Jokes for the Restaurant Thaitanic

While driving past the restaurant, Thaitanic, in Northwest D.C., a couple of jokes came to mind:

1. After eating there, you get a sinking feeling in your stomach.

2. No beverages are served with ice.

3. The band members are the last ones to leave at night.

When Morning People Attack!

Yesterday was particularly frosty in the D.C. area, and trudging to the Metro and from the Metro in the virtual darkness of a winter morning while half asleep was considerably lame. Let's just say the melatonin buildup in my body was especially high, and my psyche was burdened with having to be at work on a week that should have been a holiday, as many others in the area were off toasty in their beds, sleeping off the nog.

So, I wasn't very aware of my surroundings, is what I'm saying; in other words: dark, cold, sleepy, depressing ...

I emerge from the Metro tunnel and ride the escalator up, still aforementionedly groggy. Posted at the top of the escalator is a woman handing out brochures. She attempts to shove one at me, but my hands were buried deep in thick gloves, and further buried deeply in my pockets. I didn't reach out for one, as it would likely have caused my body temperature to drop 6 degrees, sending me in to hypothermic shock. Further, my fuzzy brain barely registered the interaction, which wasn't the case on her end ...

I walk past, and she says in a sickly sweet tone, "Good morning to you, TOO!"

Whaaaaa??? I was judged by the brochure passer-outer! How unfair is that? It's not like I was expecting to have my path crossed by someone I had to interact with, much less someone trying to make me do something. It's probable I didn't even want the brochure, whatever it was. And, I'm not a morning person, and shouldn't be judged by those who are.

I guess this is a sign that I've fully assimilated into D.C. culture. When I first landed here from laid-back and friendly Seattle, I would've likely taken six brochures and carried on a 12 minute conversation with the lady out of politeness. But now, I have one thing to say to her: Suck it, Judgey Brochure Lady.

Back in the Blog Business

Lobster Status Update: Nats Have Huge Winning Percentage in Games Attended by Stuffed Animal

Holy crap, y'all. The Rally Lobster is amazing. Here's the rundown of the games, attended by the lobster, since this was posted. 

May 15

Lobster attends game without me. Gets a new name; doesn't like it, apparently and the Nationals lose in the 12th inning. Could be a possibility, too, that the R.L. doesn't like games that head into extra innings. His game-saving abilities might be limited to a full nine. 

May 21

Washington beats the Pirates with a come-from behind two runs scored in the bottom of the 8th. 

May 24

Against local "rivals" the O's, the Nationals score four runs in the bottom of the 7th to take the game 8-5. 

June 3

Rainout, but it would have been interesting if the game had been played. As a Mariners fan as well, I would've been torn to have Randy Johnson lose his 300th game because of the lobster. Next night, he won the makeup game. 

June 6

The Nationals back up John Lannan's good-for-a-National pitching performance with seven runs, mostly courtesy of the home-run ball. Lobster entered the stadium just as the first three runs were logged in the bottom of the 1st. Although the 4 runs were added for insurance in the 4th and the 5th, all the team needed were those three that were courtesy of lobster's arrival. 

Record for the Nationals today: 15-40

Record for the Nationals in games when the lobster is at the game: 6-1-1

Wins: 6

Losses: 1

Rainout: ?

No Decision: 1

So almost half the Nationals' wins are in games where it's been there. I think the proof is in the stuffing. 

Nats Wins Brought to You by … Lobster?

With a 7-17 record, the 2009 Washington Nationals are off to what may be considered a sloooow start (let’s remain positive, people, no need to chase after Manny Acta with pitchforks … yet). The team may have not have an obvious ace on the mound, or a batting superstar who will singlehandedly save this current season by belting out runs each game, but they do have a boost coming from a very unlikely place: a stuffed animal—a lobster, to be specific. This plush has attended four games now, and the team has sported a 3-1 record for those games attended. Consider this evidence:

April 16, 2009

The lobster was picked by a partial-season-ticket holder around 3 p.m. as part of a free swag sweep on a trade show floor. He was thrown, haphazardly, into a complimentary bag with Post-It Notes, postcards, brochures, pens and candy. His acquisition was merely a blip on the Swag Gatherer’s radar, but what happened next may become the stuffing of legends.

