TWO WRONGS DON'T MAKE A BALONEY SANDWICH

I’m sure most people have heard that saying about if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. And let me tell you that might work for some stuff, but not everything. I wish it did.

I think I’ve sort of made sure most folks are aware that I take food real serious. At least in terms of feeding my face. I always want to be sure I don’t mess around and goof up anything I want to put in my stomach.

Now this is one thing where my buddy Otis and I don’t always agree. With me I don’t like to fool around changing the way I fix something to eat. If it taste good then why change it. That is like the old advice about if ain’t broke, don’t mix it. Er I guess that is sticks it. Oh shoot it rhymes with mix somehow. Anyway I think the basic idea if something don’t need changing then leave it alone.

However when it comes to food I’m just happy to know when I decide to eat something it will taste the same as the last time I tried it. There are times though that my buddy gets in these moments of inspiration and decides we need a change in that regard. He talk about how variety is the dice of life. Or something like that. In any case I don’t like gambling in that regard.

And what really bugs me is that Otis knows perfectly well what happens when Truly Grimy ends up trying to get too clever and changing foods. Man that is one gal who could I swear figure a way to make plain old water taste yucky. So you would figure that he would not want to risk the same chance by changing something good that we eat.

Does that influence him in any way? Heck no. Does he learn when he tries something different and it turns out to taste bad? I wish!

I suppose if Otis were just to stick with the foods he truly loves like Spam that would be okay. But he insists upon doing junk to something as yummy as a baloney sandwich. Now I ask you what can be easier to figure out than the way to fix a plain, old baloney sandwich. You got bread, mayonnaise, maybe mustard too if you feel adventurous, baloney of course and perhaps some lettuce if you like vegetables. Plus perhaps some cheese too if you are really daring.

Well that formula seems one that works pretty darn good for me. I enjoy biting into some baloney sandwich and knowing what it is going to taste like. What I don’t want is to bite into is and for one not taste any baloney.

I mean how can it be a baloney sandwich WITHOUT any baloney? That doesn’t seem very hard to figure out for me.

Otis though doesn’t agree. He loves to call it a baloney sandwich even when it uses what he calls a baloney substitute. Shoot man if it don’t taste like meat and lard then it ain’t baloney too me, except in fibbing.

And while I’ll stick with my old faithful version of baloney. I guess I’ll have to tolerate the times Otis gets in one of those moods to change what works. So far it hasn’t and I’m sorry those accidents just will never make my tummy smile as good as the real thing!

LIFT THAT BARGE, TOTE THAT STALE

Well I know one thing I ain’t interested in lifting an barge. I saw one once I think. It was this humungous flat goodie floating in this harbor and it was piled high with garbage. And boy did it look heavy.

So all I can say is that whoever came up with this lifting a barge thing must have been out of their mind in terms of thinking we could do such a thing. And if that sucker was piled high with garbage, man you would expect it to be stale.

Now my thinking on this is perhaps the person who came up with this stupid saying (who was also probably the same dude who came up with some other similar stupid sayings) probably had something else in mind. Like trying to say how perhaps it really is dumb and stupid to even try and lift anything that heavy that stinks. As if you ought to have the brains enough to not bother. In other words don’t be so dang stupid.

I have to admit that I have never personally met the guy who came up with this saying. But I’m only hoping that is what he had in mind. Unless he was one of those weird dudes who perhaps came up with ideas after taking some funny pills or drinking some of that stuff that makes your head spin.

I’ve seen enough of those guys to know how doing that kind of thing sort of makes them weird. I’m not talking about the kind of weird I get accused of being. I’m speaking of the kind of weird that really never makes any sense. The type, which you never know has a chance in the world of getting better.

And if the dude who came up with this saying was one of those then I can sort of appreciate how he would have been thinking you could lift a barge even if it was full of stale crap. Because those dudes really do get hopeless at times in what they think is real.

