I've Been Tagged

Army of Mom just tagged Mazurland (well, actually me personally) with a meme. I'm supposed to list six weird things about myself. Since me and Mom go way back (to the 2005 Weblog Awards where she cleaned our clock), I'll play along:

1) If bread or rolls are served with dinner, I always like for my last bite to be a mini sandwich of the meat or fish being served. I learned this from my grandpa Odziemiec who was a master at enjoying a meal. It has served me well.

2) I don't trust anyone to handle my mail, not even the postman. Well, I know a postman has to handle it, but I try to minimize any middlemen by trying to mail things at the post office, rather than leaving stuff in our mailbox to be picked up. If at all possible, I'm the one who gets our mail at home. When I'm at work, I do a mail phone call, and my wife knows to reassure me that she didn't drop any.

3) I make up really inane songs. Now here's the weird part: I remember them, and they become part of my repertoire. Here are sample lyrics to an ode I wrote for my little daughter:

Hey little schnipper of love,
Whatcha gonna do today?
Whatcha gonna do, little baby blue?
Little one two three four SCHNIPPER!

You really need to hear the melody to do it justice.

4) I have a concealed weapons permit, and can legally "pack" in 24 states, but I never carry a gun. I got it mainly to exercise my right, since I'm convinced that just the existence of these licenses lessen crime where they're available. It also makes it easier to go to the range without having to worry about locking the guns and ammo separately in the car.

5) I finally got the dog of my dreams (a Bernese Mountain Dog), and she hates me. This is probably because I disapprove of her digging, and the fact that she barks at anything; like putting a coffee cup on the counter or male voices on the television. She barks when I try to hug my wife. When I tell her to stop it, she growls under her breath. When she digs, I believe she's fantasizing about my grave.

6) I wear the same outfit almost every day: Khakis and a button-down shirt. The only difference is that I wear hiking shoes (instead of dress shoes) on the days I don't work.

I was supposed to tag six others for this meme (Boris, Tom, and Paladin, you were this close...), but I'll refrain, and make it voluntary. Also, Marty and Paul, feel free to play too, if you wish.

Comments

[hank kaczmarek]

Chris:
1.Bread of some type should be served at every meal. Just stay away from white flour. Polacks usually like they rye and other dark breads.
2.If you have a rural mailbox on the road (like I do)NEVER leave mail in it for the RR driver to pick up. #1 cause of non internet related identity theft.
3.A nice rendition of your "Byzantine Empire" or "Cardinal Richeleiu" from your Sophmore year might be handy. Don't ask me why I remember, you and John Lauerman came to our table in the Cafeteria to perform for Marty, Andy, myself and CO.
4.If you have the permit, PACK THE DAMN GUN!
5.My Dachshund Sophie must be a Methodist. Singing or Dancing in the house is not allowed. Affection between my wife and I is also not allowed as far as the dog is concerned.
6.Add some clogs to that outfit, and you're stuck in 1973!

[Marty]

Hank: OK, so now we need to hear 6 weird things about you, though that might take Mazurland into new realms...

Chris: Ah, "Byzantine Empire". That song is so great. A total nonsense song with a really annoying tune. There were some others, like "Hiroshima" (sung to "Oklahoma") and "The Garage on the Hill" (sung to "The Fool on the Hill"), but these songs were take-offs, and had more structure. Byzantine Empire showed you and/or Lauerman at your creative peak.

I also make up odd songs. I used to be more prolific when my kids were little. I had a lullaby tune for each of them. The song I'd sing would have the same template and refrain, but each day I'd change the words a little to fill in the events of the day. Worked like a charm. Now, I mostly sing insulting and vile songs to my cat and dog, and weird loving songs to my guinea pigs (more on that later).

WRT your dog: And doesn't it just suck that your dog fell in love with me from the moment she first saw me?

[Ben]

I make up tunes too, usually to some pre-composed melody. For instance, an ode to my cat Newton, as sung to the tune of the Colonel Bogey March (a.k.a. "The Theme from The Bridge Over the River Kwai", a.k.a. Hitler Has Only Got One Ball):

Newton, he is so very neat;
Newton, he'll suckle on your teat.
Newton, sometimes he's pootin'
But since he's Newton, we're rootin' for him.

It helps to know that, as a kitten, he would reach for fingers and other soft parts and attempt to suckle, as he was not properly weaned before we got him (his mother was apparently killed by a car shortly after he was born); also, he was very flatulent as a kitten.

I'm still workin' on a song for my daughter.

[Marty]

1. I recently (within the last few years) found that I have a thing for small animals. My daughter got a guinea pig several years ago. Since then, we've had several (we have two now). They're not "mine" in the sense that they're in our house at my behest, but I'm the one who gives them the most attention now that my daughter is 18. I talk to them in a high-pitched voice and sing weird songs to them (see above). I also pay attention to small woodland creatures, like chipmunks and birds.

2. I factor numbers that I run across in day-to-day business in my head. Times, check amounts, etc. Keeps my brain going, I guess.

3. I refuse to buy Beano, as my wife has suggested on numerous occasions, because, as you can tell from my holdings-forth here at Mazurland, I like the smell of my own farts.

4. I am a member of the NRA and I don't even own a gun. I believe in 2nd Amendment Rights and have always thought that a donation to the NRA is a more effective way to elect conservatives than a donation to the idiots who run the Republican Party. I have had plans to get a gun for some time, but I may actually get a concealed carry permit before that!

