curmudgeonbludgeoning

College Stupidity...Vol 5...and the horrid tale of The Sauce

2005-10-11T08:26:00.000-07:00

Fall, 1989:

With one year of college behind us, already those of us who had migrated from small town high school to slightly larger college town had begun to lose touch with our roots. My friend Nelson and I had rooms across campus from each other, and rarely hung out anymore, but when we did, it was interesting to note that the stupidity I had witnessed was mirrored on the other side of campus.

While attending high school, Nelson and I had a mutual friend who was one year our junior. Gordon was the kind of guy whose basement had a pinball machine, pac-man machine, foosball and pool table, and the piece de resistance...a jukebox. Despite his junior status, he was immediately elevated to the upper eschelon of cooldom, and allowed to hang out with us.

Few odder people have I ever met than Gordon, which immediately endeared him to us, so in the fall of 1989, it was with great expecations that we anticipated his arrival at college.

He didn't disappoint.

Upon arriving, he brought with him a pickle jar. Not one of those nancy-boy pickle jars, but one of those 5 gallon monstrosities you typically see on the counter of a deli or bar. Starting on his first day of college, he, and the other miscreants who lived in Bradshaw hall took turns adding various....things....to the jar. I believe, as the story goes, it started with orange juice. Then someone added part of a hamburger. Some other guy added a half eaten boiled egg, and some other guy added half a coke.

You get the idea.

By the end of the year, the jar was half filled with an olive green sludge so disgusting that it warranted being named. When someone put one of Steve's socks into it, it was deemed that 'the sauce' had reached critical disgusting mass.

For four years of college the sauce followed Gordon to every domicile he inhabited.

Interesting sauce facts:

On two occasions it was stolen and ransomed back to him.
One guy turned down $1000.00 to take a drink of it at a party when the lid was removed and vapor...green vapor escaped.
Amazingly, it was never dropped and broken.
The sauce still exists, and is sitting on one of Gordon's friends mantles. I wouldn't be surprised if it weren't a fantasy football trophy or something.

Stinkeroo...

2005-09-27T06:11:00.000-07:00

Wow what an ass-kickin that was..

I'm referring, of course, to the yearly evisceration the Chiefs receive at Invesco Field at Mile High. (that doesn't sound near as cool as mile high, but the house that Elway built makes me shudder)

It must be the thin air what makes my guys commit 60 yards in penalties in the first half. Either that, or they checked they're heads as luggage when they got on the plane and they ended up in parts unknown. When they have the distinguished banquet at the end of the year to hand out most valuable player for the Chiefs, they'd best just hand it over to Mr. Roaf, because it's apparent that without him, we can't run worth a shit.

Anyway, hats off to Jerk's Broncos. He complains alot about Jake Plummer, and I don't know why, everytime I've seen him play he's done rather well. Maybe the key to us beating them is to wear Raiders jerseys. I hear he fears the black and silver and just...hurls the ball to them at any given opportunity.

We get another shot at them...in OUR house, where we don't have to listen to that irritating IN-COM-PLETE bullcrap. I'm personally hoping we hang a 50 point ass-kickin on them that day, but we have the Eagles to worry about next.

There's some good news.

Do You Remember...

2005-09-22T09:14:00.000-07:00

I did one of these awhile back, and I enjoyed it so much I think I'll do another.

..when there were two kinds of gas, unleaded and regular? My dad constructed a homemade catalytic converter when regular went away.

..when it wasn't uncommon to see someone driving with an open beer? My dad never drove anywhere without a beer, like it was his co-pilot. He'd be strung up in the street for doing it now.

..when a quarterback could take a hit and keep playing? If you watch fox's nfl show, remember this, Terry Bradshaw has no teeth, they're all in the grass in Texas Stadium.

..when you could easily differentiate one car model from another? I swear most fuel efficient sedans look exactly alike these days.

..when Kellen Winslow was a kickass tight end, and not a whining primadonna rich boy?

..when CBS was the worst network on television?

..when CBS had only one CSI show?

..when the best multi-person roleplaying game was Gauntlet?

..when I used to post daily?

..when Santa and the Easter Bunny were real?

..when the Tooth Fairy was female?

..when Saturday cartoons were worth getting out of bed for?

..when the Friday night High School Football game was a big social event?

..when the opinion of your High School peers was everything to you?

..when you saw your Senior Prom picture and wondered how the hell you arrived at THAT decision?

..when a suburban, an explorer, and a bronco were all referred to as a 'truck'?

That's all for now.

Coming next...the Legend of The Sauce.

Because Jerk probably thinks I've forgotten about him...

2005-09-13T19:41:00.000-07:00

Football season is upon us, and already I am surprised.

The talking heads that make up the sporting press have already jinxed the Chiefs, mentioning the forbidden words that start with S and B. I think I should personally make a trip to Bristol Connecticut and hogtie those bastards before they do anymore damage. Yeah, the defense walloped the Jets, but let's see how they do against Oakland next week before we start building the pedestal to put them on.

But, I must say, it's nice having a fast as lightning linebacker named Derrick again, and it's even better watching him strip the ball from unsuspecting quarterbacks.

Alone, we sit at the top of the AFC West. We should take this opportunity to retire as division champs while we still have it, because I'm sure once the division games start it's going to get nasty.

I noticed Jerk didn't have much to say, but if my team had lost to the lowly Dolphins, I probably wouldn't acknowledge the official start of the season either. Jake Plummer is officially my favorite person in the world, long may he live and his health hold true. Luckily for him, hockey season is just around the corner. Lucky, that is, if Colorado managed to keep Peter Forsberg...oh yeah, they let Philly have him for a bag of magic beans or something.

Poor Jerk...

Nightmare...

2005-09-02T06:00:00.000-07:00

I understand desperation and panic. I understand how 5 days with little food or water can cause the near feral regression we are witness to in the wake of such devastation. I understand how temperatures in excess of 100 degrees, and being mired in raw sewage and rotting corpses can cause anger and despair. I tell myself that people with no power or access to communication have no idea the extent of the damage and may not fully comprehend the difficulty involved with getting relief to the area.

What I don't understand is how someone can completely lose their sense of humanity and hinder the efforts that are being made to help people that are in dire need of it.

Something is very wrong when the most powerful nation on Earth cannot maintain order in the wake of such a disaster. Especially given that an entire department was created within the government to deal with such disaster. Something is even more wrong when people turn on each other and devolve into a system of warlord despotism in a period of 2 days.

There are many people clinging to the last vestiges of humanity while being preyed upon by those who have descended into animalistic madness. We need an armed presence to hold back the predators and allow those who have endured this utter hell a chance to be free of it.

I personally won't shed a tear over any of the gun-toting thugs that happen to get left behind to shit their guts out when cholera takes hold of them. If they had a shred of humanity left to them, they wouldn't be hindering the rescue effort that is taking place.

Get them out of the superdome. If you can imagine what that must be like, trying to sleep in a building where the stench of death, feces, and urine is so pervasive that anyone who comes in is overwhelmed to the point of vomiting. In addition to that, the building is dark. Not dark like your house when the lights are off...dark like a cave dark, and all around you, you can hear the moans of people suffering...dying. Words cannot convey the fear those people must feel being in that hellhole.

Get them out.

I'm not quite dead...

2005-08-31T10:04:00.000-07:00

You'll be stone dead in a moment..you're not fooling anyone you know.

The Monkey's computer blew up, it was a 6 yr old dinosaur and the great hard drive eating comet finally destroyed it. From the ashes, and the good graces of the finance department at Best Buy a new computer has taken it's place.

While waiting for them to reload it, because I hate BestBuy off the rack imaging, I bought World of Warcraft. What's the point of having a 64 bit dual core 2.8GhZ with 800MhZ front side bus and a 128 mb video card if you aren't going to completely abuse it...right?

Ok, so in the pixelated realms of WoW, I'm technically dead. In fact, if there was a career class 'Crow Feeder' I would be the high exalted poo-bah, as I've died more times than John Travolta's career, but I'm having a blast.

So I've neglected my blog. It doesn't scream when I bash it with an axe, or drop me nifty little treasures that I have to take somewhere else to sell so I can afford to fix the stuff I broke bashing it with an axe.

College Stupidity Volume IV

2005-08-21T18:03:00.000-07:00

The library.

It's the big building that houses more knowledge than all of the professors combined. It contains the past, present, and future of our existence. A world of knowledge just across campus, but it may as well have been on the moon for the men who occupied rooms 3 and 5 in 1990.

Chavez, Mike, and Rick were three guys who embodied the characteristics that brought about the incense rule. Collectively, I think they attended twelve full hours of class that semester, and for some reason, the fact that I had been there two years already, and hadn't been kicked out yet prompted them to look to me for scholastic advice. My advice often went like this.

"Spend some of that time you spend smokin dope going to class and you'll be allright"

These guys smoked enough dope, and played their music loud enough, that I felt like I was saving 30 bucks a night in concert tickets. It would get on my nerves, but I'm not one to rat on someone smoking dope, because you never know how that guy is going to react.

I got my revenge in a different way.

"Hey, ya know what I saw in the library the other day" I said to Chavez.
"What were you doing in the library" he said.
"Learnin' motherfucker, I'm not sleeping in an 8 by 20 room for kicks you know! I saw the anarchist's cookbook" I retorted.
"What's that?" he managed to ask through his drug induced haze.
Sigh.
"You'd have to see it to understand, it's a book that has all kinds of stuff in it. It's got how to make malatov cocktails, napalm, LSD, and other intoxicants from household items."

He stared at me for a moment before it fully soaked in.

"No shit?"
"Yeah man, no shit."

I had baited the trap, and had to just sit back and wait. The braintrust managed to find their way to the library to locate the rumored tome, and having done so, brought it back and gathered around it like it was the chronicle of the world.

A day went by, before I saw them entering the dorm carrying 3 sacks filled with bananas. I just had to ask.

"What are you dumbasses doing?"
"Oh, hey man, thanks for telling us about that book man, we're trying one of the formulas. It says you can get high off banadine."

To get banadine, in order to get high, according the the anarchists cookbook, you have to scrape the inner white layer off of banana peels. It takes about 3 lbs of banana peels. 3 lbs of banana peels is a shit load of bananas, if you were unaware, it's not 3 lbs of bananas, but 3 lbs of banana peels, which translates to...I have no idea what, and neither did they. I do know they had about 10 lbs of bananas to eat while they sat patiently scraping the shit off of a shit load of banana peels onto a baking sheet.

Once the scraping was done, they carried the scrapings down the hall to the community stove, set the thing to 350 (because apparently you bake everything at 350, it's a philosophy I happen to subscribe to) and leave it to bake.

6 hours later, Chavez is gleefully carrying a pile of blackened banana peel innards down the hall psyched about how he's going to get his inexpensive high on, oblivious to the fact that he had to eat 10 lbs of bananas, scrape the peels for 2 hours, and bake it for 6 hours. But, when you are in college, you find that you have more time than you do money, so I guess he was economizing.

The three part braintrust that lived in 3/5 divided their spoils equally, loaded their bowls, and fired up.

"Do you feel anything?"
"Not yet, how 'bout you?"
"Nope, nothing. I think they sold us some bum shit."

10 minutes later.

"OH GOD MY HEAD!"

The three of them, in unison, clutching their heads praying for it to stop, rolling in agony on the floor of their room. My roomate looked to me, saw the smile on my face, and asked, "what have you done?"

"It's quiet isn't it?"

They were out of commission for the rest of the night. You would think, at that point, they would return the evil book to the library, and maybe punch me in the face or something, wouldn't ya? But no, we're dealing with a special breed of dumbass who doesn't possess the ability to quit despite horrid and utter failure. No, these geniuses flipped the page.

A couple of days later I saw them all coming back from the store, and each of them had spent the rest of their weekly money on ....

Nutmeg.

That's right, they read that if you pack nutmeg between your cheek and gum like skoal that you'll get a buzz. I thought the banana idea was the stupidest idea they'd had, but apparently the banandine did more damage than I originally thought, because this was the stupidest idea I'd ever heard at that point in my life.

Of course, the result was the same...

"OH GOD MY HEAD PLEASE MAKE IT STOP ALL I OWN FOR JUST 5 MINUTES OF PAIN FREE EXISTENCE"

heh heh heh

They took the book back after that one. They also didn't ask me for advice anymore after that. They were gone at the end of that semester, as we had all truly expected.

If you build it....they will come.

2005-08-15T14:05:00.000-07:00

They'd better, anyway.

Fantasy football is a go. Repeat: Fantasy football is officially a go.

The league is ready to go, all you folks have to do is go sign up. Go to nfl.com, register a team, and find the following league:

--UPDATE--
Here is the password that works. Sorry about that guys.

League Name: Full Contact Bloggin
Password: monkeybaconj

The league allows 12 people, be sure to sign up for the free fantasy football product, and automatic draft day is 8/31. The season opens officially 9/8, so that should leave plenty of time for trades and whatnot.

Tagged.....flee....save yourself

2005-08-12T05:42:00.000-07:00

Jerk tagged me.
My rabid flying monkeys are en route now to gouge out his eyes and stuff the empty sockets with salt coated garlic.

Just kiddin' man, relax.

10 songs I've really been getting into lately huh? Interesting choice, as it's like someone knows I listen to a song 87 times, then hang it back up for awhile. Oh, and they always catch me at a point where at least one of those songs is kind of embarassing.

1. Breadline - Megadeth
2. So What - Metallica
3. Crash Course in Brain Surgery - Metallica
4. Cadillac Pussy - Kid Rock
5. Everyday Sunshine - Fishbone
6. Satisfaction - Devo
7. Mexican Radio - Authority Zero
8. Girl U Want - Devo
9. Orgasmotron - Motorhead
10. Guerilla Radio - Rage Against the Machine

I think I missed a memo..

2005-08-09T10:05:00.000-07:00

As I lay in bed watching the ceiling fan rotate this morning, I should have heeded the small voice in the back of my head which said '..don't go in today..'. Little did I know that my subconscious was aware of some odd celestial alignment which stood poised in a distinct arrow shape to ram me in the ass. Like a dumbass, I got out of bed.

I pulled into work to find out the 'patch' our billing system vendor implemented blew the bejeezus out of every other process, including my data warehouse. By 7:00, I was staring down the barrel of being behind 2-4 hours in my daily routine while I pieced the damned thing back together. This carried with it other considerations, not the least of which was the fact that I wouldn't get a chance to eat lunch today unless I left while everything was coming back online and grabbed breakfast somewhere quick.

I jumped in my car at 10:00 after fielding 2 hours of repetitive 'when can I run reports' emails, phone calls, office visits, and carrier pigeon borne messages to sneak out and grab a breakfast burrito inspired to be a good rower for caesar and optimize my time. On the way to McD's I noticed I was low on gas. So I gas up my car, get in it, turn the key....and nothing.

Fantastic...

I went into the gas station and noticed immediately that the pay phone was absent, in it's place a clean pay-phone-shaped area of paint below the 'phone' sign. I managed to procure a phone book from the guy behind the counter and proceeded to call the closest tire and battery place. The clerk informed me he was filling in for someone else that day, and he didn't know if they used a tow service or not.

"Just give me a number for one" I said, feeling the last drops of patience I had leaking away from the hole in my self-control radiator. Thirty minutes later, during which I consumed my mcdonalds breakfast in my 98 degree car, the tow truck guy showed up, jump started my car for the good samaritan fee of only 45 dollars, and I was on my way to Tires Plus for a new battery.

Here comes the bonus.

Apparently the '03 Kia Optima utilizes the pinnacle of automotive battery technology. The overweight, stereotypical mechanic informed me of such, and the only thing missing from the entire scenario was a pit of screaming souls behind him being kept at bay by pitchfork wielding underlings who danced about in glee..well, that and his 'Mammon' nametag. 175.00 for the damned battery alone, and I know I'm getting raped on the entire ordeal but there isn't a damned thing I can do about it.

I'm just hoping they don't try to sell me a new alternator too, I don't know if I have the guts to look Mammon in the face and tell him to stick it up his ass.

----update----

3 hours later I have to call the place to ask if they're done, and what it's going to cost me.

"Yeah, it's done. Oh! You'll be happy to know we saved you some money on that battery, in fact, the entire bill comes to 120 bucks with everything."

I wonder if my mention of my friend who works at interstate battery, and my superb internet search skills prompted a less punitive pricing for the battery.

Fuckers.

At least they didn't try to squeeze me for a new alternator or starter, so that's a first.

5.5; 5.4; 5.5; 5.3; and a perfect 6 from the American Judge

2005-08-09T06:22:00.000-07:00

Todd Bertuzzi is back.

So, let me get this straight. He drives a player into the ice like a tent stake, breaking his neck and ending his career, and the punishment for that is 19 games? That just doesn't seem right, but hey, nothing about hockey has seemed right in a good long time. I bet he misses the plane for the colorado games this season.

Ricky Williams is back.

What did he get, 8 yards on 4 carries last night? I checked the Chiefs schedule, we get a piece of the Miami pie this year, so we'll at least win one game. Although, now that I said that, watch Miami have the game of their lives to rival the movie 'Hoosiers' against my team.

All this talk about sports makes me think about the X-Games. Sorry kids, not a sport. A fine exhibition of skill without a doubt, but not a sport. I'll not be holding out hopes for any high school skateboard teams. I guess what really bothers me about the X-Games is that all of the events are judged, which means all Dave Mirra has to do is not fall and he'll probably win.

I hate judged events, and with the exception of boxing, don't consider any of them sports. If a judged activity is a sport, then that means barbecueing is a sport and I should get a scholarship for it. In my opinion, you don't need 3 judges to count punches and assess aggression to score a fight. We all learned how to effectively score a fight by the age of 6, all you have to do is figure out which guy looks the worst and bingo... that guy loses. That's how boxing ought to be, at the end of 12 rounds, bring em out without any trainer/cutman attention and let's have a look. Whichever one looks the least damaged wins the fight. Seems simple to me.

The least I can do...

2005-08-04T05:56:00.000-07:00

There are several phrases we mutter every day that make no sense whatsoever. Phrases that escape our lips without any forethought on our part, we simply say them because, well, everyone else is saying them.

Today's phrase is one that I'm guilty of using a few times myself, but I cringe everytime it leaps out of my lungs because I know better than to use it.

"It's the least I could do." is a phrase that I truly doubt anyone ever took the time to say to themselves slowly enough to dissect what it's really saying.

Hey man, I know it really put you out to be here on a Saturday and help me move all my shit, thus saving me five-hundred dollars that I can now spend on stuff I really want to spend it on, so thanks, and as a token of my thanks, here's a twelve dollar case of beer.

It's the least I can do.

Because aren't we all about doing the least we can do? Nothing screams gratitude like returning the favor with the least amount of sacrifice and effort possible.

Congratulations on 40 years of service to the company, here's a watch. It's the least we could do after forcing you into retirement.

Perhaps the gesture would be more appreciated if it were labeled 'the best we can do.' 'It's the best I can do' infers that you gave it your all, and these days, that's all anyone asks. We don't even care if you succeed at whatever you're doing anymore, as long as you tried your best.

The last bastion of civility and decency...

2005-08-03T05:46:00.000-07:00

I believe I have found it, the last bastion of civility and decency left standing in these 'hurry up and do something for me' times we find ourselves in. I realized it as I was leaving, but I appreciated it nonetheless as I was holding the door open for another lady who was entering.

She actually said "Thank you." Thank you are two words you only hear in a mall when someone is handing your receipt across the counter, and even then it's not really a thank you as much as it is a 'ok we're done here, move along, next' motion cloaked in congeniality.

I turned and looked at the Borders books, and recalled how people said pardon me, excuse me, thank you, and you're welcome at every turn. I recalled how people were cordial within it's book laden confines, neither ignoring each other nor staring obsessively at them either. I let my eyes move down the length of stores that make up the strip mall in which I have been shopping for more than a year, until they fell upon the antithesis of the experience I had just lived, the store marked with the big yellow sign reading 'Best Buy'. In Best Buy, you would be lucky if anyone stopped playing playstation long enough to piss on you if you were on fire. In Best Buy, people brush past you on their way to buy the new 'fiddy' cd without so much as an acknowledgement of your existence.

Why? The question pops into my head, as it usually does in these situations. I swear 'why?' sits in my head like a cocked and loaded jack-in-the-box, and whatever I'm mulling over is the turning crank.

I digress...the reason the shopping experience is so different between the two places is because dumbasses don't shop in bookstores. Dumbasses would rather flaunt their pretty plumage where others of their breed can appreciate it, and I daresay anyone tooling around borders books with their headphones blasting would be a bit out of their element. Not only that, but I'm pretty sure books are to dumbasses as holy water and garlic are to vampires.

That's right fool...it burns, it burns.

I've noticed the same phenomena in places like Staples, Comp USA, and Men's Wearhouse as much as I've witnessed it's antithesis in places like Wal-Mart, Old Navy, and Target. It's because Staples, Comp USA and Men's Wearhouse are typically patronized by intelligent people who enjoy the comforts of civilization and have elevated themselves to a higher standard. As opposed to your typical Old Navy shopper, who has de-evolved to a more feral territorial state, where 'excuse me' is seen as a sign of weakness in the scavenger culture they find themselves in. So, rather than saying 'thank you', the shopper in the lower set takes a warning swipe at you for eyeballing it's prize. Despite the fact there's an entire bin of them right behind you.

Rock Star?

2005-08-01T06:20:00.000-07:00

Rock Star? Give me a break!

Out of the swirling commode that metaphorically represents the think tank that brings us reality tv shows, some coked up exec somewhere decided to go forward with this.....thing. Leave it to reality tv to polish a turd and sell it to the general public under the auspices that the last one standing actually wins.

Wins what?

