Ash Vennsday

First of all, props to my friend Miller who came up with the name and inspiration for this Vennsday.  Yes, that's a real person, not a bottle of beer that I call my friend, although I do that, too.

Anyways, Lent is a time of restraint and penance and prayer.  It is like a cleanse for your soul, in which you live on only lemon soul juice and cayenne soul pepper, and you feel terrible until the hallucinations come on, and then you feel great because you think you just defeated the devil.

It's like inside-out Christmas.

It is, in short, the antithesis of me.

Fun things about Lent: saying Maundy Thursday and being a kid and having sword fights with the cross-shaped palms on Palm Sunday.

Not-fun things about Lent: everything else.

Which is why Lent and I are as separate as the green circle in the Venn Diagram below¹:

Know what I like?  Things that I like.  So I'm gonna keep doing 'em.

Maybe I've been a little too hard on the Church thus far.  I mean, if it weren't for Lent, there would be no Mardi Gras².  And if there were no Mardi Gras, my only excuse for drinking on Tuesday would be "why not?"

 I don't want fish on Fridays.  I want a beer and a burger.  Or maybe like a beer and a burger, but instead of buns, there will be two filets and some pork belly, and then that will be followed up by a bourbon.  Fish is for Sunday brunch when I want something light.  Or maybe for Saturday happy hour at the sushi restaurant.

¹I think it's clear to everyone that today isn't my best day for similes.
²There would also be no excuse to say snarky things like "I would respond, but I gave up reading bad grammar for Lent" on youtube comments.^3
3I have never actually commented on youtube anything in my life because that whole comment realm makes me believe that it's the end times.

Vennsday - God Loves You And Your Need For Booze

Well, it seems that the Venn Diagram Dinocorn has finally started working again.  That lazy bastard.  And!  With its new enhanced dinosaur powers, it is using more color!

These are exciting times, people.

Let's get to it.

This is also a nice diagram of my entire diet.  Anyways, you could show yourself to be a good, solid guy from Illinois by literally eating meat 'n potatoes.  That sounds pretty tasty, if slightly bland.  Or, you could be a 14-year-old who has decided that meat is evil and is eating only cheese sandwiches.  Without the meat is evil part, that sounds like Thursday to me¹.  But, put all those magical yet common ingredients together, and you have what some² would call nirvana: the cheeseburger.  I just had one two hours ago, and you know what?  I want more.  Thanks for loving me, God!³

Best quote of the week:  "More debates, more vetting of candidates because we know the mistake made in our country four years ago was having a candidate that was not vetted." - Sarah Palin.  Ah, she consistently reminds me why I listen to political podcasts.  It is less funny to think about any kind of could-have-been face off between her and Ahmadinejad.  They would have both agreed that there were no gay people in their jurisdictions, been creepily folksy, and then hunted each other with helicopters.  Final thought: Tea Parties started becoming way less fun when they decided that maybe Newt Gingrich should be president.

I'm bringing it all together here, for a nice clean wrap-up.  It looks like it's about food and drink and then SURPRISE it's about politics.  That, kids, is how you make an old-fashioned, or as we call them at my house, Anna's maybe-three-more-of-these-will-make-thinly-veiled-racism-funny⁴ juice.

¹Wednesday obviously being the day that I spend working on my blog instead of grocery shopping.
²Ok, just me.

³I'm not saying that God doesn't love Jewish people, I'm just saying that he wants them to be miserable and hungry.

⁴They didn't.