It's All Fun and Games until Someone Loses an Eye

Hermosa Beach is one of those towns where if you have a friend who lives there and you visit her on a sunny Sunday, and her newly remodeled house is a block from The Strand and you WALK along this Strand to some totally hip, French Bistro for lunch, you go home feeling like you suck in comparison. Your house is a hovel. You are so not cool, not to mention that after strolling past all the volleyball players on the beach, you are now fat and pasty white as well. Oh God, why do you even bother to leave the house any more? What reason do you have to live, really?   

 

So anyway, when I first arrived at my friend's house, before my low self-worth set in, I took a picture of her cute little dog...

 

 

Her name is Wink. Can you guess why?

 

That's right. It's because she only has one eye.

 

Now, in a country where it's not OK to tell jokes like "What do you call a girl with one leg shorter than the other?", is it politically correct to name your poor one-eyed barker 'Wink'? I'm sorry, what I meant to ask was, is it politically correct to name your optical-quantity-challenged canine 'Wink'?

 

I don't think she knows she's a one-eyed freak of a dog, but that doesn't mean if you repeatedly call her that name followed by a fit of giggles, that eventually her own self-esteem won't be crushed.

 

Actually, Wink is spoiled rotten and everyone who meets her fawns over her and asks to babysit her and she's welcome at many restaurants where the servers will wait on her hand and foot. Or paw. Or whatever. AND she lives in a gorgeous house in Hermosa Beach - did you see that hardwood floor? And if she's taken too far for a walk, she gets carried the rest of the way like a baby. This furball may as well be wearing a tiara with her pink bow. 

And if this princess is ever disturbed by the proverbial pea, she can enroll in Doga (yoga for dogs and no, I'm not kidding... I wonder what they call the dog pose... or is that like asking what they call watermelons in Louisiana?) This little furball would just need to be sure to remove her diamond-encrusted tiara before class so as not to accidentally poke her precious little head while wrapping her legs back behind her neck and breathing properly.

 

Bitch.

 

Not that I'm jealous or anything. I mean, I may not have a house by the beach, but at least I have two eyes. HA! And I don't have to bust a gut waiting all day for someone to come home just so I can pee. Double HA!

 

 

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NGiP would like to thank Tina over at The Bigger They Get for adding Nanny Goats to her blog roll. I loved Tina's recent post entitled Newsletter: Month Two Hundred Sixty Four.  It's a birthday card to her son.  It's beautifully written, moving and funny.

 

There's Nothing To See Here

Today's post is sick of my cooking and has decided that it can no longer stand the sight of me. So, when I said "Why don't you just leave, then?" it called my bluff.

Before I start enabling its behavior by coddling to its spoiled rotten attitude, you'll have to click one more time to get to it. For some reason, it likes a blog called No Cleaning Here more than NGIP. I ask it to vacuum the dust bunnies once a week and it thanks me by going to a blog that promises no more need to do housework???  Please go to the post at this link to read my post for today.


* * *  but seriously * * *

A thousand Thank Yous to Stephanie over at No Cleaning Here who asked me to be a guest blogger on her site today.

Maidenhead, Revisited

I visited my first internet porn site today. And while I willingly clicked on a link to get to it, I didn't know that was where I was going. Although with a name like Assopedia, what did I expect? I'm no prude but Jesus Christ, I hadn't even had my coffee yet and I was just checking my web statistics to see where people came from to get here and this, this,... blog of blow jobs (for lack of a better - or cleaner - description) shoves itself in my face (so to speak).

But did I immediately click away? Hell no. Now that Mr Ass O. Peedia had my number on his stats page, it was too late to leave undetected. Granted, I didn't want to further be seen as lurking for more than 2 seconds, but I was on a mission, dammit, and I had work to do. So I scrolled through the muck, stepped over naked bodies and slurpy sounding links, looking for a reference to "Nanny Goats In Panties" because SOMEBODY got to my site from this godawful place. Somebody from Romania who should have been in church on a Sunday.  Praying to God to save his soul! Repenting for his sinful thoughts! 

