That's Church

“Angels we have heard on high …”

Do you see that?  That is eight, count them.  Go ahead. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8 bottles of Zima!

A bit yellow in color, a smidgen stamped with a date of 2007, but still delicious.

I know you’re incredibly jealous and that you would like to know where you too can purchase some $3.50 bottles of Zima and I’m not going to tell you because they are MINE ALL MINE!

My precious.  My precioussss.  They wants me.

Okay, I’ll tell you.  Behold the power of Twitter.

Once a month I whine like a poopy baby on Twitter all, “I WOULD SELL MY DOGS FOR ZIMA!” or “I WOULD PUNCH A KITTEN FOR ZIMA!” or “I WOULD MAKE OUT WITH BEN ROETHLISBERGER FOR … nah.  Even I’m not that desperate for Zima.”  But you get the picture and the picture is a melancholy, black-and white photograph of me with my sad forehead pressed against a rainy window pane like the poster-child for depression.

And every month, I get a few replies like, “Oh! Try this place.” or “I’m pretty sure this place has it!” and I follow-up with those places and the owners/proprietors/phone-answerers would be all, “ZIMA?!  ZIMA?!   HAHAHAHAHAHAH! Stop calling here, lady.”

But then a week or so ago, @dougkeklak tweeted me that he found a bar with Zima in Homestead.

Problem was this. Doug?  Hates me.  He says to consider this a peace offering and that “hate” is a strong word, so let’s come up with a word that is almost to hate but not quite to hate.  Loathe? Horrified by? Can I punch her? Can I? Can I? Please? Pick one.

So I thought.  Is this a trap?  Is he luring me to this bar where I’ll be accosted by a large gang of ruthless pigeons, as if there are any other kind of pigeon gangs. There are no gangs of pigeons that knit afghans for the elderly.  They’re all ruthless knowing bastards and whoa! tangent.

Doug gave me the name of the bar, directions to the bar, and possibly the GPS coordinates to the bar.

I mentioned to my husband in passing one day the possibility of Zima being found in Pittsburgh and he said, “Well, I’ll check it out,” but he never did because I failed to properly light the fire under his ass about it because I was a bit wary of Doug.  Why the sudden change of heart?

Then a DIFFERENT twittererererer, this one named @MarkECib, who DOESN’T hate me, tweeted a picture from the bar showing me the actual Zima in the cooler.

So of course I got out the gasoline, the blowtorch, and the C-4 and I KABLOOEYED a fire under my husband’s ass, resulting in him heading to Pido’s Pub in Homestead/Munhall last night.

You know how a cat can discern if you’ve removed a can of, say, tomato paste from a cupboard versus a can of tuna, and the cat will pounce as soon as he hears the air around the tuna can move?  That’s pretty much what happened when my husband opened the door last night and I heard the crinkle of a paper bag, which is a miracle considering how deaf I am.

I bared my claws and pounced with a hiss.  He got scared and held the bags out in front of him like a man offering a baby bear back to the mama bear all, “TAKE THEM TAKE THEM TAKE THEM! DON’T HURT ME! I WANT TO LIVE!”

I heard bottles clinking, I lined them up on the dining room table, twittered a picture, opened one with my teeth, guzzled it and practically had an orgasm.

The end.

This sounds bad.

But when you spin it like this, it sounds … not so bad.

You see?  Two bad pitches resulted in three home runs.

I like that math.

Because this is the year and we are drinking heavily on this here rocking bandwagon.

Oh, this little fire I have burning right here?  That’s just me burning all the newspapers reporting the Pirates have lost 9 of their last 11 preseason games.

I like to look at things positively. It wasn’t nine losses, it was “just a couple poor outings,” or, it wasn’t three home runs, it was three game-ball gifts to three lucky fans.  Also, this might be the alcohol talking, but I would like to remind you that if baseball was scored like golf, we’d be in first place.

LALALALA-ICAN’THEARYOU!

Headline:

Council should prepare for lots of comments that say one of these things.

1.  “Response?  There was a response?!”

2.  “DISLIKE!”

3.  “SUCKED!!!!!!”

4. “[golf clap]”

5. “[shakes cute little fist]”

Guess which one is mine.

My fake YouTube boyfriend Colin Sander, who you remember from his urban skiing video, now has a new Pittsburgh-filmed video up and it is, well, freaking awesome.

It’s called “‘Somehow’ by Recollect” but I call it “Ode to the Pittsburgh Parking Chair.”

(h/t Charles!)

At least two union paramedics are facing discipline in the death of Curtis Mitchell, who died following almost a dozen calls to EMS during Snowmaggedon in February.

“The truth is, there was a total system failure,” union grievance chairman Tom Polito said.

“There are no grounds or merit to discipline,” he said. “Zero.”

Are you freaking kidding me?

You know what?  Is anyone out there denying that there was a total system failure?

Has anyone said, “Oh, Lukey, you’re off the hook for the mass incompetence displayed during Snowmaggedon because hell, the whole system failed?”

Has anyone said, “Oh, plow truck drivers who called in sick, you’re off the hook because dang, that was a lot of snow on the roads.  And besides, you were operating with an outdated plow map?”

Has anyone said, “Michael Huss, you’re off the hook because, hell, you weren’t even in town what with the birthday shenanigans going off the chizzain up there in the mountains?”

No.  EVERYONE is on the hook.  EVERYONE should see consequences, because there was a TOTAL SYSTEM FAILURE and all the parts of the system are responsible for that total system failure.

If a group of people are holding up the four walls of a barn during a barn raising and they all walk away from their walls too early, causing the entire barn to fall down, do we say, oh, you’re all off the hook because you ALL let go?

Hell no.  We kick all four of those losers in the ass for their incompetence in holding up a stinkin’ wall. Luke let his wall go.  Michael Huss let his wall go.  The EMS system let their wall go.  And these paramedics let their wall go. And the barn fell down.

I would like to interject that I know nothing about barn raising other than it sounds like something the Amish do, so please don’t comment, “Gee.  You know nothing about barn raising, do you?”  I don’t.  I just admitted it.

A paramedic who tells a dying man that he needs to walk to an ambulance through two feet of snow, instead of, oh, I don’t know, realizing, “Hey, I’m the healthy non-dying one. Maybe I should get out of this truck, do my job, serve the sick people, and walk over and at least check this dude out,” REALLY ought to face some consequences.

This “no grounds or merit to discipline” is the most ludicrous, lying sack of crap I have smelled in quite some time, and I recently stood six inches from an elephant.

I’m naming you, Tom Polito, the next Annoying Burgher for not admitting what is so plain as day that even Stevie Wonder could see it and be all, “Ow! It hurts! Where are my sunglasses?!” and that is this: Your people let go of their wall.

You’re the next Annoying Burgher and your crown is in the mail and by crown I mean two things, 1. a framed copy of 50-year-old Curtis Mitchell’s obituary.  Hang it somewhere where you’ll be reminded every single day that this lost human life is actually more important than protecting your excuse-making union members.

Also, 2. a flaming bag of elephant poo.