July 26
 

"I'm pretty sure I have an umbrella in the truck somewhere"  is not to be assumed.  Check first.  See #1.
 

First Off:

I invited my grandparents over for Sunday dinner.  I am a retard.  They have lived here for 10 months, and I have been there countless times.  I have not ONCE invited them to my place for dinner.  It took a guilty "All I want for my birthday is for you to invite your grandparents for dinner..."  from my mom for me to realize "Dana, you haven't invited your grandparents for dinner.  You are a bad granddaughter."  So, I went over there last night, dog in tow, and invited them.  You would think that I'd given them a plate of gold nuggets or offered them a limo to Atlantic City for free.  Now, I have to plan dinner for Sunday, which is fine.  I'm a good cook.  I like trying new recipes and I've found that often Foodtv.com is a great source, as long as I can find something without 80 ingredients (I lack  the exacting patience for dishes needing 17 spices, all metered out differently).  Imagine my surprise, then, looking for a side dish (I'd searched for "potatoes") and finding this (click before you read the next paragraph).

Heh.  "Mmmm.  That smells delicious, Dana! What is it?"  "Why, it's peasant meat,  Gramma! He kept trying to run away, so eventually I had to hit him over the head with a mallet until I could toss him into the bed of the truck!"

Perhaps even more disturbing than the idea of hunting down my dinner in a crowd to make a sauce is the fact that I can not seem to actually find where the peasant comes into the recipe.  I've read it and read it and looked it over and it seems to me that this is not a dish which requires the bloodletting of any member of a lower caste.
 
 

Things I Need To Invent:
 

1.)  The Homing Umbrella.  Whistle and it's in your hand.  It flies like a broom or whatever through the air from wherever it happens to be, right to you.  Don't need it anymore?  It's gone.  Where does it go when it's not with you?  Well, we don't know that, exactly.  And really, what does it matter?  The point is, an umbrella will come to you.  Yours?  The Ayatollah's?  You'll never know.  You won't care.  You're dry!

2.)  Self watering plants.  Do I water them too often?  Not often enough?  Is "not exactly dead"  the same as "healthy and flourishing"?  You know what, if plants are so smart, they should be able to let me know when they need something.

3.)  Really good person cloning.  Imagine how handy!  I'd send Clone Dana to work for me every day.  I'd get Clone Dana all dressed and prep Clone Dana on what she needed to do, and I'd go to the Fancy Pants mall and eat at the Rainforest Cafe and try on hats in agnes b all day, every day!

4.)  The "Think it, it gets played" mp3 player.  Ever notice that when you sit down to do some serious(ly illegal, Missy! So don't you do it! It's wrong!)  downloading that you can not remember a single song you wanted to get?  Yeah, me too.  I'm all blank when I actually have it open on my screen.  It is as though I have never heard a song.  So, it would be helpful to have an mp3 player that had voice recognition and I would be driving along singing to myself and I'd say "Machine! Fetch me some Otis Redding, I've Been Loving You Too Long!"  And boo-weep, it would play.

5.)  Self-adjusting favorite pants.  Are you fatter than you were?  Skinnier?  Did you shrink?  Did you grow?  Your pants are intuitive.  They understand.  They will be tight where you want and loose where you want.  They will flare and not flare in just the right way.  The are the Perfect Pants.  They are made from the fabric of your choice.  They never give you a big fat ass, even if you happen to possess a big fat ass.  They make your scrawny non ass appear plump and succulent.

6.)  The Shitty Driver Car Crushing Robot.  Turn from a straight lane?  Straight from a turn lane?  Gun your engine next to me at a  red light, then floor it and whip in front of me?  Ride my ass when I'm going 90 in the fast lane?  Woah! What's that behind you?  What's that flying over you?  What's that giant metal hand doing, yanking you out of your seat?  Why, it's the Shitty Driver Car Crushing Robot! Watch in horror as your brand new BMW is crunched into a coffee table.  If you upgrade to SDCCR v2.1, you have the option of a laugh track, so that there's gleeful laughter coming from the robot as it's ejecting and crushing.

7.)  Keyboard Cleaning Pocket Ferret.  Small enough to store in your pocket or upper desk drawer, utterly quiet.  The Pocket Ferret sits in wait until you let him or her loose in your keyboard.  His (or her) long tongue darts between and under the keys, eating all of the hair and dust and dirt and crumbs that builds up there after years of eating Triskets and potato chips and spilling Sublime and coffee.  All the ferret eats is keyboard mung, so you don't have to worry about him/her chewing up your pens or your underwear or whatever.  Plus, their droppings evaporate almost instantly and smell of flowers.

8.)  Rubber airplanes.  Now, this is a great idea, listen:  Instead of standard planes that do the whole go fast down the runway thing and then take off, my proposed airplanes will be either dropped from a high elevation or shot from a slingshot.  Each landing will bounce into a slot where you disembark.  If you're continuing on, they just reshoot the plane.  My thinking?  Rubber planes won't fall from the sky burning and dropping flaming metal chunks.  You won't find arms in trees nearby.  You won't have to identify body parts.  You'll never be clocked on the head by the errant nose or wing flap.  Of course, the velocity at which you'd have to drop the rubber plane might kill a few people with the g force, but that'll be worked out when it goes into production.  The first all rubber airfleet! Cool!

9.)  Retractable arms.  There has to be some way to pull in our arms.  At night,, when you sleep, arms get in the way. They're always where you don't want them to be.  If you sleep with someone  else, their arms are always all over your mix.  When it's hot out, the last thing you want is someone's hand all rubbing on you.  The solution?  Before retiring to bed, pull in those arms.  There'd be a button you could push and there you go, thank you very much, your arms are in.  Ahh, blissful, arm free sleep!  Where the arms actually go once they're pulled in is still a mystery.  I'm working on it.

*Note:  since so many of you have written me about this, I need to point out that the button to get your arms back would NOT, in fact, be on YOU, but on the floor, so that when you awake and require arms, you STEP on the button.  You people need everything explained to you, don't you?  Man.
 
 

10.)  Hair Stop Growing Shampoo.  (via Rob)    You get a great haircut, right?  You want to keep it that length, right?  So, you get a bottle of this shampoo and it freezes your hair just at its current length.  Get sick of that length?  Stop using the shampoo and the hair starts growing again immediately.  Of course, the reverse product would have to be available, too, say Hair Grow Like Weeds Conditioner or something.
 
 

*Note:  All of these ideas are mine, and you may not steal them without written permission.  You bet they're copyrighted.  I'll come after you with the The Shitty Driver Car Crushing Robot if you bite any of this.
 
 
 

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Well I see that the world is upside-down
Seems that my pockets were filled up with gold
And now the clouds, well they've covered over
And the wind is blowing cold
Well I don't need anybody because I learned, I learned to be alone
Well I said anywhere, anywhere, anywhere I lay my head, boys
Well I gonna call my home