Now I'm not a prude, or maybe I am, what the hell do I know? And I know that such sites exist. I just don't subject myself to it and when stumbling out of bed with bad sleep breath and eye-boogers, I'm not exactly thinking, "Yeah I could really go for some RedTube videos right about now". I've been to sex shows in Amsterdam for Chrissakes, but there's a time and a place, ya know? (And as Chef would say, it's called college).

This blog is just out there for any child to see - how do you parents keep your kids out of these places?

I shielded my eyes from the horror as I waded through looking for the NGIP link, certain I was breaking some law by being there (I told you this was my first time, a virgin if you will, a maiden voyage if you will again, on an "adult" site, I don't know what to do in these situations other than completely freak out).

I figured there must have been some mistake, you know, some random link generator that snatched (oops, pardon me) my blog's name thinking it was a good and nasty site involving nannies and their undergarments and slapping it (oops, pardon me again) up onto their link list. But I couldn't find it and I was afraid that any minute some internet cop was going to come (oops - darn these double innuendos!) over and arrest me and my face would be plastered all over CNN and my family would be humiliated (well, some might congratulate me, or welcome me over to their side, actually).

So I left that nasty place, swearing I would never visit it again. It's gross, demeaning to women, and shocking as all get out.

But not before I bookmarked it. You know, just in case the FBI needs me to testify against these awful, awful people, and I'll need a reference to jog my memory because no doubt I will repress these horrible, icky images until the trial.


* * *

I was going to wait until another post to thank Unfinished Rambling(s) for adding NGIP to his blog roll, because maybe he'd be offended at being linked to in the same post as the subject matter above, but then I remembered his post about man boobs, so he can't be all that upset about it. Granted it's not all man boobs all the time. Sometimes he talks about pens. (That's PENS! Without an "i", you pervs.) And any blog that pictures and quotes Christopher Walken's SNL dialogue rules.

NGIP would like to give a shout out to Extremely Funny for adding NGIP to his blog roll. I do this without hesitation, due to the fact that I counted no less than 7 scantily clad breasts on the first page of his blog, so I'm guessing he doesn't have a problem accompanying a blog post about [whispers-->] s. e. x.   Thank you Extremely Funny! You stumble and you rock!


And how convenient is it that I already have "weenie" and "taco" to choose from in my list of previously used labels to categorize this post? (...sorry, that was an inside joke between me and my label maker and it was tasteless and I should have kept it to myself... I sincerely apologize for that rude outburst.)

Succumbing to Drew Barrymore's Boyfriend

So anyway, I got this pen for my birthday last week:

OK, it's not a pen...it's a friggin' laptop!



I'm completely new to Mac, so there is a bit of a learning curve. Apparently, at some point I will become a religious zealot about it and refuse to understand how you ignorant PC users could POSSIBLY still be using your Draconian lead bricks. Luddites! (see? it's already starting.)



During this transition, I will be nothing short of a confused child, victimized by a bitter divorce, trying to sympathize with each of my parents as they battle it out for the blue teeth and thumb drives.  I will be shuttled between Seattle and Silicon Valley on the weekends and 2 weeks in the summer.



And the lies! 



"You mother drained my bank account. She always had to have the most expensive version of everything!"



"When your father and I made love, his operating system would crash halfway through. Did he ever tell you THAT?"





As I put away my new laptop at the airport last weekend, the lady standing next to me in line uttered, "So it really is that thin."



That's what she said.



Let the record show, that was my first "That's what she said" reference.





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NGIP would like to thank Zen Mom for adding Nanny Goats In Panties to her her blog roll. A former reporter, Zen Mom is an excellent and thoughtful writer. If you're a Joss Whedon fan you might enjoy her recent post entitled Strong Women Characters.



