Hammy Vision

Hammy and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

2010-06-16T09:19:00.000-07:00

I went to sleep with a glass of water on my night stand, and now there’s water on the floor. And when I got out of bed this morning I tripped over the laundry basket and by mistake I cut the under part of my nose while shaving. And I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day because when I got to Starbucks I asked for a chocolate doughnut, and I was told that they didn’t have those anymore, and that a plain one would have to do. And then they gave me a latte instead of a mocha, and when I sipped it I burned my tongue. And while I was arguing with the barista about my mocha, someone gave me a new door ding in the parking lot and then drove off. I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, that’s what it was because after leaving Starbucks I had to sit in traffic for an hour and a half. Who gets out of bed at 6am to sit on the freeway for an hour and a half? ‘I hope you all own shares of BP!’ I shouted. ‘I hope that a dog totals your Prius!’ I shouted, shaking my steering wheel. All the shaking made my doughnut fall on the floor of the truck. I think I’ll move to Australia.

When I got to work, Mark had a Jelly roll with his Mocha. Brett had some lemon cookies and a cup of tea. Guess who still had a lonely, tepid latte? At meeting time the boss said that my numbers didn’t look right, and at the other meeting time I got action items. Who needs action items? ‘Make those numbers right by next week’ he said. ‘Next week’, I said, ‘I’m moving to Australia’.

I am having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. I told everyone. No one even answered.

At lunch time I spilled soup on my shirt, I got pee on my pants, and I bit my tongue. The boss wants to go to the conference with Mark, not with me. And Brett took back the stapler he said I could keep, and the soda machine was out of diet coke, and I broke my pen.

When I went home I had to make mac and cheese for the kids, and I hate mac and cheese. And the baby needed changing, and I hate changing. And "Cupcake Wars' was on TV, and I hate 'Cupcake Wars'. And the school left a message that said that one of our kids was ‘a really neat kid’ but that they needed to talk with us about him. And Sally wants to sleep on her side of the bed, and not with me.

It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

...I guess some days are like that. Even in Australia.

The Crash

2010-04-09T15:49:00.000-07:00

After the dust had settled, Don opened his eyes and spied a tiny caterpillar just a few inches from his right cheek, almost hanging in mid-air as it was busily gnawing on a thin blade of grass that was bending slightly under the weight of the beast. You could almost hear it chewing in the silence that had fallen since the crash. Don sat and stared at it for a few seconds, and then made a face as if to mimic the caterpillar’s chewing - partly, I figure, to check to see that he was still alive, and partly to enjoy the simple things in life that people briefly re-discover after a near-death experience.

Most people would have assumed, and rightly so, that we had been out drinking again and in a fit of poor judgment decided to get in a vehicle and make it go – but this was not the case. What had been the case was that we were kinda checking out some ass on the way to a team building experience that our boss, in his infinite wisdom, forced us to go to. We really had no business going to this event in the first place, as everyone who sat within ear-shot of Don and myself had already made up their mind about whether they could stand working with us or not. Ordinarily, we might have downed a pint of liquor in the parking lot before-hand, and then followed some other poor bastard out to their car so that they could drive us to the event, all the while making obnoxious jokes and sounds, and seeing who could sound the most like Sam Kinnison. Don’s natural drunk voice was a cross between Jeff Foxworthy and Sam Kinnison, so he had an advantage in this area, but I could usually mimic him well enough to get him in trouble on conference calls and such, from time to time. But this is all beside the point, because as I said before, we were not drinking at all that day – we were checking out ass.

Ass comes in many shapes and sizes, and while the debate rages on over what the perfect ass looks like you can pretty much count on most guys to have the exact same reaction when confronted with a given ass. On the affirmative, the guy will either make a shortened ‘m’ sound, or potentially even go as far as to say ‘damn’, but this is rare and is also a call for any other guys in the area to stop what they are doing and have a gander as well, because it’s just that good. It’s a bonding thing. Conversely, on the negative a typical guy will usually stifle a kind of gagging sound, which is difficult to describe but often heard, while averting their eyes – sometimes going as far as to actually shield their eyes with one hand, just in case. Occasionally, there will be a negative of epic proportions at which point the guy will temporarily lose control of his diaphragm and utter a rather louder sound that is either similar to a retching noise, or, if he is more experienced, ‘Oh Gawd’. This is also, contrary to what you might think, a call for other guys in the vicinity to drop what they are doing to experience this with you. Again, it’s a bonding thing. Don’t ask. There are no asses in the middle. It’s a simple yes or no question.

Don was an ‘Oh Gawd’-er because he was more experienced at this than I was. He was also thrilled by the recent development of women taking to putting their names across their backs or butts on sweats because it made identifying and pointing out the ass in question much easier than in a normal girl-group situation. Plus, if you ever felt the urge to compliment someone on their derrier, it made that easier too. ‘Hey Williams!!!’ (pause) ‘Nice ass!!!’

Just kidding, he never did that - at least not with the windows rolled down anyway. Don probably thought it unusual that so many of the girls were named either ‘Juicy’ or ‘Pink’ though – speaking of which, why would you want the word ‘Juicy’ across your ass anyway? That’s just. So. Wrong.

So anyhow, where were we… O right, we were on our way to said team building event, listening to Jimmie Rodgers on the stereo (because we’re freaks) and checking out ass:

Me: ‘Abercrombie.’
Don: ‘m.’ *pause*
Stereo: ‘Um gonna buuuuy me a shotgun,’
Don: ‘Blondie there.’
Me: ‘Damn.’
Stereo: ‘Just as looooooong as I’m tall…’
Don: ‘What?’
Me: ‘Forrester, in the red there.’
Don: ‘Damn.’
Stereo: ‘Gonna buy me a shotgun,’

And this went on pretty much the whole trip, as we toodled down the road, until we came upon something that we did not entirely expect to be possible.

Me: ‘Juicy.’
Don: ‘m’.
Don (shielding his eyes): ‘O Gawd!’
Me (looking over): ‘What, I, *retch*, ack!’
Me (thinking quickly): ‘With her, or that big green one we saw a minute ago?’
Don (grimacing at the thought, but you have to answer –it’s the rule): ‘Green-ey’.
Me (laughing): ugh.
Don: ‘In grey, up ahead’.
Me: ‘I don’t see – ‘
Don: ‘Well, we’ll have to get closer to be sure.’
Me: ‘Oh there…’
Me: *pause*
Don: *pause*

And we paused there, at length, as if we were two yokels trying to make out the meaning of a Picasso painting, and we got closer and closer to the ass in question, but neither one of us said anything or took our eyes off it. It wasn’t a good ass, but it wasn’t a bad ass either. It was set dead-square in the middle, not bony or fat, not shapely but with shape, not huge and not small, and in fact there was absolutely nothing remarkable about it at all, except to say that it did indeed exist somewhere under those grey sweatpants, and upon discovering what can only be assumed to be the one ‘middle-of-the-road’ ass in the entire world, our brains simply stopped functioning as they went into an endless loop of analysis paralysis and

Don: ‘STAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWPPPP!!!!!’

Cue slow motion. I have had numerous near-death experiences before (almost drowning, nearly being hit by a train, motorcycle vs. Mack truck, etc.) and the one constant between them all is that the world seems to slow down for the duration of the experience. The world has now slowed down, which means that I am about to die unless I do something, so here goes…

I hear Don shout, and tear my face away from the ass dilemma to assess the situation. We are traveling about 50 MPH, and there is a line of stopped cars in front of us at what appears to be approximately 10 feet away (though I am sure it was really farther). I have a suspicion that it would be futile to hit the brakes at this point, and I doubt I could even touch the brake pedal before impact. I have to swerve, either into oncoming traffic or the shoulder. I’ll pick the shoulder. It might not be wide enough for the car, and I am not sure what lies beyond it because my eyes can’t see that far that fast, but all in all it sounds like a better plan than the oncoming traffic. And time begins to speed up. . .

WA-ZIZZZZZ!!! We managed to swerve fast enough to avoid hitting the car in front of us, and we were even in the shoulder, briefly, but apparently there was a lot of loose gravel or something in said shoulder which caused a total failure of traction because as I straightened out from the swerve our vehicle continued drifting slowly sideways, and we left the shoulder at the speed of still 50 mph, were momentarily airborne, and then began to descend and bottom out in a near perfect fashion in a canal which was beyond the shoulder of the road by a few feet, running parallel to it.

The car crunched perfectly into the rather narrow canal – like a slot car running on a track really, and we zoomed along the canal floor rather grandly as I stood on the brakes, and Jimmie was howling the whole way too:

Don: ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!’
Stereo: ‘Gunna buy me a pistol…’
Don: ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!’
Stereo: ‘With a big long shiny barrel…’
Don: ‘AAAAHHH!!!!’

We ultimately stopped a few feet short of a metal underpass pipe, and I reached over and turned off the stereo; the caterpillar chewed, and then Don made his chewing face, and then we assessed the situation. The canal was luckily empty, as the sides rose slightly above the roof of the car and had it been full we would have been unable to open the doors (because they butted up against the sides of the canal within a few inches either way), and the water surely would have shorted out the electrical system causing the sun roof to be inaccessible. Picture two guys slowly drowning as they frantically tried to position themselves in such a way as to kick through a windshield or sunroof from the inside of a car. Haha.. Fortunately, this did not happen, though we did have to climb out the sun roof to escape our current situation – which as it turns out had not gone entirely unnoticed by the rest of the motoring community, leaving us to sit on the roof of the car smiling and waving at everyone who had stopped to gawk and ask stupid questions while leaning out their windows like ‘Hao’d yoo doo thay-at?!?’

You would think that this embarrassment would be enough for one day, but alas, remember the ass-in-question that caused this whole mess? Well, it decided to walk over to see how we were doing:

Ass-in-question: ‘Hao’d yoo doo thay-at?!?’
Don (recovered now, and in his best Sam Kinnison voice): ‘Well, you SEE, ‘
Me (cutting Don off, so we don’t end up in jail): ‘We were just looking for, uh, free parking.’
Don (nodding): ‘Free parking.’
Ass-in-question (slowly): ‘Are you guys, uh, feeling ok?’
Me (looking at Don): ‘Oh sure, it’s all good. We’re fine. Everything’s fine. Are you fine?’
Don: ‘Yup! Just fine!’

And the ass-in-question waves and walks away.

Me: ‘I think that one’s a ‘no’ for me.’
Don: ‘Yeah, it’s a no. The lighting must have been bad before.’
Me: ‘It’s not that bad, but I mean, no where near as good as Juicy was.’
Don: ‘Kind of saggy, really. I mean –‘
Cop: ‘Sir, step off the car please.’

Let me take a little break here to give you some background on my experiences to-date with the po po. Actually, they can be summed up quite simply: I never get away with anything. Nothing, nada, zip. I have tried various answers to the ‘do you know why I pulled you over, son?’ question, and none of them have ever caused an incident to end in a favorable manner. Allow me to recap a medley of events for you, briefly:

Cop: ‘Did you see that sign back there?’

Possible Answer: A) ‘Yes’
Response: ‘So you willfully disregarded the sign then. You know, all I ever see around here are accidents and blah blah blah.’
End Result: Ticket

Possible Answer: B) ‘No’
Response: ‘So, you’re a lousy driver and you aren’t paying attention to the road either, huh? I should cite you for blah blah blah blah.’
End Result: Ticket

Possible Answer: C) ‘Yes, but I guess that I made a judgement call, because everyone else wa-’
Response: ‘A what?!?? If everyone jumped off of a bridge would you? If everyone blah blah blah blah, would you!?’
End Result: Ticket

I fleetingly and fancifully thought about getting cheeky with the officer, since I knew I was going to get a ticket anyway, but resisted the temptation to answer in the affirmative. After all, if everyone is jumping off the bridge then there’s probably going to be a good reason (train coming, bridge on fire, etc), but I let that one slide because, well, I didn’t really need any new jewelry that day. Anyway, back to the present:

Cop: ‘Did you see that sign back there?’
Don: ‘Ack!’
Me (stepping off the car): ‘Hi Offi-‘
Cop: ‘Son, have you been drinking?’
Me: (I know the answer to this one, because I get asked all the time for some reason): ‘No sir!’
Cop: ‘License and registration.’
Me (after having retrieved it by shimmying through the sunroof, to the delight of onlookers): ‘Here it is.’
Cop: ‘What happened?’
Sam Kinnison: ‘Well, you SEE,’
Me (cutting Don off, so we don’t end up in bracelets): ‘I, uh, just got distracted, and umm, I guess we ended up here.’
Cop (writing things down and frowning at me): ‘I should cite you for reckless driving, but it looks like you have enough to worry about for right now.’
Me (in disbelief, as I have never gotten out of a ticket before in my life): ‘Uh… thanks.’
Cop: ‘You got a tow truck on the way, right?’
Me (I sure will in a minute here): ‘Yup!’

The cop then cheerfully proceeded to light about 15 road flares and sprinkle them all about the shoulder of the road, as if there was going to be some sort of party in our honor, and then gets in his car and leaves. This is truly excellent, because now anyone who might have missed a bright red Acura sitting at the bottom of a canal with two nimrods sitting on top of it is not going to make the same mistake when it’s surrounded by flares – oh no.

So I sit back down on top of the car to call a tow truck amid what has become every one else on the road’s personal reality TV show, and I think to myself: Do we have AAA? So I call my wife to ask, and if so what our account number is. The conversation went something like this:

* ring ring *
Her: ‘Hello.’
Me: ‘Hi, do we have AAA?’
Her: ‘No.’
Me: ‘Damn.’
Her: ‘Wait, what do you need AAA for?’
Me (cornered): ‘Errr.. Nothing!’
Her: ‘What did you do?’
Me: ‘Uhh… Well, we sort of like, drove into a ditch by accident.’
Her (pausing): ‘And how on earth did you do that?’
Don (who had been listening in - shouting): ‘We was checkin’ out ASS!!!’
Me: (covering the phone): ‘I don’t remember. I have to call a tow truck now though.’
Her: ‘There’s a sticker on your window, remember?’
* click *

Ahhh, that’s right. The auto manufacturer offered free roadside assistance for the first 48k miles. I had forgotten that! So I call them up and a guy with a two truck arrives in short order, winches the car out of the canal and what was a rakish 45 degree angle or more, and we are back on the road in no time. No visible damage to the car at all, save a couple paint scrapes that were caused by a patch of blackberries growing on the side of the canal. Amazing really. So we get back in the car and continue, though somewhat more cautiously and shakily, on to the team building event - which is half over by this point, but whatever.

Don: ‘Don’t fucking kill us this time.’
Me: ‘Okay.’
Don: ‘Pink.’
Me: ‘m’

We pulled in at the address a few minutes later. Turns out that the teambuilding event was, for real, a racing event hosted here: http://www.traxxracing.com/groups.asp .

We opted out.

Back in My Day. . .

2010-01-02T15:38:00.000-08:00

I'm not quite old enough to bellow 'back in myyyy day' and proceed to tell a long and excruiatingly painful story about making soap by hand behind the barn with my brothers and sisters, concluding with a moral or values or something else long forgotten. Not quite yet anyway. I hope. Though I was in Target (I have my standards) the other day and over-heard a boy about 8 whine incessantly about not getting a new Wii game and ultimately fold his arms declaring that he was bored and that there was nothing to do. The parent subsequently caved. Now, aside from being privately flabbergasted and fondly reminiscing about the one time I tried throwing a tantrum in the store (which I am told (and only kinda remember) ended with my bare backside exposed to everyone in aisle 4, followed by a good long uncomfortable sit in a summertime Plymouth with blue vinyl seats), I thought back to what I did do when I was bored as a child. A small treasure trove of childhood memories burst forth, so I thought I would share :). Keep in mind we were a little bit poor, relatively speaking, but that we were far from a bunch of inbred hoochers living on the bayou - despite what you are about to read. So here goes, top 10 childhood memories about what we did when we were bored:

10) Rock fight. Pro: Easy to organize; rocks are cheap and abundant. Con: This always ends rather quickly with someone running home crying, and their mother subsequently shouting obscenities at others from the doorway.

9) Playing with fire. This actually has its own post, so for details on something that does not warrant repeating and probably should never have been posted in the first place, go here.

8) Making home-made radios. No wait! Allow me to explain! If you dig through the garbage (or your neighbor's garbage) you will eventually find an old can or a jar. If it's a jar with a lid, then you are indeed in luck that day - otherwise you'll have to make do with a can and something to cover the open end (tin foil, envelope, block of wood, etc). Mostly we found cans, and although cans had better acoustics than jars, they were also more dangerous. So get your can and follow me, and lets try to capture an unsuspecting flying insect and then we'll compare the sound of an angry yellow jacket vs. an angry hornet buzzing against the inside of your can. If it's a super-lucky day, then you might find a wasp instead - This is a real treat, because wasps have a sound all their own when irritated. How do you irritate them? Easy! Cover up your can and shake it up real hard. Put the metal side up to your ear. Hear all that buzzing? Now it's like you have a real walkman! No, of course no one ever got stung, repeatedly. . . :)

7) Digging. On a more industrious day, it would then turn into mixing the dirt in a pail with water to make mud. If you wanted to be more scientific about it, then you added a bit of sand, wood shavings, or whatever else you could find. Then we poured it back into the hole we dug it out of and smoothed it out like cement. This took hours.

6) Box car derby. This is probably not what you are thinking. Picture a little kid standing at the top of the stairs, a pampers box sitting at his feet. The pampers box is perched precariously at the edge of the first step, and is mostly empty except for a few diapers selectively arranged as a seat, and also inside, sitting upgright, his 9 month old sister. I am happy to report that there were no fatalities.

5) Roller derby. This is also probably not what you are thinking. Picture a slightly larger kid standing at the top of a long sloped driveway, with a cardboard packing barrel turned on its side, and held in place by a block of wood - and inside the barrel, lying on her stomach, his 4 year old sister. Once again, I am happy to report that there were no fatalities.

4) Mii Fit. Take one small water pail, such as only your grandmother would have, and one nasty old yellow tennis ball (also such as only your grandmother would have) and head out into the front yard. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to toss that nasty old tennis ball up on the roof to where it rolls high up, but does not go over to the other side. Now you track its trajectory as it heads back down the roof, anticipate the little bump and rise it gets from the gutter, and catch the ball in the pail. I am sorry to report that I chased that sad yellow ball around for hours at a time.

3) Doorjam magic. Find yourself a doorjam. Stand in it. No wait, there's more! Stand with your arms at your sides, then push up on the door jam with the backs of your hands as hrdasyoupsblycan andthencnt tosxty slwly. When you get to sixty, release, and walk out of the doorjam. Your arms will rise magically into the air for the next few seconds. It's magic! :)

2) What lives under this? If you have played this game, then you already know the appeal. If you haven't, then you probably won't get it anyway. It usually ended with a stomp fest, followed by carefully replacing the object of interest. My friend Rowdy (his real name), however, liked to poke worms and squeeze their brains right out of their little heads - then watch them wiggle uselessly on the ground. I didn't participate.

1) Build a fort. Boys love forts. Forts are everywhere. A fort could be as simple as a blanket draped over a piece of furniture in the house or as complicated as a wooden structure created from spare siding, a few nails, and some tall grass. One time we made a fort by cutting and stacking blocks of (essentially) ice with a snow shovel, after a massive snow-storm was followed by freezing rain in Idaho. A fort is your home away from home. A castle. A sanctuary, where you are free to sit and contemplate your existential state of being. Or perhaps sit clutching your knees, rocking back and forth chewing on your own hair, plotting the demise of all who have ever wronged you - real or imagined.

I was never really one for contemplation. ;)

Happy New Year!!

Man . . .

2009-12-13T10:08:00.000-08:00

I have sometimes wondered whether the dim bulbs who work at the K-Mart are drawn there by a mystical force, or if they are otherwise ordinary people who, little by little, get their brains along with their will to live literally sucked out of them by their environment.

One could reason that, when given a choice to work at, say, Target or K-Mart, a person with more than a room temperature IQ would choose Target every time. In fact, one would think that anyone capable of fogging a mirror would choose Target. This would seem to suggest that either only a select few are choosing to work at the K-Mart freely or there is a hidden and overwhelming factor that tips the scales in favor of the K-Mart employment experience. Perhaps an extra 25 cents an hour?

I bring it up because that's the route I went about 18 months ago. Oh, not literally to the K-Mart, and it certainly wasn't for an extra 25 cents an hour, but chasing dollars is what ultimately led to this blog being virtually abandoned. I'm happy to report that the dollar chasing has ended in favor of, well, having a life - and as a result, for better or for worse, you'll likely be seeing more going on here from now on.

Now, that being said, this having a life thing may be a bit optimistic. All it may really mean is that I can squeeze in the vacuuming every weekend instead of every other weekend. Okay, so really once a month, plus once about an hour before house guests come over. Well, new house guests anyway. I've already shared my thoughts on the vacuum in an earlier post, but I will say that you can have a lot of fun chasing around a toddler with a vacuum though. It's kinda like playing with your child and cleaning the house all at the same time, and as a bonus the whirring of the vacuum drowns out the screaming pretty good too. Yup, father of the year.

Anyhoo, I made a song to celebrate my new found free (house-cleaning) time, and put it over there on the right (Man I Feel Like a Woman). In the original, Shania and pals go out and have a night on the town, and girl power, and maybe they get a fro-yo or something afterwards, I dunno... This song is a parody of that one, and would represent the flip side. I hope you like it.

Cheers!!

The Saga of Larry Long

2008-08-17T19:42:00.001-07:00

Today, I would like to talk about Larry. Not soft, cuddly, polo shirt-wearing, burn-your-nut-hair-off Larry, but a different Larry. Larry Long. You see, one of the first jobs that I ever held was working in an independent video store. At this job, I would be expected to check videos in and out, make recommendations for customers, abuse the rent-to-own stereo system, and then vacuum up at the end of the day. Sometimes I got additional tasks to help break up my day, like, you know, like setting up displays to advertise new releases and such. It was while I was setting up one of these displays (a life-sized cardboard image of Cary Elwes, grabbing his nuts(?)) that I was introduced to what would be my most deplorable task at my new job, and his name was Larry Long. I have not changed his name. His name really was Larry Long, and do you know why I haven't changed his name? Because Larry Long was, and probably still is, illiterate - so he won't be reading this anyway. How do I know he's illiterate? Keep reading, brave internet friend, and I will tell you the tale.

The video store owner introduced me to Larry Long one day shortly after I started, and we shook hands. To describe Larry without using cliché' is difficult, but I will try. The first thing I noticed about Larry was that he was kind of yellow. Not yellow in a healthy Chinese sort of way - more yellow in an 'I drink myself to sleep every night, and have never brushed my teeth' kind of way. The pit stains in Larry's wife-beater were quite prominent, and were as yellow as his teeth. Larry's eyes were yellow, his hands were yellow, hell, even his breath was yellow - though it’s hard to say if his hands were yellow because of a liver problem or because he smoked so much that the nicotine stains wouldn't wash off anymore - assuming that he washed at all. Larry was sweaty. Larry was not given to kindness. Larry hadn't eaten a meal out other than 7-11 for years - and he wasn't much of a cook either. Larry's idea of treating a date was squirting a couple extra farts-worth of liquid cheese on the nachos when the store clerk wasn't looking. Larry could have easily been an extra on any episode of COPS, playing the part of 'guy without shirt wearing gold chain' who stands in his front yard screaming 'he done it! he done it!' and pointing deliberately and quite unnecessarily as the COPS tazer and drag off some other unfortunate chap like the lawnmowner man.

Please don't think I am being hard on Larry, or that I have any disdain for those who can't read. I don't. I'm just trying to give you a decent mental picture of what I, at 17, am about to have to deal with on a weekly basis until I grow a pair and quit this stupid job.

As I mentioned, Larry was yellowish, and he was also rather short. Five foot four, I would estimate. Five foot four, but he was all man. Larry would proceed to show up at the video store every other week for the next several months, reeking of beer and cigarettes, and we would begin what would be, by today's standards, a rather inappropriate relationship upon our first meeting. The relationship started like this:

Store owner (Vern): 'Hey, come here, I have a job for you.'
Me (and yes, her name really was Vern): 'Ok.'
Vern: 'See that guy at the counter? That's Larry.'
Me (Looking around, and spying Larry, who is leaning on a thirty-pack of Budweiser that he slung up on the rental counter just a moment ago): 'Ahhh... okay.'
Vern: 'Larry needs help picking out movies.'
Me (having made suggestions for customers a million times before): 'Oh, okay, no problem.'
Vern (lowering her voice): 'Larry can't read.'
Vern (continuing): 'You'll need to print out his rental history, and follow him around. Find some movies that he hasn't seen yet, and...'
Me: 'And? ...'
Vern: 'Just help out, okay?'
Me (hm, this is unusual): 'Erraky, sure....'

So I print out Larry's rental history, and it's one of those old dot-matrix printers that takes forever, and Larry looks to have rented about half the store so far, so I have some time to kill here.

Printer: 'zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzit.'
Me: 'Hey Larry.'
Larry (making a little upwards nod): 'Mnh.'
Me (gesturing towards the intellectually-painful Cary Elwes display I just set up): 'So uhh, have you seen 'Men in Tights?'
Larry: 'I don't do dude movies.'
Me (waiting patiently in slow-printer hell): 'Uh. Okay.'
Printer: 'zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzit!'

Glancing at the list, I could see that Larry loved his ass some porn. Loved it. Lived for it. Loved it, lived for it, rented it, watched it, and copied each and every one into his own personal porn library. Every-other week. Only on paydays. And he never missed a payday either.

About seven hundred zits later we're done, and I follow Larry. Larry heads straight back to the porno section of the store. Now, as a teenager, I had of course watched my share of porn - but never really discussed them in any kind of detail with another guy. 'Cause eww. This one time, over at Desi Fajardo's house (true story), we watched a great porno together while we drank his father's kahlua and smoked his father's camels, but that was four years ago - and we never felt the need to say more than 'oh, that's nice' during certain parts of the movie. It was not really a sharing kind of thing, and after that I was pretty much solo when watching porn - it's a guy thing I think.

Larry had no such inhibitions, and he crashed through the saloon-style swinging doors to the porno section (in which people under 18 - i.e. me are not allowed) with the bravado of someone who owned this section of the store (and in fact, as I was soon to find out, he essentially did, by virtue of somehow managing to afford two VCRs. . . yet still no deodorant). Larry studies the wall intently, and then holds up a video 'I got this one?' he asks.

Me: 'Uh.. Let’s see, Eight is not Enough...'
Me (damning myself for not printing out Larry's list in alphabetical order - it was by date instead): 'Looks like, last September, uhh.. yes.'

Larry, somewhat nonplussed, put the video back on the shelf and kept browsing. He picked up another and popped the question again. 'This?' he asked, holding it up.

Me (mumbling to myself): 'Postman always bangs twice.. Postman.. Bang..'
Me: 'Ah, yup, yup, sorry Larry, you've seen it already.'

And based on the length of the list that I was scanning, I sensed that this would go on forever unless I took the initiative and started pre-finding movies that Larry hadn't already watched. I looked along with Larry and he began recounting some of the movies he had seen and what he liked in rather horrifically fine detail for anyone within earshot, which I judged to be about 50% of the store given that all that was between us and the children's section was a pair of swinging doors and a six-foot section of painted plywood. I listened, involuntarily, as Larry recounted his weekend living room conquests and picked up on his likes and dislikes, and scurried around trying to find a movie with identical twins, in jail, with a billy club-wielding, red-head dominatrix warden on the cover, all the meanwhile looking up titles that Larry was tossing my way. 'This?' 'This?' 'This?' 'This?' he asked, as he flung porno after porno my way faster than I could look up his choices: 'Hannah Does Her Sisters', 'Buffy the Vampire Layer', 'The Great Muppet Raper', no, no, no... Sorry, Larry, - you've seen them all.

Larry: 'Fuuuck.'
Me (in my head): 'Yeah, that pretty much sums up our afternoon here...'
Me (outloud): 'You're living the dream man, what can I say?'

It was looking hopeless, and just then another guy came busting through the swinging doors. Larry looked up.

Guy: 'I got the stuff. Huh huh huh'
Larry: 'Heh heh heh'
Guy (showing Larry something in his pocket (I hope to God)): 'Huh huh huh,'
Larry (big smile, looking in the guys pocket - maybe his pants, I dunno): 'Heh heh heh'
Me (holding up the last video that Larry threw me): 'Hay, you haven't seen this one yet!'
Larry (squinting intently): 'Whadsat?'
Guy: 'That's... Dude. That's a dude movie!!!'
Me (looking again at the title): 'Drill Bill?'
Larry: 'I toll you I ain't into dudes!!'
Larry (quickly): 'Why'd you pick that!?'
Me (thinking that I couldn't get out of this gracefully): 'Oh, sorry...'
Guy: 'Dude.'
Larry: 'Dude.'

