NEW RELEASES
I’m not sitting on Vadar’s lap
Since the retirement of The Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes, Chuck and Beans has become my favorite cartoon.
This is why….
If you go to the Shoebox website all this week, they’re giving away calendars – two a day.
If you win one, you have to promise to give it to me. It’s only fair.
December 16
We hope you’ve mailed off your letters to Santa by now. Have you done your Christmas cards yet? Us neither. Last year we’re not even sure if they ever actually went out. That’s pretty pitiful for a bunch of writers, but what can we say. We tell you everything on this blog already…. What do you need a card with Santa and a bunch of penguins on it for anyway? You know we love you. Sigh. Fine – we’ll make the effort to get them out this weekend. These 5 things, among others, were what were distracting us from our seasonal chores.
1. Hellboy. We really wish we could explain our fascination with 
Hellboy, but we can’t. We watch either of the movies anytime they’re on TV. There’s a lot to love. We haven’t read the comics he is derived from, but we love the movies directed by Guillermo del Toro and adore Ron Pearlman as the title character. It’s a damn good thing we knew Ron first from Hellboy because if all we knew about him was the evil character he plays on Sons of Anarchy….well, that would be bad. Hellboy loves cats and chili and Baby Ruths. He’s an overgrown adolescent in a huge body, including one hand in the form of a giant club. He constantly cracks wise. Now that we write it, that may be the root of our love of him. Anyone with a great snarky comeback or a snide remark is OK in our book.
2. Elves Four Food Groups. The movie Elf is one of the greatest Christmas contributions in the last several years. Will Ferrell as Buddy is a genius. When he launches himself at the tree to put up the star….well, we rewind that over and over. According to Buddy, the four Elf food groups are: candy, candy canes, candy corn, and syrup. We totally could buy into that diet. We figure you’d be so hyper from all the sugar that you’re bound to lose weight just from the running around. Not that anyone would notice any difference in our level of hyper, but at least we’d have something to blame it on. Remember, the best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear.
3. Kerfuffle. We were reading an interesting article on MSNBC the other day about how atheists ramp up their advertising budget around this time of year. In an effort to spread the awareness and to give the timid atheists out there an opportunity to come out of the closet, there are many displays which often cause the religious among us to, well, to freak out. MSNBC described one such incident as a “kerfuffle”. OH. MY. That is our new favorite word. Kerfuffle. Doesn’t it sound like a made up word? NO! It’s not. Mostly used by the English (the Great Britain English not us American
English speakers) it means a fuss or commotion. All this time, we thought we were being difficult to wait staff and baristas but, no, we were causing a kerfuffle. Go ahead – use it in a sentence today. We give you all permission to cause a kerfuffle in our name. When the police come, you can blame us. It won’t be the first time.
4. Elizabeth Taylor auction. We are anticipating very exciting Christmas mornings at the Quill Sisters compound this year. Elizabeth Taylor’s estate auctioned off her jewelry this week. The 33.19 carat Richard Burton Diamond sold for $8,815,500 and the necklace Burton gave her, known famously as La Peregrina, went for a perfectly 
reasonable $11,842,500. A pretty little diamond bracelet Michael Jackson gifted Liz went for six times the pre-auction estimates. The Quill Husbands know of our love of sparkly things AND classic Hollywood so we have every confidence the “Asian buyer” was really an agent entrusted to pick these items up for our very busy spouses. We suspect you’ll hear the squeals all the way under your own trees on Sunday morning.
5. Sufganiyots. The local Picayune had a headline that simply could not be ignored this week: Eight Days of Donuts. If you’re eyes and ears didn’t just perk up, well, perhaps you’re dead. Apparently, those unassuming Jews have been hiding a very pertinent fact 
about Hanukkah. We can’t understand why they’d keep quiet about the fact that there are EIGHT days of donuts. Are they trying to keep them all for themselves? Honest to Moses, this may be the best reason to convert yet. These little donut gems are described as “reminiscent of beignets” and are stuffed with fruit jams or custard and sometimes, hold on to your yarmulkes, caramel and fudge. Some are even filled with spoonfuls of cheesecake. We’re all a quiver just thinking about it. We have no idea how to pronounce them, but we want some right now. This fits right into the Elf diet in #3. We fully expect to slip, sated and happy, into sugar comas by New Year’s Day.