You get to be the new lead singer of INXS? When was the last time INXS did anything worth paying attention to? Did anyone give a shit about INXS during their heyday? I never heard anyone say 'KICKASS MAN!!! I GOT INXS TICKETS!!'

I think I would have remembered something like that.

Winning the lead singer job of a long dead 80's flash in the pan band who has long outlived their fifteen minutes isn't really winning at all because you're still the lead singer of a has been band who will do one more tour and disappear quicker than Pamela Anderson's sense of commitment at the Grammy's after party.

What's next? You get to be the lead singer of Van Halen? After that Gary Cherone debacle, even The Red Rocker felt bad for them. I'd like to see them try to do that shit with the Ramones, but legions of pissed off punkers would kill whoever won that contest their first night on stage.

Yet more proof that someone needs to step in and put an end to this reality tv sillyness. It's too late to keep it from getting out of hand, so at this point my goals are strictly punitive.

The gardeners of the cultural landscape

2005-07-31T08:30:00.000-07:00

Lew Scannon wrote a post on his site about classic rock which I found interesting. We're all aware that I have strong opinions about music, so you had to know I couldn't read it without having the rusty gears that occupy the space between my ears groaning into action. Music is important in that it provides a cultural road map for the period in which it was created. You can tell quite a bit about a decade based solely on the music that emerged from it. For instance, you can easily tell the 60's were a time of war, protest, and heavy drug use just by listening to a few songs by The Doors, Jimmy Hendrix, Bob Dylan, and The Beatles.

But after the 60's, something weird happened. Suddenly, you could no longer gauge the mindset of a decade by it's most successful bands. Instead, you had to look deeper, you had to look to it's flash in the pan bands to get an idea of what the decade was all about.

The 70's are characterized best by bands like KC and the Sunshine Band, Captain and Tennille, The Bee Gee's and The Village People moreso than they are by KISS, Boston, or Aerosmith. The 70's were about gettin' baked, gettin' laid, and lookin' good, and nobody embodied those ideals like the one hit wonders.

Then came the 80's, a decade rife with flash in the pan groups who gathered a cult following while the music industry ushered in a new age of marketing with MTV. The 80's carried on the gettin' baked torch from the 70's, but replaced gettin' laid with gettin' stuff in light of the AIDS scare, and took it's best shot at lookin' good. When you think of the 80's, what bands come to mind? It speaks volumes.

I don't even want to talk about the 90's. I still don't know what the 90's were about. Hell, as far as I can tell it was about lip synching, big butts, teen spirit, a room a thousand years wide, and Madonna's beaver.

A testament to my old-man-edness is the fact that I haven't even paid attention to music this decade. I saw a publicity pic of Mariah Carey in Borders today, and I haven't seen that much air-brushing on a unicorn festooned midnight blue VW conversion van. My God she looked like the warrior chick in Heavy Metal. Janet Jackson is flashing boobs, Madonna is writing children's books, and every new artist looks and sounds like the one who wrote that song they played on the radio all the time last month. What was her name? She looked kind of like that other chick, with the hair, you know, she wrote that song...it was about love or something.

On internet celebrity...

2005-07-30T20:23:00.000-07:00

Video killed the radio star...
Internet killed just about everything else.

For seven years I have wandered this ethereal tower of babel we call the internet, and no matter where I venture, one annoying spectre has always reared it's ugly head. Whether I found myself in chat, forums, or blogdom, I have always encountered a few people who firmly ensconced themselves upon an imaginary pedestal constructed of bullshit painted to look like marble and scented to smell like roses.

I refer to these people as net-celebrities or net-celebs.

I should probably say that not all people who are popular on the internet are utterly full of shit. Some of them are actually interesting people who are worthy of the attention they get, but for the most part, I've found that the typical net-celeb meets a certain profile.

1. The typical net-celeb likes nothing. Being cool isn't something you can learn from a book, and to date there has not been a single class offered anywhere on the subject. The fast track to coolness is to devalue everything, because if you do that, you don't have to look like a dork defending something you like. Typical net-celebs hate everything, which brings me to number two.

2. The typical net-celeb is smarter than you. If you don't believe me, just ask him, he'll certainly tell you in painstaking detail the how, why, and when he is smarter than you. In fact, you won't have to ask him, he freely volunteers the information every 5 minutes like he's on a self-esteem egg timer. If you tell the typical net-celeb you liked the new star wars movie, he'll respond "that movie sucked, but I might have liked it if my frontal lobe were removed and replaced with cottage cheese".

3. The typical net-celeb would have no friends if it weren't for electricity. In fact, if an EMP blast went off near his house, he'd be fucked in the friends arena and probably have to start making some up in order to make himself feel better. In fact, many of the net-celebs I've had the ~~dis~~pleasure of meeting couldn't even wrap their heads around the concept of bathing regularly. The day we develop a webcam that can transmit olfactory data will usher in a cultural revolution.

4. The typical net-celeb can do everything better than you. You designed a web-page? That's cute, but he designed an entire online purchasing web application using nothing more than notepad and mspaint. You went rock climbing last weekend? Well he scaled Everest and rescued a group of lost Shirpa's who now revere him as the sky god. In this way, the typical net-celeb is alot like Bill Brasky of SNL fame.

So, fair reader, you are left with three choices when confronted with a net-celeb.
1. Drop to your knees and worship him as the sky god he is. With a bit of ingenuity and luck, you can scratch and claw your way through the throng of followers who also think his shit is mighty and sit at his feet.

2. Boldly proclaim that sitting in your mothers basement rendering judgement of the worthiness of everything to a collection of weaker minded maternal-basement-dwellers doesn't make him the oracle on the mountain. It makes him a worthless loser asshole in an outdated Bab-5 T'shirt who needs to do something more constructive with his time.

3. Simply chuckle to yourself, ignore him much like he does the petrified bar of soap in his shower, and move forward without so much as casting a glance in your rear view mirror.

If you select option 2, be prepared for the following argument:

"You're an asshole"
"Are not"
"Are too"
"Are not"
"Are too"
etc..etc..etc..

If you have a five year old around, let him/her take over keyboard duties for awhile, you'll make better progress that way.

Irony..as defined today..

2005-07-29T14:54:00.000-07:00

A pickup truck lashed to the back of a repo vehicle with a windshield sticker that read "Cowboy Up".

New digs...

2005-07-29T11:05:00.000-07:00

See the new banner my wife Lisa did for me. If you like it, I'm sure she'll make one for you too.

Only yours won't have the hulk. For he is me...I am he...whatever.

Don't confuse Hulk, Hulk will smash.

Thanks honey!

Counting the days..

2005-07-28T06:35:00.000-07:00

With football season fast approaching, has anyone given any thought to starting a blog-office pool? Would anyone be interested in such a thing?

Or better yet, a fantasy football league?

I figure we'd need 12 people for a league, but I plan on doing a weekly blog-pool once the season starts proper.

If you're interested in a league, let me know.

But I'm doing the blog-office pool regardless.

The meek shall inherit the executive bathroom.

2005-07-27T18:47:00.000-07:00

The weasels are frantic. I can see the panic in their eyes as I walk by them in the halls, smell it above their cologne, and hear it in the quiver of their false greetings. The word these days on everyones mind is 'buyout'.

The silent catacombs that make up mahogany row reek, the bitter scent of fear replaces the air of treachery and sychophantism that has so long lingered in these halls. That scent still lingers in the furniture, a subtle reminder that not even great Caesar is immortal at Big Evil Inc., despite the hastily drawn alliances between Vice President and Director alike. Armani clad corporate yes-men dance about in complete confusion, secure only in the knowledge that the axe is coming, yet still they try to maintain the corporate line. Still they profess that nothing is certain yet, and that all hands must continue to see to their duties as if nothing has changed, all the while glancing over their shoulder to make sure Carlton from Public Affairs hasn't made off with the last lifeboat.

Meanwhile, downstairs, those who man the oars for Caesar toil away, secure in the knowledge that Big Evil II will simply incorporate them into the guts of the new galley. They toil along with us, the taskmasters who quantify their value to the company though intense statistical analysis and constant, overwhelming surveillance. Together we stand and observe those we have served these past years and reflect on their abuses. We look to the abandoned ivory tower from whence they would look down upon us with disdain and criticize us for the way we looked, regulate away the things we liked, and execute policy that makes Pharoah's 'make bricks without straw' seem like an extra week of vacation. We look to that tower now overgrown with cobwebs, the runnels of bird droppings a testament that new days are ahead, and think things can only get better.

Already the closed ranks of the six-figure incomed have begun to break. The first weasel squeal echoed through the mahogany tomb, sending pigeons scrambling to the air from the tower of disdain.

The rest of us, lackeys to the man, patiently await Christmas. By then, they should be feeding on each other quite nicely.

Smell the air fellows, vengeance has come, and for once, she's on our side!

Pet Peeve #2...of 42,597

2005-07-26T18:41:00.000-07:00

People who can dish it, but can't take it.

We all know these people. The guy who has a smartass comment for anyone who happens by, but the second someone casts a disparaging comment toward his new hair plugs he gets all bent out of shape.

Suddenly, you've gone from loveable joker straight to asshole. You didn't pass GO, and you sure as hell didn't get your $200.00.

People like this piss me off to no end, or, they used to anyway, but in my increasingly old age I've come to realize that they're beneath my contempt. Now, rather than make it a point to see if I can get that guy to turn red in the face on a daily basis, I simply ignore him. Oh, and you know that trick where he hangs around and says some snide thing again, well I calmly turn and say:

"I know you and your cronies here think that was clever, and it was, kudos to you, but do you really want me to reduce you to a quivering, fuming, pants-filling baby like the last time I played this game with you? Is that what you want in front of these people you've brought together to replace the last group that ostracized you for that fit you threw?"

Ok, so secretly, deep deep down, I really loathe people who do this. If you don't possess the strength of character to take a shot, then you have no business delivering one. That's my philosophy anyway. It's part of what makes Lisa the best wife ever, giving as good as she takes, and never getting upset. A quality my first wife will never possess. A quality most women don't possess.

If you don't believe me, try being a man and speaking your opinion about women. God forbid it isn't laced top to bottom with flowery words praising their intelligence, logic, attention to hygiene, abilities to wage war, penchant for fashion, and empathetic yet pragmatic view on everything. Attest to the fact that women are just as greedy, full of shit, smelly, uncoordinated, illogical, emotional, and stupid as men, then you find yourself lumped in with Archie Bunker and his legion of misogynistic neanderthals.

Yet it's perfectly acceptable for women to speak about men in such terms, and nobody gets their panties in a wad about it.

You know why?

BECAUSE WE CAN TAKE A FUCKING JOKE!

Lunchtime paranoia...

2005-07-26T10:44:00.000-07:00

I've noticed something lately that's beginning to piss me off. I've been going out to eat for quite some time now, but over the past couple of months there has been a change in my dining experience. Nine times out of ten, it seems, when it comes to the point when the waitress is supposed to ask me what I want to drink, I get attitude. Rather than "...and what would you like to drink?", I get "..Diet Coke, sir?".

The really creepy part is that it's not just one place, but a variety of places. When did all these waitresses gang up and decide it was time to assert themselves as my nutrionist? I mean, do I look like a diet coke drinker? I can't stand diet coke, I'd rather drink grease trap oozings through a straw than swallow diet coke. Bring me a beverage with sugar, and don't judge me while you've got that tribal dump zone tattoo just above your ass.

The first few times I simply brushed it off, no thank you, I'll have a regular coke. Lately, however, things have gotten out of hand to the point that brings us to yesterday.

I'm sitting peacefully enjoying my lunch, having made it through the grueling personal appearance indictment that has recently replaced my initial order experience. I was probably spared because the waitress was just a ham sandwich short of orca status herself, but managed to be upbeat about it and kept a pleasant attitude.

Or maybe it was a coping mechanism to deal with the full facial beard she was sporting, I can't decide, but regardless, she was very nice although not a good waitress. Sitting in a stall talking to your boyfriend is not the best way to shake loose tip money from my wallet, nor is what happened next.

My drink empty, the waitress ambles her way over, collects my glass and says:
"I'll be back with another diet coke.."

Grrr...

"And I'll get you a razor!" I say with an enthusiastic smile.

Ok...

I really just thought that, what I really said was "no, no, regular coke please..."

Then I said it when she was out of earshot.

Mean I may be, but not cruel.

College Stupidity...volume III

2005-07-24T17:15:00.000-07:00

Unlike most days, where I struggle to post anything, there are about twelve things I could post about today. I will forget the other eleven tomorrow, and I don't want to violate the one post a day rule that is chiseled in the side of Mt. Attention-span.

I learned much more in the surrounding areas of college than I did in it's hallowed halls. Oh sure, I learned how to calculate area under the curve, how to use a Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer, what an LD-50 was, and how to euthanize a rabbit and keep it's heart beating despite the fact that it was dead for extra credit.

But my best lessons came after school.

One year, I was carrying 15 credit hours in only three classes. That was the year I took leave of my senses and decided it would be a good idea to take physics, anatomy and physiology, and organic chemistry...I and II. In the first semester, I had german for about a week, but when the teacher said '15 total hours of listening lab' I packed my books right then and walked out. The other three classes I was taking accounted for approximately 15-20 hours per week in lab, and I would be damned if I was going to spend one more minute in any lab of any kind.

The guy that lived across from me was Kendall. Kendall came to the university by way of Indiana, which was an oddity for a university who drew most of it's student body from rural Missouri. Kendall's dad had owned a ski-resort in Colorado, but had sold it to purchase a radio station in Indianapolis. Kendall's dad was rich, but didn't give Kendall a dime. Kendall was studying aviation, and the flight time was expensive, so to make the ends meet, he sold drugs on the side.

Halloween night, I was sequestered in my room, quietly minding my own business with my nose buried in my organic chemistry book, when Kendall bursts into the room. His entrances were later used by the Kramer character in the show Seinfeld. He invaded my room with this grandiose tale of some huge party down the street held by a guy we both knew. A guy we both knew was an acid dealer too. I told him no repeatedly, even hurling my shoe at him which was the signal that I'd had enough, but he was determined. He hauled me out of my chair and literally dragged me out of the room until I decided to go.

It cost 10 bucks to get in, and it was all the beer you could drink. Throughout the room were people in all manner of costumes, as it was halloween night, the beer was flowing, and a live band was playing onstage. Nothing beats live college music at a party, but the entry fee took every dime I had. Sensing this, Kendall went forth to procure for me the necessary accoutrements for me to have a killer evening. Within minutes, I was fixed up with two hits and was on my way to God knows where.

It wasn't long after that, when Kendall abandoned me in a room full of strangers. As my senses begin to amplify, the music is drowning out everything, and the place is so crowded that anywhere I went, at least 4 people were touching me. Just as I was starting to deal with the fact that I was alone in a room full of masked strangers, abandoned by the guy who dragged me here, the only guy I know in the entire place besides the acid dealer, and I was about to trip my balls off at any moment when the shit he gave me kicked in. Just about then, Kendall taps me on the shoulder and says the following:

"Dude, I can either go home with that chick over there" he pointed " or, I can eat these" he said, producing a fistfull of fresh 'shrooms.
"Take the chick and give me the 'shrooms." I said.
"Fuck you!" he said, swallowing the entire fistfull.

We were both feeling a bit claustrophobic at that point, so we moved to the one place we could be guaranteed to not be touched anymore. We moved behind the bar. It was light duty to be sure, pouring beers for thirsty vampires, frankensteins, grim reapers, cheerleaders, and kitty cats. Light duty, that is, until the acid kicked in.

Kendall was working to my left, and to my right was a guy dressed up like Humphrey Bogart, and to my out of synch eyes, it WAS Humphrey Bogart. Kendall is filling beers and talking to people when I see him take a beer from a guy, and empty it. He emptied it in my lap.

"Dude, you just emptied that in my lap" I said a bit surprised.
"No I didn't" he said, without even turning his head.
"Uhh, yeah, ya did, look!"
"No I didn't" he replied.
It wasn't so much what he said, but how he said it, more like one word "NoAhDint".
"Oh yeah?" I said as I shut the tap off to the beer I was filling.
I turned, showed it to Humphrey Bogart, and upended it in Kendalls lap.
"DUDE!!!" he turned to me.

It was at that point, that I realized. For a guy that just got a beer dumped in his lap, my crotch was amazingly dry.

"You didn't dump a beer in my lap...did you" I say to him amid the 'ooooo's' of the surrounding crowd.
"No, dude, I didn't. But you're gonna wear one now for sure" he said, flipping the tap to the beer he had been filling. All around us people are chanting "GO! GO! GO!" as he pulls himself to stand on his stool. Defeated, all I could do was stand there, nodding my head, and pointing to his beer soaked crotch as he emptied the entire 16 oz. glass over my head.

Sometimes, you just gotta man up and take what's comin to ya.

I think we were kicked out at midnight, but we simply changed venues and finished around 4ish. Luckily, I didn't pass out and suffer any public humiliation at the hands of my friends. No sir, all the humiliation I suffered that night was home grown.

CuZ wE R0XxOrEd 'DeY SoXxOrZ

2005-07-23T08:07:00.000-07:00

It is rare that I receive email that I consider worthy of sharing with other people, but this I found hilarious.

Because I'm odd.

If World War Two had been an online Real Time Strategy game, the chat room traffic would have gone something like this.

**Hitler[AoE] has joined the game.
**Eisenhower has joined the game.
**paTTon has joined the game.
**Churchill has joined the game.
**benny-tow has joined the game.
**T0J0 has joined the game.
**Roosevelt has joined the game.
**Stalin has joined the game.
**deGaulle has joined the game.
**Roosevelt: hey sup
**T0J0: y0
**Stalin: hi
**Churchill: hi
**Hitler[AoE]: cool, i start with panzer tanks!
**paTTon: lol more like panzy tanks
**T0JO: lol
**Roosevelt: o this fockin sucks i got a depression!
**benny-tow: haha america sux
**Stalin: hey hitler you dont fight me i dont fight u, cool?
**Hitler[AoE]; sure whatever
**Stalin: cool
**deGaulle: **** Hitler rushed some1 help
**Hitler[AoE]: lol byebye frenchy
**Roosevelt: i dont got **** to help, sry
**Churchill: wtf the luftwaffle is attacking me
**Roosevelt: get antiair guns
**Churchill: i cant afford them
**benny-tow: u n00bs know what team talk is?
**paTTon: stfu
**Roosevelt: o yah hit the navajo button guys
**deGaulle: eisenhower ur worthless come help me quick
**Eisenhower: i cant do **** til rosevelt gives me an army
**paTTon: yah hurry the fock up
**Churchill: d00d im gettin pounded
**deGaulle: this is fockin weak u guys suck
**deGaulle has left the game.**
**Roosevelt: im gonna attack the axis k?
**benny-tow: with what? ur wheelchair?
**benny-tow: lol did u mess up ur legs AND ur head?
**Hitler[AoE]: ROFLMAO
**T0J0: lol o no america im comin 4 u
**Roosevelt: wtf! thats bullsh1t u fags im gunna kick ur asses
**T0JO: not without ur harbors u wont! lol
**Roosevelt: u little biotch ill get u
**Hitler[AoE]: wtf
**Hitler[AoE]: america hax, u had depression and now u got a huge fockin army
**Hitler[AoE]: thats bullsh1t u hacker
**Churchill: lol no more france for u hitler
**Hitler[AoE]: t! ojo help me!
**T0J0: wtf u want me to do, im on the other side of the world retard
**Hitler[AoE]: fine ill clear you a path
**Stalin: WTF u arsshoel! WE HAD A FoCKIN TRUCE
**Hitler[AoE]: i changed my mind lol
**benny-tow: haha
**benny-tow: hey ur losing ur guys in africa im gonna need help in italy soon sum1
**T0J0: o **** i cant help u i got my hands full
**Hitler[AoE]: im 2 busy 2 help
**Roosevelt: yah thats right ***** im comin for ya
**Stalin: church help me
**Churchill: like u helped me before? sure ill just sit here
**Stalin: dont be an arss
**Churchill: dont be a commie. oops too late
**Eisenhower: LOL
**benny-tow: hahahh oh sh1t help
**Hitler[AoE]: o man ur focked
**paTTon: oh what now biotch
**Roosevelt: whos the cripple now lol
**benny-tow has been eliminated.**
**benny-tow: lame
**Roosevelt: gj patton
**paTTon: thnx
**Hitler[AoE]: WTF eisenhower hax hes killing all my sh1t
**Hitler[AoE]: quit u hacker so u dont ruin my record
**Eisenhower: Nuts!
**benny~tow: wtf that mean?
**Eisenhower: meant to say nutsack lol finger slipped
**paTTon: coming to get u hitler u paper hanging hun cocksocker
**Stalin: rofl
**T0J0: HAHAHHAA
**Hitler[AoE]: u guys are fockin gay
**Hitler[AoE]: ur never getting in my city
*Hitler[AoE] has been eliminated.*
**benny~tow: OMG u noob you killed yourself
**Eisenhower: ROFLOLOLOL
**Stalin: OMG LMAO!
**Hitler[AoE]: WTF i didnt click there omg this game blows
**Hitler[AoE] has left the game**
**paTTon: hahahhah
**T0J0: WTF my teammates are n00bs
**benny~tow: shut up noob
**Roosevelt: haha wut a moron
**paTTon: wtf am i gunna do now?
**Eisenhower: yah me too
**T0J0: why dont u attack me o thats right u dont got no ships lololol
**Eisenhower: fock u
**paTTon: lemme go thru ur base commie
**Stalin: go to hell lol
**paTTon: fock this sh1t im goin afk
**Eisenhower: yah this is gay
*Roosevelt has left the game.*
**Hitler[AoE]: wtf?
**Eisenhower: sh1t now we need some1 to join
*tru_! m4n has joined the game.*
**tru_m4n: hi all
**T0J0: hey
**Stalin: sup
**Churchill: hi
**tru_m4n: OMG OMG OMG i got all his stuff!
**tru_m4n: NUKES! HOLY **** I GOT NUKES
**Stalin: d00d gimmie some plz
**tru_m4n: no way i only got like a couple
**Stalin: omg dont be gay gimmie nuculer secrets
**T0J0: wtf is nukes?
**T0J0: holy ****holy****hoyl****!
*T0J0 has been eliminated.*
*The Allied team has won the game!*
**Eisenhower: awesome!
**Churchill: gg noobs no re
**T0J0: thats bull**** u fockin suck
*T0J0 has left the game.*
*Eisenhower has left the game.
**Stalin: next game im not going to be on ur team, u guys didnt help me for ****
**Churchill: wutever, we didnt need ur help neway dumbarss
**tru_m4n: l8r all
**benny~tow: bye
**Churchill: l8r
**Stalin: fock u al
**ltru_m4n: shut up commie lol
*tru_m4n has left the game.*
**benny~tow: lololol u commie
**Churchill: ROFL
**Churchill: bye commie
*Churchill has left the game.*
*benny~tow has ! left the game.*
**Stalin: i hate u all fags
*Stalin has left the game.*
**paTTon: lol no1 is left
**paTTon: weeeee i got a jeep
*paTTon has been eliminated.*
**paTTon: o sh1t!
*paTTon has left the game.*

Pessimism, PSP, and Baseball..