So we (Larry) ended up getting 'When Harry Ate Sally', 'Titty Titty Bang Bang', and 'Bonfire of the Panties' - which as it turns out, was actually switched with 'Bonfire of the Vanities' by mistake. Larry objected when I tried to exchange the movie for his chosen title, until I asked if he enjoyed Brian De Palma as much as I did, which sounded enough like a dude movie to Larry that he finally shut up.

So Larry announces rather loudly that he has to 'go have a squirt', and proceeds to weave his way over to the mens room, followed closely by his friend, leaving me to take the videos up to the register solo, and ring them up. And, as I was walking up to the register, hoping that by 'have a squirt' Larry had meant that he needed to pee rather than anything else, I bumped into Kari (who's Kari ) Editorial note: It wasn't really Kari, as I had already moved three times since knowing her - but it just as well could have been, and for the purposes of this story, it shall be.

Kari (staring at the pile of porn in my arms): 'O M G!' <-- she talked in acronyms sometimes.
Kari's Friends (conveniently, and exactly, one foot away): 'O M G!!' <-- So did they, apparently.
Kari and her friends: *whisper whisper -freak- whisper whisper*
Me: .. (Ah, what's the point... Is carrying around a depraved psycho’s porn for him any better than buying it myself?): 'Hi.'

I kept walking. They kept whispering and giggling. I set Larry's porn next to his case-or-more of beer on the counter and waited. Larry came out of the bathroom, followed by his friend, and rather non-chalantly and with a touch of practiced flair, picked up three blank video cassettes on his way to the register. Kari, oblivious to this, pantomimed a guy beating off - just for me, and then she and her friends turned and walked out of the store.

Guy (looking back towards the bathroom): 'I wouldn't go in there if I was you. Heh heh heh.'
Larry (grinning): 'Huh Huh Huh.'
Larry (gesturing to Kari as she walked out the door): 'Nice can on nat one nair.'
Larry: *belch*
Guy (all horned up, and dry-humping the counter): 'Ohh-h-h, she's bang-a-licous! Bang! Bang! Baaang!'
Me (having raised my hands off the counter, 'cause, I mean, hey): 'Yeah, um... She sure is... Yeah, like.. like a screen door in a hurricane, right?' <--I'm trying to fit in here, really.
Larry: ???
Guy: ???
Me: 'You know, like a screen door, when it's really windy and it... You know what, nevermind. Total's $18.50'

Larry pays with a twenty, belches once more for good measure, takes his change, and walks out the door - but not before I hear him mumbling to his friend 'Screen door. . . Must be a dude movie thing, I think he likes dude movies, hell I dunno.'

Kari and friends walk by moments later and make a gesture into the air as they pass by the outside store windows; they look as if they are giving a low-flying midget a hand job as he passes overhead.

I get to re-live this at school on Monday.

I get to clean the video store bathroom later tonight.

As a result, I get so intimately acquainted with Larry's tastes that when new pornos come in that I know he'll like (which is almost all of them), I add them to Larry's watchin' list, which is now duct-taped to the plywood wall inside the porno room - all so that Larry (and me) will never have to spend longer than 5 minutes in the video store picking out porn - hoping, perhaps, that this will spare me whatever small amount of dignity that I have left.

Larry showed up every-other week for nearly a year before I finally left for college. Every meeting presented some new and horrifying glimpse into the private life of a man who lived for nothing but cataloging imaginary poon - despite the 'Larry watchin' list'. This one time though, right before I left for college, I managed to sneak a copy of 'Homo Alone' into his weekend pile. I hope he had friends over that night.

And I never did get a date with Kari... Though, looking back on it now, I don't think that I really wanted one either...

Mistakes have been made, others will be blamed. . .

2008-08-06T17:09:00.001-07:00

I find myself, as a new parent, regretting some of the decisions that I made during the first couple of years raising the boy. Oh, not the major ones, I got those down: Read to your child 15 minutes a day, don't spike the milk, change their diapers daily, you know - my regrets are rather minor I guess, on a more personal level. Maybe 'regret' is the wrong word, maybe it would be better to say 'knowing what I know now, I wouldn't. . .', yeah, that's it. . . Knowing what I know now, I wouldn't ever be:

1) Trying to substitute 'malk' for 'milk' - or really any basement brand food for the real deal. Let's face it, Oaty-o's do not equal Cheerios, and everyone knows it - even the 18 month old - and the perfect time to not discover the emerging pallate of your child is while driving through the middle of the California desert with 72 oz of Oaty-o's strewn across the back seat, 90 minutes away from the next rest stop with something sounding roughly equivalent in pitch and volume to a fire engine's siren coming from your back seat. Buy the damn Cheerios and save yourself the headache. The only potential benefit of buying basement (and I am making a distiction here between so-called bargain brands and basement, btw. Bargain hotdogs, for instance, are just rubbery and kinda nasty. Basement hotdogs turn your tongue magenta.) brands is the amusement of watching the child's face as he or she naively tries the new brand in front of you. The best I got from our 2-yr old was an immediate grimmace, and an audible 'plah', following by a 'da's yucky, papa' - and this was for freezer-o-pops, by the way. Who would have thought that you could screw up frozen sugar-water?

2) Encouraging solid foods too early. I always looked down upon those parents who sat with and fussed over their child during the first several months of solid food - scraping the pureed peas off of their chin back onto the spoon and placing it back in their mouth only to have half of it come back out again along with gurgling, when clearly their must be a better, less time-consuming way. I'll call my method 'the fish-feeding' method. I reasoned that, since this little guy was capable of crawling around and attempting to shove anything in his little mouth that he could find - and I believe that he in fact considered it his job, then the most reasonable method of feeding him would be to go along with a box of Cheerios and shake some out all over the floor in front of him, and wait for him to a) discover and b) eat them. Seriously. My wife nixed this idea, but suggested that we could put some on a paper plate on the ground and wait to see what happened. She expressed some concern that he might get a Cheerio stuck in his mouth and gag, but was willing to give it a shot. I poured the Cheerios on to a paper plate and waited. The discovery phase of the operation went fine - no problem in fact, but as the first Cheerio entered his mouth there was a gagging and wheezing sound, followed shortly by a jar of semi-digested pureed peas errupting from out of nowhere, in a near-perfect arc, showering the floor in a sickly green ooze. My wife had been videotaping at the time, so we have this moment for posterity. I haven't been able to live this one down yet.

3) Trusting the diaper. There will come a time when you rely on the diaper, and it will let your ass down (and often in a spectacular fashion). My time was 2:30 am September 1st, 2005. The kid was awake, in the middle of the night, because he was hungry, or so I had guessed. So I zombie'd my ass out of bed, got the stupid milk bottle, and went to take care of business. We sat, he fussed, but ultimately agreed to the milk. About half way through he seemed to be done, and as I went to sit him up to burp there was a horrendous sound which originiated from his back-end that propelled him skyward, eviscerating the diaper in the process. When he came down, I caught him - and everything else that came along with him. If you had happened on the scene 5 minutes later you would have seen something that looked as if the entire baby food aisle at the grocery store decided to empty itself on some poor chaps floor, a set of footprints leading away from said emptying, and distantly, the sound of running water, a screaming baby, and a cacophony of cuss words which would cling to the bathroom walls like so much baby food for weeks to come - which reminds me, I also wouldn't be:

4) Swearing in front of them. Oh, it's cute when you hit your thumb with a hammer and say 'dammit', and then they look up at you, make a crude attempt at a thumbs up (mimicking you) and say 'dabbit', but sometimes they pick up more than you might think, and will then wait for the perfect time to spring it on you. Like this one:

Grandma: 'Oh, darn-it, I meant to grab some malk at the store.'
Kid (admonishing Grandma, with the gravest of seriousness he can muster, shaking his head): 'We don't say that word Grandma. . . We don't say that fucking word.'

And his pronunciation of 'fucking' was bloody perfect, which was bloody hard to explain!

Why my wife objects to him saying 'darn-it' I'll never know, but whatever. It's better than mispronouncing words sometimes I guess. Right now we're working really hard on 'finger', becuase it comes out 'neeeeger' instead of 'finger' - and since we all hold hands everywhere we go, and since his hand is too small to hold an entire adult-sized hand, he is often heard to ask (in his outside voice, of course): 'Where my [finger]??', 'Okay, got my [finger]!!' as we're crossing the street or whatever. . . We're just waiting for that one to drop at the wrong time . . .

The Lawnmower Man

2008-07-26T07:47:00.000-07:00

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/07/25/mower.madness.ap/index.html

Now... You might be tempted to look at this guy and think, my God, what a pathetic waste of human life, but I bet that you're not exactly seeing him at his best. At least I hope not. It's my contention that this fellow probably grew up fairly normal (whatever that is these days), and then somewhere along the line from then until now he probably just got jacked with one too many times until he finally snapped. You all know someone on a similar path - that crazy checker at the grocery store, or that co-worker who has put on 40 lbs in the past year and always comes back from lunch smelling like gin, maybe that one old guy who lives on the corner who methodically digs up little squares of his front lawn and sifts through the dirt (but only at night, by floodlight) - you know someone who some day is going to get fucked in the drive-thru one too many times and will go absolutely bug-nutz crazy and plow their car through the drive-thru window and scream 'but it said drive thru!!! It said drive thru!!!' as the cops taser him and carry him off to jail. The point is that this guy was probably relatively normal at some point in his life but that the continual stress of living in our society made him cave in one day and say 'fuck it.'

The idea that some people may be put on this Earth to simply serve as an example for others has crossed my mind more than once, so to that end I suggest using this story for something positive. When you have identified that one person in your life who is going to snap at any time, then email them this story. And then tell them, next time someone readeatedly kicks the back of their chair in the theater, next time they get cut-off in traffic, next time they only hear the second flush, and the sound of running water on the hard wood floor, along with the words 'uh oh' to remember what happened to The Lawnmower Man, and maybe it will make it all better :).

Len and the Art of Interviewing

2008-07-05T20:39:00.001-07:00

"Successful job interviews are an artform that is easily learned but which is difficult to master. The successful interview is much like dance where two partners engage each other in a rhythmic pattern of mutual discovery until, at the climax of the music, a mutually beneficial arrangement is achieved" the book read. It sounded like smut then, and it sounds like smut now. The book then rambled on for pages about the virtues of punctuality, picking the right tie, researching the company, and other academic and largely useless interview checklist items. I didn't know how irrelevant most of this would be at the time, so I continued reading and collecting these little droppings until both my pockets were full and something didn't smell too great. I then got a good night sleep, woke bright and early, showered, dressed appropriately, and went on my first ever post-college interview. You know, the big one, the one where you're supposed to land a real job instead of working the teacup ride for a traveling carnival. The one that's supposed to show off that going off to college made sense.

Let's back up a minute. I had just graduated college with a degree in Biochemistry. A good private college too, not one of those wussy state schools where the final exams are multiple choice *cough* UMN *cough* so I actually did know how to do some pretty amazing (to me, at the time at least) stuff despite my B- average there. Want to know if that DNA matches? Need an HIV test? Want to grow mutant corn? No problemo! So, needless to say, I thought that I was pretty hot stuff. Obviously, I needed to find myself a hot stuff job. So, having an a) girlfriend heading to Minneapolis and b) a big head filled with very little sense, I decided to pack up our (100% her) stuff in a U-Haul truck and head out there with her. Hm? Oh, no, I didn't have a job waiting there for me. Place to stay? Well, no, not as such. Money? Well, enough to last a few weeks I guess, as long as you like all four flavors of Ramen. The truck? Well, yes, they'll want it back after we arrive in Minneapolis. Yeah. Uh huh. Yeah. So in essence we had a place to stay (Super 8) and store our stuff (back of the U-Haul) for about 48 hours after our arrival, after which point we would either need to have an apartment or a garage sale. Surprisingly, the stars aligned and all went well, and that's how I came to be sitting in Minneapolis, reading the most useless interviewing guide on the planet made up by some total fuck-wit who was probably a free-lance writer and as such had never been offered nor held a real job in his whole life.

Now I had been on several job interviews before, but they were all for really crappy jobs where the interview was more of a formality than anything - sometimes only consisting of two words in the case of farm labor ('ju wanna?). A nod in the affirmative was all that one took - and, as most of my co-workers at the time either didn't speak English, or were people that you didn't want to spend any more time within arm's reach of than it took to say ' 'ju wanna?', I understood why.

Now, since Monster.com was in its infancy at the time, the best way to look for a job was still in classified ads for the most part. Unfortunately, since news papers charged by the word, some of the ads were quite brief, leaving much to the imagination of the reader. This is how I came to be sitting across from Len the next morning, completely unprepared for what was about to happen. I think the ad went something like this:

*******************************************************
* Asst. Mgr for rapid grow hi-tech company. Will train,
* no exp nec up to 68k to start 612-555-haha
*******************************************************

Ah, management already, excellent. I like delegating, and I'm all about hi-tech stuff. 68k, that's not too shabby either, in fact better than I was expecting for my first job. So I call and make an interview appointment with 'Len', drive up at the appointed time, and get out of the car looking for the address. It's in a strip mall... Okay, fine. Hm. 'E-L-E-C-T-R-O-L-U-X' the sign read. Okay, well, I guess that sounds kind of high tech. Assistant manager for the Electrolux corporation, hah, won't my college buddies be jealous when they find out. So I put on my interview face (chapter 9), and push open the door to find a display room full of vacuum cleaners. Big grey ugly vacuum cleaners. I step out and scrutinize the outside of the door again. . . 'E-L-E-C-T-R-O-L-U-X' it reads. 'Hmm. Maybe they are having the carpets cleaned or something...' I think, as I go back inside. 'Hello?' I say, in my confident, polite, and pleasing interview voice (chapter 6). A strange little man with a very dated suit and bow tie comes walking out from the back room, smiles at me, and then continues walking out the front door dragging a vacuum behind him. He kinda reminded me of that claymation-puppet host guy for those 1970's-era Santa, Frosty, and Rudolph shows that they drag out every year around Christmas. We really need new Christmas shows, don't we? I digress... At any rate, I walked cautiously towards the back room, dully wondering if this is a joke. 'Come in' says a heavy set man with a comb-over and coke-bottle glasses. 'I'm Len' he breathed. 'Hi, I -' I start, but Len cuts in 'Sit down. You see those over there?' he says, grunting towards a wall of ugly grey vacuum cleaners.

Me: 'Yah, th-'
Len: 'That's the new model 55. The chassis is a replica of the original models sold back in 55.'
Me: 'Oh, I-'
Len: 'They're the big seller right now and we push more units than any other store in the Midwest.'
Me: 'That's v-'
Len: 'A lot of folks don't know who we are these days, but if you go knocking on doors of the older generation then you'll see a smile and a wink, because they know quality when they see it.'
Me: 'I'm here about the assistant manager job?'
Len (continuing): 'You know, we use the same technology in these model 55s as jet aero-planes. There's not another vacuum in the world that can make the same claim.'
Me: 'I-'
Len: 'A lot of people will tell you that they can get by with less, but the beauty of an Electrolux vacuum is power and durability.'
Me (in my head, while looking them over): 'Well, the beauty certainly isn't in the chassis...'
Len: 'People don't know what they need in a vacuum anymore. They go for looks, or portability, or because it's quiet, but what they don't know is that it's not picking up all the dirt from their carpet. You don't want a dirty carpet do you?
Me: 'N-'
Len (pounding his fist on the table): 'No one wants a dirty carpet!'
Me (resume still in hand): 'I-'
Len (continuing to pound): 'For $800 today, you'll never have a dirty carpet again!'
Me: 'I'll just go ahead and see myself out...'
Len (talking over me, oblivious to the fact I am leaving): 'This is the finest machine ever built! Could put a man on the moon with the parts inside it!'

Sooo, I emerge from Electrolux a little wiser in the ways of the world, and as it happens we already owned a lovely little green Hoover at the time that even did the stairs. It cost (her) $100 and lasted 9 years before we threw it out - chiefly because she was taken in by the pretty colors of the new Dysons - not because the Hoover was giving out. Secretly, I still miss the Hoover. It was a total whore of a vacuum, sucking up anything that it came across without a single complaint. The new Dyson, by comparison, is kinda prissy. Anyhoo, since the whole Len thing was a failure, I started reading the paper again.

*******************************************************
* Exp cash handler for evening work. Must have reliab
* trans. Apply in person at Minn. Mariott Hotel
*******************************************************

Okay, so it's not Biochemistry exactly, but it could pay the bills while I get a real job eh? So I go down to the Mariott and walk up to the front desk - got four copies of my resume, got two pens, suit - check, tie - check, lookin' good, smellin', well, ok, and here we go!

Me: 'Hi, my name is Hammy, and I'm here to apply for the position posted in the Minnesota Crapper (or whatever their paper was called - I dunno).
She (handing me an application): 'Here, fill this out. I'll let them know you are here.'
Me: 'Thanks.'

So I sit down, and as I am debating whether blue or black ink would be more appropriate for this application - as it was copied on blue paper, I get a tap on the shoulder.

Him: 'Hey, you can leave that here. Follow me.'
Me: 'Okay, nice to meet you, I'm Hammy.'
Him (not looking at me): 'I'm Big Tony.'

He must have noticed my impeccable dress (Chapter 3) and resumes ready in hand (Chapter 4), and that's why I didn't have to fill out or bring the application with me. Yes, he knows how to spot a fellow professional when he sees one (Appendix A), for sure.

Big Tony proceeded to lead us down the hallway, across the hotel, and to the elevator. Were we going to a conference room? Was he giving me a tour of the hotel?

Big Tony (as if sensing my confusion): 'There's a guy you gotta meet.'
Me: 'Okay, sure.'

We get out on the second floor, and walk to a nearby hotel room. Big Tony stops and knocks twice. 'Who is it?' comes from inside. 'It's Big Tony' says Big Tony. 'Yeah, alright.' the inside voice says, and the door opens and we proceed into the room. It's just a room. A hotel room. And not even a suite. My spider sense begins to tingle. Rut Roh Raggy. . .

'Siddown' the guy says. 'I'm Frankie, youse here for da gig, right?'

Me (hesitantly): 'Yes, here is my resume.'
Frankie: 'You're a funny guy.'
Me (naively): 'Thanks, I -'
Frankie: 'Hey Big Tony, getta loada dis guy, here's my resume.'
Big Tony: 'Ha ha ha.'
Me (uncomfortable, restoring to my 'memorized questions to get the interview back on track' (chapter 15)): 'So uhh, what would you say is the most challenging aspect of this position?'
Frankie: 'Getting the clients to pay regular.'
Big Tony: 'Haaaa Ha.'
Me '..?'
Frankie: 'We sell insurance.'
Me (showing interest with related follow-up questions (chapter 16)): 'Oh, you mean like State Farm, or -'
Frankie: 'Hey Tony, dis guys bustin' me up here, like State Farm, that's rich.'
Big Tony: 'Ha ha ha.'
Frankie: 'Yeah, like State Farm, only we sells door to door, see?'
Me (in my head): 'Oh dear God...'
Me (outloud): 'So I would be -'
Frankie: 'You do collections. We collect door to door every week.'
Me: 'I see.'
Frankie: 'Some clients don't pay unless you motivate them. You got skills?'
Me: 'I-uh-huh?!'
Frankie: 'Are you tryin' to break my balls here? What am I, an asshole here?'
Big Tony: 'I'll get this -'
Frankie: 'Get dis guy outta here!'

And I was summarily gotten out of there. And I'm still not really clear on what the job was, except that it was probably painful, illegal, and quite unnecessary. Thankfully, I eventually managed to grab a job at the local University being a lab rat for some cancer research team. The pay was horrible, the tasks repetitive, and the prospects for advancement were dismal - as there were PhD's sitting across from my lab bench doing the exact same work that I was - but at least it paid the rent. It wasn't until later that I slowly gathered some real secrets for good interviewing, a few of which I will attempt to summarize for you here today. The following recommendations are based on being on both sides of the interview table approximately 100 times in the past 5 years - take them for whatever you think they're worth:

1) Dress appropriately to the job that you are applying for. Dress as if you were ready to step out of the interview and start working right away. Any more, and people might think that you're pompous or over-compensating - any less, and you appear not to care about or respect the position. Most interviewees fret about potential employers discovering weaknesses in their skill sets, but when I look across the table at someone I find myself asking 'Will they fit in?' just as often as 'Are they an idiot?'. Dress like you'll fit in.

2) Don't be afraid to admit ignorance of a topic or question asked. The interviewer likely already knows both the textbook answer and the real answer to whatever question they are asking, so don't bother trying to fake it. You'll sound like an idiot, kill your chances for the job, and likely provide endless entertainment for the interviewer's co-workers later that day. Say something like: 'Well, I don't have a lot of experience in that area, but if I had to guess, then I would say [...]' Even if you're wrong, you'll score points for demonstrating an ability to know your own limitations. This engenders trust. Editorial note: Don't try to use this on every question.

3) Have an answer ready for the following interview question: 'So, knowing what you know about our company now, tell me, what can you do to help us reach our goals?' Sounds stupid, yeah, especially if it's McDonalds, but if you go in with a clear picture of what the company is and how you fit in, then the answers you give to any other interview questions will paint a consistent and cohesive picture. If you have a good interviewer, then they will note this - and you will move up the list. If they ask this question straight away (only happened to me once), and you answer it with any kind of eloquence, then you just got the job. Congrats.

4) Have a few questions ready to ask the interviewer. You can stay generic here if you want, though pointed questions are better. Generic? 'So what do you envision the key contributions for this position to be?' 'What do you see as the most challenging aspects of this position?' 'What is a typical day-in-the-life like for your team?' You know, just stuff. Stuff that helps you learn about what kind of chaotic hell-hole you'll be (potentially) thrust into on a Monday coming soon. If you have no questions, then you have no apparent interest, and you'll move down the list fast.

5) Don't say anything stupid. Bad interviewers, especially, are looking for reasons to not hire you rather than looking for reasons to suspect that you will be a star at their company. If you need to keep a mouse in your pocket and stroke him when you get nervous, then the interview is not the best time to mention this. Shut the hell up, keep the mouse in your pocket, and smile.

6) When and if the inevitable subject of salary requirements ever comes up, the company will try to sign you for as little as possible. Oh, they may say that they are working with you to find a 'mutually beneficial' (Chapter 18) arrangement - or some other crap like that, but the fact of that matter is that if you would sign a piece of paper saying that you would do the job for $5 a year, then that would, all of a sudden, become the most beneficial arrangement. When they ask what you want, then you need to respond like this:

Company (wink wink): 'So, what's it going to take to get you to work here, today?'
You: 'Well, that's an excellent question. What are you prepared to offer your best candidate?'
Company (with a suddenly fake, plastic smile): 'Come on, now.'
You: 'Come on, now.'
Company (no matter what they say): 'Blah blah blah.'
You: 'Show me the money.'

Stick to those basics and you'll avoid a lot of uncomfortable situations. Most uncomfortable situation I have ever been in? Sure. I was interviewing at McDonalds just before my senior year of college in order to make ends meet. They had assistant manager positions open which were paying more than anything else at that point, so I decided to lie my way into an interview. 'No, no, I've had enough of college. I'm giving it up one year short of my degree to join your fine organization where I'll happily be the modern-day equivalent of an indentured servant for the rest of my life' I said, or the equivalent, and was invited to interview. During the interview I met with a current McDonald’s manager and listened to him talk about the goals of the company, and McDonald's University, and the training program, and all the other company lines. He indicated that there were several stations that I would have to work my way through and spend about 6 weeks working each until I had attained a mastery of each one. This seemed kind of.. dumb? to me, so I tried to make light of the requirement by saying 'Well, yeah, but do you really need six weeks salting fries? I mean, how can you screw up salting fries?' And this little mistake (don't say anything stupid, see #5 above) cost me approximately 30 of the most uncomfortable minutes in my life (that I will never get back) where we had to go over the proper procedure for salting fries in painstaking detail, as well as anything that could possibly go wrong with the process. To sum up: You salt forwards, back, and then forwards one more time. Three passes, and you try not to get salt in the oil, because it will break down the oil - which I say is complete BS, but I didn't want to get into it with him because I didn't need to spend an hour discussing intermolecular bonding theories with someone who was probably a burger flipper six weeks ago. I actually thanked him for his time and left after our little salting lesson, because no matter what happened next I couldn't see being successful there - even for three months. Some things should just be too damned stupid to be allowed. I went and delivered pizzas instead - and that's another story. :)

Quick Update aka the Cop Out

2008-07-01T19:22:00.000-07:00

Yes, I am copping out this week. Actually, it's been about two weeks, hasn't it? I'm sorry, I have been adjusting to a new job and the result is that I haven't had much time to work on music or write anything remotely interesting on here for the last couple of months. I accept the blame.

At any rate, I wanted to make an entry to let y'all know that 1) I am not dead, as Perez Hilton reported earlier, and 2) That I am thankful for the hundreds of you that have gone on to iTunes or Amazon and bought a song. You have inspired me to keep going. Over the past several weeks I have managed to actually finish writing the full-length album that I want to put out, and now it's just a matter of finding the time to record all of the parts that go into it. It will be out this year, even if I have to squeak it by in December. I'm hoping for late summer myself though.

Sooo, highlights of the last few months include:
- Receiving a bottle of simple syrup in the mail from a couple readers in Europe (who must have felt some sympathy for that Simple Syrup story) - thanks guys!!!
- Getting 3 nice 'atta-boys' on the iTunes reviews page (woo hoo!)
- Happily reporting to my wife that the 'I met My Wife at a Strip Club' story is the most popular read on this blog, despite her protests
- Seeing that music video to the right there has received over 300,000 views (combined) from all of the sites that have hosted it. W-O-W!

So, if you'll accept a cop-out for this week, I humbly offer the following joke (which is not mine) for your amusement:

C, E-flat, and G walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Sorry, but we don't serve minors." So, the E-flat leaves, and the C and the G have an open fifth between them. After a few drinks, the fifth is diminished; the G is out flat. An F comes in and tries to augment the situation, but is not sharp enough. A D comes into the bar and heads straight for the bathroom saying, "Excuse me. I'll just be a second." An A comes into the bar, but the bartender is not convinced that this relative of C is not a minor. Then the bartender notices a B-flat hiding at the end of the bar and exclaims, "Get out now! You're the seventh minor I've found in this bar tonight." The E-flat, not easily deflated, comes back to the bar the next night in a 3-piece suit with nicely shined shoes. The bartender says: "You're looking sharp tonight, come on in! This could be a major development." This proves to be the case, as the E-flat takes off the suit, and everything else, and is now au naturel. Eventually, the C sobers up, and realizes in horror that he's under a rest. The C is brought to trial, is found guilty of contributing to the diminution of a minor, and is sentenced to 10 years of DS without Coda at an upscale correctional facility. On appeal, however, the C is found innocent of any wrongdoing, even accidental, and that all accusations to the contrary are bassless. . .

Y'all remember not to take things too seriously, if only for today.

Cheers!

A Modest Proposal

2008-06-19T18:53:00.001-07:00

So, you've probably read about (how I met my wife), but did you hear about how I proposed? It's actually our anniverssary this week, so I've been thinking back to that day long ago. Let's rewind a few years, and I'll tell you the tale. . .

It's November, and it's buttfucking cold. No, not kind of cold, not really cold, it's geniune, wholesale, buttfucking cold because we're in Minnesota in the winter time, and they've been 'having a bit of a cold front moving in'. Editorial note: This means that it might climb into single digits for the high today, but with the wind-chill it will really be about -40.

News anchor: 'It's gonna be a little chilly today, for shooore!'
Co-anchor: 'Oooh yah, for shooore. Better button up those little ones, yah!'
News anchor: 'That's right, we're looking at an intra-day high of seven today, but the wind-chill means that any bare skin will die within a few minutes of exposure!'
Co-anchor: 'Yah, yah, scarves and hats at the bus stop this morning kids!'
News Anchor (nodding): 'Ooh, yah, that's a good idea Margey'
Co-anchor (nodding): 'Ooh yah.'
News Anchor (nodding back): 'Yah.'

Why are we in Minnesota you ask? Why is anyone in Minnesota you ask? That's a very good question, and the latter had something to do with even the Native Americans not wanting it, and the former to do with, as my father put it, 'chasing that skirt cross-country'. Apparently, if you're from northern Scandanavia, then Minnesota is pretty good living, so the Scandanavians decided to move in, and no one felt the need to stop them. Okay, I might be over-simplifying American immigration a tad, but in a nutshell that's what happened. So yah, you best button up those little ones, yah.