That’s okay if it works for you I suppose. Only I don’t think we you get all silly and make up really stupid junk that people ought to have a reason to quote it like it was something worth listening too.

I guess that is what I consider as part of my reason for what I do with this blog. I got to spread the word about this type of thing. Hopefully by doing this I can spare at least one person from having to think about stuff that maybe it was better if we just forgot.

And ain’t it wonderful that I work so hard doing all that thinking so you don’t have to. All you have to do is drop my and read where I thought it through and then you can see how bothering with it was perhaps not a good idea.

As for me, well I guess I don’t mind taking the time. I mean after all being a grimefighting super hero type does put me in the position where it is important that I do what I can to help others.

Of course my buddy Otis says I probably shouldn’t be so helpful at times. But I got to do what I got to do whether some people like it or not. At least it works for me. I won’t say what some thing about it because I don’t use that kind of language.

UNDER THE YUM, YUM FREE

For me there is nothing cooler than free samples. Of course I’m speaking of free stuff to eat. Other kinds of free samples can be okay, but I don’t know they just don’t do it for me the same as getting something for my tummy for nothing.

The big problem is so often they don’t put up a sign that says, “limit one to a customer.” And that to me is false advertising. Well I consider it that way when they don’t explain up front that you can’t just enjoy the free samples as much as possible. But let me tell you with some places if they have a plate of whatever out for you to try they sure give you the evil eye if you like take the whole plate. They don’t say you can’t.

Now if the free sample is something really great I try to get creative on this thing. I mean shoot free is well, free and that is a bargain any way you look at it.

So what I do is go in and take a free sample. Then I leave and come back later and hope they don’t remember I was just there. I do have admit that sometimes I maybe hurry too much. That’s when I don’t pay attention to the time like I should and then when I think it has been maybe an hour it only turns out to be like thirty seconds.

Believe me the look on the clerk’s face sure tells me that I didn’t guess the time right. So sometimes I have to pretend that I forgot something before casually trying to have another free sample.

The best situation is when they are really, really busy. Then the clerk will most likely not pay attention to you helping yourself to extra free samples. And if you happen to know when the help change shifts shoot you really can luck out.

One other option is to go in and buy something. They don’t seem to get too upset if you take extra free samples if you are paying for something else.

But in some cases it doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of difference. Those are the situations where they know you too well and then you can fake being a first time customer. And I guess trying to claim I got five brothers that look just like me doesn’t work either.

The good news is that I have found certain ways to get around that problem. Like wearing a mask. Or claiming to have food amnesia. Or even claiming to have some incurable and terminal disease and how getting a free sample of their whatever is the only way to dry happy. Hey those might seem kind of lame, but let me tell you free is darn worth it!

I only wish I hadn’t ended up going into the candy store that often. It really gets tough to come up with a good excuse to visit and get some free samples when I go in there too often.

That doesn’t mean I’m going to give up though. I’m still toying with a good animal costume I can rent that I can wear into some candy store. I just haven’t decided whether being a talking gorilla or talking bunny will impress them the most. Guess I’ll find out in due time.

GRIN AND SHARE IT

Now this giving thing can sure be confusing to me at times. Take with somebody like the Reverend Analbe.

There is hardly a Sunday that goes by that he doesn’t bring up the subject of giving during his sermons. And he always mentions how God loves a hilarious giver.

The only thing I’ve notice with the Reverend though is how he expects us to do the giving part and he does the hilarious part. I not sure that is quite how it was suppose to work, but he sure gets a nice big grin on his face when he takes those collection plates with him after the service.

Anyway, Otis and I just do what we can to chip in when we can. And I guess I’m glad Otis told me not to put any jelly beans in the plate. I was worried about having to do that at one time, but he said not to bother.

And I guess that is the part of this giving thing that I also get concerned about. I don’t mind if I have to do the giving thing if it is something I don’t want. But I’m a whole lot less thrilled when I got to do it with stuff I really want or need.