And another thing, MJ over at Note To Self is crazy. But crazy for a cause. She's doing a blogathon starting at 9am EST tomorrow (Saturday), where she will post a new blog entry every 30 minutes for 24 hours. Can you imagine either blogging every 30 minutes OR staying awake for 24 hours? ACK! It's madness! You can visit her blog and watch her all day tomorrow and give her some comment love. Any $donations$ go to benefit HUGS (Helping Uplift Grieving Survivors). She's got all the info on her blog. Also, there's a cool prize for the people who support her the bestest!

Add THAT to Your ToDo List and Smoke It

I hate ToDo lists. They may help you organize your life, but what's more depressing than looking at 147 chores that simply remind you of all the stuff you haven't accomplished yet? It's like getting bogged down in massive debt that you don't want to pay because it will take YEARS to climb out of that hole. So why bother?



That's why I've decided to just let the bank repossess my ToDo list.  HA! Let's see them try and unload THAT thing in today's ToDo list market. Plus, for the last six months, I've let the thing go because I just don't care any more. Rather than rewrite a fresh clean list after completing several items, I'll just scribble out "feed wombat" and add "blog about Olympic Gold Medal" and other ToDos until I have to staple pages together into an unwieldy mess.



And...I use a pen. A big fat leaky one.





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NGIP would like to thank Motherhood From the Edge of the Map for adding Nanny Goats In Panties to her blog roll. This gal seamlessly combines The Two Coreys and lobster sex into one post  which somehow manages to demonstrate how happily married she is. Well done!



Hey, while you're here, could you do me a solid and click on this link which will bump me up a bit in the Sacto Top 25 rankings? That's it, just one click, nothing else. Thanks, man.

Bugs: They're Not Just For Breakfast Anymore

We have a couple of Tarmac strips in our little town called Sacramento International Airport, although the "International" part of it may as well have quotes around it. OK, I guess there is a flight to Guadalajara now and again. Not that I have anything against Guadalajara - I mean, who doesn't want to order a drink whose Spanish name translates to Happy Buttocks? (These drinks are served at Los Famosos Equipales. But that's not why I called you here today.



I walk through this "international" airport a few times a month and the Starbucks had a serious fly problem. I apologize in advance for not taking a picture of the large poster made of flypaper, but I promise you, it was gross. But alas, it's gone.



Recently they installed these lights on the walls...

This coincided with the fact that there were no flies. Where could they be? I reached up with my camera and aimed down into the top of the light... 

For further enjoyment, you can click on the picture to enlarge.



Mmmmmm.  Kinda makes you want a Venti Mocha Flypachino about now, doesn't it?





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...And the answer to the trivia question the other day about where the Nanny Goats In Panties banner picture was taken:  Fremont, California. In Coyote Hills Park, near the San Francisco Bay.

Motorcycle Diary of a Madman

Those of you who arrived here by Googling "motorcycle panties" have come to the right place. Anybody landing here through the key phrase "billy goats in high heels", that's next door...wierdo.



Why are we so comfortable hindsight-quarterbacking bad behavior, feigning dismay and asking, "What were they thinking?", insisting that we would NEVER do such a thing, when in fact, we pull stupid crap all the time. It's just that we don't wind up maiming ourselves, or get caught on camera for the rest of the world to judge us afterwards, claiming that they would NEVER pull such a stunt and what were we thinking?



After announcing our infallability, we ostensibly sensible folk then jump on our motorcycles with our pants stretched halfway down our butts because it's cool. It shows off our panties and it impresses the ladies. And when we zoom by said ladies on the freeway we weave in and out of traffic to get their attention.



But then our balls get all sweaty, because our legs are hugging tight against hot leather seats in the desert sun. So our leader, Gerard, gets a little wind flappage going in his shorts and stretches his legs straight out like kickstands. We think Gerard has one-upped us showing off for the chicas, so we follow his lead and play around too, because - say it with me - - "It sounded like a good idea at the time."

Speaking of dumb-asses on motorcycles (oops did I type that out loud?)... have you seen this? Apparently, in India (hi Scratch Bags!), "Hands Free" means something else entirely:









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NGIP would like to thank Mojo over at Why? What Have You Heard? for adding Nanny Goats In Panties to his blog roll. Mojo is working toward "charming curmudgeon" status.