2005-07-22T05:53:00.000-07:00

Those of you who read Lisa's blog know I was presented with a golden opportunity doing less than I do at my current job for almost 3 times the pay. Needless to say, I was excited. But I didn't post about it here because I'm also a superstitious fuck, and I could think of no better way to jinx the opportunity of a lifetime by screaming it from the mountaintops of blogdom as if it were my barbaric yawp.

If you don't get that reference, you need to read more Whitman.

One of the side effect of being a superstitious fuck, is that I'm also a pessimist. I think it's a condition borne of my proclivity to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, so I never assume victory at any point in any process until the papers are signed, the check is in the bank, or the fat lady starts singing.

So I did something that defies all pessimist logic. I spent money on a PSP, feeling pretty good about being in the running for such a position. I bought MVP baseball for it and have done fairly well with it, but the day I figure out how to steal bases I will rule the faux baseball universe.

Any superstitious fuck will tell you, don't fuck with a streak. I had the streak going, I had gotten the email, I had spoken to the recruiter, it was down to the waiting.

Well the fat lady sang the other day, and the song she sang was hit the road Jack. Apparently the client chose another contracting company, so I didn't get the job. I think the bullet in the head to the karmic balance of the entire thing was when I sat in the 2005 Pontiac GTO, that had to be the clincher. Somewhere, far in the heavens, the clerk in charge of Hope was laughin' his ass off at the glimmer of optimism that crept it's way into my being.

A true pessimist like myself simply shrugs his shoulders and moves on. Getting the email expressing interest is more than the true pessimist expects, anything better than that is essentially gravy. I had an interview scheduled for yesterday, but the guy rescheduled.

I'm supposed to see him Monday.

So if you see me wandering around any car dealerships, do me a favor and hit me with a brick.

In the head. Maybe the resulting pain and discomfort will shift the balance back in my favor a bit.

Parking lot epiphanies..

2005-07-20T10:13:00.000-07:00

So I went to the grocery store to belly up to their titanic salad bar for lunch today. I was also dispatched with errands from high command, inclusive in the list being 'get smokes' which I intended to do anyway to keep from strangling someone to death with my id badge lanyard.

On my way into the building, I hear someone's car alarm go off. Did I stop in my tracks, chin held high and cape blowing in the breeze to bound into action and save the day?

No, of course not, I kept walking. Oh, I gave a passive glance to see if I could immediately identify which car it was, but I couldn't so I didn't even break stride. I've heard so many car alarms going off I wonder as to how effective they really are. If your car is parked outside a huge megamall, what are the chances you're going to hear your own alarm? That's all it's really good for, is the off-chance that you hear it when it goes off outside your house or whatever, but in public places with acres and acres of relatively smooth, adequately portioned blacktop you'd be better off tying a dog to the bumper and taking your chances. The only thing I've seen a car alarm prevent is the car from starting after it's been going off all day to the annoyance of everyone else.

Maybe I'm just a bad person, but I don't think I'm alone in the arena of car alarm apathy.

I have no smokes today kids, so buckle up....

2005-07-20T06:05:00.000-07:00

The dog days of summer are here, and apparently alot of us rookie bloggers just don't have the steam to keep blogging. I think we put alot of pressure on ourselves to blog daily, and to be honest, there just isn't enough interesting shit to blog about every day unless you start making some shit up.

I might just do that. Intersperse total bullshit into my blog with the truth and let you guys figure it out, who knows.

Anyway, here's what I don't get. What is the point of the 'I'm no longer blogging' post? If we go to your blog, and the last blog entry was April 4th, we're pretty clued in to the fact that you're no longer blogging. Announcing that you're leaving any online community, be it chat, blog, newsgroup, forum, or whatever, is like finishing your meal in a restaurant, standing in your chair as you toss your napkin onto the table and screaming "OK EVERYONE, I'M DONE EATING, GOODBYE FOR NOW AND FOREVER, ANY OF YOU WHO NEED TO CONTACT ME HAVE MY EMAIL".

And if you think that mental image is ridiculous, picture the one where you are back the next day asking for your 'usual'. To your left is the same guy whose head you used to steady yourself on the table when you made your grand announcement,

"You back already? What happened, did you leave your wallet or something?"

Let's face it, the 'I'm leaving' post strictly serves one need, the need to see people post 'nooooo don't goooo' in your blog and pat you on the back. You'll never see one of those posts out of me. If you gotta go, then you gotta go. If you need a break, you need a break. I'll keep going back for awhile, I'll keep checking to see if you've posted anything new. I'll remember you fondly, I understand, and don't want you coming around because you feel obligated to, I have more dignity than that.

You'll never see an 'I'm leaving' post out of me either. The day I quit this foolishness I won't even close the door on my way out, that's just the way I roll.

What a day..

2005-07-18T19:24:00.000-07:00

Ok it's been awhile, so here we go..

If I were President, here's how it would be.

1. I'd legalize pot. Not because I want to sit on the couch, eat cheetos, and pontificate on why we're really here, but because it's retarded to spend money on the war on drugs while terrorists and tyrants make money off of it. People that want to smoke pot are going to, regardless of how illegal you make it.

2. I would exempt all veterans of war from income tax for the rest of their lives. They've paid more for their country than anyone who didn't go in terms that cannot be quantified, so this isn't too much to give back.

3. I would get rid of the filibuster. In fact, anyone found filibustering would be shot full of dart gun delivered morphine until they passed out while my specially appointed public humiliation committee took incriminating, circle jerk themed pictures of the perpetrator. Filibuster sounds even gayer than it is, and I didn't think that was entirely possible.

4. I would throw all lobbyists off the front steps of the capitol building and into the white house lawn. No future lobbies would be entertained that don't fit on a standard 3'x3' cardboard sign.

5. Any government form more than 2 pages in length would be abridged to fit the new government standard. Any verbiage that could not be understood by anyone but a lawyer would also be stricken and replaced with lay-terms.

6. The day after the Super Bowl would be a national holiday, and everyone gets the day off.

7. No more sports strikes. The next time someone locks out, walks out, or strikes, they can pick up a jackhammer and report to the nearest 100 degree highway for a year. That will be the new definition of arbitration.

8. There will be no more bickering over gay marriage. As President, I have more important shit to do than micromanage the life of every American. If you want to aggregate your assets and share a last name in the eyes of the state, more power to you. It makes you easier to keep track of.

9. Anyone caught embezzling a company into oblivion for their own personal gain, resulting in the loss of thousands of jobs will be forced to evenly divide said spoils among everyone who lost their job. If this is impossible legally, then the evil, soulless bastard will travel to the front door of every family he destroyed with his own greed. Oh, and they can do whatever they want to him.

10. Paris Hilton, Jessica Simpson, Nicole Ritchie, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Michael Moore and any other intellectually and spiritually vacant douche bag who makes their living being someone other than themselves yet feels compelled to advise those less fortunate how they should use what little power they do have are free to leave the country. Those who do not comply by the end of my inauguration ceremony will be loaded into a supergun and aimed toward France, where their rhetoric will be more appreciated.

Monkey in '08...

I'm running on the 'No More Bullshit' platform.

...in a handbasket

2005-07-13T18:37:00.000-07:00

Apparently, Gary Sheffield wouldn't play for the United States in a world baseball competition because he doesn't get paid. So much for a pro athlete playing for love of the game, huh? Come to think of it, isn't this why our Olympic basketball team was thrown together with duct tape and paper plates? Remember that? When we got our asses kicked by Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and a couple of bellboys in the Olymic village? What I find most disturbing is that it's a situation that mirrors our overall apathy as a country these days.

Major League Baseball is going to go forward with this thing, and if this is the way it's going to be, then I hope we get our asses kicked by countries that exhibit some patriotism. I hope a 12-2 whitewashing at the hands of Japan, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, China, Korea, or even Canada opens a few eyes, because the current state of patriotism in this country is pathetic.

If you can't tell, it got me to thinking.

December 7, 1941: 2430 American servicemen died alongside 68 civilians at the hands of japanese machines of war. A total of 2471 people total in a single attack which galvanized the nation into a single, pissed off fist. Men across the nation volunteered for the opportunity to avenge those people. Men lied about their age to get in, hid injuries to get in, and if you were rejected, it was a mark of shame. Four years later, Nazi Germany was in rubble, Hitler was dead, two atomic bombs had forced the Japanese to surrender, and the world had undergone a distinct change.

September 11,2001: 2,985 Civilians died when militant Islamic terrorists slammed two passenger airliners into a gleaming icon of American achievement, and a third crashed into the Pentagon. A fourth plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, where it was assumed the passengers attempted to take the plane, and a failed attempt to roll the plane to stem the attack met in failure and death. Media expressed shock and horror. People stood in front of televisions watching, mouths agape, as the second plane slammed into the remaining unscathed tower, disintegrating on impact. I remember vividly people being friendlier to each other for a little while. I remember strangers talking in supermarkets, and at gas pumps, and while waiting in line at the bank. Before that, when was the last time you had a conversation with 6 people of various racial background while pumping gas on your way to work? I'd wager never in your life, unless you are in your 60's or older. Four years later, recruiters are having trouble finding recruits, Bin Laden is still at large, Zarqawi is still at large, and the nation is divided between those who believe in an eye for an eye and those who believe in turn the other cheek.

Patriotism is dead, and unfortunately, I doubt anything will bring it back short of someone detonating an atomic weapon in times square on new years eve. Both sides have a point. Yes, it's important to hit back once you've been hit first, but it's also important to get the job done and not fuck around.

Hawks say we have to build a functioning democracy in Iraq to serve as an example to the entire middle east. Doves say we need to pull out of Iraq and let the Iraqi's run their own country.

What I've never heard a single person from either side acknowledge is this:

We're there to do a job, and it's a shitty job to do. Regardless of whether we're there for the WMD's, or we're there for the 9/11 link, or even if we're there to build a gleaming jewel of civilization in the cradle of life, one thing rings truest of all to me. If we quit, then we render worthless every sacrifice made by the men and women who lost their lives fighting for what they believed in. When people ask me if I think Iraq is worth it, my answer is always the same.

"Only if we succeed, otherwise, those people died for nothing"

We have to succeed, to me there is no alternative, regardless of what we think of the president, his staff, or their reasoning for being there in the first place. The fact is, we're there, and all the protesting, all of Michael Moore's efforts, all of the witty hollywood commentary and morale shattering news coverage doesn't change the fact that the rest of us who chose not to go need to sit down, shut up, and have some respect for those who possess the courage to do that which we do not.

Carrrrr........Game On!

2005-07-13T11:40:00.000-07:00

The car has past, the crying is over, now sign the damned thing and lets get back to normal.

I want to see some foil donning, slap shotting, fast breaking, kick saving this winter, so try not to screw this one up would ya!

A quick peek....

2005-07-12T18:57:00.000-07:00

Jen and I got in a discussion over why I think Orlando Bloom sucks as an actor. Simply, because he does, and Jen's opinion is that yes, that is true, however, he's good looking enough for it to be overlooked. She then said Brad Pitt, on the other hand, sucks dog balls.

WHAT?! Are you NUTS?! came my reply.

Fight Club, Se7en, Kalifornia, Snatch, and 12 Monkeys were all solid performances. I agree he sucked in Troy, but historical fiction ain't his gig man! Neither is being Dean Martin, which is why Ocean's Eleven sucked, that, and Clooney ain't exactly Sinatra.

So this got me to thinking, and since I've really done nothing but bitch about movies (with the exception of Batman Begins) I thought tonight would be a good night to detail a few of my favorites, in no particular order, because I don't believe in a most favorite anything.

Too limiting.

High Fidelity : A good movie which teaches us that what people like is just as important as what they are like. This movie is a glass bottomed boat trip through the male psyche during a breakup, trust me ladies, if you wonder what he's thinking, it's all in here.

Fight Club: The other epiphanous movie in my life, which taught me that there does come a time when the things we own end up owning us. One of Brad Pitt's best performances.

Aliens: Bill Paxton sets the bar for cowardice in this movie, and carries it into True Lies as the cheesy car salesman who acts like a spy, only to piss himself when truly confronted. Great lines, kickass monster, and a young(er) Sigourney Weaver covered in sweat and a tank top.

The Blues Brothers: More great lines, and probably Dan Akroyd's best movie ever. Whoever thought a sequel was a good idea needs to be dragged naked through a cactus patch.

Jaws: I was 7 years old and saw this in the theatre. I didn't go swimming for 3 years afterward, but watched every shark documentary and read every shark book I could get my hands on. This was also the first book I ever read that didn't have pictures.

Raising Arizona: I've seen this movie at least 120 times, and most of those times I see something I missed before. For instance, if you watch when H.I. is running through the house from the police after stealing the huggies, you will notice that there is a television in every room, they are all on, and they are all on the same channel. Subtle hilarity. More great lines.

The Thing: In my opinion, John Carpenter's best movie of his career. I watched it over and over when going through my divorce, to the point that the tape began to stretch. In fact, I slept to it.

...get back here, I'm not done yet...

Monty Python and the Holy Grail: This probably explains alot, doesn't it. I've probably seen this one 150 times too, but lately, I like Life of Brian better. Bet you're gay.....No I'm not.

Conan the Barbarian: Second best sword movie ever...because Arnie doesn't speak. James Earl Jones doesn't hurt either. Thulsa Doom was Darth Vader...without the starship.

Excalibur: The best sword movie, and, I'll only say this once, the only King Arthur movie worth watching. Everytime a new one comes out, I emerge from the experience a bit insulted, and that one with Richard Gere was the one that proved to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that Connery is nothing but a money grubbing whore with no talent whatsoever.

This has been an abridged list. I left out the obvious ones, like Lord of the Rings, because it's almost cliche' to like those movies, to the point that some people simply choose to dislike them simply to be different.

And I hate those malcontent fuckers who think it's much cooler to like nothing than it is to like anything because then you don't have to defend your choice.

Why...part 2...Stupid Questions

2005-07-09T21:36:00.000-07:00

Why is it that most sequels totally suck ass in comparison to the original.

With that in mind...here's why part 2.

What possesses people to pay 85 cents for a bottle of water when they can drink from the faucet for free?

Why does every bottle of water contain sodium?

If a 20 year old car is a classic, would a 1985 chevy citation count? I don't think it compares well to the '69 Camaro in any car-cool-factor quality.

Did Dan Rather report that CBS was full of shit that time they totally botched the news? If so, who believed him?

Why does shiny stuff still impress stupid people? The immediate example that comes to mind is spinning hubcaps.

If a kid falls and scuffs his knee, why doesn't he cry unless someone is watching?

Why doesn't the government surgically implant GPS tracking devices in soldiers? Would that not take care of the hostage problem?

What's the point of a refrigerator with internet access? Is it so someone can hack themselves a sandwich from Austria?

Why does Wal-Mart have a monolithic display of AA batteries everytime they have their back to school sale?

How low do sales have to dip before McDonald's brings back the McRib for a limited time?

Why haven't I ever seen anyone empty the change out of a payphone?

Why does ESPN lend hours and hours of airtime to golf, only to say that cycling 135 miles through the french alps at speeds of up to 75 mph doesn't qualify as a sport?

Why do the elderly drive 20 miles below the speed limit? I figure if time is that short, you should be in a bigger hurry.

That's all for now...I hope everyone is having a nice weekend.

It came from outer space...

2005-07-07T20:01:00.000-07:00

Ok so July 4th a group of physicists and rocket scientists slammed a projectile into a speeding comet so they could study the erupting detritus for scientific purposes.

Isn't that how every 'unleashed cosmic horror from outer space' movie starts? Some overachieving egghead figures out a way to crack Azathoth's containment node where he's rested for a billion years, imprisoned there by the lost people of Atlantis who paid for their perfidy to their dark god with their continent and their lives.

I'm sure he's pretty pissed off too.

Azathoth awakens, freed from his hoary prison, blinks a billion years worth of eye gook out of his alien eye, and gazes upon the gleaming blue jewel of the solar system that escaped his grasp. The single malevolent eye squints in foggy recognition, and a billion years worth of malicious revenge plotting comes online like a light in a refrigerator.

"Lunch" the single word that escapes his cottonmouthed world devouring beak.

Where's Indiana Jones when we need him? Oh yeah, he's off filming such classics as Hollywood Homicide.

That's right, we're boned.

Game On!

2005-07-07T07:35:00.000-07:00

Everyone votes Monday, the forecast looks good....

Cue music...
Crap...someone get Jerk his hat...ok you ready now man?

Cue Music...
Is that a sombrero? Cool!

It looks like indeed there will be hockey next year...it looks like there will be hockey next week. Now let's sit back and enjoy the chaos that is likely to ensue as teams scramble to sign people.

Isn't this guy 80 years old? What's he doing pushing cameramen?

2005-07-07T05:53:00.000-07:00

When did we become such pussies?

For a week now, I've heard over and over and over again what a bastard Kenny Rogers, pitcher for the Texas Rangers is for knocking a camera out of a cameraman's hand. It's been force fed to me by the empathetic, caring, and humanitarian members of our responsible media in the hope that I will see things their way. More than anything, they want me to believe that the media has the right to stick their nose wherever they want, take pictures of whatever they want, and should expect to be treated differently than anyone else who engages in that same activity.

You'd think Kenny Rogers killed the guy on first base and danced around in his guts. For crying out loud people, it was a camera. If it was such a heinous thing, then how about you blood sucking lampreys stop showing footage of it, and maybe there will be less encouragement to do it in the future. You know, kind of like you do when someone runs on the field during Monday Night Football.

I honestly could not care less that a baseball player knocked a camera out of a cameraman's hand. It isn't worth 50,000.00 worth of my attention, and I'll be damned if I want to hear about it for another 20 days. It's over, it's gone, get over it. I've about had my fill of the American media. Today they were handed a real news story when a series of bombs went off in London. Sit back now and watch the insanity as news stations froth like pirahna on a stranded cow over the bloodshed.

It's pathetic, it truly is, because most of these soulless bastards are nothing more than shitty actors who couldn't manage to drum up the emotion to play a boot in acting class, so they sit in the one place where they can dispense their agenda-motivated, questionable dreck with no emotion or compassion required. Have you ever had a conversation with a tv journalist? You'd get more intellectual stimulation talking to a chrysanthemum. At least you'd be assured that the chrysanthemum wasn't lying to you.

5 bucks says most of them can't even spell chrysanthemum.

We should all send Mr. Rogers a thank you card, and encourage him to really hit the guy next time, that way he'll have a legitimate reason to sue. Something other than 'emotional distress' which really translates into 'I'm sick of being a bottom-feeding member of the media so please give me some of your hard earned money so I can be a human being again'.

Why??

2005-07-06T06:31:00.000-07:00

Why is General Tso's chicken always listed under chef's speciality in every chinese restaurant? Is it the staple dish taught at chinese cullinary school?

Why do people who attend tanning salons feel the need to tell me to go get some sun? The last person that told me this I asked 'Do you know where I can buy some?'.

Why do soft drink companies always have to hold some kind of contest in an attempt to entice me to drink their product? Has anyone ever heard of anyone winning the million dollar grand prize? You would think that would make national news.

The same goes for fast food places, does anyone really win the McDonald's monopoly game?

Why is it called 'drug abuse' when really it's the drug abusing you?

Why are nudist colonies filled with people I have no desire to see naked? And why do they all seem to have trouble with razors?

Isn't it ironic that people who are all for your right to free speech call you a fucking moron if you don't see things their way? I especially like it when they call me fascist for not caring about the whales or whatever 'excuse to get high and kick a hackey sack' cause they are representing with no regard for their own bullying tactics.

When were the long distance commercials replaced with the cell phone commercials? It had to have happened overnight, it couldn't have been a slow, subtle exchange of power.

What the hell happened to Hot N Now? One minute they were going up like starbucks, the next they were being boarded up. I didn't even have a chance to get a burger there, it was that quick!

What is the point of a 3 bladed razor?

What is it about a woman's leg hair that completely destroys a man's facial razor? Any man who has ever tried to shave his face after his wife has shaved her legs with his razor knows what I'm talking about.

If it's such a bad thing to drink and drive, why are there 12 cars on every nascar track with a brewery as their primary sponsor?

Why is it legal to vote before it's legal to drink? With our election history, I'd like to think I could blame it on the nation being drunk.

Why does Microsoft have an advertising budget to market 'windows'? As if you really have much of a choice.