The thing is over at STINK there are times when Dr. Hemoglobin gets on this kick about giving. And when he doesn’t his son old rat boy, Junior Hemoglobin sometimes gets on the subject too.

Only with them they want us to do the sharing while they do all the grinning. That ain’t cool to me.

But I don’t think we will have to be worrying about it for a while. Not after Otis pulled a sneaky. That was after Dr. Hemoglobin made this big lecture about how important we all chip in to help with this one cause. To be honest there have been so many I can’t even remember this one. All I recall is that he said it was important.

Well Otis asked Dr. Hemoglobin if it was okay if we collect things from around STINK to try and sell to give the money for this cause. And he agreed as long as we didn’t like sell the diaper service vans or garbage trucks.

So what he did was to sneak into Junior’s office and take all his cases of cheese. We took them over to this one store where Otis was able because he knows the manager to swap them for some cash as well as some Spam and jelly beans.

Then Otis took the money and gave it to Dr. Hemoglobin. And he thanked us and sent the money off to that needy cause.

Right after that old rat boy came rushing out of his office saying somebody stole all his cheese. And that is when Otis explained how Dr. Hemoglobin had told us it was okay to take whatever for this charity.

I tell you what after that neither of them has bother to talk about giving that much or sharing at all. As for Otis and I we are doing all the grinning as we snack on the spam and jelly beans we got in the swap. And that man is one kind of sharing I can really enjoy!

TOGETHER AGAIN

Reunions can be so cool. And especially if you like the person that you are suppose to meet and used to know at a friend.

However they can be a real bummer if you the person is a jerk. Then you may not want to go to the reunion. It can real tough deciding too if the reunion is with a whole bunch of dudes and some you like and some you don’t.

My buddy Otis and I had to go to this reunion the other day. It was at the Grimefighter’s Academy. Now Otis and didn’t attend there the same time, but since I am a grimefigther too he didn’t think it was a big deal if I went with him and since we are buds and all it sorted sounded like a good idea.

The thing is most of the grimefighters that Otis went to the academy with are no longer grimefighters. They have gone on to do other junk. Some did make decent grimefighters for a while and some weren’t so good, but out of his class Otis is really the only one to hang with it.

Personally I admire Otis for hanging in their with STINK and all. He is really a great bud and if he hadn’t ended up staying there then I might have ended up with somebody like the Old Diaper Weasel as a partner. I won’t born you with much detail about him, but to say he might be an okay grimefighter, but most of us wouldn’t care to hang with him. I mean we are talking about a dude whose idea of collecting junk is to store dirty diaper odors. Is that twisted or what? Yeah I thought so too.

Anyway lucky for me I manage to get hooked up with Otis and so when he mentioned going to the reunion I thought it sounded like a good idea. So I tagged along. But I got to be honest I’m not all that sure I had the best time when we did go.

For starters I don’t know who was in charge of the refreshments, but chilled sauerkraut juice ain’t my idea of something tasty. As for snacks, jeez, did those suck. They only had those weird crunchy things without much taste that are real colorful, but not that great to eat. You know stuff like cauliflower and broccoli and other weird junk. Heck they didn’t even have any decent dip to help kill the taste. Was that insane or what?

I did ask the one guy about it and he claimed they were concentrating on eating nutritious foods that were good for you. Oh I agree they won’t hurt you since I couldn’t eat the darn things!

As for those other dudes who graduated with Otis. I guess I sort of felt sorry for most of them. They had given up the exciting calling of being a grimefighter for stuff like being stocker brokers and other jobs where they made a crummy six figure income. Heck I got a ten figure income since jelly beans has ten letters in it.

So I was sad that after leaving STINK they had given up driving junk like mopeds and instead had to settled for something called a “BEAMER.” I guess that is some kind of thing you drive, but need a flashlight beam to be able to see at night.

After we left, I told Otis how glad I was that we hadn’t given up the life of super hero grimefighters for those kind of unsuccessful jobs with such low pay and lousy transportation. I’m sure the fact that Otis looked so sad after talking to those guys was because he pitied them too. He didn’t say so, but at least we know as long as we got each other as buds life will always give us a reason to feel successful and rich!