A Near Life Experience For Nanny Goats

When I started this blog in 2005 for two or three of you, I couldn't have cared less where I got my accompanying pictures. I'd just search on Google, grab something appropriate and insert it in my blog post, copyright be damned. Also, you were lucky if I posted something three or four times a month. Juvenile, uncultivated crap like, "Oh I went shopping today. It was fun. The End."

In 2008, when my readership soared to an audience of five or six, I figured I should think twice about plagarizing and only put up my own photos or get them from the public domain.

A few months ago, when I revamped my blog, I created the banner above from a picture that I stole found on the internet. It was from a website that was semi-public domain. The author's name was listed as A Aevtrd, or some such nonsense with a bunch of umlauts and Norwegian-looking bits dangling over the letters like left-over mouse droppings. The site said I could use the pictures for my blog and edit them as long as I didn't make money off it. And I had to attribute the author and follow his rules. Well this goat picture didn't have any rules.

Or so I thought.

Meanwhile, my readship continued to grow and I grew to LOVE the banner. LOVE it. I wanted to marry it.

Anyway, the other day, I went back to the original site where I found my little goats and this time I noticed a link for the author's Flickr account. Uh oh. And he wasn't Norwegian. He was American. With an American (well, Irish, if you want to put too fine a point on it) name and everything.

Oh my God! What do I do? "Oh, sorry sir, for destroying your picture for my purposes for the last few months but is it OK that I used your picture and continue to do so?" What if, after receiving my sorry-ass plea, he went to my blog and was mortified at the desecration of his art? And I hadn't asked permission! What if he pressed charges? What if he - GASP! - had me arrested and sent to (OH NO!) Blogger jail!

Have you ever been to Blogger jail? Oh My God, it's absolutely horrifying! First, the Blog Police come to your house in the middle of the night and rip you out of the arms of your loved ones. They strip search your hard drive and confiscate your IP address. They slap handcuffs on you and throw you in the Blog police car and threaten your domain name as they speed down the information super highway to the station.

The next thing you know you're sharing a cell with a bald-headed thug named TurdBot108 who's in for Googling Weenie Man song lyrics. And he hogs all the toilet paper. I'd be forced to eat porridge and fold standard issue laundry with my fellow prisoners: web stats whores and content thieves.

I agonized over whether or not to contact this guy. Maybe he would never find out. But if he did, and not from me, I could be put away for life! I resigned myself to doing the right thing and sent the photographer an email begging for forgiveness, offering my first born child, anything. I HAD to have my goat banner. Nanny Goats In Panties just isn't Nanny Goats In Panties without it.

As I clicked SEND at 12:30am, I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep all night, wondering if, when, and how he would answer. I imagined a vitriolic response, hurling spam and threatening to expose my HTML. He would flame my ass and the goat I rode in on. He would tear down my firewall, leaving behind a pitiful pile of rubble.

I sobbed. I prayed to the internet gods. "Please!" I cried. "Have mercy on a smalltime blogger like me! I'm nothing! Oh, boo hoo!"

Five minutes later I got a response:  "Sure," he said. "No problem."

Woo Hoo!

I would like to kiss the feet (proverbially, of course) of Kevin Collins for betstowing his kindness and downright upstandingness unto Nanny Goats. He is a wonderful photographer - you can catch his stuff on his Flickr page here.

TRIVIA QUESTION: Without cheating, can you guess where the Nanny Goats In Panties banner picture was taken? I'll let you know the answer in the next blog post.


* * * WHAT ELSE? * * *

Nanny Goats In Panties is now listed on Alltop.com under the Humor and Midlife categories. They "help you explore your passions by collecting stories from 'all the top' sites on the web."


NGIP would like to profusely thank the following fellow bloggers for adding Nanny Goats In Panties to their blogroll:

Olga The Traveling Bra - keeping the world abreast of all her traveling adventures.

Feisty Charlie - A shit-kickin' writer from Texas whose birthday falls two days before mine. Yesterday was her birthday, it's not too late to send her good wishes!