But, baby, it’s cold outside
I’m pretty sure that the person who writes this cartoon read our minds. The part of the kitty will be played by alternating Amylynn and Ava. 
Thursday Afternoon Information
Me: I’m planning on dying with my eyes open.
Boy: How will we know you’re dead?
Girl: She won’t be talking.
I have no idea WHY I thought having children was a good idea, especially that last one . . .
Sprint is giving me an ulcer
I really hate my cell phone. Ava hates her cell phone, too. My Honey and I have the exact same wretched phone so you can be assured he hates his as much as I do. We all have Samsung phones through Sprint. I believe that Ed, Ava’s husband hates his Samsung Sprint phone as well.
When I say we hate our cell phones, I’m not using that word lightly. In fact, hate may not be a strong enough word. I’ll have to get out my thesaurus and get creative.
My Honey and I each have the Samsung Intercept. They should have called it the Samsung 
Pieceofcrapthatdoesn’tactuallyworkasaphone. It’s an android phone in which you can play games and use the internet with and all that happy crap. You know what I mean – one of those phones that is desperately trying to be an iPhone but doesn’t have a shot in hell. I can play Angry Birds – when it doesn’t freeze up. I can also catch the hockey scores live – when it doesn’t freeze up. I can Tweet – when it doesn’t freeze up. I get my email veeeeeery sloooooowly and sometimes the email I send actually arrives in the mailboxes where I sent it. I’ve long since given up trying to use Facebook because that is guaranteed to cause the stupid thing to freeze up. The only way to un-freeze it is to pull the battery off the back and reboot. That only takes about fifteen minutes to accomplish. For whatever reason, it decides which texts it intends to send and which are so banal and unimportant that it won’t bother. We have no way of knowing if they went or not. Did it go or does Ava just not think I am as funny (Ava would never think that) as I thought I was?
Arrrrrrggggggggg!
The biggest, most annoying, inconvenience with the stupid thing is that the damn touch screen often times won’t let you answer a call. No matter how many times, or how gently, or roughly, or how loudly you yell at the effing thing, you can’t answer the phone. You must helplessly watch your incoming call be hijacked by voice mail because you are impotent to answer it. Anytime I call My Honey or Ava and they don’t answer I just wait for a couple of minutes. They’ll call me right
back and hopefully I’ll be able to answer their call.
Speaking of calls – I only hope I never have an emergency and need to call for help. I’d have better luck chucking the phone at a potential rapist than getting the phone to cooperate in making a call for help in any kind of timely fashion. You’d think Sprint would be concerned about that!
Amazingly enough, Sprint already replaced my phone once due to it’s horribly bad construction.
I bring all of this up because I went on Sprint.com and then to a human at the 800 number to see about trading up. They won’t let me. And the customer service people are completely unable/unwilling to help me. It doesn’t matter that I’ve been with Sprint for like NINE years. They don’t seem to care that other servicers are begging for me to switch over. Apparently, even in this wretched 
economy, customer loyalty means absolutely nothing. Not a God damned thing.
Ava seems to think we should go to a Sprint store instead of dealing with the 800 number. She thinks we’ll have better luck. All I think will happen is that I’ll get arrested for starting a riot. Everytime I go in there I become hostile. Those customer service people are unbearably snotty and frequently deserve a slap upside the head, but the police frown on me and my vigilante justice.
So – to sum up: The Quill Sisters and their entourages despise, loathe, and abhor Sprint and the crappy Samsung phones we’ve been saddled with.
What companies do you just hate to deal with?
Ava says – Amylynn just threw that last question on to feel like she isn’t the only person with such a heated dislike of a national company. However, she did’nt really need to do that. SPRINT is by far the worst cell phone company in the world. My phone is such a piece of crap it’s amazing. I had this great Verizon Android cell phone that worked like a dream. We were with Verizon for over 20 years but they would not match the prices at Sprint – they also do not care about customer loyalty. In this case, you get what you pay for. I took my phone back toBest Buy, where I got it, and the 12 year old girl there took the battery off and redid something. That didn’t solve any of my problems, it just wasted a half hour of my life. I went on the Internet to see if I could find a solution and what I found were a whole slew of other Sprint Samsung customers saying – guess what? Their phones are crap too! Deep sigh . . .
