Polls & Up The Pole (I Must Be)

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Results are in!

According to my readers, the correct definition of the word eubodicly is:

A particularly successful bowel motion

That’s about your level, I guess.

Did I mention that mine was the vote that tipped the balance?

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You guys are cheats, or I am slow: there is no six degrees of separation now that Google is King.  Many of you found Shanea Vernon by typing her name and clicking search.  Have you no romance in your internet-withered souls?

Well done to Aquatom, at least, who knows Kevin Bacon via the movie Mystic River, which he hasn’t seen (it’s too complicated to explain; read his comment here).

I emailed my friend to ask her to get her Louse to check the business card for details (which I did not want to do, believing that the six degree thing was more fun.  Apparently I’m alone in that), and it is indeed the Shanea Vernon who works for Entertainmentpc, though she is now the managing member, not a sales representative.  I think it is party planning.

I have requested to become her friend on Facebook.  If she accepts, and I don’t get locked up for stalking, I’ll explain to her how a stranger in Stockport came to know of her existence on the other side of the world, and proceeded to tell the whole world about her.  If I’m still not locked up for stalking, I believe she’ll be happy, because any publicity is good publicity, right?  Right?

Where’s my orange jumpsuit?

Do You Know Shanea Vernon, Sales Representative?

Let’s see if this six degrees of separation thing really works.

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The Hub and I were visiting some friends yesterday.  Their son and his lovely girlfriend were there.  He is in the Army.  He and a colleague were on an RAF course recently and told the instructor that their nicknames were Maverick and Goose.  I can’t remember which one he was, so I’ll call him Moose.

This was the first time we had seen Moose since he returned from Afghanistan.  He was telling us some tales, and his little brother – shall we call him Mouse or Loose?  Or Louse? – showed us an American Army cap to illustrate one of them.  Moose had traded caps with a GI (are they still called that?).  One of those tight, pillbox-type hats with a peak that, in movies, are worn low over the eyes to make the soldier look disciplined and menacing.

Louse was fiddling with the hat as we chatted, when he discovered a worn business card tucked inside.  We passed it around the table and wondered why it was there.  Had the soldier (male) asked for it, or been given it, by Shanea Vernon, Sales Representative, because of a mutual attraction/attraction on one side and politeness on the other, or for a possible future business transaction?

Learning, to my shock, that I am a romantic at heart – or that I watch too many romcoms – I favour the idea that they met just before he was going off to war; felt something instinctual, animal and badly timed; and he kept her card in his cap so that it was always with him. 

The card had been folded up small and was badly creased: had he taken it out on cold desert nights and stroked it, thinking wistfully of the woman who gave it to him?  Or the new computer she sold to him and which his kids were now stickying up with their grubby, peanut butter and jellied hands?  Or the car he hopes to buy with the wages he’s saved while on his tour of duty?  I forgot to see what Shanea Vernon was representing, so I have to speculate.

What if Moose, by swapping caps, became the star that crossed potential lovers?  What if Shanea Vernon has the only thing for sale in existence that the soldier wanted but couldn’t afford to buy at the time he obtained her card?

What if I explode from never knowing the answers to all of these questions?

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to ask the people you know to ask the people they know to ask the people they know if they know Shanea Vernon.  Then to ask them the question: what, specifically, does she sell?

By the way, if any of your friends of friends of friends know Kevin Bacon, he is an acceptable substitute. 

Help! My Computer Hates Me And I Really Don’t Want To Have To Kill My Husband In His Sleep

Image by jacob earl via Flickr

Here we go again.  WordPress or somebody asked how I’d like to be remembered.  As a computer genius; but it’s never gonna happen, is it?

My techneptitude has flared up again.  Do you any of you real computer genii know how to fix my problem?  Preferably before the Hub gets up and has a little whinge about it.  You remember that post the other day where you all urged me to hang onto him because of his un-man-like ability to change a toilet roll?  Here’s why I might not: think of the loudest noise you know.  Double it.  Multiply by every prime number.  Take away the will to live.  And only then will you just begin to comprehend the Hub’s ability to sap the life out of a person who accidentally messed with his computer settings.

