Tag Archives: Aunt Pheeb

Christmas Gift Selection #10 Genuine Emperor Scorpion

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Emperor Scorpion Sierra Leone Africa

Note: This is a repost of one of our Top Ten Gifts for the discerning buyer originally published in December of 2013, a year that will live in infamy. In what has become a half-assed tradition here at The Institute we have been irregularly reposting these now famous gift selections when we remember to do so in a lame attempt to create a Holiday Tradition and mostly because we suddenly realize it’s Christmas time and we don’t have squat done. It’s fun and we don’t have to spend the time making new stuff up. Enjoy

The First item in our Top Ten Countdown of Incredible Christmas gifts

Genuine Emperor Scorpion

*The Institute does more than just solve the world’s problems. We help in many other ways too. Every year our staff puts together a gift list that we offer to our loyal readers to help them with their Christmas shopping. We know that many of you have loved ones that are incredibly difficult to shop for. That’s why we go to the ends of the earth to bring you those items you just can’t find at Wal-Mart. So cheer up help is at hand, watch for the selections we’ve chosen as they appear throughout the rest of the holiday season.

Our first item is the cute but lovable Emperor Scorpion, a sassy native of Africa, it is sure to put a smile on the face of that hard to please relative that just won’t shut up. We’re sure they will be speechless when they open this gift. Our Aunt Pheeb got one of these for Uncle Skid last year and to complete the surprise she didn’t tell him it was coming. She just left it in the bottom of his favorite six-pack for him to find. Boy did that liven up half-time. That Aunt Pheeb she’s a kidder alright.

Order now: Satisfaction Guaranteed.

Emperor Scorpion item # 1999567783332-1

Availability: in Stock

Description: Color, shiny black with iridescent highlights. Creates delightful scrabbling sound as it hides amongst your personal effects. length 8″. wgt. 1 oz. but can get up to 4lbs. if overfed or left alone among your other pets. We recommend feeding your Emperor Scorpion only guaranteed, high volume, low calorie Scorpion chow. Available through our catalog. An Institute exclusive.

Choose country of origin: Ivory Coast, Senegal, Ghana, and Sierra Leone, sorry due to internal strife in Ivory Coast and Ghana, animal is only available from Senegal or Sierra Leone. Note: Senegalese item not suitable for children under 3

Accessories: scorpion chow, leash, rub on tattoos ( personalize your pet with unique designs).

Scorpion den, has individual quarters for up to 10 individuals, shipped unassembled.

Training manuals.

Mirror, official fighting mirror authorized by the OFSS** of America, scorpions go gonzo nuts when they see another scorpion, use to amuse your friends by having them hold the mirror, great at parties.

Anti-venom. Please select Pint, Quart or Half-gallon. Larger sizes may be  special ordered. Extra shipping charges apply. Sent from 3rd party shipper allow 4-6 weeks for arrival.

Scorpion sized booties and tail covers. Highly-recommended if animal is shipped to Co., WI., N. D., S. D., Upper MI., ME., MT., ID.,  All those little states below ME. and CA.

Price: $ 9500.00 please add tax if you live in Colorado.

Delivery time: guaranteed to arrive before Christmas if ordered before 12-01-13.

Watch for other great Gift ideas! Operators standing by to take your orders. Call now!

* Note: For those of you unfamiliar with The Institute and what it does, please see the page labeled The Institute on the Menu Bar above. That should explain everything. You shouldn’t have one single question remaining regarding The Institute after reading it. None. For those of you favored few who already know about the Institute, Nevermind. Return to your daily activities. Thank you for your support.

** Official Fighting Scorpions Society of America. The Ultimate in Arachnid Cage Fighting™, headquarters Killem, Al. 36001

Christmas Gift Selection #1 Genuine Emperor Scorpion

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XmasGiftEmerorScorpion4430
Emperor Scorpion Sierra Leone Africa

Note: This is a repost of one of our Top Ten Gifts for the discerning buyer originally published in December of 2013, a year that will live in infamy. In what has become a half-assed tradition here at The Institute we have been irregularly reposting these now famous gift selections when we remember to do so in a lame attempt to create a Holiday Tradition and mostly because we suddenly realize it’s Christmas time and we don’t have squat done. It’s fun and we don’t have to spend the time making new stuff up. Enjoy.