CUCUMBERS, COCONUTS AND STAPLES

Oh man, oh man, oh man, is this posting about one heck of a nightmare. Well I guess it really can’t be called a nightmare since I wasn’t dreaming. I mean this more in terms of a mess I got involved with over at STINK the other day.

Our boss Dr. Hemoglobin decided it would be a good idea if we, meaning the grimefightes as in Otis and myself mainly, should try our hand at fixing lunch. Shoot it hardly seemed like a tough chore, but I know he wanted us to do it in order to get even for us having everyone protest that crap he let Truly Grimey try to feed us.

You would think after all this time and as many people that have gotten down right sick eating that stuff she calls food that he would have known better than give her another chance. But NO, not him. When she had this so-called inspiration in terms of lunch he made us sit down and let her serve it to us.

My question is, “since when are donuts suppose to have legs? Or move?” I didn’t think the answer was sometimes. But Truly apparently does.

Before we actually stuffed them critters in our mouths though my buddy Otis got Truly to admit that she had made those things while also taking care of her ant farm. And after she confessed that for some reason all the ants disappeared about the time she started whipping up the donut batter, that sure ended my appetite.

Only it does get worse. It turns out that she didn’t use ants in her ant farm. She has managed to lose them and thought cockroaches were a good replacement. Are you getting the picture yet? Does oh my god sound about right?

Well at least we did manage to get her to understand that using icing to cover over the moving part on those donuts didn’t solve the problem. I’m not sure what we will do the next time she decides to fix donuts, but I know if it starts walking forget having me eat it.

Anyway after that whole mess Dr. Hemoglobin decided we should volunteer to fix lunch. And well Otis is generally the cook at our apartment. So I thought I would just maybe choose to do the serving part and let him worry about the fixing part.

Only he decide I should help. And there he had all this stuff that I am not use to seeing like cucumbers and coconut that is still in a shell. Man is that ugly looking or what.

The thing is he asked me to take the coconut and crack it open and then cut the skin off the cucumber. But I sort of got them confused and tried to smash the cucumber and then remove the shell from the coconut. I guess I didn’t do that good of a job because all I ended up with was one really big mess.

But it sort of looked like something I could fix. All I needed was something to just sort of make it stick together. That is what I thought the staples would do. I figured they would melt when Otis put those cucumbers and coconuts in the oven as part of his casserole. At least I learned that staples don’t melt. And the nice thing I don’t think Dr. Hemoglobin will bother asking us to do that again. I guess I’ll have to wait till he gets back from seeing the dentist to have those staples removed to be sure though.

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK: "Better to grow flowers than have them thrown at you in a pot!"

UP AND ADAM

My buddy Otis says this a lot. Mainly in the morning and normally on a Saturday when I think I should be able to sleep in.

Now what I want to know is there some reason that getting up early when a sane person should be sleeping means you should be known as Adam? Who was this Adam character anyway? Some clown with an alarm clock I bet who just loved making sure you didn’t get to sleep in. Yeah that sounds like the kind of sick thing some moron would try.

I personally don’t know anybody named Adam. Well I’ll take that back. I do know that there was that Adam in the bible. The one they mention in that first book called um, Geritol or Gensing or something that starts with a G.

He was that dude who hung around in this Garden for Eaten. Guess he was a vegetarian. And he had a wife named Eve. I think she must have had a night job since they all night “eve” some times. Hmmm I wonder if that is why he had to live in a garden for eaten since his wife was never home to fix dinner.

I bet that is why he got in trouble with that apple or whatever fruit it was that was hanging from that tree called the tree of the College for Hood and Weevils. That might explain why he didn’t have a regular job if he was a student.

But none of that explains how come he had a thing for getting up early or why just because it was his problem I have to get up early too. I figure if he enjoyed it fine. However that doesn’t mean I should need to.

