• Who, me?

    I’ll say this for my wife: there’s nothing wrong with her reading comprehension and retention. The occasion for this revelation was my mea culpa on a spending incident. I bought a book, on nutrition no less. Yes, the king of the candy bar, the sultan of snack machines, now owns a book on nutrition. Who woulda thunk it?

    As it turns out, my mistake was not buying the book on nutrition, but in the follow-up criticism of my wife’s shopping habits. “I thought I would give you some ideas for the grocery store, so you would stop coming home with all of this crap.” Little did this author realize, his wife had been reading these entries.

    Is anyone familiar with the verb “smite,” as in “Cheryl was tempted to smite John; as he so richly deserved.”? Do your high school English teacher proud; look it up, use it in a sentence today.

    “Smite,” it’s not just for the Bible anymore.

  • And now a word from retail hell,

    Like millions of gifting challenged Americans this holiday season, I bought someone a retail gift card. I was visiting one of our representatives from the national chains the other day, standing in line with my card. When it was my turn I shrugged off the slightly out of breath, saccharin holiday greeting from the store clerk, and handed over my gift card. She asked me how much I wanted to put on the card and I told her, “Fifteen please.”

    “Very well sir, fifty it is.”

    “Sorry, I must have misspoken; I meant to say ‘fifteen’.”

    You’d have thought I just kicked tinny Tim’s crutch out from underneath him. The idea that I was so cheap I’d dilly around with a fifteen dollar gift card was so distasteful to the clerk she practically snarled at me. For a split second I felt compelled to whip out the receipt for my daughter’s presents, but good sense won out.

    It was a receipt from a competitor.

  • Please pass the Lysol

    My wife told me that she saw a news piece on the boob tube the other day where they reported a fascinating discovery: there are far more germs in your average office than in your average office bathroom. What is the lesson here? Personally, I’m planning to move my desk to that stall on the end.