That evening, playing the Phillies, the Nats were up by three runs, which were scored in the first inning. Up until this point in the new season, the team had posted a staggering 0-6 record, so it was not looking good for our hometown team. The Swag Gatherer (S.G.) came to the game late, in time for the main event, i.e., the President’s Race in the middle of the fourth inning. Soon after, the S.G. started distributing the loot to her other season-ticket-holder friends. The lobster finally saw the stadium floodlights, and the game began to really heat up for the Washington Nationals.

The Phillies battled back within one run by the fifth inning, but the Nats added more to the score, with one run in the seventh and four in the eighth. The Washington team finally was able to hold onto that lead; the first curly W was logged in the books.

As the game closed, the lobster was dubbed the Lucky Lobster by the season-ticket holders, but with only one win under his shell, a trend was not yet established.

April 19, 2009

A breezy Sunday afternoon marked the lobster’s second game. The mighty Marlins came to D.C. and quickly fell behind by two runs in the first. The Marlins scored one run in the third, but the Nats added one for insurance in the fifth. Florida struck again with one run scored in the sixth, but the Nats held onto their lead through the seventh.

As it started to get really cold in the seventh inning, and with the Nationals ahead by one, the season-ticket holders left the stadium. When they just had walked out the gate, lobster in totebag, the group heard the crowd groan as the tying run was hit out of the park. The Nats ended up losing that game, 7 to 4.

April 21, 2009

Unlike the previous two games the now so-called Rally Lobster attended, the Atlanta Braves struck first in the first, leaving the inning up three to nothin’. The Nats scored in the second and again with three runs in the sixth, and the team held on to that narrow lead to take the game, 4 to 3.

May 2, 2009

The Nationals record now included five wins, when the rally lobster made it to his third game. An extremely dominant Shairon Martis no-hit the Cardinals until the fifth inning, and the Nationals got four runs in the bottom. The only mistake allowed by Martis was a lead off home run in the seventh, and the Nats added two more in the eighth to close it out.

Boiling point

As this trend reaches that pitch that a lobster makes when you drop it into the pot, some may argue that the true reason those games were won were Martis and bolstered by Ryan Zimmerman’s 21-game hitting streak, Adam Dunn and Nick Johnson. Sure, this writer acknowledges that those very well paid professional ball players contributed, but there may be some assist from the No. 11 on the team (No. 10 being the fans, of course): the Rally Lobster.

Letter to the Intended Pollen-Editors

Dear cute little kids with your fundraising car wash, 

Thank you for hosting a car wash in D.C. this past weekend. You did a really good job making those signs and the location you picked, on Wisconsin Ave. in Georgetown, was brilliant. I also commend you on picking the first 90 degree day to hold your car wash; the weather was gorgeous and, with no rain in sight, you probably had a bunch of takers. I hope you raised a ton of money for your sports team/band/chess club/whatever. 

I also like to say I admire your enthusiasm as I pulled up to the traffic light next to you. Your shrieking pierced right through the loud music I had blasting on my stereo. But pointing and laughing at my green-pollen-dusted car was not appreciated. Suggesting that I needed to have my icky car washed, while correct, was not the best marketing strategy. You see, I park my car under a tree, and until that tree decides it's done with its business, I will not be paying anyone to hose it off. 

Thanks so much for trying, 

This blogger 

Creative Differences

My blog and I have spent some time apart, recently, as we experienced creative differences. My blog really wanted to have imaginative posts, and I did not feel that I could perform such feats at that time. 

I blame the haze brought on by the heavy use of Zyrtec, which was being used to handle the green pollen-ic haze that has settled over the D.C. area. This allergy pill dropped me into a Rip-Van-Winkle-type drowse, but I somehow went about my day without really no recollection of what I did or where the time went. What year is it? Why do I somehow have, in my possession, a suitcase full of unmarked bills? Perhaps allergy meds should be enlisted in government experiments at controlling people and keeping them in line?

Anywho, two news items caught my attention on Monday. I know it's Wednesday, and it's long old news. I also realize that I'm pretending to be a blogger, and, therefore, should be breaking all sorts of news myself. But, give me some time to get with this. Anyway, back to Monday: The first was a local report interrupting GMA—which is fine because all that show seems to focus on lately is Susan Boyle and her incredible shot at British and Internet stardom, ho hum—to announce that seven Greenpeace activists had scaled a construction crane near the State Department, draping a large banner and themselves from it. The report said that most of the major routes into downtown from Virginia were being closed off while they extracted the activists from the crane. I don't mind the whole protest thing; I just think that screwing up people's commutes is a really poor way to get your message across, especially on a beautiful Monday morning when they'd rather be sipping margaritas in the backyard than stuck in their cars on a bridge over the Potomac. Just saying. 