First of 10 Exceptional Gift Ideas For this Christmas Season!

Genuine Emperor Scorpion

*The Institute does more than just solve the world’s problems. We help in many other ways too. Every year our staff puts together a gift list that we offer to our loyal readers to help them with their Christmas shopping. We know that many of you have loved ones that are incredibly difficult to shop for. That’s why we go to the ends of the earth to bring you those items you just can’t find at Wal-Mart. So cheer up help is at hand, watch for the selections we’ve chosen as they appear throughout the rest of the holiday season.

Our first item is the cute but lovable Emperor Scorpion, a sassy native of Africa, it is sure to put a smile on the face of that hard to please relative that just won’t shut up. We’re sure they will be speechless when they open this gift. Our Aunt Pheeb got one of these for Uncle Skid last year and to complete the surprise she didn’t tell him it was coming. She just left it in the bottom of his favorite six-pack for him to find. Boy did that liven up half-time. That Aunt Pheeb she’s a kidder alright.

Order now: Satisfaction Guaranteed.

Emperor Scorpion item # 1999567783332-1

Availability: in Stock

Description: Color, shiny black with iridescent highlights. Creates delightful scrabbling sound as it hides amongst your personal effects. length 8″. wgt. 1 oz. but can get up to 4lbs. if overfed or left alone among your other pets. We recommend feeding your Emperor Scorpion only guaranteed, high volume, low calorie Scorpion chow. Available through our catalog. An Institute exclusive.

Choose country of origin: Ivory Coast, Senegal, Ghana, and Sierra Leone, sorry due to internal strife in Ivory Coast and Ghana, animal is only available from Senegal or Sierra Leone. Note: Senegalese item not suitable for children under 3

Accessories: scorpion chow, leash, rub on tattoos ( personalize your pet with unique designs).

Scorpion den, has individual quarters for up to 10 individuals, shipped unassembled.

Training manuals.

Mirror, official fighting mirror authorized by the OFSS** of America, scorpions go gonzo nuts when they see another scorpion, use to amuse your friends by having them hold the mirror, great at parties.

Anti-venom. Please select Pint, Quart or Half-gallon. Larger sizes may be  special ordered. Extra shipping charges apply. Sent from 3rd party shipper allow 4-6 weeks for arrival.

Scorpion sized booties and tail covers. Highly-recommended if animal is shipped to Co., WI., N. D., S. D., Upper MI., ME., MT., ID.,  All those little states below ME. and CA.

Price: $ 9500.00 please add tax if you live in Colorado.

Delivery time: guaranteed to arrive before Christmas if ordered before 12-01-13.

Watch for other great Gift ideas! Operators standing by to take your orders. Call now!

* Note: For those of you unfamiliar with The Institute and what it does, please see the page labeled The Institute on the Menu Bar above. That should explain everything. You shouldn’t have one single question remaining regarding The Institute after reading it. None. For those of you favored few who already know about the Institute, Nevermind. Return to your daily activities. Thank you for your support.

** Official Fighting Scorpions Society of America. The Ultimate in Arachnid Cage Fighting™, headquarters Killem, Al. 36001

Road Trip

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2016-01-05RoadTrip4734

Every once in a while we take a chance here at The Institute and do something really nice for our employees. This year we shut The Institute down completely for the entire holiday season, banked the fires, put the computers in standby, turned off the electricity to the fence, turned our livestock loose to fend for themselves, gave all of our interns a bus ticket to the last place they remember being from and The Institute went into hibernation until the New Year’s bells rang.

