Ranzino.com

Just Peanuts, Nothing Else, originally uploaded by ranzino.

“What came with these?”

“What?”

“The peanuts.”

“Oh those!”

“Yes, the ones that are all over the floor.”

“Nothing, it’s just a box peanuts.”

“You ordered and received by shipment from UPS a box of just shipping peanuts?”

“Yes… But coincidentally… they also came with a battery grip quite unexpectedly.”

“I see. How much does a box of shipping peanuts cost these days?”

“Hmmmmm, I hear ones without the battery grip accesory are considerably cheaper. I’ll have to consider those next time.”

“Pork Chops and Applesauce”, originally uploaded by ranzino.

I’ve got to admit… I dig on swine baby.

All Aboard, originally uploaded by ranzino.

Confession time.

I like things that are “old time-y.”

If it looks like something Roger Miller would have written a song about, I’m all over it.

Peppercorns, originally uploaded by ranzino.

Because I’m a man, from time to time, I like to compete. I don’t know for sure what it is about us that we have to prove we’re better at something (anything) than someone (anyone) else. It probably has something to do with our fathers, insecurity, establishing dominance and throw in a little something Freudian for good measure. Regardless, if you give us a smidgen of talent at something, we’re going to turn that interest into a competition somehow so we can feel better about ourselves knowing that once, just this once, we were the better man.

As an example of this twisted compulsion, take the above photo. What would lead an otherwise sane individual to spend a better part of an hour arranging and re-arranging peppercorns liberated from their rightful home in my pepper grinder in an attempt establish the best natural lighting scenario? An act of desperation born of competition if I’ve ever seen one.

After resounding trouncings in my two previous attempts at entry into the MatchPoint Tournament on Flickr, I was determined to take my rightful place as a winner in the macro theme this go around. Hence the careful prodding, poking and placing of black, red and green peppercorns that caused my 4-year-old to wonder aloud if I was, “counting how many,” I had. As frugal as I can be, I resisted the temptation to take him up on his suggestion.

In the end, all my efforts were for nothing. When I initially read the rules for the “Larger Than Life” round, the organizers had included a caveat of no plants or bugs. “Great,” I thought, “I’m totally in the clear. Pepper is a spice!” As any Star Wars aficionado knows, spices are manually extracted by means of slave labor from exotic spice mines. Surely they couldn’t be a plant?

Wrong.

Sometimes ignorance is not bliss. Sometimes it just forces you to post a picture of the tiny carbonated bubbles in a glass of Coke instead.

SOYLENT PINK IS PEOPLE!, originally uploaded by ranzino.

I’m willing to accept many things about the anthropomorphic animal residents of Richard Scarry’s Busytown at face value. For instance, I can overlook the fact that the only townsperson to wear a shoe is also the only one to not have any feet on to which he could insert said footwear (One Lowly the worm).

However, I cannot accept that in an idyllic village where cats, dogs, rabbits, mice and the occasional immoral gorilla can live together in harmony, the community would allow out and out cannibalism in the form of a pig becoming a hot dog vendor.

Spring Ripple, originally uploaded by ranzino.

Thank God.

The following is the best dinner-time discussion my son and I have had in weeks.

Me: So what did you do at Gramma’s house yesterday?

Son: Pop Pop and I watched SpongeBob SquirtPants.

Me: (Choking back some grilled tilapia) I think you mean SpongeBob SquarePants.

Son: (In complete righteous indignation mode) NO! The song says SpongeBob SQUIRTPANTS!

Me: I think I’m pretty sure I saw that particular title in the restricted section of the local video store. Nickelodeon’s probably not adding it to their lineup until their demo really really shifts.

It Was a Quack Job, originally uploaded by ranzino.

Parenting Tip #3

A toy is NEVER out of batteries. It is always ALWAYS broken… as far as they know.

All parents know that getting a split second of peace and quiet is harder than trying to explain the appeal of The Hills to anyone over the age of 40. Knowing this, and subsequently wanting to punish us for similar transgressions from when they were raising us, grandparents find every opportunity they can to buy toys that endlessly emit songs, sirens, farting noises, etc. so forth and so on.

When these soulless playthings finally succumb to the great Duracell recycling center in the sky, never never never put in fresh batteries. Just claim you have and then launch into a discussion about trade imbalance, unions, price points and quality workmanship until your 4-year-old finds something better/noisier to play with. Repeat as often as necessary.

Under no circumstances should you teach your child how to change batteries himself. Not because of the safety hazards, but mostly due to the fact they could reveal your ongoing ruse, and, quite frankly, it’s information they just don’t need.

1. The first 4 pages of your photostream consist entirely of pictures of your wiener dog dressed in outfits you have personally crocheted.
2. You’re hosting an historical archive of starlet nipple slip screenshots from the Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
3. LOLCATS. Nothing but wall-to-wall LOLCATS.
4. No, I’m not interested in trading, as you put it, “tasteful” pictures of our wives.
5. You just found out photoshop has FILTERS!