It's got Paul Anka's guarantee.
While driving up to Redlands, California to visit my dad over the weekend, I hit something of a traffic jam at the 15-215-Temecula Wineries bottleneck. That's when I saw, partially covered by a perma-trailer, on the back of an old beat-up pickup truck, a faded, though definitely legible bumpersticker: "Shit Happens."
This sentiment has always been slightly confusing to me. I mean, there are so many senses in which it could be taken. First, it could be a sort of powerful statement of stoic self-confidence, a "Keep on Truckin'" for the high-flying world of the 80s. Like, "Damn, my dog just got runover by a drunken trucker, the same guy that made off with my old lady! Shit happens." Second, it could be something like a dire, slightly moralized warning. "Hey man, shit happens." This, I take it, is the sense of "shit happens" used in the ever-popular conglomerate, "Shit happens when you party naked." It could also be a somewhat trivial declaration of fact, i.e., that events take place. "Shit happens." But that would be the least interesting use of the phrase, by my lights.
So I make it up to Redlands, and before I can say "shit happens," my dad's new wife is shoving a glass of wine in my hand. After a few minutes of conversation (during which my dad told me that he missed having lunch with George Foreman by only two hours), we take off to a rather expensive restaurant in town - which was quite good, I have to say, but I also got the sense that people who go there are showing off a little. My dad reminded me of the story of some guy he knew growing up in South Dakota who, during a particularly extravagant night of drinking, drove his friend's new car onto a train, which then ended up somewhere in the badlands of North Dakota the following day. Pretty sweet wheeze, if you ask me.
I checked my email that night to find a paper by You-Know-Who on the latest iteration of neuroethics. This one is actually quite a bit better than other ones, but only insofar as it much more clearly details the absurdity of the project, and how, if taken seriously, it would cheapen morality beyond recognition. Maybe I'll make a detailed post on that one of these days, but now's not the time. The next day I had a great time playing with my dad's new XM satellite radio while we made a white-knuckle drive up a mountain to Lake Arrowhead. Turns out that's a ton of fun; there are about 100 individual music channels, many of which are really interesting. There's one "Jamband/Prog Rock" station, although it was about 98% Prog. Tons of Rush and early Genesis. The classic rock station also had a bunch of stuff you don't normally hear. They played this one track by Ted Nugent that, notwithstanding your personal feelings toward the Motor City Madman, had a brutal guitar riff. They also played "Journey to the Center of the Mind" by the Amboy Dukes, which I think was a little beyond me.
At home, before I could say "party naked", my dad shoved about 35 pounds of oranges from his tree in his backyard on me. Ripe as all getout. My apartment smells like a citrus grove now.
This sentiment has always been slightly confusing to me. I mean, there are so many senses in which it could be taken. First, it could be a sort of powerful statement of stoic self-confidence, a "Keep on Truckin'" for the high-flying world of the 80s. Like, "Damn, my dog just got runover by a drunken trucker, the same guy that made off with my old lady! Shit happens." Second, it could be something like a dire, slightly moralized warning. "Hey man, shit happens." This, I take it, is the sense of "shit happens" used in the ever-popular conglomerate, "Shit happens when you party naked." It could also be a somewhat trivial declaration of fact, i.e., that events take place. "Shit happens." But that would be the least interesting use of the phrase, by my lights.
So I make it up to Redlands, and before I can say "shit happens," my dad's new wife is shoving a glass of wine in my hand. After a few minutes of conversation (during which my dad told me that he missed having lunch with George Foreman by only two hours), we take off to a rather expensive restaurant in town - which was quite good, I have to say, but I also got the sense that people who go there are showing off a little. My dad reminded me of the story of some guy he knew growing up in South Dakota who, during a particularly extravagant night of drinking, drove his friend's new car onto a train, which then ended up somewhere in the badlands of North Dakota the following day. Pretty sweet wheeze, if you ask me.
I checked my email that night to find a paper by You-Know-Who on the latest iteration of neuroethics. This one is actually quite a bit better than other ones, but only insofar as it much more clearly details the absurdity of the project, and how, if taken seriously, it would cheapen morality beyond recognition. Maybe I'll make a detailed post on that one of these days, but now's not the time. The next day I had a great time playing with my dad's new XM satellite radio while we made a white-knuckle drive up a mountain to Lake Arrowhead. Turns out that's a ton of fun; there are about 100 individual music channels, many of which are really interesting. There's one "Jamband/Prog Rock" station, although it was about 98% Prog. Tons of Rush and early Genesis. The classic rock station also had a bunch of stuff you don't normally hear. They played this one track by Ted Nugent that, notwithstanding your personal feelings toward the Motor City Madman, had a brutal guitar riff. They also played "Journey to the Center of the Mind" by the Amboy Dukes, which I think was a little beyond me.
At home, before I could say "party naked", my dad shoved about 35 pounds of oranges from his tree in his backyard on me. Ripe as all getout. My apartment smells like a citrus grove now.
posted by dd0031 at 10:52 AM
2 Comments:
Man, if you want to lay some oranges on your neighboring office, please don't hesitate. "You-Know-Who" as in Voldemort? Awesome. Oh, and I always thought of "shit happens" in the first sense. See "snakes on a plane".
dude, i dont have XM radio, but i get a good selection of Sirius stations through my Dish Network subscription (i just have to watch them on TV is all). anyway, they have some good stations too, but i havent found one playing any old Rush or genesis, yet, so i am jealous. I have been listening to Hard Attack (metal station) and it is kicking my ass like a tribe of bitches.
second, i'd just like to say how much i like the urban dictionary (as referenced by adam above). it taught me teh difference between ridonkulous, and riCOCKulous and all kinds of other fun phrases.
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