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I Was A Passenger On The Burp Bus

18 Apr

April 18, 2016
This post is all credit to and copyright Saarah, and you’ll soon see why.

Long-time readers of this blog, of which I’ve heard that a few survive, may recall my attempts at coining a new phrase. I was sure that, with some time and effort, I could make the world fall in love with the term blog-slinging, as in I’ve had a busy day, blog-slinging this latest post about Donald Trump’s hair for you to enjoy. Well, it didn’t happen. If anything, the world has violently rejected that phrase, and I have the hate mail to prove it. (Watch out, Edna Furlitzer of Fort Wayne, Indiana. I’ve turned those letters over the police.)

But I am not one to give up so easily. Well, actually, I do give up easily, laughably easily. But this time I’ve got nothing better to do, so I’m going to try again, this time with an all-new, all-ha-ha-hilarious turn of phrase.

But you’ll have to sit through a short story first. See why so few of my long-time readers survive?

Recently, I took a trip to my ancestral home, Salem, Massachusetts. To be honest, Salem is not my ancestral home. Not a single ancestor lived there. Sure, a man named Ebenezer Tepid Ride was hung there as a witch in the 17th century, but that’s just a coincidence. Salem is my ancestral home in spirit.

I love witches and black cats, Halloween and ghosts. Most of all I love a good, juvenile belch, and that’s what this story is about.

I had spent a couple of days in Salem with Saarah, and it was great. The Witch Museum, the House of the Seven Gables, the vegan bakery that was closed every time we went there, it was all awesome. A total blast. And a blast was exactly what Saarah was letting out on the ride home. It is certainly not my intent to embarrass her, no, not at all, but I have to be honest. She was burping more than Curly after Moe and Larry forced him to eat soap.

curly burp 1

So there we were, in the car, she in the passenger seat, slightly dozing and occasionally loudly burping, me in the driver’s seat, slightly dozing too driving home and occasionally rolling down my window depending on how pungent her burps were.

NOTE TO SAARAH: Please don’t kill me.
NOTE TO READERS: It’s all a joke. Saarah has only ever burped once in her life, in 2010, and even that time it was a medical necessity.
NOTE TO SAARAH: Happy now?

Well, Saarah was a little embarrassed and said the she was burping more than a truck driver. She said it again the next time she burped too. And the time after that, etc etc etc. Yes, she burped a lot on that trip.

As the drive went on (it’s about a four hour trip from Salem) she got tired, and though the burps didn’t stop, her expressions got better and better. “Burping more than a truck driver” soon became “burping more than a bus driver,” which eventually became “burping more than the driver of the bus.”

Now we’re getting somewhere.

“Burping more than the driver of the bus” became, as Saarah got more and more tired (but no less full of gas) “burping more than the driver of the burp.” That would have been funny enough had it ended there, but it took a slight regression to “burping more than the driver of the burp bus,” and finally settled on “driving the burp bus.”

So I may have been driving the car, but over in the passenger seat, Saarah was driving the burp bus.

And that is the new phrase I am coining and forcing on you today: Driving the burp bus (copyright Saarah).

If only one person uses it, it will already be more successful then blog-slinging.

 

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Imponderable #128: I Can’t Remember

27 Feb

February 27, 2016

Today’s Imponderable comes from the world of news radio. This was heard on the venerable 1010 WINS of New York.

memory

This is a legitimate story about research that shows that losing weight is linked to an improvement in memory. That’s all well and good, but a little research of my own brought me to articles as old as 2011, leading me to wonder what 1010 WINS defines as “breaking news.” I expect them to break in with a special report on the capture of the Unibomber any time now.

But my real problem isn’t with the news, it is on the reporting. They quoted unnamed “researchers” as saying

“how can people lose weight if they don’t remember that they’ve eaten?”

At this point, I would like tell you the totally true fact that about seven years ago I looked into getting a job at 1010 WINS as a news writer and I was told that not only were there no openings, they only had one writer. I know I could have done a much better job than the guy who wrote this story.

Is weight gain due to the fact that people simply forget that they’ve eaten? Is that why I ate two Thanksgiving dinners last year, I simply forgot the first meal of turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and gravy so I had a second one because I was worried that I hadn’t had dinner yet? And that must explain why I binge ate a whole bag of Oreos last week. After I ate each cookie, I simply forgot that I ate it, so by the time I got to the end of the bag I was convinced that I only ate one cookie and was totally flummoxed about how a brand new bag could be empty after only one Oreo.

Is being overweight simply due to “food amnesia”?
No.

Does 1010 WINS have a clue about reporting?
The question is Imponderable.

And yes, I am totally coining the phrase “food amnesia.”

 

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