So the wife-to-be had been hinting that she was interested in tying the knot, so to speak. Our coffee table had begun to be taken over with magazines from Ben Bridge, Zales, The Shane Company, and other diamond hawkers who seem to hold some mystical power over the psyche of a woman which convinces them that something that a criminal dug out of the mud is somehow worth two months of your salary. * cough * whataloadofshit * cough * Sooooo, we're sitting there having dinner one night and the subject inevitably comes up:

She (dropping the hint): 'You know, I was talking with [someone] today, and she said that they have really great merchandise at The Shane Company, I think we should go...'
Me (looking up with a mouthful of Ramen, unaware): 'Hmph?'
She: 'Yes, it looks like they are open until 8, well it's settled then.'
Me (thankful that whatever it is is settled): 'Mowkay.'

So, half an hour later I am driving around in the snow, trying to find The Shane Company. 'Don't worry, I'll leave my purse in the car', she says. Now somehow we managed to buy her (our) first cat, who is still living with us by the way, while her purse was still in the car, but I don't remember this until much later - which is a pity because it would have made for great foreshadowing. We find The Shane Company. I park. We walk in, and are greeted with a dazzling display of diamonds adorning any kind of jewelry that you would ever want to wear.

Sales girl: 'Can I help you?'
The wife (giving the sales girl a certain, secret look): 'Oh... We're just looking...'
Sales girl (knowingly): 'Come right this way.'

Now, inside my mind I start to wonder, and I begin to piece together what has happened and what is about to happen, but much too slowly to be of any use or to head-off what is, at this point, absolutely certain to happen.

Future wife: (turning around, eyes beaming): 'Don't you looove it??'
Sales girl: 'That's a quality diamond right there Hammy. Hey, have you heard about the four C's?'
Future wife (fighting back a little dance of joy, and holding the ring up high, admiring it from every angle): 'Tell us about the four C's Carol!!'
Me (in my head): 'Carol, who's Ca --- Oh.'
Carol: 'Well, I'm glad you asked, the four C's are Color, Clarity, Blah, and blah blah blah blah.'

Carol blah blah blah'd for about an hour and a half, after which I found myself sitting in the car with a happy wife and no money spent. Awesome. We went home, and all seemed well. Then the next day we were sitting around after dinner, and she was all of a sudden unhappy. I can tell because she always makes these little over-obvious sighs which are designed to get me to look up from whatever I am doing and ask 'What's wrong honey?', at which point she will usually say something that is long, agonizing, and can't be solved by a man. It's usually something like she has this friend, and this friend said something insensitive to her other friend. So now her other friend isn't talking to the first friend, but the first friend doesn't know, and there's this party next week, and she couldn't possibly invite them both, and blah and blah and omg, I need another beer. Viva la penis, that's all I gotta say.

Anyway, she sighs, and sighs again, and then a third time, so I know I have to bite:

Me (perfectly disguised dread): 'Is something wrong honey?' *cringe *
Her: 'I just, I just hope no one else gets that ring, I love it soooo much.'
Me (in my head): 'Ring? What ring?'
Me (dismissive): 'Oh, I'm sure it will all be okay honey...'
Her: 'I didn't see anything else I liked, and they only had one.'
Me (dawning): 'Yeah, ummm, it sure was pretty.'
Me (in my head): 'Who the f--- was that sales girl again?'
Her (distraught): ...

So needless to say, I go back to The Shane Company the next day, find Kristi or Carlie or whatever the hell her name is, and say 'Hi, what was that one ring again?'. And she knows, and do you know what? I knew that she would know, because of that secret-look thing that went on earlier in the week. I had half-fancied that her and my future wife would hook up in some torrid affair before my bedroom eyes, but now I understood exactly what that secret look meant. It meant: 'Help me part my man from his money'. And thus she did, swiftly and efficiently, and for my $$$$$ (ouch) I got to leave with a teeny little piece of metal and rock, smaller than a quarter, dressed up nicely in a little felt box. Hoo-freaking-ray.

The days went by, and my wife seemed to grow more distant, more despondant, and more irritable by the day. I decided that, if I was going to propose to her before she garnished my dinner with rat poison, that I would have to do it rather quickly. So I picked a night in late November, and as we sat watching television I brought it up. Now, I had heard of spectacular proposals before. Proposals where people went up together in hot air balloons and when flying over a particular ridge at just the break of day the guy had his idiot friends light a bunch of hay bales on fire in the middle of a field that spelled out 'WILL YOU MARRY ME?' The guy was thrown in jail, his friends fined $1000 each, but she did say yes, and I bet the memory is worth more to them than any misdemeanors on his record. Some people had proposed at a baseball game on TV, some people at a nice dinner out with an acapella song, some people didn't have the guts for these kinds of proposals, but they nonetheless found a way to make that night special for their bride-to-be.

So I start scheming. Maybe I could get her to take a hot air balloon ride. Maybe I could sing at a piano bar. Maybe we could just go for a nice walk, and at the right moment I could pop the question. I try to be subtle. Don't want to tip my hand...

Me: 'So, uhh, what do you feel like doing tonight?'
Her (laying on the couch, mad): 'I'm doing it.'
TV Guy: 'Looks like we're in for more chills tonight, with lows reaching the minus teens...'
Me: 'How about we go for a walk and look at Christmas lights?'
Her: 'No.'
TV Girl: 'That's right yah. Time to plug in those cars, yah, for shooore.' <--Editorial note: They don't mean electric cars. In some parts of Minnesota it gets so cold that on a chilly morning, if you go outside to start your car then the sudden temperature change in the engine block will actually crack the steel. Plugging in your car keeps the engine block warm. How fucked up is this?
Me: 'Errkay, umm. Hey, we could go out for a nice dinner instead of cooking tonight.'
Her: 'I already thawed hamburger.'
TV Guy (nodding): 'Ooh, yah, that's a good idea there Margey.'
Me: 'Well, is there anything you would like to do other than -'
Her: 'I want to go to K-Mart and get a new litter box.'
TV Girl (nodding back): 'Ooh yah.'
Me (trying to work this out somehow): 'Errkay. . . '

So we go to Kmart, and before walking in we are greeted by a bell-ringer (Salvation Army), and my wife sticks out her hand (as is custom) for my spare change to put in the pot. Actually, what she says is 'Give me something shiney to put in the pot', well, usually, but not this time on account of her mood - which is a pity because that would have been a good time to present the ring. I dig around and hand her what I have. I still have one more chance when we come out of the store though - as she likes to get me both coming and going. She throws my money in the pot and stalks off into the store, very much on a mission for that new cat box. I can't blame her really, the old cat box does smell like ass, and it's not like I'm going to wash it out either. It's a good thing I didn't give her the ring right then, actually, because I would have had to spend the next twenty minutes with a store-bought screw-driver prying open the pot over the objections of the Salvation Army guy.

I check my pocket, for like the fourth time, because inside is an envelope (left the box at home to be more stealthy) with her ring in it. A ring that I paid more for than anything else in my life to that date, and if it falls out of my pocket then I may as well hang myself because I'll be out the money and no other ring will ever do. Losing the ring would be grounds for saying 'screw it', and joining a traveling carnival, really. So I check it again, and it's there, thank God.

She picks out a beauty of a new cat box, and we go to the register. I fidget more. She looks back at me kind of annoyed (I later learn that she thinks I am shoplifting gum or something, as I am nervously feeling around in my pockets and trying to open the envelope with one hand, unbeknownst to her). And we start to walk out. The bare ring is in hand now, and I am walking right behind her. And she doesn't stop at the bell ringer for some reason. She usually can't pass up a bell ringer with a little pot, so this is unusual for her. She didn't stop at the bloody bell ringer, now what the hell am I supposed to do? My big plan is ruined!

In a panic I chase her into the parking lot a few steps and call out to her 'Hey, I've got something shiney for the pot!' And she turns around really kind of pissed off that I am delaying our departure, because as I said before, it's buttfucking cold out. 'Fine.' she says, and starts to grab for my hand as I get down on one knee, in the parking lot of the K-Mart with the ever-present ice crystals floating in the air, illuminated by the headlights of on-coming K-Mart shoppers - who pause just briefly to witness this event. '[Name of future wife], Will you marry me?' I ask. And my hands are shaking from the cold, as my gloves are off and my arms are stretched into the air. And the knee of my jeans is stuck to the ice on the asphalt of the parking lot on account of the cold, and she looks at me and smiles for the first time in days, and says 'Yes'. Thank God.

We left the cat box in the middle of the parking lot by accident, but we went back for it. A cat box is, after all, a cat box. Then went back home and finished the news, only it was a happier news this time:

TV Girl: 'Ooh, looks like it's going to warm up a bit next week.'
TV Guy: 'Yah Margey, into the teens it looks like, yah.'
TV Girl: 'Are we going to be looking at some thunder-snow then there?'
TV Guy: 'Ooh yeah, could be thunder-snow, for shooore, yah.'
TV Girl (nodding): 'Best stay in side then, yah.'
TV Guy (nodding back): 'Ooh, yah.'
Me: 'What the hell is thunder-snow?'
Future-wife (content): 'It doesn't matter.'

In Retrospect

2008-06-08T07:47:00.000-07:00

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/06/07/thong.bandits.ap/index.html

Now, having lived in what basically amounted to an immigrant housing project for the last couple years of college, I, at the risk of stereotyping, have found Hispanic people living in America to be fun, easy going, and resourceful (generally speaking). Based on my limited experience I would say that they, as a whole, usually don't take themselves too seriously, and they can often figure out how to do something cheaper, faster, and better than you would ordinarily think possible.

Case in point - one time I had a car that I needed to get emissions testing done for. It was a mess of a car (Pontiac Sunbird - only slightly less trouble than the Fiero was), and it had several issues in the engine department and wouldn't pass inspection for anything. I took it to a local shop where the guy started listing off what would need doing - adjust the idle, replace some vacuum tubing, something was up with the distributor, etc, etc.

Total cost: $Hundreds
He can fit me in: Monday

Being a poor teenager, and discouraged at this news, I decided to look around for alternatives. I needed to pass emissions to be able to drive my car, after all, and there was no way I could meet that bill for at least a few months. Now, why a seven-yr old coupe needs to pass emissions and a mostly-empty diesel-spewing bus doesn't is beyond me, but that's a separate rant. After driving around for a while I saw a non-descript service station of sorts that se habla'd Espanol, and so I decided to investigate. Pablo (yes, he really was named Pablo) came out with his friend (whose name I do not recall), and looked over the car with his bud and then came over to me and said something like this (and I am dead serious here):

Pablo: 'Okay, so we feex the car like theees, okay. You leeesin now.'
Me: 'Si.'
Pablo: 'I am going to file theeese connektors, si?'
Me: 'Si.'
Pablo: 'And then my essay over there, he eez going to [something, I don't know].'
Me (Well, it sounded like car talk): 'Si.'
Pablo: 'And then I take this screw, and tweeeest it in the tubing, si?'
Me: 'Si.'
Pablo: 'Don't let the inspector guy see this screw, or you will be fucked, si?'
Me: 'Si. Si. Cuanto es?'
Pablo: '¿Qué? '
Me (embarassed): 'Uhh, sorry, umm.. How much will it be, and when can you guys do the work?'
Pablo: 'Eet's already done essay, eets $20.'

And the inspectors never found the screw, or any of the other 'modifications' made in the engine, and I passed emissions, and all was well. For $20! Can you beat that?!

And there are other examples I could give where I have seen or been a part of schemes that involved similar 'simplification' of ordinarily complex tasks - from buying beer without ID to landscaping tricks to SAT preparation. So it strikes me as a bit, well, odd that the story above ever came to pass. In other words, what the hell were they thinking?

I figure that the conversation must have gone wrong somewhere along the line, and that's how these two ended up in jail hoping to hell that their fellow inmates don't discover that they like to dress in women's underwear. Maybe the conversation went something like this:

Guy #1: 'Man, essay, I could reeeelly go for some cervezas right now.'
Guy #2: 'Yeah man, but we don't got no money, man.'
Guy #1: 'I don't get paid until Wednesday man, what are we going to do?'
Guy #2: 'Hey man, I got a peestola, we could go rob the store and then get some beers after, man.'
Guy #1: 'Yeah, we could do that. But how will we disguise ourselves, essay?'
Guy #2: 'We could wear your seeester's panties on our faces!(?)'
Guy #1: 'Yeah man, that sounds like a good idea!' <---- Here's where it must have gone wrong.
Guy #2: 'Let's go.'

Like it or not, the conversation had to go something like that. Maybe we could substitute baby formula and hard times for beers and carelessness, but at some point the panties had to be brought up and agreed upon. Now, as much as I am a fan of thongs (God bless them), I would not try to conceal my face with one - well, unless maybe it was some kind of kinky litt --- you know what, I'll finish that thought privately.... Anyway, if I was forced to choose underwear for the job then I would probably cut eye holes in some granny panties and just go for it - but you can't possibly be constrained to underwear as your only concealment option right? I get if you're not a regular criminal (good for you!) and as such don't own a couple ski masks, but what about hankerchiefs? What about shop rags? What about rolling up a turtleneck and putting on a hat? What about a Halloween mask? What about wrapping an ace-bandage around your head - ala the mummy? What about a combination of scratch and sniff stickers and sun-glasses? What about using a goddamned shopping bag and cutting eye-holes in it - you could probably even find one of those in the parking lot or in the dumpster outside. Something had to be better than thongs, right guys? I mean, come on... Well... I guess everything gets clearer in retrospect, doesn't it? ;)

What to Expect When You're Expecting

2008-05-18T07:53:00.000-07:00

No, we're not expecting. But we have been twice before. When I say 'we', I mean 'she' - because I had no idea what to expect. She had books to help her along the way. She had friends who had been expecting before. I had nothing, and as a result my journey into 'expecting' was much like being bandied about the head with an axe-handle. It was painful, disorienting, and I hoped that it would soon stop. If I were to write a book for guys, about what to expect when you're expecting, then they would never read it - 'cause I mean come on, we're guys, but if I were to make some cliff notes on the book in an effort to help prepare the average guy for what to expect, then they would be as follows:

1) Strange books will begin to appear on your coffee table. Lots of them. Hundreds of dollars worth of books - and she will want you to read them along with her. You will want to resist this - but not to the point of appearing uninvolved or disinterested. Some books have excrutiating details in them which are best left to the doctors and the babies, and some are little journal-type things that you write in (i.e. Day 63: I thought I felt you kick today, but it turned out that it was just those fajitas we had last night. I realize that you aren't capable of kicking me yet, but you are such a little miracle and blah, and blah, and blah.) One possible compromise is to have her read the book aloud to you in the evenings while you're sipping your beer. If she resists, then remind her that studies show that babies are comforted by their mothers voice while in the womb and that ears begin to form at only 8 weeks into pregnancy, and wouldn't-this-be-a-great-family-bonding-thing-for-all-of-you? :) Then all you have to do is try to not grimance when she announces rather proudly that her mucus plug is about to come in. Tip: If she thinks that you are disinterested then you can save yourself by putting your ear to her stomach and listening to the fajitas digesting for a few minutes. Don't ask me why.

2) She will begin 'nesting' if she hasn't already. You thought the books were expensive? Having a baby is the world's best reason to go on a shopping spree - and it never ends! She will buy things. A lot of things. Things that the child will have no use for until they are three years old. Things that are cute. Things that are on sale. Things that her friends thought were cute. Things that you kind of need, but that could be put off for another 6 months easily. She will buy two of some things in case the baby likes one of them better. Then there will probably be something called a baby registry too, where all of her friends can join in the excitement and buy multiple copies of things that the baby will have no interest in. Take heart - at least the financial strain will be spread around somewhat. There's really no way to stop this without appearing to be the world's biggest prick, so my advice is just to plan ahead and let it happen and defend as much of your territory as possible. If you're not having the baby for another six months, then you don't need to have the car seat in the back of your car just in case. Did she get an inflatable kiddie pool on sale? Don't blow it up yet, just smile and compliment her shopping ability, and then stick it in the garage.

3) She will change. Physically, obviously, but that's easily dealt with by using the phrase: 'You're just glowing honey, and it's the greatest thing ever that you can bring our child into this world.' Just repeat it at least three times out loud, right now, and remember it. That phrase will save you from just about any arguments or drama about what's happening with her body - and if you're convincing enough, then you'll score some bonus 'good daddy' points out of the gate. Trust me, those are more easily earned now rather than later. Emotionally speaking she will also change, and could have umm.. mood swings.. and cravings.. It's kinda fun waking up not knowing whether the bacon and eggs that you made her for breakfast will make you a star for the day or whether you'll be the devil's spawn who is making her fat (insert glowing statement here) and then she'll start crying and call her friend to bitch about this and all of the other stupid things that you've done during this trimester. Cravings are handled easily enough, you just have to make sure that you get enough of whatever it is that she wants. Think one pint of Ben & Jerry's is enough? Think again. Get three. Worried about waste? Over a $3 pint of ice cream? When you now own two changing tables that go for $400 a pop? Get real. I once had to drag my ass out of bed at midnight (so cliche', but I'm serious) to go find a store that was still open and that had peach yogurt and pink lady apples (nothing else would do). I filled the damn shopping basket after that. Fool me once.

4) She will become, uhh, irrational at times. Some of this is the fault of the books from #1 - at least one of which outlaws all sugar while pregnant and suggests that you reward yourself with an organic fruit-juice-sweetened cookie no more than once a week if you just can't live without it. Of all the tripe to put in a pregnancy book. She may read things like this (unbeknownst to you), second-guess herself, try, fail, and cry, at which point you will need to step up and do something or you risk being the insensitive jerk who ruined her life. Remind her that her mother smoked, drank, and probably ate her weight in doughnuts while she was in the womb and look how beautiful and smart she turned out (insert glowing statement from #3 here - are you seeing how useful it is yet?). You won't be able to fight some of the irrationality though, as it tends to resist reason very well - such as why the spare room upstairs, which has had fine white walls for the last five years suddenly needs to be a different color for the baby. It's for the baby. The baby needs a yellow nursery. The baby needs it. Don't try reasoning through this; don't try fighting back. Yes, it's true that the baby likely wont be able to appreciate interior decorating for quite some time, yes it's true that they may prefer white to yellow, it's almost certainly true that the room doesn't need to be painted right now - but you won't win this one. Just suck it up, go to Home Depot, and get the paint that she picked out. Reward yourself with a new power tool while you're there - and if you get called on it, then say it's for the baby. A new router? Say it's for engraving the baby's name on the crib or the changing table or something. New saw? Well, you need it for the detail work on the rocking horse you were planning on surprising her with. You know.

5) A lot of books say that she may become very horny during the second trimester. Heh. I wouldn't bank on that. . .

Anyway, if you can weather the storm then when you get to the hospital and witness the miracle of birth you will be greatly rewarded. Cherish the arrival of the baby. Cherish the look on your wife's face as the baby is presented to her. Cherish the look on your wife's face as you tell her that you forgot to put the car seat in the back of the car that you drove to the hospital. Cherish the urine as it drips from your chin, because soon this little person will call you 'dada' and then it's all over. :)

That's it, in a nutshell, hope it helps!

Away with the Circus

2008-05-07T08:44:00.000-07:00

I was a carnie once, I'll admit it. Briefly. This unfortunate turn of events was due to the fact that I needed money prior to taking off for college, and I had just recently been fired from my prior job for 'horse play', whatever that is :).

So, at my Dad's insistence, I read through the paper to find myself a job for the last few weeks of summer before school started. I think the ad went something like this:

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
$
$ RIDE OPERATORS WANTED, NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY !!
$
$ Must speak and understand English, must be able to lift 50 lbs.
$
$ Get started TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
$
$ Show up on Friday at the field on 5th and Vine before 9am.
$
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

And as you might have guessed from their rather stringent set of requirements, this turned out to be quite a fascinating and dynamic organization to become a part of. I showed up at 8:30 am on Friday, and stood next to a couple of other sorry-looking individuals and surveyed the once-vacant lot - which now seemed to be taken over by trailers, tents, and other assorted vehicles and contraptions that, when all taken in during the early morning fog, made this seem more like the set of a Stephen King movie rather than a place to bring the family. It was a chilly morning, but I waited. At about 9:20 a girl(?) came walking up to us and simply said (gruffly) 'CommON', and led us all into the maze of trailers that we had been staring at. The trail of smoke left by her cigar made it easy to follow her into the mist, and she sat us all down under a tent and went on.

Carnie Girl (handing us paper): 'Fill these out.'
Us (fumbling around for pens or whatever): ...
Carnie Girl: 'Oh Jesus Christ, CommON!'
From behind the trailer: 'Bev, where's my shorts!?'
Carnie Girl: 'I TOLL you I don't know, get-the-hell-outta my trailer!!'
Us (scribbling now): ...?
Bev (I guess): 'Don't you mind that now, y'all can fill those out later, CommON!'
Bev (mumbling): 'Somebitch better notta got me pregnant.'
One of us (not me): 'Is there going to be an interview, or.. ?'
Bev (walking off): 'CommON I SAID!'

And Bev walked us around to the various contraptions that were being set up in the field, and started pointing her cigar at them and calling out names (sort of). 'Blondie' she said, gesturing towards the Haunted House 'You're over there.' 'Freckles, on the canoe ride'. 'Sweet cheeks' she said, looking at me, 'You're on the teacups'. 'But I...' I started, 'CommON and git!' she said, and I scurried over to the ride and tried to figure out where to stand so that I at least looked like I knew what I was doing. 'I'll be back' she barked, and stomped her way off to one of the tents behind the line of trailers.

I stood in place, not daring to move, and looked over at the other new carnies-to-be. No one said anything, but it was easy to see by their similarly rigid stances that the the three of us had no idea what we had gotten ourselves into. 'Up time!' I heard Bev grunting, as she rounded the line of trailers again. 'Up time!' she shouted, kicking the sides of the trailers as she went, causing them to shake back and forth to wake their occupants. 'UP TIME!' One by one a small herd of hung-over, red-vested carnies emerged from their trailers and went almost robotically to their assigned attractions. There would be no introductions. Bev handed each of the three of us a not-so-clean red vest, and a few words of encouragement 'Don't go making trouble'.

Me (putting on my vest): 'So umm.. How do you work the ride?'
Bev (incredulous, pointing to some buttons): 'Green means go, Red means stop. You know your colors right?'
Me: 'Err, yeah. So um.. What do I do if someone falls off or gets hurt or. . .'
Bev: 'Are you Makein TROUBLE?!'
Me (cowering): 'No!'
Bev: 'Look, there's only one thing you gotta know. Each cup has a weight limit of 140 pounds. Anything more than that, and it goes bad. Keep the fat fucks off it.'
Me (in my head): How the hell am I supposed to know how much someone weighs just by looking? I mean, what does a group of three 8 year-olds weigh? I better err on the side of caution here. . .
Me: (in my outside voice, with a thumbs up): 'You got it boss.'
Bev (handing me a towel): 'Here's your towel.'
Me: 'Umm (?)'
Bev (walking off, over her shoulder): 'You'll figger it.'

I seem to be the only one with a towel. Blondie and freckles didn't get towels. Hm. Before I had time to ponder this any further, people began making their way down the midway and out into the field to survey the shoddily-maintained death-tra- I mean, attractions. I didn't actually see them come down the midway, per se, I just heard the carnies start shouting at them as the walked - 'come on and who's gonna win - who's a winner here - you a winner sir? Step riiiight up!' My first customers were on the way. Two little kids and their mom. Mentally, I play the weight game before they arrive.

Two little kids: maybe 60 or 70 pounds total
Mom: Ugh. 200? I don't know.

I collect their tickets, pull back the chain on the corral, and they mooooove on to the teacup floor. 'Excuse me ma'am', I say, as she goes to hand me her tickets better think of something fast - think-think-think!, 'but this ride is just for little kids.' yeah! that's it! you go boy! 'Oh, okay' she gruffs, and I help her kids into the teacup. I push the green button, spin the little suckers around for a few minutes to their sheer delight, and then hit the red button, lead them back to mom, and then they stumble off giggling. 'Okay' I think. This is easy, no sweat! Next comes a family of four - mom and dad didn't even want to get on the stupid teacups - no problem! Gaggle of giggling girls? No problem! An entire cub scout troop? No problem! This ride isn't cool enough for anyone over 12 it seems, so this has been cake walk for the most part.

'Break' I hear from behind me, and turn around to see Bev bending over to get something in the grass at my feet (turns out it was a dime). And I tried not to look, but because I am a guy, I couldn't help it - it was totally involuntary. And I looked, and I saw a thin blue line of fabric popping out along the top of Bev's pants. Underwear. 'Now that's a surprise', I thought to myself, 'I would have figured her for going commando'.

Bev: 'What you lookin at?'
Me: 'Nothing!'
Bev: 'Git! And be back here in 20 minutes, less you want trouble, sweet cheeks!'
Me: 'Okay boss!'

And I take off my vest and scoot off towards the midway, looking for a hamburger or something to eat for lunch. Following the smoke, I find a little shack doing popcorn, hamburgers, and hot dogs with a short line gathering around it. I wait. And someone in a red vest nudges me and points over to a table where there were a bunch of other people, who could only be carnies, gathered. Every single one of them had a hot dog. So... I guess I am getting a hot dog too.

Me: 'One hot dog please.'
They: 'ONE HOT DOG!!!'
They: 'You with the show?'
Me: 'Huh? Err.. yeah. '
They (shaking their head and looking skyward): 'Here ya go.'

I go and sit at the table with all the other carnies, none of whose names I remember, but if you picture a bunch of alcoholic 40-yr olds who look like they spent the last 10 years in prison, then you wouldn't be too far off. The clamor of the midway and the smoke from the grill adds a touch of elegance and sense of occasion to the meal.

From the midway: 'and who's gonna win - who's a winner here - you a winner sir? Step riiiight up!'
Some old Carnie: 'Go git 'em son!!! Booyeah!!!'
Me (trying to be more carnie than I can reasonably pull off): 'Why y'all got hot dogs for anyhows?'
Old Carnie: 'Hot dogs is new on Friday.'
Me: 'So... I mean.. Do they ever get .. old?'
Carnies: (laughter)
Old Carnie (gesturing to the hot dog machine): 'See dat roller up air?'
Me: 'Yeah.'
Old Carnie: 'They load 'er up when we pull into town, and the hot dogs last all week.'
Me (epiphany): 'Ooooohhh, right then.'
Old Carnie: 'No dogs past Sunday, that's the rule. I been here near twenty years, and the only time I ever got sick was on dogs past Sunday.'
Me: 'What about, like, the other people who come here an-'
Old Carnie: 'Hey! Are you tryin' to make trouble?!'
Me (quickly): 'No!'

And I scarf my hot dog, make a mental note to switch to hamburgers on Monday, and scurry back to Bev who looks to be busy instructing the kids on the finer points of riding on my ride.

Bev: 'Heet-up on in there now! Here we go! CommON!'
Me: 'I'm back!'
Bev (pulling some Skoal out of her pocket): 'Great. You got a cigarette? I'll trade ya a dip.'
Me (because I smoked when I was 18): 'Here, just, take it. It's cool.'
Bev (all of a sudden turning nice): 'Well, thanks, they don't let us smoke when we're workin'.'
Bev (pausing to spit on the side of the ride): 'So I make do with this.'

And with that I actually saw Bev smile as she threw off her vest and lit up my cigarette. The cigarette could have easily rested in half a dozen different pockets between her remaining teeth, but she didn't seem to notice my awkward gawking. Then after a short pause and a big drag, she looked at me and said 'see ya.'

So I put my vest back on and stepped up to the ride. More people were coming now, it was a zoo in the afternoon. And across the field I see a mom with three kids coming up. Again, the pre-emptive weight game -

Kids #1 and #2: About 80 lbs I reckon
Kid #3: maybe 100 lbs
Mom: Milf-tastic! She'd fit under the limit with room to spare!

I open the door, take the tickets, and divvy everyone up into their cups, and awaaay we go! And a line forms as everyone is spinning around, and I now realize that I just lost my good excuse for keeping the ride weight under control. Shit. And as the ride ends, and as I say goodbye to Ms. Milf-tastic, we take on more riders, and the line continues to grow. So far so good. And we start/stop and load up again, and this time there is trouble.

Me: 'I'm sorry Ma'am, but this is a ride for little kids.'
300: 'It is not. I saw another mother riding with her kids just a minute ago.'
Me (in my head): I am so, so fucked.
Me (trying to sell it): 'No you didn't.'
300: 'Don't be tellin' me what I saw, and I don't see no sign that sa-'
Me (transformation complete): 'HAY! You tryin' to make TROUBLE?!?'
300 (in utter shock): 'No!'

