Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? Eat Moose!

To paraphrase Brian Wilson in the Vegetables song, I know that you’ll feel better if you send us in your letter and tell us the names of your…most annoying phone calls—and how to fight back.  Mine are:

1. Pension-donation telemarketer.

Ring, ring.

TELEMARKETER: “Good afternoon, sir! My name is Mortimer Gladhand, from the Pension Donation Overzealous Marketing Corporation.  And how are you today?”

ME: “You know, I’m glad you asked me that.  I have a disgusting boil on my butt and my wife never quits with the nagging.  ‘Go to the doctor!  Put some cream on it! Get off your lazy butt!  That’s how you got the boil in the first place!’ Nag, nag, nag. Wives have a nag gene, you know that? Yeah, I first learned that when my mother-in-law came over and stayed for six years. By the second year the romance had died off in my marriage anyway and then I had two old nagging hens in the house. That’s the story of my life—no respect, I don’t get no respect! My kids are no bargain either. I tell ya–”

TELEMARKETER: “You have a good day, sir.”

2. Mothmen.  If you’ve seen Richard Gere in The Mothman Prophesies, you know that a phone call from a mothman is almost as annoying as a telemarketing call.  You get an ear-splitting screeching noise, like something between a fax tone and a screaming banshee. The unspoken message is “I am a seriously creepy entity and I’m going to eat your spaghetti first and then your children.” But do not be creeped out. Instead, have a recording ready of your wife nagging about your butt-boil and play it right back in the mothman’s ear. That will seriously gross it out and you’ll never hear from it again.

3. A call from Sarah Palin telling me she’s a real governor. She wants to get back at comedians (of which I am a type, loosely speaking), for duping her into thinking they were Nicolas Sarkozy. “Hi!  This is the governor of Alaska!” she says. “The largest state in the Union!”

“Oh, sure you are,” I reply. “You couldn’t govern anything larger than your kitchen. Give me a break.”

“Can too.”

“Can’t.”

“Can too.”

“Can’t. A governor wouldn’t go around shooting up the state’s wildlife from a helicopter.”

“Oh yeah? Well at least I don’t bust the federal budget from a $400 million helicopter.”

“Uh-huh…Well, by the way, I can see Canada from Buffalo but that doesn’t make me an international affairs statesman, you know.”

“Hey—eat moose!”

“Chocolate mousse?”

“Damned liberals, you’re all out to get me.”

“Damned right—you’re really hot, did you know that?”

4. Getting put on hold. “Sir, may I put you on hold a minute? Just one moment, sir.”

And here, I have to give due credit to Homer Simpson. “No, you may not put me on hold!” he retorts in one episode, “I’ll put you on hold!” Then he sings Wichita Lineman in a tinny voice. “I am a lineman for the county, and I drive the main road…Searchin’ in the sun for another overload…I hear you singin’ in the wire, I can hear you through the whine…”

5. Obscene calls from a woman with a sexy voice who says she looks like Julia Stiles, only more nubile. Uhm…I’ll get back to you on that one.