Category Archives: Humor

Man’s Real Calling: Mining Sherpa

The Annunaki of Sumerian Mythology (a bunch of little guys doing something for one really big guy)*

Sumerian Legends
“Tablet of Shamash relief” by Prioryman – Own work. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tablet_of_Shamash_relief.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Tablet_of_Shamash_relief.jpg

So I was doing a little research on the history of metallurgy– figuring that I could distill some industrial verbage into a topic of remarkable interest for our soon-to-be hoards of loyal groupies. And naturally, that led me to Sumerian mythology. The story goes something like this:

The Annunaki who actually came from Sirius but are attributed to having come from Nibiru were out on an intra-gallactic ‘walkabout’ when some had the misfortune of crashing onto Earth. Finding it a resplendent locale, rich in divers minerals, they decided to colonize. They, being all smartypants, mined said minerals for thousands of years because they found that gold, in particular, was a magnificent conductor of energy, allowing them to maintain phenomenal longevity (upwards of 1000 years), increase their survival rates with its healing properties, and look cool as they bedecked themselves.

Some of the more entrepreneurial hatched a scheme. If they could mix some of their stellar DNA with the hominids scattered about, they could create a humanoid chimera who would be smart enough to do this mining work for them and would surely not mind doing so. So the Annunaki created what became humans so that they could then devote their time to more important matters like sinking Atlantis in a sound experiment that went horribly awry.

Inevitably, the humans eventually held an ancient, though successful, version of Occupy Annunaki-Ville, largely in retaliation for the unsavory practice the Annunaki had for dining on them. (Soyent Green / Fee Fi Fo Fum / Vampires). The Annunaki fled, promising (threatening) to return at some future date when the humans had completely scuffed things up. Like a mucked up version of kicking your kids out of the house to find their own way when they are being complete putzes but knowing you will be there for them if they fail miserably. But they’re mostly putzes because they don’t like it when you eat their siblings…

Don’t know about you, but that sent the story-teller in me into a warren of bunny trails from which I may never emerge. Biblical narrative, global themes of giants and vampires–not really so much about gold except that is a backdrop for funding the entire plot. I’ll keep you posted as I find more.

In conclusion, the net net of today’s research finds that according to Sumerian legend, ancient metallurgy began for humans shortly after they were chimera-ated into gold-mining sherpas for the ancient race of marooned space mauraders. Insert Joseph Campbell’s anthropological treatise on human archetypes and one could create a veritable tome, comparing the Biblical narrative with Sumerian legends and drawing conclusions that apply to prophetic writings that span the globe as well as well as to debates about the metaphysical.

For Pete’s sake, have a glass of wine and manifest anticipation as we make our way to the more authorized version of the human-to-precious-metals connection, etc.

Bonus: according to my online source (Internet: the fount of ALL that is true), the 2012 Mayan Calendar / Zombie Apocalypse is a ruse, so at least you can let your hair down on that one!

KP

The World Cup or Something

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Yesterday, according to Google’s animated gif, something important went on in the sports world. There was a ball involved and some sort of net. Somewhere between five and twenty virile, agile, and attractive men in matching white attire sportsed against another similarly festooned team, wearing red. The thing they were sportsing over went back and forth on the field and they chased after it with something that one observer referred to as ‘gusto.’

The stands were filled with avid consumers of sportsing who paid inordinate amounts of cash to be there. Many of them took pictures.

Bars and couches were filled with hop-loving sports enthusiasts who alternately watched the game, drank beer, and sexually objectified some combination of the waitresses, girlfriends, and wives who brought them the beer.

world cup 2014Reportedly, the white and red teams sportsed equally, and there was a tie. These teams will each play another game against teams wearing different colored outfits, maybe blue or green. Depending upon who chases the thing around better in the next round, the red and white teams might keep playing games this year. Though only one team gets a trophy this year for being best at chasing things around, the other teams will get another chance at the trophy in next year’s season when new groups of virile, agile, and attractive young men do some sportsing.

UPDATE:  Feedback from male readers indicates that some offense has been taken regarding the characterization of men accepting beer from women as the objectification of women. One of them noted that his wife voluntarily brings him beer, and the other noted that he is a good tipper.

 

Mom Jeans

I’d like to go on record as saying I was adopted.

My mom got mad at me today because I wouldn’t take her Mom jeans with the elastic waistband. I quit.

“Why not?” she asks condescendingly.

“Because I won’t wear them,” I fire back.

“Why not?” she asks with judgment and disappointment.

(Somebody remind me how I got here…)

“Oh, look, it’s time to go!” And my yoga pants and I came home.

