I get a fair amount of nuisance email daily. Possibly you do, too. I consider nuisance email anything from retailers that I’ve purchased products from in the past that I have no reason to purchase anything from in the present. Most of it I trash unread, but every so often one has a subject that piques my curiosity so I open it. On Labor Day I received an email with the subject heading “LABOR DAY FLASH SALE: $10 Flip Flips – 6 hours only!” I wondered:
Me: What are flip flips?
Apparently flip flips are flip flops with a typo.
Last week I received an email asking if I knew that September is National Chicken Month? I did not know this fine factoid. Before I opened it, I reasoned:
Me: There’s Black History month, there’s Gay Pride month, there’s Breast Cancer Awareness month, why not give chickens their due? People are crazy about their dogs and cats.
Then, I opened it.
I realized that the feathered and cackling variety of fowl were not in the forefront of the National Chicken Council’s thoughts. They’re thinking more along the lines of these types of chicken trios.
The backstage story about how September became the month of the chicken is as follows:
“For over two decades, the National Chicken Council has banded together all of the major chicken producers in the U.S. to promote chicken sales in September, turning a once slow month, as the summer grilling season waned, into one of the year’s best performing sales periods.”
That was even more news to me. After all, it was not that this was an idea prompted by some crazy chicken cutlet lover with clout. Of course this naturally makes me wonder about what chicken sales must be like from October through May, or is that the period where chicken consumers are content to pan grill their chicken or just go with rotisserie-style?
Then, my thoughts drifted back to the usual – film, theater, sex and where did I put my keys?
If there can be a National Chicken Month, it has dawned on me that I would like to spearhead the Lame Adventures Day – a day where it’s considered a cause for celebration to:
Sleep through the alarm.
Leave your satchel on your bed you’re in such a rush to get out the door.
Miss the morning train.
Arrive twenty minutes late at The Grind.
Forget to refrigerate your lunch.
Spill something on yourself (preferably something dark on light color attire).
Spend half the day trying to repair an office machine showing advanced signs of death.
Miss an important phone call.
Trip over the desk drawer you left opened.
Smash your knee into something sticking out because it was not put away properly.
Strain your lower back removing a file folder.
Lose your pen.
Lose your notepad.
Lose your mind.
Get caught G-chatting on company time.
Get caught texting on company time.
Get caught having phone sex on company time.
Get fired.
Miss the evening train.
Last but not least:
Make enemies with the National Chicken Council by declaring Lame Adventures Day the day when all chickens are safe and none are eaten.
In conclusion, Lame Adventures Day is a day when any and all inept, asinine and humiliating situations that do not lead to loss of limb or life, but can and do result in a temporary loss of cool, sanity and/or dignity, would be considered a cause for celebration! Plus all chickens are cut a break from ending up served on a plate, in a sandwich or floating in a bowl.
Am I onto something or what? For your viewing pleasure embedded below is a classic educational cartoon from my pre-Sesame Street youth that offers insight into how I attained my deep respect for chickens.
Oh you do make me giggle! I love the idea of Lame adventures day…sounds like most of my days at work to be honest but having it official would make it seem worthwhile!
I’ve never heard of superchicken…but I will be looking for more of it soon lol xx
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Glad you were entertained! Unfortunately, Super Chicken is a relic of a bygone era — the pre-Sesame Street days. To learn more about him and his sidekick, the lion Fred, click here. He was brought to Saturday morning cartoon life by Jay Ward, the genius mind behind two of my other animated favorites Rocky and Bullwinkle.
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My sister and I once had a hilarious discussion about Super Chicken, which involved her being mad at me for not remembering SC and me laughing at the absurdity of the name. Oh and I’ve been celebrating Lame Adventures Day for years now and never knew it.
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You forgot Super Chicken! How could you? Have you had other things on your mind for decades and decades? Share this post with your sister!
I suppose every day has the potential to be Lame Adventures Day.
