I Mean...

[1] ...Dear Kyra Phillips,
I have some advice for you, dearie, and it isn't, "You go, girl!"
No, this one should probably be filed under: "Don't (uh) piss people off."
Next time that fat, ugly, hairy guy who always seems to be hanging around --you know, the guy with the ketchup stains on his loud, too-tight, yesterday's-style shirt-- next time he tells you that you look nice, try to look at him instead of through him, and when you say, "Thank you," try to sound like you just might actually mean it. True, I don't know you personally, and the last thing I'd want to imply is that I think you're something of a prima donna, oh, Ms. Wide-eyed goddess of the high cheekbones and year-'round tan, but if you'd ever taken, say, sixty seconds out of your day to actually get to know some of the "little people" on your technical crew, you might've known before last week that that fat, hairy, ketchup-stained weirdo is the guy who runs your sound board.

[2] I mean, George W. "The Smirking Marionette" Bush did an interview with NBC's Brian Williams last week. At one point, Williams asked him about the ever-growing number of Americans who think we're "fighting the wrong war." The Smirker said, "Ah ree-uh-lahz that there are peeple who don't agree with are policies. Ah know that." Then he used the rhetorical device of re-asking the question and following it with that patented, three- or four-word, I-don't-want-to-talk-about-it-anymore way of his...
"Are we fahtin' thuh wrong war? Ah have no doubt."
Umm, yeah. Me either, George. Maybe you should have visited your father up there in Kennebunkport, you know, like, several years ago and asked him, "Daddy, when you were president, how come you didn't take out Saddam Hussein and create a big ol' power vacuum right smack-dab in the middle of ancient Messa, Messo, Messo-poe --darn it, you know whut ah mean--
Eye-wrack?"

[3] I mean, I heard last week that the Smirking Marionette's approval rating had edged up to 38%. You know, a baseball team that wins 38% of its games over the course of a full season... loses more than 100.

[4] I mean, even the Chicago Underachievers and Bud-lighters Society is only on pace to lose 97.

[5] I mean, ho-ho-ho, Christmas may come early this year. I hear-tell that the owner of those rat-bastard, fifteen-million-dollar-payroll, in-the-thick-of-the-wildcard-race Florida Marlins doesn't get along with his manager, Joe Girardi, and is looking for an excuse to fire him. You remember ol' Joe, don't you? Joe of the big, gaudy, pinstriped rings? Joe, the former winner of Killre's "Most Likely To Become Manager Someday" award? Joey Gee-whiz-kid, soon to be named Manager of the Year? Joltin' Joe Girardi-oh? I have just one thing to say to Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria. Are you listening Jeffrey? JEFFREY, DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? Good. I want you to listen very, very carefully: FIRE AWAY, YOU PIN-HEADED PRIG!

[6] I mean, the Cubs' magic number for finally --mercifully-- being mathematically eliminated from playoff contention is 10 (as of Tuesday morning). Yes, believe it or not, the Certified Union for Baker's Sayonara is --technically-- still alive. That damned wildcard can be a hateful thing sometimes, can't it? Ah, but thank the Creator of the Universal Remote: Football season is finally here.

[7] I mean, speaking of football... That Bastion of Unmitigated and Unbelievable Arrogance and Sanctimony known as the University of Notre Dame (or, as Raging Bull likes to call them, Our Lady of the Belligerent Potato Farmers) has --in case you haven't heard, in case your senses haven't been overloaded by the media blitz, in case you don't have dents in your skull from thousands of Catholics brandishing thousands of college football preview magazines-- a not-bad football team. Which, of course, means that they are, uh, ripe for the picking... uhh-long 'bout the third week of September, I should imagine.

[8] I mean, I'm not going to get into the recent play-calling of this Blinkin' Administration's offensive coordinator, Karl Rove, pounding the platitudes out of the D-line with galloping ghosts named Fascism, Nazism and Hitler. Not right now, anyway. I'm sure by now you know about Secretary of War (that's the original title) Donald Rumps-felt shooting his mouth off last week. You probably also know about MSNBC personality Keith Olbermann's apt and able response to it. If you don't already know about that, don't worry: One-F has taken the time to make it easy for you, dear reader, to check out Olbermann's response to Rummy-dummy's rant. You will find One-F's effort posted below, under the title, "Amen, brother." I will add only this: I find this Blinkin' Administration's Nixon-on-steroids-esque doctrine of Taking Over the Government and Undermining the Constitution to be "morally... confused," and that's putting it mildly.

[9] I mean, these kids these days. I'm familiar enough, I think, with the words they're using, but I don't quite understand why they're using them that way. There is a trend among today's teen- and twenty-somethings --especially athletes-- to start virtually every statement with the words, "I mean." Now, I'm just a truck driver, but I could have sworn that "I mean" was kind of a verbal road-sign, used to introduce some sort of clarifying or summarizing statement
--roughly akin to the phrase "in other words." Not so with these guys. To them, it seems to be more like a Reaganesque "Well..." In, uh, in other words, it's a vocal filler: Something to say while the person saying it figures out something to say. The difference? Well, "well" has, over time, accumulated the connotation that you're actually pondering the topic under discussion. "I mean," on the other hand, just makes everybody wonder what the hell you're really thinking about.

[10] I mean, home plate to first base is ninety feet. First base to second, ninety feet. Second to third, ninety. Third to home, ninety. That means two things:
(a) 755 home runs is nearly 51.5 miles and (b) I have way, way too much time between exits to just sit and think.

[11] I mean, I was surfing my way through a cascade of channels Sunday night when I came across the U.S. Open. Tennis. Women's singles bracket. Third round, I think. Some poor, angular woman, seemingly cast in washed-out, faded colors, who has worked very, very hard throughout a long career to be just good enough to be third- or fourth-round cannon fodder for better tennis players, was being rudely toyed-with by Maria Sharapova... Sharapova of the soft features and the ever-so-slightly dingey blonde hair, pulled back none-too-tightly and decorated with strategically-placed bows... Sharapova of the four-beaded earrings jangling and dangling down, nearly touching the sequined collar of her little, black, upscale cocktail party dress with the enticing slit down the back-- big-time tennis evening wear... Sharapova of the perfectly pink and playful-seeming tongue thrust just a few millimeters too far past the upper front teeth when she makes the "th" sound in "thank you," an artifact of learning English late... Sharapova of the would-you-like-some-more-coffee-in-your-cream skin tone and the incredibly long limbs and the cold steel eyes and hot furnace gaze, tossing the ball twenty feet into the air and crushing it over the net and then cat-quick bounce like a summer stroll, meeting the return with a sudden-and-gone concert and swirl that sends the ball skidding across the clay... Sharapova, six-three or six-four in height, six-three and six-four on the scoreboard.

[12] I mean, love means nothing.

[13] I mean, Bud "Wonderful, Wonderful Wildcards
Whirling and Twirling and Unfurling" Selig must go.