Tuesday, 1/3

It’s only two days late, but I’ve started to use my 2017 calendars!

I actually received three of them, if you wanna count the giant wall calendar at work. That one’s in my office and it’s how I keep track of everything that’s going on in my life, at least to the extent that I keep track of everything going on in my life. Another of the calendars is the one Loraine gets me every year, one that features a different region of France in pictures each month. Must like past years, a few of the places highlighted (highlit?) are places that we usually visit are on this calendar, which is always cool, plus it features beauty shots of French food and French places. How can you go wrong with that?

The third calendar I have? Well, that’s the 2017 edition of “365 Stupidest Things Ever Said calendar, a calendar I get every year for Christmas. I’ve asked for it for, oh, the past 15 or so years, and every year I have this pre New Year’s tradition--I sit down, pull out the calendar, and read each and every page of it in one sitting. This accomplishes a great thing--there’s a point where the cumulative effect of all that stupidity catches up with me, and whatever control I have dissolves in a big puddle. I start laughing uncontrollably, with tears running down my eyes, and for the next couple of minutes, I’m unable to do nothing else. Loraine then just stares at me for a second, and shakes her head the way she’d shake her head at a puppy trying to chase its tail and accidentally running itself head-first into a wall.

Except I do it on purpose.

The page that set me off this year? Well, there were actually two of them, and read by themselves they’re not necessarily that funny, but when you consider I’d just read 200 or so other pages of stupid stuff; well, like I said, the cumulative effect was just something else. The first was this newspaper headline--

“Ohio residents cautioned against using toilet bowl cleaner in their hair”

I wasn’t aware of it, but that must be a big problem in the Buckeye State. The other? The statement from a “High Yield” account at a bank, which had, at the start of the month, a total of $688 in it. At the end of the month?

$688.02.

Yup, that’s quite the high yield!

Like I said, in and of themselves those two items aren’t gut-busting, but when placed near the end of a long line of stupid quotes, sayings, and newspaper headlines, it was the trigger that set my annual bout of self-induced hysteria off. And yes, I know I need help. What’s your point?

8-)

(jim@wmqt.com)