Monday, April 06, 2009

Quote of the Day, 21


"What's wrong with the word lozenge?"

-- Me

Yesterday, Sweetie and I stopped to pick some things up at the drugstore, and the clerk that rung us up complained that he was not feeling so well. Then, he coughed up a lung all over one of his hands and our bag, and then picked up the bag to hand it to Sweetie.

I was repulsed by that, and told her so on the way out the door, and she agreed that she knew I'd be grossed out by what he'd done. As we got in the car, I said to her "I understand he doesn't want to stay home from work for a cold, but he works in a drugstore. Take a lozenge, for God's sake."

Sweetie, then, began laughing at me for saying lozenge instead of cough drop, and calling me "Professor Dictionary." We have a very mature relationship.
Here's an interesting point about all of this: The Oxford Rhyming Dictionary says that "lozenge" is a near-rhyme for "orange." Plus, that book organizes words by sound.

Sometimes, when I start talking, I just ramble until I run out of words.

I am, right now, the sole breadwinner for a our family. That is, Middle and The Boy both work, but they work at the kind of jobs where the primary benefit is not so much the pay as it is the ability to bring home free bagels for me -- something that happens all-too-rarely, if you ask me.

But I take my responsibilities as the income earner in our family seriously. I get up and make it to work on time, mostly, at least two or three days per week, and I spend upwards of 25% of my time at the office not surfing the Internet, all to bring home enough money to make sure that when the coffeemaker breaks down, we can take a jaunty trip out to Wal-Mart and get a new one, and throw in a Hershey's Bar for Mr F and Mr Bunches to split on the way home.

I'd hate to think that if something happened to me, Sweetie's ability to replace coffee makers (and toilet seats, and couch cushions) at will, with a bonus candy bar thrown in, would be hampered, and I'd hate to think that she and the kids would have to struggle just to make ends meet, or that Sweetie would have to go back to work and struggle to make ends meet.

That's why we've got a whopping amount of life insurance on me -- to make sure that if something did happen to me, there would be enough candy bars and trips to the store and coffee makers to keep everyone from being too distraught over the terrible thing that happened to me (I like to imagine that I went down fighting the rhinos that escaped from the zoo. How'd they escape, you ask? Eco-terrorists, I'd gather. But I saved the city, so it doesn't matter who let them go. The threat was ended. But at what cost!?!)

Not only would there be enough to take care of candy-bar-related needs, but enough to pay off the house and the debts and make sure that there was something left over, so that Sweetie wouldn't have to struggle as a single parent suddenly, rhinocerously, deprived of her spouse.

Don't lose sleep at night worrying about whether you could afford to save the city from a Zoo Gone Mad: Instead, just get yourself a decent amount of life insurance through the good people at altig and American Income. American Income is an A+ Superior rated organization taht for over 50 years has been providing benefits to families, and Altig is the professional firm taht trains and supports the independent agents who provide American Income Life Insurance Products -- which means that when you're dealing with American Income, you're dealing with people who have been professionally trained to evaluate your insurance needs and help you provide for the future, whatever the future holds.

Even rhinocerouses.

Sunday, April 05, 2009

We interrupt this blog for an important announcement.


Claudius wanted to be the first man to reach the stars... and maybe he was. Alone, drifting through space with nothing to keep him company but the dot... speck... rock that is drifting there, too, Claudius reflects on what brought him to this point: A spaceship, a dream of reaching the stars he always saw when he closed his eyes... and murder.



Eclipse is a Mobius-strip of a psychological horror thriller that takes the reader on a twisting, turning trip through Claudius' troubled childhood, his time at NASA, and a grimy hospital or prison, peeling back layer upon layer of the personality of a boy who could close his eyes and see the stars, a boy who dreamed of reaching those stars... and maybe he did.



Eclipse is available for purchase through Lulu.com for as little as $1.25 per download, or $11.50 by paperback. Coming soon to a bookstore near you, but why wait?




And, for a limited time, if you are one of the first 50 to purchase the book and send me a picture of yourself holding the book, I will mail you one of these fine t-shirts, free of charge.