It worked!! And the ride went on, and no one else in line said shit after that! Awesome! And the day went on without issue, and well into the evening until it was almost time to close down for the day. And then I got me another gaggle of giggling girls. And they were fine, and they climbed in and rode, and as the ride was coming to a stop the cutest among them said 'Hey, can we just go again?' Now, I am a total sucker for cute little girls. I can't help it. Want an ice cream cone? A pony? College tuition? Okay, just smile and blink your eyes at me, that's all it takes, and I'll cave. They need to make a pill for this, obviously. And since the carnival is emptying out, and since no one else is in line, I say 'Sure!', and I spin them again. And a few minutes later the ride comes to a stop, and again she asks 'Hey, can we go just one more time?'

Me (sucker): 'Ohhh, okay.'
Them: 'Woo hoo!'

It's not like anyone is counting my tickets anyway, right? And they spin and spin and spin, and then. for. some. reason. they. want. to. stop. So. we. stop, and they all get out and start heading in fairly random directions and collapse on the grass. No more giggles. Then slowly they regain their feet, and the cute one waves goodbye to me. The littlest one just looks at me and says 'sorry' before scurrying off to join her friends. Sorry? Sorry about what (?), I wonder. And then the smell hits me. And I creep up to the teacup where she had been sitting. And it's everywhere. Looks like it might have been pizza about an hour ago (?). And now I understand what the towel is for. So I get to work cleaning up, and Bev brings me by a bucket of water. 'Come back tomorrow, sweet cheeks' she says, before dropping the bucket and heading off to her trailer for the night.

And I do, and all the rest of that week too, until Thursday rolls around and it's time to pack up. I help with the packing up, and Bev comes over and hands me a wad of cash -

Bev: 'That's for the week. You headin' out with us?'
Me: 'Thanks. I don't think so, I have other-'
Bev (rocking back on her heels and flashing her six sexy teeth): 'Aw come on. You can sleep in my trailer if you don't got none.'
Me (putting it in terms that I think she can understand): 'Thanks really, but I think I'll be movin' on now.'
Bev (pausing to drag on her cigar): 'Arright then. See ya sweet cheeks!'

And then she smacked me on the ass, turned, and walked away.

The Men's Room

2008-05-01T16:27:00.001-07:00

'Why don't you change the baby? There's a changing station in the men's room.' she said. Evidently, she had never seen the inside of a men's room before. Certainly not a real men's room. Not a men's room like the one at the McDonalds off of I-5 that I would have had to change the baby in. 'No thanks. I'll just change him in the car' I say. 'Don't be stupid,' she continued editorial note: That is her favorite phrase, 'It's pouring outside, you'll get soaked...' 'I don't care.' I replied. And seeing the continued quizzical expression on her face, I had to break down and tell her. The real horrors that are the men's public restroom. This took roughly an hour to lay out for her, but I will attempt to keep it brief, since the rest of you have lives to get back to. I'll start with upscale men's rooms, and work my way down. I swear that all of this is real - there's not even a need to stretch the truth here. No pictures will be provided. You're welcome.

The Upscale Men's Room
Found in: Fancy restaurants, executive hotels, and anywhere there is a lot of money
You are sometimes ok venturing into the upscale men's room, especially if it's earlier in the day. These are cleaned frequently, have quality tile, and are monitored for the occasional no-no. In some upscale men's rooms they even have attendants to assist you with whatever you might need while peeing - you know, the little mint and towel guys in black tie. This can be both a good and bad thing, depending on whether you like encouragement while trying to accomplish your business:
'Come sir, let's have it then.'
'I shall alert the weather bureau that a flood shall be forthcoming.'
'Well struck sir. We shall have to re-tile after that thunderous contribution.'
You know. And this is not to say that an unattended upscale men's room will not deteriorate quickly when left alone for too long - quite the contrary. Men seem to be pigs, and it doesn't matter if they are in a suit or a wife beater, they can't squat, aim, or wash without making a mess. The only particularly dangerous thing about the upscale men's room is that the tile is well-sealed and high-quality, meaning that when it gets wet it will be extremely slick. Couple that with a nice pair of virtually tractionless dress shoes, such as you might wear in a fancy restaurant, and you can be in for some fun.

The Men's Room at Work
Found in: most workplaces
And here we begin to see a real breakdown of societal normalcy. If you've seen Lord of the Flies, then you understand what I'm getting at. Let's begin our tour at the stalls. The stalls are kind of like a game show, in that you're never quite sure what you'll find behind each door - or whether it's a good idea to try to trade up to see what's behind a different door. As a general rule, anything that doesn't have poo smeared all over the insides of the stall or throne is workable, though not necessarily desirable. The traditional method is the quick-peek through the cracked stall door during which you can make an informed decision about whether to venture into the stall any further. If someone just went wild with #1, then you might be able to clean up or even better do a hover-type manuver to avoid contact. Caution must be exercised with the hover though, as it tends to promote splashing, so sometimes you're better off trying still another stall door to see if you can find a relatively unmolested stall. Depends how many doors you have to choose from I guess. Allow me to summarize the typical stall findings:

Always: Toilet paper on the floor, liquid of one kind or another on the throne, bad smell.
Frequently: Toilet paper missing, previous hover-manuver gone awry - leading to collateral damage on throne, liquid surrounding throne - like a moat for your castle.
And Sometimes: Poo on throne, floor, or other, used toilet paper on floor or other, throne overflowing and has presents inside, and even 'my diet has gone horribly, horribly wrong' - leading to a total catastrophie.

Moving on, we have a special fixture for guys called a urinal. You pee in it. That's it. Most of the time. . . At my place of employment, someone has affixed a laminated (obviously) sign above the urinals which reads: 'Only Urine in the Urinals Please.' . . . This is a fortune-500 company, not some rinky-dink operation that employs transients to throw freight. And what's worse, I will tell you that there are exactly three things that are ever found in a urinal aside from urine. One is gum, but no one chews gum here. The second used to be cigarette butts, before they outlawed smoking inside. The third belongs in a stall, but for whatever reason it's apparently not getting to the stall sometimes. And for them to go to the trouble of making a sign about it tells me that this has happened more than once, right?

Let's dissect the urinal a little more though. I want to examine it from a time-of-day perspective, as most janitorial-type duties (how they do it, I'll never know) are performed at night. In the early early morning, the men's room at work is, for the most part, clean. This is your only shot at getting a stall in reasonable condition, and also your best shot at not getting your shoes wet if you need to use the urinal. Why, you ask? Well, as the urinal sees more and more use, there is more and more spillage on the ground, until a nice little lake forms in front of it. You choices at any point later in the day are to stand in the lake (but eww), or stand on the far side of the lake and pee across the distance. Most everyone chooses option #2, and as a result the lake continues to increase in size as the stream drop-offs continue to land on the floor. Occasionally the lake will build to such a size as to create and support a small town complete with a ferryman to take you across the lake in his little boat so that you may pee closer to the urinal. He will generally not be as nice as the little mint guy in the executive men's room, and you have to make sure that he doesn't head back to shore without you too. Tip well.

The Real Men's Room
Found in: Gas stations, fast food, airports, train stations, skating rinks, and especially Chucky Cheese.
Girls, think you've seen it all? Are you disgusted by that little drop of pee left on the seat, and the nerve of the person before you who left the toilet unflushed? HAHAHAHAHA!!!! You haven't seen shit, my friend. If the world descended into anarchy and people were expelling waste whenever, wherever, and however they pleased, then you still couldn't touch the absolute filthery (not a word, I checked) of the Real Men's Room. I call it that because you have to be a real man's man to even enter these god-forsaken shit holes. Most of us would rather pee out the car window, even with the risk of blow-back. The placement of thrones and urinals in the real men's room are taken mostly under advisement, with the final resting place of said waste pretty much being distributed randomly across whatever space is available in most cases. The only way you'd be able to prove that the throne or urinal was once used is that whatever contents were deposited in either one have not been flushed, ipso facto, someone managed to hit the target at least once - and let's be honest here, close counts in the real men's room.

Also, you do not wash your hands in the real men's room. Touching anything at all will just make you dirtier than when you came in. You go in, hold your breath, do whatever you need to do wherever you can find room to do it, and then if there is paper of some kind available, you use it, open the door with it, throw the paper on the floor, and get the hell out. 'And that's the reality of the situation' I said to her. . . 'Fine' she replied, 'I'll just change him in the women's restroom', and she stalked off kinda pissed.

And now I don't have to change the baby when we are on the road anymore!!! :)

Before She Eats

2008-04-26T22:09:00.000-07:00

I attempted a parody of Carrie Underwood's 'Before He Cheats' a long time ago, and finally decided to put it on the list of songs over to the right. It's not a great performance on my part, but I felt it might at least be entertaining (maybe), so I figured I would put it up. This particular sonic nightmare was mixed (rescued, really) by a guy named Jay Walsh who can be reached at http://www.farviewrecording.com. If this is your first time here, then I would recommend listening to 'Glamorous' or 'Hey There Vagina' first, as these are really more up to snuff.

Rhianna and Eminem are next up. Additional videos likely. Be afraid. . .

The List

2008-04-24T08:00:00.000-07:00

The list. You know, the list. The list of people who if you had a chance to sleep with them (not that you'd ever have a chance), then there is a silent agreement with the wife that it would be ok, because, I mean, damn. I'm not sure how many people y'all get to have on your list, but I get five on mine - chiefly as a result of my dongle hanging on a little hook by the front door. Encased in glass. Along with a little hammer and a note which reads 'Don't you even - '.

I figure that the only way I'd ever get to meet one of the people on my list and have a chance with them would be if like, they were driving around in my neighborhood without an entourage, with a dead cell phone, got a flat tire right in front of my house, and were insatiably horny upon my fixing the tire for them - and that's only if the lighting isn't too good. I changed out our porch lights from 75W to 60W just in case, and keep waiting for that knock on the door. So far zippo.

So without further ado, here's my list for 2008:

1) Natalie Portman. That little ripped up white outfit in Star Wars? To die for!
2) Rihanna. When she has the straight hair in those music videos? Ack!
3) Rebecca Romijn-Stamos. The blue chick from XMEN. Drooo o o o o l.
4) Angelina Jolie. Pretty much any time, anywhere. Duh.
5) Milla Jovovich. She's weird. She's interesting. She'd have to be a great lay.

I know, I know, you're saying what about Halle Berry? What about Victoria Beckham? What about - - - ??? Okay chief, who's on your list?

Kari's House

2008-04-19T19:26:00.000-07:00

The five of us had plotted all week. Me, Shane, Josh, Paul, and Bob. Plotted all week to have a sleep-over and then sneak out and go toilet paper Kari Pollreisz’s house. Kari, spelled K-a-r-i, was the future homecoming queen, head cheerleader, and queen of the fake-baked-mall-bitches all in one. She hated us. We openly hated but secretly loved her (or the idea of her anyway), and after enduring months of torment that only adolescents can either dish out or experience fully, we finally decided to get her back. We were going to TP her house. Next weekend. TP it good. Then she would be sorry and take back all those brush-offs, screw-yous, and thinly disguised looks of disdain that we would always garner while making those farting sounds with our arm pits in class. Bitch.

Bob, by virtue of having overheard our conversation at lunch, had to be included in this little endeavor, though everyone (particularly Paul) was skeptical about Bob’s ability to make a meaningful contribution (who's Bob?).

Paul: ‘He’s slow, weak, noisy, and pathetic – whaddaya mean we have to bring him?’
Me: ‘He’ll tell. . .’

And since we were 12, that was enough to secure Bob the outing of his life so far. Oh, I’m sure that Bob has since moved up in the world – probably retired from software engineering at 30 and waking up on his yacht right now as I type, deciding which ex-model will be allowed to welcome him into the world this morning with a bloody mary and a blow job, but this is a story set long ago where we can still poke fun at Bob and not have to follow it with a ‘sir’.

So we all meet up at my house, and Bob brings along all of his Dungeons and Dragons stuff because, well, we need something to do, and Bob will tell, so I guess we’re playing… Also, Bob gets to be the dungeon master, because he’s the only one who really knows how the game is supposed to work – and the only one with the rule books too, so that means he basically gets to tell us all what to do during the game to a large extent as well. Bob may very well have popped his first boner that night - what with all the excitement.

Bob (rolling dice): ‘Wah wah wah.’ <--- That’s how Bob laughs
Shane: ‘What?’
Bob: ‘It seems that the Beholder has taken an interest in you, puny elfling, wah-wah-wah’
Shane: ‘Okay so –‘
Bob: ‘The rest of you guys see Fizgig shoot up into the air and . . ‘
Bob (rolling more dice): ‘.. oh look, he just exploded. Wow. I’ve invented elf-rockets! Wah-wah-wah’
Bob: ‘Someone better collect the dust, maybe you can resurrect him in town.’
Paul: ‘Screw this crap.’
Bob (smug look): …
Me: ‘I’ll get a jar…’

And this pretty much goes on for a few hours, as we down cans of Jolt (remember Jolt?) cola and bags of chips. We get the stupid elf resurrected, we save someone from something – I don’t remember what, and emerge heros. And then it’s time.

About 2am we grab all the toilet paper in the house that we can find, about 12 rolls, and stuff them into backpacks. Josh has brought some from home already – 4 more rolls makes 16. And then naturally we grab the firecrackers too – because we, of course, have to go torment a field full of cows that are on the way. It’s like a tradition. Okay, it’s just a guy thing… Okay, so… Really it’s more like we wanted to try cow-tipping this one time, but we were too chicken to do it, so we threw firecrackers at them instead, and now we sort of just always do it, okay?

We also swipe a couple of beers from the fridge because, uhh, because they are there I guess. I didn’t develop any taste for beer until I was about 22 – and couldn’t hack down enough of it to get a buzz until I was 14, but hey, if it made you look cooler to have it, then you may as well have it right?

Me (popping open a can): ‘Here Bob, go for it.’
Bob: ‘I don’t think that I sh-‘
Me: ‘Oh Christ Bob, it’s just beer, drink it.’
Bob (sipping): ‘I – uGh! Argh!’

Bob says ‘argh’ a lot. It can mean any cuss word. He lives with his gran, if you recall, and she’s the kind of gran that don’t abide no cussin’. In my idle daydreams I sometimes picture Bob sitting in the bathroom with a bar of soap in his mouth, like that little kid in A Christmas Story. Bob hands me back the beer, and I pretend to like the rest of the can as we walk to the cow fields.

We spread the upper gap in the barbed-wire fence and crawl through quietly, approaching our unsuspecting prey – 5 or 6 cows standing in a field unsuspecting. Probably having cow dreams. What exactly they dream about I can’t tell you, but I can tell you that the dreams are about to come to an end –

Paul (lit firecrackers in hand): ‘Hey-oh Cows!!!!!’
Cows: ‘Moo?’
Paul: ‘Artillery!’

And at that we start sticking bottle rockets lightly in the ground, angled towards the cows, and lighting them. *shoom*shoo-shoo-shoom*bang*bang*bang-ang* (I wasn’t brave enough to launch them by hand yet) and Paul throws his firecrackers, and the cows start a mini-stampede to the other end of the field with us preparing to pursue, and Ssssssssssssssss…. *BANG* happens right at our feet.

Paul: ‘Dammit BOB! You don’t stick ‘em in the ground that far!’
Josh: ‘Cows are already gone, dood.’
Bob (abashed, and stammering): ‘O.. Okay.’
And we start a pursuit, and run them into a corner (quietly) where we continue the merciless and senseless onslaught – and Paul is about to bellow an attack order when from behind us: *shoom-shoo-shoo-shoo-shoom* rockets begin whizzing by our heads and veering off-course and hitting the adjacent fence right behind the cows *bang-bang-ang-ang-bang* and this naturally spooks the crap out of them, and they start their mini-stampede again – right towards us.

Paul: ‘Goddammit Bob!!!’
Bob: ‘I-‘
Me (cutting in) ‘RUN.’

And we do run, and probably make more of a production out of running than necessary, but hey it’s a really dark night, and if you get trampled or bit or something, then you’re basically on your own because no one thought to bring a flashlight. We cross to the nearest fence and all scoot through the barbed wire, and from behind me I hear

The darkness: ‘Oh ARGH.’
Me: ‘Bob?’
The darkness: ‘Help!’
Me: ‘Guys, I think Bob is in trouble.’
The darkness: ‘Come on guys…’
The guys (mocking): ‘Come on guys…’
The darkness: ‘I’m stuck!’
The guys: (laughter)

So, I go back for Bob, because Bob’s, well, a little out of his element I guess, and plus he is my friend. Mostly. So I walk back, and Bob is perched kind of straddling the barbed-wire fence, with the crotch of his stylish grey corduroy pants all hung up on the barbed wire (Bob chose corduroys instead of the cheap nasty purple jeans that I usually got stuck with – to each his own I guess).

Bob (having given up trying to free himself): ‘Help?’
Me (sighing): ‘Okay, let me see if I can OHMYGOD–WHAT-HAPPENED?’
Bob: ‘I kinda slipped on the way…’

Bob had, in fact, found himself a fresh cow-pie, ran through it and managed to both lose his shoe and slip and fall into a second cow-pie all at the same time. His pants were trashed. He smelled horrible. And I had to reach into this mess to get him off the fence.

Me: ‘This is love, Bob.’
Bob: ‘Please don’t tell the others.’
Me (fighting back the urge to both vomit and laugh): ‘I don’t think we’re going to be able to hide this one.’
Me (still fighting back a giggle): …Want some toilet paper, for… you know… (?)
Bob: …
Me: wah-wah-wah!
Bob: ‘Argh.’

So Bob gets loose, minus a few crotch fibers and the aforementioned shoe. And we talk about it and decide that going back for the shoe would be pointless as he’ll never want to wear it again anyway. No, I am absolutely not making any of this up, you’d just have to know Bob.

So, cows sufficiently spooked, we continued on to Care Bear’s house. Kari the bitch, Kari whose family is loaded, Kari who has never not been on any of the junior high dance, Christmas, homecoming, or whatever courts. Kari, whose book report was on ‘Of Mice and Men’, when asked, reported that the theme of the story was ‘to be nice to everyone (+ tee hee)’ and got an ‘A’ for that smarmy, vapid, future Miss America answer. Kari who was so high up on her throne that she actually sent a follower of hers to come over to our table at lunch time and announce that ‘Kari doesn’t like you’, since it was beneath her to do it herself. She’s getting hers tonight. Maybe we’ll even be lucky enough to wake her up while we’re doing it and then we can see her in her underwear in her bedroom window, we thought. Yah, that would be the icing on the cake alright.

And we’re close now. We’re sticking to the shadows, and have cut all the chatter among us. Toilet paper is handed out and primed silently as we walk. We don’t give any to Bob, despite the fact that he needs it the most. He might trip over a dangling stream and let out an ‘Argh!’ at the wrong time or something. No no, not taking any chances now. And we’re quiet, and we slow down. It’s just around the corner now. Hungry smirks are traded like baseball cards as we try to conceal the fog from our breath on approach. No fingerprints, no trace, no nothing we agreed. Everyone has known their piece of this endeavor since the day before. It will be fast, thorough, and humiliating – that much is certain. And we round the bend, and the tree blocking her house from view from the main road. And we start up the sides of the driveway – all stealthy, like cats. And we stop. And we look up. And wonder. And it was truly, truly the best work of art I had ever seen - even to this day. Absolute mastery, as if someone had decorated for Christmas. The trees were trimmed expertly; the house looked like something from a paper mache ginger bread kit. It was awe-inspiring, but as we stood there, toilet paper in hand, reeking of beer and cow manure, the fact remained that SOMEONE ELSE HAD ALREADY TOILET-PAPERED KARI’S HOUSE EARLIER THAT NIGHT!

Me (tossing my roll of toilet paper to Bob): ‘Here Bob… Argh!...’
Bob (suddenly hopeful): ‘Well, that’s that then. Who’s up for more D&D?’

Inequalities

2008-04-04T20:23:00.000-07:00

When you get married, you have to relinquish yourself to having some things that are his & hers. His & hers bath towels for instance. One for him, and one for her. What no one ever tells you before entering into this pact is that 'His & Hers' can extend to other aspects of your relationship, and that separate does not necessarily mean equal. Case in point:

This is 'Her' ice scraper. Actually, it's mine, but she lost hers, so I was nice and let her borrow mine. 4 years ago. We used to live in Minneapolis, where the winters sucked. We got a pair of these for free at a Twins game back in 1999 when we were still dating, and have used them ever since. Great scapers. Virtually indestructable - and they just laugh at the pathetic winters we get here in the Pac NW. Note the long handle so you wont get frostbite while scraping. Note the brush just in case you want to finish off the scraping job and scatter that frost-dust on the ground. This is good. This was mine. This is hers. Now. . .

This is my ice scraper.
It's half of a subway sandwich card. It's only a half because a few years ago I broke off the other half while trying to scrape my windshield. If the camera phone were better, you could see the useful platic coating peeling back from the leading edge of the half-card, which makes it much less efficient at scraping windows than an ordinary half-a-card. The ice curls up and lands perfectly on my finger tips while I am scraping the window no matter what angle I approach it from - at 5am, while my wife sleeps away the morning with the lion's share of the covers in our nice warm bed - but I'm not bitter or anything. I know that I could go to Subway and ask for a new card. I simply understand that in any relationship you need to compromise and sometimes his does not equal hers, and that's OK.

...and it's okay because I have some other cool toys that are mine and mine alone, such as:
Ye' olde time toilet plunger. Yes, this baby is all mine. She never touches it. Never talks about getting her own, never gives me one of those little furtive jealous glances when she sees me using it, never sighs wistfully and bats her eyelashes the way she does when she sees a nice little $5000 tennis bracelet in the store window. Doesn't matter who actually did it, fear not, me and my trusty plunger will come to the rescue time and time again and splook out the problem - whatever it might be. . .

Maybe I'll get her one for our anniverssary. . .

Rocketry

2008-03-28T07:10:00.000-07:00

So speaking of rockets, want to bond with your kids? Share a hobby? Do father-son things? Me too! I thought we would try model rockets 'cause the kid likes space. He loves to sit and ponder various goings-on in the solar system such as why there are gaps in Saturn's rings. Needless to say, I spend a lot of time on the internet researching answers to these questions - 'cause although I can operate a motor vehicle, plug in a microphone, and sometimes build a little fort, when it comes to anything academic I have been fortunate enough to have flushed anything more complicated than comparison shopping down the toilet. It was during one of these comparison shopping internet escapades that I saw an ad for a local hobby shop that carried model rockets.

So we go to the hobby shop. And well, uh.. We discover that it's basically some kind of Mecca for geeks. There's your standard computer geek, the model train geek, the RC whatever (don't you dare call it 'remote control') geek, and God knows what other kinds of geeks all clustered under one roof. It's frightening, really, and we shuffle off to the rocket part of the store trying to avoid being fallen over or maybe lit on fire by other shoppers. Upon arriving at the rocket aisle, the kid starts announcing the advertised heights that each different rocket is capable of achieving.

Kid: '1000 feet, 1100 feet, oh look poppa this one goes 2000 feet!!'
Me: 'Mmmhmmm.'

All the while, I am scanning the same model packages as he is, looking for something that says 'Assembles in 10 minutes'. No dice. After a lengthy exchange between the kid and myself, we decided to compromise, which is a good word to know when you're five. We get the rocket that goes 1100 feet, and assembles in about an hour. Now we need, lets see, glue, engines, and a bunch of other... oh, okay, I see, this comes with a launch pad - that's nice - I mean for $30 you'd hope.

Total bill out the door: $45
Dad of the weekend: Priceless

Right? Right. Okay, so we go home and proceed to open the package at the table and read the instructions. The kid, of course, wants to help - and who can blame him - but after reading through the instructions it seems as if making even the tiniest mistake will cause the rocket to veer off course or even disintegrate mid-flight, so I take on the majority of the putting-together part while he dances around me kicking the table at the most inopportune times.

Kid: 'Is it ready yet?'
Me: 'Almost, we have to let this part dry first.'
Kid: 'What does flammable mean?'
Me: 'It means that it can catch on fire.'
Kid: 'What does inflammable mean?'
Me: 'The same thing. English is just weird that way. Where are you seeing that?'
Kid: 'All over the packages and stuff.'

Cheery. So I find a few things for him to do while the rocket dries - including reading about the science behind how it works and how to operate the launcher, and then we're off to the park. According to the instructions, we should find a place that's at least 25'x25' to launch this baby to ensure safety. I figure the back field of an elementary school should do just fine, so we go and set up our launch pad in the middle of a patch of dirt, and point the rocket upwards, and hook up the lau- . . . heyyyy,

Me: 'Stop dancing around that launcher.'
Kid: 'But I want to launch it!'
Me: 'You can, just wait until I am done hooking it up and we do a count down, or you'll accidentally launch it up poppa's shirt.'
Kid: (maniacal laughter)

So I hook up the little alligator clips - while keeping a reeeel close eye on the kid, and then back off, and we do the countdown:

Us: 'Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Blastoff!!'
Rocket: 'SSSSHOOOOOOOOM!!!!!'
Kid: 'Where did it go?'
Me: 'I don't know, I think, lets see... Oh, okay. See that little black spot up there?'
Kid: 'Yeah..(?)'
Me: 'That's it, and.. it's.. drifting.. over those, houses there, and... Okay, so we need to go to the car - right now.'
Kid: 'Okay.'

So we hastily pack up the launch pad and accessories, and beat it to the car to go look for the rocket. We drive around about where it should have landed, but don't see it. I get out of the car, talk to a few people, and look in a few back yards, but it's nowhere to be found. Kid distraught. 25'x25' my ass. Second trip to the hobby shop imminent.

'Okay', I say. 'This time we're going to use the big park next to the school, and we'll just have to wait until there's no people where we are launching it, okay?' So we go back to geek central, get another rocket, and we're on our way. This time, the kid picks out something called the 'Sizzler' which goes 2000 feet according to the package. He's excited. I am a little hesitant, but figure that we have a lot of room to work with in the park. I decide to get all prudent and write my cell number on the side of the rocket, so that if it gets lost, then maybe someone will call us. That's thinkin' now, ain't it?

Second rocket, plus new rocket engines: $25
Dad of the afternoon: Priceless. Right?

Two beers later the rocket is all assembled and also no one has managed to glue their fingers together yet, so we let it dry for a few and then head out to the park. We pick a little corner of the park to set-up in, and angle the rocket ever-so-slightly towards the center of the park, figuring it will land in a nice little sea of green grass, and we'll have the added bonus of being able to tell if anyone (other than us) is in danger.

Us: 'Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Blastoff!!'
Rocket: 'SSSSHOOOOOOOOM!!!!!'
Kid: 'Where did it go?'
Me: 'I don't know, I think, lets see... Oh, okay. See that little black spot up there?'
Kid: 'Yeah..(?)'
Me: 'That's it, and.. it's, wow, that went a LONG way didn't it?'
Kid (jumping up and down): 'Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!'
Me: 'We better start running.'
Kid: 'Yeah!'

And we run across the whole park, length-wise, and lose sight of the rocket along the way. And it's not in the park. And we look, and we look, and finally cross over to the adjacent grade school where we had (ironically) launched the first rocket, and then we see it. Well, part of it anyway - here it is:
As you can see the nose part and parachute had separated from the body at some point, and one of the fins was broken.

Kid (disheartened): 'It's all broken.'
Me: 'I know, we-'
Kid (missing the irony): 'Hey look, at least we still have the phone number part.'
Me: 'We sure do. . .'

So, back to the geek-shop we go. How hard can this be? This time we park and walk in and go to the rocket aisle, and now I'm looking for the biggest, slowest hunk of crap I can find. Preferably something indestrucable too. No more balsa wood for me.

Me: 'Hey [name-of-kid], what about this one??'
Kid: 'It doesn't say how high it will go. . .'
Me: 'Oh but look, it's huge and it has two space shuttles attached to the sides! That's like three rockets in one!'
Kid: 'Yeah!!!'

Oh, I'm sure there is a special circle of hell given to deceivers, but I'm already on that list on account of Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, an imaginary person (Fred) who has periodic gastrointestinal issues, and who knows what else, so I figure it's worth the gamble. So we get the rocket and our make plans to head back to the stupid fucking park.

Third rocket, plus another six-pack: $25
Dad: Whatever.