When a product comes out in a 'new and improved' version, do you ever feel taken advantage of because of all of the previous crap version that you were sold before?

When did obesity become a handicap? In my entire lifetime I think I've seen 4 wheelchair bound people get out of a car in a handicapped spot. I see at least that many orca's waddling out of their car everytime I go to Wal-Mart.

Movie Critic..Volume 2..Monkey takes on Jason

2005-07-05T10:31:00.000-07:00

You know, my main problem with the movie "Friday the 13th" isn't in the shitty dialogue. It isn't in the cheesy death scenes, or the laughability of a psychotic killer stalking from cabin to cabin murdering at will while maintaining the wits and strength to string up its kills in grotesque, but imaginative fashion. It isn't even in the gratuitous nudity, because, let's be honest, we all like a bit of gratuitous nudity from time to time. No, my problem with the movie lies with the perspective of the police at the end.

Officer Joe arrives on the scene to find a dozen or so uniquely mutilated and displayed corpses strewn about the vacation resort, and the beheaded carcass of a local elderly woman on the shore of the lake. Further investigation in the form of looking up from said geriatric carcass reveals the lone survivor, asleep in a canoe with the murder weapon still in hand.

Then some bullshit happens that doesn't really happen with the kid who supposedly drowned because he can't swim lunging out of the deep water to drag her beneath the surface.

Suddenly, she's in a hospital bed, and the police are re-assuring her everything is going to be allright.

?!?!

If the police found me lounging in a canoe holding a machete coated in blood, brains, and hair the only reassurance I'd get would be along the lines of 'hey, you'll be our first overnight serial killer in the Crystal Lake correctional facility for the criminally insane', no matter how much I shook, screamed, cried, and protested.

7.4.2005

2005-07-04T12:51:00.000-07:00

First things first, a heart felt thank you to everyone that wished me a happy birthday. I would have been content to allow the dread day to pass without notice, but my lovely wife would have none of it, apparently.

I've always hated feeling obligated to wish anyone a happy anything, and most times have to be dragged kicking and screaming by Lisa to do so. What can I say, I'm an awful person.

On to something that's not about me for a change.

Happy birthday to you
happy birthday to you
happy birthday dear America
happy birthday to you!

I'd ask America to blow out the candles, but he'd probably send Uncle Sam on one of those missiles they used to collapse caves in Afghanistan. You know, the ones that cause such a barometric disturbance that it causes a vacuum? Hell who needs that!

"The party was going great until the sonic boom followed by the wind-sucking implosion that left 12 partygoers dead"

"What did they die of?"

"Want of breath."

I think there's been a grave oversight in the scheduling of holidays, by the way. The fourth of July on a Monday is wrong! Oh sure, I appreciate the day off of work, but how likely is it that I'm going to make it to a firework display, get out of the damned thing at 11, fight traffic to get home, and wake up for work with a hangover?

Answer: Not very.

Some holidays aren't date specific, so we're familiar with the concept. Memorial day, for instance, is the last monday in May, and it kicks ass. I defy you to find one American who hates memorial day, and if you can, they're obviously an insurgent and need to be dealt with. The same goes for Labor Day, first Monday in September, everyone loves Labor Day. Having these two holidays on Monday helps keep the binge drinking down to a degree, while still allowing the much coveted three day weekend.

Where the holiday assignment committee really dropped the ball, however, is Thanksgiving. Come on guys, can't we do better than to hold a holiday celebration devoted to over-indulgence on a Thursday? Going back to work one more day before the weekend after that holiday is damned stupid if you ask me. I don't care if we DID land on plymouth rock on a Thursday, just tell us we did, and let's have it on Friday. Besides, it makes for good dinner table conversation:

"Well, you know, yesterday was actually the holiday."
"Shut the fuck up Donnie, and pass the mashed taters."

That's my brief, out of context homage to 'The Big Lebowski' for those of you who don't know.

Since we're having a go at the stupidity of holiday placement, let's just make the day after the Super Bowl a holiday while we're at it. The day after Super-Bowl Monday is like a scene out of night of the living dead with everyone shuffling about the coffee machine looking for the miracle hangover cure at 8 in the morning.

At least this year we got a three day weekend, because it could have been alot worse. It could have been Wednesday, after all.

7.4.2002..

2005-07-01T09:43:00.000-07:00

On a small farm just outside my hometown, a group of 11 friends converged to indulge in a feast of fire the likes of which we had never seen. All told, the firework pile carried a net worth in the neighborhood of four-thousand dollars, and encompassed everything 7 fully grown men would need to ensure they left the scene reeking of cordite, burnt hair, and sweat.

2,000 firecrackers
6 gross bottle rockets
50 roman candles
50 fountains
30 packs of sparklers
100 assorted large rockets
10 saturn missile batteries
5 cases of mortar shells, 25 per case
4 mortar tubes
and the piece d' resistance
one commercial grade flash bomb

This isn't the entire list, hell, I can't remember everything that was there that day, but what I do remember is that it was Lisa's first 4th of July with me and my friends, and we wanted to make it a doozy. We had enough ordinance to 'show that we love us some America' as my friend BB would put it, and we were bound and determined to burn it all.

All day, off and on, it rained. Sometimes it would deluge, most of the time it was a slow summer sprinkle, but it was wet and unsatisfactory for large scale ballistic deployment. Tensions grew high, as functioning pyromaniacs aren't known for their infinite patience and understanding, and had to be sated through mad dashes into the yard when precipitation would allow to light off a few before the rain would return.

By 4 pm the clouds parted, making way for the blistering eye of God which would inevitably turn the backyard into a sauna for the remainder of the afternoon. But we were men, we didn't care, we loved us some America, and we were here to prove it. Sacrifices had to be made, nobody likes to spend the day covered in stale sweat, bug repellant, cordite, and powder burns, but we felt we owed it to our forefathers. They would have wanted it this way.

Throughout the day we worked our way through the bottle rockets, until, bored with that, we began firing roman candles at each other through a drainage culvert. The sound was incredible, much akin to the main laser turret of an AT-AT, and much of the appeal of fireworks to the standard male is the sound. That's why you see us tossing explosives into drainage gutters, because it sounds cool. It didn't take long for us to start firing the larger rockets through the same culvert into the pond. Much cooler sounds escaped the confines of the steel tube, and much fun was had. On the other side of the culvert was the pond, which had received little moisture until that day, and was down quite a bit. The real problem was the dried cattails surrounding the dwindling body of water. Unconcerned, we proceeded, as grown men often do ready to cross the flaming inferno bridge when we come to it.

We came to the flaming inferno bridge at approximately 5pm. The cattails went up better than kindling. Rushing men scrambled everywhere, wading into the 2 feet deep pond in mud to their calves to form a bucket brigade to quench the flames.

We crossed it again at approximately 5:30 pm and decided at that point, AT-AT sound or not, it might not be a good idea to fire those things out of the culvert anymore. To lighten the mood, we instead decide to fire off the commercial grade flash bomb.

It was the size of a softball, relatively small for a commercial grade firework, but much larger than anything else we had, and it came with 15' of fuse. Written down the entire fifteen feet of fuse were the repeated words "Fuse burns instantly".

What the hell does that mean, instantly? Instantly like instant ramen noodles? Because that's like, what, three minutes? Plenty of time to light the thing and get away. So my friend TT digs a small hole in which to place the device, and runs the 15 feet of fuse down a length of board to keep it dry. The rest of us position ourselves 100 feet away to view the "s'plodin's". TT gets it all configured, and bends down to light the fuse. The puff of smoke, and frantic turning of TT revealed the meaning of 'burns instantly'. Apparently 'burns instantly' means at the speed of light, because 15 feet of fuse disappeared in .2 seconds. By the time TT turned to take his first step as dictated by his fight or flight response, the primer charge which normally hurls the bomb through the tube and into the night sky went off in an unimpressive 'poof'.

One, two, three, four, five steps in what could have easily been slow motion from the look on TT's face was the interval between the primer charge and the explosive charge. When it went off, the video shows the concussive force ripple TT's shirt around his waist and shoulders, as well as the mushroom cloud that erupted behind him. From 100 feet away it felt like someone punched us in the chest, TT must have been hit by a truck, but suffered no damages.

"That was AWESOME!" we all cried.
"Huh?" he replied.

A few minutes later, I offered my words of wisdom.

"Dude, you should have dove"

Nearly 8 hours of continual booms and bangs, at one point we had all 4 mortar tubes going to the point they nearly collapsed. We managed to make it through all of the fireworks. None of us has bought any fireworks since then.

In the spirit of the weekend...

2005-07-01T06:27:00.000-07:00

I don't often think of my Dad, but there's just something about the 4th of July that always reminds me of him. Probably because the 4th was when the everyday Drink-Gasoline-and-Piss-Fire asshole was replaced by a genuinely fun guy.

The old man possessed a certain....redneck invulnerability, let's say. The list of things the man can do correctly is a very short one my friends. It goes like this:

1. He can cook one hell of a steak
2. He really knows his way around the workings of an automobile
3. He has an idiot savant-like ability when it comes to procuring fireworks.

I'm not talking about firecrackers, or bottle rockets, no, no, no my old man gains no satisfaction at all from such frilly pyrotechnics. My old man somehow still gets his hands on M-80's, cherry-bombs, and one year even got his hands on some thing that didn't have a name, all I know is it was the equivalent of a stick of dynamite. When we set that thing off, it eradicated a 2 foot diameter divot in the backyard which I'm relatively sure is still there on 2205 Austin Street.

1980, July 4th.

At 10 years old, I still remember that summer as the summer hell cracked open and decided to vent it's excess heat into the midwest. My God it was hot that year, which meant my old man went 3 and a half consecutive months without wearing a shirt outside as if his gut was the world champion beer swiller trophy for 1979. Throughout the summer, two neighbor families had indulged in a low impact 'romeo and juliet' type feud over the female Pentico dating a male Huckleberry on the sly. Pentico's brothers would chase the Huckleberry suitor whenever they could find him, and I'm pretty sure a couple of fights broke out between older Huckleberry's and Pentico's.

I'm not making those names up by the way, welcome to growing up in government subsidized housing on the brink of poverty during the Carter administration.

The 4th brings everything to a head, and both families are taking their war to the streets patriot style. Just like in the anthem, rockets were red glaring between both houses, which would have been fine, but my house was between the two. The pentico's had a pair of aluminum baseball bats they were firing rockets from to start the day, but a quick bike ride around the neighborhood reveald the Huckleberry's fast at work in the garage developing a Bottle Rocket Fight Superweapon. They unveiled the apparatus around 3 in the afternoon. It was essentially a board with 12 2 foot lengths of metal electrical conduit mounted on a stand with a swivel enclosure. When that thing went off, it looked, and sounded like one of the multi-rack missile launchers I saw Japanese militia fire at Godzilla.

While all of this is going on in the backyard, my old man is parked on a lawnchair in the front lawn. On his left is his bag of fireworks (the legal stuff only, the illegal stuff he kept stashed in the house to use when we weren't looking for maximum 'scare the shit out of you' effect). On his right was a rapidly dwindling, formerly fully stocked cooler full of beer. In his hands he held whatever pyrotechnic he had grabbed from the bag, and a propane torch to light them with. Cigarette in mouth, he would sit smugly and hurl bottlerockets at passers by. Nobody would confront him, because, well, who in their right mind would confront a man with a bag of explosives and a propane torch?

Consequently, that was the night I saw a fistfight, a near housefire, and a 50 dollar bag of fireworks including a 1000 count roll of firecrackers go up as the result of a dropped cigarette incident.

Life was always exciting with pop, but that isn't even my best 4th of July story.

Let's see your 4th of July stories, I bet there are some great ones out there!

Have a safe and happy 4th everyone.

Movie critic monkey, volume 1

2005-06-29T18:23:00.000-07:00

If you read my wife's blog, and I know many of you do, then you know last weekend I went and saw a couple of movies. That's a pretty big deal for me, because I hate crowds, and most particularly movie crowds.

If you've read my blog from the onset, you already know this. If not, then you deserve to wallow in my archives until you find it.

So, yeah, I went to a double feature. The first movie on the list was George Romero's "Land of the Dead"

I guess I should say this now, this post will be rife with spoilers, but in this case I'm truly doing you a favor. Trust me.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a comment on someone's blog about leftist hippies and how they are always up in arms protecting the rights of anyone who doesn't have the benefit of a protest group. The comment I made was that after I watched Dawn of the Dead, I began to think if it really happened, someone, somewhere would be protesting the inhumane treatment of zombies.

Oh sure, just because they feed on the flesh of the living, it doesn't make them bad people.

Uhh, yes it does. Eating people is the textbook definition of evil, put the bong down, hand me the frisbee, and look it up.

That said, I went to see land of the dead, and guess what...it's a zombie rights movie!! From the opening scene we learn that the zombies have been shuffling about long enough that they are beginning to wander back into their normal daily routine. Some are even beginning to exhibit signs of intelligence. Turns out, the only intelligent zombie is the zombified gas station attendant. The best explanation I could come up with for that was being braindead wasn't that much of a departure from his living intellect, so he was the chosen zombie, for in the kingdom without brains, the half-wit man is king. There's alot of zombie combat, and there are some cool zombie scenes (like the scene where one zombie has his fist in the mouth of it's dinner scooping out the gooey goodness in a manner that looks alot like stuffing a turkey in reverse) but the story is complete and utter shit.

That movie sucked so bad that I snuck next door just in time to catch the beginning of Batman Begins.

MUST SEE MOVIE OF THE SUMMER!!

I won't go into much detail, except to say that I wish my 6.50 would have gone to this movie than the other piece of shit I watched, but sometimes the actions of the entire industry warrant wholesale punishment.

Christian Bale is the best Batman to date. He delivers the performance with all of the anger Batman is supposed to have, and truly invokes fear in the criminals of Gotham. The utter lack of paisley colors, Danny Elfman's 'ooompah ooompah' music, and shitty one-liners leaves an ambience of dark dread that has long been absent from the series.

And there are no goddamned nipples on the batsuit either. If Hollywood wants to show me superhero nipple, then make a Wonder Woman movie for crying out loud.

So, there you have it, go see Batman Begins, it's the number one movie and has done it solely on word of mouth, on your way out of the theatre, be sure to have a laugh at the poor bastards going to see land of the dead.

Maybe next time I'll start an argument with Jerk over why Highlander sucks, even though it's one of my favorite movies of all time.

The world is run by C students

2005-06-28T19:09:00.000-07:00

C students are the idea men of the new millenium. Ok, to be fair, C students don't occupy the big chair at the head office for the most part, but they're firmly esconced in the little big chair at the division level. They implement policies that could be described simply as 'moronic' but the implication would be an injustice to morons all over the world.

Some of you know, I work for Big Evil Inc., and at BEI we have a customer service director who shall henceforth be known as The Fatman. The Fatman appeared on BEI's radar when he applied for our office from his Mom and Pop cable company in Atlanta, where he was in charge of the customer service department. He interviewed, he impressed, he came, he saw, he conquered, and soon, he and the rest of his brood loaded up the truck and moved to K.C.

The Fatman arrived as a customer service coordinator, positioned below many people, most of them women, who had been at the company a good many years. Like any cancer, he began slowly to eat away at the inner vital organs until eventually all of these capable ladies found themselves without jobs. How did he do this?

He's an olympic quality ass-kiss, that's how. I saw him heading for lunch the other day in his SUV with 4 vice presidents and the division president packed in the confines of his mobile ass-kissing battletank. Like I said, olympic quality.

Without further ado, I present to you but one of the ingenious brain-children of the man who kissed, licked, fondled, and backstabbed his way into a directors seat..ladies and gentlemen, the stupidest policy on Earth, as conceived by The Fatman.

We all endure fire drills at work, and they're a pain in the ass. You have to stop what you're doing, rush outside, stand a quarter mile from the building and make jokes about how your favorite pen is in there, or you offer condolences to the people that are late.

"Wow, sorry you died Bill, mind if I date your wife?"

The problem Fatman has, is that customer service has to hang up on their customers, and the call queue backs up like cheese in an 80 year old. To alleviate this problem, he determined that it would be better if only half of the customer service reps attended fire drills in the future.

Good thinkin' genius, I haven't seen a fire safety procedure like that since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Oh, I'm sorry, you were busy doing beer bongs instead of going to history class, fucking business admin majors, yeah a bunch of kids died in a textile mill that way.

Let's break this down.

1. When there is a fire, what then? When customer service is milling about asking if it's a drill or not, and who is supposed to go, the fire isn't waiting. It's doing it's fiery best to take down the building and anyone else it can get it's greedy claws into. I can't wait to hear that court proceeding.

"Well, your honor, because the event happened unannounced, all the odd numbered teams had to stay behind because it was a Tuesday, and unfortunately, it was just not their day."

Yes, muuuuuuuch better than getting everyone out, maybe they can add that to the job description. If you're into life threatening chills, thrills, and excitment, come to customer service where death is but a fire alarm away.

2. During a fire drill, you hang up on half of the customers. I guess if you don't get hung up on that day, then it's your lucky day, but who wants to explain when the guy that got hung up on calls back.

"I thought you said you had a fire drill"
"We did"
"Well my neighbor didn't get hung up on, that's a bunch of bullshit"

Fatman, however, hasn't missed a firedrill yet. I think the next time we have one, I'll send him back in.

"Say there, captain, aren't you supposed to go down with the ship or some shit like that? Get your ass back in there, you only get to live on Wednesdays and Fridays, today is Thursday, so your ass is fricasee."

Grrrrrr......All it takes is one bad apple

2005-06-28T06:08:00.000-07:00

Please, God, take away Jeremy Roenick's ability to speak and give it to someone with the cranial capacity to use it to further the cause of good in the world.

Let's see, you just lost an entire season because you and your co-workers didn't want to give up the overly inflated salaries that were strangling the very league in which you play. Then, after the season was cancelled, YOU TOOK THE GODDAMNED CAP!!!

I was willing to forgive that, I really was. I understand the idea of shitty representation, which is what you have in Bob Goodenow, and Gary Bettman is no prize either. I was actually pulling for you pampered assholes when you were getting together without these two to try to save the season. Now that it's gone, and Lord Stanley's Cup will have a blank line on it for the first time ever for reasons other than plague, the last thing any of us want to hear is:

"I say personally, to everybody who called us 'spoiled,' you guys are just jealous ... we have tried so, so hard to get this game back on the ice," Roenick said...

"We're going to try to make it better for everybody, period, end of subject. And if you don't realize that, then don't come," said Roenick, who spoke at a charity golf event he played in over the weekend.
"We don't want you at the rink, we don't want you in the stadium, we don't want you to watch hockey," he said Saturday at the Mario Lemieux Celebrity Invitational in suburban Pittsburgh.

Jealous?! Jealous?!

Listen you prancing prick, you should personally come to my house and kiss my ass for investing the interest, time, and money to make sure your spoiled ass gets to PLAY a sport for money! Bring Mario Lemieux, Joe Sakic, Gary Bettman, Bob Goodenow, Eddie Belfour and everyone else with you while you're at it, because I got plenty of ass you all can kiss. Yeah, you're goddamned right we're jealous, because the rest of us work for a goddamned living so otherwise worthless puck chasing alcoholics like yourself can look down on us while you drive by in your porsche. This is just the sort of thing I would expect from a self-absorbed jock sniffing fuckhead like you.

And guess what, I will be watching, because I'll personally feel robbed if I miss the day someone puts a puck through that lump 3 feet north of your ass and proves to the world that you really DO have shit for brains.

Hot summer nights, and the Missouri Death Chigger..

2005-06-27T17:21:00.000-07:00

For those of you who have read the cat-tail-sty-in-the-eye post my wife wrote, you already know that my mother is...well...a unique individual. What you don't know is what a mischevious joker she can be, and it's this quality that makes me automatically suspect anything she tells me, because she is completely capable of lying convincingly.

Like the time she told me a walking stick was really the devil, and he was not to be trusted.

Nobody was safe, not even my grandmother, who emerged from a grocery store checkout line with an obvious air of irritation and sense of indignance because the clerk was treating her like a child. When we left the store, my mother told her that she had told the clerk she was senile and liked to feel like she was really shopping.

It was one of the most valuable things my mother ever taught me.

Lisa's first taste of this 'ornery streak' as my mother would call it came in her first withering Missouri summer. Fresh into the country with the few belongings she could pack into her car, she drank deeply of the cup of day to day life. We smoked outside in order to keep the house from smelling like smoke, but also to feed the various parasitic insects that prefer the taste of human blood. The blood drinking duties are shared between mosquitos, the scourge of the lake ridden north, and the alien and unseen chigger.

I don't know what the proper name for a chigger is, but what I do know is that they are very small, and very irritating. Chiggers typically attack in droves, but occasionally a lone over-achiever will take it upon himself to be the biggest pest he can be. The bites swell up like mosquito bites, and itch a hundred times more. Poor Lisa had never before experienced the insidious threat of the Missouri Death Chigger, but she was about to be educated.

"What the hell is this?" she asked my roomate and I.

"What?" we asked.

"These little red bumps, they itch like hell!"

"Oh. Uh-oh." my roomate and I looked at each other.

"What?"

"That's the signature of the Missouri Death Chigger. A microscopically small parasite native to these parts which, in many cases, kills it's prey"

"Fuck off, you guys are fuckin with me"

Concerned, my friend TT and I looked at poor Lisa "I wish we were" I said "but the Missouri Death Chigger burrows into the skin, where it's head detaches from the body. At that point, the head burrows further into the skin until it can find a blood vessel to carry it to the heart, where it finishes off it's victim"

She looked to TT, knowing full well that it was entirely possible that I could be utterly full of shit. But TT is a master joker too, and simply nodded his head with the same unblinking look of concern on his face, and the wide eyed terror on her face is something I wish I had a picture of.