5. I've been a runner most of my life, even though for significant periods of that time I've also been a cigarette smoke (no longer) cigar smoker (still love 'em), imbiber (more occasional) and trencherman (the original reason I started running). I am a pretty good runner for my age, but I am nowhere near the caliber of many of the same-age runners in my club. Yet I am still something of a "leader" among them. I am known as "Bwana" to the people who come to the track workouts I lead. The guy who started calling me Bwana is a former world class and Olympic athlete. I refer to myself as Bwana in the third person when I do my weird weekly report on our workouts.

6. When I make tea in the morning, I try to turn off the electric burner before the kettle whistles and time it perfectly so that there's enough heat going into the kettle while the coils cool that the kettle does eventually whistle, but not so much that it still whistles loudly when I put the kettle back on the burner after I've poured out the water into the cups.

[Marty]

Bonus weird thing: I have nicknames for everyone I know well, sometimes several, and I rename all of our pets. I may be the only one in the family who calls them what I call them, but that's what they are to me. I have renamed our two guinea pigs "Poopers and Peepers". They're both named that, both individually and collectively. So when I talk to both of them, I address them as "Poopers and Peepers". When I talk to one of them, I call it "Poopers and Peepers".

[Ben]

Marty,

The above-mentioned weekly email, which was forwarded to me by one of Bwana's minions in a futile recruitment effort, was what led me, indirectly, to the wonders of Mazurland. And yes, it is very, very weird.

[Paul]

OK, here's mine (that I'm willing to admit)

1. I am farsighted in one eye and nearsighted in the other. Therefore my depth-perception is poor. It also freaks people out when I look at them with my nearsighted eye and on occasion, my farsighted eye will follow, independent of the other eye, something moving behind the person I am talking to.

2. I have a birthmark on my forehead that has been the source of much amusement for my kids when they were smaller. The kids would "press the button" to get me to make weird sounds.

3. I, like Marty, have different names for our animals. George is Hoo-Hoo (take of of the Spanish for George, Jorge), Radar was Rudy-Roo-Doot-Koo and Rhoda was Ro-Ro. Our various cats are sometimes just called "cat" or "dinner".

4. One of my best friends from high school and college is now my brother-in-law.

5. I can take a nothing date and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile, no wait, that's Mary Tyler Moore. Back in my college days, me, Mike (now brother-in-law) and Vinnie, knew all the words to all the Beatle's songs and would have contests where we would pick aa word and try to think of all the Beatle's songs that had that word in it.

6. I have a database at home that has all of the prime numbers from 2 to over 25,000,000,000 stored in it. Until recently it had continually calculated prime numbers for 2 or 3 years, I lost track. Maybe one day I will fire it up again.

[Chris]

Hank,

Do you recommend an inside-the-waistband or on-the-belt holster for packing?

Marty,

I realize there are people who like the smell of their own farts. You're unique because 1) You admit it in a public forum and 2) You assume other people feel the same way.

Paul,

I remeber once playing the Beatles song game with you guys. The challenge was to find colors in their lyrics. The winner, after all the other songs were exhausted, was "Everybody's GREEN, 'cuz I'm the one who won your love".

Ben,

Exactly which "soft parts" did your cat try to suckle?

[Marty]

Paul: WRT 1 above, I always thought that eye thing was due to the several-too-many whacks on the head Chris and I gave you during your "training".

[Chris]

PS. I think John Lauerman wrote most of the lyrics to "Byzantine Empire", but I do claim credit for the horrendously-rhymed verse:

"Santa Sophia
Was built over thee-ya"

[Paul]

Another classic song I remember Chris singing way back when was a take off of the song, "When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman"

Let's see if I remmember it correctly.

When you're in love with a flutulant woman
You hold your nose
You go it alone
Everybody knows her
Everybody smells her
She's the most flatulant woman in town

[Marty]

Chris: I knew that Santa Sophia was yours. It had your touch.

[Chris]

Ahh... fart songs. That was sort of a different phase, because we would take existing songs and substitute fart lyrics.
The correct lyrics for that verse were:

When you're in love with a flatulant woman
You go it alone
Everybody smells her
Everybody tells her
She's the most flatulant woman they know

We also covered the Beatles "If I Fell" and The Doors' "Been Down So Long", but if I print the lyrics, I'll permanently embarass myself.

[Ben]

Chris: All the soft parts were readily accessible to Newton on fully-clothed adults. So get your mind out of the gutter.

[Marty]

Chris:

Marty, I realize there are people who like the smell of their own farts. You're unique because 1) You admit it in a public forum and 2) You assume other people feel the same way.

WRT 2, do you mean about their own or about mine? Sartre famously said "Hell is other people" (which I riffed on for the title of this post). You can substitute "farts" for "children" and get most people's feeling on the subject.

I think Army of Mom by now deeply regrets tagging us. Chicks usually leave when the fart humor starts.

[Army of Mom]

What the hell? I tag you to do a meme and you get 4,238 comments on your thread.

*sigh*

I, too, am thinking about getting my CHL. I have a gun that I carry illegally in my car. Shh, don't tell the Federal Protective Services I was lying to them the other day when I went on federal property and they asked me if I had any weapons (I have a knife I carry and the firearm stays in the car).

[The Challenge]

This is really funny including your comments actualy they are hilarious, but I did same thing last year and became public joke.
5 Weird Habits Meme
People are still making joke about point 4 as most idiot thing I could imagine.

[Marty]

Hey, Boris. Sorry we didn't pick up on your tag a year ago. Anyway, your point 4 is not so weird. I've heard of people doing this. Some of the people I run with like to go running on trails in the woods nearby. They try to get lost, then find their way back. Even though the nearby woods are not so big that you could get lost forever. there are so many trails that it you can definitely get turned around for a while.