So I'm a wiz at putting together rockets now, and despite the fact that this one had attachments and complicated things I let the little guy help out too. Hell, why not. And we go to the stupid park, and hook up the stupid rocket, and wait for the stupid people to get out of the stupid way. I point it vaguely 'up'. And we wait. And there's this lady. An elderly lady walking this little dog that is really too small to be allowed, and they're both shaking as they walk. Slo w l y. Nice.

Kid: 'When can we launch the rocket?'
Me: 'We have to wait for that lady there to pass...'
Kid: 'That's a really little dog.'
Me: ' I know.'
Kid: 'Is it trying to poop?'
Me: 'I don't know, probably, hey, umm, I spy with my little eye, something that is - '
Kid: 'Poppa, we already played that game.'
Both of us: ...
Kid (when the lady is now 8 feet away): 'Poppa, why are old people so slow?'
Me (burying my head in my arms): '[name-of-kid], just, shut up.'

And after what seemed like an eternity, seriously, the old lady rounds the corner and we do a countdown and launch the rocket:

Us: 'Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Blastoff!!'
Rocket: 'SSSSHOOOOOOOOM!!!!!'
Kid: 'Where did it go?'
Me: 'I don't know, I think, lets see... Oh, okay. See that little black spot up there?'
Kid: 'Yeah..(?)'
Me: 'That's it, and.. it's, it's landing. on. that. house. over. there...'
Kid (jumping up and down): 'Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!'
Me: 'We better start running.'
Kid: 'Yeah!'

So we go over to the house, and I can actually see the rocket this time, and both shuttles that it carried up along with it. On someone's roof. Wayyyy up there. I scrounge around and find a big long stick, and then pause for a moment. I better ask the homeowner if this is okay... *Bing Bong* a little kid looks through the glass at the side of the door, gets a terrified look on his face, and then runs away. Doh! I deftly hide the big stick behind my back. Door opens, homeowner seems somewhat concerned about the situation, but ultimately agrees to let us fish for the rocket. We fish. We retrieve! It's in one piece! The score is now:

Rockets: 2
Us: 1

So I figure, hey, we can do this, right?. Now, instead of 'vaguely up' I decide to try the ever-so-slightly angled towards the center of the park trick again, figuring, once again, that the rocket and shuttles will splash down nicely in a sea of velvety green grass. Hah!

Us: 'Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Blastoff!!'
Rocket: 'SSSSHOOOOOOOOM!!!!!'
Kid: 'Uh oh.'
Me: 'Oh. Shit.'

As it turns out, this rocket is much heavier than the others we launched, and it seems to have weighed down the little metal launching stick as it took off, meaning that what was maybe once a 5-degree angle has now turned into a 35-degree angle. It's almost surreal to watch, as the rocket, with rugged (and sharp) plastic tip crosses the entire park at roughly head level, headed for a basketball game on the other side. It must be about 400 yards to the basketball court, so they aren't going to hear a word I shout - so I just get to sit and watch this all in slow motion and hope that no-one gets impaled. To make matters worse, the parachute has decided not to deploy and help us out. It's basically a missile at this point.

From the basketball court: 'HEADS!!!'
Me: 'We better start running.'
Kid: 'Yeah!'

Looking up, I see ten ball-players flat on the pavement and a basketball rolling slowly along, somewhere in the center of the court. It's a long walk to the basketball court. Long walk. With twenty eyes wondering why you might have almost put them out. Long ass walk. Looks like most of the players are kids. Looks like their parents are there too. Awesome. I cling to my 5-year old for support, hoping that if I look like I'm playing the ignorant part of 'fun dad' instead of 'vengeful negligent jerk' that I won't be stoned to death. After some awkward apologies and small talk, we retrieve the rocket from the other side of the court (it had apparently hit a fence and finally fallen). It was still in one piece, still with both shuttles attached too - they never deployed.

Kid: 'We can go and launch it again an-'
Me: 'Hey, [name-of-kid], how would you like to have a fish tank?'
Kid (jumping up and down): 'Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!'
Me: 'Let's go to the pet store. . .'

For sale: One tried and true rocket with two shuttles. Smells vaguely of sulfur. $3

New song

2008-03-21T21:51:00.000-07:00

So I made this new song. It's a parody of Colbie Caillat's 'Bubbly' - and because the original was so damn cheerful, mine has a more macabre demeanor to it. You can click it over on the right hand side there if you'd like to listen to it. Comments always appreciated :).

Cheers,

School Lunch?

2008-03-12T13:38:00.001-07:00

Did they fix the school lunch program, and no one bothered to tell us? Chicken soft tacos? Pizza Hut? You have a choice - no, three choices today? There's a menu?? And it's not a bunch of little squares on a sheet of goldenrod?? And you're in Kindergarten?? The hell you say!

I had the pleasure of attending five different schools during my K-6 years, and the school lunch program was the same at every single one, and as I recall went something like this (shout out if you remember this too):
1) Everyone lines up by the door alphabetically, meaning that the same kids got screwed every single day. Not that I'm bitter about it or anything. . . :)
2) You all tromp down the hall and join 400 other kids waiting in line for lunch. Your teacher, on the other hand, runs off someplace to smoke or drink - or who knows what else. . .
3) You get up to the front of the line, take a plastic tray and proceed down an assembly line of cafeteria workers, each one more surley than the last, who then slop little piles of either different colored sludge or canned vegetables onto your tray with a little clicky ice-cream scoop. There is no 'choosing'. Did you want the 'dinner roll' with the little bubble? Too bad. Next!
4) You hope, in vain, to avoid getting cigarette ash in your corn this time.
5) And fail.
6) And then sit down at a table, pick at your sludge, and hope the milk that was left sitting in a crate next to the radiator since this morning hasn't curdled yet.

All through this you never once saw an adult eating any of the food that was being served, and usually there was a rule that you had to take one bite of everything on your plate before you were allowed to throw it away. Didn't like the cole slaw last time? Too bad! Take another bite this week - and we'll know if you just try to push it around with your fork! We're watching you!

Lunches did get slightly better in junior high and highschool as I think people started realizing that there were a few students who had begun to develop critical reasoning skills (i.e. if I can't tell what it is, then perhaps I shouldn't place it in my mouth...), so these students were placated with omnipresent hamburgers. Those still weren't very good, but thanks to McDonalds everyones expectations had already been lowered to the point where they became acceptable. I'm jealous of the new school lunch program. Damn. . . Though, every now and then, I do get a little craving for that old-school 'mashed potatos and turkey gravy' where the gravy came from that big can. . . Yeah, that was alright. . .

Dora the Sexplorer

2008-03-03T13:39:00.000-08:00

Warning: The following, like most everything else here, is not suitable for children (children who are literate anyway). . .

They loooove Dora. I haaaate Dora. I want to kiiiill Dora. With a haaaammer. You can only sit and watch the same idiotic, mind-numbing Dora the Explorer episodes over and over for so long before your mind starts to wander and make up its own story behind the characters and what they are doing. I finally cracked at the 55th showing of 'Dora's Magic Box', so here I am. . .

For those who don't already have their own little private Dora-hell, the real show airs on Nickelodeon, and usually goes something like this:
Dora has some shit to do or somewhere she needs to go and so she does, and she always has two landmarks along the way, with the third place as her destination. She'll use a map to help plan a route and get there. Dora travels with a talking monkey named Boots, meets Swiper (a fox) somewhere along the way, sometimes succeeds at saying 'Swiper no Swiping' three times, and sometimes not at which point Swiper successfully swipes stuff from Dora or Boots and hides it. Dora and Boots then always find the hidden stuff. Dora has dozens of stupid friends, and with their help always succeeds in overcoming the obstacles during the show. Dora sometimes speaks Spanish, especially to some of her friends that don't speak English, and then every character that was on today's episode sings the god-forsaken 'We Did it' song at the end except for Swiper - unless Swiper did something positive in the episode, like the time where he rescued a lost baby fox. Lastly, Dora asks viewers what their favorite part was, and she and Boots then proceed to tell the viewer which part of the adventure she most enjoyed. Hurl.

In my head, it goes more like this:

Dora was born into a poor family in small Mexican village someplace, and was brought into the world of sex, drugs, and prostitution early-on, chiefly as a result of not being able to run quite as fast as her cousin Diego. Like the rest of the world, Diego quickly tired of this cheery little bitch and decided to trade her to a local pimp for that nifty watch he now wears, plus a half-gallon of ice cream.

The pimp of my show is Tiko, of course. Tiko is always cruising around in his car, or a boat, or a plane, perhaps a rocket ship - who knows, and always seems to own at least one of everything. He is a pimpy little guy fo shizzle, and a snazzy dresser to boot, and he was glad to trade his Mexican-made Rollecks to Diego for a nice little piece like Dora.

After the trade, the first thing Tiko had to do was make sure to get a monkey on Dora's back because although she couldn't run very fast, she could be counted on to sing assinine songs unless heavily medicated, and this frustrated her Johns, err - I mean Jose's, to no end. The monkey, unfortunately, needed one hand free at almost all times for one reason or another, so he kept slipping off her back and was relegated to the role of 'guy in the corner for little to no reason with only one hand usually showing'.

Not easily defeated, Tiko enlisted the help of 'backpack' who is now an almost permanant fixture on Dora's back, along with 'map'.

'Backpack' is a veritable treasure trove of anything that helps Dora turn tricks faster, and is also has a 'star pouch' so that if and when Dora catches stars, she can put them in the pouch. The stars have different varieties and names, much like LSD does (Blue Cheer, Looney Tunes, etc.)

'Map' functions mostly as a humiliation tool for Tiko to remind Dora where her place is should she start thinking about taking off. 'What's my name?!?' he asks. 'Say it AGAIN!' he demands. That's right bitch, take it! Oh, wait, he doesn't say that... I'm getting ahead of myself, heh. . .

That's Dora's friend Benny to the right there. Benny is lame. Benny would be Dora's best customer if he could get it up at all, but he can't. He does have a hot-air balloon, but still manages to get outwitted by most office supplies. He ain't no Tiko. The best job he can manage is 'fluffer'. He's also insanely jealous of the Big Red Chicken (not pictured) because Benny would otherwise be the most well-hung character on the show. . .

And this fellow is Swiper. He smaller than the big red cock, err - I mean chicken, but he's a kinky little fucker who always wears a mask during sex. He lives on 'Blueberry Hill', and whether or not it was intentional, it fits in perfectly with the Louis Armstrong song. He'll wait for the opportune moment and then take Dora and her stupid monkey by surprise, mostly coming from behind. Mostly.

And lastly we have the band. Bow-chicka-bow-wow, bow-chicka-bow-wow. Tiko bought these guys to follow Dora around and play upbeat porno-style music to keep the clients happy. They certainly look happy, don't they? Personally, I think they have been dipping into Dora's star pouch.

Anyhoo, it's a lame little fantasy for sure, but it beats the hell out of actually having to process the show yet again, and the next time I have to see 'Dora's Magic Box' I have a feeling that the plot will sicken a bit :).

Incidentally, if you are repulsed by this latest blog entry, but have managed to make it this far despite that fact, then I would like to take this opportunity to assure you that I am not the person who invented this: :) Comments?

Sex Ed

2008-02-22T15:51:00.000-08:00

I was reminiscing about sex ed the other day. I went to many different schools growing up, and each one taught their own sex ed class - none of which were as informative as watching 'Bonfire of the Panties' in Bob's basement growing up (who's Bob?). I can remember at almost every school though, that there were two or three students who quietly disappeared when it was sex ed time - presumably to go and visit the library and learn more about puppies or ice cream or something, and I never quite understood what the big deal was. Looking back now, I can understand that these were the kids whose parents didn't sign their permission slip and they were either too honest or too dense to fake it - but I still can't understand why. . .

Don't get me wrong, I'm not here to tell you what to do with your kids as far as sex ed goes, I couldn't care less. Mine will probably go just so I don't have to hear about it from anyone else later, but I fully expect them to actually learn about sex by watching pornos or in the back seat of a car with a box of condoms and a local floozy - in other words, the way that nature intended. That's really the only place to learn anyway - 'cause much like math, reading, grammar, science, and etiquette, public schools can't teach sex ed to save their lives either...

This is what all of us 10 and 11 year old boys had hoped sex ed was going to be like:

Eliza Dushku, brought into the classroom, hair all in a tussle, and just waiting to show us all of the special wonders that go with sexual relations. Many, many times if possible. We had, after all, gotten over the embarrassment of giving the stupid permission slips to our parents, and listened to them stutter haltingly over something in an inane attempt to smooth over the situation ('Don't you go ahhh.. Don't you be getting no girls pregnant now. But, wait, don't get gay either! Not-that-we-won't-love-you-if-you-are...') - thanks guys, that helped! What I'm trying to say is that we put in our dues. We had earned Eliza, or at lease a torrid, bawdy afternoon with her. We could almost see her, surrounded by nothing but steam, waiting. . .

And this must be parents' greatest fear - that little Billy will discover exactly what all the moaning at night has been about, and that the vibrator in the drawer isn't really for daddy's sore neck, and in fact, that sex might actually be fun! No! Better to keep them in the dark until college, because mixing your first alcohol, first independence, and first real social function on the first weekend of college with other horny teens is bound to produce some exceptionally wise choices :).

Anyhoo, back to the point, I can't fathom why anyone would worry about the above, because despite our best jockeying for who was going to have first dibs with Eliza, when we came back in from recess we were greeted with this instead:

You can imagine how that pink smudgy thing in the center there aroused our loins to such a state that maintaining a seated position was mighty challenging for those with any endowment whatsoever. And this is the best it ever got! Usually, in most schools, you didn't even get a flesh-colored smudgy - you would have to settle for a district-approved cut-away diagram photocopied on goldenrod and looking as if it had been hand-drawn by Charles Schultz on his death bed. Also note how there are lines pointing to the bladder, anus, and other various anatomical features that have nothing to do with any legitimate attempt to reproduce. Side note: This could very well be the source of some peoples infatuation with orifices and fluids not traditionally associated with sex, but I digress... The diagram of the male anatomy is similarly presented, only we get to memorize where the vas deferens and prostate are - arguably important for sex, yes, but girls, when is the last time you cared about how to spell vas deferens, or where it was located?

So while we were there, nursing our swollen boners and deciding which circle was going to be the ovary, do you think that someone would tell us anything that actually had to do with sex? No! Never once did I hear that the penis should be placed in the vagina, or that there would be a little tickle-that-felt-like-a-sneeze-only-better that would let you know when your business was done, or that condoms were available at any local drug store (much less how to use one!). No! What we got was an afternoon spent understanding the female period, which was both uncomfortable for the girls, and disgusting for the guys - and forced all of us to stare in random non-eye-contact directions until class was over at which point we all turned in our papers with virtually nothing filled out on the little blank lines and were all summarily flunked. By the next day, no one could tell you what a vas deferens was, much less what it was for, and the only person who could spell it was a girl who didn't even go to the sex ed that day. This is sex ed in public schools. This is the big fear, the big lie. For all of you about to hold your kids back from what can best be described as a farcical journey into Latin spelling, I salute you - just do it for the right reasons - and for heaven's sake, buy the kid a DVD!

The Treadmill Saga

2008-02-12T14:30:00.000-08:00

The following takes place several years ago, following the purchase of a treadmill at a local sporting goods store. . .

10:00 : Went to U-Haul. Tried to get a moving truck with a ramp and a dolly, because it would be easier and cheaper (surprisingly) than renting a pickup truck and dolly.

10:15 : The inbred idiots in line in front of me are finally gone in their $19.95 a day moving truck, the kind that I want to get too.

10:16 : Clerk informs me that they are out of $19.95 a day moving trucks,but they have some brand new ones that are the same size that he will rent me for $29.95. Figured that it wasn't worth it, so asked for a pickup truck and a dolly.

10:20 : Picking my nose.

10:25 : I went out to the parking lot to do the damage inspection for the truck. I marked up the whole sheet, so as to avoid a fight later about whether or not I made that particular scratch on the bumper. Clerk didn't seem to care.

10:30 : Waiting to turn left on Aurora.

10:35 : On my way in the truck. It smells funny inside.

10:50 : Arrived at Sports Authority. After some humming and hawing, they decide to get my treadmill out from the back. They were surprised that they still had one. Noticed a 'free home delivery and installation' package advertised for treadmills. Didn't even want to know. Figured I had the situation in hand anyway.

11:00 : Talked Bob into helping me load the treadmill into the U-Haul truck. Damn that thing was heavy. Noted that the box had 'Warning, fragile electronic equipment inside' writing all over it. Noted that I had forgotten get the dolly. Crap.

11:10 : On the highway, headed for home. Beginning to wonder whether or not I can handle the 300+ pound box, which is absolutely huge.

11:15 : Arrived home. Tried to move treadmill out of pickup bed. Open tailgate is about 1/4 inch higher than the bottom of the bed. There is no way I can slide the damn box out.

11:20 : Finally done trying to strong arm it out of the pickup. Arms shaking and back hurts. Remembered something about levers from physics class. Retrieved two shovels from the garage.

11:21 : Managed to work shovels under one end of the box. Shovel heads look like they will make excellent steel feet to help the box slide over the inner tailgate ledge. Hauled back and shoved.

11:22 : Treadmill box on driveway, remarkably still upright.

11:23 : Start to work the box towards the door of the house. Wet sidewalk is amazing in its ability to hold a box fast, yet make the soles of your shoes extra-slippery.

11:30 : Opened the door to the house, took off coat and threw keys on the couch. Proceeded to work box into the doorway.

11:31 : Box wedged tight. Cant move box, can't close door, can't get keys. Looks grim.

11:32 : Box magically moves far enough inside to close door. Get keys and start up truck.

11:35 : Re-fuel truck.

11:40 : Returned truck to U-Haul.

11:45 : Waiting to turn left on Aurora.

11:50 : Cut off four people. Gave everyone in sight the finger. Escort doesn't move very fast anymore.

12:00 : At home. Debating whether to try to move the box out of the livingroom, or not. Figure that my wife would kill me if I left it there.

12:15 : Ecountered another lovely obstacle - the lip of the floor running into the laundry room. Found out I can deadlift 200 pounds, even with my weak back. Better than I thought I could do.

12:20 : Box in place. Want to make sure I didn't break anything inside. Search begins for an exacto knife.

12:21 : Tried to cut box open with scissors. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.. That was cute.

12:24 : Decide to use my little knife that I found in the Escort. Worked great!

12:30 : Saw the words 'Space Saver' inside the box. Space saver my ass. You could fold the treadmill up and store it in, say, a two car garage - provided that you could find a way to move it.

The Video

2008-02-12T01:51:00.000-08:00

So I made this video for Youtube:

It's a video for that 'Hey There Vagina' parody off on the right hand panel there. The video was shot with one of these doohickeys:

which you can get for like $100 at Amazon, and seems fine for YouTube to me I guess. I don't know much about making videos, but this was kinda fun so thought I would share. Hope you enjoy it!

Business Speak

2008-02-04T16:22:00.000-08:00

I work in a stuffy office building where I sit in a little grey cubicle and type all day. If you've ever seen the movie Office Space, then your know exactly where I'm coming from. Anyway, office buildings go, almost inexorably, from 'regular' to 'stuffy' via business-speak. Usually, business-speak is used to present bad news or to cover for inadequacies, and it works like this:

Instead of saying "Hey guys, tough times ahead, we wont be able to pay out much on bonuses this year", they'll make up a story, and use big words to confuse you and make you think that maybe, just maybe you aren't getting screwed this time. Thus, a relatively cool sounding announcement like: "In accordance with our vision to be recognized as the industry leader in widget innovation, we are re-engineering the bonus paradigm to more effectively align our business goals with our mission of staying employee-focused. This new bonus restructuring program will empower managers on every level to more effectively recognize and reward the most valued contributors in the organization! These are not the droids you're looking for. You can go about your business. Move along please."
Really means this: Bonuses have been slashed - horribly. There is a lot less money to go around now, and your manager will decide how much you get, so brown nose and backstab as appropriate. Many of you will receive no bonuses, no matter what you do - sorry Pip old chap, bend over and you know the rest.

No no, don't leave! There's more! Walk down the hall in my building and eavesdrop with me! Here's a quiz, err.. I mean a reader-aligned empowerment initiative (answers at the bottom):

1. "What we need is a straw man, then we can give them a 30,000 foot view, run it up the flag pole, and see who salutes!" means:
a. Somewhere there is a scare crow wearing a parachute that is about to get impaled on a flag pole.
b. You must stand for the national anthem before watching the Wizard of Oz.
c. Only an idiot would buy into this load of crap, so let's trash the other guys idea first, then we'll talk about ours in vague but positive terms while waving our hands frantically, and hope that someone goes 'ooh ooh! Good idea!!'

2. "Our value-added services are really the core dependency of the new operating paradigm" means:
a. If people don't start texting more, then we're going to lose big time on all the money we spent putting that feature in...
b. We're operating on someone to remove a pair of dimes.
c. There's a new menu at McDonalds.

3. "What we need is an ITIL-driven six sigma solution..." means:
a. There's a lot of important people sitting around a table, talking about the latest fuckup.
b. I have no idea what's wrong, or how to fix it, so I'm going to throw acronyms and buzz words at it until it goes away.
c. Both of the above.

4. "Highly motivated, detail-oriented person sought for position at Widgets-R-Us. Position requires problem-solving as well as people skills with leadership experience preferred. Competitive salary offered." means:
a. We are behind schedule, have no quality control, and your co-workers are agents of the underworld. Please come and take responsibility for this mess, and we will pay you as little as we think that we can possibly get away with.
b. And your bonus is forfeit this year too.
c. And you're looking mighty cute in them jeans. . .
d. Squeal like a pig, boy.

5. "Our drive to increase our efficiencies and maximize our opportunities for success relies heavily on our most experienced employees taking the initiative to partner with our vendors prior to making their transition to our corporate alumni community." means:
a. Your job is being outsourced to someone who will do it for 8 cents on the dollar, but we don't call it 'outsourcing' anymore, we call it 'right-sourcing', because it's right for us!
b. Your severance package will consist primarily of a cross and shovel. By accepting these, you agree not use either one on company property, and will not under any circumstances remove flowers from company premises.
c. PS - haha.

Answers:
1. C, though A actually makes more sense, doesn't it?
2. A, although you weren't sure at first, were you?
3. C, because A invariably leads to B.
4. Definitely A, often B, sometimes C, always D.
5. A, B if you're lucky, C after you have left, and also see 'D' from #4

Cheers,

I Met My Wife At A Strip Club

2008-01-28T18:32:00.001-08:00

She was dancing up on stage. Not much to look at really, but then none of them were. Oh, not my wife, my wife didn't work at the strip club, I just met her there. The girl I'm talking about is some nameless, faceless being from back during my days of youthful indiscretion. And she isn't much to look at, really, because this isn't an upscale down town strip club with Martinis and mink-lined booths in VIP lounges that I'm sitting in. This is a strip club in Umatilla, OR that caters to migrants, truckers, and people who just got out of the WA state penitentiary - legally or otherwise. They ain't what you would call picky. I'm sitting at the blackjack table trying to avoid either getting hustled or discovering something sticky, and waiting for my friend to come pick me up. What am I doing here, if this is such a seedy dive you ask? Well. . .

I went to school in Walla Walla, and before the yuppies found it and screwed it up it was a quaint little town with about two square blocks of 'down town' area. There was a Safeway, a few bars, a strip mall, and a little old lady who sold cookies off of her back porch, who was simply referred to as 'cookie lady'. So, on your average Wednesday night, this meant that the town pretty much closed its doors and rolled up the sidewalks at about 8pm. If you're bored after 8pm, and your roommate can't be bothered to put his book down, then you pretty much have three choices:

1) Sit in the wheat fields and drink, drink, drink.
2) Play pool with the fat old biker down at the Polar Bear Club
3) Drive, drive, drive, and hope you find something over the next hill

After many nights of #1 and #2, I found this rat's nest of a strip club pursuing #3. Heck, it's only 60 miles from campus, and as far as that sounds like it must be, you have to understand the lay of the land to realize that it's really the closest thing around. Allow me to Yahoo for you:

Now Waitsburg might seem tempting there, but don't overlook Milton Freewater - it's a blast. Is the issue more apparent now? Good. So off to #3 I go. Tonight it will be the seedy strip club to leer at ugly women, practice my Spanglish, and maybe not lose money at blackjack. It's west down (12) there a ways past the edge of the map.

Now, I thought that I may have heard something weird under the hood, as I pulled out of the gas station in Walla Walla, but I wasn't sure. In the last 6 months that I had owned this Fiero, I had learned a ton about auto mechanics, due to all the crap that went wrong with it. It was also a 1984 four cylinder model - the kind with the spontaneous engine fires, so it was cheap, but also quirky and unreliable, even as Fieros go. Under the hood was always a cramped and convoluted mess, I really hated getting in there - and yet there always seemed to be a reason. So, unbeknownst to me at the time, the alternator belt, which had been a tad squeaky for the past week, decided to go as I was pulling out of the gas station that night. About 30 miles into my trip I noticed my headlights growing a bit dim, and quickly surmised what had happened. From past experience I knew that the car would only be running for a short time after a failed alternator belt, and I also knew that if I shut off the engine or if it stalled at this point, there would be no restarting it. I had no cell phone - not that you would get service out here anyway. Please review map above and note potential issues with this situation.

There was a full moon out that night, so what made sense to me at the time, since I knew that there was no help for 30 miles behind me, was to turn off the headlights and everything else, and proceed with all due haste, full speed ahead, in the dark that night. It was maybe only 20-30 more miles to the rat's nest, and there might be a gas station or something along the way that I had forgotten about, or maybe I would be lucky enough to get pulled over by the police. Funny thing about that, I can never find one when I want one, but they're all over me if I try to turn right on red.

So of course there are no gas stations along the way, or even a light that I remember. There may have been a flashing yellow one at an intersection of two rural highways, but that didn't exactly do me a lot of good, and I didn't pass any other cars in the last 25 miles anyway, so waiting there would have been pointless as well. I pulled into the rats nest probably a whole 15 minutes (do the math) later, and killed the car. I got out and confirmed that no, it wasn't the battery, it was the belt, which was miraculously still in one piece, but it had just twisted and warped from the heat, and fallen off the guide wheel. What's the big deal you say? Just put on a new belt you say? Would love to. Did you know that with a Fiero, you have to jack the whole thing up above your head to get to the part where you need to loosen the crap to get the old belt off (not an issue anymore) and slide the new belt on (still an issue)? Well, now ya do. Where am I going to find a hydraulic lift in Umatilla at 10pm on a Wednesday? So I go into said rat's nest and pay my $5 cover to use the (eww) pay phone to call one of my roommates.

*ring ring*
Vince: 'Yellow?'
Me: 'Hi Vince, how's it going?'
Vince: 'You're not in jail are you, because I don't have any m-'
Me: 'No, not yet. I'm stuck. Can you come get me?'
Vince: 'Uh, okay. Where are you?'
Me: 'Umatilla.'
Vince: 'Uma-whatta?'
Me: 'Umatilla.'
Vince: 'In Oregon?'
Me: 'Yeah.'
Vince (hanging up the phone): 'ROAD TRIP!!!!'

Vince was always up for helping a guy out, especially if it involved cars or some kind of rescue op. This one, involving both, was surely like a wet dream for him. Note to self: If I ever open a strip club, I'm calling it The Wet Dream. Anyway, knowing that help was on the way in about an hour, and knowing that there was nothing else that could be done tonight, I decided to ease my way over to the blackjack table and have a sit. I would have told Vince where I was in Umatilla, but there are only three buildings, and Vince is pretty bright.

Everyone please welcome 'Shyla' to the main stage!
Me: 'Deal me in please.'
Dealer: 'Changing $20!'
'Shyla' looked anything but. If someone had called animal control and pointed them her way, they probably would have assumed that someone had shaven a gorilla and put a sling on it as a joke. Tranquilizer darts and hilarity would have surely followed.
Me (12 showing): 'Hit me.'
Dealer: 'Thaaat's 22 - oh too bad!'

Let's give it up for 'Dallas' folks!
'Dallas' was a favorite with the truckers and farm boys alike. She was pretty heavy, but had recently got her hair colored and had all her teeth to boot. If I had to pick one, it would have been Dallas, but I'm also thankful that I didn't have to pick one.
Me (hard 18): *wave off dealer*
Dealer (6 showing): 'That's 16, and now 5 for 21!!! Woo hoo!'
Big hairy arm around my neck. 'CARE for a DANTS HoNeY??'
Oh God, it's Shyla. 'Thanks sweety, but I have to win it from this guy first!' I say. I hear her stumbling off, bleating 'Dants? Dants!! Anybody wants a dants??'. Good lord. No matter how bad your day is going today, at least your name isn't 'Shyla', eh?