Now we are ramping up again. Everyone is slowly trickling back from where ever they spent the holidays. Just yesterday the bright, shiny, baby blue bus that the Sheriff’s department uses to transport prisoners hither and yon, hither being County road 56G where they cheerfully spread blacktop for the entire fortnight of the holidays, and yon, back to the tent city up near the Soapstone Wildlife Preserve where they ate sagebrush and tried not to freeze to death, dropped off the interns and two of our PhD’s that had spent the Christmas holidays in the bosom of the Larimer County Work but not release program.

Fortunately our critical employees like our chef returned a day early to get the fires built back up again. Of course he returned because we kept the back seat out of his 1968 Buick Boattail Riviera as an incentive to come back. You can not find replacements for those anywhere, I don’t care if you look on Craigslist, eBay, AutoZone, or any junkyard from here to the Philippines, they’re just not available. It’s good to see that coal-black smoke roiling out of the commissaries chimneys again. It won’t be long before the scent of coal fires and Lamprey stew and frozen dinners will coat the buildings with a thin layer of grease again. I know some of our interns cannot wait. Which is good because they’ve already chewed so much bark off the aspen I don’t know what the elk are going to eat this winter,

Our Chief of Security was also an early returnee. She had to put new brushes in the generator that keeps the fence electrified and to test fire the AR-15’s that were stored in the gun locker. Plus she just likes shooting stuff and it’s difficult to find a place where you can discharge automatic weapons with impunity. Our med staff came back because there would be a lot of cases to treat amongst the returning interns due to their living rough as they call it. Rashes, bites, broken teeth, infected tattoos, malnutrition, loss of key parts of their bodies from unknown incidents, bruises from manacles and restraints, loss of body hair from attending New Year’s parties, colds, hypo and hyper thermia, hearing loss from listening to Mother’s and other loved ones telling them to get a real job, acute disorientation, many terrible nearly untreatable diseases from those who traveled outside the country to their home of origin, and sea sickness. Our med staff is ready, in fact some of them were walking around with their rubber gloves on already.

Our animals got time off also. The wolves went up to Yellowstone to visit friends, the grizzlies that watch the far-flung perimeter of The Institute had reservations at Sandals again this year. They just can’t get enough of the Turks and Caicos, Saint Lucia and Antigua. Our resident Elk herd made the short pilgrimage to Rocky Mountain National Park to see the in-laws. Our own Bighorn Sheep herd went to visit cousins and other extended family down in the Black Mountains near Kingman Arizona. They’re a little late checking in but they were sighted on Highway 34 near Allenspark just outside of Rocky Mountain National Park where they were going to stop for a night to see friends and drop off a few Desert Bighorns who wanted to see the park first hand, or hoof as it were.

It’s always a good feeling to get The Institute back up and running. Soon we’ll be having our meetings, setting agendas and summer trips schedules, putting the interns back to work with planting and watering and hoeing. They’ll be getting that lower 160 acres planted to Rutabagas again and be busy stirring up the carp ponds. Fresh fish again, they like that. We here at The Institute hope your holidays went well and you’re back in the grind with a fresh mind and rested feet. Drop us a line when you’re not busy. Let us know how your holidays went. We’ve already heard from Aunt Pheeb. Uncle Skid got out of Rikers in time to make it home for Christmas. She didn’t even know he was in New York, he had just gone out for cigarettes, but that’s a story for another time. Have a good New Year.

Friday

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Grand Canyon 5616

It’s Friday, and you know what that means, we’re going to have a brand new show! And if there are any of you out there that watched the Mickey Mouse Club show as religiously as we did then you know that the phrase “And you know what that means, we’re going to have a brand new show” was actually said on Tuesday and it was “And you know what that means, we’re going to have a special guest”. Then they’d bring out somebody to do something goofy and we all thought it was the neatest thing we had ever seen and we called our friends to see if they were watching it too. They always were. But that doesn’t fit in with what I want to say today so I changed it. I can do that because I am the Overlord of this site and I can pretty much do whatever I want to.