Soooo important
The Sisters abhor censorship in any form. Our official uncle, www.newmexiken.com, has something very important to say.
Stop American Censorship
I’ve censored the following, in protest of a bill that gives any corporation and the US government the power to censor the internet–a bill that could pass THIS WEEK. To see the uncensored text, and to stop internet censorship, visit: http://americancensorship.org/posts/13645/uncensor
██████ ██████████ ████ at his █████ ██████ ████ on ████ ████ in ████ at the age of 67. █████████ to the ███████ of ████████, his ████ █████ ██████████ ████: “I ████ ██████ █████. I █████ you for ████ ██████████; but I ████ you to ████ no ████ ███████ █████ me. Let me go off ███████. I ██████ ████ ████.”
I’ve made it super easy for you. Click the link and follow the jump.
It’s your civic duty. Besides, Santa’s watching.
I can feel the ostracization already and I’m fine with that
I took my kids to a birthday party. If there’s anything I like less than sitting in a park with a bunch of parents I don’t know, pretending that I share any of their interests, and that their snot-nosed kids are just adorable, I don’t know what it is. Now after typing that, I will admit that there are several of my kid’s friend’s parents that I genuinely do like. A lot. Of course I met them at some party or another, but with few exceptions, I don’t like other people. This is a general rule of thumb.
So at this party, which was agonizing, the hostess handed my son a goodie bag. The Bandit looked inside and pulled out a
whistle. He didn’t glance my way, he simply held his palm out with the whistle laying on top and said to the mother, “Yeah, my mom won’t let me have this.”
I started to laugh because he’s absolutely right. He can’t have the whistle. Any mother who let’s a child in her house with a whistle deserves whatever torture she’s sure to get. The mother looked at me quizically and I shrugged and nodded in answer.
The Bandit peered back into the depths of the bag. “Is that a flashlight in here? She won’t let me have that either.”
Again, the mother didn’t answer. She looked at me and I nodded my head vigorously. The flashlight is even more forbidden than the whistle. A chronic migraine suffer such as myself doesn’t want a flashlight within a hundred yards of her. I live in fear of flashlights. Nothing insures a migraine faster than a bright flash of light right in the eyes.
I guess The Bandit can never aspire to a career as a cop – no flashlights and no whistles. I think I can live with that.
So I wouldn’t let my kids have half the crap in their goodie bags and I didn’t chat with the other moms. I tell you what – I leave a hell of an impression.
Winifred the Mighty
Well, quiet little Winifred as definitely developed a personality. I think for a minute, My Honey had the misconception that a little girl puppy wouldn’t be as much work as boy puppy. If that was the case, the man was totally delusional.
I am currently writing this with a hole in my right palm. It’s in the perfect shape of a tiny little puppy tooth. I don’t know what I was thinking, putting my hand down there near her face.
Roscoe has decided she needs to be kept an eye on. She’s resting for a minute under the coffee table because she was racing full speed into the living room with a mouthful of something she wasn’t supposed to have and nearly knocked herself unconscious bouncing under the table.
She’s an absolute doll – when she’s sleeping. Once awake and fully engaged in a wrestle, her growl is the stuff of horror movie monsters.
Just now there was maniacal yipping coming from the bedroom. My Honey tells me she found another bossy little puppy in there, lurking in the mirrored closet door. Of course, that only kept her attention for a few minutes before, “Hey, is that a sock?” and off she ran.
The other day I tickled her nose with her tail and the look on her face when she realized that funky little thing was always there was hysterical. Unfortunately, now it must die. When she’s not chewing on Roscoe, she’s yanking on her own tail.
Speaking of Roscoe, who is easily five times her size, she is absolutely fearless.
Please don’t misunderstand. I adore her and am not in anyway complaining. Even when I have a hole in my hand. I’m merely reporting the facts. Except that I am 100% certain it’s not true, I’d postulate that she might have rabies, she’s such a lunatic.
