Passed Crap

Mojo does not like golf. It's not like she HATES it or anything. If you like golf, fine. Mojo doesn't think any less of you. She just never got into it. Perhaps if she had, instead of lounging around the house dabbling on the computer, Mojo might have ended up the CEO of some Fortune 500 company. Yeah, that's why she never made it into the big leagues. 'Cuz she never took up golf. That's the ticket. Yeah. It's not her fault; it's the golf.

Ah, yes, the early Eighties. The beginning of the "Me Decade". An innocent time, when innocent, gentle jokes saturated the media and got flogged to death through overexposure, instead of the stuff nowadays that you actively *wish* would get flogged to death in a more literal sense. Mean, nasty, cynical things like the Craptacular was the last thing on the mind of a substantially younger Mojo, so chock full of promise, as she kissed public school goodbye forever and entered the hallowed halls of a private college, complete with hidden dorm fees and "Whaddaya mean, 'that'll be seven hundred dollars'? They're only textbooks!" at the campus store.

Let me explain yet again, gentle Craptacular reader, that despite my annoying tendency to complain about every tiny detail of my pathetic existence, in actuality I hail from a fully functional, happy family. I do not mention this very often because, as Tolstoy once said (oooh! Look how smart she is! She's quoting Tolstoy! Gosh, she must be REALLY smart, huh?) happy families are all pretty much alike. In other words (if I may have the temerity to rewrite Tolstoy) if you're not about to commit adultery and throw yourself under a train, you're really not worth writing about.

In case you think this morbid fascination with misery is purely a Tolstoyian contrivance, let me point out that we as human beings are much more fascinated by conflict than happiness. You don't see too many fairy tales starting with "They all lived happily ever after." You don't see soap operas filled with good-looking scantily clad people curled up next to a roaring fire reading a good book. Happiness is fun to experience yourself, but if people are spying on you, its...um, well .... boring. Hence the Craptacular's peculiar focus on all the negative features of the things I encounter. I find the question "What was this person THINKING?" much more interesting than the several, several instances of "Oh, my, that's just lovely, what exquisitely good taste, thank you very much" that also populate my life.

Who doesn't like kids, huh? And who doesn't want their kids to grow up to be creative, precocious, obnoxious little geniuses like our beloved Mojo?

When Mojo was a child it was just occurring to a bunch of hippies that they could mold and twist young minds as one might shape a lump of Play-doh, and thus destroy the Establishment from within. There were no magnet schools or "gifted" programs as there were when my Favorite Younger Sister attended school. No, when they were not traumatizing me with the Junior Fire Marshall program ("if you don't make your parents get rid of that half-used quart paint can in your garage, rest assured you will BURN TO DEATH IN YOUR BED!"), I was subject to all manner of psychological experiments, like the infamous Open Classroom of Third Grade, a la the famous/infamous "Summerhill" program over in England. During our Open Classroom, we were allowed to skip about the room and do what we wanted for a year.

Mojo fancies herself an open-minded skeptic about many things. She tends to prefer empirical, reproducible data over anecdotal evidence. This is not to say that the anecdotes are wrong. It just means that More Evidence Is Needed before Mojo will be comfortable with whatever conclusion she ultimately draws. Like they say, the more extraordinary a claim, the more extraordinary the proof should be to support that claim.

(She will admit, however, to a definite bias against those who make wads of money from their extraordinary claims. If someone insists on something where I feel More Evidence Is Needed and is making fistfuls of dough off said claim (usually from certain misguided, delusional or just folks with bad critical thinking skills), I have the unfortunate tendency to jump to the conclusion that this person is probably not on the up-and-up. Especially if said person starts shrieking loudly that any probing questions are counter-productive or Detrimental to the Life Force or other such arguments. The more hysteria said person projects upon being questioned, the more Mojo sez "hmm." But once again, I digress.)

Leaf Dishy-Plate Ceramic Thingamabobs—set of four!

When I was a kid smoking was socially acceptable. There were commercials on TV with catchy jingles. Even my mother, who was (and I assume still is) a virulent non-smoker, had ashtrays all over the house when we were growing up. While I share my mother's virulence, I don't think I have a single ashtray in the house. People can smoke outside, I figure. Once we had a guy work on the house who was a smoker and while he did good work it drove me nuts picking up all the butts around the house for MONTHS. He just flung them into the lawn. If you are ever invited over my house (and most assuredly you will NOT be; this is a hypothetical situation to make me appear friendlier than I actually am) do NOT do this. I probably will not say anything, because I am very Well-Bred and Polite, but rest assured I will be TOTALLY ANNOYED after you are gone.