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Hahaha….it seems that I have ALREADY been celebrating Lame Adventures Day on a fairly regular basis without even realizing it! Satchel? Is that what that bag is called? Is this what you carry in place of a purse? You see those chickens in the white trays? The featherless chickens? That’s my job. Not just chickens, but all sorts of meats, even though I hardly eat meat myself. Job sucks, but it’s just until I get discovered and become rich and famous.
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Carry a purse? Me? Nyet! Glad to know that you share the spirit of celebrating Lame Adventures Day.
When someone eludes to a room being as cold as a meat locker, you must think, “If you only knew …”
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It’s not a freezer…it’s kept just above the freezing point. I’m getting quite used to it and I dress warmly. Sorry about the purse thing….I don’t really like to carry one but I need a place to put all my shit.
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That sounds like how it feels over here when the heat’s turned off in winter. Brrrrrrrrrrrr!
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Here too…gets fucking cold here in January 😛
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I know all too well that feeling of having more bumps on my chilly carcass than a Xmas goose.
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carcass…lol. Does it get as cold there in N.Y. as it does here in chilly Quebec? We average -15, -20 in Jan/Feb with a week or two close to -40….this is Celsius of course.
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Even though I have yet to set so much as a single toenail across the border the cold you just described — even at Celsius — is probably a lot colder than the cold down here in the Apple, but the quality of your cold air is probably a lot less soot-filled than ours.
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Our cold is probably cleaner, yes, but also very humid…even compared to other parts of Canada. That’s the part that makes it so fucking cold. Here’s hoping for a long beautiful fall (although with the drought we had this summer isn’t supposed to be as colorful – crap) before the snot-sicles begin again.
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Thanks for that reminder.
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It’s my job to chill your soul. I usually do it with stories, but since you don’t read my blog, I had to resort to frozen nose secretion. It’s your fault really.
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I do read your blog! Hey, I’ve got a lot going on! Eventually, I get there.
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Sorry…I didn’t realize you were reading it…my bad…spank me. 😉
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Is it as good when you have to ask for it? Just wondering…
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No…but nobody follows me with a paddle so I gotta 😉
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Time to paint your back porch red! 😉
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You volunteering? 😛
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Sorry, I seem to have misplaced my paintbrush. Check you later.
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*rolls eyes* Story of my life.
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That simply made my month. One question regarding the toon. Why is Fred’s monogram on backwards? Also kudos to you, LA woman for resisting a zinger at the expense of Chik Fil A. No need to give them more undeserved press. I do have a confession though, I did barbecue some chicken thighs last night as I dodged rain drops.
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Wow, and we’re only four days into September! That’s high praise from you! That National Chicken Council appreciates you.
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Thank you for diverting my drifting thoughts with this plucky adventure.
Uncaged,
R.
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Now I have the urge to fan my feathers Robert!
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I think every day should be lame adventures day, and then I could tell every one that I’m “celebrating”.
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I agree Sara! Move over Christmas, you holiday hog!
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Down with holiday neocoloninization! boo! hiss!
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I agree with one exception: José Feliciano singing “Feliz Navidad” — the carol my brother, Axel, and I favor most. That can stick around.
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When my daughter was little she used to sing “Feliz Navidad,” but since she didn’t understand Spanish the words came out “Feliz Blobby-blob.”
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That works for me considering the the original lyrics for the Beatles’ Yesterday were the far more resonant, “Scrambled eggs.”
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I would suggest that “scrambled eggs” was merely the working title while the lads were writing the song. I have never heard that they comprised any of the lyrics. — Richard Starkey
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Hey Ringo, guess you missed that meeting:
As Lennon and McCartney were known to do at the time, a substitute working lyric, titled “Scrambled Eggs” (the working opening verse was “Scrambled Eggs/Oh, my baby how I love your legs”), was used for the song until something more suitable was written.
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As I channeled the left handed drummer with the right-handed drum set, I must have misinterpreted what he said. My apologies to you my more knowledgeable cohort. Forever a wingman, and never the main attraction. Now we know why. The left hand/right hand thing I just learned this past year. Explains quite a lot.