If you come over, remember this advice and remember it well: don’t look her directly in the eye and don’t stick your hand down there. She’s 7 pounds of terror in a polka dotted collar.
It’s just a red nose, jeeez.
My father said this years ago only he used the word bigot. From the hysterical geniuses at Shoeboxblog.
December 9
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Holy crap, can you believe it? We know that Santa is watching and we’re trying ever so hard to behave ourselves, but honestly, it’s not easy. The Sister’s generally do have trouble behaving. It’s a darn good thing these five things were around to distract us.
1. Presidential candidates. Tis the silly season! The Wall Street Journal this week brought a candidate to our attention we feel absolutely compelled to back. Vermin Supreme apparently is a perennial candidate, a performance artist who spends a great deal of time making fun of the electoral process. Here’s the thing
Here he is wearing his cod piece - clearly ready for the debates.
though: he might really be the one. He is running on a platform so magnificent we feel confident that you’ll also see his brilliance. Are you ready? His Democratic platform is zombie preparedness, mandatory tooth-brushing and the promise of a pony for every American. A pony! Are you kidding? Sold! And Amylynn gets her brother’s pony because he’s allergic. Ava thinks we could start a pony exchange for those people that don’t want theirs, then when we collect around twenty extra ponies, we bargain with the Chinese for one of their red pandas. That seems a fair trade – twenty ponies = one red panda. This is going to be awesome!
2. Bono gives us a compliment. Well not the Sisters, exactly, but how cool would that be? Think of the post we could write if Bono happened to make a comment on our blog? Actually, if ANYONE made a comment on our blog. Sigh, that’s not the point. Bono told Time magazine that American leadership has been one of the greatest influences in the breakthroughs in fighting Aids. We think that’s a pretty nice compliment since it seems all we hear are negative things about our leadership – and all too often, rightly so. Bono gave kudos to Presidents Bush, Clinton, and Obama. So pats on the back everyone. You can still give someone a merry Christmas. The pandemic is on the decline – now is not the time to let up.
Ava been saying for years she's less than six away....she's yet to prove it.
3. 4.74 Degrees. Do you remember that game 6 Degrees of Separation? The theory was developed by psychologist, Stanley Milgram, in the 1960’s that you and every other person on the planet were only separated by six people. The concept meant that you could meet anyone as long as you could line up the right six people to get you there. The Sister’s could meet the Pope or Robert Redford or Idi Amin so long as we found the right six people to introduce us to the next person and the next until there you were, shaking Barry Manilow’s hand. Well now, thanks to Facebook, that number has shrunk to 4.74 people. We’re assuming the .74 of a person represents a midget. We’ll be the first to admit that we don’t understand exactly how it’s supposed to be easier to meet people now days if you always have to have a midget in the mix. Whatever. We brought this up because of Bono. If you’re still confused, reread #2. We have a comment open and ready for his pithy bon mot. You 4.74 people go ahead and line yourselves up.
Look! It's Tiffany blue!
4. Kepler-22b. They discovered another Earth! Well not exactly Earth, but it’s the closest planet within the “Goldilocks zone.” That’s the hard to find zone scientist have created that holds the parameters for life on another planet- not too hot or too cold. NASA describes Kepler-22b as having a “shopping mall-like surface temperature of near 72 degrees.” Dear heavenly bodies! It’s like they’re begging the Sisters to go there. And with our burgeoning relationship with NASA we feel confident that we’ll be welcomed aboard one of the first colonizing ships. We already have plans to open our cupcake/book/jewelery store next to the first Starbucks. All that’s left to do is come up with a better name than Kepler-22b. That’s just a ridiculous name.
5. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens. One of the Quill Sisters loves Charles Dickens. Being a HUGE fan of the Christmas season, her favorite is naturally “A Christmas Carol.” Almost without fail, she re-reads it each holiday. She has been known to stay up late into the night to watch any version of the movie. Any version, even the bad ones, yes, you Kelsey Grammer. This upsets her children but she will not be dissuaded from this path until she’s seen it at least 4X every year. Her favorite line? Scrooge to Marley’s ghost: “There’s more of gravy than grave about you” How brilliant is that? That Charles Dickens sure could turn a phrase!