Los Cuatro Ojos - where some days you're the dog and some days you're the hydrant.

Musings - A lovely young couple from Paso Robles, California - hey, my great (or is it great-great?) grandmother is buried at the Old Adobe Chruch in Paso Robles!

Honeywine - A ghetto-trailer (her words, not mine) woman working on her PhD. I should apologize to Anna right now for all references I have made and will undoubtedly continue to make about trailer trash.

Laughing Wolf - Author Dave "holds the distinction of looking like Uncle Fester (or a shaved Panda)". Dave also had a birthday this week, so go throw some cake at him too.

Shoes White People Like

Folsom, California is one of those suburbs that seem to be made up of white, SUV-driving, stay-at-home, soccer moms. Rumor has it the city council tried to change the town's name to Stepford. And when the editors at Stuff White People Like look for material, they infiltrate Folsom and take notes.



Now, Folsom isn't racist or anything. They think everyone should have a black friend or two.

While cruising the outlet mall in Folsom today, shopping for shoes, I came across this:

It was the only pair in the store.





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We close today with a few search terms recently used by wierdos to get to Nanny Goats In Panties:



where to buy contraband fireworks on the web no questions asked

i have goats in my pants

panties obama

i know a weeny man

weenie man music

can goats poop out cans





Oh, and just one more thing, as Columbo would say: Thank You to William over at Dead Rooster for adding NGIP to his blog roll.

What Part of "Squalor" Don't You Understand?

I would ask that you not get me started on this whole housing crisis thing, except that I've already decided to get started without you. Come with me in the Wayback Machine to 2005, when gas was still less than three bucks a gallon but a 2000 square foot home was pushing $450K, in the country's fastest-growing, least desirable suburb: Elk Grove, California. Ask anyone from the Sacramento area who changes their underwear every day, if they had their druthers, would they live in Elk Grove? Who wants to put "Elk Grove" in the real estate search box when the nation's headlines about the poor city lead with "Squalor"?



And I don't want to hear, "Well it used to be nice." "Used to be" doesn't let you sleep at night. "Used to be" doesn't keep you from getting shot while pulling out of Chili's. "Used to be" doesn't stop the house from across the street, and another one around the corner from becoming pot farms.



We held out as long as we could. Our tight-knit neighborly little court began to disperse, saying the neighborhood was going downhill. Plus, in 2004 and 2005, they were panic-buying like everyone else, buying bigger McMansions before they were priced out of the market. Of course they exacerbated the blight of the street by abandoning us, moving out so fast that all we could make out were elbows and assholes in the dust. And everyone who moved in after them were loud, rude, obnoxious, wouldn't speak to us, etc... Eventually our annoyance and fear won over our laziness and we moved.



Now, by "going downhill", do not mistake for a minute that I mean anything racial. In fact, when we were a happy little party-having group, I was the only white girl. Well, actually there were two of us, but the other one high-tailed it out of there because she saw the writing on the wall long before we did.



No, I'm talking about class. I'm talking about behavior. I'm talking about moving two or three families into one house and parking your 12 cars all over the court leaving no room whatsoever for our own guests. I'm talking about letting your yard go. I'm talking about leaving your front door open all day long while your unsupervised children run around half naked and barefoot in the middle of the street, screaming until well after midnight.



So, late to the party, we finally gave in and sold our house. Here is a picture of it just before it sold in November 2005. Please note the green and well-maintained lawn.







A few months after that we began to hear rumors of our old house going into foreclosure. More than once.



Last week, my niece happened to ride by it and snapped a picture from her phone. It's the one on the left...







What is that, a "For Sale, Sort Of" sign?



This is the backyard when we moved out in 2005...







I'm too chicken to climb the fence to see what it looks like now.



When we left, we bought a bigger McMansion. In Elk Grove. But that's another long story.



One year later, we moved again, out of Elk Grove and into Sacramento, which is another long story, one that involves bending WAY over.



