Dinner conversations with my 8- and 10-year-old daughters tonight:

8yo:  Dad, I want to go to college in England.

Me (feeling rather proud, as a rabid Anglophile):  Oh, I think that sounds great, baby.  Why do you want to do that?

8yo:  So I can drink beer when I’m 18.

Ten minutes later:

10yo:  Dad, what is “Fifty Shades of Grey” about?

Today, I had rooster comb (read that carefully…it says COMB) injected into my body.

Today, I spoke to an executive at a chicken company. His name: Mike Cockrell. Wow…talk about a man whose name shaped his destiny.

The same perhaps couldn’t be said for one of his colleagues, Lampkin Butts. Yes, really. I couldn’t make that up.

BONUS ODD THING THAT HAPPENED TODAY: I paid a very attractive and very fit young woman $65 to torture me for an hour. What?

Excerpt from an actual conversation I witnessed today:

“She wouldn’t be able to find my bung hole with a treasure map.”

“Dude…if she knew the treasure was your bung hole, she’d burn the fucking map.”

Nice.

All right…technically, this happened yesterday.

Last night I tried a new coaching technique while working with my 3rd & 4th grade girls’ soccer team.

In our last drill of the night, I told them that if anyone made a mistake…I would point at her
and laugh.

It worked! Apparently, publicly shaming young girls in the presence of their peers is a brilliant psychological tool!

So, today, I left this group marriage/relationship counseling session (yes…I KNOW!).  I got into my car, started up my iPod on shuffle…and the song that came on was “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” by Led Zeppelin.  Huh.

BONUS ODD THING THAT HAPPENED TODAY:  At the same counseling, I took this Myers-Briggs personality test thing.  I answered all these questions, and then I took the answers and tallied them up into these scores that are supposed to tell me things about my personality.  These scores ranked where I fell between four sets of opposite pairs, or types…for example, one of the pairs was thinking type vs. feeling type.

Now, the counselors giving the test explained that everyone has some of each type in them, but we usually lean toward one type or another in each pair.

So, for three of the four pairs of types, I was 55%/45% or 60%/40%.

When it came to the extrovert/introvert pair, I scored 0%/100%.  I think that means I’m perfect…do I win something?

First of all, we have NUDE PHOTOS!

While working on some bonsai trees over the weekend, I spent an entire afternoon sitting outside in the sunshine.  The house was on my right, and the sun was on my left.

So, today, while getting out of the shower, I noticed that I had a ridiculous quarter-leg sunburn.  My lower leg was shaded by my upper leg, so only the left side of my thigh burned.  Nice.

In case you’re wondering, that huge thing dangling between my legs is the tag from a towel, all right?

If anyone out there is looking for a leg model with a variety of attractive scars and a ridiculous quarter-leg sunburn, please let me know.

BONUS ODD THING THAT HAPPENED TODAY:

Inspired by Australia’s proposed scheme to give people carbon credits for shooting camels from helicopters [see my earlier blog post here: http://jerkass.tumblr.com/search/camel ], I have come up with a brilliant idea that will launch me into a new career in video games.

My new game will feature eco-friendly gangsters who do not use cars or motorcycles, and I will call it…wait for it…

Bicy-KILL!

Our green gangstas obviously will earn carbon credits equivalent to the emissions generated by each victim they kill.  Then they will exchange their credits for crack.  Brilliant, if I may say so myself.

Today, I was on a plane, and we were just getting ready to depart.  Suddenly, this teenage girl (15-ish) a few rows ahead of me was in a panic.  “I can’t find my phone!  I can’t find my phone!”

So, everyone around her started searching their seats, she had friends on the floor looking for the phone, and that sort of thing.

Just as she was asking a stewardess if she might make an announcement to the entire plane about this crisis, someone came up with the idea of calling her, to see if anyone could hear the phone ringing, possibly.

We all waited in suspense.

After a few seconds, the girl clutched at her chest in horror.  Yes…she had stowed her phone in her bra.  We all helpfully laughed hysterically and pointed at her.  Then a bunch of middle-aged men started making inappropriate comments, and things became silent again.

Today, the person in front of me at Starbucks asked the cashier:  “These salted caramel squares…do they have salt in them?”

BONUS ODD THING THAT HAPPENED TODAY:  While speaking to the Chief Financial Officer of a fairly large company today, I asked:  “So…these were all big panty wins, right?”  And it was a perfectly legitimate business question.

Today, I encountered this unlikely phrase:  “plant-borne sheep.”

I was doing some research on cotton—I mean, doesn’t everyone?—and I came across this brilliant historical anecdote (source Wikipedia.org):

“During the late medieval period, cotton became known as an imported fiber in northern Europe, without any knowledge of how it was derived, other than that it was a plant; noting its similarities to wool, people in the region could only imagine that cotton must be produced by plant-borne sheep. John Mandeville, writing in 1350, stated as fact the now-preposterous belief: “There grew there [India] a wonderful tree which bore tiny lambs on the endes of its branches. These branches were so pliable that they bent down to allow the lambs to feed when they are hungrie [sic].” (See Vegetable Lamb of Tartary.) This aspect is retained in the name for cotton in many European languages, such as German Baumwolle, which translates as “tree wool” (Baum means “tree”; Wolle means “wool”). By the end of the 16th century, cotton was cultivated throughout the warmer regions in Asia and the Americas.”

I think my favorite part is how the branches were pliable, so the sheep could lower themselves to graze when necessary.

Don’t miss the old sketches: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vegetable_lamb_(Lee,_1887).jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mandeville_cotton.jpg

BONUS ODD THING THAT HAPPENED TODAY:  It is with heavy heart that I must tell you that Non Park (previously blogged here: http://a4.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/s720x720/316684_10150298714286017_658911016_8287364_839080224_n.jpg) is non more.  Rather, well, that is to say, it non longer is a non park, which doesn’t mean that it now is a park…it’s just that Non Park is no longer there, or not there, if you see what I mean.  Do you?  Non Park is nonexistent.  That makes me non-happy.