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It also helps that I much preferred the unsuitable opening verse to McCartney’s thick sap. That probably explains a lot about me.
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I like a nice pair myself. Here’s to scrambled eggs and gams. Not unlike green eggs and ham? Yes, I was born in same city as Theodore Geissel.
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How very Horton hears a who of you.
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In anticipation of national reading day some 12 years ago I took a photo of my son (for his 3rd grade show and tell) on a snow bank underneath the street sign at the corner of Mulberry and Maple. I lived about 2 miles from there as a youngster.
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Was he reading Seuss in the snow?
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No but I read the good doctor’s first book to the class “To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street.”
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That must have scored a hit with your audience.
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I’ve even commented! (Excuse me for interrupting you and Mike G.)
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Lame Adventures Day? Try Lame Adventures YEAR!
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As you well know, Jules, Lame Adventures is my virtual autobiography so I lead a very Lame Adventures life.
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V,
This brought me back to my childhood favorite day of the week – Saturday morning cartoons! ?And I loved Super Chicken along with Precious Pup and Dudley Dowright. I also realize that the humor – like most cartoons is not really written for kids. Anyway, I think Lame Adventures Day is a great idea! Just when is it?
Cathy
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Cathy, I LOVED Sturday morning cartoons. Getting my fix of that silliness while high on fistfuls of Frosted Flakes was a tradition with me.
Maybe Lame Adventures Day should be a floating holiday that occurs each year on a different date? Whenever it does occur it should be a weekday, preferably when the weather is crummy. What do you think?
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Yes! Crummy weather, Frosted Flakes and we could jamb YouTube watching all of our favorite cartoons (chicken free, of course)!
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That’s the spirit of Lame Adventures Cathy!
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Oops. I had chicken for dinner last night. All the while I eat it, I can’t help feeling sorry for the poor chicken; yet I eat it. The thing is, I eat chicken breasts, so it doesn’t look like what it is. I cannot hold in my hands and prepare a whole chicken; because there it is, that chicken that lost its life after being maltreated. OK, well, this comment got out of the yard and roamed far afield from where I had intended to contain it.
What a concept — Lame Adventures Day — let’s celebrate, at least monthly. And, what a better place the world would be if everyone, everyday, started off their day watching a cartoon. That definitely sheds a realistic perspective on life and its lame adventures.
Maybe I should have had my cup of coffee before I wrote this …
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That’s okay if you had chicken for dinner last night, especially since it was Labor Day. We wouldn’t want Lame Adventures Day to conflict with a holiday. The celebrating best occurs on the day when you walk out the door and discover your newspaper is missing and a bird unloaded on your car and the battery is dead.
Glad you liked the cartoon!
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Super Chicken! If you believe it, they played Super Chicken on my small town tv station well until the 80’s promoting it as though it was brand new each time. Budgetary concerns.
I am going to celebrate Lame Adventures day by taking the chicken soup I was working on and putting it in the fridge, then passive-aggressively deal with my family’s hatred of leftovers by eating it all myself over multiple days long past it’s due. I was going to do that anyway but now I can tell people I am celebrating and being joyful.
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I take it that your small town TV station latched onto modest Super Chicken since he was a less in demand cartoon avian than Daffy, Donald, or that supersized chicken, Foghorn Leghorn.
Wow, that’s a great idea about eating the soup over multiple days long past its shelf (or, refrigerator) life. Vintage soup!
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Now that is a holiday I can get on board with. Nothing like celebrating the mundane, and if Tyson gets less money in the process, all the better.
I hate those random emails you get way after you make a purchase. I am still getting emails from the Gap trying to sell me maternity clothes despite the fact that I made my original maternity purchase last October. It seems like they could figure that out and at least modify their solicitations to sell me high-waisted jeans.
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The mundane is sorely overlooked in our society! You know the retail industry would be all over Lame Adventures Day like a cheap suit — and is there a more appropriate day to wear a cheap suit than Lame Adventures Day? Still on the topic of attire, if only the Gap could figure out that C’s been out of the oven for five months now, they could then inundate you with mailings for cute little kid clothes for her.