And now let's hear it for 'Maria', she's going all the way tonight everyone!
What, 'Maria' couldn't think up a stage name? How about 'el toro loco'? As I was about to share my private little funny with the rest of the table, a guy sitting next to me leans over and motions at the guy closest the dealer and whispers 'That's Humberto. That's his sister.' I look over, and Humberto looks like he has exactly nothing to live for. So I shut the hell up.
Me (*sigh*): 'Hit me.'
Dealer: '22 again! Not your night!'
Me (pissed): 'If they ever change this game to 22, I will own your ass.'

Joining us once again is 'Starla', how was your vacation Starla?
'Starla' is, well. . . Anorexic might be putting too fine a point on it. Starla, in fact, looks like a skeleton trying to hide an Ewok. I debate whether starting a side pool at the blackjack table concerning whether 'Starla' will faint during her first dance or her second would be gouche, and as I am bringing it up I learn that 'Starla' just got out of jail, and that was the joke that the DJ was making about her vacation which earned him the finger. 'It was for drugs though, not prostitution' I'm assured. Of course it wasn't for prosititution, I think to myself, how could.. Who would.. But then I look around and realize that. . . Well, probably most of them. . .
Dealer: 'Wanna hit?'
Me (12 showing): 'No!'
Dealer (tipping his cards to show me a pair of jacks): 'Are you sure?'
Me: 'Fine. Hit me.'
*KING*
Dealer (laughing): 22!!

Everybody put your hands together for BROWN SUGAR!!!
And here's where you came in, sitting at the blackjack table, avoiding sticky things, and trying not to get hustled. Since you are wondering, 'Brown Sugar' is indeed brown, and is kind of like a refined version of Shyla who hides Ewoks more successfully than Starla, and she's got the prettiest gold teeth. She ain't much to look at, but then none of them are really. . .

So I push back from the table. It's been about an hour now, and Vince will be coming shortly. I head outside just as Vince is pulling up. Buuut, Vince is not alone. Vince has brought spectators, including Sally, Jeff, Frank, and Suzie (names changed to protect the innocent). They came in Sally's car, which was a 1992 escort sedan, and they managed to cram all five of them in there. I have no idea where I am going to sit on the way home. Dammit.

Vince (innocently): 'Well, they all wanted to come.'
Me (not looking a gift horse): 'Okay.'
Vince (popping the hood): 'So what's the, oh yeah, there it is.'
Me: 'Uh huh.'
Vince: 'How did you do that??'
Me: 'It's a Fiero.'
Vince (having owned a Fiero in the past): 'Ahh, yeah. That'll do it then.'
Vince: 'We need to find a garage.'
Me (gesturing wildly up and down the street): ...
Vince: 'Maybe we can get the belt back on somehow and power it up enough to move it. It doesn't turn over, does it?'
Me: 'Nope.'
Vince: 'Even a click?'
Me: 'Nooope.'
Vince: 'Damn.'
Suzie: 'Why is that van rocking like that?'
Everyone else: ...

Suzie was, in all seriousness, a church-going virgin of a girl (at 20) and may have seen her first pictorial diagram of a p-p-p-penis in biology last semester, at which point she probably felt guilty, called her mom and cried, and then went to confess her sins. Suzie has no idea what is going on right now, and that's sweet, in a convoluted 'life is going to destroy you once you leave college' kind of way. Vince gets Suzie turned around and interested in all the little thingees inside the engine just before Dallas emerges from the van all sweaty and still half naked, along with the help, who is screaming 'yee haw!' in true Dukes of Hazard fashion.

Vince (rambling): 'Okay, so here's the plan... We get the jumper cables out of Sally's car, and we'll hook them up to your battery. You turn it over, and I'm going to wedge this screw driver in between the guide wheel and the belt. If all goes well, we can pop it back on there and it might give a charge for a little bit...'

Sally: 'What if it doesn't go well?'
Me: '. . .screw driver might shoot out and go through your windshield and impale someone. . . Well. . . That's worst case really. . .'
Vince: * nod *

And everyone gets out of Sally's car, and hides behind it. And Vince and I go to work.
Vince: 'Okay, turn it over!'
Me: * ruhr ruhr ruhr *
Vince: 'AUUUUGH!!!!'
Me (stopping): 'What! What?!!'
Vince: 'Just kidding. Okay, do it again!'
Me: * ruhr ruhr ruhr *

And the belt somehow, magically slips back on. It's warped and twisted, but it's on, and we turn the engine over and it starts. And we start to pull out of the parking lot, and it dies. The belt just won't do it. It's done. It's over.
Van: * squeak-a squeak-a squeak-a *
Jeff: 'There goes that Van again.'
Van (muffled): 'O Gawd!'
Suzie (becoming suspicious): ?
We all stop and watch the van for a few more seconds, and then we leave the car, with plans to come back for it later.

Sally (not her real name) lets us borrow her car the next day, and with her driving it and Jeff sitting in the driver's seat of the Fiero steering, Vince and I manage to wedge ourselves in-between the two cars and we take off down the road to a place with a hydraulic lift a few miles away - holding onto the Fiero with our arms, and using our legs as suspension between the two cars. Yes! This is a great, fool-proof plan isn't it? You cannot make this stuff up!

Fortunately, nothing went wrong until we pulled into the service station.
Me (walking up to some guy): 'Hi there, can you guys change an alternator belt?'
Otis (according to his shirt): 'It ain't fer that Fiero, right?'
Me: 'Well...'
Otis (spitting): 'I don't work on Fieros. You can use my rack if you wants to do it though.'
Me: 'Uhhh... Yeah. Sure, okay then.'
Otis: * spit *

A few minutes later we have it up on the rack, and I'm under the car, literally hanging off of a long-handled wrench in mid air, bouncing up and down, trying the break the nut holding the alternator wheel thingee in place. The car is shaking side to side in a rather jovial fashion, and I'm just waiting for it to come down on top of me and end this misery.

Otis: 'I seen you at the club last night. That Dallas sure is a looker, ain't she?'
Me (still hanging in mid-air, looking over at Otis, and actually not lying): 'Oh yeah, she's my favorite!'
Otis: 'Let me have a look up in-air. Well, I'll be dammt.'

It turned out, upon closer inspection, that someone had previously welded the damn thing together, so Otis took pity on us and used a cutting torch to help us out. Replacing the belt was easy after that.

Otis: 'I wouldn't just do that fer nobody, you knows. Dallas is my girl, so if you like her, you guys is okay with me. That one you got out yonder is quite a looker too. She dants?'
Me: 'I don't think so.'
Otis: 'Oh well.'
Me: * nod *

And we get a new belt, charge up the battery, and we're on our way. And who would have known that would be the first time that I ever met my wife. NO! Not Dallas!! Sally!!! Although, when people ask, I usually just tell them we went to school together.

:)

One Ring to Rule Them All

2008-01-21T12:24:00.000-08:00

One Ring to rule them all,
One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. . .

It was given to me quite by chance actually, by someone who, whether through genuine sympathy or an insatiable voyeristic streak, couldn't bear the thought of not witnessing every misfortune and misadventure that would eventually befall its owner. It was my precious. My one. My own. And then something happened that the ring quite clearly did not intend. . .

You see, after I got married, I started meeting women. Lots of women. More women than I ever met in college or any time before (not that I ever met many before, what with being such a doofus and all), and I'm not talking about tupperwear party going, stitch-and-bitch women either. Not like the women I got to dance with at the senior center when I was 12. I'm talking about women. The ring brought them, and it controlled them. And they wanted me, my precious. Finally, after all those years. And I couldn't do a thing about it. . .

The Fellowship of the Ring
I had been married for maybe a few weeks, and the ring's power had yet to fully assert itself. We were going out to dinner with friends, and asked for a table for four once inside the restaurant. The waitress was looking at me funny. She was pretty. I liked her. She's still looking at me. What does she want? Did we go to school together? This is kind of creepy. . . 'Right this way, folks' she says. Okay, she can talk. Good. Normal enough for me! She stops by the table that she's planning to seat us at, and puts her hand on my shoulder and puts the menus all across the table. Then she decides to rest her hand in the crook of my arm while we get seated. She's playing me for a tip. I like her, she's nice. Okay, she wins. I am nothing, if not easy. I sit. Arm moves back to my shoulder. 'The drink menu is here' she gestures, 'Is there anything that I can get started for you right away?' Arm now around my neck. I look up. She's looking at me all funny again. Everyone else is being ignored. 'Errr...' I manage to spit out. It's the best I can manage (it's a doofus thing, just go with it). 'We'll need just a minute.' my wife says curtly. My wife is mad for some reason I think. 'Ok, back in a few!' says the waitress cheerfully, giving my neck a last little covert rub before departing.

Wife: 'She. Did. Not.'

Wife's friend: 'Oh. She. Did. And did you see those fuckme eyes??'

Wife: 'Bitch.'

Wife's friend: 'Slut.'

Me (You know in the movie Bambi where the little girl rabbit is scratching Thumper behind his ear, and Thumper's foot starts thumping uncontrollably, and he gets a big grin on his face? That's me right now): 'Oh, she's just being nice...'

Wife: 'You're an idiot.'

Me: (Still dazed): 'Yyyyeeeeeah. . .'

And the rest of dinner pretty much went the same way! It was wonderful, fabulous in fact! She was fabulous. Her eyes were fabulous. The food was fabulous. The fact that my wife was jealous was also fabulous. I had never seen that before, and for all I knew would never see it again - and in fact, had things gone any more swimmingly, she probably would have lunged across the table and gouged my eyeballs out with a fork. Heh. I spent the rest of the meal, and well into dessert wondering. . . what it would be like if they got into a cat fight, or a pillow fight, or maybe. . . Ah, nevermind. . .

Her Two Towers
We were at a bar, a bunch of us, for some reason. Not that we needed a reason, but I think that this may have been a weekend at least, 'cause other people were there too. My wife was meeting us at the bar. Larry and I (who's Larry?) and a handful of others were drinking Martians (martinis) and telling stupid jokes, and having a great old doofus-fest of a time. I had been paying attention to nothing but the table I was at for the evening, so it was quite a shock to be cornered by three women when I came out of the mens room on my way back to our table - not that it wouldn't have been a shock at any other time either, it's just that I hadn't noticed they were in there. One of them touched my chest and pushed me back into the corner near the men's room door.

Her #1 (big smile): 'Hi.'

Me: 'Errr. . .' <--- dammit!

Her #2 (fuckme eyes): 'How many people have you slept with?'

Me: 'Um, I guess about [a respectable average number]. . .'

Her #3 (cornering me on the other side of 'her #1', looking at her #2): 'See, that's not too many!!'

Me (wishing I had lied just a little): 'How, uh-'

Her #1: What's your favorite position?

Her #2 and #3: *giggle*

Me: '[Immediate and truthful answer], but I'm married so I - '

Her #3: 'Oh, that's okay, we don't mind that at all . . .'

Her #2 (lifting her shirt): 'Do you like these??'

Me, inside my own head: Where the HELL were you guys five years ago, huh?!? HUH!?!?

Me: 'I should really.. I, uhh.. I have to go. I'm sorry. Really.'

Needless to say, when I got back to our table, no one believed me. I decided not to belabor the point, as my wife arrived shortly thereafter, and we left after sharing another appetizer and drink. I did hear about it the next day though, as apparently 'her #2' and 'her #1' decided to flash the entire bar before they left later that night. And that's a pity, because I was actually kinda interested in what was behind door #1. . .

...Could Have Been King
I was out of town on training, minding my own business, sitting in the hotel bar writing some song lyrics when out of nowhere two girls came up and asked if they could share my table. It's one of those tables that sits low, with cushy chairs all around it, kinda loung-ey, but in an upscale east coast kind of way, not a skeezy sleazy 70s kind of way. I was a little bit taken aback by how forward they were, but I figured maybe people on the east coast actually talk to strangers like they do in the midwest. Heck, I've had strangers sleep on (on, not with) me in movie theaters in the midwest, so I kinda go with the flow, yannow? You know what? This time I managed to let out a 'Sure!' instead of an 'Errr...', so, so far I had them fooled.

They sat down and fiddled with their drinks a little nervously for a few minutes, making polite small talk. They were from out of town, and staying in the hotel. My, isn't the weather nice. We have a conference tomorrow with so-and-so. You know, the usual crap. No fuckme eyes, no nothing. Then they got quiet. And then the blond one turns to the brunette -

Blond: 'So, ask him...'

Brunette: 'I, okay...'

Blond: 'Well?'

Brunette: 'Okay, so like, my friend here? We'll, we're together, you know...'

Blond (squeezing brunettes hand): 'We're seeing each other.'

Brunette (smiling): 'Yeah. And I've been with a man before, but April here hasn't.'

Blond (looking at Brunette, lovingly): 'Yeah.'

Brunette: 'And she wants to at least try it once, and so then I thought that maybe it could be something that the two of us could share together...'

Blond: (smiling at Brunette, then looking at me) 'Yeah, and that sounded so sweet. And so... would you?'

Me (inside my head): 'Check please.'

Me: 'Would... I... You mean. You mean, would I? Errrr. . . .'

Them (giggling and nodding, kind of embarassed): 'Yeah.'

Me (inside my head - head about to explode): 'Check please. Just SAY IT! HOW HARD IS IT TO SAY IT!?!?!'

Me (in disbelief, looking around for Ashton Kutcher or some other joker with a camera): 'Errrr....'

Me: 'I'm sorry, I really am, but I'm married, and -

Me (inside my head - head threatening to strangle throat): 'YOU IDIOT!!!!!!'

Me: ' - and I can't be -'

Brunette (hurt): *sigh* 'Well, I can sure respect that. We hope to get married some day too, as soon as we get all of our crazy kinky ideas out. You know how it is.'

Me (lying my ass off): 'Oh, yeah. I know how it is. . .'

Blond (looking very hurt): 'Come on, let's just, go. . .'

Me: 'I'm sorry, really!!!'

Brunette (consoling): 'Come on hon, let's go pick up those handcuffs you saw earlier.'

Me (inside my head, which has now turned against me and taken on a life of it's own): 'IDIOT! IDIOT!!! IDIOT!!!!!!'

It was painful and disorienting to have these things happen. Much like being bandied about the head with an axe handle would be painful and disorienting. I couldn't believe what had been going on. What had changed? Had I lost weight? Hair look especially good that day? New aftershave? Confused me with Brad Pitt? Okay, maybe Will Ferrel? Thought I was rich? I couldn't figure it out until I was experssing my confusion to Sarah (who's Sarah?) one day, and she replied that I was deemed 'safe' because I had that one ring - my wedding ring.

Sarah: 'It says that like, you aren't going to get all weird on them. You're seen as more stable, reliable, and attractive with that ring on. It's kinda like being pre-approved.'

Me (slowly dawning): 'Really? Boy, that's like.. That's like the biggest lie in the world, isn't it?'

Sarah: 'Oh yeah. Huge in your case.'

Single and lonely? Buy yourself a one ring!

MEEP MEEP!!

2008-01-19T06:25:00.001-08:00

Things overheard while watching the Coyote and Road Runner with a five-year old:

- Oh, the coyote is catching up.
- Look poppa, the roadrunner is about to do his trick.
- You can tell when he does his trick because the coyote stops.
- What does that say?
- (hotroddicus supersonicus)
- What does that mean?
- It means he goes very fast.
- Didn’t his nose look funny? It went all droopy.

- Oh, he is going to try to turn the roadrunner into a burger, that’s what the plan says!
- This isn’t going to work… Crack.
- I think he’s going to poof on the ground again…
- Look, he got all flat.

- Look, he just turned into a pair of eyes.
- Poppa, what’s dy-na-mite?
- Oh, he just boomed hisself up!

- Is he going to try to boom him up?
- He just boomed his self up again. He booms hisself up a lot.
- Why does it say ‘Eat at Joes?’
- You want to eat at Joe’s someday?
- Yeah.
- Now he feels all better, look at him, he’s brown again.

- Ooh, that might be good. Triple strength leg muscle vitamins!
- This is gonna be crazy, watch.
- See, he ripped through it and fell. I wonder how the roadrunner ran across. Maybe he jumped.

- Oh, maybe this might work…
- A five hundred libbed anvil.
- …how did he fall past the anvil on the way down?
- Well, at least he kept his anvil!

- …He went poof again.
- I don’t think that can ever happen, the bridge should have fell!
- I think the coyote’s tired, don’t you?
- Yeah.

- That’s not real, that would never happen!
- He should stop trying fireworks because he always booms himself up instead…

- Oh, look, he’s getting an idea!
- Ha! Look, he has a really big tongue, doesn’t he?
- Oh, this might work…
- Can we get some rocket-powered skates, pleeease?
- Oh, he going to get him with his aimer there. Oh, I guess not.
- The roadrunner tricked him up good, huh?
- If roadrunners can’t read, then how does he make all his signs?

- How do you get a whole tornado to go in a pill?
- Do they have leg vitamins at the store for real?
- Why doesn’t he just order a pizza?
- Hey poppa, can we order a pizza?
- Sure son.
- Hey poppa, guess what?
- (crossing his eyes at me)
- Two of you!!!
- Yes there are son, yes there are. . .

That’s all Folks!!

Good Idea Gone Bad

2008-01-15T08:08:00.000-08:00

As far as I know, every normal boy plays with fire when he is growing up. I don't know why. It's a guy thing, okay? It's a good thing guys like to play with fire because if they didn't, then chateaubriand would have never been invented, okay? If you can't appreciate a nice chateaubriand, then you're probably reading the wrong blog. What follows is an account of my experimentations with fire, mostly bad, which serves no purpose other than to entertain. If your kids are reading this and getting ideas from me, then you're the one that needs help, not me. Don't bother suing me, I don't have any money. In chronological order, here goes:

1) Caps
Remember caps? That little orange roll of explosive dimples that you're supposed to put in the cap gun and then run around pretending to shoot your friends with? Turns out they're really cheap, so we always got extra when we went to the store. If you take a whole roll and whomp it with a hammer, it makes a very impressive bang. Also, if you unroll a roll and carefully scrape the cap part along the ground with your fingernail behind it, then you can get it to flare up. With a little practice, and some patience, you can start a fire easy! If you did it wrong, then your burned your finger up pretty good. Thus, as kids, maybe five years old, we had already advanced to the neandrethal stage as far as fire was concerned. We weren't sure what to do with it yet, but we knew that we liked it!

2) The Magnifying Glass
Screw the caps, grandma had a magnifying glass. Now fire became much more portable and predictable! Having a magnifying glass in your pocket is almost as good as having a pack of matches. My father thought I was spending my time torturing the local ant colonies and burning my name into little pieces of wood for mom, but it was all a ruse to guard the power of fire! This also answered a great deal of important questions such as 'exactly how important are antennae to the various species?' and 'How long can I stare at this intensely bright little light before I see the world in black and white for the rest of the day?'

3) Fireworks
You thought that the magnifying glass was bad? Now the whole colony is in danger. I swear I could hear little air-raid sirens amid the scurrying of the ants after the bombs had gone off. Also, did you know that you can take apart the fireworks and do whatever you want with the powder inside? Muhahahaha. . . Okay, well, actually there's so little of it in each firecracker that it takes forever, and the final product is rarely as satisfying as what the many smaller originals were in the first place, so mostly this is just wasted time, which is why I jumped straight to -

4) Gun Powder
Yes! Having been given a shotgun at the ripe old age of barely 11, and having a father who believed in loading your own, I now had access to gun powder! Not only gun powder, but insane amounts of gun powder. I tried lighting little piles of it on a piece of plywood, but it burned up way too fast to do anything other than singe whatever got close to it and smell bad while doing it. I never had any success starting fires with gun powder, but I could still load blank shotgun shells (minus the shot) and scare the neighbors with the noise when the parents were gone :). I would get more willies thinking back about it now, but I know that I was careful to use a well-respected reloading manual to concoct these blanks. Being irresponsible is different than being stupid! Well. Okay, so it was stupid in this case too.

5) Farts
Yup, you can light 'em. Hurts like hell if you do it wrong though, and that's why I don't want to talk about it any more. . .

6) Fireworks Part Deux
Boy, bottle rockets sure are cool. They're especially cool when your dad invites a bunch of his friends over and you all sit out in the back yard getting drunk and shooting them at things (not me of course, as I was only 12 at the time. What kind of fool *cough Trent cough* would give beer and bottle rockets to a 12 year old at the same time? :) ) Anyhoo, someone *cough Trent cough* managed to shoot a bottle rocket over the fence and hit a power-line on the side of the main road perfectly dead on, after which the rocket proceeded to explode. 'No way! That could never happen again!' Everyone said. So we all spent the next oh, 20 minutes or so trying to get it to happen again (my father was inside this whole time), until one rather errant shot by yours truly caused a passing car to swerve, screech, and then come banging on our front door. I'm not sure what was said, but I can imagine, and after that little stunt was over we spent the rest of our time lighting farts instead.

7) Fireworks Part Tres`
Being a bit more seasoned with fireworks and fire in general now, I decided to start playing around with fireworks in enclosed spaces for something to do. Did you know that you can use a plastic two liter bottle lid to hold a firecracker inside the bottle if you screw the lid on loosely? The cap shoots off the bottle at an impressive speed, and stings if it hits, oh, say, your sister. The budding physicist inside me said that the smaller the chamber, the greater the pressure, so I decided to see if a little bottle would work even better. The only little bottles with screw caps we had were glass. I pressed on, ignoring the obvious issue. And surprisingly, it did work, even better! Pazzzzing!! Wow, did those caps fly good. I only got off about three shots before the firecracker accidentally fell to the bottom of the glass bottle and exploded. Since I saw the firecracker fall, I tensed up and turned my head away, which meant that when the glass shattered I got a fistful and got cut up pretty good, but didn't lose an eye or anything. You would think that after such a stunt I would be a little more careful with fire and explosives and such, but nay, read on -

8) Gasoline
Now gasoline was cool. Gasoline was my father's all-in-one solution for almost any household need. You can wash paint off your hands with it, you can kill weeds with it, power vehicles with it, sanitize with it, burn back brush with it (even if it's raining), and you can also choose whether you want it to start a fire or whether you want it to explode, depending on how enclosed your area is. And back then it was cheap too! My worst experience with gasoline went something like this:

We had a rusty old burn barrel out in the side yard, and it was my job to take garbage out there to burn it. This was back in the non-green days of my childhood where recycling was not even an option in most parts of the country, 'kay, so keep the hate mail to a minimum. At any rate, we burned flammable waste in this barrel. One day I had taken a couple of bags of stuff out to burn, and it was raining. And it wouldn't light, and it wouldn't light, and I was getting rained on still, and if I left the garbage out there in the barrel unburned, then it might be weeks before we're actually able to burn it (we lived in Portland, OR at the time, and it rains about 100 days a year there I reckon). So I say to myself 'hm', and then inspiration strikes and I go get the little red can of gasoline from the garage. I give the barrel a gentle douse, not enough to saturate anything, just enough to give it some motivation, and I come back with a matc- FOOM!!!!!! like a pirate ship cannon going off, spewing burning garbage what was probably only 30-40 feet into the air, but what seemed like 100 feet at the time. Consider this moment, frozen in time, as I'm looking up into the sky with my eyebrows still a smoking a tad, to see what the hell just happened. Silhouetted against a bright grey sky are the previous contents of mr. burn barrel, some on fire - some not, all suspended in some surreal picture of a good idea gone bad. Remembering back to the last week, I can recall various items that may or may not be in said picture, including some nakpins, paper towels, school assignments, maybe some past due bills, and oh, wait, is that a pair of underwear? Last week, my lesbian marine corps sister (who was recently discharged - something about being too aggressive with the other soldiers) managed to destroy some underwear so badly that my mom refused to put them in the washer and put them in the burn pile instead. Oh dear lord. Please not those underwear. And time starts speeding up, and the contents fall - everywhere. . .

Picture if you will, a young teenaged boy running around frantically trying to stomp out and pick up everything that is on fire in what was once a nice quiet little neighborhood. Picture also what would happen if a cannon went off in your neighborhood. Would you come to the window? Open your door and walk out on the porch? What would you say if you saw a 14 year old kid trying to gingerly remove the most disgusting pair of flaming underwear that you've ever seen off the hood of your car?

9) Bacardi 151
Alcohol burns too! When I was in college my first dorm room had a tile floor. The dorm itself was made in 1910 (seriously) and had received no major renovations since, and it was well-known, or at least widely rumored, that the whole thing would go up in about 3 minutes if a fire started in someones room. We were warned about unattended candles, incense, and anything else that might require fire - there was a don't ask / don't tell policy at the college at the time. So naturally, lighting shots of alcohol for fun was a great way to pass a Tuesday night. Alcohol burns with a disappointingly weak flame though, so you really have to turn the lights out to appreciate it. So we do. Then somone gets the bright idea to write things on the floor with alcohol and start setting them ablaze, and even that goes fine for the most part. My roomate, who went to this college for an actual education (and is my polar opposite as far as I can tell) was sleeping in the second room (our rooms are set up so that if you need to get out and you're in his room, then you need to walk through mine before you get to the hallway and eventually the outside world). My roommate opens the adjoining door just as I finish lighting a giant pentagram on the floor - but before we had turned off the lights.

Him (just woke up): 'mmbathroom'

Me: 'STOP!!!!!!!'

Him: 'Wha?'

I ran and shut off the lights in the room, at which point the huge flaming pentagram sprang to life out of nearly nowhere, illuminating all the faces in the room with a strange glow. 'F' 'Fuu' 'Fuck!' he finally manages to spit out - which is a big word coming from him. 'Just walk around, it's ok' I say. This was the first week of college. We had known each other all of three days. Our relationship was never quite the same after that.

It turns out that higher-proof alcohols burns better than the lower proof ones, and Bacardi 151 (or Monarch 151, but eww) burn pretty good. That being said, if you're going to pour Bacardi 151 in a bowl that you borrowed (heh) from the college food service cafeteria, set it on the floor, and then light it on fire so that you can toast marshmallows over it with bent-up coat hangers after a double date, then please remember to:

a) figure out where the fire extinguisher is before hand and

b) note that cheap-ass bowls from China do not resist heat as well as Pyrex from the chem lab does, and they will indeed shatter when they get hot. Also, the simple act of a bowl shattering will not extinguish an alcohol fire, no matter how much you run around in circles screaming 'Oh my God, oh my God!!!'

10) Fireworks Episode IV 'A New Hope'
Did you know that you can launch bottle rockets out of your hand? It's fun! It doesn't even hurt that much unless you light your new polo shirt on fire and have to try putting it out while dodging blows from the wife.

11) Propane
The final frontier. You can burn yourself, blow yourself up, asphixiate from it, asphixiate from the byproducts of burning it, drop it on your foot, and more. That little electric lighter on your BBQ is going to stop working the day after you bring it home, and you'll be bent over the BBQ with a long-stemmed match, piece of wood, or lighter just like me one day - trying to light that ever elusive hissing sound. And then you'll start your own blog.

My Ass

2008-01-13T08:06:00.000-08:00

No, this entry is not literally about my ass, and for those of you who found this on a google search for porn, please accept my apologies and hit the 'back' button now. This is about an article which was posted on CNN this morning about airline food. The original article can be found here: http://www.cnn.com/2008/TRAVEL/01/11/airline.food/index.html , but I will be summarizing and referring to it in this post, so you won't need to reference it unless you really wanna. The article is about airline food, and it starts off like this (followed by my comments in italics below):

"(Tribune Media Services) -- Airline food. The very mention of those two words is enough to provoke a strong -- and usually negative -- reaction from any passenger.

But let's add another word. Good airline food.

Laughing yet? Maybe not. Maybe you've heard all about airlines' efforts to improve their in-flight fare.

Continental Airlines recently unveiled new menus featuring hot gourmet sandwiches such as roast beef and oven-roasted turkey with gouda cheese on marble rye bread. Delta Air Lines introduced new signature entrees from celebrity chef Todd English, like smoked salmon and egg salad croissants and roast beef steak cobb sandwiches..."

Okay, okay, I'll be the first to both observe and admit that airline food sucks. It does, NO question. It does NOT, however, suck because of lack of concept. In concept, a sandwich should taste good. You put some meat, cheese, maybe mayo, mustard, lettuce, etc. on a roll or bread or even a pita thingee and it should taste good, right? They're not trying to serve us 'grubs on a stick' and tell us they're great; people eat sandwiches all the time, and they are simple to make, store, and serve. The airlines somehow manage to fuck this up. An airline sandwich usually has nasty dry bread, sour brown wilty lettuce, and god knows what else inside. It's not a question of 'Is this going to be any good?', it's a question of 'Will this kill me?'. . . If Todd English is on the flight, serving up smoked salmon and egg salad croissants table-side, then that might be one thing, but he wont be. It will be made by a nose-picking felon in some warehouse two weeks prior to serving, and then left out on the counter for three hours by Betty 'I hate you' Harris, before its unceremoniously dropped in your lap for your enjoyment. Call me cynical, but that's how I see this being implemented. The article continues. . .

