Richardland Blog

If there is plenty of natural light in a bathroom I won’t turn the lights on when I enter. But then sometimes out of habit, when I’m on my way out I’ll click the light anyway, turning it on instead of off. Then I pause for a second cuz my subconscious knows that lights don’t go ON when you exit the bathroom - it’s the other way around.

At first I’m confused.

Then I’m enraged.

We learned tastes in first grade. Miss Kleins class at St Joseph. They all made sense except one. Bitter. Wtf is “bitter”? Sweet, Salty, Sour - they all make sense and are easy to describe through words and example, but not bitter. Its just there and makes no sense.

The only thing I’ve heard referred to as being bitter is the frogs breath Sally uses to cover up the deadly Nightshade she slipped in soup the Dr’s soup in Nightmare Before Christmas (she coughs and goes “bitter! worms wort, where, where’s that worms wort” amid gasps).

The example they gave us in 1st grade was “unsweetened chocolate”, cuz every first grader knows exactly what unsweetened choc tastes like. way to go.

Bitter is a lie perpetuated by the liberal media.

There is no such thing as bitter.

My parents and I went to a cousins wedding in Maine in September 2006. I was on a business trip to New York so they flew into JFK and picked me up with a rental car and drove up to Maine for the wedding.

On the way back to New York we drove with some other family groups who were driving to Boston and we all stopped in New Hampshire for lunch. Afterward we all went our separate ways. In the ensuing drive, my dad brought up the annual “you’re a failure doin this internet and Hollywood garbage so when are you going to go to college and make something of your life?” scolding. But this time with an added reason: My uncle, who’s name starts with a B and rhymes with Plyin, had noted to my dad that I wasn’t making any money because if I had, then I would (or should) have offered to pick up the check for everyone. Adding further that either of his kids would have surely not allowed anyone but them to pay for the meal.

There are so many things wrong with that, not the least of which being that the comment itself was a totally dick thing to say, but lets explore the most obvious logic holes in my uncle name rhymes with Plyin’s rules of engagement:

The meal attendee’s consisted of my mom, dad, grandma, uncle and his wife, aunt, cousin, cousin2 and her husband and uncle and his wife. 11 people. No one expects my grandma to pay for anything ever anymore so that makes 10 possible check picker uppers. First, there’s the obvious question of why wouldn’t everyone just pay for their own meal - the answer to which, I have no idea. So one could try and figure out the pyramid of each persons “pay for everyone” expectation, but instead of trying to psychoanalyze his thought process, lets just weigh the merit of his end result: I should have paid for everyone’s lunch.

Ignoring that it was other people who suggested lunch, picked the place, invited everyone, ect - why would one of the offspring be expected to pay not only for their parents, but for the whole table? Further: I was one of 3 offspring, none of whom offered to pay for the table either. So why was I singled out? and should it matter that my 2 cousins are both 15 years older than I?

What the honkey tonk funkytown was going through my uncle’s rhyme’s with Plyin’s head that made him think it was at all appropriate, let alone expected for the youngest family member at the table to pay for everyone? Since its impossible to decipher, I shrugged it off to him just being kind of a jerk and moved on.

Then a year later in August 2007, we are down in Coranado (San Diego) for another Bushnell cousins wedding. We go out to dinner the night before the event with a table of 16 or so people. My uncle rhymes with Plyin sits across from me. Before anyone has ordered, he is already arguing with my dad over who gets to pay for who. I’m in amazement at how flipping ridiculous and elitist the whole concept is. Who the hell cares? I keep thinking to myself. “I wanna pay for your dinner tonight” should be answered in this case with a simple “F you, I wanted to pay for YOUR dinner tonight, but since it doesn’t frigging matter to me, I will either accept the offer or say no thank you and we each pay for our own”. It’s not rocket science. And if one feels some smug sense of accomplishment because he force-paid for your meal, then you’re probably doing him a psychological favor.

But no, they bickered and got annoyed with each other over it until an agreement was made. Before and after that though, my uncle made several “Richard’s paying for the meal” jokey comments. Which was awkward because of the “several” aspect. One line would have been harr harr, very cute. But bringing it up again in different forms showed definite signs of wtf is with this guy.

For whatever reason, this particular uncle thinks I’m a bum and that no one is pointing it out (or at least not enough). It’s weird. It’s amusing. And yes, despite all his great personal qualities, it makes him a total snob.

I was on about 648 of my daily 800 laps in my Olympic size pool and came across a snail all tucked in its stupid shell hanging upside down from the edge of lip of the concrete rim of the pool. The waves from my massive man-strokes were smacking against it and apparently it not only didn’t care, but thought this was a pretty cool place to hang out.

Um. Wrong.