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Chickens can run around free all year…I don’t it the stuff!!!
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I’m sure they consider you a friend!
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Ah, Henry Cabot Henhouse III and Fred. How I loved those cartoons.
Lame, you need a sidekick. Someone not too bright, who would get in the way and make your adventures even more trying and difficult. They could audition on your blog and the readers vote for the lamest. Together you’d be the Ho-hum Heroes. Better put a hot-line in for the mayor.
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Interesting idea Russell. Possibly our motto could be, “We’ll be there in a hot flash!”
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Super Chicken! I love Super Chicken!
I am so glad you have a Lame Adventure’s Day! Everyone deserves their own day!
I laughed all the way through this… (and choked on my chicken sandwich…) Please pass the super sauce….
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Oh no! Did you eat Super Chicken for lunch Susie! … Okay, I did eat a distant relative Crummy Turkey for mine.
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This post made me think of this short. If you haven’t seen MST3K, you should. This one’s all about The Chicken of Tomorrow. And yes, it is that incredible. Chickens!
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This is great! I especially liked it when the narrator said about the baby chicks, “Their immediate destination after leaving the incubator is –” and one of the MST characters interjected, “Broadway!” Thanks for posting!
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I’m in. I am SOOOOOO in. Didn’t even realize how lame I was/am until I read your list. In fact, if anything were ever to happen to you, I think I could fill in nicely. Plus, I live in flip flops for most of the year and eat tons of chicken. Hapy LA Day, my friend!
By the way, my interview got rescheduled for tomorrow. I won’t go into it all now, but I will let you know how it goes tomorrow–1pm.
Hugs,
Kathy
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Feel free to send me a private email so I can read how your interview went in the privacy of my low tech home under my cone of silence. Tomorrow I’ll be thinking about you at 1 pm, but be forewarned that my thoughts might also be drifting in the direction of lunch.
Yes Kathy, you could be the heiress-apparent frontrunner to take over this site should I ever decide to forfeit this claim to obscurity.
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Only problem is that I’ll probably be thinking about lunch, as well. I’ll email you for sure!
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Cool! Keep me posted.
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By the way, BRILLIANT title!
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Thanks! I don’t expect to ever top it, so next post I’ll be back to my usual anemic titles like Tree Trash Update or Pointless Mysteries.
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lame adventures day… I love the sound of that. I’d like to be a charter member.. your day mirrors mine! On ward HO
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Absolutely, you can be a charter member! In fact, you can sit on on my board of directors alongside my legal advisors Dewey, Cheatem and Howe.
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I will humbly serve to the best of my non-abilities 🙂
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With that kind of attitude you can be my Joe Biden!
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oh damn !thank you for that laugh
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But I can’t promise that I’ll let you speak in prime time.
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I cannot speak in public.. unlike Joe — I know my shortcomings
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Gee, I’m not big on speaking in public, either. Maybe we can just let an empty speaker’s podium speak for us … That would be symbolically Lame Adventures-like.
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now you’re talking!
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Actually, I’m very quiet and hiding. You’ll find me behind the ficus tree.
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🙂 ahh we are simpatico
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Touché!
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Anybody know Zoot? There was something familiar to me about hiding behind a ficus and couldn’t figure it out. Googled the phrasee and came across a 2005 blog by a woman calling herself Zoot who titled her post Yes…I’m talking to YOU. Hiding behind that ficus. Just wonderin’…
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Much of my romantic life might be a fog, or maybe for much of my romantic life I’ve been doing it with fog, but I can assure you if there had ever been anyone named Zoot in my life, I wouldn’t forget that. In fact, if there was anyone named Zoot in my life, I’d marry that person simply for that name.
I have a history of cracking wise about ficus trees, but as John Lennon once sang, “There’s nothing you can do that’s never been done …” Nice to know that I think like Zoot.
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Well that’s something you have in common with her. From what I gather from scanning her post, you have little in common. For instance you have a sense of humor and crack me up from most of the time. She does insane road races (like 50 fucking miles…who does that shit?) and is, in the parlance of a gay friend, a “breeder.”.