Wishful thinkers, manipulative speculators, and real estate talking heads are now going to be calling the bottom of the Sacramento market every week for the next 2-3 years. We'll just be calling it "rent".



* * * W H A T     E L S E * * *

My book review of Driving With Dead People by Monica Holloway is up at Curled Up With a Good Book. You can click on the links in the previous sentence or right here if you wish to read it.

Nanny Goats in Panties wishes to thank Wendy over at wining and ironing for adding NGIP to her blog roll. Wendy joins our global network as she hails from South Africa and is "not your average desperate housewife".







Some of you may recall last week's post about the new Hands Free cell phone law. Have you seen this parody?









Please click here if you wish to rate this post on Humor-Blogs.com

Hell Hath No Fury Like a Woman Scorched

You know, it's weather like this that keeps you locked up inside your house because it's too damn hot. And when there's eight hundred (give or take four hundred) wildfires blowing around Northern California and killing people's homes, they tell you to stay inside because of the air quality. Unless, of course, they're telling you to evacuate. So you sit on your couch of nails, watching the weather channel, ants crawling all over you because you just HAVE TO GET OUT OF THE HOUSE BEFORE YOU KILL SOMEBODY!

So you leave the house. And while you wait for the air conditioner in your car to blow out cool air because right now, the interior is searing you like Sushi Grade Ahi Tuna, you see the grey hazy air that looks like a foggy winter day, except that you're beginning to sweat. A ball hangs in the sky like an out-of-focus fuzzy orange, as if you forgot to put on your glasses. And you hear the news radio guys talking about the heat and the fires and you immediately switch it to your Pink Martini CD to get your mind off this ever-lovin' heat. You pull up to a red light and take a look at your dashboard:

GAHHH!!!!!



Some anal retentive angel is running around up in Heaven like a headless chicken right now yelling, "Good Lord, who left the oven on? BAWK! BAWK!"



Oh, by the way, did I mention that it's hot here today?



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Nanny Goats would like to thank Don over at It's A Funny Thing for adding us to his blog roll. Under the "Some Funny Some Not So Good" category. We would like to be so egotistical as to think that we fall under the "Some Funny" part.



Speaking of "some funny", you can click on this link to Humor Blogs in order to vote with a LOL Smiley Face to help keep Nanny Goats in the Top 30 (which seems to be a bit tenuous at the moment)

MootchAss GrassyAss, Senyureeter

I can't tell you how many times I've been caught at an Undocumented Workers Ball without a lick of Spanish to use for decent conversation. It's so embarrassing. Once I'm discovered, I'm relegated to the children's area or the punch bowl table, where people resort to wild gestures or yelling to communicate with me. I'm not deaf people, I just don't understand your language.



I once overheard a man accidentally speak English at one of these foreign affairs to his wife after trying to shoo me off to the pinata corner: "If she'd just learn the language," he'd said, "maybe she'd be worth something, but as it is..." and then he shook his head and sighed. His wife, who I'd like to say has a very big nose, clucked her tongue and looked at her long red nails. Bitch.



I ran into the bathroom and cried. As I ripped paper towels out of the dispenser and blubbered, two men came out of the stalls and said something I couldn't understand. They gestured to the door, pointing to the sign with the little man on it. I covered my face and raced out of the men's bathroom, as they snickered in my wake.



Apparently, the Ambassadors heard tell of my woes and knowing my award whoreness, had their people call my people and the next thing you know, I'm walking down the red carpet in a Vera Wang with spanish light bulbs flashing in my eyes and spanish media hurling questions and microphones at me.



A skinny sequined one-hundred-year-old lady, Ho-Ann Rivieras, who had clearly been under the knife a few times, grabbed my arm, looked deep into my eyes and asked me a question. As I looked at her eighty-year-old daughter standing next to her, Ms. Rivieras pulled at my hemline and sniffed my shoes.



I felt so sorry for this woman who had to smell my footwear simply because I could not speak her language. I vowed right then and there that I would learn Spanish. Oh sure, I've bought the book, a set of CDs, a one Spanish Word A Day calendar and subscribed to the podcast, and the amount of effort I have put in to using them all provides me with the ability to say to you: "Taco, burrito, and Nacho Libre." Hence the vow.