Here’s the problem: I was writing today’s sapoems post and I accidentally hit some or other buttons on the keyboard (I blame the Germans) and the bit at the top and bottom disappeared – the ribbon/banner thingy that says what’s up on your desktop.  I can get it back if I click on the top or bottom of the screen but it refuses to stay in place.  How do I fix it?  I tried going to some fixing website, thinking it was probably a common problem; but there’s no FAQ for ‘my ribbon/banner thingy won’t stay put.’ 

Please, people: if you don’t want me to have to murder the Hub in his bed rather than face a rollicking, take pity on me.

Today is My One Year B***********

The Doctor was beginning to regret getting so many pets….

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Today is my one-year *l**********.  When I told the Hub, he insisted that I can’t use the word ‘**o*********’ because it’s just too naff and he doesn’t want to be known for having a naff wife using the word ‘***g********.’  As this blog is mostly about him, I had to listen to his argument.  Especially as he had me pinned to the floor with a knee across my larynx at the time.

I decided to celebrate my ****i******* by taking a look at my statistics (as if I don’t look at them every day, drooling with excitement that three people linked from Writer’s Island and the two-hundred-and-eighty-ninth person accidentally found me by typing in ‘your old as woman feel’) .   I would tell you all about it but I can’t help feeling that a) it’s dull and b) it would be rather like swapping salary stories; I just don’t think it’s the done thing in the blogosphere.  I can tell you, because I have a little stat counter on my home page so it’s something you can check for yourself, that my target of 10,000 hits for the end of the year – 2010; not the year since I started blogging, which is today.  Did I mention it was my *****v******? – will be reached sometime in the next ten days.  I hope.

Now I have to set a new target.  That involves looking at statistics.  Umm…  2782 in my first half and 7016 in my second half which is an increase of something percent so if I factor in my poor maths skills and multiply that by my one year *****e*****, take away the number I first thought of and stop for a chocolate break, my new target will be 17,000 hits by 31 December.  (Don’t let the science fool you; this is what’s technically known as a ‘thumbsuck figure.’)  And look at that!  I finally managed to legitimately pull together three punctuation marks.  Go me!*

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I have a bit of a problem: I set myself today’s target of writing the word (though it’s not really a word and in the opinion of the Hub is a bit naff; did I say that already?) ‘*******r****’ twelve times in this post so that anyone who’s a bit clever, like, could crack the code and discover for themselves what the word is (it’s ‘********s***’).  Thus, I would be obeying the Hub’s diktat not to say ‘*********a**’ but subverting it at the same time.  I’m too smart for him.  Trouble is, I’ve run out of things to say.

Oo!  Oo!  Just had a **********r* flash of genius – isn’t it ironic that the first anniversary of a blog (wink wink) – an electronic media (medium?) – should be paper? Why?

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Today is Rallentanda’s POW prompt day.  The prompt is to write a Who Am I?  poem.  The first was written in response and is easy; the second was written about eighteen months ago and is more difficult if you are not interested in Royal history – which, inexplicably, many people aren’t. 

Answers on a postcard please; or in the comment box.

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Who Am I?

I’m craggy but handsome; fecund but cute. 
I look good in blue or my birthday suit. 
I act; I direct; sometimes I produce. 
I had a great wife but I played fast and loose. 
Dad wanted his son to avoid Vietnam:
I’m Aussie; I’m Yank; I don’t give a damn.
Famously Catholic, I’m hypocritical. 
I’m occasionally drunk and anti-semitical. 

Who am I?

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Mother Knows Best

There is so much angst at home
when your Mum sits on the throne.
She says it is my duty
to wed for State, not booty.
I know that I can’t fight her:
she’ll pull her corset tighter
and declare she’s not amused;
I must consent to being used.
Avoiding war is wiser:
I’m off to raise a Kaiser. 

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*Sorry, I’m excited.  Today is my ***********y.  

 

Ha!**  You thought I couldn’t do it, didn’t you?   

 

**Will somebody please close the exclamation mark factory door before I overdose?