The guys in this picture are digging up a dead body.

Somehow this is socially acceptable.  And not only is it socially acceptable to dig up dead things, modern day teachers think that it is very important to teach kids everything there is to know about a bunch of stuff that happened a long time ago.

Preschools are focused on teaching kids these big words like cretaceous and tyrannosaurus and coelophysis.  Why is it so important to learn about dinosaurs?  They are dead. This is a bunch of useless information unless your kid is someday going to grow up and be a paleontologist.  Is there really a need for paleontologists in our society?

I have heard that there is a shortage of physicians.  The reason why there is a shortage of physicians is because medical school is extremely hard to get into and the classes are so insanely difficult that no normal person can pass them.  Maybe it wouldn't be so hard if teachers would introduce organic chemistry and medical terminology in preschool instead of teaching the kids about rock formations in Afghanistan and the infrastructure of beehive colonies.

My kids spent a month last year learning about owl droppings and bat caves. It's okay to observe and study digested mouse skeletons, but it's not okay to study dead humans.

Okay, so like, a few years ago I was talking to this girl and she told me that her brother wanted to be a doctor, but he couldn't pass all the classes he needed to be accepted.  There were loads of other people in the class with him, that had no trouble at all passing these classes and they didn't really have to study as hard as her brother.
So it got me thinking.  There is massive quantities of information that have to be learned all at once in order to get a college degree that allows you to get a job doing anything that will make you a high income in a job that is actually quite meaningful and beneficial to society.  Why not just learn all the vocabulary when you are a kid and have all the time in the world, and then later on, medical school will be easy.

Dorsal scapular vein. Guess where that is?  Is that a hard word to say.  If a kid talks about a triceradon, it's cute.  But if they say subclavian vein, or Ileocolic artery, then people think it's sick and horrible.  Kids should not be taught anatomy.

When my twins were just a couple months old, my friend Dottie asked if I wanted to go to the Bodies Exhibit.  She offered to watch the twins, but I really didn't trust her with them.  She freaks me out.  So I decided that we should all
go together.
                  
The people in the exhibit were annoyed that some white trash mother and all of her kids were at the exhibit.  It was a quiet serene place filled with students who would one day be doctors.  I did not feel welcome there with my double stroller.  I especially felt unwelcome when the twins started crying and I had to sit down and nurse them.
Everyone I knew I was scandalized that I would take my young children to see such a morbid exhibit.
I bought several books there, and from time to time, my kids gets these books out.  They look at the pictures and I read them the terminology and describe to them the inner workings of the human body.

If your kid wants to be a meteorologist, it's perfectly fine if you study the weather together.  If your kid wants to be a geologist, it's fine teaching him about sedimentary rock and slate.  But don't get him prepared to be a doctor, unless you are a doctor or in the medical field.  That's just wrong.

I realize that teaching my children vast quantities of useful information such as this is going to screw them up in the worst way.  I need to teach my kids about the crystal formations of snowflakes by cutting shapes from notebook paper.  I need to teach my kids about ecology and conservation by buying workbooks on the environment.

It is very important to teach my kids about dinosaurs, geology, butterflies.  I need to sit down with my kids and make macaroni art and paper mache'.  I should have listened to them.
Now look what's happened.  My son has grown old before his time!  And it's from letting him read from anatomy books.  The doctors say that it's irreversible.

Due to the over stimulation in the choroid plexus of the 4th ventricle of the brain, the hypoglossal nerve was overreacted triggering the pituitary gland to stimulate hair follicles into rapid growth.

The Sun is a mass of incandescent gas

Steven Hawking said that the universe was created by an accident.
I wish the universe would fix this chair.

Steven Hawking thinks that you shouldn't mix the science of the universe with real life.  He thinks it's ridiculous.  Well, I think that stupid bow tie he wears is ridiculous.  It's a shame that he is so narrow minded.  It's also a shame that he probably gets out more than I do.

Anyway, I think the universe is a lot like real life.

The universe was created by the big bang. And people are created by the big bang too...get it?  You know, slam bam thank you ma'am.

  Each person born lives in their own personal universe don't they?  I guess some  people are accidents and created by an incredibly intense big bang, and some people were planned out and created.