To this day, the words Missouri Death Chigger evoke a certain response. It usually goes like this:

"Oh fuck you!" -- SLAP!!!

The dark side of the 80's..

2005-06-23T18:16:00.000-07:00

A couple of times I've written about the aspects of the 80's which bring a smile to my face. These days occurred in the pre-'85 years. After that, most of it went to hell in a handbasket.

Remember hair bands? Those icons of rock who sold records by looking like chicks, whose empire crumbled like a oreo castle in an ocean of milk in two weeks when grunge brought in the 90's. Some of us were dancing in the street singing 'Ding dong the witch is dead, the witch is dead..'

You know the rest.

Dee Snyder hosts a radio show featuring music of the hair band era. I think it's on for a half hour on Sunday morning after the government required half hour of religious programming which is cleverly obfuscated under the title 'community programming'. I think the late 80's are bitter for me because those are the years that the demon known as puberty possessed me and sent me forth into repeated episodes of humiliating rejection at the hands of the fairer sex. The only thing I knew for certain in those days was if you had an extra Bon Jovi ticket and couldn't get laid, you may as well join the priesthood.

I couldn't afford Bon Jovi tickets, so I didn't have to face this ugly realization. In fact, I used it as my excuse.

Buckle up folks, dust off your cut up acid washed jeans, and spray your bangs up into the crusty antenna-like pompadour that later became known as 'jersey hair' for you ladies, because we're goin for a ride. Don't laugh fellahs, those were the days in which the mullet was forged as well, and you looked pretty damned stupid too.

The summers filled with concerts by bands like Poison, Warrant, White Lion, Winger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Faster Pussycat, Skid Row,Ratt, and Cinderella packed up their hairspray, donned their makeup, and did their best to out-Crue Motley Crue. I think Warrant owned land here or something, because they showed up here 5 times one summer. They even filmed a video here as I recall.

You know you live in a cultural black hole when THAT is something you remember.

They should have a special edition of that new reality show featuring just these guys. I doubt many of them are up to much, and sequins don't biodegrade.

Sebastian Bach is on the O.C. now. Dee Snyder is on the radio, and I wonder if he regrets having filed his teeth into points in an effort to be more metal than metal. Over the course of the last couple of years, many of these bands took to the road again. Playing in bars to sold out crowds of people who just won't let go of a time I'd rather have purged from my memory with hot irons than endure again.

However, if you disregard pop music utterly, like a good music listener should, it can be said that this was the last time music was about having fun. The songs these bands vomited forth were all about women in fishnet stockings and boustiers; good times; good friends; and good booze. I think all my friends were drinking Boone's Farm wine (3.00 a bottle) and the more experienced were knocking back Mad Dog 20/20, so I think it's safe to say the 'good booze' message fell on deaf ears.

I guess, in retrospect, it wasn't all bad. After all, these were also the years that brought us Megadeth, Anthrax, the Beastie Boys, NWA, and last but not least, Metallica.

To this day, I still don't get the whole panty-dropping/Bon Jovi thing. It's not like it happens anymore. The only people dropping trow at a Bon Jovi concert these days are the ones who are too strung out to make it to the bathroom. It had to be the hair....it had to be.

One night in Casa de Monkey..

2005-06-22T16:08:00.000-07:00

Cast:
The 14 yr old
The 4 yr old
The dog
Me

The garage door came to it's rattling close at the end of the day, as the 4 year old and I open the door into the house. A full day of daycare activities had taken their toll on the youth, but she carried her trophies home with pride, half of a peanut butter sandwich (partially eaten) and two mini corn-dogs.
"Oh hi, I'm so glad to see you I thought you would never come home Ithoughtyouwouldnevercomehome! Oh you brought me treats! I love the little one, she's just the right height to feed me treats!"
"Hey, don't eat that, that's not for you!"
"Who? Me?"
"No, not you."
While the 4 year old is listening to me, the dog rolls her for the remainder of her peanut butter sandwich, and dances away the victorious thief, oblivious to the fact that he hates peanut butter.

"Can I go out?" the 14 year old asks as my foot touches the second step into the house.

"Have you cleaned your room?"

"Who? Me?"

"No, not you."

"No, but I will."

"Thanks"

"Are we gonna eat now? Are we? Arewe? Arewe?"

I enter the house and make a bee-line for my bedroom. Just 12 minutes prone, that's all I ask, please God, just 12 minutes. I turn the television to cartoons, mesmerizing the 4 year old like you would a bullfrog with a flashlight. The effect lasts all of 10 minutes.

"Will you make me fly?"

There is no God. Check that, there is, and he's laughing his ass off at me right now.

"Just let Uncle Dave die, you have to live on kid, and tell the tale."

"What's a tale?"

"Ok, never mind, let's just play airplane."

We play airplane until whatever energy is left in my body says 'fuck this' and vacates, leaving me with a profound sense of boneless antiquity, except for the rocketing pain that comes with a lifetime of bodily abuse that shoots through both shoulder blades.

"Is it time to eat yet?" the dog communicates with his perky ears and half cocked smile.

"You ate this morning, and you still have food, go away."

"I did not!"

"Not you."

We watch cartoons and play games until I am sure the corn-dog and sandwich has fallen victim to the cold-fusion efficiency that is her metabolism.

"What's for dinner?"

"Yeah, what's for dinner?"

"I don't know, you can fend for yourself, you still have food, and what do you want to eat little one?"

"I'm not hungry!"

"I am!"

"Well, you're going to eat anyway, because it's almost bedtime, and you're not going to eat after bedtime."

"I don't care, as long as we eat."

"Not you."

"But I don't want to eat!"

"Can I have hers?"

"NO!"

"Ok, ok sheesh, I'll be over here licking myself then."

"Don't even waste your time, you don't have anything to lick."

"Bastard!"

I finally manage to get the 4 year old to eat something. It's always the same ordeal every night. Dinner becomes let's make a deal.

"Do I have to eat it all?"

"Just eat what you can, if you eat this much" I say as I seperate a portion making up roughly half of what is on her plate "you can have dessert after."

This is exactly why I started doubling her portions of whatever I put in front of her. Ten more minutes of attention-drifting, periodically interrupted by my authoritarian "Eat" marks the home stretch of dinnertime in which the dog is poised to snatch the merest morsel before it hits the floor. He's a smart dog, he's latched onto the child as the great dispenser of snacks, because whatever she isn't outright handing to him is crumbling to pieces as she walks around the house with it.

Dinner concludes with bathtime, which is a post in and of itself, and the continuation of her cartoon appreciation education with a full hour of Tom and Jerry.

Because if there's one thing Uncle Dave knows, it's good cartoons. Spongebob sucks, T&J rule!

Interesting side note, I watched The Flintstones for the first time in 2 and a half decades and laughed my ass off. The same thing happened with the Jetsons.

Trivia Hour

2005-06-21T18:07:00.000-07:00

Anyone know who William Moulton Marston is?

Anyone? Bueller?

William Moulton Marston was the inventor of systolic blood pressure test, which led to the development of the lie detector. But that's not his most famous creation. His most famous creation was Wonder Woman.

Useless trivia I know, but the answer to an old question of mine nonetheless.

"What kind of sick fetishist created Wonder Woman? 10 bucks says it wasn't a woman."

Turns out I would have won 10 bucks.

Apparently, in the testing phases of the lie detector machine, he hypothesized that women were more honest than men. That soon evolved into a realization that the DC universe had an plethora of male heros like Superman, Green Lantern, The Flash, Batman, etc... What it lacked was a female super hero. What it lacked was a female role model for young girls who didn't sweep floors and cook dinner. What it lacked was a scantily clad, large breasted amazon princess who physically dominated men, tied them up with her golden rope, and made them tell the truth. She doesn't need armor, you'll take away from the star spangled leather, give her some bracelets and let her block bullets that way.

Come on now, high heeled thigh high boots? Tie me up and make me tell the truth? Why are all female superheroes decked out in leather? That's your idea of a rolemodel? For whom?

How the hell does she find an invisible jet anyway? I have trouble finding my car in the supermarket parking lot, I'd be thoroughly hosed if the damned thing was invisible.

I'm a child of the 80's...till the day I die

2005-06-20T18:22:00.000-07:00

Did anyone else find it hilarious when bellbottoms came back?

I for one had a healthy snicker at the expense of the todays youth when it happened. When you consider most teenagers are chronologically predisposed to knowing more than their elders, you are prepared to truly appreciate the irony of the event. Bellbottoms, combined with the Afro craze that was going on for awhile made for a recipe of humiliation that we, the old and decrepit, should have lined up with our cameras to chronicle for all time.

They tried to fly this crap by us in the 90's, it lasted about a month. We were smarter than that. We all remember seeing pictures of our fathers in that ridiculous getup. Lapels that looked like Imperial Star Destroyers, lifts, frizzy hair, and gigantic pantaloons were the order of the day back then, but to us, they just looked like clowns.

I'm a child of the 80's. I was there to witness firsthand the horror of parachute pants, piano ties, friendship pins, leg warmers, headbands, and choose life shirts. My God, what were we thinking.
Luckily, I grew up impoverished, and thus was saved the dire fate of such fashion humiliations. It's probably the only thing for which I was ever grateful to be poor.

Someday that shit will come back too, mark my words. Maybe with it will come break dancing, which, thankfully, I was too uncoordinated to indulge in. Maybe it'll have Don Johnson's career in tow, along with Rick Springfield, Corey Hart, and Samantha Fox.

Until then, I leave you with 10 songs that remind me when MTV played music and make me feel 13 again.

Wall of Voodoo - Mexican Radio
DEVO - We're Through Being Cool
Alan Parsons Project - Eye in the Sky
Men at Work - It's a Mistake
The Police - Tea in the Sahara
Dexy's Midnight Runners - Come on Eileen
Men Without Hats - Safety Dance
Modern English - I Melt with You
Squeeze - Tempted by the Fruit of Another
Berlin - No More Words

Well, here it is.

2005-06-19T12:13:00.000-07:00

My voice, no singing though, be sure to thank your congressman, prime minister, ambassador, or any other high powered official for the mercy upon your tender eardrums.

I think it's really Foolish Uncle-Stepdad Day

2005-06-19T07:01:00.000-07:00

Ok so today is Father's Day, and I'm in the club on a technicality. I have no kids of my own,but trust me, it isn't due to a lack of effort on my part, I just have lazy swimmers or something. It's not something I worry about like some guys do, if it happens it happens.

I wonder if the lil' swimmers are like plants and if you talk nice to them they perform better. Honey, could you come say inspirational things into my ........no no not that part, I know it looks like a microphone but....wait, hey get back here!!

One thing I'll never do is undergo fertility treatment. To hell with that! One kid, maybe two is fine, but with my stellar luck Lisa would produce like a 7 yolker hen and the next thing you know I'm working three jobs just to buy diapers. Somehow blowing a grand a month to dispose of poop does not sound like a fiscally viable enterprise.

"You kids are shitting away your inheritance!" my neighbors would hear from my sliding back door.

I have enough trouble keeping the 14 year old from eating everything in the house. Literally everything, he was complaining the other day that there was nothing to eat, I about panicked when I noticed he was laying on the couch. Two thousand dollar couch the color of chocolate, I'm afraid someday he's going to lapse into a munchie induced state of delusion and take a bite. As it is, I have to squirrel away snacks like I'm preparing for a terrorist attack, otherwise, the container doesn't even have an opportunity to gather dust before it's empty. He doesn't throw away the empty container either, which is doubly maddening because we buy Lay's Stax chips, in the nifty processed plastic cylinder. When that thing is empty, and sitting on the counter, it's like a fat guy decoy, taunting me with false promises of salty, tasty goodness. He's probably got a Dave blind constructed somewhere behind which he chuckles with evil mirth at my frustration. He will rue the day when I find it, oh yes, there will be definate rue-age.

I think I understand why male lions eat all of the old males cubs when they take over the pride.

Now, I've got the monster to deal with too. 4 years of age under her belt, and adorability skills that should be banned by the Geneva convention, the child is a walking sanity destroyer. Yesterday, we sat her down with a bowl of applejacks and turned on cartoons. Thirty minutes later, the apple jacks have dissolved into their component parts, apples, and jacks swimming in a primordial dairy goo that possessed a color I've not seen before.

"Eat your cereal, monster" I said, as gently as I can being 6'4" and towering like Godzilla over this tiny little girl.

"But, I'm not hungry" (insert devastatingly cute fearful face here)

Ok, I can understand that, we'll hook her up with a snack in a couple of hours and she'll be fine, right? I hadn't eaten anything at that point, and was starving. Nobody else was hungry, so fixing a whole bacon and eggs breakfast was out of the question, so I did what anyone would do in that situation, I made ramen noodles.

I get one bite into it before monster sidles up to me.
"Can I have some?"
"I thought you weren't hungry?"
"But, I am now."
"What? Five minutes and you're starving?"
Why can't I have a metabolism like that?
"No, you said you were full, you should have eaten your cereal, and that's that."

So, I'm sittin' there, watching cartoons, shoveling my noodles into the gullet of the monster, and I realize in two days she's settled in and feels right at home.

I think her coup'd'etat is complete.

Doesn't anyone have phone manners anymore?

2005-06-18T10:44:00.000-07:00

Long years have I worked in various companies as a customer service representative.

It's a thankless, shitty job that I sincerely hope I never have to do again. It sucks primarily for one reason, and it's the reason that all customer service phone jobs share.

People who call into customer service often possess a false sense of bravery. They operate under a percieved cloak of anonymity much like the one that a four year old dons by ducking under the covers. If I can't see you, you can't see me, and if you can't see me, you can't hurt me. It's understandable given the intellect you often find yourself dealing with, especially if you are working in a tech support capacity, that people think this works. The problem, however, is that people use their 'head in the sand' defense as an excuse to de-evolve into raving lunatics. All manner of human decency, compassion, and common fucking courtesy go right out the window as soon as the hold music stops, because by God someone is going to ANSWER for this thirty-five cent charge that I can't identify on my bill!

'WHAT? THE 25TH YOU SAY?! Oh, yes, wait a minute, now I remember'..click.

Hell hath no fury like a customer charged, and nobody calls to tell you what a good job you're doing. I would have fainted dead away if someone would have called and said:

"Hey man, just calling in to let you know the cable is kickin ass today, good job, and well done"

Actually, I've done this on my own before. It's kinda funny to hear the reaction on the other end. But, what the hell, I'm weird, don't do what I do, just do what I command and I'll be happy.

Anyway...

A few months ago someone received a postcard in the mail with a message that read something like:
"In the future, you may want to be nicer to telemarketers, you never know when one might turn up"

The lady called the FBI, the CIA, the dept of homeland defense (which is obviously in need of a cool acronym, but it's a fledgling secret police organization, give them time), got her story on CNN and Larry King and basked in her fifteen minutes of fame. The one thing I didn't see was any admission on her part that she acted like an ass on the phone and got the shit scared out of her for it. No, in fact, it was all the fault of the evil telemarketer who finally got enough of being treated as less than a human being for doing a job nobody else wants to do just to earn a living.

The next time you call customer service, remember that they know who you are. They know where you are. They know your social security number, date of birth, and most likely at least one of your credit card numbers. I don't know about you, but I treat that guy as nice as pie because personally, I'd rather take a right cross to the nose than try to fix all the shit that could go wrong with that much information in the hands of someone who thinks I need a lesson in manners.

Fool me once,shame on you. Fool me twice...

2005-06-18T10:41:00.000-07:00

Two times I have attempted the audioblog thing.
Two times it has failed me. I will be sending a letter rife with harsh language and cryptic metaphors to people who will summarily ignore me with a form letter apology.

Ok, I'm not really sending a letter, but it's true that technology despises me sometimes.

Answer to an age old question..

2005-06-17T11:06:00.000-07:00

I believe God created man before woman, and I'll tell you why.

In the beginning God created Man. Two legs, two arms, a head, hands, feet, and everything in between. Man did everything he was designed to do, he walked, he talked, he used his hands to accomplish things. He lifted and moved things, built things, and endured many stress tests for durability. He performed his tasks without question and without fail. All was good in the garden, until, like all functioning applications, some changes were needed.

Hence was created Man V2.0. Built to be more aesthetically pleasing than Man V1.0, the new version incorporated the newest in reproductive technology. Up till now, reproduction was accomplished through an external egg mechanism which required manual warming, or relied upon wind borne spore technology, and that was dicey at best. Man V2.0 was state of the art, with internalized reproductive organs complete with feeding interface. Functional and pleasing to the eye at the same time, Man V2.0 was certain to revolutionize the planet.

Where Man V1.0 was simply functional, Man V2.0 was a work of art. Man V1.0 was angular in it's chassis, where Man V2.0 had curves for better aerodynamic efficiency. Man V1.0 was prone to growing hair in random locations, but that problem had been addressed in Man V2.0. The clumsy gait of Man V1.0 had been replaced with a new hip enclosure and counter-balancing in the chest area that allowed for more of a swinging, seductive walk in Man V2.0.

Man V1.0 was impressed, and proceeded to field test the new model sent forth by the Maker. Initial testing proved the new model to perform below capacity in the areas requiring brute strength. The new chassis, although pleasing to the eye, didn't hold up well under heavy loads. Man V2.0 had other issues as well. Periodically the new reproductive system would break down entirely, resulting in fluid loss and an overall drop in performance. Man V2.0 didn't have the verbal governor that Man V1.0 possessed, so it was prone to effusive bouts of rambling speech in which it expressed it's malfunctions and environmental requirements. The Maker assured Man V1.0 that was just part of the diagnostic package that came with Man V2.0, and to simply ignore the message, it would fix itself over time. Man V2.0 also had a problem with mood consistency. This confused Man V1.0, because all of his attempts to fix the problem were often met with another failure in the system. Man V2.0's hormone regulator was out of whack. That was obvious from day one, as Man V2.0 would experience mood swings that were difficult to resolve.

Despite all of it's flaws, however, Man V2.0 was fun to ride.

If man isn't a beta version of woman, I can't think of any other way to explain it. An improvement in presentation on an original design that brings with it a few new bugs that you have to live with.

All I wanted was a pepsi...or College Stupidity Volume II

2005-06-16T17:09:00.000-07:00

In a time when hair bands were at the peak of their popularity, Luke and Gus lived down the hall. Gus looked like Steve Vai, and Luke looked like one of the Ramones. Probably DeeDee if he had the long, slick, Ozzie Osbourne hair on loan from Black Sabbath. These two geniuses would tell women they were med students, and got laid more than cheap carpet during half price month. It didn't even really matter that our university didn't have a medical program.

Just outside the living area we had a soda machine. It was a state of the art beverage dispensing device equipped with the newest anti-theft device. In reality, it was a flap that raised that was supposed to prevent you from sticking your arm up the hole and pulling a soda for free. Gus, being thin, was the master of soda stealing, and it was many a night that my last 45 cents was taken by that machine only to be rewarded with the empty 'clunk' as the next soda was lowered into position for the next buyer.

One night, in a dazzling display of drunken stupidity, Gus couldn't get a soda out of the machine and started rocking it. A fully loaded soda machine weighs about 2 tons. I don't know the exact weight, but stack 12 cases of soda and try to walk off with it in a refrigerator while carrying 40 bucks worth of quarters and you probably have the right idea.

When it fell over on him, it spiral fractured his leg so badly they almost had to amputate it. He didn't make it through the rest of school. I'm sure he blamed it on the leg, but his Bluto Blutarski-like 0.0 GPA probably didn't help matters either.

Everyone on the entire floor sent a 12 pack of soda to his hospital room, for a total of 80 full cases of soda.

We were dicks like that.

Car shopping is better when you aren't even buying

2005-06-15T15:00:00.000-07:00

I'm not much of a car enthusiast. I like cars, don't get me wrong, and I can appreciate a kickass ride when I see one, but when it comes to gear ratios, compression rates, camber settings, blueprinting, and block boring, I don't know shit. To me, it's simply a conveyance. Yesterday I received an email from GM to take advantage of their new employee discount promotion. Curiosity got the better of me, despite the fact that I'm not really in the market for a new vehicle.

I saw the new GTO. I wasn't all that impressed with the body style, in fact, it looks like a grand am on steroids to me, but the vehicle specs caught my eye.

6.0 L 8 cyl engine.

Good God! I mean, granted I'd only get 12 feet to the gallon, but hell I could coast for miles at 140 MPH!

30k even with the discount, bare bones, but I think I've found my midlife crisis mobile.

The world is SO not round...

2005-06-15T05:26:00.000-07:00

The earth is lopsided. It has to be, why else would time fly when you're having fun. If it spun at a constant speed, wouldn't time pass as normal when you're having fun? But it doesn't, it flies. I think the same principle applies to waking up in the morning. Because the night goes by so fast, the inertia is so great that the gravitational constant increases, making it nearly impossible to get out of bed in the morning. While I'm at work, the world slows to a crawl, hell sometimes I think it even spins backwards a little.

I'm in a very 'world revolves around me' mood today, it should be interesting.

A short one...just to prove I can, so NYAHHH!!

2005-06-14T18:59:00.000-07:00

Kara says I'm too wordy lately. She's probably right, I'm over-compensating for not posting much this past weekend. It's either that, or I can't put together a cohesive thought train of late. I'd vote for both, but more the latter than the former.

Tonight I had dinner with Lisa and her best friend HR. Quote of the evening:

Me: "If you see blood shoot out of my nose, don't worry, that's just me having an aneurysm, I'll be fine."

Imagine eating dinner with two giggling schoolgirls, one of which is making passes at the waiter as subtly as a construction worker wired on viagra. It wasn't really a pass, it was more of a thrown jackhammer.

