It's not easy being green

So, I went shopping this past weekend and bought a few shirts. I tend to favor subtle tropical prints, aloha shirts, and the sort of two-tone cabana-type shirts commonly seen on mafiosos and laid back coastal dwellers. Oh, and before you comment, subtle tropical prints is not a contradiction in terms.

Cool shirt for cool guys

Anyway, when I got home the MonkeyWife looked over my selections. She’s not a big fan of tropical prints (regardless of subtlety), aloha, or two-tone cabana-types, so she wasn’t all that impressed. Nonetheless, she indulges my particular fetish for these things. Aside from the disapproving clucks and slight sighs of resignation, she pointed out a curious fact. “All these shirts are green,” she said.

Elvis sang about green shirts

And she was right.

In fact, I realized that an overwhelming majority of the shirts I’ve bought over the past 10 or 12 months are some shade of green or another. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, particularly since girls tend to like green and I look good in green (forest green is better for me in winter, but a lighter lime green definitely looks great on me in the summer when I tan up a bit). Green tends to match my tone and also helps bring out the complex color of my eyes (which are a hazely amalgam of brown, green, and a sort of blue-grey). And, I’ve found that green shirts match whatever pants I might wear on any day, whether they're jeans or those sort of khaki trouser things that are all the rage among non-suit wearing professionals and salespeople at Best Buy.

The thing is, I don’t trust the color green. That’s not to say I dislike green or I find it aesthetically unpleasant. Quite the contrary. But I don’t trust it.

I hear you cry.

Here’s my logic (such as it is). Green, like Orange or Purple, is a color derived from a combination of two of the primary colors (Red, Blue, and Yellow). Green being the spawn of a Blue-Yellow copulation, Orange the result of Red-Yellow breeding, and Purple the unwanted child of Blue-Red.

Lying, cheating color

Are you with me so far?

However, the problem comes with a closer look at the colors. See, if you look at Orange you can easily detect traces of both Red and Yellow present. Similarly, Purple exhibits considerable phenotypes of both Blue and Red. Yet Green, that inscrutable and nefarious bastard, never gives a hint of either Blue or Yellow. It’s as if it’s a primary color unto itself … sort of a rebel striking out to establish a new color foundation. How can anyone trust a color that doesn’t betray it’s progenitors?

But man, I gotta say I do look good in green.

Ook ook

The source of Blogpinions revealed

This explains sooooooo much.


[sarcasm]Of course, I'm never guilty of this. [/sarcasm]

Ook ook.

PS: Is it only me, or does anyone else notice a frightening resemblence between Brewster and Zapp Branigan?

Oh, Those Wacky Catholics!

Tonight I am going to finally be finished with my xmas gift swap. I know, it’s late. But there’s a whole thing behind it involving drama, a bitter wife, some innocent mispronounciations of words, pomegranate jelly, questions of inbreeding, the source of the nile, the curse of the jade monkey, and a whole lot of pride. Actually, it's not unlike many bloguments (like that term? I think I created it, so anyone using it has to give me full credit)

Anyway, one of the gifts I am giving to my friend (who is married to the bitter wife mentioned above) is a special rosary which the MonkeyWife and I found at some Catholic supply store in Cambria. Another long story, not worth getting into right now. The rosary itself is actually very nice, with polished beads and a bit of wax from a candle used during a mass said by Pope JP2. That may not seem like a big deal to you, but for firebreathing Catholics (like my friend) it's about as big as it can get. Perhaps the only thing bigger would be a piece of the true cross, or maybe a preserved finger of some saint or other.

My kind of pope!

But I digress. (As an aside, I would never get anything from Pope Benny - nee Ratzhitler – he isn’t my kinda Pontiff).

Not my kind of pope

Anyway, thinking about this gift reminded of the rosary said for my uncle’s funeral, about a month ago.

