Trek the Wars.

December 22, 2016December 22, 2016 / Spoken Like A True Nut / 3 Comments

Writing my own bastardized versions of popular Christmas songs is usually something of an annual tradition for me.

Key word: usually. Sadly, due to a sudden apparent complete lack of creativity on my part, it doesn’t look like that will be happening this year.

Or maybe 2016 was just so awful that even I’m having trouble making light of it.

Happily, though, the internet is a thing, so at the very least I’m still able to enjoy and share the irreverent holiday mockeries of others.

Like the Wookiee-tastic version of Silent Night that I stumbled upon last night.

Wow, the walking carpet can carry a tune! Who knew?

But I’ve always been more of a Trekkie myself; specifically, a Next Generation Trekkie. And although being serenaded by Chewie definitely tickles my funny bone, I find this classic holiday offering featuring Captain Jean-Luc Picard & Co. far more…engage-ing.

#sorrynotsorry

What’s your favorite carol crime? Pour yourself a glass of spiked eggnog (unless eggnog’s not your thing, in which case MORE FOR ME, SUCKER) and post your most gigglesome holiday twisted tune selections in the comments so we can all have a much needed guffaw.

P.S. Pets in Santa hats also accepted.
P.P.S. Or GIFs of people slipping hilariously on ice.
P.P.P.S. Or whatever you want, really. I’m not picky, nor am I good at sticking to themes.

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Stranger things.

December 19, 2016 / Spoken Like A True Nut / 9 Comments

My mother always told me never to accept rides from strangers.

This, in general, seems like sound advice.

Until it’s 8am on a Monday and you’ve been standing for an hour and a half out in the snow that forecasters swore up and down was going to melt overnight, waiting with zero success for a bus, ANY bus, that maybe perhaps might have the most remotely conceivable potential of getting you to a Skytrain station so you can make it in to work.

That’s when your priorities start to shift…when your fingers and toes are starting to scream at you in the early stages of frostbite despite several layers of woolens, and you can’t move around to get your circulation going because if you step even one inch out of the lineup at the bus stop, your place will be immediately assimilated like the Blob taking over a small Pennsylvania town…when the lady behind you with the complete lack of regard for your personal space keeps periodically deciding to shift closer and jostle you yet again because she spotted a few spare atoms’ worth of room she thought she could squeeze into…when the heavenly aromas of people passing by with sugary seasonal lattes and greasy McDonald’s breakfast items encourage your stomach to do its most convincing Chewbacca impression for the restless throng…

Suddenly, the idea of being stuffed into an axe murderer’s trunk doesn’t sound half bad. Gotta be warmer than the street corner, right?

So when a random woman pulls over in a large SUV, rolls down the window and calls out, “Anybody need a ride to Cambie?” you say, “Yes please!” and you and the four other strangers who responded in kind swarm into her vehicle like ravenous locusts before she has a chance to reconsider.

And because you have all the luck, she turns out to be a thoughtful saint of a person who drives skillfully and safely, is pleasant and easy to make small talk with, and doesn’t bring out a chainsaw to lop off all your heads at the first red light.

It’s a Festivus miracle!

Seriously though, to my mystery chauffeur – and all the other kind souls before her who stopped and offered lifts to various places to our sorry stranded crowd – my sincerest gratitude. I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t a million times over rather be at home in my pajamas sipping hot chocolate than sitting here making awkward eye contact with a big dying poinsettia in our drab little beige office, but okay yeah, showing up to work and getting paid like a responsible adult has its merits too, I guess, and I have nobody but you to thank for making that possible today and reminding me that awesome people do still exist.

I will pay it forward. Promise.

Anyway, enough of this gooey sh…show of emotion. Back to our regularly scheduled sarcasm.

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A plague on the Nut house.

December 16, 2016December 16, 2016 / Spoken Like A True Nut / 8 Comments

An alleged friend of Nutty Hubby’s and mine sent us a Christmas card that sheds micro glitter like a sparkly vampire with the world’s worst case of dandruff.

