POPCORN, JOCKEYS AND GANGRENE

I am reposting this, yes. Bear with me. RRRAAWWWRR!

Hi, folks! So, the big news is we're just days away from our exciting NJ trip! I can't wait, especially since this is a very special trip-- and not like in a Very Special Episode of Blossom kinda way, either. It's the first time I'm bringing Greg there to finally see where I came from; it's my first trip back in almost 4 years; and I will meet a bunch of blogger chicks in person!! That's just going to be so cool. Some might scoff at the concept of "blog friends" but they're just jealous. We know we have a pretty sweet network going on here. Besides, it's just too damn hard to make good girlfriends in the first place, the older you get. If mine come from the blogs, so be it. Amen.

Want to hear about the weather? Hell, who wouldn't!

It's officially the monsoon season here. It's really...warm outside. I refuse to say the "H" word because it's just ALL a person hears around here this time of year. "OHHH, it's soooo H*#!" everyone whines as they either head outside of an air conditioned building or when they are coming in from the heat outdoors. At a certain point, you have to say, "Really? Wow, I never would have expected it to be H in Arizona in the summer! OMG!" If you insist on stating the obvious, then I shall insist on throwing mud in yer eye.

That phrase, "here's mud in your eye," makes me smile. I like the idea of someone running up to another person and flicking a spoonful of mud into their eyeballs. Because yes, in my mind, it's a spoonful. And for some reason, the person flicking the mud-spoon looks a lot like me, but in old-timey clothes (like Tom Sawyer-times), and the person with the flung mud in their eyes looks a lot like Orville Redenbacher. I have no idea why. Maybe because I never liked the looks of that guy. Sure, I liked his delicious popcorn, but I won't trust a guy with a corn fetish and suspenders. So don't try to make me.
Orville Redenfreaker sure loved to "pop" some "kernels" every chance he got.

By the way, here's what I came up with when I tried to find out the origin of "here's mud in your eye":

_It's a horseracing phrase: The winning horse would kick up mud at the also-rans. (OK, I don't mind thinking of horses kicking mud around, but I'd prefer the mud hit the jockeys in the face instead of the other poor horses. PS: I am also kind of creeped out by jockeys. They're just too small to be "right," and I hate when they stand really, really still for days and days outside of someone's house, holding a lantern...)

"At my signal, UNLEASH HELL!!!"

_It's a Biblical phrase: In the Gospel of John, Jesus cures a blind man by rubbing a bit of mud on his eyes. (Now I don't know 'bout you, but the Jesus I IMAGINE wouldn't play a mean trick like that on some poor, blind dude. And I don't care if it is in the Bible, I think the Son of God would just use good ol' fashioned GodMagic and not waste time smearing wet dirt on the faces of the unfortunates.)
"OWWW! What the hell are you doing?! I asked you to heal me, not make me even MORE blind!"

_It's a World War I phrase: Soldiers spent a lot of time hunkered down in muddy trenches. The horrors of that war were many: Machine guns, grenades, gangrene, mustard gas. If all that happened to you was a little mud in your eye, you were lucky. (Christ, I should say so. Imagine how terrible it would have been to be a WWI soldier? Worse, imagine getting gangrene? How about in your eye? And you're stuck way out in some trench in some foreign battlefield, and no one has any idea how to treat ocular gangrene, so you are stuck sitting there, holding your gun, waiting for your rotting eye to just, I don't know, fall out? Mmm, wait a second. That's not a nice thing to imagine. Besides, I don't really know anything about how gangrene works and I'm certainly not in the mood to look it up! What do I look like, a smart person or something?!)

"Dudes, living in this trench sucks. We've got to get out of here before someone gets gangrene in their eyes."