People are like little solar systems.  If you are powerful and make a lot of money and are very persuasive, then you are a sun and everyone revolves around you.

If you are delusional and think you are a sun and force everyone to revolve around you , then you are a black hole.

If you just go about life in a go with the flow kind of way, then you are just a planet spinning around and around doing the same old thing year after year.

But if you do your own thing and don't really fit in with the grand scheme of things then you are just a meager little dwarf planet like Pluto.  Pluto is just not good enough to fit in with everyone else.  But who cares.  Pluto is far more fun than all the other planets.

Okay, since we're on the subject of planets, I have a theory about Mars.  A lot of people think that there is no life on Mars, but there is.  They found frozen water on the ice caps.  That is evidence number one.
I don't have any more evidence but I firmly believe that there is subterranean human life underground Mars.  The Martian planet is made up of caves much like a stone sponge.  But don't tell NASA about my theory because the word will get out and they'll be sending rocket ships up there to mess up their nice little eco system.

There is a reason why other planetary systems don't want to have anything to do with us.

The Jamcracker Diet

Are you tired of spending money on those new fangled "fad" diets that claim to work, but don't?
You've tried them all, but finally here's a diet that is guaranteed to work or your money back.
It's simple, it's easy, and it's all yours for absolutely Free...That's right.
There's no crazy schedule.  You don't have to keep a journal and log down every bit of food that enters your mouth.  It's so easy, you don't even have to buy a book and read it seventeen times to understand it.  And best of all, it's the cheapest diet known to man.
Here's how it works.
Just drink one delicious glass of water for breakfast.

And then another nice delicious glass of water for lunch.

There is nothing in the world like "not eating" that will make you lose weight faster.
Here's the best part.  You can have anything you want for dinner.  Anything at all.

However, you can only eat once per day.  Sit down and eat your evening meal no sooner than 4 o clock.  The closer to bed time you eat, the better.  Going to bed hungry is not so much fun.  I know someone who takes a sleeping pill while he is dieting so he won't be tempted to eat late at night.  I don't think I would actually do this, but hey, to each his own.
After you stop eating dinner, don't eat anything else.
This diet gets your brain in "will power" and "self-control" mode.  Once you start nibbling on something, it's hard to stop eating.  So just say no to everything all day long and reward yourself every night with a satisfying meal.
You can drink as much as you want during the day as long as you are not consuming calories.  Don't drink artificial sweeteners.  They have been scientifically proven to give you the munchies.
I have had people tell me that this diet is not healthy.  I beg to differ.  I met a doctor from India who fasts for three days every few months.  He said this is completely healthy.  It cleanses the body.
After I had twins, I weighted 180 pounds.  If I stayed at that weight, I could have had all sorts of health problems.  Obesity has been linked to cancer, diabetes, arthritis, heart disease, etc.
It's just not as easy to be light on your feet and full of energy when you are carrying around extra weight.
I don't starve myself all day long on a regular basis.  I just do the diet until I get to the weight I want.  Then I try to eat a balanced diet, and If my pants get too tight, I do the Jamcracker diet until they fit again.
The first couple of days is kind of rough, but the stomach shrinks and adjusts and you get used to it.
If I know that I am going to go somewhere for dinner in the evening and I will be tempted to eat way too much, I don't eat all day long.  When I get to the party, I eat whatever I want.  I look like that skinny girl who can just eat whatever she wants without gaining weight.
I am five foot 4 and a half inches tall.  My weight range is 115 to 140 pounds. I like to stay at 120.  I'm not anorexic.  I like food.  I don't think I'm fat.  I don't over do dieting.  Sometimes I diet and sometimes I don't.
I didn't actually make up this diet.  I stole it from a guy.

I used to work at the BroadRipple Subway in Indianapolis, Indiana.  I worked with this fat guy there for a while.  He quit, and came back to visit a few months later and he looked "HOT."
I asked him how he lost so much weight.  He told me "The Guy Diet."  I said "The Guy Diet? What's that?"
He said "You only eat one meal a day."
The guy asked me for a hug.  Someone told me later that he had a huge crush on me and wanted to go out.  I was with an overweight psychopath at the time who laid on the couch and ate food from Long John Silver's all day long.  I wish I had left my crazy guy for the hottie."  Oh well.  I guess I have rambled of subject once again.

