Nanny Goats in Panties - A humor column

Choosing Baby Names for Asphalt

Feb 28th, 2014

Call me a small stuff sweater. Because I can totally sweat the small stuff when I am of the mind. Take street names, for example.

Here in Sacramento, after it ran out of letters to name the streets in this town, and before it got so suburb-happy, somebody came along and named a bunch of major streets in one area as follows: Edison Ave., Watt Ave., Howe Ave., Fulton Ave., Northrup Ave., Arden Way, Bell Ave., Morse Ave., Whitney Ave., Marconi Ave., etc…

Great. I don’t have a problem with that. It’s got a nice theme and I can dance to it.

However, when some bozo in a cubicle is assigned to name all the streets in a new subdivision, a bozo who is out of ideas but actually gets PAID to make up names and probably knocks out them during his afternoon dump, he has no idea of the consequences or the chaos he has created. Particularly when it comes to giving directions to a first-time visitor.

“Oh yeah,” your cousin Ralph says, “I live on Laguna Greens Circle. You can’t miss it.”

And you drive around knowing you’re looking for Laguna something and you drive down Laguna Woods Dr., then Laguna West Way, then Laguna Mill Avenue, then Laguna God-knows-what-else and on and on until your car’s compass spins out of control and your brain explodes and you veer off the road and hit the street sign marking the intersection of Laguna Meadows Ave. and Red Maple Laguna Dr.

Just asking for a little forethought, people. That’s all.

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This post is part of The 30 Minus 2 Day Writing Challenge (today’s prompt is “And then my brain exploded“) and is hosted by We Work for Cheese.

23 comments
Posted in: humor, sacramento.

Crock Pots, and Other Reasons for Living

Feb 19th, 2014

by Margaret.

30 comments

30 Minus 2 Days of Writing Challenge
Day 19: Tastes Like Chicken

How have I lived, lo these many years, without the knowledge and power of the wonder that is the slow cooker, the almighty Crock Pot?

I have fought and fought and fought some more with various protein animal products with less than zero success and ultimately limited my repertoire because most meat comes out hard and dry and yucky and blecky and other similar adjectives and I figured I just didn’t have the knack for it and recently came to realize you all have been cheating. Consider yourselves on my poop list.

And never have I been more happy to cheat than through the discovery of this cook’s best friend. Oh my lord, the tender fall apart heaven that comes out of these things six to eight hours later. I’m cooking again with gusto and beef broth and low heat and Pinterest.

And I’ve been cooking everything now, from the oxymoronic pork butt shoulder, to neighborhood stray cats to local road kill (because eating local means organic and pesticide-free and you know where it came from and who knew skunk could be fall-apart scrumptious?).

And don’t get me started on all variations of backyard snakes. Those slithering nuggets of deliciousnessability.

I can’t believe you guys didn’t tell about this culinary magic before. Shame on you.

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This post is part of The 30 Minus 2 Day Writing Challenge and is hosted by We Work for Cheese.

30 comments
Posted in: humor.

Goat Thing: Goats Take Olympic Silver!….Ribbon.

Feb 18th, 2014

by Margaret.

16 comments

30 Minus 2 Days of Writing Challenge
Day 18: Liars

I could write a whole book about liars and how much I hate them. But then you’d be reading a very heavy tome filled with the ugly that came out of me and you’d question my ability to return from the hate abyss. You’d think of me as a hater. I’d be a big wart-nosed hater. And then you’d hate me. And you’d spray paint “hater” all over my fence even though YOU are doing it out of hate as well. And the hate would spread and infect the rest of the planet until everyone hated everybody and there would be no more ice cream and who wants that?

So, instead I will share with you something that is filled with playfulness and love that my friend, Brad, sent to me.

Also, it must be goat season as people have been throwing more of them at me lately.

Now, isn’t it nice to be filled with playfulness and love and not hating on people and spray painting their fence, hypocritically calling them haters?

UPDATE: The above link may not work as it’s “not available due to copyright” and I may or may not have periodically replaced it with another version.

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This post is part of The 30 Minus 2 Day Writing Challenge and is hosted by We Work for Cheese.

16 comments
Posted in: Goat Thing of the Day, humor.
Tagged: goats · liars

Goat Thing of the Day: A New Video Game

Feb 13th, 2014

by Margaret.

18 comments

30 Minus 2 Days of Writing Challenge
Day 12: Incommunicado

I’ve got a treat for those of you who have been clamoring for a Goat Thing of the Day. I know! It’s been so long!

Some game developers were goofing around during a game jam and…what, you don’t know what a game jam is? Are you kidding me? I can’t believe you don’t know what a game jam is. Who doesn’t know what a game jam is. Honestly. I swear, what am I going to do with you people. OK, take this down: a game jam…obviously…is when neighborhood computer programming kids rob local convenience stores dressed as their favorite video game character, say, the red-feathered chicken from Angry Birds, and hold the store owner hostage until the chief negotiator from the FBI arranges the successful delivery of twelve thousand jars of jam. Usually a fruit farm has to get involved.

Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone you didn’t know that already. Can I get on with my story now?

So anyway, these kids, during one of their game jams, high on fructose and pectin, made a game. A first person shooter type game where you’re a goat, wielding axes and licking things. No I’m not making this up. It’s called Goat Simulator and here’s the trailer:

You’re welcome.

You can pre-order Goat Simulator now, and you can bet when this thing comes out I’ll be incommunicado for a while.

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This post is part of The 30 Minus 2 Day Writing Challenge and is hosted by We Work for Cheese.

18 comments
Posted in: Goat Thing of the Day, humor.

A Diamond Treasure in the Rough

Feb 6th, 2014

by Margaret.

28 comments

30 Minus 2 Days of Writing Challenge
Day 6: Scatterbrained

So there I was, driving back from the Bay Area to Sacramento, bored out of my mind because I hate long drives, and because I hate long boring drives, I have to find ways to entertain myself, so I daydream, which you can’t do when you want to make sure you stay on the right freeway and actually drive toward your house, but I missed my turn off and realized it about 10 seconds too late and once you do that, you are forced to stay on that freeway until the next exit, which in my case meant getting in a very long slow line to pay $5.00 to cross the Bay Bridge into San Francisco and then try to figure out how to turn around once I got into the crazy one-way street-happy city so I could drive back over the Bay Bridge and go home. Which meant adding another hour to my already long ass drive.

There is something excruciatingly unsatisfying about cursing up a storm all by yourself in the car.

So I’m parked in line, facing away from home, with a lot of time to formulate what I’m going to say to the toll booth guy to get out of paying $5.00 and is there a place right here somewhere in this 25 lane horizontal monolith of asphalt where I can turn around because I don’t want to go to the city today?

Turns out…no.

But!

He did say that I could get off at Treasure Island, a spot of now touristy land halfway across the bridge, and turn around there.