Daft Toes and No One Should Have Sex, Including Rats

It was really only three minutes until the alarm was going to go off anyway, and I had to pee. They weren’t going to be good for sleeping with my bladder that full, so I figured I may as well get out of bed. Due to a perpendicular kid’s feet poking into my very gizzard, I was precariously perched on the edge. I swung my leg over to roll onto my feet.  Just didn’t realize how close I was to the edge as the synergy of my voluminous butt meeting gravity pulled my carcass off the bed in a most unseemly manner. I threw out my right to the bed stand to catch myself. I threw my right leg out to brace against the wall.

picture of broken toe
This is my newly abused toe, inflicted by a morning of angst. Ignore the ratty nails. I’ll take care of that in a couple of months when I have income. (Photo by Kaley Perkins of her own foot, Feb. 2014)

That would have been a TREMENDOUS plan if the portable heater with the metal screen hadn’t been in the way, snagging my Morton’s toe in a death grip.

I limp-stumbled into the bathroom in the dark because only sissies need light to pee, and I was preoccupied with muttering profanity. From the unsuccessful sound of the flush, I could tell that something was wrong with the toilet. I flipped on the light and looked to see that whoever had diarrhea in the middle of the night had used a lot of toilet paper and had also not flushed. “Oh please, shit water, don’t breach the perimeter. Oh, gawd, please have a plunger in the garage, please have a plunger in the garage.”

(Nevermind one of my kids has diarrhea.)

The garage is not my favorite place since the rats have taken up residence and begun a comprehensive and systematic campaign against my pulses and staples. Their inherent stealth scares me, their turds remind me of existential failure to control the wilderness of life, and there is only so much sweeping of dried rodent feces one can do before the constraints of denial begin to crumble. But the threatening foam of shit-water and three-full-bladders about the awaken required the tactical flashlight and me to do recon. No damn plunger.

Sons just peed in the shower. Again. We got daughter to school early so she could go potty before classes.

I sat on the edge of my bed nursing my daft toe and sucking up to the wall heater when the girl child came in looking forlorn from a bad dream. She is in sixth grade and starting to wake up to stuff we’d both rather she didn’t have to.  The weekend before, she’d been at her dad’s and called me crying. She wanted me to pick her up, but I wasn’t in town. My sister and niece picked her up and got her away from all of the “boy juice” that was bugging her. Further debriefing revealed that she is starting to feel the ickiness of being a second class citizen because of her girlness in a house-full of boys with a … well, we’ll leave the ex-bashing for another day. He has some great strengths as a dad, but navigating the emotional needs of women and pending women is not one of them.

She is realizing this, and it breaks my mommy heart. If I had chosen differently, I wouldn’t have a broken family, a mistrust of men that makes me guard with tines and vitriol, girl children looking for worth, and boy children I am trying to squelch paternalistic privilege out of. But man, these are cool kids, and they wouldn’t be who they are without him as their dad. Dose of mom guilt, check.

That I told her I was gripping about having to get my IUD taken out because I’ve been bleeding since months ago, probably didn’t help.

“Why do you tell me that stuff?” she asked.

“Because I am nervous,  and I feel alone,” said the best mom ever.  “Being a woman is glorious.”

Morning routine pretty normal, near vomiting from anxiety on her way to middle school. She hates using the school’s bathrooms because “They’re disgusting!”  Bought a plunger with the boys before dropping them off, and immediately burst into tears on the way to the doctor’s office to get the bloodiest IUD ever seen removed from my baby basket. [The only reason I didn’t take a picture is because I didn’t think of it. You are welcome. (If you want some gross pictures – more gross than the featured toe above – click here.)]

“This seems like an awkward social moment,” I said to the doctor as he stuck his torso into my vagina to do a pelvic exam. He and the nurse laughed, presumably at my ice breaker, so at least the audience was friendly.

“I’m used to it,” he responded.

Bully for your team!

I didn’t cry quite so much on the way home. And why would I? I left there with Rx’s for valium and vicodin and a four-step plan to circumvent a bazillion year old evolutionary plot to reproduce – nature’s way of taming the divine feminine energy using sleep deprivation and interminable laundry. So imagine my surprise when, while bent over the toilet sucking the now largely encrusted  ick back up so that it would flush, I discerned the rapid and smooth scamper of a lush dark brown pelt somewhere to my left.

ONLY because of Ratatouille did I not have heart attack. I transported to the door by the garage to see if it was open (none of the doors in my house open or close with particular ease.) It was just a bit open, like enough for a smallish brown and well-fed rodent to scootch in. We danced a bit, the luxuriant rat, nourished by red lentils and TVP, and I – through the bathroom, the laundry room, around the perimeter of my kitchen, until he threw himself at the door which (he thinks) should have been opened and, in a feat that ordinarily requires opposable thumbs, probably had been by him. He ran behind the stove. I opened the door. Out he ran. Bastard. Fucker.

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. I dragged my tired-ass, emotional self out of the house to watch my niece’s high school orchestra concert. It was a good move as my daughter is in band and has been squawking about wanting to quit. It was an evangelistic event for her for which I am grateful. Did you know that kids who learn instrumental music for the four years of high school are 75% more likely than their non-instrumental peers to get bachelor’s degrees; 58% more likely to get master’s; and 32% more likely to get doctorate’s?

