was humble, it’s good to be humble, learn to laugh at yourself.
Who knew? I went to Concordia College in Nebraska because of their great art program, because they offered me a scholarship, and because it was far away from home.
Junior year of high school on the plane to Journalism Workshop at Ball State University in Indiana, kids from all over the country assumed I was from Chicago. When they found out I was from Phoenix, they’d look at me funny. Too heavy, too short, too pale, too not-blonde.
Then there was the one about the Art Major and the farmer’s daughter. Just that he married her, no joke. So, that’s how I became a Midwesterner, I married into it. Kids at Boyer Valley are always asking why anyone would want to choose to live in rural Iowa. They want nothing more then to get the heck out of their one-horse town.
I tell them that I lived in the second largest city in America for the better part of a decade and I’d much rather live in a village than a megalopolis. Sure, we still have crime, and drugs, and poverty, but I never had dinner with my state representative in LA, I never knew my postmaster by name. I never talked to the LA County Sheriff about being a fellow church youth counselor.
This is a good place to live and a good place to be from. You can say, ‘I’m an Iowan’ and not be ashamed, it may not seem as exotic as being an Ethiopian, but why be jealous of hardship? Why not appreciate your roots and how blessed you are to be from the heartland?
Lots of kids were dealing with their parents’ divorces; some kids had lots of money or knew someone famous. Everybody else seemed to have a more interesting life than mine. Mine was just too boring, too "Leave it to Beaver." I had both parents, they worked hard to make sure we had clothes and food and they loved us. We lived in a ranch house in the suburbs where my brother and I had paper routes. Boring-ville.
When I was in junior high in Phoenix, the Black kids had a culture; the Mexican kids had a heritage and a culture and great food. American Indian kids had all that and cool pow-wows and costumes and stuff. The Italian kids had great cooking and style.
I felt left out. I thought that White Anglo Saxon Protestant lower-middle class suburbia was boring. If only we were rich or poor or members of some oppressed minority group. Drama, passion, contrast. Could you imagine? Envying hardship. Other kids turned to teenaged angst, punk rock and pot. I turned east.
Hardly anyone in Phoenix is from Phoenix. My parents had left the Detroit area in 1968. Now there’s drama, it just took years and college classes about recent history for me to see it. They wanted a better life for us. Better weather, better economic conditions, and away from all the racial tension and political unrest that Detroit had come to symbolize.
What it meant for me was that I could say I was (sort of) from the Midwest. Suddenly I had a sense of identity. I had a culture, even if it was kind of bland. The summers we spent in Michigan I was introduced to such foreign, exotic and romantic things as twilight, casseroles home made pies, fishing, and Jell-O salads.
Then I stumbled upon a radio show that was all about my newly chosen ethnicity. Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" on National Public Radio. I’d savor it the way I imagine Eastern Europeans under Soviet oppression savored the Voice or Democracy on Radio Free Europe.
Keillor's self-effacing humor focused on what’s funny about the mundane. Like how the front-row for Lutherans is five or six rows back. Or his "Young Lutheran’s Guide to the Orchestra:"
"Many Lutherans start out playing clarinets in marching band and think of it as a pretty good instrument and kind of sociable…But the symphonic clarinet is different: clever, sarcastic, kind of snooty. It's a nice small town instrument that went to college and after that you can't get a simple answer out of them. It _is_ a French instrument, you know. Ever wonder why there are no French Lutherans? Probably the wine wasn't good enough for them."
I thought this was great stuff, especially since I played the clarinet in junior high and hated it. All the cool kids played trumpet or drums. But my older brother had played clarinet, so I played clarinet. Keillor made it okay, I was humble, it’s good to be humble, learn to laugh at yourself.
Who knew? I went to Concordia College in Nebraska because of their great art program, because they offered me a scholarship, and because it was far away from home.
Junior year of high school on the plane to Journalism Workshop at Ball State University in Indiana, kids from all over the country assumed I was from Chicago. When they found out I was from Phoenix, they’d look at me funny. Too heavy, too short, too pale, too not-blonde.
Then there was the one about the Art Major and the farmer’s daughter. Just that he married her, no joke. So, that’s how I became a Midwesterner, I married into it. Kids at Boyer Valley are always asking why anyone would want to choose to live in rural Iowa. They want nothing more then to get the heck out of their one-horse town.
I tell them that I lived in the second largest city in America for the better part of a decade and I’d much rather live in a village than a megalopolis. Sure, we still have crime, and drugs, and poverty, but I never had dinner with my state representative in LA, I never knew my postmaster by name. I never talked to the LA County Sheriff about being a fellow church youth counselor.
This is a good place to live and a good place to be from. You can say, ‘I’m an Iowan’ and not be ashamed, it may not seem as exotic as being an Ethiopian, but why be jealous of hardship? Why not appreciate your roots and how blessed you are to be from the heartland?
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