The second report centered on a brilliant group of frat boys at The George Washington University, who decided to grease their Slip 'n' Slide at a philanthropy event with laundry detergent, resulting in trips to the hospital for sorority girls for treatment of chemical burns. Doesn't a Slip 'n' Slide only require water to work? Isn't that the point? If you're using a Slip 'n' Slide and going to the hospital for reasons other than sprains and broken bones, you're doing it wrong. Also note that, semi-ironically, the event was to support the Firefighters Burn Foundation ...

That's all for now, folks. 

Goitus Interruptus

The other day, my sweetheart and I were playing one of those fun hypothetical relationship games, where you make the other person super uncomfortable by asking questions such as, "If I became horribly disfigured, would you still like me?" And, then, of course, you become incensed by whatever the answer happens to be. Wheee! 

(So, being the woman in the relationship, I, of course, maybe would be prone to acting a bit irrationally when these things come up, but whatever. Mars and Venus, blah blah.) 

This is what went down: I asked, all so innocently, "Say I didn't eat enough iodized salt, and ended up getting a goiter. Would you still go out with me?" Harmless, right? To which! To which, he replied, "Nope." 

WHAT?! I'd be the same person! I'd still be cute, right? Regardless of the giant growth on my neck ... The ever-growing increase in size of the thyroid ... What's the big deal, yo? I would still have the same sparkling hi-larious personality. What a jerky thing to say ... 

... Except, I ran this very same scenario past my friends today, and the responses varied from a mild, "No, probably not," to "Hell, no! I wouldn't even talk to you anymore, and I'd likely run the other way when I saw you coming." And this was before we even did a Google image search and found horrific sickening pictures of goiters the size of the person's head, bulging out beneath her chin. Ok, I guess they may have a point.

Two things: You don't find out who your true friends are until you're actually inflicted by a goiter, and do all you can now to prevent such a thing from happening to you. You wouldn't want to test your friends' loyalty, finding yourself alone and goitered. 

I'm now gonna go start an iodized salt lick in my apartment and start drinking more margaritas just so I can use the salted rim to ward off social pariah-dom. Cheers! 

Just for the Cheap Celebrity of It!

So, I find myself watching what may be termed "a lot" of reality TV—Don't judge. I can feel you judging—Worthwhile entertainment does exist out there, especially on Bravo, and especially the Project Runways and Top Chefs. But, despite my fandom, I have to take an opposing stance to Diet Coke's new TV ads*. The recent ads featured PR's Heidi Klum and TC's Tom Colicchio. 

Um, Diet Coke, I'm worried about the direction this is going. Sure, Heidi was a supermodel or whatever, and she's nice and all, but you used to get people like Penelope Cruz and Adrian Brody. And Tom is lovably curmudgeonly, but he's really not an official celebrity. You also used to have Paula Abdul, before she became a reality TV star, when she actually made her own music and before she went all wacky and nonsensical. But she's nice, I guess. 

Anyway, I am just concerned that we'll soon be seeing Diet Coke spots with Real Housewives and that shrill Jeff from Flipping Out, doing such over the fact that someone brought him a Diet Pepsi (or God forbid, Jonathan from Blowout, crying his eyes out and seeing his therapist over his love of Diet Coke ... Yikes). Do you see my concern here? You have an established brand to protect here, and this is a potentially very slippery slope down to having Tool Academy endorsers.  

Don't get me wrong, those shows are guilty pleasures for me, but I don't think I want to have those people making me feel like I need to be enjoying a tall frosty glass of Aspartame. 

* Which, as an owner of TiVo, I wouldn't typically be viewing, except that I had to watch the last part of the Oscars live since I got home late and didn't want to be behind on watercooler discussions in the morning; I didn't have a choice. Had to watch those silly commercial interruptions, not the product placementy commercials that appear as part of the reality TV shows (Bluefly.com Accessories Wall. Quaker Oats Challenge). But that's another post entirely. 

The Pet Shop Choice

The story about the pet chimpanzee that went berserk and mauled a family friend has got me thinking about the appropriateness of having certain animals as housepets. A Google search suggests that chimps have struck before and again some more.

