The Mother Load

Mom, today I learned that this is what Evelyn thinks I look like.  I guess I need to smile more.  And shave.

The sad part of this story is that the moron involved got away with the money he intended to steal. The happy part is that he made the news, and now I get to tell you about it. Morons are my bread and butter here at the Mother Load, people. This Thanksgiving, I will be sharing my gratitude for them just before I dig in to my turkey and ham.

Mmmmmm...ham. What was I saying?

Aha. So a man in Phoenix got the bright idea to hold up a Circle K and, not wanting security cameras to reveal his identity to police, he got the even brighter idea to put a plastic bag over his face to hide it from view. As you're probably guessing, because you are not a moron (and you read the title of this post) the robber nearly suffocated on his disguise, prompting him to rip it off and reveal himself after all.

I often ridicule movies which feature bumbling criminals I consider unrealistic.  People like this make me want to personally apologize to every studio in Hollywood.  The Wet Bandits in "Home Alone" may not have been the brightest crayons in the box, but I think they'd have understood a thing or two about keeping their airways clear for, you know, air.

Grabbing a plastic bag from my cupboard, I see where the robber got confused.  This one has a warning label that is vastly underestimating the potential for stupidity in the criminal community.  It reads: "WARNING: TO AVOID DANGER OF SUFFOCATION, KEEP THIS PLASTIC BAG AWAY FROM BABIES AND CHILDREN."  I see a robber vs Wal Mart lawsuit in the near future, don't you?

If you're in the Phoenix area and you hang around with stupid people, click the link above to the full story and check out the pictures of the robber's face.  If you recognize him as one of your buddies, you'll probably find him inside the house, running with scissors, mixing bleach and ammonia, and fashioning his ill gotten money into wings so he can fly off the roof.  Just tell him there's a stranger who wants to offer him some candy down at the police station.

Mom, today I learned that writing a word backwards is supposed to make me want to buy stuff.

(Author's note: Mahalo Moment is a new feature on the Mother Load which will chronicle my adventures as a Senior Guide for Mahalo.com.  Expect about six posts a month on the humorous side of online writing.)

I have a couple of good friends who've just been hired to write for Mahalo, and there may be a few of you out in readerland who took the information I sent your way and have signed on to write as well.  Both of my buddies have expressed concern that their writing time for a typical Mahalo page is, at this point, abysmally slow.  I've reassured them that learning the ins and outs of page writing takes time, but they WILL get faster.  I write about a page an hour because I've had a chance to practice and perfect my technique.

So what did I do immediately after sharing that encouraging bit of info?  I took hours and hours to write a page that I should have been able to complete in 45 minutes.  The upside? I'm not even annoyed about it.

How can this be?  Why is it that I, Sarah, self proclaimed rock star of the online writing world (and president of my own Mahalo fan club, members totaling one), can be happy with a performance such as that?  Because of Claude.  *LOVE*

The topics for half of the pages I write each week are allowed to come from my very own brain. Somehow, the folks at Mahalo aren't frightened of what might from such a dark and twisted place, and so far, I've not given them a reason to be. As much as I'd like to write a page on how to buy presents for Sarah Clark, I've restrained myself...for now.

That said, I can't deny that the opportunity to get paid to write about my favorite things is actually pretty cool. There's a little surge of adrenaline every time I realize the site doesn't have a page on something I consider a part of my identity. Such was the case when I wrote my first page this week on French jazz composer/arranger Claude Bolling *LOVE*. (Yep, that's a link to the page. Check it out. The Mahalo peeps tell me I'm not required to link to them, but seriously...I spent hours and hours on this page. If you don't read it, I will cry.)

There are pages I can write with a detached and professional manner and then there are pages like that one.  So special is this man to me that the only way I could do justice to his amazing legacy was to write, rewrite, edit, and polish until the page was absolutely perfect.  There may also have been quite a bit of YouTube watching and screen stroking and frequent breaks to sigh deeply and become a quivering puddle of abject love. 

If you're concerned that my husband will be jealous to hear about this 80 year old composer's effect on me, just know that he's been a quivering puddle of Claude love since he learned I was going to write the page and will probably not reconstitute until I write something boring about taxes.  Fortunately, that's next up on the writing agenda. 

That page will take me a half hour, tops.