Daily Ambivalence - weeds

For lots of people the word "weed" has a negative connotation.

However, for people with dreadlocks saying weed is a lot like saying bacon-wrapped bacon.

Remember that one Saturday Night Live skit? This rastafarian-type guy who runs a novelty shop and any time a customer brings an item to him and asks what it does he takes it and says "You put your weed in it." Doesn't matter what it is. You put your weed in it.

I think I was a teenager when that skit was showing. For that very reason I found the skit endlessly amusing.

But I'm older now. More mature.

I happen to be at a novelty shop looking at a strange item in the back of the store. It's kind of a wavy box thing with three handles and some leather strings that come out of holes on the side. Somebody glued marbles and what appears to be pencil shavings on the top. I have not idea what it's for. Where's that novelty shop owner when you need him?

Weeds . . . eh.

Daily Ambivalence - baker's dozen

You know that old saying where someone says you should never trust a skinny chef?

I've always liked that saying because usually fat people are the ones who get discriminated against.

I don't know what the first guy who said this had against skinny chefs. I like to think it was something like a brother and sister who grew up hating each other because one of them liked country music and the other liked rock 'n roll. The sister opens a barbecue ribs restaurant and the brother, who has a band, asks to play there one Saturday night but the sister says no because she has already signed a banjo quartet. So they stop speaking to each other, but then years later when they have families of their own his daughter and her son fall in love, but it is forbidden love because they are first cousins.

And because their parents hate each other.

It's sad.

Still, the brother should never have trusted the sister in the beginning, but not because she didn't like his band or because she was skinny. It comes down to the whole baker's dozen thing. Ask any chef how many in a dozen and they'll probably tell you 13. That's just wrong.

You can't trust a chef. Skinny or fat.

Baker's dozen . . . eh.

Words what folks don't say right

Some people don't pronounce words correctly.

Like the other day I met a guy who didn't know the correct way to pronounce the colored sticks Crayola makes. Instead of saying crayon like cranberry minus the vitamin C, he said crayon like he was just returning from a science fiction convention and still had a Klingon phrase stuck in his throat, something like heghlu'meh QaQ jajvam.

Not that I have anything against Klingons. Or Star Trek in general, though I still think it was strange when Tasha Yar went down to that planet in episode 23 and died unexpectedly. She wasn't wearing a red shirt.

Dogs and cats living together.

Daily Ambivalence - Cheerios and rasins

My kids think I'm weird because I put raisins in my Cheerios.

When I was young I was a bit anal retentive with Cheerios and raisins. I needed to have one raisin with every spoonful of Cheerios and I admit that was weird.

But now I can have two even three raisins with a spoonful of Cheerios and that's no big whoop.

Just so that I tap my right foot on the floor once for every raisin while I chew. That and recite the original 13 colonies alphabetically backwards in my head. And hum the chorus of Eleanor Rigby in the key of C#.

So, huge strides.

Cheerios and raisins . . . eh.