I don’t know what we did to her to deserve this kind of punishment or how we’ll be able to properly atone so it doesn’t happen again next holiday season, but what I do know is thanks to handling that most egregious travesty of holiday correspondence I will now be finding glitter on my desk and in my carpet and in my pores for approximately the next fifty years. Assuming I don’t die before then, in which case my cremation will make for one very festive urn of ashes indeed.

Last night, as I tried for the eleventh time to get a single stubborn fleck of the godforsaken stuff off the tip of my index finger (an emery board eventually did the trick) I found myself wondering who it was we had to ~~castigate~~ thank for making the herpes of the craft world possible. So I typed my glittering way over to Wikipedia to find out.

“The first production of modern plastic glitter is credited to the American machinist Henry Ruschmann, who found a way to cut plastic or mylar sheets into glitter in 1934.” – Wikipedia^1,2

Dear Wikipedia,

You misspelled “masochist”.

Dear Henry Ruschmann,

¹ “Glitter.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 13 Dec. 2016. Web. 16 Dec. 2016.

² Yes, I know people were using other shit as glitter long before my new nemesis Henry, but sometimes you just need to hate someone with a name.

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Walking in a winter wonderland.

December 5, 2016 / Spoken Like A True Nut / 4 Comments

Fact: I am still just as excited to wake up and see snow outside my window as I was when I was an itty bitty kidlet.

Only now I have a better camera than when I was an itty bitty kidlet, so it’s possible that these days I’m even more excited.

I left my car at home today. The only thing worse than trying to get up our steep driveway in the snow is trying to get back down it.

Instead I took about fifteen “me” minutes to just walk around in the white stuff and be enveloped by the stillness that came with it as it wafted softly down. I photographed the silent streets and breathed deep breaths of fresh, crisp air until my heart was as light and carefree as a helium balloon.

Then I reluctantly acknowledged the reality that it was Monday and I had places to be.

I joined a line of some two dozen texting and muttering people waiting anxiously for a bus. Approximately three minutes later, we got the word from a kindly couple in a truck that there were five buses stuck down at the bottom of the hill and not to get our hopes up that they’d be heading our way any time soon. At that, about three quarters of the line dispersed. Out of some misguided sense of duty, I decided to wait another ten minutes before giving up.

Exactly ten minutes later, the bus arrived.

Figures.

Two transfers later I was on a community shuttle, seated directly in front of a bunch of college kids who were just not having it.

“Who was it that told me it never snows in Richmond? Who? Was it you, man?”
“Nope, not me dude. I said it was gonna snow Sunday, remember?”
“Some motherfucker told me it doesn’t snow in Richmond. When I remember who it was, I’m gonna punch him in the face.”
“Heh. I kinda hope, like, class is cancelled, but at the same time I kinda hope it isn’t because I came all this way.”
“Seriously man, I know someone told me it never snows in Richmond. When I remember who, I’m gonna kick his ass. Punch him right in the face. This is bullshit.”
“You should, like, drive over to his place and block his car in. Be all, ‘How do you like it?'”
“And then I’ll pack his exhaust with snow. Freeze his carburetor.”
*laughter*

They got off the shuttle at the first stop, still churning out increasingly outlandish threats to the mystery misinformer. I had to stifle a smile as they passed by.

The silence closed back in around us when they had gone.

We drove onward.

I arrived at work an hour and twenty minutes late. The snow is still falling softly outside the window.

I am happy.

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TGIFluffy.

December 2, 2016 / Spoken Like A True Nut / 1 Comment

As if the fact that today is Friday weren’t cause enough for celebration, the Boss Lady decided to bring her dog in to visit on her day off. He’s two years old and full of energy, and we all just spent a considerable amount of time chasing him around the office and talking to him in silly voices to watch his head tilt madly back and forth.

This may very well be the closest I ever come to having anything resembling job satisfaction.