Friday is always kind of a lost day where you go through the motions but you’ve got the weekend off and your heart isn’t in it. You’re not sure what you’re going to do, you have no big plans really, but you don’t want to waste it. After all Monday is just a couple days away. Maybe you’ll have some people over and just hang out. It would be a good time as Aunt Pheeb and Uncle Skid haven’t got out of the hospital yet. So you could have kind of a drama free day. Everybody knows what happens when Aunt Pheeb and Uncle Skid get wind of a party.

The reason they’re in the hospital is Uncle Skid heard that there was an all you can eat Crawfish boil down at Big Leg Kathy’s Shrimp Shack out on Hwy 11 and there was a $40 prize for whoever could eat the most crawfish in an hour. He talked Aunt Pheeb into going along with him and since Aunt Pheeb had been into the gin since about quarter to seven that morning she was game. Uncle Skid thought that if they both entered and won they’d win $80 bucks and that would go a long way towards getting the boot off the Skylark so they wouldn’t have to walk when they down to Ruby’s for cigarettes.

Uncle Skid had a cunning plan to win. It seemed like a sure thing and once he explained it to Pheeb they thought they had this thing knocked. Being Skid he was already trying to figure out how he could skim a little off the top of that $40 bucks so that Pheeb wouldn’t know and he could buy that cool Eight Ball spinner for his steering wheel he’d had his eye on for months. They could still pay off the parking tickets and get the Skylark out of hock. All they had to do was win.

The way everybody with any sense ate crawfish was you grabbed one, bit the head off, sucked out the rest of it from the shell, and then threw the shell at your neighbor. This has been the excepted practice for generations. Uncle Skid, using what small amount of animal cunning he had, noticed that this took about 5-7 seconds. His plan, and this is where the brilliance comes in, was to bypass all that mechanical stuff of shucking and sucking, and just eat the whole thing shell and all. And if you didn’t have to chew that was even better yet.

Well, that was three weeks ago and they may get out of the hospital the end of this week. The 40 bucks are gone. Skid didn’t read the flyer right and missed where it said ‘whoever’, singular, not plural, eats the most etc. so the most they could win was $40, and the hospital took that before they’d even let them sit in the emergency room waiting area. It didn’t matter how loud Aunt Pheeb moaned or tried to get at the receptionist they were going to wait. Security was there, they’d had these two in here before.

It seems that when you ingest over 14 lbs. of crawfish shells it does stuff to your lower alimentary track. It all bunches up like, and forms a ball about the size of a small cat. Apparently Nature does not have a system to take care of this naturally. The staff there at Our Sisters of Eternal Misery hospital have a wall of miracles they call it, where they post the dumbest things live people have done to themselves and/or each other and this little episode is posted right up there at the top. There were Doctors, Nurses, Residents, Interns, Candy Stripers spitting milk clear across the cafeteria tables when they heard what happened.

Pheeb swears she’s going to lobotomize Skip with a bread knife and a cantaloupe baller when they get out. Skid is worried that the Skylark is now at the impound lot and he’s going to have to come up with not only the parking ticket money but now the impound fees and they’re going to be walking to Ruby’s for cigarettes for the rest of their lives.

So there it is then. Have the party now before they get out and maybe it will be one that doesn’t involve police and paramedics and the guys from Power and Lights having to re-string the neighbors electrical lines because Skid leaned that aluminum ladder against them so he could crawl up there and look over the hedge at the guys wife. We all know how that turned out.

And if a party doesn’t float your boat why not drop in at the Grand Canyon and take in the sights. It’s pretty there, mostly quiet and since the Skylark is out of commission Uncle Skid and Aunt Pheeb won’t be dropping in.

Weekend Color

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WeekendColor3296Columbine and Aspen

Listen I know you guys are busy. It’s the holiday weekend, you’ve got company. You gotta fix burgers, the charcoal won’t light because the air vent is rusted shut on the bottom of the grill and no matter how much lighter fluid you squirt on it, it just flashes and flares up about 20′ in the air and goes out. Aunt Pheeb and Uncle Skid are probably over and Aunt Pheeb’s been in the peppermint schnapps a little too deep and she is bound and determined that this is the day she’s going to erase that tattoo of the Mexican cutie from Uncle Skid’s backside, but she can’t find a place to plug the angle grinder in, and Uncle Skid knows that he better double buckle his pants and stay out of sight for a while.