Plus, how am I supposed to brag about my new Spanish Award if I can't understand the website that founded the darn thing?



Here is a picture of my award...

The award was presented to me by Shadow Crystal of Impeccable Items of Interest and Natalie of Tell Me About It. Usually the presenters enter the stage together, say something lame according to the cue cards and the audience laughs as a courtesy because they are on international television and must appease the advertisers and the TV audience. Not so with these people. If the presenters aren't funny, tomatoes are thrown and they are booed off the stage, TV cameras be damned.



Had I understood Spanish, I would have known when to duck during my acceptance speech, rather than stand at the podium, chattering on about the little people who know who they are, and waiting for the exit music to drown me out into commercial. As my Vera Wang took the brunt of rubber chickens and apple sauce, I slinked off stage where a translator told me I had to present this same award to 5 other people.



"Oh really?" I said, dripping with latex poultry and crushed apples in cinammon.



"Well you can take this award and shove it up yo-"



"Or you can take this rubber chicken," he sneered, waving a pink pimpled blob with a beak near my face, "and shove it up yo-"



I held up my hand. "Right. I get it."



So, Nanny Goats In Panties is pleased to present the following five bloggers with the Arte Y Coup Award.



merlotmom

Midlife Misfit

sue doe-nim

Twenty Four At Heart

Jan's Sushi Bar



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NGIP thanks you for your support and all those votes and clicks on Sacto Top 25 and Humor Blogs. Humor Blogs.com is changing their rating system. You have to have a userid (which is relatively quick and painless) in order to vote and you rate a blog post by clicking on the LOL smiley face for my post when you get to the Humor Blogs site. I am truly grateful for each and every click you can spare. Please click here to vote for NGIP on Humor Blogs.



If you're interested, my book review of Chip Kidd's The Learners was published today on Curled Up With a Good Book. Click here if you'd like to read it.



Nanny Goats In Panties would like to thank Midlife Misfit for adding NGIP to her Blog Roll. Midlife Misfit is a fellow Humor Blogger. Thanks MM!!!

Hands-Free Isn't Really

Anybody traveling via Southwest Airlines this holiday weekend seated near a screeching child who can't seem to get enough peanuts will be strapped into a flying death trap festooned with red white and blue pieces of heart-shaped paper and ribbons...

Yeah, I can't wait until they allow the insecure Hollywood wannabe behind you in seat 28C to blow hard into a cell phone for the entire flight. He'll blather on about this film deal or that film deal at the top of his lungs, repeating himself because the poor sap on the other end can't hear what Joe Hotair says half the time because the reception hops from one cell tower to another every 3 minutes.

"YEAH ... I'M ON THE PLANE!.... I SAID I'M ON THE PLANE!....ANYWAY, I THINK BRIDGET WILL PAIR NICELY WITH MATTHEW BRODERICK... ASK BILLY BOB IF HE'S READ THE SCRIPT YET... PEACE OUT.... I SAID, PEACE OUT! "

This is the same yahoo you will be stuck behind in traffic on Sunset Blvd. who hasn't quite succumbed to the new Hands Free law. He drives erratically, narrowly avoiding the death of others around him, while a cop pulls YOU over for a dead tail light.

But I'm here to bitch about something entirely different.



One of the more annoying things I own is the ear piece for my cell phone. I'm in a no-win situation with the frickin' thing in that I can't stand talking for more than 5 minutes on any phone without a headset of some sort because my elbow and my neck start bugging me. But I hate using the ear piece I have because it takes forever to untangle the mess created by stuffing it in my pocket, or my purse, or my backpack, or wherever I stuffed it last, then stick it in my ear while fumbling with the the rubber thingy to go around the back of my ear, and then plug the cord into my cell phone. And I only have that luxury if I'm the one placing the call.