"It would be tempting to say that the now-profitable airline industry has turned a corner when it comes to customer service. That it really cares about its passengers. But that might be a little premature.

See, there are a few things the airlines aren't telling you about the fare up there.

1. 'There's no food on this flight.'
Read the announcements of these new in-flight menus carefully, and it's clear that the food offerings are extremely limited. For example, the Todd English sandwiches were initially only available on flights between New York and Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle.

Good. It will make the forensic scientist's job (what killed all these people?) later that evening so easy that she'll be home in time for dinner...

"Delta probably takes the dung medal for the worst food," says Sohail Rana, a professor of medicine in Washington. "On a Washington to Los Angeles flight, all they had was a pepperoni pizza. My family and I are observant Muslims."

You're proceeding from a few false assumptions, Sohail, including:
1) The belief that the pepperoni was once a meat product of any kind
2) Failing #1, the belief that the pepperoni was actually once pork

I wouldn't eat it either, but I would have also asked for a vegetarian meal or brought my own if it were me - or just have waited the 5 hours it takes to go from DC to LA, what's the big deal?

2. 'Hope you're not on a diet.'
No one has to tell you that the snack packs offered by airlines are loaded with calories and unhealthy fats. But the latest DietDetective.com survey of airline food (http://www.dietdetective.com/content/view/2873/3/) suggests it may be a lot worse than you think.

"The individually packaged snacks are oversized and have mega calories,"

the survey's author, Charles Stuart Platkin, writes of American Airlines in-flight cuisine. "These snacks should be for a family of four, not one person. They really are a disaster." Ouch.

What the hell kind of snacks are you getting on your flights Charles? My tiny ass bag of pretzles has maybe 200 calories at the most, and it's among the only things that I will consider eating on any flight at all. If you're getting served king-size Snickers bars on some other airline, then email me and I will switch over to them immediately! Seriously, if you can manage to hork down enough of the shit that the airlines try to feed you to actually start gaining weight, then mister, you're a better man than I.

3. 'Our in-flight cuisine is awful.'
Have a look at the latest Zagat airline survey (http://www.zagat.com/airline), and you'll see that with few exceptions, the food really is terrible. As a group, the major airlines are bottom-feeders, scoring 5 out of a possible 20 points...

Well duh.

4. 'Exact change only, please.'
If you think you're going to be enjoying any of these new and improved airline meals on your next flight, you better either bring cash or pray for an upgrade.

Not willing to spot us paupers $10 on a $400 flight for the chance to contract a tapeworm infestation from Salmon ala Felon? You bastards!

5. 'There's a secret menu -- and it's better.'
Your airline probably won't volunteer this information, but the food is even better if you order from the "secret" menu. And often, the economy class meals from this menu are better than the fare served up front. I'm talking about entrees for passengers with dietary restrictions, such as vegetarians, vegans and diabetics.

Same nasty dry bread, same wilty brown lettuce, only NOW instead of that gelatinous, slightly greened slice of deli turkey you score a cheese and walnut patty on your sandwich. Awesome! You're in for a real treat!

Okay, it's not like me to bitch pointlessly most of the time right? I have a proposal. Instead of having a disgruntled attendant lean over and ask 'Chicken or Beef' (Chicken or Beef what??), how about having an airline draw up a contract with a company who actually knows something about preparing food? Lets keep it simple at first, something like Subway. You get your regular crusty attendants on the flight, and instead of that stupid kitchen area with the trolleys and all that crap, you wheel in a little refrigerated Subway table complete with all the stuff. 'What kind of sandwich' index cards are waiting for you in your seat. There's a stack of milk, juice, and soda cans underneath the sandwich making table, and here's the kicker, you hire a real Subway employee to come in and make the sandwiches to order. The food wouldn't suck, or at least wouldn't be poisonous, and you'd always have a choice of virtually any sandwich you could think of. Expensive? Nay! For an 8 hour shift, that Subway person might clear $100, which divided between all the passengers would equal about an extra $1 per flight (so $376 instead of $375 - whoopie). The airlines would probably actually save money on bringing food in, as waste would be virtually eliminated. And when the plane lands, you wheel out the old cart and wheel in a fresh new cart. Subway has stores in every city, this is easy! No one bitches about it being unhealthy, vegetarian meals now require no special orders, and etc. Subway wins, airline wins, you win.

Petition anyone?

The New Kid

2008-01-11T06:29:00.000-08:00

Having attended ten different schools during my K-12 years, I was in effect the perpetual 'new kid'. While this probably had a psychologically damaging and damning effect, it did give a certain objectivity to my perspective of the whole public school experience. Patterns began to emerge between the schools I attended. Some of these I will share with you now. Raise your hand if these apply to you too:

1) In every school there will be one, and only one, kid named 'Boner'. How Boner got his name will vary between two distinct possibilitites:

i) 'Boner' is really a shortening of his name, as was the case with Benjamin Boden -or-
ii) 'Boner' is a earned - it's sacred observance and reminder of events passed, as was the case with Jeremy Schumaker. Jeremy had, apparently (and this is second hand info as I was not present), last year gotten a huge boner during a dodge ball game in PE that wouldn't go away. I guess it was noticible. People on the other side of the gym noticed at any rate, and proceeded to not only try to cream Jeremy with the dodge balls, but also try to hit him where it counts. When people on Jeremy's own team started chasing him and trying to peg him as well the coach had to stop the game and send Jeremy out. You can see by playground logic how Jeremy would now need to be called 'Boner' for the rest of his natural born life. He earned it. I'm sure that Jeremy is sitting in his therapists office right now, chewing on his hair and talking to a plant, but the fact remains that he did indeed have a boner.

2) In every school they have a giant parachute sitting in some janitor's closet which smells like moth balls and that you have to play with in the gymnasium, as a class, at least once a year. *Shwoop* it goes up, or *Floop* it goes down and makes the parachute thingee - otherwise you're just walking around in circles, all holding on to it and marching in time to Abba's greatest hits. It's often called 'the circle of the damned' too, because they've got your ass for the next 55 minutes. There are only two fun things to do when you have to play the parachute game, and they are:

i) Do the opposite of what the teacher tells you (sit on the inside of the parachute when she says to sit and hold it on the outside! Ha HA!!)
ii) Get together with a couple friends and use your collective might to try to whisk the parachute up in the air so fast that it starts to make a snapping sound at the top and potentially lifts some of the lighter kids off the ground during the upshot.

The more important question is why kids are made to participate in this ridiculous ritual in the first place. I've heard that it's supposed to promote a certain kind of coordinated teamwork, which is why you get in trouble for sitting in the wrong spot, but even accepting that explanation I'm not sure it's entirely necessary. Have you ever seen the complex coordination involved with four guys sitting behind the school cafeteria passing a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 around between three of them while the fourth acts as a look out not only for the 'playground attendant' but also for that stupid fuck on the lawnmower who ratted you out last week - and then seamlessly rotates back in for his swig while someone else takes lookout? That's coordination. That's teamwork.

3) In every school, the school nurse is a beastly woman from a former Soviet country who has no interest in your name, health, or well-being. Yadviga (Yadviga to her friend(s)) has had no formal medical training unless you count hauling bodies off of the battle field circa WWII, and has exactly three things to offer your sorry ass:
i) Band Aids. Not by choice. The school district insists on them.
ii) A table with a sheet draped across it with a bowl sitting at one end, partly shielded by what looks like dirty bed linens strung up around it. She may in fact be multi-tasking and drying her laundry, who knows. She will not be cleaning up after you if you puke, either.
iii) Unwanted observations and advice, i.e. 'Een my kontree, sahmtimes vee haff no food. To vomit zo eazily eez such a wayst.'

One time I was in such pain from eating the school lunch that I could barely stand upright. I went to see the nurse who pinched my cheek (seriously!) and said 'You luke fine to me. Go.' So I decided to leave school AMA, and got assigned a day of Saturday school for my budding self-diagnosis skills. It was the first and last time I ever went to Saturday school, as it was really boring (not like The Breakfast Club at all), and I learned that if by chance you did NOT show up to Saturday school, then you would in fact be suspended from school on the following Monday. Let's see, six day week, four day week, six day week, four day week... Even public school kids can work this one out. . .

The Indignant Fashionista

2008-01-10T06:48:00.000-08:00

I see myself, every once in a while, when I go to the mall and have to walk past Sears to get to the good stuff. I’m the boy standing dolefully over a pile of those big purple jeans with the orange stitching. Sears (along with Kmart) was our family’s headquarters for clothes shopping, and while I was never in want of clothes (my parents saw good enough to that), I was in want of good clothes. Clothes that fit. Clothes that other kids were wearing too, and not just my socially-retarded friend Bob either.

*sigh*

Me: ‘Hi Bob. You guys are here too huh?’

Bob (who had just come around a clothes rack): ‘Yup! And then we’re going to Wizard Masters, they have the New Dungeons and Dragons set out today, and the new Zorlon comic, and –‘

Me: ‘- Err.. Cool Bob’

Bob’s Gran: ‘Oh Hi [Hammy]! They have a sale on those iSuck polo shirts –‘

Bob: ‘IZOD, Grandma’

Me: (muttering) ‘Oh, I think she’s got a bead on it’

Bob’s Gran: ‘- IZOD polo shirts that you boys like so much over near the registers.’

‘Oh, let’s go!’ my Mom says, handing me a pile of purple, ‘We wouldn’t want to miss out!’ ‘Pleaseletusmissout pleaseletusmissout’, I think to myself, and trudge along behind her. Now that I have jeans in my hand, I can’t pretend to simply be passing through anymore. Now it’s official; I shop here. I walk over to the iSuck display, and see that there are several choices of colors, all with that stupid alligator on them smiling up at me. I would pick him off if he wouldn’t leave a hole. This year, there’s a choice of lovely pink, pastel blue, off-green, and sickly yellow to choose from, and oh, black, but I can’t have black because it would make me look like a hoodlum. That’s what my Mom thinks anyway, but I know better, because I got to wear a black shirt once and I still got picked on. Hoodlums you generally just leave alone, because they might get you later. ‘We’ll get a yellow one and a blue one. Blue goes so well with your eyes sweetie!’, Mom says. One wink from the alligator, and one single-minded handsome-little-man move from my mother, and I knew that Bob was going to be my only friend this year too.

Mom: ‘Let’s go to the dressing room!’

Me: “Awww, Mom…’

The dressing room has been, and still is, my most hated part of shopping. It was also a rather painful and pointless exercise back then, since the goal was not to find clothes that actually fit me, but rather to find clothes that I wouldn’t outgrow during the school year. Last year’s ‘school clothes’ matured into this years ‘play clothes’, so if we got two years out of them, then so much the better! With this goal in mind, you could spare yourself a lot of embarrassment and time by simply holding the clothing up to the child until you found the size that looked a little bit beyond too big, since it was probably going to shrink a little anyway after you washed it. I especially hated the dressing rooms with the little wooden slats to see out, because even though you can’t see in, it sure feels like you can see in.

Me: ‘Mom, you don’t need to be in here with me.’

Me: ‘Mom, STOP OPENING THE DOOR!’

Me: ‘MOM!!’

Mom: ‘Well, come out here then!’

Mom: (turning me around and grabbing the back waist band on the purple jeans and pulling on it as much as humanly possible): ‘I don’t know, these might be too big…’

Bob’s Gran (looking with my Mom through the gaping waist band at my tighty-whiteys): ‘Get him a belt, that’s what I do with my Bobby!’

Bob: ‘Hey, you have the same underwear as me!’

Me: …

Girls (walking through Sears to get to the good stuff – you can tell because they are wearing faded jeans that fit - oh do they, and eye-liner too): *giggle* *giggle*

Bob: ‘Hey, are you coming with us to Wizard Masters?’

Me: ‘Sure Bob. What-the-hell.’

When we got back home I had to model the clothes all over again for Dad, as per the usual tradition. I’m not sure what purpose this served since he’ll be seeing me in the same clothes for the next year or more at least, and these ones are only slightly different than the clothes he saw me in last year (I got off-green instead of sickly yellow last year), but whatever. ‘I’m worried about the pants being too big.’ Mom says, looking me up and down. I have rolled the cuffs up twice, and have my old Lone Ranger belt (garage sale) cinching them up so far that if I had a picture, then I could have rightfully sued MC Hammer for diluting my trademark image a few years later. ‘Hmm.’ Said Dad, possibly sensing the early arrival of teen angst. ‘You know what we used to do when I was your age?’ he asked, and not waiting for one of a hundred snide answers I had on standby (Play Unions and Confederates?) he continued ‘We used to get them wet and wear them so that they would shrink to fit.’ ‘Come outside’ he said. So I go outside, and stand in the front yard, and Dad comes around the side of the house with a hose. **WHOOOSH** The jeans are soaked in no time, and I stand there cold and dripping, wondering what to do next, and from across the street, more girls, more faded pants, more giggling. ‘Friends of yours?’ asked Dad, waving to them. ‘Oh yeah, we talk all the time’ I say. ‘What am I supposed to do now?’ I ask. ‘Well, you should have taken your shoes off first.’ Dad offered, ‘Go ride your bike or something’. ‘I’ll go see Bob’ I say. So I go see Bob, and I slosh around in Bob’s yard instead of mine, since I am not allowed inside on account of my jeans issue, and wouldn’t you know that the last part of the jeans to come dry is the crotch region, so it looks as if I have urinary issues during the last twenty minutes of my visit with Bob, which both completes the social scene as I know it and makes the time just fly by. It doesn’t seem to escape the attention of Bob’s Gran either –

Gran: ‘Would you boys like some sandwiches – Oh I see we had an accident. I’ll get some tissues.’

Me: ‘No, it’s okay, my jeans are just wet!’

Gran (not listening): ‘My Bobby sometimes has accidents too.’

Bob: ‘That was LAST YEAR Grandma!’

Me: ‘I, no thanks, I -’

But I just end up taking the tissues and a pat on the back because, hey, why not. I’m standing in Bob’s yard with a soaked crotch, a stupid alligator, and chaffed thighs from riding my bike in wet jeans. What’s wrong with holding some unneeded tissues to boot. I pretend to dab at my crotch to placate Bob’s Gran, who has apparently forgotten about the sandwiches and starts humming to herself and wandering around the porch. ‘Ooooh, did you know Lady Plunon is Zorlon’s half sister??’ Bob asks excitedly, looking up from his comic.

Bob: ‘Oh, I just ruined it for you didn’t I?’

Me: ‘No, it’s okay.’

Bob: ‘Want to come over and play Dungeons and Dragons later?’

Me: ‘Sure.’

The ride home went easier than the ride to Bob’s did, as I weighed about 10 pounds less and didn’t have to worry about my ass sliding off the bike seat anymore. The jeans are now dry. The jeans are now purple. The jeans have not changed in the slightest.

Dad: ‘Hm. Funny, it didn’t work very well for us either.’

Me: …

Dad: ‘Well, that’s a quality pant for you. I guess you’ll be able to wear those forever!’

Me: *cry*

It wasn’t until a few years later when I finally got a job umpiring baseball games (the only job you can have at 14, really, around here anyway) that I was able to buy whatever clothes I wanted. After getting my first paycheck, I went to the mall and immediately walked past Sears - out to where the cool kids were shopping, and bought the tightest, most faded Guess jeans ($78 at the time, if I recall) I could find. I then topped them off with a black leather jacket. It was heavenly. The jeans lasted exactly two days before I managed to rip huge gaping hole in the crotch because they were too tight to move in.

So I put on spandex underneath, and wore them anyway!!!

Magnet Fetish Anyone?

2008-01-07T11:43:00.000-08:00

They started hanging these around the office to encourage honesty among employees. . .

... so far, I have managed to collect three of them! :)

May cause dizziness, dry mouth, and fatigue

2008-01-03T10:51:00.001-08:00

I hate ads for medicine on TV, especially ads for medication where you aren't sure what it's supposed to do. . .

*Scene Fades in*
An older man jumps up and catches a football and pumps his fist wildly upon landing. His grand-child (?) goes wild. It's so fun playing with grandpa again. 'Now, thanks to new Zillirex(tm) the game is back on!!' they say. . .
*Fade out to Zillirex box*
Is Zillirex:
a) An incontinence aid for Grandpa?
b) The latest designer anti-depressant for little Billy?
c) Something that makes it so Grandpa isn't attracted to little Billy in the wrong way?
d) Other?

I don't know either, but they want me to be sure to ask my doctor if new Zillirex is right for me, which would be an awkward conversation to have, especially if it treats condition 'C'. At least they could throw us a bone by naming the new medicine in an intelligent way, so that we would know whether asking about it would be appropriate or not. For instance, if the medicine is called 'Vagicide', then I have a pretty good idea that I wont be needing it for anything. Come to think of it, if it were called 'Peniscide III', then I probably wouldn't go near it either. Guys are kinda squeamish when it comes to anything to do with mr winky. Mr winky could, in fact, be blackish green and smelling none too good, and if a guy did manage to work up the courage to go to the doctor to have it looked at, the conversation would probably go something like this:

Doctor: What seems to be the prob - Good God man, what the hell happened?!?!

Guy: An evil witch cast a spell on it. It kinda itches. . . Is Peniscide III right for me?

Doctor: No. This is end-stage gangrene, we're going to have to cut it off right now, or you will die.

Guy: Errr. . . Thanks anyway doc, but I think I'm going to ride this gangrene thing out, you never know. . .

What should trouble you most about the above exchange is the III part. I want to know what happened to Peniscide I and II, how come they aren't on the shelf anymore. What if they come out with Peniscide IV next month? See why guys don't mess around with this stuff? An even more compelling reason to just leave it alone is the warnings that they do give out on television. There is one 'good' warning, and three 'nuisance' warnings, but all the rest are 'bad' warnings, and are worth paying attention to.

Good warning: Do not take this medication with alcohol.
What it means: Taking this medication with alcohol will probably be a lot of fun. Do it, do it, do it!

Nuisance warnings: May cause dizziness, dry mouth, and fatigue.
What it means: One of the professional 'medicine testers' who seems to get recruited to test every medicine known to man is a crazy old bat who is perpetually tired and dizzy, and in need of a drink of water. When was the last time taking Advil made you dizzy? Never? Don't worry about it.

Bad warnings: May cause kidney failure, uncontrolled rectal bleed, seizures, blindness, and death.
What it means: Ooookey, so, you've got dry skin and you're looking for a cure. This is not the medicine of choice for you, okay? Just buy some lotion and deal.

I think they actually passed a law or something recently that says that any ads for medication must now mention the symptoms that it treats. This is a good thing, as it saves embarrassing conversations, but they haven't quite got it right yet - as I overheard one the other day that went something like: 'If you've experienced constipation for more than six months, then ask your doctor if new Ream-a-way(tm) gel caps are right for you. . .'

My feeling is that if you have been constipated for six months, then I don't think calling a doctor is going to help. Maybe calling a coroner. . .

Hammazon!

2007-12-31T07:45:00.000-08:00

It's official. Pop culture is ever so slightly more polluted today than it was yesterday, as Hammy's new single was added to Amazon this morning. It's a proud day. . . Heh. Um. . . Funny story later. I have to fill out some last minute paperwork before I get sued. . .

Hammy vs. the Pop Machine

2007-12-29T16:52:00.000-08:00

So I go to get a soda. Diet Coke, just like always. I go through about four cans a day at work I figure, and today is starting off no different. I have my fifty cents. For me, it's a brave thing to approach a soda machine with fifty cents, and expect to walk away with a soda. Today I am feeling froggy, so I chance it. I walk up to the soda machine, put my fifty cents in (two quarters) and push the 'diet coke' button. One quarter falls out of the coin return below, and nothing else happens. *sigh* I bend down, get my quarter, and put it back in the slot with the 'special back spin' that the coke machine likes for me to do for it, especially early in the morning. Success, no quarter droppage. I push the 'diet coke' button. And there is whirring. Not a good whirring, but a sick sounding whirring, as if something bad is happening. Now, on this machine, there are actually *two* diet coke buttons - maybe just for me, who knows, but the fact of the matter is that I panicked and half-way through the sickening whirrrr sound I hit 'diet coke' button number two, thinking that this will set the machine straight, and I will score my soda. This seems to anger the coke machine, and it starts to make a chugging sound and drops something down below. I bend down to pick it up. F---ing Fresca. The machine Fresca'd me. I check the other buttons on the soda machine to assure myself that Fresca was actually an option and that someone wasn't just screwing with me. It was, at the very bottom button. Great. So I stalk back to my desk, and give the Fresca to a passer-by in the hall after a rather brief conversation. "want a Fresca?'. I get back to my desk and dig through my change drawer which has about $45 in pennies, and as luck would have it, one quarter, one dime, and three nickels. So I gather up my change and walk back to the coke machine. It's smiling at me, I know it. I walk up and put in my change. One quarter, one dime, and three nickels. No droppage, we are good. I slowly push 'diet coke' button number one. There is whirring. I wait. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, you know the rest. The whirring continues for several seconds, and then the 'sold out' light flashes. Okay, fine, I think. I cautiously press 'diet coke' button number two. The 'sold out' light remains flashing. This sucks. Whenever the coke machine is out of diet coke, I have to make due with diet Pepsi. I don't really like diet Pepsi, but it beats Fresca when you want caffeine. 'Fine' I think. I hit the change return button, and change drops out. Not a lot of drops though, just two. I gather two quarters (wtf, excuse me? okay, whatever. . .) from the change tray, and head off to the Pepsi machine. I put my quarters in the Pepsi machine, and we have droppage. I bend down, get the quarter, and put it back in again. Again droppage. *sigh* I get the quarter from the change tray again. It's Canadian. One sideways glance to the Coke machine, and I see it shaking with laughter. I throw the quarter at it. The dinging sound is not satisfying. I go downstairs and out to my car, grab another stupid quarter from the change tray, re-scan my badge, go back upstairs and put my other quarter in the Pepsi machine. Success. Success as measured by my f---ed up standards, anyway. I wipe off the top of the can on my way back to my cube, sit down, and pop the top. The little top-popper thing breaks mid-way through; the can opens just enough to let some fizz come out and roll down the sides, but not enough to actually drink from. Touche' mr. soda machine... Touche'

Day-After Detective

2007-12-26T11:34:00.000-08:00

Everybody has drinking stories. Well, most people do anyway. I know that I have my share, and thankfully none have ended up with anyone getting hurt, getting a divorce, or going to jail (as far as I know). This is not to say that, many weeks ago, when I was young and stupid(er), there wasn't a great deal of reckless abandon and mayhem, just that I won't be using this blog as a forum to promote reckless behavior. I'm sure that whoever you are, you'll either have stories of your own, or won't need my help to figure out how to use alcohol to screw up an otherwise perfectly reasonable weekend of fun.

Here's a few things that a little experience has taught me though, so I will share these bits in the hopes that someone may benefit. The rather serious possibility that the only purpose of my existence is to serve as an example for others has crossed my mind more than once. With that in mind, I offer the following:

1) After the first couple drinks, Contrineau = triple sec = orange schnapps. After any more than that white wine= red wine = pink wine, and beer = champagne = anything with club soda. When you get to Listerene = peppermint schnapps, then it's time to stop.

2) The less you talk, the less obvious it will be to everyone that you are plastered. Hush.

3) Breath mints, including Altoids, do not make it seem as if you are not drunk. Instead of stumbling around and slurring your gin-drenched speech all over eveyone, you will be stumblimg around slurring your peppermint-gin-denched speech all over everyone. This does not help in the slightest.

4) If you absolutely must fake sobriety for some reason, then eat some onions, or corn nuts, or other foul smelling food which will make people naturally want avoid your breath. This also has the added benefit of potentially saving you from a night o' lovin' should you get tossed in the pokey for some reason. . .

5) The porcelin at the bottom of the bowl is both colder and nicer than the porcelin at the top of the bowl.

6) If you decide to invite tequila or jagermeister to your party, then the odds that you'll need to review #1-#5 increase dramatically. I was talking to a girl a while back who swears up and down that she was an alcoholic. I asked her why that was, and she replied 'Becuase I drink for the effect, not for the taste...' to which I had to say 'Look honey, ain't no one drinking Pancho Villa for the taste. Put down Nietzsche, let's go party. . .' She didn't bite.

7) Throwing up while on the phone with your parents or a new girl that you have been hoping would call is neither productive, nor endearing. Especially on the first day of college. Especially when you had her convinced that Nietzsche was a load of crap and that you were going to be her new moral compass. Dammit!!!

8) There is a time and place for everything. It's called college.

9) If you're going to pour Bacardi 151 in a bowl that you borrowed (heh) from the college food service cafeteria, set it on the ground, and then light it on fire so that you can toast marshmallows over it with bent-up coat hangers after a double date (while still in your dorm room), then please remember to:

a) figure out where the fire extinguisher is before hand and

b) note that cheap-ass bowls from China do not resist heat as well as that Pyrex from the chem lab does, and will indeed shatter when they get hot. Also, the simple act of a bowl shattering will not extinguish an alcohol fire, no matter how much you run around in circles screaming 'Oh my God, oh my God!!!'

10) If you wake up the next morning and you find some smudgy writing on your hand that looks like 'I (heart) Dana' along with a phone number, and you remember nothing about the night before at all, then consider (before playing 'day-after detective') that:

a) 'Dana' probably gave you a fake phone number to get your sweaty slobbery face as far away from hers as possible.

b) 'Dana', if she did choose option 'a', probably gave you the phone number of her ex-bf who also happens to be involved with a South American drug cartel, and

c) If neither of the above are true, then 'Dana' was that big hairy biker guy who bought your last round of drinks and called your friend 'sugar lips'.

Just wash your hands, and don't call. . .

Simple syrup

2007-12-22T07:27:00.001-08:00

To a collins glass, add 12 mint leaves, 1/2 of a lime cut into wedges, and muddle gently. Fill glass with ice, add 2 TBSP simple syrup, 1 1/2 oz rum, and top off with club soda. Yum.

I'm lazy, I'll be the first to admit it. If there is an easy way to do something that gets me 80% of the way there, then that's usually the route I will take. Exceptions to this are rare, and usually involve some greater purpose than the task at hand. Enter simple syrup. Now, I know that you can make simple syrup yourself. It's not that it's hard. It's just a pain. I don't wanna, okay? So when I go to the store to procure the above ingredients I start looking for a bottle of simple syrup. It's not in the 'mixers' section, it's not in the 'baking' aisle (ok, a stretch, I admit, but I also don't understand why they dont put the taco shells next to the flour tortillas either, so what do I know - I'm a guy).

Anyhoo, I search the store for a reasonable amount of time before figuring that they must carry the simple syrup at the liquor store instead. I go to the check-out line and wait. Someonehadcoupons-oopstheypickedthewrongitem-billcanIgetapricecheckplease-canIwritethisfor$10over-mycatheterbagjustexplodeddoyouhaveanytape-Fast forward, I'll tell that story another day. She's pretty. I love her. . . Or love the idea of her anyway. . . Hm? Oh, the little nineteen year old checkout girl I have been staring at. . . You want what? Oh yes, hi! I'm back now! Yes, I'm doing very well thanks, and how are you? Happy holidays to you too! (I'm wearing my Santa hat right now, apparently) Well, actually yes, I was hoping that you guys might carry simple syrup.

Her: *slight pause, as if worried that she might be on candid camera*

Me: 'It's okay if you don't know what it is.'

Her: 'Oh, I know what it is. . . You can make it yourself you know. . .'

Me: 'Yes, yes, I know, but what if you're lazy?'

Me: 'I mean like, if it's only a couple bucks, then. . .'

Her: 'Umm, I don't think we carry that. . .'

Me (meekly): Okay thank you.

I'll just get it at the liquor store. They have all sorts of mixers and oddities at the liquor store. I go into the liquor store, grab my rum, and look around. A plethora of colors and names is all over the mixer shelf. No simple syrup. They've got lime juice, in case I am too lazy to squeeze a lime, but no simple syrup. So I go to the register.

Me: 'Do you guys carry simple syrup'

Her: 'You can make it yourself you know. Two cups of sug-'

Me: 'YES, I know that, but if I didn't want to make it myself, then -'

Her: 'We don't carry that. Two cups of sugar, one cup of water in a pot on the stove. Just boil it.'

Me: 'Okay -'

Her: 'Boiling is when those little bubbles happen at the bottom.'