For those of you who don’t know anything about the bizarre Catholic ritual, here is a very quick and dirty Catechism for you. The rosary (verb) is a special mass usually said when someone dies. It's not a funeral per se, but part of the entire funereal cavalcade of whimsy. The rosary (noun) is a string of beads, with a cross. There are five groups of ten small beads which are separated by a larger bead. The beads are there to keep your place while reciting the various prayers – the Hail Mary’s (small beads) and the Our Father’s (large beads). Each time you say one, you move on to the next bead so you can keep your place, because if you lose count around the 37^th Hail Mary, you damn well don’t want to start over.

Say "Hail Mary" 50 times real fast

So, there we were in this little chapel. The priest begins the recitation of the Hail Mary, saying the first part aloud, followed by those of us in attendance muttering the second part as softly as possible. We aren’t Southern Baptists by a long shot. Anyway, he finishes the first Hail Mary and begins the second. Then the third, etc. By the time he’s on the sixth, the MonkeyWife (who continues to be befuddled by the whole Catholic thing) elbows me in the ribs, and looks at me with a puzzled expression:

Fez Monkey: What’s wrong?
MonkeyWife: Why's he saying this again?
FM: What do you mean?
MW: He’s done this prayer like five times already. Is he stuck?
FM: No, he’s doing the first round of ten.
MW: First round of ten?!?
FM: Yeah.
MW: How many rounds are there?
FM: Five.
MW: Five?
FM: Yeah.
MW: Five rounds of ten?
FM: Yeah.
MW: We have to say this thing 50 times??
FM: For a full rosary, yeah.
MW: Boy, that Mary is a demanding woman.

Ook ook.

Holiday Fog

The official start of the holiday season has always seemed a bit surreal to me. All those bright lights and obnoxious window displays, compelling you into a festive spirit. Giant inflatable snow-globes perched in front lawns, and small molded plastic santa sleighs (complete with the Rudolph leading the way) on rooftops while outside the sky is blue and the temperature hovers in the low 60's. Fake frost is sprayed on windows in an attempt to make LA seem more traditionally christmasy, even though the first xmas (if one is to believe the Bible) took place in a small, desert village near the sea. Seems if accuracy is important, the folks back east and up north would spray fake sand on their windows, and have giant, inflatable palm trees stuck on their lawns.

The leftover thanksgiving turkey is about finished (and what is left will probably go to the dogs tonight), and the malaise of a 4-day weekend again returns to the mundanity of a 5-day work week. Shopping for xmas gifts now looms as a threat about to be made carried out, and I still have to conjure up and create our xmas cards.

It’s finally time to wear a long-sleeve shirt, and my friends are talking about college football bowl match-ups.

This time of year has always made me a bit unsteady, as if some odd, omnipotent prankster was fucking with me just to see how I’d react to a lateral shift in normality. That feeling is tweaked even more this year, as an “uncle” of mine passed away last week. I use scare quotes because although he was not directly related to me (he was my mom’s sister’s husband’s sister’s husband), he was a fixture in my youth, and in the old country even indirect relationships are considered family.

The news wasn’t totally unexpected, as he was getting along in years, and was recently suffering from declining health. However, even if he were on total life support for a month, his passing would still have packed a pretty good wallop. I mean, no matter how prepared you think you are, a hard punch to the breadbasket is still pretty intense.

This is that odd limbo: the time between the death and the funeral, which adds even more surreality to an already disconcertingly unbalanced season. The funeral is when people get to say their final goodbyes and get closure. It makes the death both real and final. The priest mumbles, the family weeps, the coffin is lowered, and the ceremony is complete. This time, between the two events, is like an emotional version of Schroedinger’s box.

In the mean time, I keep going as always. I get frustrated at the traffic. I play with my dogs. I dread the thought of buying gifts. I try hard not to over-spice the marinara sauce. I silently mock the ignorance and arrogance of the geeks in the marketing department. But it’s all done in a bit more of a fog than is usual.

No wonder I like the summer more.

Ook ook

Disagreement (50)

“I want to hear it.”

The cold muzzle pressing against his head underscored the threat in the words. “Fuck your mother,” he replied.

“Say it.” The naked, flinty click of the hammer cracked the air. This was serious. Finally he relented.

“Okay,” he admitted, “Kirk would kick Picard’s ass.”