On the other hand given the fact he did live in that garden maybe he needed to get up early to water the plants. Or whatever else he spent his time doing there in between the time he spent eating.

Gee I wonder if that garden was like the one in that “Willie Wonka” flick. You know the one that had candy hanging on the branches of the tree. Now that to me would really be a cool kind of garden of eaten.

And if that was the case well shoot. I think I would be up early too in order to get a head start of finding something really cool to eat. Yeah I could see doing that.

It is too bad he and his wife didn’t get to stay there. But I know sometimes when you are renting a place and the lease is up they don’t always let your renew it. So I reckon his landlord had a reason to not giving him a new lease.

Perhaps that was part of the problem why that Adam is still mentioned for getting up early. I mean if he spent all that time getting up early it would be a hard habit to break. But I bet it was the pits to get up early after he wasn’t in that garden any more and couldn’t get something good to eat off the tree.

However regardless of how it was hard for him to not get up early, I don’t have the problem. And if sleeping in means I have to be Philo Milo Buttercream and not be called Adam I risk it.

DOWN IN THE VALLEY

I don’t think this is a place I want to visit. I mean I don’t believe I do if it is like in that song where it talks about the valley so low.

Course I know it wouldn’t be a valley if it wasn’t low would it? Only there sure must be something extra awful about how low this valley is if you need to sing about it in some song. I can’t help imagining it is the problem.

The only issue I have to wonder about is whether the dude who wrote that song did so because he got stuck there. Was it intended as some kind of warning like don’t let this happen to you.

If that be the case then how come the guy forgot to mention where you find that valley. That seemed like a kind of big item to have left out of his song. At least he could have mentioned where you find it on some map.

I mean what if it is some really crazy place like that Bermuda triangle? You know the location where they make all those shorts that look cool to wear at the beach. But don’t go there because from what I heard they can be really tough on trespassers. Like to the point they make you disappear! I call that pretty serious.

But then I reckon if this dude stumbled in that valley and it was in the Bermuda joint then he wouldn’t have been around to sing the song or write it huh? On the other hand you don’t hear of him sticking around to take credit for it like on the Internet. At least there is no Down in the Valley So Low web site that I’ve heard of. However these days there are so many it is hard to say for sure I guess.

I think though I’m going to do what I can to see if I can figure out for safety’s sake where this valley is located. And if it ain’t in the Bermuda Triangle I sure hope it ain’t the one they call “Death Valley!” Because if it is that means they end up putting you in some plot and that is one kind of low I don’t imagine anyone wants to rush to check out.

That is why I got on this whole valley thing in the first place. I call it being downright irresponsible to be singing some song and getting a person all excited about worrying over this valley and then you don’t even bother to tell us how to avoid it. I ask you is that fair? Not too me.

So I guess as usual it is up to me to take up the slack on this thing and do what this dude should have done if he had been more inclined to be nice to folks rather than fool around with just writing music. I mean I know as a writer myself that us creative types can be a little fickle, but come on is this any way to honestly treat folks.

Okay so the place I’m going to look at first is a globe. It normally has all the really important things on it. Only I think the guys who make them do forget the really important spots like where to find all the good places that sell jelly beans. Well maybe after I locate this valley I’ll write them and ask them to work on it.

BREAD AND BUTTER

I saw some old movie and they kept saying this when this couple were walking and holding hands and had to separate like when passing on different sides of a tree. Now I ask you what in the world has any dumb tree got to do with bread or butter.

I do realize that there are sure a lot of dumb things people find a reason to say. And I confess I’ve managed to repeat plenty of them. Plus I’ve even made up a few too I suppose. But fair is fair if people are going to say stupid junk and others think it cool then I guess I’m going to get stuck saying them too in order to be cool.

That’s my way of excusing why I come up with dumb crap at times. With my buddy Otis he always tries to claim it is his effort to prove a point. The only thing is he never quite gets around to explaining what the point is he’s making. I think he just says that so he doesn’t have to admit that he’s fibbing about some saying he is making up.