Aunt Pheeb brought along their dog Arlo, who thinks he’s a retriever but is really a Chihuahua/pit bull mix and he just ate all the new Angel fish the kids bought with their lotto proceeds and they’re mad. They’re trying to string him up but he’s back under the Hudson so far they can’t get at him. He’s bitten the tips off of two of your new $700 graphite fishing rods they’re using to poke him out of there.

Uncle Skid is hitting on the next door neighbor and has promised to show her his tattoo if he can just climb over the fence. Her husband just came out and now Uncle Skid is running around with two fingers stuffed up his nose making muffled noises about how to stop the bleeding. Aunt Pheeb is laughing so hard she fell over that rickety lawn chair you weren’t going to use this year and knocked over the table with all the potato salad and stuff everybody brought and that was enough to get Arlo out from under the car. Some of the women are trying to scoop the potato salad and the jello surprise back into the bowls and keep Arlo from getting his feet in the baked beans. This is tough because Arlo always stands in his food bowl when he eats.

Your significant other has mentioned earlier that she didn’t want to host the party again this year after what happened to the gazebo and that firemen’s elbow, but you said “Hey it’ll be fun. We won’t invite Aunt Pheeb and Uncle Skid this time.” However you forget that it doesn’t matter if you invite them or not. They’re going to be there and now you’re getting those glances from her that say “Wait until I get you alone…you’ll never host another party again if I have to… etc”

I realize that these are just a few of the minor things that happen before the party gets in full swing but I though you could take a moment out of your very busy day to look at some thing pretty. It’s a flower. A Columbine to be exact, although that doesn’t really matter, it doesn’t make it any more or less pretty knowing its name, and you won’t remember it anyway the way you’re draining that keg, it’s just something useful to call it. They often grow around and in front of Aspen and that has a tendency to make them even prettier, so stop a minute, go inside to your computer room and put the chair under the doorknob and check it out. Take a moment to reflect on the fact that there are other pretty things in life besides your family. It’s going to be a long weekend.

P.S. I think it might be a good thing if you lock Arlo in the tuff shed for the rest of the afternoon now that’s he gotten a taste of those baked beans. You’ll thank me later.

Leftover Beauty

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Leftover Beauty4307Tropical Flowers                             click to enlarge

Well for all you people who slept through the weekend Easter was yesterday. How do you do that anyway? Sleep through a weekend. Do you like go to bed Friday and wake up this Monday morning and say “Hey, dudes, did I miss anything?” That’s always been a mystery to me. Although I can remember one weekend some time ago where I didn’t get out of bed all weekend but that was a special circumstance and best left in the past.

Like all holidays this one brings together families, friends, social workers and their clients, parole officers and their nicer and less dangerous parolees, people who wait tables and people that are  too lazy to cook, big events where they worship, smaller events where they don’t, they just eat ham, watch parades on TV, and make their kids go out and look for brightly colored Easter eggs so they can drink their beer in peace.

It also generates leftovers. Massive amounts of leftovers. Everything from that extra twenty pound ham you cooked in case some of the neighbors came over to sing Easter carols and you felt like you had to feed them, to Aunt Pheeb’s Squid and Applesauce puree that curiously went untouched. Even Uncle Skid wouldn’t eat that stuff and he has to sleep with that woman.

Another thing that people seem to have a lot of on this holiday is flowers. Every kind of flower you can think of but mostly a lot of lilies. They’re the flower of choice for this holiday and you can’t go to anyone’s house without bringing them a big pot full of lilies. They are such a pain in the wha-toot to travel with. They’re top-heavy and no matter where you put them in the car they fall over, bust the buds off the stalks, scatter dirt all over the back seat of your Maserati, and when you get there the people you are visiting already have a bunch of them. All they could ever want in fact. So many that they’re now sticking out through the cracks in the garage door and lined up and down the front walk and set on the stoop so you can’t even get into the house without tripping over the lilies. But you paid $12.99 for the damn things and by god they’re going in the house.