Here are some interesting diets that I have heard of:
Tim Ferris Diet:
Available in the book "The Four Hour Body"

It's basically a slow carb diet.  You eat nothing but beans and meat for six days.  Then on the seventh day, you binge eat and it supposedly helps you loose weight.  My husband tried this diet and lost 2 pounds per week.  It was extremely expensive.  I tried it for three days but quit because it made me feel sick and constipated.

Atkins Diet:
I guess most people have heard of this meat and cheese diet.  You know what happened to Dr. Atkins?  He's dead.

Paleo Diet:  This one is actually kind of fun.  Basically you don't eat processed grains like bread, rice, and cereal.  You eat meat, vegetables and fruit.  There is a book for this diet and it makes the diet extremely complicated and frustrating.  I follow a modified version of this sometimes when I seem to be gaining a few pounds.  It seems like I gain weight fast when I am eating from the bread group.

Raw Vegan Diet:  This one was a fun diet.  I did it for a month and lost 8 pounds.  I had a lot of energy and felt light and airy.  I was extremely hungry though.  I got down to 115 pounds and called it quits on that one.
Watermelon Diet:  I made this diet up.  Buy watermelon with seeds.  Eat tons of ice cold watermelon...seeds and all...for breakfast and lunch.  Then eat a sensible dinner.  Eat watermelon for snacks any time you want.  I lost five pounds doing this one week.

1000 calorie diet:  I had a friend in High School who lost 100 pounds on this diet.  It's simple, but I tried it once buy only eating a small sandwich for all three meals.  Each sandwich is about 300 calories or so.  It works.

A diet is only a crash diet if you let it become one.  If you totally blow it one day and binge eat because you are starving....don't worry, try again the next day.  According to Tim Ferris, one day of binge eating can actually help you loose weight, as long as you only do it once a week.  I don't binge eat though.  That's disgusting.  But you can do it if you want to.

You don't actually have to diet, though.  Plenty of people are overweight and completely happy about it.  But if you are not, I highly recommend the Jamcracker diet.  You don't have to do it though.  The only thing you have to do is pay taxes and die.

Making Coffees

The best part of waking up is Folgers in my cup.

But not when Dottie makes it.
This is how much coffee I put in my coffee maker in the morning....

This is how much Dottie puts in....

If Dottie were a normal person, I could just explain to her that she should get the measuring cup and just use 1/4 a cup.  But Dottie is not a regular person and at the time she was making me coffee every morning, I was so freaking mad at her that I couldn't say anything.  I was about to explode I was so furious.
I went into pre term labor while pregnant with twins and I had to be hospitalized.  My husband called his mother, Dottie, up on the phone and she retired from her teaching job and flew right up to save the day.  My husband brought me home 10 days later, and the house was trashed from top to bottom.

Dottie had made the mess.  She likes to make things like crafts to entertain the children.  She bakes things for the neighbors and everyone she meets.
I got one look at the kitchen and there was flour and batter caked all over the walls and the ceiling.  It looked like Lucille Ball had broken into my house and a giant cake exploded. I was on bed rest, and I couldn't clean it.
The twins were born early

