He's a cold-hearted snake

So this was fun. The other night I go out to drop some clothes off at a Salvation Army deposit dumpster. This I fail spectacularly to do, as it used to be located behind our vet's office but they recently moved, and searches of both the old and new buildings reveal: no dumpster. (Well, they had a regular dumpster, but I thought that would sort of defeat the purpose.) Undaunted, I decide to stop at Rita's italian Ice on my way home to pick up a treat for my adoring wife.

So I get there, jockey for a parking space with the infinite restaurant goers, and eventually make my way to the counter, where I place my order. I know, dullest blog entry ever. Hold on, we're getting there. As I'm making my order I see a middle-aged woman approach the window next to mine and start talking to the teenager located therein. I finish my order and glance idly over, not particularly interested. However, out of the corner of my eye I notice that she's got something in her hands with kind of a mottled brown and black pattern. Huh, I think to myself. Wonder if she's got a snakeskin wallet? Still only half paying attention, some deep recess of my mind brings up the fact that the corner of my eye may be wrong, but is reporting that the object is rather too long and thin to be a wallet. Hmm, my conscious mind reassesses, becoming just a tad more engaged. Probably a beanie baby or some other stuffed animal. Is the carnival in town? It's at about this point that my brain becomes alert enough to tune in, just in time to hear the counter idiot ask, "How old is it?" As I've never before heard of someone asking the age of a stuffed animal, my just-getting-there mind crashes to a halt upon collision with one now irrefutable fact: it is a real snake.

Now, I'm a peaceful man. I bear no ill will toward my animal brethren, and even though I will gladly eat the tastier ones, I generally go out of my way to do no harm to animalkind beyond killing the occasional bug in our house. But I also feel the same way about snakes as Indiana Jones does, and that is not good when one is literally three feet away. My neck snaps back toward the counter window at approximately Mach 3, saved from debilitating injury solely by an unconscious slowdown to keep from seeming quite so obvious about being a wimp. I decide to collect napkins from the counter, because we'll certainly need those with our water ice, yes, and spoons besides. Other than vision, I'm unable to block out the blithering from next to me, which is how I find out that he's a bull python (because when I think of ideal snakes for pets, the word "python" is always the first one that comes to mind), he's only a foot and a half long now but he'll get up to at least five feet, and larger if she lets him, and that he eats mice that she buys at the pet store and keeps in her freezer. Oh yes, and his name is Murgatroid, because when I think of snakes, I think of effeminate pink cartoon cats. Doesn't everyone?

Still looking straight ahead, I bear witness to the poor girl who took my order bring it to us and putting it on the counter fearfully, shooting an apprehensive glance to the left, and then practically shooting back into the inner sanctum of the Rita's booth, never taking her eyes off the beast. I toss her a sympathetic look because hey, we're all in this together, me and teenage girls. None of this sinks in to Crazy Snake Lady, who continues blithering on about how you can't feed them mice from the garage because they might be carrying disease that could be spread to the snake, heaven forbid. Interestingly, I had her pegged as a slightly more goth version of Crazy Cat Lady, but she mentions how her daughter loves the creature too (I'll bet), so clearly she found someone willing to brave the viper's nest at least once. As quickly as possible without actually running, I scoot past her and make my way to my car, appetite thoroughly gone. And that was the end of my adventure, except now I know my town plays host to at least one person who is completely out of her damn mind, which is not a comforting thought. Still, I suppose there's always one.

I really shouldn't be surprised, I know. I mean, when you think of the best pets to bring along with you on family walks or drives, the list goes dog, cat, then snake. And it's a close third. But I'll admit I wasn't expecting to see my nemesis appear so suddenly, and it startled me. That won't happen again. And if the Rita's workers don't like it when I show up next time with a sword and a blowtorch, well, too damn bad.

R.I.P. John Hughes

Dear Mr. Vernon,

We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. But we think you're crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us- in the simplest terms, and the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain, and an athlete, and a basket case, a princess, and a criminal. Does that answer your question?

Sincerely yours,

The Breakfast Club

Hey hey hey!

The other night Ann and I happened to catch an episode of The Cosby Show. We see bits and pieces periodically, but I don't think I'd watched a full episode since it went off the air. It was quaintly nostalgic and quite funny, but what really struck me was how little actually happened in the episode. The entire plot was: Claire is feeling stressed by kids and work. Cliff makes reservations at a hotel owned by a patient, they put Denise in charge, they go to dinner, then hang out in their room and eventually, as Cliff puts it, "get it on." They come home the next day and are glad to see the kids. The end. Oh, and Theo takes a call from a patient looking for Cliff and refers her to the on-call doctor. That's literally all that happens in the episode. It wasn't bad -- far from it -- but I was taken by just how little plot was involved. On any other show in the world, particularly these days, Claire and Cliff's dinner would have been interrupted by a rude couple at the next table, or the food would have been undercooked, or a robbery would have broken out. Or they would have come home to find the house flooded and Rudy missing. Nope - stress, hotel for the night, home, done. There's your half hour. Even the intro felt simplistic... I think it must've been from the first season or so, because there was none of this smooth jazz while Bill does some soft-shoe skat or booming grandiose island rhythms. Just some grainy pictures of the cast having a picnic in the park while their pictures blur out of focus. Frankly, it looked like a Kodak cross-promotion or something. "Was your family picnic ruined by a camera that took nothing but blurry photographs? Y'see, you need to get yourself one of the Kodak cameras, see, with the zoom lenses and the fast shutter speed and the oooooh, and then you can have some Jello pudding pops."

The only other thing of note was the hilarious mid-'80s "what lengths will we go to to protect the children even though both on-screen characters are talking about 'getting it on'?" In this case, that would be "Cliff has changed out of his clothes into full-length pajamas, even though he's clearly intent on romancing his wife." If any of you have ever (successfully) staged a seduction wearing matching pajama pants and shirt, kindly let me know.