Oddly Enough Blog

Nine things I’ll miss most about this blog

Let’s get the sad news out of the way first.

After an exhilarating five-year run, this blog is ending its run here. Websites change, and take new directions.

The slightly better news is that we have a couple of weeks until my final post, so let’s have fun.

I’ve enjoyed everything about creating and writing Oddly Enough. My advice is, if somebody offers to pay you to be a sarcastic smartass, take the job. Especially if it includes dental insurance.

Some of the things I will miss most…

9. The Photos: The Reuters photo file is a grand candy store. It has been a treat to look through it daily, searching for goofy gems in a sea of serious images. I’m sure it’s fair to say many of the shots in my blog don’t get used anyplace else. Indeed, it was the richness of our photo archive that inspired the blog’s fabled Goofy Face Museum and Doughnut Shop, which will be a runaway success if it ever opens.

Signs that you made a dumb career move

Blog Guy, your career advice is very useful, especially your tips on possible indicators that we may have taken the wrong career path at some point. Thanks to your last one, my brother got out of the bee-wearing profession.

Thanks. Here’s a tip that a surprising number of young urban professionals tend to overlook, what with their busy schedules.

If you find yourself flat on your stomach and you can’t get up, look over your shoulder. If there is a 3,000 pound bull on your back, then maybe you actually should have READ the questions on your Career Aptitude Test before answering them.

Uh-oh, that one hits pretty close to home, Blog Guy. I myself was lured by a pamphlet called, “The Exciting Life of the Matador,” and once I saw the sissy outfits and stupid hats, I was hooked.

Yes, know, I hear that from people all the time.

So if I see the 3,000 pound bull on my back, what else should I watch for?

Those cute ears will make a great trophy!

What’s up, Blog Guy? You look concerned about something.

I am. I just saw these photos of two panda cubs born in Spain.

They’re adorable! What’s wrong with that?

Did you miss the part where I said they are in SPAIN, the place where poor creatures are slowly tortured to death before slobbering, bloodthirsty crowds?

Besides bullfighting, this is the home of the running of the bulls, the fiery “purification of the horses” and similar traditions too numerous to mention.

Why couldn’t these poor pandas have been born someplace safer, like Libya or Somalia?

Look! It is ‘El Tall One’ himself!

Blog Guy, can you please settle a bet with my pedicurist’s pest control guy?

Sure. I’m just here to settle bets. What’s up?

It’s about bullfighting, and I know you wrote the book on that. The cockroach man says bullfighters tend to be short, like jockeys, but I think they’re much taller. Who’s right?

I’m afraid cockroach man is right. I believe the average height of a living matador is only 3’6″, and many of the dead ones are even shorter.

Wow. Guess I owe  him $20,000. Are there any exceptions to that?

Only one, who goes by the colorful name of “El Tall One.” As you can see here in these pictures, he’s a towering 5’8″.  He has built his whole career around his incredible height.

Insert zany cartoon sound here…

Honey, is that you? How was your fight? Did you torture another poor creature to death?

Mmmmmpffffffffff…..

I can’t understand what you’re saying. Sounds like somebody stopped off for a few beers with his amigos, huh?

Urrrrrfwack!

I’m just thinking about dinner, hon. How about a nice butt steak?

Nogo nogo!

It’s festival time, round up some poor animals!

I hate to get serious here, and I promise I won’t make it a habit, but WTF?

In the past couple of days alone, we’ve had pictures from a festival in Spain where they attach flaming torches to a bull’s horns, as well as photos and video of a bull leaping into the stands and injuring dozens of spectators at a different event in Spain, where “young boys run before the bull trying to avoid being caught.”

All this from the country that brings you the annual running of the bulls in Pamplona, and regular bullfights where morons dressed like Elton John torture animals to death slowly before a cheering mob.

And that’s not to mention Spain’s fiery “purification of the horses,” or the festival where people pull the heads off roosters, and so on and so on.

What exactly is wrong with those people, that every festival has to involve killing, maiming, torturing or frightening poor animals? And what sort of folks put young boys in a ring in front of a bull, anyway?

Don’t show him your butt, Lamar!

Until today, my favorite oxymoron – and I’ve blogged on the subject frequently – was “homemade submarine.”

But now, we have a new winner. This video clip shows a spectator being gored during an “amateur bullfight.” I am not making that up.

Like it’s not stupid enough to have “professional” bullfights, we now have to have amateur ones, too? Is this some kind of local reality show, “So You Think You can Fight A Bull?”

But it gets worse. Much worse. We are informed that the guy who is getting gored entered the ring “to retrieve a personal item.”

Are you fricking kidding me?

What kind of “personal item” do you enter a bull ring to retrieve? Your mother? The antidote to a poison you just took? Tina Fey’s home phone number?

“Yo, Lamar! What the HELL are you doin’ there in that bull ring?”

Ma, Dwayne’s dressin’ like a sissy again!

Blog Guy, you write a lot about bullfighting. What’s the stupidest thing about that so-called tradition?

It’s a close call, but one thing that comes to mind is the montera.

The Mitsubishi? Really? Bullfighters drive mid-size SUVs?

No, that would be a Montero. The montera is the beanbag hat they wear.

The idea is to make the most obnoxious face humanly possible as they adjust the beanbag just before the bullfight. Here, look at these guys above. Who would you root for?

The bull, of course. I see what you mean. So does this give you any ideas?

The Decent Human Beings win one?

Blog Guy, it looks like you’re gloating about something.

You bet I am. The Catalonia region of Spain has just passed a ban on bullfighting, a barbaric activity which I have mocked repeatedly in my blog. I like to think my readers helped tip the balance.

Congrats, Blog Guy. So what were the main factions in the debate over there?

It was the Decent Human Being faction against the Pro-Torture and Cruelty faction.

Can you boil down the basic arguments of those two sides?

Sure. The Decent Human Beings felt that slowly torturing an animal to death while bloodthirsty imbeciles cheer in the stands has no place in the 21st century. As for the Pro-Torture and Cruelty faction, their side is so ridiculous it’s not even worth repeating.

Getting bored with getting gored?

Blog Guy, I was surprised to find that Pamplona Running of the Bulls thing started several days ago. Usually you dump all over it in your blog. Don’t you care about animals anymore?

I do care very much, but from the coverage I’ve seen this year, I’m cautiously hopeful that some improvements have been made. For example, it looks like they are using fake bulls on wheels, instead of being needlessly cruel to real animals.

I had no idea! What else?

I was also happy to find pictures of runners waiting in long lines before they get to run.

In past years it was like, “Twenty bulls, no waiting!” Now, with the lines, it’s more like going to the DMV to get plates, and it’s bound to discourage some idiots.

I mean, how long would YOU wait just to get trampled and gored? Pretty soon, people will be like, “I waited four hours and then they ran out of bulls! I’m just gonna see if this blond chick wants to get drunk and make out.”