bush approval rating Brain Farts Brain Fart brain farts brain fart brain-fart brain-farts brainfart brainfarts LEO Louisville Eccentric Observer parody lampoon satire Louisville Kentucky Kevin Gibson kgramone@aol.com  kgramone humor cat's ass fart anna kournikova zeitgeist  bush approval rating

Brain Farts was a weekly humor column that ran in the Louisville Eccentric Observer from mid-2000 until the summer of 2002. It was, well, eccentric. And occasionally satirical. And sardonic. Some liked it, some hated it; some just didn't get it, and that's OK. There were times when I didn't get it either. I've compiled here some of the archives from Brain Farts for the enjoyment of friends, family and anyone else who happens by. I also have written some new Brain Farts, and added some links and other trivialities that you shouldn't be too concerned with.

Unless you're as bored as I am.

Before I get into how sometimes I just don’t get things, I want to share a new word with you all. The young lady I see on a regular basis (see, I’m so emotionally closed off that I can’t even type the word “girlfriend”) and I stopped off at a local department store yesterday, as I had run out of laundry detergent at my house.

I needed to wash some clothes so I wouldn’t look like a complete slob for work this week (not that anyone would notice), so to me it was a fairly important errand. I needed detergent. And it was, in a sense, an emergency.

“Hey,” I said, “we’re having a detergency.”

She looked at me as if I were suddenly wearing a clown suit.

Anyway, that’s just a preface for some angst I began feeling last week: that I just don’t get it. My good friend Andrew (see Marketing Genius Gone Horribly Awry) and I were having our weekly Thursday night chat over drinks and wings, when he began telling me how his oldest son, Griffin, is able to understand the conversion of base numbers. The kid is only, like, 7.

I told Andrew, “Heck, I’m almost 40, and I don’t understand base numbers conversion.” You see, I was trying to be supportive. But Andrew, for some reason, took this as a challenge and started trying to explain it to me. I told him there was a reason I hadn’t had a math class since I was a freshman – in HIGH SCHOOL, for crying out loud – but that only strengthened his resolve.

“Say you’ve got the number 10,” he said. “The second number represents ones, so 10 means you have a zero number of ones. So the one therefore represents tens, meaning you have what? Yes, one of tens. So let’s say you have the number 57 in base 10 and you want to convert it to base three … "

It was at that point I’m fairly sure I had a mild stroke.

The very next evening my lady-friend-who-I-see-on-a-regular-basis and I were attending an art opening of a friend of hers. The artist had created what she called “sky wheels,” wooden tubular things with various sky scenes (clouds, sun, stars, etc.), with beads and other items of corresponding color attached and dangling off the sides.

Jen loved them; she couldn’t stop marveling at their beauty. To me they looked like oversized artificial bait -- did you know you can get artificial anything to catch fish with? Seriously, you can get artificial maggots, artificial lunch meat, artificial dog biscuits, artificial tiger nuts (don't believe me? Click here), and even artificial bread (it's like $4 for a few crumbs, yet a loaf of real bread is only about a buck. What the?)

But I digress. The point was, my lady friend was very much into the art, so I waited and just kept my mouth shut.

Then she gushed, “They remind me of different days of my youth. Each one reminds me of a different day.”

To which I said, “They remind me of a day when my grandfather took me fishing for crappie.”

Clown suit.

So when we left, I explained to her that I just don’t get certain artistic media. To me, I said, the sky wheels were like higher math; you know, base numbers. Just not something my brain can get its arms around. She said she understood but that she still wanted to attend art openings whenever possible. I told her that was only fair, because, hey, she watches football with me. And I can guarantee you she doesn’t understand Cover 2 or the West Coast Offense.

I wonder if they make artificial West Coast Offenses for catching footballs?

Contact the writer at kgramone@aol.com. Detergency. Get it?