But what about your typical house pet, such as a dog, cat or kimodo dragon? Let's talk about one of my pets, a vicious beast named Ivy. When I was a senior in high school, my dad brought home Ivy, a runt-of-the-litter kitten. She was an adorable, sickly thing—two traits that masked her inner Cujo. She started out weak and cute, but upon healing turned into a skittish monster. She attacked anything and everything that moved, those mostly being my parents and me. She'd lie in wait for someone to walk by, then spring on the victim in full aggression, tearing at the skin with her teeth while digging in with her claws. My hands were constantly torn apart from when I tried to pet her.

And she was wily, too. Often she'd wait to attack until after my mother had put on her nylon stockings—oh yes, Ivy knew what she was doing—she would rend them apart. And it wasn't just the claws and the teeth we had to worry about.

I would sleep with a water glass on my headboard, right behind my pillow, so I could hydrate in the middle of the night. On the nights when I would forget to close my bedroom door, Ivy would slink in at 6:00 a.m., seek out the water glass and swat at it until she knocked it over, spilling it all over me. This happened time and time again, a early morning drenching, and I know she plotted it out throughout the night, constantly checking the door to see it ajar, ready to make her move.

So, I believe my point is, what makes a kitten such as Ivy a naturally better pet than a chimpanzee? I believe it's an individual pet and the care and treatment of it that makes for a good animal. I grew up with a perfect companion in a cocker spaniel; she never let me down nor tried to drown me in my sleep or attempted to tear my face off. Just saying. Be careful for what you bring in your home. The more you know ...

OK, OK, I'm Here. Gawd!

So, some people were harassing me because I hadn't updated this thing since just after I started it. And, sure, that's true, but I haven't had much to say over the past week. Sure, I've been updating my Facebook status, but that takes very little time and creativity. And I should be washing dishes right now, instead of succumbing to peer pressure, but I've never been very strong avoiding suggestions.

So here you go, all two of you that read this thing so far...a culling of my favorite status updates from the past week. Enjoy!

Andrea is now in the market for a new nose, as the one she had froze off on the walk back from lunch. Her sniffles are gone, though.

Andrea couldn't find her moisturizing gloves last night, and as it's desert-dry in her apartment, had to wear socks on her hands.

(For those in the D.C. area, this'll make sense) Andrea wonders why Tyson made his corner so difficult to get to.

Andrea just did the backstroke in the flooded office kitchen.

Andrea wonders what excuse she's gonna use to forgo the gym tonight.

Andrea received a press release touting products called "Gainfully Employed Fixtures," "Hardworking Taxpayer Table Lamps," and "Honest Wall Street Sconces." Seriously. (That's making light of the economy! Or looking at the bright side in this our darkest hour.)

Andrea thinks the people who claim that chewing gum will curb your desire to snack are stupid.

(My personal favorite) Andrea wonders if Judd Gregg actually withdrew his nomination because he had to go get his excess consonants surgically removed.

Andrea heard Marion Barry say, "that bitch, Uncle Sam, set me up."

Andrea does not recommend chopping an onion, then putting in one's contact lenses shortly afterward.

Geez!

Dear Family of Elephants Who Apparently Live Upstairs,

My goodness! What are you doing? Why are you jumping around? Why are spoons falling out of my dish rack? Why does it feel like my ceiling is caving in?

Please calm down now and stop your wrestling match or circus performance. It's 10:00 p.m. on a Monday, for goodness sake.

Thank you muchly,
A the E

P.S. I expect that you won't forget that I sent you this message. After all, you are elephants ...

Helllllooo Subscriber!

I heard you're out there...somewhere.

Try, Try Again

Sooo, this isn't my first stint here in the ol' blogosphere, but hopefully this will be a lasting one. I need some sort of ongoing creative outlet, and I like to share things I observe; this couples those two things perfectly.

My previous blogging life played out, happily, on a party barge. It was fun being part of a team, sharing all of our random experiences, but that fizzled out in 2007. So now I've been set adrift, on my own. Time will tell whether I sink this ship too.

So, the title. Right. About that. A running joke if you will. When you really incensed about something, you flip the table (or the desk) you happen to be seated at and storm out of the room. So many observances here ... will be of that variety. I happen to get fired up often. Enjoy!