Me: 'Thanks.'

Her: 'If you put a little bit of maple in it, you can make maple syrup.'

Me: 'Thank you so much.'

Me, inside my head, what I meant to say: 'Jane, you ignorant slut. Bisquick is little more than flour, baking powder, and shortening. I could make that myself too if I really wanted to. And despite being a total alcoholic, I have never, ever, found anything that was begging to be mixed with maple syrup. If I wanted to get in the business of 'making my own', then I would set up a damned (illegal) distillery in my garage and make some tax-free hooch, at which point I could sell mojitos for $1 each and still come out ahead.'

Me: 'Happy Holidays!'

Unfulfilled, I went home and spent the 10 minutes it took to make 750 mls of simple syrup. Maybe it wasn't so bad after all. . .

The songs

2007-12-21T08:17:00.000-08:00

Updated 7/1/2010:

I just linked a few parody songs that I made over there to the right. They were lots of fun to do, and I hope you like them.

'Glamorous' is my first ever attempt at a parody song, I think the underlying commentary is pretty clear, so I won't bother going into detail about what it means to me. This song was not, I should stress, directed at Fergie or any other artist in particular.

'Hey There Vagina' is obviously a 'Hey There Delilah' parody. This is my personal ode to the most sacred and sought after of human orifices. If you've never heard the original, then this will sound pointlessly and painfully juvenile. I'm just having some fun though the eyes of my 12-year old self. In my living room. With the lights on.

'Bubbling' was a heat-of-the-moment knee-jerk reaction to the original song being so damn cheerful. It turned out okay, so I decided to post it up.

'Imagine' I took a lot of crap for, because some people made the assumption that I was making fun of John Lennon, when in reality I kinda like his work. I'm more just using that song as a platform for minor hilarity because it seems to lend itself so well to the cause. Hey, you imagine what you want, and I'll imagine what I want.

'Before She Eats' was not a great performance, and was also quite a s t r e t c h for me, vocally speaking - and I'll be the first to admit it. It is what it is, and if you like it great. If it hurts your ears, just move on to the next song and accept my apologies. :)

'Man, I Feel Like a Woman' is obviously a parody of the song made famous by Shania Twain. When the girls go out, the guys get left with the kids obviously. This was a little attempt to capture that flip-side of the equation there. . .

'Casey's Palm' is a parody of Stacy's Mom, as made famous by Fountains of Wayne. Would it be wrong to include two songs about whacking off on an album?

Let's see, what else can I say about them.. Hmmmmm.. They were recorded at home on a Dell laptop, using either a Studio Projects C-1 or a Sennheiser 865 microphone - both of which are fairly low grade, but seem to get the job done. Some guitar work included an SM57 as well. For 'Man, I Feel Like a Woman' and 'Casey's Palm' I used a new MA-200, and slammed it through a Distressor (I've been upgrading, lately). This produces a noticable sound quality difference between those songs and, say, Hey There Vagina. That sound at the very end of 'Hey There Vagina' is my butt sliding off the couch where I was sitting while singing, and had nothing to do with a zipper in any way - as someone has already accused it of being just that.

The album is now entirely written, and includes parodies of Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus, Eminem, Rhianna, Katy Perry, Billy Joel, Elton John, and a slew of others. It's just a matter of finding the time to practice and record everything. :)

Anyway, hope you enjoy the songs, and cheers!

McSick

2007-12-17T15:44:00.000-08:00

Do you ever find yourself kinda sick after you finish something that you ordered from McDonalds? It's a particular kind of sick, which I can only relate as being a feeling similar to ingesting an old sweat sock that has been fried in bacon grease, and then waiting for about 5 minutes. I call it 'the McSick'. It doesn't seem to matter what I order, about five minutes later I always feel the same, which makes me wonder why I ever go to McDonalds in the first place. Oh, the fries are ok I guess, the service is usually ok, but why on earth someone would choose to go there as opposed to simply 'ending up' there is beyond me. They have started a suggestive selling campaign out here too, which I find particularly annoying. It usually goes something like this:

Metal Box: 'Welcome to McDonalds, would you like to try one of our McSuper McValue meals today?'
Me: 'No thankyou, could I please get a sweat sock with some fries and a large diet coke?'
Metal Box: 'Certainly! Would you like to add a couple of our McFried Apple McTurnovers to your McMeal? They're only a dollar on our 'What's McNew McValue McMenu'!
Me: ...McNo?
Metal Box: Thankyou, drive through!

I do find it funny that McDonalds has been trying to branch out with new menu items in an effort to stay in the public eye as a fresh and exciting place to visit though. There are, after all, only so many ways to sell hamburger (I question the spelling, as I have never managed to fry a hamburger at home and have it turn out grey - that's a neat trick), chicken parts, and french fries. It's bound to get old-hat sooner or later unless you get creative with the marketing. It's all about creating the most buzz with the least amount of capital expended, right? How about making a new McVick? 'McDonalds is doing their part to help with the unwanted pet population. . .' Nah, that probably wouldn't fly. . .

Childhood Peculiarities

2007-12-16T12:01:00.000-08:00

My family was rather poor growing up. Not destitute, not like some of my friends who awoke to fry up (bulk) flour mixed with water and call it pancakes, or spread too much Buttarr ™ on a slice of bread and fold it over and call it a sandwich, just poor enough to encourage a certain amount of creativity when it came to things that some other families apparently took for granted. I did not fully appreciate some of the trials and humor of my own childhood until I met my wife in college many years later.

An example? Sure. My father bought my first car for me and drove it home. Spoiled rich kid you say? Nay, let me explain! As you have probably gathered, the car did actually start, run, and drive, but it was only a car in the academic sense (made of metal, had round things underneath it, etc). In fact, in every literal sense it had spent the past many years of its life as a house instead of a car, as a pack of raccoons had taken up to living inside it. When this happened exactly, I am not sure, but as it was a 1962 Oldsmobile it could have been for nearly the last 30 years at the time. It smelled like about 30 years. A brand new three pack of air fresheners had done nothing but make it smell as if you were sitting in a raccoon den in the middle of the forest instead of in the car. This was enormously helpful, and in retrospect probably explains why I had to wait just a tad longer to get any booty. The floor boards on one side were first rotted, and then rusted through, and you could actually see the street pass under you from small holes on the passenger side. The original color may have been a sickly green, but the exterior rust masked it nicely. My father had found this gem at a local yard sale, parked under a tree, apparently unmoved for quite some time. There was a cardboard sign on it that said ‘Runs Great! $50’ He talked them down to $35. Nevertheless, I was thankful and greatly impressed at 14 to already be the proud sort-of owner of a sort-of vehicle (my father figured it would take me at least a year or two to fix it up anyway). I was the new road king. My friends, okay, friend, would be so impressed, so jealous! Over the next few months we sanded, painted (Big Bird yellow!), changed spark plugs, oil, and other guy stuff. I would post a picture of the good ol' Blonde Bombshell for you to see, but my mother one day declared that it was too much of an eye-sore to remain in the neighborhood, and it was sold. Grrr.

Probably the most stark example of taking these little childhood peculiarities for granted though, was revealed when discussing the possibility of screwing outside, err.. I mean.. camping, with my then future-wife. Go “camping”, with me, in a tent? Okay, fine. Now, my prior childhood experiences with camping go something like this: We all pile into the car and drive for hours until the paved road ends, and then we continue on a gravel road, logging trail, or maybe just making our own way across a flattish piece of ground until it appears unwise to drive any further. Then we get the tent, a hammer, a shovel, and a backpack out of the trunk, and proceed on foot until we’re almost lost. We use the hammer to drive the tent stakes into the ground wherever we end up, hopefully it’s not too rocky. We find a fallen log and use the shovel to dig a hole behind it. That’s the potty. Hopefully there is a lake or river or something nearby to provide food, water, and entertainment (though there is a pack of UNO cards and some freeze dried noodles just in case). There are fishing poles for fishing, and a gun or two for rattlesnakes, cougars, or whatever. We then strike out on a hike, for no particular reason, and end up crowded around a little fire boiling some water from the river (which as it turns out is not entirely sufficient, but luckily my father has brought some military grade iodine tablets with us) to cook the stupid freeze dried noodles, and spend the rest of the afternoon trying to enjoy some stupid view while choking down ‘Iodine Noodles ala Hammy-Dad’. It’s on trips like this that I learn valuable life lessons like, ‘You can eat it, no matter what it is, Son, if you just put salt on it and then plug your nose while you chew.’ Editorial note: this does not work for the Man Sauce. After a couple days of this (sooner if someone gets bit, breaks a thumb, or goes blind in one eye – yes, it happened), we will pack up, bury the hole, and head back to civilization our lives much enriched from the experience.

My wife’s version of camping: If there is no valet service at the state park, then you must find your own parking place. Some of the washrooms can be a little dirty, so bring along your own sanitizer if you venture into one. A rather bland jar of spaghetti sauce can be dressed up nicely if you first sauté some onions and garlic before adding your sauce to the saucepan. Adding a dash of basil and a ¼ cup of whatever varietal of red wine you brought along can make this an extra special treat for the family. The ‘Walk of Wonder’ tour starts promptly at 8pm, and warm hand towels and refreshments will be provided after. . .

We compromised by buying some of those professional marshmallow roasting sticks, instead of whittling down tree branches, and as a reward she introduced me to something called a ‘smore’. Thus began an inexorable decent into a lifestyle of decadence and plenty.

Hammy's Collection

2007-12-15T15:57:00.000-08:00

Lest you think I was turned off by my experience at Dixies, I do keep a small inventory of hot sauce around the house. This, plus 6 open bottles in the fridge represent what I am trying out right now. There are sauces representing 4 or 5 continents in my stash, and my personal favorite which I am hoarding the last little bit of right now is called 'African Rhino Peri-Peri Pepper Sauce' from the good folks at Kalahari Pepper Company ( http://hotshotshotsauce.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=99 ). This is not a hot sauce by any stretch of the imagination, but it has a very interesting and unique flavor which lends itself especially well to chicken, though I suspect it would find use in a variety of meat dishes. I plan on getting another bottle shortly. Do you like all the colors? Yes, that bottle of Dave's Insanity sauce is about half gone. Dave's is my standard go-to eatin' sauce when I'm feeling a bit froggy. There's much hotter out there, but Dave's is cheap heat (unlike designer hot sauce). If you spoon enough on, then you'll be fine most of the time. ;)

Hammy Loves Hot Stuff

2007-12-14T09:23:00.000-08:00

I love hot stuff. Spicy food. This love is something that has, overtime, developed into somewhat of a bemusement for the people I sometimes eat with. You see, when people learn that someone likes spicy food, their immediate reaction is to recount a tale of the spiciest food that has ever crossed their own lips - all the while trying to hold back a thinly disguised smirk of disdain, as if to suggest that if indeed a lunch date is in order, then you won’t be able to handle it. I have played this game many times. Usually it involves going to a strip mall Mexican joint and trying the salsa, or even more terrifying, chewing the little Chinese red peppers that come in the kungpao chicken. Oh the horror. The horror. Pshaw.

After a few years worth of this rather tedious and predictable nonsense, I decided that the next time I was being taken someplace for the new ‘spiciest food in the world’, I was going to try and see if getting snarky with the help would heat things up a bit. Asking for food ‘extra spicy’, or ‘Thai hot’, or ‘five stars’ or whatever the local expectation is just wasn’t cutting it. So I started ordering nine stars, thirty-seven stars, and ultimately asking if they would just have the cook make it as if they were playing a joke on someone that they didn’t like – and that the desired result would be that the preparation would be so spicy that after one bite, the food would burn a hole through the patron’s soft palate and fall uselessly to the floor where it would sit and smolder for a bit. This is what I ask for, but never get. It’s a neat little show that ultimately goes nowhere, though I appreciate any extra effort that is made on my somewhat twisted behalf.

Now, in 1999 I took a new job and met a guy named Larry. Larry is the proverbial IT geek who was, at the time, divorced and somewhat bitter about it, and in all other aspects your typical pudgy, polo-shirt wearing dufus, bimbling around with no real plan for life. Just like me, really, except that I was a newlywed at the time. I was talking to Larry one day and the subject of spicy food came up, and of course, Larry had a suggestion. I took a moment to sigh a rather strained sigh, peppered here and there with a bit of dread and apathy, before saying ‘Oh. Really. . . Where?’ And Larry says to me: ‘Well, if you like spicy food, we gotta go meet the Man, mmmkay’. And I was like ‘Meet the Man? What are you talking about, this “meet the Man?” (in air quotes)’ Note how the word Man has been capitalized. This is not an oversight, this is called foreshadowing. And Larry goes ‘No, it’s great, there’s this place called Dixie’s BBQ, and they have this guy who goes around with a little pot, putting Man sauce on your BBQ. We should go!’ . . . I stared at Larry kind of hard, trying to figure out where he was going with this. . . ‘Larry’, I said, ‘This isn’t some kind of like, gay bar thing is it, because I .. .’ and Larry laughs. ‘Nope! It’s just a BBQ place’ he says ‘The spiciest BBQ ever! Before it’s over you’ll be saying “COME ON ICE CREAM!”’. Oh good, I am thinking to myself. . . I have never had spicy BBQ before. BBQ just isn’t spicy. It doesn’t have the potential to be spicy, much in the same way that ice cream can’t be spicy. Larry is a bimble-fuck. This was surely going to be the biggest waste of time ever, and then I would have to spend the next 45 minutes telling Larry ‘Oh, yes, this is really great, so good, so spicy. Yum. Yum. Yum. Wish we could come here every day.’ All the while hoping that Larry hasn’t figured out which cubical I sit in. ‘Just one thing’ he says, ‘Remember that ‘Soup Nazi’ episode of Seinfeld? This place is kind of eccentric like the soup nazi’s kitchen was. They get really mad if you don’t finish your food, and for goodness sake, whatever you do, don’t be obnoxious or piss anyone off there, or you may not even live to regret it, mmmkay? I hear he raises wild hogs.’ . . . Smiling a rather guilty smile inside my own head, I assured him that I would behave. Of course I would. . . Who would risk embarrassing themselves by being obnoxious? :) .. ‘course, I am a firm believer in knowing exactly where the line is, and you never really have a good idea where the line is unless you cross it just a little. . .

So lunch time rolls around, and it turns out Larry and I are going to Dixie’s BBQ with Sarah and Justin. Sarah is a child prodigy who wants to work in computers for some silly reason, and Justin is her brute-ish thug of an ex-alcoholic tattoo addict boyfriend. How they got together I will never know, but that’s irrelevant to the story. We all pile into our cars, along with my wife, and go. The place, as it turns out, is situated near the interchange of two freeways and looks similar to an old auto shop. This turns out to actually be the case, as when we pull into the parking lot a sign above the building reads ‘Dixie’s BBQ and Porter’s Automotive’. Nice, I think. This just gets better and better.

Larry leads the way, and there looks to be a line at the door of the place, so we stand at the end and wait. Larry directs us to the menu on the wall, and says ‘You better figure out what you want now, so that you’ll know when you get up there.’ I casually glance up at the wall, and there’s something called a ‘520 special’ (named after one of the highways, naturally) which is a hot link and pulled pork BBQ sandwich. The menu is rather limited, but this looks like a decent bet. It was no sooner than I had picked my sandwich for lunch that I heard a woman with a deep voice around the corner of the line bellow (in a southern drawl) ‘Child, You tellin’ me you been standin’ dare for twenty minutes and don’t know what chu want?! Gene!!! Dis boy don’t know what he want!!’ There was a mumble from the front of the line, and we moved forward yet again. When I rounded the bend I saw a large woman with a scarf over her head and sweat on her brow serving up sandwiches with BBQ meat from steel bins. She looked amused, but in a more serious kind of way than you would think, for some reason. I ordered my sandwich without much trouble, but no drinks were offered. In fact, the only drinks in the entire place were served by a coke machine that took quarters, which I am guessing is really for the guys working on cars on the other side of the wall. I get a soda, and sit down. I start biting. This sandwich is not hot. It’s not bad for a BBQ sandwich, but it’s not even trying to be hot. This is stupid. I look over at Larry and he says ‘Just you wait… Come on ice cream!’ Ahhhh, right, the guy with the little pot, I forgot. I stop eating and wait. I have about 2/3 of my sandwich left, and I am hungry, but still I wait. No guy, no little pot, no love. .. So, naturally I decide to try and speed things along. “I THOUGHT you said there was a GUY with a POT here’ I offered rather not-quietly. Somewhat loudly, but not so loud as to disturb the entire restaurant, more like as loud as your typical idiot talking on their cell phone in line at the grocery store, oblivious to what is going on around them. About that loud. Some nearby patrons stare in wonder. A few giggle. ‘I don’t SEEEEE any POT here, Larry’, I say, before Larry can lunge across the table to cover my mouth. ‘SHHHH, don’t don’t don’t, you’re gonna – ‘ and at that moment someone kicked the swinging back doors to the dining room open. A man with a little pot.

I later learn that his name is Gene, but for now we’ll just call him the man with the pot. The man with the pot seemingly knows where the obnoxious sound has come from and comes marching straight past the other diners and up to our table, puts his foot up on a chair, looks us over, and in a voice not-unlike Boss Hogg (Dukes of Hazard) says ‘Okay. Who da baddest one herr?’ A slight pause ensues. Larry winces. Justin pipes up (go Justin) ‘Gimmie some of that there’ gesturing to the pot. And the man with the pot grins and swirls his little teaspoon around in the pot, drawing out a spoonful of his sauce and slaps it down in the middle of Justin’s sandwich. ‘PAP!’ he says. A table of diners in the corner looks over in amazement, and start whispering among themselves. ‘Okay, who else think dey bad?’ he says. I’ve been waiting for this moment. This is truly the best moment when it comes to being obnoxious about spicy food, the moment where you can ask for something heretofore unheard of and impress everyone. It’s a testosterone thing - don’t ask. Anyway, I had looked over at what the guy put on Justin’s sandwich, and it was a kind of gooey dark red sauce. Looked like it probably had some pepper seeds in it or something, but otherwise looked unremarkable – even like it might just be a different kind of BBQ sauce. And I look the guy with the little pot, dead in the eye, and say ‘Gimmie two scoops!’ And the corner table full of whispers all of a sudden goes ‘ooooooh’, in unison. ‘HAH!’ he says, delightedly, and throws them on my sandwich – ‘PAP!’, ‘PAP!’. ‘You mix dat in there goooood boy. HAH!’ I look over at Larry, who has buried his head in his hands, as if to not wanting to be associated with any of this, or us, but especially me. ‘Oh, no, I’m fine. I have met the man before. But thanks.’ Larry says when offered some sauce.

The man with the pot smiles and goes on to the next table where I hear him bellow ‘Hey, BOY, you ever met the MAN!?’, and I see him take a toothpick out of his pocket and dip the tippy end in his little pot of sauce, and hand it to some guy who then sticks it in his mouth, immediately withdraws it, and then seems anxious to not speak, and leave the room in a rather immediate fashion. I grow a little concerned, seeing this, but not overly concerned – as I have never met anything on this Earth that I couldn’t eat two teaspoons of, much less two teaspoons spread over most of a sandwich. The dining room has quieted. There’s an air of silent anticipation building above the corner table of ‘oooh-ers’. I shan’t disappoint. I bite. . . They wait.

Now, for those of you who don’t know, there are two kinds of heat when you’re talking really spicy foods. There’s the kind that hits you right away, and the kind that builds as you go. This had both. As I chewed my bite I did note that it was quite hot, very hot in fact. Very hot, but not unmanageable, I tell myself. I can do this. I feel a bead of sweat on my forehead, and take another bite. And another. I now have to suppress the urge to hiccup, and I take another bite. My wife, who has been silently enduring this, informs me that my face is getting red. I start to hiccup, and must drain my soda to remedy the condition. Note: This is normal, really, so far. If you eat a habanero pepper, you will likely sweat, maybe hiccup, and get some color in your face. This is to be expected. No big. This is the last thing that I remember clearly. What happened next is a little hazy, as I am still repressing that memory somewhat, but I will recount both what I can remember and piece together based on Larry’s later re-telling of the story.

I turned to my wife and said ‘You know dear, this uh, sandwich is pretty hot. Umm.. Do you have any quarters for another soda?’ My wife, being the nice person that she is, leaves the table to go get another one for me. I take another bite. I am really underplaying this Man sauce as much as I can, as the heat has now built to a point that I have never experienced before. ‘There’s something weird in this stuff’ I say. ‘I’ve heard he uses pepper spray’ Larry says, not altogether un-cheerfully. ‘Pepper spray and brake cleaner from next door’ I joke, trying to make light of the fact that I have no idea what the hell I have gotten myself into. My vision, is in fact starting to blur, and I think I can feel sweat coming from inside my ear canals. I did not know ear canals could do that. I look over at Justin who is a somewhat purplish color and slouching in his chair, his somewhat eaten sandwich waiting for him patiently on the table. ‘So uhh.. How is it?’ I ask. Justin does not answer, but I’m not sure if it’s because he can no longer hear me or if his tongue is too swollen to answer, because I can’t see well enough to tell if his lips are moving. I take another bite, and decide that, in fact, I cannot wait for my wife to get back with another soda, so I reach across the table and take hers and up-end it. And from behind, the familiar voice booms across the room ‘SODA!? Soda ain’t gonna help YOU boy! HAH! How ya dooin’ mister TWO SCOOPS!?’ I groan. Must keep eating. Testosterone won’t allow defeat. Man with pot, pure evil. I take another bite. My wife returns as the echoes from the man’s bellow die out, and she immediately starts bitching me out for drinking her soda while she was gone, but I am not listening to a word she says, as I quite literally and involuntarily snatch the new soda out of her hand and drain that one in one go as well. ‘More’ I manage to spit out, weakly, and with the patience that only a woman who has lived with me for the last five years could have, she turns around and hurries off to procure more soda. The man comes over to our table ‘You boys want some MO’?’ he asks, holding the teaspoon up in mock anticipation. ‘Oh, no’ I think I said. Whatever I said, he seemed to understand it as a response in the negative. I may have been speaking in tongues at that point, I really don’t know. ‘How come you boys stop eatin’? It ain’t half-time yet!’ he growls, and then stomps off to the back of the kitchen again, and through the swinging doors you can hear him bellow, in a rather practiced Muhammad Ali impersonation, ‘I’m a BAAAAAD MAN!’.

I bite. The sandwich cannot even truly be described as ‘hot’ now. It just hurts to put in your mouth, much like sticking a road flare in your mouth would probably hurt. My skin has gone from red to a sickly ashen-grey. I discover that I know exactly where the contours of my stomach are, as they are now strangely sensitive – it’s much higher up in your abdomen than you might think. Larry looks concerned. My wife comes back with an armload of soda, and I immediately drain two more cans, which as the man with the pot predicted, did absolutely nothing to make the pain stop. Now I have to piss too. Excellent. I stand up and see that my shirt is drenched in sweat, and as I cross the dining room I hear the corner table giggling, and in fact it seems as if everyone else has taken an interest in this foolish little display as well. As if they come for lunch every day and wait for a sucker to stop by. I go to the rest room, and see myself in the mirror for the first time (which is how I was aware of my current unusual complexion). It doesn’t look good. I start to pee. And pee. And from outside the bathroom door I hear ‘Where’d two-scoops go!?’ I like to think that it’s because he’s concerned for my safety, and not that his patrons are complaining about the show being over…

Now, for those of you who don’t know, when you chop up or handle hot peppers at home, you usually get some of the pepper oil on your hands, and then you have to wash them with soap to really get it all off. If you forget to do this, and then rub your eyes or whatever, then you’re in for a real nasty surprise. When is the last time you went for BBQ and didn’t get some sauce on your fingers? Never? Where are my hands right now?

Yes! Indeed, I am peeing, and now I’m in deep shit, because I feel the burn starting to set in on mr. winky, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. If I let go, he’s going to douse the whole bathroom, and knowing the man with the pot, he will check up on his beloved bathroom and end up feeding me to his wild hogs or something. If I try to cut off in mid-stream, then I might hurt myself so I try to force the rest out as fast as I can. After what seems a painful eternity, I am finally finished, but please recall that you really need to wash your hands before you handle anything or you’re asking for even more trouble. I wash my hands as fast as I can while dancing around ‘What chu dooin’ in derr, two scoops?’ to control the pain as much as I can and when my hands are finally clean I go to wash mr. winky, and as you may have guessed, mr. winky cannot reach the faucet from any angle around the sink as not only is the sink a little higher up than he is, but he’s doing his best to actively retreat into my body. So I grab the foreskin and pull, and I proceed lean in and jump up and down, trying to splash some soap and water on him. This makes quite a mess as you might imagine, so I ultimately emerge from the bathroom soaked nearly head to toe from the combination of old sweat and new water, to the sheer delight of the other patrons.

My wife has now transformed from the sweet helpful soda goddess that I once knew into the town gossip, telling anyone within earshot that cares about some of the other stupid shit that I have done in my life. She keeps a list. I sit back down at the table. Justin is non-responsive. He may be dead. Mr. winky has not stopped burning yet. I look over at Sarah who has finished her sandwich already, and she is listening intently to a story about how I managed to let a leashed cat outsmart me last week. I ask cautiously, ‘Hey Sarah, can I umm. . . You’re not like, using that empty sandwich box are you? Can I buy it from you?’ No dice. “But you LIKE hot food’ she says. I groan. I can’t eat any more. I can’t really do anything any more. The entire world has become rather kaleidoscopic, and at this point I am actually in fear (and rightly so with so much anatomical self-discovery in the past 20 minutes) that something bad may be happening to my insides. ‘Gimmie two scoops! I want two scoops!’ I look over at Larry, remembering the conversation about not finishing your food, from earlier, and as if right on cue I hear from the other side of the room: ‘You boys don’t be wastin’ that food now! No sah!’

‘Oh, we’re all done here’ says Sarah, as I hastily close up my sandwich box and try to fake a smile. The man with the pot comes over to our table and opens my sandwich box, and shakes his head in shame and waits for me to speak. But I can’t speak anymore. I had eaten the sandwich down until about ¼ of it was left, but I could go no more. It was over, and the man with the pot had won. Whether as a show of pity, or concern over someone dying from the food, the man with the little pot decided to let me take the rest of my sandwich home in a doggy bag, which my wife assured him that she would make me eat. I do not think that he doubted her at that time. She piled me into the car and drove home. I briefly (and seriously) considered asking her to take me to the hospital instead of home, because my body still wasn’t right. Ultimately we decided to go home and see what happened over the next few hours. Eventually, later that day, things thankfully returned to a normal, if not slightly more enlightened state.

Now, those of you who have not had the opportunity to experience a really spicy food before may think that this story is over, but it’s not, because anything that you put in your body is eventually going to come back out – and surprisingly, hot sauce going in = hot sauce coming out, with only the sandwich changing to any appreciable degree. So I’m driving to work the next morning, and it starts. There’s a gurgle, a tiny utterance of protest, and then gas. A tiny amount of gas. Hardly worth mentioning, and since I am both male, and in the car by myself, I just go ahead and let it go. Who cares. You do it too, you know you do. Anyway, a few seconds after that event, the ‘Boyz’ start burnin’. It started off as a slow, rather pleasant warming sensation that I initially attributed to the aforementioned gas, but being that this gas had nowhere to disperse quickly, and being that it was really the man sauce gas of death in disguise, the boyz went from warm to scrotum-tearing hot in about six seconds flat. This was NOT good, being as I was driving, and there was even more gas threatening to come at any minute. I had to go home. Nay, I had to race home, the kind of race where your illegal u-turn carves a groove into the asphault and you effectively cut the life of your tires in half. The kind of race where you don’t care that the light is red, and you don’t even check for cops before you run it. That kind of race. I raced home, hard. Threw open the door and got situated just in the nick of time. I will spare you the gruesome details, but suffice to say it was absolute madness. As a depilatory, I cannot recommend this particular procedure highly enough. So I’m sitting there, and burning, and I do the only thing that seems natural – call Larry.

*ring ring*

Larry: Yellow?

Me: Aw! Gawd! Ahhh! My ass!

Larry: Yup, that man sauce will get you good in the end. Heh. Heh.

Me: Shut up Larry!! How the hell do you make this stop?

Larry: Mmmm. I think it’s time to say ‘come on ice cream!’

Me: Ahhh, it burns!! It burns!! What he hell do you mean come on ice cream, what the hell is eating ice cream going to do for me Larry goddammit, it would take hours to get down there!

Larry: Mmmm.. Never said you were supposed to eat it . . .

Me: …

Larry: Come on ice cream?

Me: COME ON ICECREAM !!!