and had to be hospitalized for several weeks

and Dottie stayed at our house to "help " with my other kids.  And every morning, she woke up bright and early to make a huge breakfast.  She was bright and chipper and very much like what Snow White would be like in the Twilight Zone or an alternate universe.
She didn't drink coffee, but she knew I did.  So every day, day after day, she woke up before me just so she could make me coffee.  She did it to be nice.  That's just one of the "over the top" things she does just to earn the brownie points she needs to be considered "mother of the year."
To make it all worse she told me "Coffee always tastes better when someone else makes it....Back when I was teaching at Lee Britain, that's what my friend always told me.  She raced in before me every morning to make us both tea so I wouldn't have to make it and she always told me that tea always tastes better when someone else makes it."
I think Dottie was just too dense to get the fact that she had just been insulted.
I could have explained to Dottie the right way to make coffee but that's like teaching a pig to sing.  It would just waste my time and annoy the pig.  Anyway, I tried to teach her how to make pancakes and she got really mad at me.  When she makes pancakes, they are all burnt on the outside and gooey in the middle and she sticks things in them that really don't taste good in pancakes.
I don't really like her doing me favors anyway.  I just wanted to make my own freaking coffee.  I am a big girl and I can do it myself.  I don't want some twisted version of Donna Reed trying to pamper me with coffee that tastes like something I scraped out of a  skillet.
So I tried to hide the coffee and the coffee maker.  I put them away in places that I knew she would never be able to reach.  But she kept finding them and making a big deal about how much effort she made to find the coffee and make me coffee.
But the screwed up thing about Dottie is the fact that she does it all so that I will return the favor.  There are strings attached to everything she does.  I know this because she gossips about people that she has done favors for, that didn't return the favor.
Living with Dottie, was the most horrible experience of my life.  And that's saying a lot, because I used to live with someone who beat me up and screwed with my head on a regular basis.  Dottie screwed with my head.  I used to have nightmares about strangling her.  But I'm past that now.

Grasshopper Pot Pie

This is a picture of me graduating from Harvard.

I didn't graduate from Harvard.  I was only kidding.  When this picture was taken I don't think I even knew what Harvard was.  Yes, back then, I was completely bats.  And speaking of bats, bats flew overhead at my graduation.  I could have followed those bats to their bat cave, collected all their droppings and sold it to buy one of those cute Victorian homes on Main Street.    Hind sight is 20/20.
Bat droppings are valuable you know.  They call it guano and its great fertilizer for plants.  I wouldn't know, I've never tried it.  I thought about it though.
You know what else I thought about?
Grasshopper droppings

Just look at all this crap.
I could package it and sell it on the black market.  I could make a fortune on this black gold.  It's actually more of a dark burnt sienna, really.  They aren't technically grasshopper droppings, its really locust poo.
I've got a bit of a locust infestation in my food forest.  These are demonic locusts from the depths of Hades much like the ones that Moses sent upon Egypt.
Someone suggested that maybe God sent them to me to use as food.  I could maybe put them in stir fry with a little broccoli and snow peas from the garden.  So that's what we had for dinner last night.
I'm just kidding.  I sautee'd them with a little chili powder and put them in enchiladas.

  They tasted a bit like the field mouse samosas we ate last Tuesday.  I got the recipe from my good friend Dottie.  The original recipe called for armadillo, but I have heard that those things have leprosy.  That is so disgusting.  I didn't eat the enchiladas.  I got invited to a pot luck at someone's church and that's what I brought.  They loved them.
I think next time I'll pluck the wings off first because those things get stuck between my teeth.  They do give an exotic flavor to the enchiladas though.  They taste sort of like toasted coconut.

Invasion of the Loco Locusts

I filled my backyard with sunflowers because
1. They are pretty and they make me happy
2.  According to theory, the bugs and other pests will leave the garden alone, and only eat the sunflowers.
Maybe this is true.  The sunflower leaves are infested with aphids, and my cucumbers are just fine.  But the sunflowers are covered in these crazy grasshoppers.  Then they ate my apple tree!
Once again, I think that planting sunflowers amongst the garden might be just another wives-tale passed onto the pilgrims from the ancient Indians.  (The feather Indians, not the dot Indians.)

I watched this permaculture video by this guy in Australia named Geoff Lawton.  He said that if you have a grasshopper infestation, then you have a lack of ducks and geese.  In my own little fantasy land, I have a full functioning permaculture food forest.
In reality, I've got a backyard full of weeds and mis shapen fruit that tastes kinda bad.  I guess I could dig a pond and get some geese, but my kids will drown in the pond, the geese will fly away, and the neighbors will call the code enforcers on me.

My husband, Clyde, told me that if I want to get rid of the grasshoppers, then I need to get rid of the sunflowers.  The sunflowers are looking kind of scraggly looking, and I guess it's time to get rid of them.  They shade out the rest of the plants, and hog all the nutrients from the soil.  I guess I planted them too close to my other plants.

So one night, I started pulling up the sunflowers, and those evil grasshoppers started swarming and landing all over me.  I had a bad experience with grasshoppers lately.  The last time I declared war on the grasshoppers and started killing them, one of the twins, Nick Kick, had a terrible accident with a shovel.


