Making something out of nothin'

The general method at this point is to sit at the computer staring at the screen or the keyboard or the wall or the solitaire game and think about what's been going on in my life.

This week, though, I've been experiencing troubles

Pam Burke

Dog, cat, horses: no catastrophes. Husband: not in trouble. Job: uninteresting (which I mean in the most respectful way possible, boss. You know me). Weather: boring. Me: totally boring, relatively uninjured and completely got nothin'.

I even stopped by the health fair last week to get in on the sweet deal for cheap blood tests and got nothin'.

I didn't have enough time to do anything but run in for the blood draw and leave, so I missed out on people watching, people talking and the doughnuts … at a health fair. That would've been a good target for some good ol' sarcasm-laced irony, and whoever you are, count yourself lucky.

I was even thinking ahead to this column and did try to make the most of my short time at the blood draw table. The nurse talked about my column and, just as she poised the needle over my vein, I said, "You know, if you mess this up you're going to be in it next week."

I'm pretty sure I'm the only person there that day who would've welcomed a needle mishap, and yet, got nothin'. I didn't even bruise. Are there no incompetent nurses at these things? Not even a nursing student with a case of the rookie yips? Nothin'.

So next step is to start rifling through the Internet, starting with the news headlines. This week's headlines provided little inspiration:

• Kirsten Dunst said in a magazine article that kissing Top-50 most-handsome actor Brad Pitt was gross. Couldn't bring myself to care, and then, too, it happened in a movie when she as a tween-aged child actor, so it's just creepy. Generally speaking, creepy things happening to children aren't funny ... though there was that drunken breast-feeding incident that gave me the giggles, so never say never.

Still, moved on.

• Prince William's rescue-at-sea job is being outsourced to the United States. Which made me wonder if we have begun some strange descent into third-world status to where jobs are now outsourced. But I got nothin' else.
• How about an article on how dinosaurs mated? No definitive answer from the scientists. More nothin'.
• Big-time clothing designer Vera Wang stopped charging women in Shanghai $500 just to try on one of her designer dresses. That's just too mind-boggling to consider. I don't even spend $500 per year on actual clothes I take home with me. Someone has too much money, and someone else is coming up with too many inventive ways to take it. I'm too tired and bitter to make this into something.
• FBI makes a statement about a 1950's memo about UFOs. Not as funny as it first promised to be. Thanks for nothin'.

How about:

• Different bacteria in each person's guts can cause them to be either skinny or fat. That was promising and led to a headline about how a breath test can tell which type of the bacteria you have, and that led to an article about how doctors are trying fecal transplants to improve other people's health. Wha—?

Yes, doctors, licensed doctors, are transplanting poo from person to person. Think about that for a moment.

Yeah, I won't be pulling that column out of my ear anytime soon either.