If someone calls me and the phone rings in my car, I invariably hang up on the caller trying to scramble with the phone, shove in the ear piece, avoid pressing the answer button until the ear piece is snugly in my ear, and trying not to soar off a cliff while appeasing the caller who twenty years ago would have to settle for waiting until I got home.



I don't get called enough to justify sticking the damn thing in my ear "just in case" and ride around getting the cord all tangled up in the gear shift knob and the steering wheel.



Get a blue tooth ear piece, you say? I did. Wanna hear about that too? I bought this damn thing that came with vague-at-best instructions that did not seem to match its actual function. It became immediately useless in my travels because it has a battery that requires recharging. And you have to remember to do it every day, or else the one day you actually need it, the battery has died and now you can't use this stupid thing that by the way doesn't even feel like it will stay in your ear. It just loosely hangs on like an earring and you know it's going to drop on the ground any minute and you don't want to walk around with that thing in your ear either because it doesn't look "cool" like everyone else's designer blue neon-lit hardware that appears to mold to the user's ear. They don't spend half their time in line at Starbucks twisting and cramming at it to get it to "STAY GODDAMMIT ALREADY!". That's right, I have headset envy, so what?



And you have to remember to pack the recharger on your trip and for someone like me who travels a lot, that is so not happening. I have enough garbage and gadgets to bring back and forth with me every trip. Over time I have duplicated rechargers so that I don't have to carry all that crap. I didn't want to buy ANOTHER charger for ANOTHER gadget. Enough already!



MrMudPuppy said he saw more people hands-not-free on July 1, perhaps out of rebellion. I can understand that. I stopped wearing my seat belt as soon as a law was going to take effect two months later that required the use of seatbelts. Here I was, using my seatbelt because I was concerned about safety, but as soon as the government decided to take away my choice, I was going to live on the edge as long as possible, because I could. Never mind that it was insane and unsafe, it was the principle of the thing in my young and stubborn mind. Oh sure, on Day 1 of the seatbelt law, I honored and obeyed, because I'm a complete chicken when it comes to getting into possible trouble. But I squeezed out every drop of choice up until the day - never mind that I was risking my life.



And then there were people like my Dad and stepmother, who never wore their seatbelts - I don't know why. They must have figured they were above the law, or because of their profession, they could get tickets written off all the time because they knew a lot of cops. Funny how they fraternized with law enforcement, and I don't know any cops. Not one single one. I can't relax for a second if I see one nearby. As soon as I see a pohleece, I check myself for contraband, miles-per-hour, guilty facial expression, whatever I could possibly be busted for, even though I'm innocent, but for some reason, I'm unreasonably paranoid about winding up in the klink.



Maybe because I haven't spent much time with cops, I don't think of them as real people and I have no idea how to behave around them. I spend my whole life trying to avoid any contact with them because I know the minute I'm in some strip club that gets raided one night, a comedy of errors will ensue and I'll be shuffled off to prison for some beauracratic mix-up that takes years of paperwork to straighten out while I toil away in the prison library writing my life story about how I was screwed by the justice system.



But I was talking about my dad and stepmom's anti-seatbelt attitude. But that was years ago. Now it's just my dad, who can't really see anymore, so I drive and my car will yell at you if you do not fasten your seatbelt, so he no longer has that choice.



But before that I was talking about the new hands-free cell phone law. And the conspiracy under foot that requires us to purchase lousy ear pieces designed to work like tires and light bulbs where we are forced to replace them frequently. God forbid they design it to last to our satisfaction, or stay charged for more than 3 hours, or not require batteries at all.



But before that, I was talking about red, white and blue, and basically, I just wanted to wish you a Happy Fourth of July.



Peace out.



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NGIP would like to throw a big fat shout out to Jennifer at Playgroups Are No Place For Children for linking to Nanny Gotas the other day, driving ridiculous traffic to this site. That link also prompted Vicki over at Creekside to link to us and add NGIP to her blog roll (WOO HOO!).



And.... THANK YOU to Apathy Lounge for adding us to her Insane Clown Posse blog roll. It's an honor and a privilege to be labeled as Insane, as well as a Clown!



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