I'm covered in schoolgirl flirt shrapnel, but I have to admire the guts it takes to do that. I can't do that. I'm a wallflower, content to sit and quietly sip my coke and eat my fries in anonymity. I'm also totally oblivious to any flirtations that are hurled my way. It has to be completely obvious in order for me to get it. I guess it's because I was raised to have respect for women, and that comes with the assumption that no lady would ever be so forward as to make a pass at me. I realized long ago that it's far better to sit and never know than to take the chance and get rejected.

Since that day, I'm undefeated.

College Stupidity, Volume I

2005-06-14T14:49:00.000-07:00

College, the official name for the 4 years of your life officially alloted to soul searching, test cramming, identity questioning, sexual experimentation, and rebellion. Somewhere amid all that swirling chaos, you're supposed to learn some stuff from overpriced books written by self-aggrandizing pompous asses who wouldn't make any money at all if they couldnt' convince you their specialty was the key to the universe. It's also your first true foray from the nest, or it's supposed to be anyway, but some of the guys I knew had entered from the military, and the things I saw that horrified me, only made them chuckle and mutter words like 'lightweight' and 'rookie'.

We lived in North Ellis Co-Educational Residential Dormitory. The best accomodations on campus. Living in the swankiest collection of 10 by 12 cubes on campus wasn't all fun and games, however. It was co-ed, which means Resident Assistants were always on the lookout for overnight company of the fairer sex. There were rules, some cast in stone like gospel, others voted on at the beginning of each new school year. The optional rules always included the same thing.

Do we allow smoking? Yes, we do, shut up freshmen, we do, trust me, or college will be anything but fun for you.

Do we allow the burning of incense? This one may or may not need translation. The real question, which couldn't be posed verbatim, was 'do we allow pot smoking?'.

Again, yes, we do. Even though I didn't indulge at the time, I had been around long enough to know it was going to happen anyway, so by voting it in, I had maneuvered myself into the 'cool' category. It was my third year in the dorms, I knew what I was doing.

The gospel rules were a bit ridiculous, it seemed at the time.
No running in the halls. Not a tough one, I had been abiding by this one since kindergarten.
No throwing frisbees in the halls. This one sucked, I lived in building with 300 feet of straight, continuous hallway, no WAY was I not going for the hall-frisbee long distance record!
No drinking. Right, sure...whatever you don't see, hear, or smell, you won't know, but nice try.
No cleaning game animals in your shower.

....

Huh? Uhh..ok man, no worries. It occurred to me that the rule was there for a reason, that someone had actually DONE this at some point, and got out of trouble on a technicality.

"..well, there is no written rule that says I can't field dress my deer in my bathtub, so you have no grounds to expel me. Furthermore, you can kiss my butt, and you'll be giving me back my room or we'll be calling this building the Hick Dumbass Library from now on, whaddya say?"

Perry was a young farm boy from Smalltown, MO. I don't know exactly where he was from, but I do know he exuded the vibe that most wide eyed country boys did when they came to college as freshmen. No parents, beautiful women, all night parties, cheap beer, and the illusion of free food all combine for one effect.

He wasn't gonna make it. In fact, chances were he wouldn't make it past a single semester. I'd seen it a hundred times, maybe even more. There were a total of 7 of us, who had made it through three years of college, all living together on the same floor, out of 300 beds.

Perry immediately latched onto CJ, one of the illustrious seven who had defied all odds and managed to make it this far despite his affinity for beer, pot, and acid. Perry didn't stand a chance, CJ was the textbook bad influence. A fun guy, a funny guy, but bad news exuded from him more obviously than his flaming red Irish locks.

One night, Perry decided to throw a party. He purchased 3 cases of beer, some pretzels, and invited people over. Only problem was, he didn't have a house. Partying in a dorm room is alot like partying in Anne Franks loft. Imagine the scene, the music is at a tolerably low level, conversation that leaked through the door consisted of 'shhh', 'someone's coming' and 'did you hear that?'

This went on for quite some time, until the rest of us got tired of waiting for the shit to hit the fan and went to bed.

2 am, the shit hits the fan.

We're all blasted out of our beds by the pounding sounds of what can only be Perry's stereo. The initial assessment being that the beer had finally kicked in, and they were going to fight for their right to party. The illustrious 7, minus CJ file into the hallway to watch the fireworks. After all, these are the experiences which mold our lives, right? Campus police arrive within 5 minutes, ask us what's going on. Hell, we don't know, we were sleeping, you're the police, you tell us? The lead cop raises his fist at the door.

POUND POUN.....CRASH!!!

On a knock and a half, the door fell off it's hinges and into the room beyond, revealing Perry, naked, unconscious, and buried beneath a pile of 96 beercans beneath the rumbling apparatus that was his hi-fidelity system.

He finally got kicked out when he decided to write himself forever into the annals of Dorm Rules history.

My senior year, there was a rule in the dormitory book that stated:

Students are not allowed to Bar-B-Cue in the dormitory bathrooms.

Note to the LAPD...

2005-06-14T10:12:00.000-07:00

The next time you go to arrest a rich celebrity for molesting a child, or murdering his wife, do us all a favor and just shoot him dead. Get a couple of co-workers to corroborate your story that he was resisting arrest, and we'll all line up to kiss your ass and thank you.

Whatever keeps it off the news for months on end, let Greta Van Sustern pull her fangs off the still pulsing neck of society and go look for a real job. She can take Geraldo and Star Jones with her for all I care, and maybe then society can have some recuperation time to replenish the blood these shameless, soulless lampreys leech from us daily.

I honestly never gave one shit what the verdict was for Mike. I was pretty sure it was going to turn out this way anyway. It's all right there, historically, OJ, that old bastard that played Beretta, now Mike. It seems if you kill someone in California, you get to walk. If you molest children, you get to walk. If you don't think it's so, anyone heard anything lately about R. Kelly? I guess that was a case even the district attorney of L.A. couldn't fuck up, so they just had to let it go, huh?

Yeah, you can kill people, and rape kids if you got the cash for it, but whatever you do, don't get mixed up in drugs. No, we can't have that, drugs are so 1980 that you're ass will go straight to jail for a fashion violation.

I'm so glad I don't live in California. Bring the king of pop to Kansas and have that trial. It would have been over in a week.

Ready the Doghouse Boys...the Monkey is Comin' in Hot!

2005-06-13T13:58:00.000-07:00

As requested, my side of the bathroom debacle:

In any retelling of an event, there are three sides. My side, your side, and somewhere in the middle lies the objective truth.

The whole problem became evident with the first few showers that were taken in the main bathroom. It was simple, when anyone used the shower, a puddle formed on the garage floor. Now, I’m not the handiest man on the planet. In fact, if you wanted to rank me among all men on the planet based on handiness, you’d waste less time starting at the bottom and working your way up. It’s that bad.

I may not be Bob Vila, but I do possess sufficient powers of deductive reasoning to realize that the puddle of water in the garage is coming from the shower. A cursory, non-invasive, and unskilled inspection of the shower reveals several tiles along the bottom near the tub missing grout. Not just a little grout, missing grout all together. Sans grout, these tiles are. The inexperienced cogs that constitute the ‘home improvement’ section of my brain begin to rotate in rusty, creaking unison, and from them emerges the hypothesis:

“Oh, that’s bad.”

Yes, that’s bad indeed. So I tell the wife the issue, and the temporary solution seems simple enough. Take baths, don’t shower in this bathroom, and I’ll get it fixed when I get the money.

That was 8 months ago. One of Lisa’s most endearing qualities is her persistence. Many people find this quality annoying in people, but it’s a necessity in my life, because I am very forgetful. Combined with my world class skills of procrastination she’s fully aware that the bathroom could possibly sit like that for a decade. So, like the repetitive reminder that she is, the long road to repair starts in October.

“We should change the grout in the bathroom.”
“I really don’t like the sliding glass door thingy, can we remove it and put in a shower curtain?”
“What do you have to do to change the grout in the bathroom?”

Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera..

Saturday, June 11:

The magic reminder number is reached, and that number is four hundred, three score, and nine. 469 requests, give or take a thousand, and here comes the reason for my procrastination.

I’m not all that handy, we know that now. But something I am aware of, is that sheetrock doesn’t hold up well to water. In fact, they might as well make the shit out of alka-seltzer, because they both withstand being wet with the same durability. If water is behind the tile, then it’s in the sheetrock, and if it’s in the sheetrock, the sheetrock is gone. Therefore, with no sheetrock to mount tile to, grout isn’t going to do a goddamned thing. The only solution will be to rip out the rotten shower wall and replace the tile, and if I’m going to do that, I may as well replace it all.

Lisa came home with her new shower rod and curtain, and looked as if I’d pooped in her Post Toasties when I had the bathroom about ½ wrecked. I showed her the gaping hole where the sheetrock was supposed to be:
“Where did it go”
“Down the drain probably, it’ll all have to come out”

Initally, she was dejected. Defeated. Her inept husband had torn apart her bathroom, and was milling about the house muttering words that had never left his lips. Words like sheetrock, and tile, and trowel, and grout, and valve must have scared the shit out of her, because when I asked her what kind of tile she wanted:

“Just the same white tile we have in there now”
“What?! Are you kidding? That sucks! Look, if we’re going to do this, let’s do it, and not slap something together as a temporary fix that we’ll just have to tear down later. I tell you what, why don’t you come with me to Home Depot tomorrow, and we’ll just look to see what’s available, what do you think?”
“Ok….”

12 hours later, we’re standing in the Home Depot aisle, and she’s tiptoeing about like she’s in a minefield. I hold up a tile, an 8x12 tile, a flagrant departure from the 4x4 white humdrum tile we have in there now. It’s got a pattern in the middle of it that I’m reasonably sure she’ll hate. I did it on purpose, and you’ll see why.

I was relying on her reflexive ‘no’ reaction to anything I suggest. It’s the type of thing that is so reliable you can take it to the bank. When it comes to decoration, I can elicit a ‘no’ reaction faster than Billy the Kid could draw a Colt.

“No.”

I think somewhere I heard a starters pistol go off. Somewhere, I heard someone say “Aaaaand they’re off!” Because at that point, the flood gates were open, and the chase for our new bathroom had begun.

We’re going with beige 8x12, and a caramel looking 4x4 interior I think. I’m also aware that I awoke the demon, and fully expect the scheme to change at least a dozen times.

Decisions...decisions...

2005-06-13T07:13:00.000-07:00

Ok so I'm sitting here at work. Occasionally I refresh my blog, and it occurs to me that during the normal course of the day my hit counter is climbing. I know it's climbing because people are hitting the site. But on a workday? Don't you guys have anything to do?

LOL

I've neglected you this weekend haven't I?

I'll put up a more substantial post when I get home, but help me out here guys, would you rather read:

1) My side of the bathroom renovation story
2) The 'He Said' side of the idea of marriage
3) One of my many college stories (which usually ends in humiliation, and a lesson had by all)

The bright side of being poor...

2005-06-11T12:26:00.000-07:00

You know what I don’t get?

Why in the hell do sinfully rich middle aged men lose their goddamned minds? What possesses a man with a net worth with more zeros in it than the attendance roster at my 10 year high school reunion to do something like scale Mount Everest? What kind of bullshit ‘I own everything’ malaise takes over and makes that guy think:
“What I need to do is circumnavigate the Earth in a hot air balloon”?

There must be some sort of filthy rich threshold you have to cross before you’re even qualified to think shit like this. Maybe it’s an overdose of whatever chemical they use in money ink that trips some recessive ‘do some crazy shit’ hormone in the brain.

Let me explain something. People die on Everest all the time. In fact, I don’t know raw statistics, but I bet more people die on Everest than die in Ferrari accidents on Hollywood Boulevard, pool lounging martini incidents, and Park Avenue shopping catastrophes combined. Even worse than that, what do you think happens when you die on Everest? Do you think Shao Ping, your Shirpa guide is going to haul your carcass back down the mountain? Hell no, when it comes to the decision between fat rich balding white man with bulging wallet and cozy warm tent, the tent is going to win every time. The only thing related to you making the trip back down the mountain under those circumstances is the wallet, and even that’s dependent on whether Shao can fit the bankroll in his shoe or not.

Just for sake of argument, let’s say Fat Rich Guy III makes it to the top. RFG3 has done it, scaled Mt. Everest and lived to tell the tale. He has great pictures to hang in his office between the fully stuffed Bear he tells people he killed in single combat during a 20 man wilderness expedition in the uncharted Yukon, and the fossilized, tooth encrusted jawbone of a great white shark he claims ate his 40 foot schooner off the coast of Madagascar. The part he’s probably leaving out is that he lost 3 toes and 2 fingers to frostbite, and has forbidden anyone to tell the tale of how he thought he was a 12 year old girl named Nancy for about 8 hours while enjoying the delusional side effects of altitude sickness. I’m sure he probably made everyone sign a non-discloser agreement:

“Under no circumstances will any information be given to any outside parties regarding moments of delusion experiencedby RFG3 during the course of this expedition, under penalty of something really terrible revolving around the fact that RFG3 is rich and could buy and sell your entire genetic history out of his petty cash fund.”

Money can’t replace that shit. Toes, fingers, the hauntingly hazy memory that one of the Shirpas may have molested you during your ‘Nancy’ period, none of these things are fixable with cash. Not to mention being left forever frozen like a forgotten pot roast in the bottom of a trailer park deep freeze as an eternal testament to other rich fucks that you didn’t make it.

Luckily, I'm going to die in thick air where people will find me and put me in the dirt where I belong. I guess that's one of the few benefits I get to enjoy as a poor person over RFG3, slowly devoured over time by vermin and worms rather than serving as my own tombstone somewhere in the God forsaken Himalayas.

Paris Hilton is probably this degree of rich. Why doesn’t FOX put her in a bikini, leash her to a Shirpa, and send her up the mountain to be lost forever? That’d be a shame, huh? But, it would be a reality show worth watching.

"What do you mean there's no Starbucks...pah...whatever!!"

What does Emily Post know about public restrooms anyway?

2005-06-10T13:57:00.000-07:00

In keeping with the bodily functions theme that seems to have pervaded my blog recently, I present the datamonkey guide to the mens room.

There exists, believe it or not, such as thing as men's room etiquette.

Not so much in our own homes, because it is that particular room in the house that every man considers his fortress of solitude. In public, however, there is an unspoken understanding that although the entire room may not by my fortress of solitude, the boundaries indicated by this prefabricated, foam filled aluminum wall exist to delineate the temporary extent of my fortress of solitude at the moment.

When using the public men's room, it is paramount to your safety to remember that there are rules.

Rule number 1: No talking. At all. If I don't know you, this is not the place to introduce yourself, ask me questions, compare shoes, bum smokes, ask for a match, or for that matter shake my hand. That also includes no singing, no whistling, and no goddamned humming. Once the entry door is behind me, and the environment is no longer composed of uniform white tile, we'll talk all you want, but right here, right now, no.

Rule number 2: Eyes front. The mens room is a time tested layout built for speed and efficiency, unfortunately, it wasn't exactly built with privacy in mind. A well built mens room has at least three urinals. My urinal, your urinal, and the 'I'm not gay' urinal which seperates your urinal from my urinal. Proper mens room etiquette dictates that you do your business with your eyes either facing forward at the wall (high class mens room post the daily sports section here in an act of genius) or facing down for optimum targeting efficiency.

Rule number 3: It is your responsibility to check the stall you are about to enter for toilet paper before you enter it. Because once you claim that stall, it's yours for better or for worse. If you find yourself out of paper, too bad so sad, because violating rule number 1 will not induce me to rescue you from your own bad judgement.

Rule number 4: Never, under any circumstances, leave your stall while someone else is in the mens room. Chances are, whatever you ate that made you smell that way has sent any pain in the ass innocent bystanders fleeing like japanese militia from godzilla, but your window of opportunity is brief, at best. It's important to keep in mind that men don't herd to the restroom like women do, so you are afforded at least 3 minutes between door swings to make good your escape. Besides that, people are keen to guess who died in the bathroom based on the shoes. The only reason to ever violate this rule, is if someone else sits in another stall, then it is your duty to leave immediately so that you a) don't have to listen to the inner trumpetings of a complete stranger and b) can blame that horrid smell on someone else.

Rule number 5: Wash your hands. Even if you didn't piss on yourself, it's only polite and it really shames everyone else in the room who was going to bolt without doing it. If you don't believe me, next time you are in there, take notice of how many people don't wash their hands when they are done. The number increases significantly if you are seen washing your hands, because nobody wants to be known as the nasty fucker who doesn't wash in the office. But he's there, and he not only wears the overalls, he wears the armani suit too. One of my favorite things to do, is walk outof the bathroom having not washed, wait till someone follows me who didn't wash as well, then go "oh, i forgot to wash" and go back in. They'll usually follow because they no longer have the blackmail material on you and they're pretty sure you're going to tell on them.

Could it be?

2005-06-10T06:04:00.000-07:00

Cue trumpets...
Cue doves....
No, no, hold the champagne for now, we don't want to go jinxing it now do we.

The NHL and NHLPA FINALLY decided on a salary cap system linked to revenue. It was the big obstacle in getting the CBA done, and at this point, it's all finer points.

Things are looking up, finally, in the 'will there be hockey next year' arena. And apparently, there's going to be a shit-ton more scoring as they've bored out the net, shrunk the goalie pads, gotten rid of the red line, and eliminated ties as a possibility.

Now if THAT doesn't brighten Jerk's day, nothin' will.

Pull my finger!

2005-06-09T15:54:00.000-07:00

I wonder how many other people go through unnecessary discomfort at work. If you really think about it, half of your waking hours are spent at work. We all have certain...things..that need to be addressed throughout our waking hours to which we don't lend a second thought. Yet, when we are at work, surrounded by our professional peers, we do not indulge these urges.

Why is that? Why do we subject our loved ones to our comfortability and spare those who are but mere acquaintances?

I know, get to the point. Ok so here it is.

For years I would eschew my own comfort, and spend my work time doubled over in pain, impeding natures process stemming the tide so to speak. I simply would not fart at work. How mortifying, my thinking was, to fart at work. Everyone will know it's you, and you'll be forever known as the gassy guy in cubicle A34. You'll forever be passed over for promotion, looked down upon by your superiors, and ostracized by your peers.

"Hey, we're all goin for beers later, don't tell assmaster gasblaster though, we'd like to have a GOOD time."

Not anymore. No sir, no ma'am, these days I don't hesitate to relieve any discomfort I may be experiencing due to vapor pressure. It's been a personal policy of mine for about the last 4 years. The results have been amazing. No more do I squirm in my seat, doubled over trying to deal with critical mass. It's not all that hard to get away with it since I have an office, but I've been lucky in that noone has entered my office immediately following an 'episode'.

It was a bit trickier when I was placed in the half-cubicle oar slave rows inhabited by customer service personnel. Timing is everything in that environment. It's important to let fly during periods of high activity, when noises can be easily attributed to other environmental factors. When large numbers of people are busy rowing at ramming speed for Caesar, quite a few things go unnoticed, but smell is not one of them, because as long as I'm being incriminatingly honest, a good fart is seldom scentless. That is where the time honored tradition taught to me by my father at a very young age came into play. The key, when you've just floated a real eye waterer is to do the honorable thing.

Blame the guy who isn't looking at you.

It sounds really stupid but it works. There is a technique to it though, I mean, you can't just stand up, point and exclaim "IT WAS HIM! I HEARD IT! IT WAS HIM! LEPER! OUTCAST! UNCLEAN!". No, the key lies in discretion. This is the thing that your father knew, as passed on by his father before him, and his father before him, throughout your gas passing lineage. A simple nod and a knowing look is all it takes, and you'll find that nobody has the nerve to announce it publicly, and you will have not only gotten away with the vile act, but labeled someone else the dispenser of foul air for all time to come.

In case you're wondering my strategy the day someone walks into my office right after I've launched one and says 'My God what is that SMELL?', it's not a problem.

unsuspecting co-worker: 'My God what is that SMELL?'
Me: 'Oh my God, you smell it too? The director was just in here, and I thought I heard it, but now I definately smell it. Oh God, what does his wife feed him anyway? We should write a letter asking what in the hell we ever did to HER!'
unsuspecting co-worker: '...'

Who's going to barge into the directors office and accuse him of crappin' his pants in my office? Nobody!

Plus, revenge will be mine!

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em

2005-06-09T13:38:00.000-07:00

I’m sure, if I were to take a poll, anyone that reads the septic spill that is my blog would testify in the affirmative to the following:

Work, like life, is not fair, and some people reap the benefits of favoritism more so than others.

Favoritism occurs for a myriad of reasons. The favorite is better looking, or has a better sense of humor, or is an expert Olympic class ass-kisser, or goes to church with the boss, etc..

I found myself in this situation quite some time ago. I know what you’re thinking. Nah, datamonkey, you’re exaggerating, you’re a man in a working man’s world, you have everything going for you. I thought that too. Well, the exaggerating part anyway, I don’t assume simply because I’m a man that I’m entitled to anything more than anyone else.

I also don’t assume that I’m entitled to any less than anyone either.

In the cubicle across from me sits RH. RH is our web programmer. Fully versed in ASP and ASP.NET, with a masters degree in English, RH is intelligent, and wholly qualified for that position. In no way would I take away from RH’s expertise and ability, as RH has proven it time and time again when needed, and has never hesitated to help me anytime I’ve ever needed it.

RH is also an attractive lady. In addition to being intelligent and attractive, she is also very witty and personable. She’s a triple threat.

In a nutshell, whatever RH wants, she typically gets, within reason. It’s a 180 degree shift from managements philosophy regarding my needs, which can be summed up under the unwritten ‘You’ll get nothing and like it’ policy.