But of course, that's ridiculous.  Those grasshoppers don't really have supernatural powers.  That's impossible.  That's just silly.  But still, I wonder.  It seems like ever since that week that I went around smashing grasshoppers, those little buggers keep flying into me and landing on me.  It's almost as if they are trying to intimidate me.
Just look at them!  They're everywhere.

They're evil and they're just waiting for the perfect moment to attack me.  So when I started pulling up the sunflowers, I started thinking of that old movie by Alfred Hitchcock called "The Birds"  I guess being attacked by a flock of birds doesn't seem as scary as Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street, but when you're being attacked by dozens of little varmints, it's a whole nother story.

Those grasshoppers landed all over me.  It was freaky.  I just knew they were after me.  I'm bigger and stronger.  So I started pulling them off and squishing them so I could run back inside where it's nice and safe.  Boy was I wrong.  Those things are telekinetic.  As soon as I got inside, the other twin, Porkchop Flannigan, did a summer sault off the back of the sofa and landed flat on his face.  He got a bloody lip and busted a tooth out.  He looked like Mohamed Ali after a boxing match.  He spit out a tooth and a mouthful of blood.

It makes me wonder though, is it the grasshoppers doing this, or is it my own telekinetic powers gone crazy due to fear.

Silly pants and foufy soldiers

The best thing about being rich and important is the fact that you can make people dress up in ridiculous clothing.  Just look at these guys in Italy.  They're saying "Look at me in my silly pants.  Don't I look stupid?"

I actually kind of like those pants.  But I bet you those guys have friends at home that laugh at them and make fun of them.  Unless they're rich.  When you're rich, you can wear anything you like and get away with it.  The camera men will take your picture and call it fashion no matter how stupid you look, because you're rich and famous.

Look at this rich and famous guy.  He's getting paid to look silly

You can only get away with an outfit like this if you are in an elite social class.  When I was 16, I did not know this.

I had a fashion sense of my own, and I just don't think the people of Denison,  TX  were ready for high fashion such as mine.

This one time, My sister Clementine was going to Deep Ellum with her boyfriend, Mikey.  Since I was paying for the gasoline, they were going to let me tag along.

Before it was taken over by Yuppies and totally ruined, Deep Ellum was this artsy Punk Rock Downtown area of Dallas.  They had cool shops, and these outside vendors that sold the coolest jewelry in the world.  We weren't actually old enough to get into the clubs, but it was still loads of fun.

If you went there, though, you had to look as punk rock as possible so that you wouldn't be considered a trendy.

Trendy: A yuppie prep conservative who is just wearing new waver clothing to follow a fashion trend.
Clementine wore her ripped fishnet panty hose with some thuggish looking outfit.  Mikey wore a mohawk, a Fugazi T-Shirt, shorts, and bright yellow Doc Martens boots that went halfway up his shins.

Somehow, they were cool and I was not.  What I wore that day, went down into their hysterical deed recollection bin and the "Clotilda Fashion Story" was told over and over again at parties and other social events.  They did not think it was a punk rock outfit, they just thought it was absolutely hysterical.

I wore a 1950s bathing suit that I got out of my grandmother's closet.  She wore it one time, was scared to death of the water, fish and snakes, and never went swimming again.
The bathing suit looked like this one:

It was made from thick black rayon.  I wore it with black and white striped tights, like the wicked witch of the west

and a pearl necklace that went down to my knees and a pair of mary janes. 
I thought I looked punk rock.  If I had been Paris Hilton instead of Clotilda Spampacker back then I might have just got my picture put in Vogue magazine.  Instead, I was the laughing stock of Denison, TX.  They almost didn't take me to Deep Ellum in that outfit.  They let me tag along, but they made fun of me all night long.  Then they told everyone all about my silly outfit, like it was some sort of a joke.

It's just not fair.  Look at these ladies, they are just walking around town in their 1950s bathing suits.  Nobody's laughing at them.  They even got their picture in the Wall Street Journal.

They can get away with it too because they're rich.
I wonder if they really are rich, or if they just look rich because of their silly clothes.