A sisyphean task.

I am terrible at doing the laundry.

It is perhaps the biggest item of contention between my wife and I.  I say I will do the laundry, but I don't.  I say I will fold the laundry, but I don't.  I say I will put away the laundry, but I don't.   

It is a wonder my wife hasn't left me yet.  She tolerates the hell out of me. I love her for it. 

As I thought about this today, it made me think of Sisyphus.  He was a Greek man who was sentenced by the Greek gods to continuously push a rock up a hill and as it neared the top it would roll back down and he would have to start again. 

To be fair to the Greek gods I think Sisyphus did seduce his niece and then had her kill the children she bore with him.  Maybe he got off easy.

Greek myths are fucked up.  As I remember the guy who stole fire for all of mankind (Prometheus) was sentenced by the Greek gods to have an eagle eat his liver out.  Every day.  The gods made it so his liver would re-grow each day so it could keep happening.  That is seriously messed up.  Guy wants to make fire and is rewarded with eternal-eagle-eating-liver torture.  Seems severe. 

Other tales (bonus points to those who can name them) involved a god cheating on his wife with a woman and then turning her into a cow, a man being turned into a deer and eaten alive by his hunting dogs for looking at a goddess' breasts and a sister of a god being kidnapped and forced to live in hell half the year for eating six pomegranate seeds.  If six seeds sends you to hell, the fact that I drink a glass of POM juice a day is worrying.  There really needs to be a warning on the container for that one.  

POM:  Contains Anti-oxidants (note: ingesting this product may cause eternal damnation).

The problem is that the minute I do the laundry it just starts piling up again.  I think I have isolated the problem:  Clothes.  Solution is obvious.  If I don't wear clothes then there will be no piling up of laundry.  As an added bonus my wife will have to not wear clothes too.  Hopefully, I don't get turned into a deer and eaten alive for looking at her breasts. 

Nudists are not more liberated than the average person, they are just more lazy.

Chinese Bun Lady (revisited)

I  never knew my words would have such an influence.

You may remember one of my first posts was about the terror regime of the Chinese Bun Lady (for the uninitiated see http://timwilltell.blogspot.com/2011/10/on-buns-and-bagels.html). 

Well ding dong the witch is dead... the Chinese Bun Shop has closed.

I went today to get a Chinese bun and the shop had turned into an art shop.   Instead of the smell of barbecue pork buns wafting over the underground instead there is now the sight of very bad oil paintings of barns. 

Oh what a fool I have been.  I know it was my words that caused this.  The Chinese Bun Lady ever mindful of plots to steal her buns must have set up an Internet search to be one step ahead of the horde of bun thieves.  Her engine must have highlighted my post and she saw the error of her ways and either killed herself or she is currently on a pilgrimage back to China to rediscover what it was that she first saw in Chinese buns that ignited the passion in her.

Or she was right to be so mindful of thieves and it really is true that stealing of buns makes Chinese bun shops economically unsupportable and she was forced to close down.

Either way I feel I have wronged the Chinese bun lady.  I guess it is true what they say.  You never know a good thing until it is gone.  Somehow my bagel just doesn't taste the same. 

I wanted the Eastern European Bagel lady to be a little meaner so I could remember. I will hug those close to me a little closer today and one day tell my child of the Chinese bun lady and her ways.

Rest in Peace dear angry lady who would always check my bag to ensure I wasn't stealing a .99 cent product

Rest in Peace.

Learning to Count (or Why Raffi is a Racist)

So we are trying to teach our son how to count.  One of the ways we are doing this is by playing him kid’s songs which go through numbers.  This probably is futile as he is just now comprehending that he can eat, so abstract concepts such as numbers are probably outside of his primitive grasp of reality.  Nevertheless, if I don’t set goals, how will he be able to not meet my expectations.

One of those songs is by Raffi and called the “Numbers Rumba”.  In it Raffi sings a rumba about each number and then describes how the number looks. 

In the song number one is described as “straight but fun.”  This struck me as somewhat strange way of describing the number one as it implies that straight is not normally fun.  Rather than interpret this as a homosexual attack on traditional values (I am after all not a Republican candidate), I instead interpret this as Raffi commenting on the fact that if Number One was more curvy it would be even more fun.  This is backed by the fact that Raffi describes number two as “having big breasts is not taboo”.  To be fair to Raffi, he might say “two big feet on a kangaroo”.  He sings it really fast.

However, I do know Raffi is racist. 

In one song he sings about the children of the world and recites their names.  The song starts off nice enough.  Bonnie is from Canada.  Sounds all right.   Olga is from Russia.  Um...okay, if a little obvious.  Jose is from Mexico.  Bordering on offensive.

And then...Ching is from China. 

Seriously Raffi? Ching is from China?  No one told you that is infinitesimally close to Chink is from China? 

I can just imagine  how this exchange went down. 

Raffi:  Ching is from China.   

Producer:  Wait, Wait, Wait.... Raffi are we sure about that one... Ching?

Raffi:  Do you know who I am?  I am Mr. Banana Phone.  Shut the hell up. 

Raffi Singing:  Ching is from China... Nigel is from Africa.

To be fair despite the possible racist undertones, the song is very very catchy.  So is the Numbers Rumba.  Raffi only goes to Three (“Three Banana on Banana Tree”).  Unlike Raffi I feel my son will need to count beyond three, so my wife and I have invented the rest. 

My favorites are in no particular order:

• Number 5 – winding road in the country side
• Number 7 – Looks like number 7 (My kid will appreciate irony and nothing rhymes with 7 that is not overtly religious or forces my son to become a baker or work at a convenience store – think about it).
• Number 8 – Infinity sign stands up straight.  (Yes my son will be a nerd).

Inventing these number rumbas has been very hard.  I literally walk around all day trying to come up with the perfect rhyme.  It occupies all my waking hours. I now know why Raffi ended up hating all children of every creed and colour. 

The Numbers Rumba made him do it.