Even we photographers have the leftover problem. I was going through my images this morning before tackling the blog and I found a bunch of leftover flower pictures, some of them going back years and many holidays. I had completely forgotten about them so in the spirit of sharing leftovers I’m presenting this beauty this morning. Plus I still have the full dish, well a pail actually, of Aunt Pheeb’s Squid and Applesauce puree that I’m more than willing to share. Even if you don’t care for it it’s good for killing slugs in your garden. Just scoop some around the base of your lilies and when the slugs crawl through it that’s all, Hasta la vista, baby.

There it is then, leftover beauty. Enjoy.

Daylight Saving Time

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DaylightSaving5518Snow Goose – Bosque del Apache        click to enlarge

Hey people, It’s Daylight Saving time in many parts of America today. It sounds weird to say Daylight Saving time, which is singular, instead of Daylight Savings time, which is plural. You’re supposed to say Daylight Saving time when you’re talking about one event like Spring Forward, or Fall Back, and Daylight Savings time when you’re discussing the time change process in general. Like when you say to your neighbor over a warm shot of tequila “Say that Daylight Savings time is something, ain’t it? All changing back and forth like that.” Everyone around our neighborhood says Daylight Savings time regardless and don’t really give a large Rat’s posterior whether it’s right or wrong. But then I live in a low-income neighborhood.

Did you remember? Did you get up or did you take advantage of that extra hour to sleep in? Guess what this guy did? The goose above I mean. If you guessed he slept in you’re today’s winner and you get an extra helping of cauliflower puree at Aunt Pheeb’s Happy Daylight Savings time dinner tonight.

Of course while he was sleeping everybody else got up and went to work like good little geese and now he’s late. He didn’t get the memo on which cornfield they’re going to be ransacking today, his girlfriend didn’t wake him up and he’s bent about that, and he has to flap all the way to where he thinks they are on his own because there’s nobody to do the V thing with. And to top it off he has to honk until his honker is sore to find them. This isn’t shaping up to be a good day to be him.

Now you’re probably saying to yourself “Now wait just a gosh-darn minute here, bucko!” this scenario happens in the Fall when the time changes to Fall back rules. Time goes back an hour and catches everybody off guard so they don’t get up in time and they’re all late and miss planes, burn the toast, and it’s still dark out when they get up and they can’t see good, etc. Remember last year? That was when Uncle Skid backed over the lawn mower in the dark on his way to the seven-Eleven to get cigarettes and it punctured the gas tank in his ’85 Buick LeSabre and it caught fire and exploded and Aunt Pheeb had to bring him lard soup because he wouldn’t eat that health food crap they tried to feed him in the hospital. This time change stuff can be tricky.

Or you know what? It could be the other way around entirely and all this stuff could be happening because of the Spring Forward thing. I told you this time change stuff is tricky. And to add to the problem there are places in our great country that have said “To hell with it.” and don’t even recognize the whole time change thing. That’s where this guy is from so he is constantly confused as to what time it is. Those folks that don’t recognize the time change thing, which is used by ‘Them’, to trick Able-bodied, Red-blooded Americans into thinking there’s more daylight than there really is, use the old system where, ‘when it gets dark they go to bed and when it gets light they get up’. They’re what we call Contrarians. Like on some of Indian reservations and Arizona.

I understand contrarian. But as luck would have it they had one not so evil genius on the program when they set this whole thing up that said “Let’s do it on a Sunday so it screws the least amount of people up.” So because of that guy (Thank you buddy) I just get up when I feel like it, go around and change my clocks, finding out first which direction they go, have breakfast, drink a little tea and am thankful I don’t have to find where everybody else is or flap my brains out trying to get there or wear my honker to a nub calling for them. So regardless of whatever the “Great Gray They” do, I’m cool.

By the way, it is 8:00am Daylight Savings time as I’m writing this. Hope it is where you live too.