And believe me there are times when he gets in some stupid mood like having one of those crazed needs in the middle of the night for a hunk of spam. So what he will do when he wakes me up to go with him to the all night grocery store is come up with some saying he claims is the reason we got to go shopping in the middle of the night. Only it always ends up with us just shopping for spam.

I just do my best to pretend I believe his stupid saying and I guess I’m glad he hasn’t ever used that bread and butter one. Although I don’t think I would mind if he used it when we were at the store and he actually bought bread and butter instead of spam in the middle of the night. At least I could have some toast when I got home. But I doubt that will happen.

Of course Otis ain’t the only one who comes up with crazy sayings. Over at STINK that old rat boy, Junior Hemoglobin, sure does his best to give us some sayings that are total stupid in my opinion.

It was like the other day when he had us all on alert. And man let me tell you at five am even I know all the griminals are sane enough to be asleep. Well he wanted us on patrol just the same. Of course his idea of a patrol was to have us check out this one all night grocery store. And you guess it he expected us to check out the cheese section and bring back as much as possible as “evidence.”

The silly saying he came up with for that one was that the early bird (which he claimed was symbolic for grimefighters flying in their spirit to victory) catches the worm (which he claimed was in reality a bad translation and should be germ and he claimed that actually meant cheese as in gouda.) Boy I want to tell you at five am I was still half asleep and so I could have cared less if the stupid cheese had worms because all I wanted to do is get it over with and get him his stupid cheese so I could take a nap.

I did survive that little dose of insanity. But I got a feeling somebody, either Otis or Junior will come up with some other lame saying. Maybe they’ll give me a break and include something about bread and butter so at least I can get something decent to eat out of the deal.

BEHIND THE EIGHT BALL

Now I can’t figure this one out at all. I mean have you looked at an eight ball? Man those suckers are not that big. So how can you be behind it and be even worried about it. All you got to do is move.

Yet the way the guys at work talk when somebody gets behind an eight ball, shoot it is like the world is coming to an end. And does that honestly make a whole lot of sense?

When I hear junk like that I got to admit it makes me wonder whether those dudes have been exposed to too much cleaning fluid again. We had this one kind at STINK a while back that rat boy Junior Hemoglobin said he got at some yard sale. Why he was wanting to buy a yard I have no idea, but he brought in this cleaning fluid that he said was “industrial strength.” I guess that means if you worked in an industry you were suppose to use this fluid to make you strong or something.

Anyway he wanted us to try it out. Well heck the moment we all smell it I just knew we were in trouble. I mean at STINK we are suppose to work there not have the place literally STINK. Beside what kind of cleaning fluid glows in the dark?

But this time we all were imagining crazy stuff. At least I call it crazy when you imagine a thousand giant, purple lobsters are trying to eat your underwear while singing the Star Spangled Banner. I call that crazy you can call it whatever you want.

The thing is after we all started going a little weird in the head Dr. Hemoglobin sort of retired that cleaning fluid. However after hearing those dudes the other day talking about this eight ball thing it made me wonder if somebody managed to find where he was hiding and dug it out again.

I sure hope not though. Once you’ve seen a thousand giant purple lobsters trying to eat your underwear you don’t really want to do it again.

In the meantime I think I’m going to ask Otis where we can find this eight ball everyone says they have been getting behind. Maybe we could use that cleaning fluid on it. Because it sure was good at cleaning if you don’t mind when you use it that it makes stuff totally dissolve.

I guess it is the least we could do though in terms of helping all the dudes at STINK get out from behind that eight ball wherever it happens to be hiding. The way I figure it there is no reason for them to be stressed out about little black balls when we mess up enough over regular junk to have plenty of reason to worry. So hopefully we can make this eight ball disappear and if not perhaps a whiff of the cleaning fluid will at least let those lobsters take their mind off the eight ball.