The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

Well, birds do...
23:51 Apr 27 2008
Times Read: 832

I had a very interesting and revealing conversation with my son during our walk today. I had often thought of him as "directionally challenged", in that he could get lost in a closet. We were talking about the location of a particular restaurant and I couldn’t understand where he was referring to. He kept saying the restaurant was ‘up’ from where we were, even though he was pointing downhill. When I tried to correct him he explained that he was indicating north when he said “up”, pointing out that north was usually at the top of a map or the typical globe, even though north was downhill from us.



Using that logic, when leaves fall from the trees in autumn they are actually going south for the winter…

Raspberries in church
14:06 Apr 26 2008
Times Read: 907

If you stick your tongue out right when you sneeze you make a raspberry sound that will wake the neighbors.



It is actually fairly easy to convince children to try it.



It is much harder to get them to stop.

Ok, see, I was bored....
02:22 Apr 24 2008
Times Read: 933

I was sitting in a brief seminar today that was supposed to be about selling your small business. I have no intention of selling my business any time soon and resented my business partner signing us up for it; I had real-live work to do and he didn’t show. I was sitting on the far left, all the way against the wall in a small conference/meeting room, about 2/3 of the way back.



About 6 hours into the seminar (actually about 40 minutes, but I was bored to tears) the speaker said that she was going to read a very important passage to us and she didn’t want our concentration to be broken by any visual distractions. She instructed us to close our eyes and concentrate on every word as she read this passage to us. I looked around and sure enough, everyone I could see had their eyes closed and were waiting expectantly for her to begin. Just as she took a deep breath to begin her oratory, I turned to the wall on my left and barked, “Quit touching me!”



Most of the attendees started laughing, as did the speaker. Every time she asked us to settle down and try the exercise again she would break into giggling, which inspired laughter in the rest.



Order was never quite restored.

No, bilingual is NOT a sexual preference!
18:41 Apr 22 2008
Times Read: 970

I started off slowly, learning a word a day and trying to incorporate it into conversations during the day, if only in my head. One day returning from lunch early I discovered the building I worked in locked and remembered my keys were in my desk in my office. I spied the maintenance man, Javier, a little ways off talking with some of the workers.



I approached Javier and intended to impress everyone with my grasp of the lengua española by asking for his keys in Spanish. I learned just the week before the Spanish word for keys (llaves). But instead I asked him, in front of everyone while pointing to the clutch of keys on the front of his belt, for his huevos, which is Spanish for eggs and is also a slang term for testicles. Needless to say the conversation went downhill from there. My assistant rushed to my rescue and explained what I was requesting.



Needless to say that was my last attempt at speaking or learning Spanish.



Javier probably still thinks I’m a little funny like that.

Set up
02:01 Apr 15 2008
Times Read: 1,024

My son and I were at a baseball game yesterday. We were leaving early because we lost interest in the game. On the way out I stopped at a concession stand near our exit. The line was long and the crowd was noisy. We stood there for about a minute and a half when my son asked what we were doing. In a loud voice I said "Cameron, if you don't stop talking I'm putting you back in the trunk." Half the line got quiet and turned towards us. My son looked at me then looked at his feet. I shook my head and walked towards the exit. As soon as we got near the exit I looked at him and our eyes met. He burst out laughing and I couldn't hold it anymore.



My son is much quicker than me. I am so proud of him.

How badly do you want this job?
13:08 Apr 04 2008
Times Read: 1,046

Wait...did you just call me "Dude"?

Salty language
03:58 Apr 03 2008
Times Read: 1,058

I enjoy listening to sailors and merchant mariners swear. Their colorful language combines two of my favorite interests: theology and anatomy.

Oops...looks like we have company...
02:43 Apr 03 2008
Times Read: 1,060

"There is no human situation so miserable that it cannot be made worse by the presence of a policeman."





This one may have to wait until I have more time to write.

April Fools' pranks
01:14 Apr 01 2008
Times Read: 835






When I was but a lad of 5 or 6 years old my family sat sitting at the kitchen table eating dinner, and my older brother and older sister began bragging about the April Fools’ Day pranks they had pulled earlier at school. Harmless, mindless pranks that included plastic spiders, “kick me” signs taped to backs, getting people to say “I 8 it”, covering the edges of a coin with pencil lead or ink and handing to someone unsuspecting, and the like.

My father took it upon himself to express his disappointment with “today’s youth” (of 40 years ago), because we had no imagination. He regaled us with stories of his own exploits, like tying a black thread to a dollar and tugging it along when someone bends down to retrieve it, or getting to class before the teacher did, pulling one of their desk drawers all the way out of the desk, covering it with a book, turning it upside down and sliding it quickly back into place, or calling the old woman down the road and telling her he was with the phone company and it was the day to blow out the lines, advising her to cover all of her furniture with sheets because the dust that was about to come out of her phone could be considerable, and similar pranks. My brother and sister looked humbled. I was enthralled. My father had thrown down the gauntlet.

My father returned home from work the following day to find one of his old wallets lying on the concrete walkway leading up to the front door. Attached to the wallet was a piece of bright red and green yarn that lead around the side of the house. My father, thinking his lesson about the reason for using a black thread had been lost on someone, went the opposite way around the house, hoping to catch the prankster from behind. What he discovered was that the yarn went up a stepladder leaning against the outside wall of the sunroom and up on to the low roof. Now he was upset, because we were not allowed up on the ladders, much less up on the roof.

He was more than halfway up when he realized that someone had just recently painted the ladder rungs. My mother had to literally prevent my father from taking my life that night, but he bragged about it for years to come.