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So why would someone like that need to hide behind a ficus? I wish you’d lighten up on breeders. Do you need me to remind you that you are the sire of three spawn? You must remember that considering every that other day you’re gobsmacked with a tuition bill.
Are these road races the sort of races where my un-alter ego Zoot is in a roof-less vehicle driving across a desert? If so, no, that’s not me at all, but I did enter an un-air-conditioned subway car last week and I briefly had a déjà vu feeling. Quickly, I snapped out of it after realizing that I was not in my garret.
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On the breeder issue, I was merely pointing out a difference in orientation. I certainly have zero against them as I married one–The Bride aka Fertile Mertyl.
No, not in a car. The maniac apparently runs in them.
Thanks for the tuition reminder as we try to zero in on D1’s future.
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“Fertile Mertyl” ha! My father claims we were all planned, but the way we were spaced, it seems like planning was the last thing on his mind when he planted our seeds in Mom, but please, I don’t want to get all sappy-mushy about my origins in a motel across the street from the Magic Kingdom on a vacation in 1958.
Back to the subject, are these races like the Tour de France for the feet? Just thinking about that makes me want to take a nap … and afterward pound a beer.
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Lame Adventure Day Rocks!…I constantly bang my knee into not properly closed drawers or doors. And Super Chicken … MUY AWESOME. I loved watching that show back in the day. I was Super Chicken at a Halloween Party a while back but had to sing “when you find yourself in danger and you’re threatened by stranger …” a couple of times. It didn’t matter that I had a bottle labeled Super Sauce. They just assumed it was Patron.
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Super Chicken does seem to be the cartoon chicken of choice with four out of five Lame Adventures readers — and like you, Guat, they also have a fondness for Super Sauce. Will wonders never cease?
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Yesterday was my Lame Adventure Day! I got home and wandered into the garage to get something out of my freezer only to find it had stopped working. Chicken? You want to talk Chicken? I had to cook about 14 pounds of it last night, along with 54 pork chops, 1 tenderloin and two pork roasts. I threw out the shrimp. That was enough meat to make me a vegetarian or a canned food person. Then, as I was cooking the pallet of meats, I took the time to color my hair, promptly forgetting that I was sitting there with the goop on it. I now have quite dark locks. Want some chicken, dear?
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Or you could maybe open an underground restaurant? What time can I come over? I woke up this morning without electricity so dinner may be up in the air at my place.
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Is it an isolated blackout in your home, your street or your entire ‘burb?
Yeah, this might be a good time to fly out to Boise for dinner.
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Thanks for the opportunity to vent. I believe it is a neighborhood event as the folks across the street had power. The guy behind me on a normally quiet cul-de-sac was not so quiet as his gas powered generator was chugging at 6:30 this morning. Luckily I have an internal alarm that doesn’t allow me to sleep past 6 most mornings and that D1 and D2 use their cell phones as alarm clocks (school started yesterday). Even luckier, the only person who needs sufficient light for her makeup and power for the hair dryer, the Bride, was on a recruiting trip to our alma mater, Georgetown last night before she hopped on a train back to NYC this morning.
Now to the venting part; why in the fuck does PSE&G (local power company) insist on having its customers recite the 10-fucking-digit account # before speaking to someone and then, after having leapt that hurdle, make you recite it again for the customer service rep? It’s six in the morning, it’s dark in my house, I have no power. Do you think I can read the #, much less remember it? Does anyone know their account #? Of course they let you use your phone # but then you still have to provide them with an address to check WTF is wrong. Their answer: there’s no power in your part of town and we are aware of it. It will be back on sometime between “now and 1.” i am hoping they mean this afternoon.
Lame-ass Adventure Day in Glen Ridge.
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I have often wondered that myself about why you have to repeat all the same information twice — once so you wait to speak to someone and again when you are speaking to someone? I am sure that 99% of the callers are already feeling some degree of irate in the first place. Possibly this system was designed by a relative of the Marquis de Sade.