Here’s the takeaway.

I have toes, a bed, a garage, money for a plunger, food to feed rodents, a car to drive to the doctor, medical care (for now), kids, healthy kids, healthy kids who are processing life and doing a pretty good job of it, a plan to make it so I can have sex without having more kids, sisters, a niece, a niece to be able to show support for, a niece who loves music and rescues my daughter when she is sad and who is a good example, older daughters who are also processing through stuff and able to help the younger kids which in turn helps them, gas to drive to a concert, and a great bed to come home to.

I want to live a life of abundance. This requires re-writing stories and remaining present, neither of which are sissy-friendly or one-time activities. If we lived in vacuums or at yoga retreats, progress might be faster, but sometimes it’s just one broken toe at a time.

The Controversy between Evolution and Creation Will Not Be Settled in My Nostril

It started with nose picking. Back from the crisp, dry Central Oregon air, my boogers have taken on a landscape of their own. Now that I am way too mature to actually pick my nose (WHATEVER), I am harkening back to my childhood when nose-picking was quite a hobby.

“Don’t pick your nose, Bertha,” used to be what I heard. That was pretty funny—nice family tradition until the beautiful summer day when Mom and I were driving to the grocery store with the windows down.  “How are you doing, Bertha,” hollered Mom out the window at one of her bridge buddies standing at the corner waiting to cross. And so named.

“Are you the lady that picks her nose?” I hollered after her. Kids are just precious.

As organic conversational topics are known to do, this happened to come up with my roommates. They’d also been to Central Oregon and I couldn’t help but wonder if their boogers were under-going a similar metamorphosis.

“Have you ever noticed that no matter how big a person’s finger is, it is able to fit up his nostril?” asks one of my roomies. Loved that he put that in the masculine as obviously boys are bigger nose pickers than girls. “I mean have you ever heard someone say, “Gosh, my finger is too big to fit up my nose”? Excellent point. I hadn’t, and did spend a little bit of time searching my archives to make sure I hadn’t missed something. All I could find was that I have also never heard anyone say, “Gosh, there’s wayyy tooo much cheese on that.” Additionally, I have never been able to lick my elbow, though I have tried.

“That’s proof of creation right there,” he said. We laughed. Something about farts and boogers can bring that out in adults—at least the kinds of adults I like. I happen to fall squarely in the camp that buys into creation as well, and being one to fixate on frivolous tangents, I spent about a day and a half throwing this post around in my head, amused by it. The fact that an individual’s finger girth to nostril capacity ratio are compatible does present a compelling argument for intelligent design.

As this idea rumbled around, and I decided that I would bless my audience with it, I had to bump the vetting criteria up a notch. Would the universal ability to pick one’s nose, in truth, qualify as incontrovertible proof of creation? My reputation is at stake here: I want to be factual and authorized in my pontifications. And actually, no—it doesn’t. If each step of evolution gave the species a better chance at survival then nose-picking would naturally have been a key component in the process.

I am sorry I could not be of more help.

Toe Nails, Ducks, Genetic Epiphanies

Thank God I dye my hair. The end.

Kidding.

Because I dye my hair, I occasionally have roots that need to be touched up. Also because I, like many other middle-aged women who are still AWESOME and HAWT, have hair that grows, and toe nails that need to be painted (thank you for the fungus, Grandma Downey), and chin hairs that go rogue (thank you Grandma Downey), I periodically go in to spend wayyyy too much money in a beautification process which involves the address of the above maladies. During my most recent stint I had a grandiose epiphany.

The hair dresser and I were talking about her ethnic background. Why not? That’s what chicks do: become best friends with whomsoever seems interesting and chatty. She was sharing about her five kids, none of whom resemble each other, and we were bonding over stories of how we’ve screwed up our kids and are in our mid years rebuilding our lives intentionally, trying to atone for whatever it is we do that for. Whatnot. Her explanation for the physical difference of her kids derives, she believes, from the genetic mix of native American, Welsh, German and Moor. Certainly plausible. But then I had a streak of brilliance that struck me, with brilliance.

Major aha moment–like the time I looked out in the pond and saw a duck go underwater and realized that might just be how the bird got its name.

Boys like girls.

All of history–genetic history at least (not the nasty war bits)–owes its vast diversity to the simple fact that boys like girls. Boys move for better provision and take girls with them. Boys go to war and take other boys’ girls. Boys go on adventure and find new girls. Some boys do all of the above at various levels of simultaneousity (look it up–I dare you), and they have been known to have their own TV shows. Boys write stories about this, lament about this, and pour out their life energy in pursuit of girls (marriage and responsible provision on one side and boy-dog trophy-procurement on the other). Simple fact. Yes, salt was important, and the plague had far-reaching impact. Water rights will inevitably show up as a feature, but meanwhile, in the scope of genetic history, each one of us can attest to the fundamental truth that boys like girls.

(Corollary: girls probably like boys too, or we wouldn’t spend so much money covering up the toenail fungus.)