For the past 3 years, I’ve been begging and pleading for SQL Server training. All of my requests are met with a succinct and definite ‘No’, despite the fact that I took it upon myself to learn everything I know about the software with no help from the company, at no cost to the company whatsoever. However, I found myself at a point where I could really learn no more without further guidance, or a test system which nobody cared about when I blew it to bits, neither of which was I likely to receive. A couple of months ago RH was assigned to three days of said training without even asking. After registering for said training, she decided she would rather attend a web conference in Orlando, FL than the SQL training.

Without even blinking an eye she was bound for Florida.

I know what you’re thinking….and…I KNOW!!

This is just one example, among several that I chose to share. In the past, I would get really bitter about these situations. Check that. I’d get fucking pissed off. But RH and I are really close friends, so I decided to talk to her about it rather than resent her for it. After all, it wasn’t her fault, right? Of course, she denied that it ever happened at first, so I took it upon myself to point it out to her every time it occurred. After a couple of weeks, she began to notice what I was talking about, and began to get pissed too.

So we put our heads together and developed a strategy.

Now she is my long legged, blonde secret weapon, a corporate femme fatale at my disposal to prey upon the lecherous instincts of the good old boy network. She is my ‘No.’ assassin. That’s right, now, when I want something, I’ll ask for it. When I get the expected negative response, I simply send in the blonde to parade her dazzling self in front of the corporate pigs. A few minutes, a flash of a smile, and I usually have what I need, with no questions asked.

Two weeks ago, I went into the boss's office.

"Hey man, I'm dying for chocolate, do you mind if I run to the store and pick us up some?"
"No, we're too busy."
"Ahh, I see"
As I walked out, I stopped by the assassin's cube
"It's a no-go, no candy for us, perhaps YOU should ask."

5 minutes later

"Mr. Boss, could we go get candy please. I could really use some chocolate about now, I don't know about you"

14 seconds later, the 'No' assassin emerged from the office not only with the go-ahead to procure confectionaries, but with 20 bucks from the boss to do it with.

See what I mean, unbelievable.

The moral of the story is, when you find yourself in this situation, remember the old adage.

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

Or in the very least, bend them to your will and have them do your bidding.

How fantasies die...

2005-06-08T16:25:00.000-07:00

Quite some time ago, during my youth, I was like most men in that I had a fantasy. No, I didn't wish I was Iron Man, I still have that fantasy, I'm talking about sexual fantasy. You know, the kind of fantasy that, as a man, you normally get asked about in the deep recesses of night while laying next to the woman you love.

"So, you never answered my question"
"What question? Oh, the fantasy thing, well, I guess if I had a bedroom fantasy it would involved being with two women at the same time."

Not the most unique fantasy on the planet, in fact, I'm pretty sure every man has at least thought those words. I'm pretty sure the vast majority have muttered them too.

Over the years I've given man's most shared fantasy much thought. Why would a man want an additional woman, given the fact that most of us can barely keep one woman satisfied? What is the obsession with seeing two women rubbing naked all over each other? If there is any other activity on the planet, apart from child birth, that makes you feel more useless as a man, I'd like to hear it, because I can't think of any. Bringing an additional woman to bed is like installing a second television directly opposite the one you have in the living room, sure it's cool, but eventually the whiplash is going to get you.

None of my meditations upon the subject yielded any insight into the mystery. I still found it to be something I wanted to do, despite the fact that it would likely obliterate any chance I had at a normal relationship.

It's during this moment that I began to look at the enigma from a different perspective.

What if she said to you "I want to be with you and another man"?

A heebie jeebie induced shudder rocketed through my body, starting at my nose, and recoiling off my toes at the speed of revulsion. Whatever mechanism it is that pumps the 'open all night' sexual juices that all men have to endure finally did the unthinkable.

It quit.

For three whole days it quit while I frantically immersed myself mind body and soul into all manner of porn to kick start the mechanism until finally the engines started again. The strike was over, and everything was back to normal. Except for the fact that the gnawing fantasy was gone for good. Like an excised tonsil, there was just a gap there where the incision had occurred.

Eulogy for Romance...R.I.P

2005-06-06T18:51:00.000-07:00

It has crumbled and collapsed to the ground. Gone forever are the winsome days of blossoming love and wide eyed infatuation. What fantastic days they were, too. Days filled with exchanged flirtations, suggestive glances met and returned across crowded rooms. Our cute and simple laughter carried on whispered giggles that nobody else in the world could ever overhear, much less decipher. Gone are these things, and with them the dizzying vertigo of anticipation that accompanies every waking, and every evening homecoming.

Dead as Caesar, and by her own hand. Well, maybe not her hand, a bit lower than that.

That's right, the last bastion of polite consideration upon which the culmination of our entire romantic history was hung has fallen.

It was on the back patio, approximately 4 hours ago, that the romance officially died.

She farted. She farted in front of me for the first time ever. Not only did she fart, but her eyes lit up like a kid who just unwrapped his first game console at christmas. They lit up like OJ Simpson's when he learned he was a free man. The last gasp of the metaphysical entity that was escaped not from her heart, but rather from her ass.

She's always made a big deal of it, and has always said 'I don't want to fart in front of you, because that just means the romance is finally dead.'.

Rest in Peace, romance of my life, I shall miss thee...

I'm no hero...mostly because I'm evil

2005-06-05T13:21:00.000-07:00

It's true, today it was established that I'm no hero.

Every relationship needs the 'nasty bug killer', we all know that. In our relationship, I am the nasty bug terminator. Spiders, ants, junebugs, grasshoppers, daddy long legs, you name it, I've put it down with extreme prejudice. The benefit of being the nasty bug killer is that in certain situations, you possess ALL of the power. It is during summer that the nasty bug killer reigns supreme as the executioner of the estate, with life or death just a rolled up magazine away.

Today, I demonstrated a flagrant display of that power.

Lisa and I were out smoking on the back deck. Discussing things that husbands and wives discuss as the forever clause in their marriage ticks slowly away to infinity, when she is beseiged by a flying geelyhopper. I have no idea what kind of bug it was, but I saw no pronounced stinger, no dripping venomous fangs, no glistening mandibles with which the creature can skeletonize a cow in seconds, hell the critter didn't even have hair. Surmise to say, on the scale of terrifying insects it ranked down there with the insidious roley poley. While making it's lazy arc of flight, Lis is flailing about like it wears the face of Satan himself, eventually turning away from the creature.

Big mistake.

"Isitonme isitonme getitoff getitoff eeeeeeek" She screams, her eyes slammed shut in her textbook i-can't-see-you-you-can't-see-me defense.

Meanwhile, the bug is on the back of her chair, doing its buggy thing which apparently consists of scaring the shit out of my wife, and she has now lost track of where it went. If there's one thing the nasty bug killer knows, it's never lose track of your enemy.

Amateur.

But, I can't stop laughing. The fact that everytime Lis takes a peek at the bug, it takes flight again buzzing around her is only sending me into deeper fits of laughter.

Finally, the bug leaves to live another day as his gift for being my entertainment for the moment, when my wife says the following:

"Oh, thanks! Gee, my fuckin' hero!"

In my own defense, had it been an insect of war, I'd have been all over it like an A-10 warthog on an outdated Russian tank. But the fact that it was a harmless lightning bug, it served it's purpose in affirming my position of power in this, the height of bug season.

So take heart bug-killers, for this is your season to shine, and realize that the power you wield is not just over our 6-8 legged enemy, but to those for whose defense you are charged. These are heady days, breathe deep....for that is the smell of victory!

As a side note, I'm considering taking up a living junebug collection to pull me through the winter in those moments where she gets all uppity.

"You could help me clean up a bit, I mean, it's not like you do anything around here"
-Flick.....buzz buzzzzzz buzzz buzzzzzz
"GETITOFFMEGETITOFFMEGETITOFFME"

heh heh heh...

The Datamonkey Bachelor

2005-06-04T07:45:00.000-07:00

So Lisa and her friend HR have this running joke, right? Supposedly, in the event that Lisa dies, HR is supposed to marry me and take care of me in my old age. I don't know how they came up with this, but I find it amusing that they think I will not have any say in the matter. I also find it amusing that they assume HR wins by default.

Nobody wins by default in.....

The DATAMONKEY Bachelor..

Oh, but wait, it's not going to be like that normal sissy bachelor show, with exotic dates and formal wear, and limousines, and lear jets, and big sparkly rocks. No, no, DMB was conceived on the notion that all that crap is fine and dandy when it comes to wooing a woman, but it really does nothing to test her wifely capabilities. Those skills are better tested on something like fear factor, or nanny 911. But even those don't have quite the competitive format for which I am looking.

So I decided on the domestic olympics.

A series of competitions involving laundry, cooking, housecleaning, and crisis resolution. I considered an obstacle course, but I figured any woman who could successfully navigate an obstacle course would most likely be a flight risk and tossed the idea.

Anyway, there will be the 20 , 40, and 80 lb laundry competition. Results will be graded on punctuality, freshness, and softness. Following the first day of 20 lb laundry, will be the breakfast relay, the idea for which is directly stolen from iron chef.

"Ok, ladies, you have 12 eggs, 3 strips of bacon, a quarter inch of milk, four potatoes, and a single slice of cheese. GO!!"

Following the breakfast relay will be the 30 yard vaccuum dash, wherein random objects will be thrown into the carpet in the form of dimes, string, chips, pins, and small bits of broken glass. I will sit in my easy chair watching tv as a resting obstacle (it's really what I do best). Scores will be tallied based on cleanliness, and overall program interruption.

The 30 yard vaccum dash will be followed by a short break, in which all contestant will engage in a round of "Have you seen my keys?". Bonus points will be awarded to the contestant who produces said keys.

After the break, we will enter the endurance part of the competition with a 40 lb laundry leg, an 80 lb laundry leg, and the Dinner/Supper cookoff jamboree. This is like the iron man part of the competition, so I expect quite a few contestants to drop like flies. Again, dinner will be conducted as seen on iron chef

"Ladies, your ingredients for dinner are presented before you; one can of cream of mushroom soup, a sleeve of crackers, 1 pound of hamburger, .82 lb of grated cheese (partially eaten from a full bag), seasoned salt, mushrooms, rice,a leftover pork chop, and if you didn't use your milk in the breakfast competition you get to use that as a bonus. Go!"

I figure if I have my brother stagger in and cause a scene in the middle of that, that could adequately fill any crisis resolution portion of the competition nicely. The contestant will be scored on speed, proficiency, and originality in dealing with my drunken brother.

Default indeed. Bahahaha. I doubt she makes it through breakfast.

A new religion

2005-05-31T18:48:00.000-07:00

Came up with this at work today while I was avoiding being productive.

Every day is the sabbath. As part of the new religion, it will be heresy to work on the sabbath. Heretics will be booted from the protective umbrella of the religion, and sent to suffer under the oppressive yoke of one of the other more guilt-ridden religions.

Every day is a religious holiday. Take today, for instance, how many May 31st's are there this year. That's right, just one, so why not celebrate it like the more priveleged days like December 25th or January 1st? Besides, the weather on May 31st is much nicer anyway.

Corporate will be forced to recognize my new religion under their politically correct 'diversity acceptance' policy, and therefore I will earn time and a half holiday rate for not working on the sabbath.

Mwahaha...haha....hahaha....ha

--The previous post was an exercise in levity. Humor, if you will, and not meant to be construed as a manifesto, covenant, cabal, or dogma. The author relieves himself of all responsibility regarding anyone who follows such a silly idea, and he knows he can get away with it because he sees signs on the backs of dumptrucks relieving them of financial responsibility for damaged windshields caused by falling rocks. If you have complaints about the previous post, please direct them to our lord Jesus, and he will see fit that I am punished accordingly, however, I happen to know that Big J has a sense of humor, and will likely suggest you get bent and leave him alone until you have some real problems like those poor souls over in the middle east.

It's a fine line what seperates porn and charity..

2005-05-31T14:33:00.000-07:00

Saturday, the wife and I went for a day out of the house. We ate, shopped, and bought groceries. All was well until …

Pulling out of the parking lot of the grocery store, my trunk full of groceries, I turn the corner to take the back road home, when right there in front of us stood a pair of teenage cheerleaders on the corner. The half shirts they wore over their young, supple upper bodies only accentuated the single word they each had scribed on their perfectly flat, youthful tummies:

CAR
WASH

“If you pull in there, I’ll SO kick your ass” comes the daydream jarring burst of reality from the passenger seat.

“But, honey…they need money to go to….well go somewhere I’m sure..”

“Keep Driving”

“You’re right, I should come back without you in the car.”

We had a laugh at the prospect of a man going through one of those fundraising carwashes with his obviously disapproving wife in the passenger seat. Wouldn’t that be a hilarious sight? Man in the driver’s seat gawking mouth agape next to his wife who looks like she just swallowed a turd.

We also both agreed that nobody goes to a high school charity car wash for the car wash. Except maybe the parents, but every man in that line is there for one reason. Isn’t that sick? Let me get this straight, it’s illegal to download pictures of these girls in wet t-shirts on the internet, but I can pay 5 bucks for a carwash and have them mere inches from my person?

That just doesn’t seem right. I guess it’s all about intent, so obviously, if you want to show scantily clad, soaking wet 15 year old cheerleaders, you’d best be giving the money to our schools, otherwise, you’re just engaging in child pornography.

I’m sure it won’t be long before the moral police here in the buckle of the bible belt take control of the situation and force them to perform their charity work in beekeeper outfits a full 8 feet from the car. I’m sure they’ll find a good use for the 15 dollars they’ll make on those car washes from there on. I can see the marquee now:

AMISH CAR WASH – 5.00
I feel safe picking on the Amish, because they don’t have electricity and therefore cannot find me to complain.

FINALLY!!!

2005-05-31T07:50:00.000-07:00

For those of you who are curious...it's done.

Hopefully Sandor isn't dead, and Jon becomes a badass.

Tag, I'm it...and who's the wiseguy that called no tagbacks?

2005-05-29T18:35:00.000-07:00

Thanks Lis, really. You will pay. Why couldn't I get the music tag?

Total number of books I've owned..

Having a mind like a kray supercomputer (oversized and outdated) I can honestly say with a .0000534823% measure of accuracy that I have owned 683 books in my lifetime. Many of these are not simply leisure time reading materials, and many I have not read. I simply collect them to further the illusion that I am 'bookish'.

The Last Book I Bought..

This seems a bit of a dramatic question, doesn't it? As if stating that it was the last book I will ever buy. I think by answering it, I am telling the powers that be that it's time for me to go.

Oh....wait. Ok, got it, I've just received word that the question has been amended to 'what was your most recent book purchase'.

I'm such a geek. Ok the last 'reading' book I bought was the Da Vinci Code, along with Foucault's Pendulum. I've mostly finished Da Vinci Code, and haven't even cracked Pendulum. Umberto Eco takes some preliminary exercising before attempting.

I'm a gamer geek. There, I said it. Remember in the 80's when people were running around screaming 'that's the devil's game'? Well, I was one of those kids that hid out like Anne Frank in basements saving maidens and slaying dragons deep in the wells of my imagination. Now, 21 years later, I still play every week in my basement now, and to date, we have yet to sacrifice anyone to any dark powers to fulfill any prophecy, gain more power, or learn winning lottery numbers.

We're pacing ourselves.

Anyway, that being said, the last printed volume I bought was the new edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

The Last Book I Read..

See previously attached addendum regarding book purchase and fatality. The Da Vinci Code was the last book I read. I found it interesting, but troubling in that people began to look upon this book as both blasphemous, and as a new type of gospel. It's a work of fiction, folks, lighten up. It's not meant to be a criticism of the bible, it's a story they're going to make a movie from and Dan Brown will be chuckling at the 'believers' all the way to the bank while he wallows like a sow in tubs full of money. I hear Tom Hanks is gonna be in it, if that gives you any idea as to the Titanic-like gravity of it.

Five books that mean alot to me...

Tough to choose, so how about 5 books that had an impact on my life..

1. Jaws
The first real book I ever read at the age of seven. I still have my original, now yellow paged and dog eared copy. I know, it isn't war and peace, but there was quite a lack of pictures and popups in it for my seven year old mind to get around. It was at this age that I did alot of research into sharks, reading all I could get my hands on.

2. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Players Handbook
Sitting at the soda counter at Branum's Pharmacy innocently sipping away at my quarter soda, my friend BN produced this tome and proceeded to lure me to the dark side. I often wonder what direction my life may have taken had I not played this game, but I have no doubt I would be worse off. While other kids in high school were out getting drunk, impregnating cheerleaders, and dying in horrible car crashes, I was safely tucked away in various basements crunching numbers, and rolling dice. As a result, I built an understanding of mathematics far beyond most of my other classmates anda vocabulary to match. How many 16 year olds can spell trebuchet let alone tell you what one is?

3. Fight Club
Read at a time when I was at my lowest. Bereft of personal possession and hot on the heels of my divorce, Fight Club granted me an epiphany. The things you own someday begin to own you. From there, I realized there is nothing I cannot accomplish, nothing I cannot do, it's all a simple matter of will and determination.

4. The Lord of the Rings
Oh, I'm sure D&D had alot to do with this one, but by age 15 I didn't much care. I recall watching The Hobbit cartoon when I was about 9, and a solid year of learning a complex and fascinating game prompted me to delve into the genre headfirst. It is the series by which all fantasy literature is compared, and the series to which they all fall a bit short. Most fantasy literature today is very derivative of these books, and for good reason. The movies were great, but Arwen is really just a bit character.

5. SQL for Dummies
I know, I know, boring boring boring Will Robinson, but this is the book that really kicked off my career in IT. Scary, isn't it. I had previously taken some programming courses, and a database management course. My company was hiring a data steward position and needed someone versed in SQL and willing to work for peanuts. So I read up on the language, took the test, and passed. Today I am an accomplished SQL programmer and Database Administrator and worked my way out of the pit known as customer service. In the fall, I begin taking additional coursework to expand my knowledge base to include .net, html, xml and possibly oracle RDBMS.

Green Eggs and Blog

2005-05-28T17:59:00.000-07:00

And now for something really fun
Here’s 10 things I’ve never done

Tagged I was by Lisa's meme
So I thought I'd pick a theme

I’ve not had sex, not everywhere
Neither here, nor even there
A bakers dozen for all to see
A bakers dozen if you subtract three

I’ve not had sex with a goat
Or ever made it on a boat

I’ve not had sex within a car
Nor have I done it in a bar

Never in or on a plane
Never, ever on a train

I’ve never tried ménage a` trios
Or banged a chick on a see-saw

Not one time ever in a pool
Not even once during high school

These were 10 things I’ve never done
But maybe, just maybe, I’ll get to do one.

Excuse me, as I clear my throat,
Which one of you jokers brought the goat?

T minus 6 hours until Lisa returns..

2005-05-26T16:18:00.000-07:00

I wonder if I'll even be acknowledged as she beats feet to her blog.
I wonder if I'll be acknowledged when she reads about the doghouse.
I have no doubt I'll be acknowledged when she learns I've divulged the great wall of no.

They better get that cloaking device fixed on the doghouse....I'm probably gonna need it.

5 more people who need to be slapped...

2005-05-26T14:24:00.000-07:00

1. Jim Rome: If you've ever listened to, or even worse, watched this guy, you know exactly what I'm talking about. For those of you who haven't, picture this: The perennial second string football playing douche-bag who made smartass comments to cover up the fact that he really sucked as a player. This guy 'matured' from that, into a goatee wearing, hair gel abusing, hip-hop sports analyst wanna-be who can't go a single show without using words like 'dome' and 'grill'. If first impressions are predicated on outward appearance, this guy looks like the type who 'does' squash, requests that you 'give him a pound' anytime he accidentally formulates a single nugget of wisdom, and worries more about his hair than any woman I've ever met.

2. Paris Hilton: Picking on Paris Hilton is so easy, I equate the exercise to tipping cows. Sure it's fun, but you don't want anyone knowing you've done it. But fuck it, it's my turn. This chick is the poster child for misplaced celebrity. Emerging sticky and confused from the correct vagina is NOT a stepping stone to stardom. Unless the footage is captured in nightvision and sold on the internet apparently. Her entire career is predicated on her stupidity, and that irritates me to no end. What's even worse, is about the time people start to forget about her, she siphons more fame out of the correct hose and keeps on going. She even gave new meaning to bottom feeding when she boned Fred Durst.

3. Michael Jackson: Go away already. Please. I'm so sick of reading about this nutjob I could fucking scream. I tell you what, if I buy 'Thriller' one more time, and everyone else does too, will you finally go the fuck away? He had Chris Tucker on the stand as a character witness. The same Chris Tucker who made his name being the stoner comic who landed the part in Friday. The same Chris Tucker who found Jesus (I wasn't aware we'd lost him) and latched onto Jackie Chan for awhile. Yeah, he's a qualified character witness. He's the perfect capper to the defense's case after Culkin's testimony. I'm surprised the judge didn't ask him 'Who are you again?'

4. Donald Trump: I was much happier when he was bankrupt and distraught after Ivana took him for everything he had, including the color blue. Suddenly, like an ugly blind date, not only is he back, but he's back on tv on a weekly basis referring to himself as The Donald, and insisting that everyone else does as well. In his leather upholstered, high backed executive chair, he sits like Nero offering the viewing public the benefit of his financial wisdom in the form of 'Ya Fired'. What an asshole, this guy inherited his fortune, then lost it like to a chick with a nice ass. That happens on 50 highway every saturday at a little place called 'the million dollar fantasy ranch', i don't see any of those guys getting their own tv show.

