Oddly Enough Blog

Have you never SEEN decorations, Mr. President?

Honey, was that the doorbell? Could you see who it is, please?

Sweetie, it’s the president!

President Obama?

Yeah. He’s here for some kind of a surprise inspection of our Christmas decorations.

Oh crap, it’s decoration inspection time already? Quick, put a plate of shiny Christmas balls on the table, and I’ll get our holiday mugs. Maybe that”ll satisfy him.

Where’s that damned little tree, and that snowman for the wall?

Where’s your Science and Pie section?

Hey Blog Guy, I saw a picture of President Obama browsing in a Washington, DC bookstore. That’s pretty cool, isn’t it, that the president is such a devoted reader?

Oh please…

Huh? I thought we would be on the same page about this, so to speak.

Yes, of course reading is a very good thing. But let’s not kid ourselves. Obama was at my neighborhood bookshop, Kramerbooks.

So?

Want something that’s bad for you, Mr. President?

Hi there, waitress, we’re the Corkery family, and we’ll be having your family-style breakfast special, where the whole family eats for for $22.95. I’ll have the…

Excuse me, Mr. Obama, I know who you are. You’re gonna have to go ahead and pay for your own breakfast…

Obama? Hah! I’m Floyd Corkery, but I do hear that a lot. People seem to think I look a little like the president.

So, waitress, the rest of my family will all have the egg-white asparagus omelets, and I’ll have El Gordo, the cheese-covered breakfast burrito, with the beer batter fries and barbecue sauce, and on the side, some maple…

Mr. Corkery, will you be ordering anything for those gentlemen over there in the black suits with the sunglasses and guns?

Nah, they’re good. But look, if a muscular lady who looks like my wife walks in here, then this kid in the green shirt is the one having the burrito, you undertand?

So, you guys here on that Groupon deal?

Blog Guy, wake up! Looks like you fell asleep at your computer.

Oh, yeah, thanks. I was going through the so-called “family photos” of finance ministers from the APEC Summit in Hawaii, and I keep falling asleep.

Can’t you get somebody else to do that?

Who? Who on earth is EVER going to look at these pictures, and yet they are a staple of every single summit. There are so many people, we don’t even bother to name them.

And it isn’t just finance ministers. We have world leaders at the summit, we have SPOUSES of world leaders, all so that 1,000 years from now historians can look at them and say, WTF?

One year, every single leader was naked in a group photo. Nobody noticed.

Courting the goat vote…

Blog Guy, with the 2012 presidential campaign now underway, I’m surprised nobody is covering the goat angle.

Yeah, many political writers handle that group with kid gloves, but not me, not with all of the candidates actively courting the goat vote.

Are goats interested in the issues?

Are they! You go to any candidate’s events in New Hampshire these days, and you’ll find the goats bleating about something or other.

Four years ago they went for Obama, but this time around they’re listening to the Republican candidates and ruminating.

Ruminating, huh? You’re enjoying this, aren’t you? Do they tend to vote as a group?

Bag? What bag, Baby?

Hi Michelle, Sweetie, it’s me! I’m calling on my new iPhone, from Los Angeles. Where are you?

Oh, hey, Barack, you caught me just finishing a speech at a grocery here in Chicago.

I’m in the produce section, surrounded by apples and oranges and pears. You remember, we’re making that big push to see that city residents have access to fresh, nutritious foods.

Oh, right! Good luck with that, Michelle.

Barack, are you chewing on something? Are those fried chicken wings?

Fried chicken wings? OF COURSE NOT, Michelle! How could you even THINK I would do that, especially while you’re busy promoting healthy eating!

Roscoe’s House of WHAT, Mr. President?

Hey Blog Guy, a couple of days ago you illustrated your piece on high-cholesterol foods with a lot of photos of President Barack Obama with junk food, and you said, “If I want to know what foods I should avoid…I’ll just follow the presidential motorcade.” You were just joking, right?

Maybe, maybe not. That item ran on Monday, so let’s see where the Obama motorcade would have taken us on that very day.

Oops, here we are at Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles, in Los Angeles.

Uh-oh. That can’t be good.

Yeah, let’s just say when Obama is on the road, you seldom find him stopping at Slappy’s House of Cauliflower and Tofu.

But gosh, nutritional information about healthful food is readily available. Do you think Obama is getting the message?

All aboard for the Lipitor City Express!

Readers of this blog know I have little patience with “stories” that not only state the obvious, but find it necessary to deliver the information in list form, for folks who are intimidated by paragraphs.

Hot on the heels of “8 Foods to Banish from your Diet” I have stumbled upon another time-waster, headlined “10 High-Cholesterol Foods to Avoid.”

SPOILER ALERT: Three of the 10 have the word “fried” in their names, and two more have the word “cheese.”

That’s right, it turns out fried chicken, fried eggs and French fries are not actually health foods. Nor are cheeseburgers or macaroni and cheese.

Hang on to your hats, because “although chicken is usually considered to be a good low-fat meat choice, how you cook it can make a big difference.”

No way!

It’s the Great Pumpkin, Mr. President!

Do you believe this, Michelle?

What’s that, Barack?

I’m the president, and I’m pulling my own pumpkins!

Pulling your pumpkins from the patch to the plane?

Precisely.

Where’s the presidential pumpkin puller?

Taking a stand for a place to sit?

Blog Guy, nobody has better connections to the 2012 political campaigns than you do. I’ve heard that President Obama has chosen his official campaign slogan for the presidential race.

I presume it’s “Yes we can,” since that worked so well for him in 2008?

No, I understand his campaign is going a different direction this time around.

Don’t say where you got it, but the Reelect Obama slogan will be, “Please Seat Yourself.”

Huh? “Please Seat Yourself?” What does that even mean?