So, you woke powerless?
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Only the house. I had snuff power to get to shower. Gas water heaters are a blessing!
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Enuff power. Damn iPad.
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Thanks for clarifying for I was wondering, “What’s snuff power?” I didn’t think you had any kind of tobacco habit nor are you in those creepy kinda films … Now, of course though, rumors will start about you thanks to that typo.
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No, I don’t have any tobacco use afflictions. Though my Irish great grandmother did use snuff. With respect to the dark films of which you speak, nope. Just trying to save 1 letter by writing enuff instead of enough. Thanks for your concern about my reputation. I am not sure I even have one.
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If anyone tries to start rumors start about your reputation I’ll pound some Super Sauce and come to defense.
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Ah, the Marquis de Sade. I have so many Lame-ass telephone Adventures, I hesitate to call. And, of COURSE after waiting 45 minutes for them to come on the line, I have them on speaker phone. And, of COURSE, I’m not going to turn my music down so they can hear me.
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I’m not inclined to duke it out with them. It’s bad enough getting disconnected. They hold all the power (literally in Mike G’s case yesterday).
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I think I would like Boise.
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Snoring Dog Studio are you out there? She’s this site’s Boise expert.
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Well, the scenery is gorgeous and Autumn has arrived so the temps are divine. But we’re still surrounded by smoke from some very large fires in the area. Oh, and the politics here? A little too crimson for my tastes!
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Power came back around noon on Wednesday. So I’ll have to take a rain check on the dinner offer. However, should I be In the vicinity of Lucky Peak State Park in the near future I will set my dinner bell to 5:30 and stop by. I prefer my red meats in the medium range.
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Really? You’ll be showing up here? Wow! Awesome! Lucky Peak is a very nice place to visit. The climb up Lucky Peak is a tough one, I hear.
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In about 5 years. Retiring in 2017 and want to explore NW more than just Olympic Peninsula…which we did before we had kids…summer of 1991.
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Okay – I imagine I’ll still be here, too. Perhaps I’ll even be retired by then and I can show you some other sights. There are miles of trails here!
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Cool. It’s a date!
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Dinner is served at 5:30. On the menu? Meat.
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First of all, what the hell are you doing with 54 pork chops in your freezer?!? I thought you resided with a few Boston terriers, not with the cavalry. I imagine you must have done all that bulk cooking in the giant pit in your back yard. Who’s doing all the bulk eating? And then, your dark helmet of dyed hair situation … You had quite an extraordinary Lame Adventures Day SDS. You really do know how to celebrate in style.
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I lost track of my meat purchases through the year. They went into the bottom of the freezer and laid there, nice and frozen. And then I’d buy more. Pretty lame attempt at going vegetarian, huh? Yeah, the doggies are going to be in meat heaven for a while! My hair turned out fine, after all.
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I was worried about your hair looking like a helmet of color. I’m very relieved to know that it worked out! As for all this frozen meat you had in bulk, maybe now that you had to unload a herd this week, the slate is clear to go vegetarian … if you can really quit your grilled sausage habit.
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First of all, I think every day should be Lame Adventures Day.
Secondly, in what promises to be a brutal, sanguinary conflict between LA & the Poultry Posse. However, if you stand your ground, I’ve no doubt they’ll back off. They’re not brave at all. In fact, it wouldn’t be out of line to say they’re (apologies in advance!) chicken.
Also, I trust you’ll forgive my ignorance (it’s a defining characteristic), but what’s a G-Chat? Is it dirty? I’m gonna be so disappointed when you tell me it isn’t.
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I hope also you’ll forgive my grammatical irregularities. It’s early (10:30 AM is early for the work-shy) and I just don’t know no better anyway.
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My posts are riddled with grammatical irregularities 24/7.
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Prepared to be disappointed Smak, it’s Google chat i.e., chatting with someone via email, or in this case, Google’s Gmail. I know, I know, you were hoping for something G-spot-related … the elusive G-spot chat, I suppose.
EXCELLENT use of chicken!
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