For one, every wave that hits it drags gross slimy snail-slime back into the pool where my face is. Wtf. And for two - since when is hanging over water a good idea for animals that can’t swim. Not only can’t swim, but can’t even flail about until they reach something to save them. What a loser. And hello - have you never heard of fish that wait for stuff like that to fall in so they can snatch them up? Some even spit water at bugs to make them fall in so as to be eaten. This snail didn’t know I don’t have those in my pool. God.

I plucked it off and tossed it into the garden where it will re-emerge and eat my flowers now. Totally lame.

I’ve met a lot of slimy creatures in my day, but I’m gonna go ahead and say that out of all the coiled shell molluscan class Gastropoda on this earth, the North American garden snail is the dumbest.

DAMMIT. I was jeeeuuuust about to turn off the tv and finally get some 1AM sleep, when the 4 o’clock Eastern daily repeat number 3 of the O’Reilly Factor came on. I can’t sleep NOW. This is my last chance to watch today’s Factor since my Windows Media Center PC has decided to freeze the Media Center part and make taping or watching shows impossible until you restart the whole computer (this happens daily now. yeay Windows), and I missed the 2nd play.

Oh hell no. Sleep is officially postponed for 47 minutes. Factor producer Jessie Waters is confronting Florida Circuit Judge Manuel Lopez while he’s trying to drive away in his car. I love these segments even though they make me really squeamish and uncomfortable. For you totally lame non-factorites: what he does is send the Producer of the show or some other guy behind the scenes who isn’t tied down to being in-studio all the time to go out on the street Mike Wallace-60-Minutes style and poke microphones in peoples faces who have sinned against nature and up to this point refused to explain themselves in any way to the media. In this case, judge Lopez gave a tiny bail to an illegal alien that later killed a dude.

This is fun because its a legitimate story that of course only O’Reilly is covering (on tv anyway) and the racial component of both villains being Hispanic (despite the victim being black) guarantee’s more “Bill O’Liely is a racist Hitler loving KKK member fascist” lines dribbles across . Woot.

Damn you William Buchanan (i made that up) O’Reilly. You’ve kicked the sandman out of my house again. And I love you for it.

On top of my fridge there has been a Nutter Butter box for a long time. I don’t usually notice it, but I did today and a wheat-based, peanut-shaped wafer sandwich with a peanut butter-flavored creme center sounded kindov good.

So I opened one.

A little dead looking, but no worse than old chocolate with the white stuff on it, and we’ve all eaten those, so I figured why not and took a bite. It was awful. But I had gone this far, so I had to at least make a real effort. I took another bite, much bigger than the first and slowly chewed the rot gunk I had just willfully started to injest.

As I masticated the stale, spoiled mush between my teeth I started to calculate exactly how old this product was exactly. The answer was that they were purchased 3 years ago this month.

I compromised with myself and forced down that which I had already bit off and threw away the rest. I didn’t get sick, but I still wouldn’t recommend eating stuff that old, even if, like me, you assume that a packaged and processed product probably has a shelf life of forever.

Some things in fact may.
Nutter Butters. Do not.

I have not written and posted an official blog in years. So I’m making myself do it right now. I have nothing important to deliver or comment on. But here I am typing. Because sometimes if you don’t make yourself do things, you’ll never do them. Like go to church, or give to charity or exercise regularly. None of which I do. But blogging zipped to the top of my list of things to forcibly change. And now here I am. Blogging. While admitting I don’t have a topic in mind.

There are several ways to approach a non-topic topic like this. I could go into reasons why I haven’t blogged and explain the back-story behind the non-premise. I could continue to talk about how this post has no topic, thus eventually forming a topic through the exploration. Or I could just stream together random observations or thoughts. Not to be outdone (by myself), I choose all 3.

1.) Why the non-blogging. For one, I’ve been busy. Busy is never an excuse for something like this, but sortov is in this case cuz I had trouble with the blog software - getting it installed, getting it to function properly, getting it to look the way I wanted - and the doing every page by myself thing was too hard. I’m now going to quickly leave this topic because I almost fell asleep re-reading that sentence on “why I haven’t been blogging”.

2.) There is no topic to this post. This is a simple and potentially interesting line to work off of, however you can’t do it this far into the post. I’ve already written too much and revealed the process to a degree where writing about how this post supposedly has no intended direction would rightly seem phony and forced. I’ve already ruined this one and now must move on.

3.) Random thoughts and observations. This is the easiest form of entertainment to make, requiring almost no thought and talent yet often yields audience pleasing results (ie: Family Guy). All you do is grab random colorful nuggets of humor and string them together like a beaded necklace that you give to your 5th grade sweetheart, except she’s a bitch and “accidentally” leaves it in the cafeteria and it gets thrown out and then when you ask her to help you look for it she thinks you’re “weird” so you go “I’ll show you weird bitch” and become known as the creepy violent kid that no one wants on their kickball team.