5. Ricky Williams: He quit. No, he's coming back. Wait, no he's not. Oh, yes he is. No, no he isn't. Oh, but wait, yes he is. The stereotypical crybaby jock dumbshit walked out on an 8 million dollar bonus then had the balls to be surprised when the Dolphins wanted it back. For 6 months all I hear on ESPN is how he's coming back or not. Why can't the player we all wanted to see return do that? Who wouldn't have been ecstatic to hear Barry Sanders was coming out of retirement? Answer: Everyone who could give a shit less if this boa wearing fancy lad returns or not. I guess it gets a bit tough to afford the good ganja as a faith healer. I'm sure his teammates will be very forgiving considering the atrocious season they had last year when he left them high and dry because of his drug problem. Take heed Terrell Owens, the NFL doesn't need you, it will chug along quietly and efficiently without your presence.

The space between...

2005-05-26T13:53:00.000-07:00

It's a known fact that when you're married, and share a bed, there is a definitive 'your side' and 'my side' of the bed. The area in between is no mans land, contested territory, the demilitarized zone, if you will.

In our house, this is referred to as 'The Great Wall of NO'.

Painstakingly built over the past few years through the erosion of our respective sides of the bed, the end result, is a hump that runs down the geographic center of the mattress. It's larger counterpart in China was constructed to keep nomadic raiders from plundering the spoils of China, and so too, was the Great Wall of NO constructed to keep my nomadic fingers from plundering Lisa's spoils. Generally, the foundation of the wall is further buttressed using an intricate construction consisting of pillows and cleverly folded covers until she rests behind an impregnable, unnavigable maze of linen that Marco Polo couldn't surmount.

But, the barbarians have struck back. That's right, I've used my time this week when the wall was left unguarded to slowly erode the base structure. Nightly I've parked my carcass directly atop The Great Wall of No, and I believe I've worn it down to a level equal to the rest of the sleeping surface. Boy will she be surprised when she snuggles down with her false sense of security behind her carefully constructed barricade, only to find her space invaded by the ravenous raider hell bent on plundering her booty.

Unfortunately, she knows spouse-fu, so if you see me in the emergency room, be sure to wave.

Oh yeah, that reminds me...

ALERT!! ALERT!! The wife is en route. Repeat. The wife is en route.
Cover all exterior doghouse hatchways!
Engage the cloaking device!
This is not a drill!

Ok, I'm a big man, I'll admit it...I was wrong

2005-05-26T08:53:00.000-07:00

So the country chick won last night, throwing off my circumstantial, crackpot theories about how the new star search is rigged. She won in spite of the glaringly obvious order of winners. She won in spite of the uniqueness obvious in selecting a long haired rocker guy.

Either way I still win because it's finally friggin over, and the show's format doesn't exactly lend itself well to reruns.

Thank God.

FOX should leave the industry of idol manufacture to the professionals over at MTV.

Football jones....

2005-05-25T10:28:00.000-07:00

Pro football season is slowly creeping up on us, and it's that time of year when unexplainable things start to happen all over the league. Ty Law is a man without a team, yet Jerry Rice has managed to make the pilgrimage to Denver.

At least Jerk has another jersey to buy, so he'll be happy about that.

Ricky Williams has firmly entered the running for biggest quitter ever behind Sugar Ray Leonard and Michael Jordan. What's with that guy anyway, first he quits, then he quits quitting, then he quits quits quitting, now he's quitting all of his previous quits and has decided to play. Are ya sure Rick? Do you think maybe his interior linemen might take a bit of pleasure in watching him get knocked around like Peyton Manning his rookie year? I know I would.

"Oh I'm sorry Rick, did that hurt, you shoulda been shuckin and weavin man!"
It's only really dramatic if he spits out a tooth while that is being said.

Football season is going to be fun, Jerk and I are going to be at odds, since he is in Denver and I am in Kansas City and city ordinance dictates that I'm not to take any of his crap. We're all still pretty sore over John Elway's entire career, and look forward to making Denver pay for at least a decade, too bad it probably won't be this year.

I only say that so I don't jinx it. There's been a quiet calm over KC this year, with nobody saying anything about this being the year and all that nonsense. Anyone caught spewing that filth will be dealt with harshly by the committee of jinxes and sentenced to 6 months of wearing a raiders jersey outside during the herd activity known as 'tailgating'.

It's really a death sentence, without all the fancy language.

Tonight's the night..

2005-05-24T19:36:00.000-07:00

Tonight is the final night of American Idol. For this season anyway. Lisa loves the show, and doesn't miss an episode. I, however, would rather have my eardrums blasted out with a waterpic and the orifice filled with caulk than watch the show. I admire her optimism, though, in that she's adamant in her opinion that the show is completely above board, despite my protests to the contrary.

It's rigged. It's gotta be rigged.

First off, the viewer is left to rely on the tabulation of votes by representatives of the show. There is no verification of the results by any outside agency, hell they don't even tell you what kind of numbers you are dealing with until the final episode. Oh, sure, they had that 'wrong number' debacle earlier this year, but it was an error so obvious they HAD to address it and have another show, else people would know the results were predetermined.

What's really funny, is 3/4 of the nation watches this shit, and will roll their eyes when they hear I sometimes watch wrestling.

"That stuff is so fake, why do you even bother, I thought you were smarter than that?"
"Really? Didn't I hear you talking about American Idol earlier?"
"Yeah, so?"
"Well, at least I know wrestling is scripted, you're still clinging to the sad hope that piece of shit show is REAL."

The producers of the show reap super bowl-like viewership two nights a week for a show that is essentially star search, with more flashy lights and commercials. Flashy lights put asses in the seat you know.

At the table you have Randy Jackson, who's gastric bypass surgery has left him with a head way too large for his shrinking body, and apparently has given him a palsy in his right hand so he's always flashing the 'surf's up' sign to the camera. So he doesn’t embarrass himself by forgetting anyone’s name, he’s simplified the greeting process to simply referring to everyone as ‘dawg’.
Next to him is Paula Abdul, a washed up pop star from the 90's who had like 3 hits her entire career before disappearing off the face of the planet. The idea of her telling anyone how to be an american pop idol is kind of like Ryan Leaf holding a ‘How to be a Hall of Fame Quarterback’ seminar. If the show was called 'Flash in the Pan' or 'One Hit Wonder' then she would be the oracle on the mountain, but in this case, she's wholly unqualified. The most notable thing she’s done in the past decade is sleep with that Corey kid, and even THAT’S only notable because he managed to write a book about it.
Last and certainly least, we have the comic relief Simon Cowell. Like the fictional villain Sarcastro, he is there to dash the hopes and dreams of the very people from which he derives his existence for the giggling wide-eyed public who watch intently the way part time nascar fans do when they’re waiting for the big flaming wreck. What the hell has this guy done to be famous, other than suck from the aorta of the youths he’s parasitically latched himself to? I’ve heard he was once a talent scout for a music company. I’ve heard he was once a music producer for a company. I’ve heard a lot of things, but I haven’t seen anything concrete, however, it doesn’t take a genius to realize if he was so good at these things, why isn’t he doing them now?

Weeks and weeks ago I stated that one of the long hairs would win, in an attempt to prove it’s rigged. My theory was based on the following:

There hasn’t been much American Idol goodness generated from the ranks of the R&B set. Anyone got Reuben or Fantasia’s album? Anyone? So good luck winning in the future if you’re an R&B artist.
The winner has been decided in a girl-boy-girl order, indicating that this time a male would win the competition, if my suspicions regarding the order were correct.
The producers of the show are desperate for a true musical icon. So much so that they’re willing to go for the perceived cheap fix. The fact that there seems to be a definite vacuum in the Rock genre these days makes it the obvious choice for conquest.

When will people realize reality tv isn’t? Wrestling fans learned that long ago, but we’re all having a pretty good laugh now. And we’re pointing too.

When the cat is away...

2005-05-23T14:41:00.000-07:00

FREEEEEDOMMMMMMMMM!!

That's right, High Command has left me in charge. The inmates are running the asylum, and the only bad part is I can't find anything. I'm sure it's a defense mechanism carefully orchestrated to maintain job security what forcer her to put things in different places every time.

Not a problem. I'm a man damn it! I can improvise. A can opener, a pot, the microwave, water, the grill, these are the tools I need to survive. No petty health mongering for me this week, in fact, I had key lime pie for dinner, and I'm going to wash it down with a milkshake. I figure it's the best use of the bananas she left as her absentee health food totem.

It seems a great day to begin construction of a new doghouse. No, not a house for the dog, a secret lair retreat for the man of the house when he's overstepped his bounds and pissed off the High Commander. She found the last one and bulldozed it. My suspicion is that she had a man on the inside who divulged it's location.

Lesson learned, this time, the lair shall be a solo endeavor, for if a man has no buddies, he cannot be betrayed.

Hot Tub - check
Big Screen T.V. - check
Keg Fridge - check
Fully Stocked Bar - check
800 piece porn collection - check
Red lava lamp - check
Serving girl of questionable moral fiber - check
Serving girls girlfriend who likes to share - check
Anti-wife alert system - check
Anti-wife cloaking device - check
False doghouse facade - check

I'm still working on the doomsday device, but weapons grade plutonium doesn't exactly grow on trees, and so far all of my efforts to grow it in the fridge have met with fridge cleaning failure.

An afternoon at the theatre..

2005-05-22T08:49:00.000-07:00

So I, like 50 million other people, went to see the new Star Wars yesterday. If you've read any of my previous postings, you know it's an event to get me out of the house and into the theatre on any day of the week. Saturday is nearly impossible, but such was my desire to see the movie after hearing just about every moment of it filtered through the discerning tastesof my friends. Their reactions were mixed, 6 yays, one nay. I think it was a token nay, which may be rescinded 8-10 years from now in the hope that nobody remembers he said he hated it.

I enjoyed the movie. I was entertained. I think what bothers naysayer is that he wasn't awestruck by it. I recall seeing the first movie in '77. Calling movie theatres day after day waiting for a day when it wasn't sold out, trying to convince my father to take me to see it. Upon witnessing it on the screen, at 7 years old, I was awed. I was awed by the empire strikes back, at age 12. By age 16, when return of the jedi came out, I was not so awed, and that sentiment has followed me through my adult years.

So I sit down. In the fourth damned row because we were late getting there, which means I get to watch the movie like it's being shown on the ceiling. As if that's not bad enough, a woman with a 3 month old parks her carcass RIGHT next to me.

Why?
Why, why, why, why, why do people bring infants to movies? I mean, I know the answer. They can't find a babysitter and they want to see the movie. BUY IT ON DVD!!! Don't bring your squawling kid to the theatre. The kid is squawling for a reason, you know. The loud noises, dark background, proximity to strangers, and quick flashing lights has to be terrifying to an infant. It's sensory overload to the little guy, and it's not his fault he's screaming, it's yours.

Surprisingly, the little tike next to me made not a peep the whole movie. Unfortunately, someone 4 rows behind me brought the anti-good baby which screamed through the entire movie until someone shouted "Take the baby outside!" , which was promptly met with 'Shut up bitch' and ignored.

Nice, huh? Where's badass when you need him?

I wish there was a theatre for adults only. No, not that kind of theatre, pervert, one that didn't allow anyone under a certain age. Like 21 maybe, or 25, oh what the hell, 30. You could watch a movie in peace and quiet. You might even be able to have a beer while you do it. You wouldn't have to wade through the teenage wasteland that is the front of the theatre to get into the place, And everyone would be mature enough to sit down, shut up, and watch the stupid movie.

I know, but let me dream, would ya?

My retinas are still recovering from our theater exit, when we decided to outwit the egressing competition and slide out the back door. Unfortunately, our orientation skills are so terrible, that what we thought was the back door, was really an alternate front door, which opened directly into the searing face of the not-quite-so-setting sun.

AAAUUUUGHHHHH MY EYES!! MY EYES!!! MY LOVELY PORCELAIN DOLL EYES!!

I actually had to stop walking and stand for 30 seconds while my ocular cavity burned with celestial flame. It probably served me right for thinking such mean thoughts about the baby earlier.

So I repented, and my eyesight was restored.

A day in the life...

2005-05-22T07:49:00.000-07:00

...of the incredible hulk.

6:00 am Awaken to the cat meowing non-stop 20 full minutes before my alarm is set to go off. I remember my anger management exercises. Breathe in, breathe out, you are the you that is in control.

6:20 am Fully dressed, I feed the cat, drink some milk, grab my gym bag, briefcase, cellphone, wallet, and car keys.

6:22 am Off to work. It's an hour drive to get there, and I've got an early start. It looks to be a good day.

6:34 am Parked in traffic. Some idiot thought it would be clever to cross 4 lanes of rush hour traffic while talking on his cell phone. Now we all get to suffer. The morning radio show guy is talking about bodily functions again. It must have been a slow weekend. Stories about poop must be comic gold, but not here.

6:48 Some insignificant speck just cut me off in traffic. I honk the horn to release my anger. He returns me the bird.

Uh oh.

6:49 Those were new pants damn it. I exit the car through the missing roof, grab the gym bag, and kick the remainder of the compact hybrid off my right leg like removing a loose slipper. Let's see what mister finger has to say.

6:52 Mister finger doesn't even acknowledge my presence until I remove the roof of his car like opening a can of pringles. How do you miss a 9 foot tall, 1500 lb green behemoth like me? I must be losing weight. I'll be in that speedo sooner than I think. I ask mister finger if he still wants to wave it at me. He poops his pants in response, and I throw his car 84 feet into the trees and out of traffic. At least now he has a use for that finger.

7:15 I arrive at work, by way of my hulk jumping ability. Just in time too, the effect leaves as I arrive on the roof. A quick change of pants from the gym bag and I'm fine. I quit wearing shoes, shirt, socks, and ties years ago. I'm not a rich man as it is, buying a new wardrobe every day is not a cost effective way to live ones life. Speaking of cost effetive, my leasing company is going to be upset about the car, but I doubt they'll say anything. That was my 48th car this year, and the lady will smile like she always does while giving me the keys to a new one.

I must be an insurance nightmare.

8:30 The copier jams. Again.
You are the you that is in control of you. You are the you that is in control of you.
I fix the jam, print two copies and it does it again.

128 feet out the third story window for a new xerox toss record. A little more arc and I could have thrown it a mile, but I drop the urge to hurl it through the ceiling. Someone call xerox, I can't wait to see the guys face when he has to pull it out of the dumpster. I go back to my desk and start drawing lines in my sand garden until everything calms down. And by everything, I mean everyone on floor three, including mahogany row.

'I should really start wearing sweat pants to work and say to hell with the business casual attire' I think to myself while getting fully dressed for the second time today. Three if you count just pants, but I'm an optimist.

To be continued....

It's official, I need to rethink my career choice

2005-05-20T06:48:00.000-07:00

Here's proof.

Somehow, I entered an industry where the screwing goes the other way.

The male response..

2005-05-19T14:13:00.000-07:00

Kara posted a hilarious breakup form letter on her site. So hilarious, that I had to retort. I hope she doesn't take offense, but I was laughing all day at hers.

For the single guys, whom I do not envy..

Dear ____________________ :

Unfortunately, the time has come to terminate our relationship as it stands today. I appreciate the time and effort put forth by you in this endeavor, and your information will be kept on file for possible future consideration. Please refrain from calling me concerning this matter, rather, trust your instinct that there is someone out there for everyone, but it is someone other than me. In order that you may expect more success in your future intimate enterprises, allow me to offer the following motivations regarding my decision (check all that apply).

1.___ Despite the fact that I like cats, a quantity exceeding two is desperate, lonely, and creepy.
2.___ The fact that an inventory of your underwear drawer looks like an amish time capsule did little to ignite my libido.
3.___ Making me wait 2 hours while you finish your makeup does not heighten my anticipation of the moment, it mostly just pisses me off.
4.___ Your constant references to your ex-boyfriend sends up more red flags than a bench clearing soccer brawl.
5.___ The entire ‘Sex and the City’ DVD collection you own provides too much insight into your shoe buying habits.
6.___ I find your order of a salad to be a ruse meant to hide the fact that you eat like a horse. If not, I apologize, but you would probably die of malnutrition anyway.
7.___ I found it disconcerting that every one of our dinner dates included the words ‘All You Can Eat’
8.___ Your incessant pace of conversation is impossible considering the human physiology’s need for oxygen, therefore, you must be an alien.
9.___ You are way too chipper. Nobody is that happy all the time, unless they are medicated, or they need to be.
10.___ You smell like soup.
11.___ The constant ‘Men are pigs’ attitude that you exude only serves to impress upon me the fact that you are dating the wrong gender.
12.___ The extent of your sports knowledge culminates with ‘my he’s got a cute butt'.
13.___ I met your mother, and thus, was thrust forward in time 20 years in my life with you.
14.___ It’s not you, it’s me.
15.___ You have a hyphenated last name, which leads me to believe that you are just aspiring to lengthen your nameplate at work.
16.___ You are too tall, and my friends think you may have been a man
17.___ I noticed none of your cookware had a scratch on it, which means you never cook.
18.___ Your Joan Baez record collection marks you as an uppity, self-empowered woman. I’d rather have someone less sassy and more obedient in my presence.
19.___ Your frugal application of sexual favors in exchange for manual labor I find insulting. I can pay a plumber 50 bucks to fix the sink, and a hooker the same for my gratification, and there is less baggage.

Sincerely,

Women are evil...I can prove it..

2005-05-18T19:03:00.000-07:00

Behold, the wonders of mathematics:

Every man knows that a woman (w) is an investment of time (t) and money (m).

w = t * m

Experience, and the ramblings of the yuppie set in the 80's, taught us that time (t) equals money (m)

t = m

Therefore, if we re-examine the original equation, we can see that

w = m * m or w = m^2

Church and that book they use, teaches us that money is the root of all evil (E), represented thusly:

m = √ E or E = m^2

So, if w=m^2, and m^2 = E, then it can accurately be stated that .......

w = E

Thank you, thank you...if you need me...I'll be on the couch....for a month.

No news is good news..

2005-05-18T06:35:00.000-07:00

I don't watch the news. In fact I hate it, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in that sentiment. To make matters worse, it's available for public viewing for about 6 hours of the day it seems. Where I live, it seems that there's some kind of screwy competition among the local tv stations to see who can get the news on earliest. The current frontrunner (fox) starts showing the news at 5 am, ending at 9 am.

Not to be outdone, our cbs affiliate starts the afternoon news at 4pm.

The 4:00 news is followed by the 5:00 national news, then the 5:30 local news, followed again by local news at 6:00. This, of course follows the midday news which starts at noon .

Is there really that much going on? Has the local political/socio-economic landscape changed that significantly between 5 and 5:30?

Sadly, no, and what's even more sad is there is never any good news. Since there isn't enough catastrophic news to fill a dozen 30 minute segments throughout the day, local news is forced to get out there and drum up enough bad news to fill the empty time. What you end up with, during non-news moments of television viewing, is:

"Could your children be in grave danger? Find out on Fox News at 10."

or

"Is the federal government trying to cheat you out of your tax refund? Find out on Fox News at 10."

A local news affiliate should, in theory, give a shit about the community they rely upon for their income. If they did, rather than bait you to watch the 'show', they'd just tell you what the danger is. Wouldn't you think?

I think society as a whole has become ghoulishly voyeuristic to the point that we spend more time glued to the tube trying to catch a glimpse of someone else's suffering than we do watching programming meant to offer an escape. Moreso than in the past anyway, because I can easily recall a time not so long ago that you got news at 6 am, 6 pm, 10 pm, and that was it. The news was worth watching then, because it wasn't an incessant litany of death and suffering. The show didn't start with the body count, nobody was trying to scare me into buying duct tape and plastic through every passing second of the program, and they seemed genuinely concerned for the well being of the community. These days, news is no longer about information, it's about selling commercial airtime. It's about selling advertising space close to the front page, and lately editors haven't been all that concerned with the validity of the drivel they print.

Somewhere along the line they decided to trade in their journalistic integrity to produce a product that would be more effectively sold at the checkout counter of your local supermarket. So, when the guy comes to my house trying to sell me the paper, the first thought that enters my mind is 'oh hell no, then I'm responsible for disposing of the damned thing!'. It's really all I can do to politely tell him no without laughing him off of my porch.

Pain is the best teacher of all.

2005-05-17T13:51:00.000-07:00

Brian, in his blog broached an interesting subject when he brought up swats in school. The topic soon ballooned into a discussion on corporal punishment as a whole, and is very insightful, you should check it out. He gets alot of comments over there from good people with good intentions, but like most people with good intentions, we tend to disagree.

This usually makes me feel like a bad person. Oh, who am I kidding, I am a bad person.

The concensus over there seems to be anti-corporal punishment. I would have commented my opinion, but I'm sure I would have been run out on a pole for my barbaric views. That's right, I'm barbaric because I believe firmly in corporal, physical punishment, and here is why:

It seems today, that children raised by well-meaning parents mature (?) with little sense of respect for adults. Teenagers, in particular, roam free in all manner of public places running their mouths at grown, working adults with impunity. That's the problem, in my opinion. I actually witnessed a 17 year old lipping off to what had to be a 40 year old man who was out with his wife, and when the man politely asked that he cease the profanity, the 17 year old said:
'Oh yeah? What are you gonna do about it?', knowing full well this grown man couldn't touch him legally. This isn't an isolated incident. In fact, I don't even go to the movie theatre anymore on weekends because those are the days chosen by less barbaric, well-meaning parents to drop their kids off to be supervised by the other kids who are trying to work, and the unsuspecting people who spent 30 bucks to enjoy the movie.

Meanwhile, as soon as soccer-mom's mini-suv-trend-wagon pulls out of the parking lot, the fruit of their loins proceeds to de-evolve about 10,000 years and revert to it's animal instincts in a mating display of assholery. Gathered together in great bleating herds they interrupt the entire movie with their unwelcome comments, senseless milling about, and incessant cellphone conversations. I generally don't say anything when this happens because it doesn't do any good to talk. In fact, all talking does is instigate further stupidity from their hormone influenced state of being, which only pisses me off to the point that I want to wade into the herd and cull the slow and the weak.

And nobody wants that.

We had a similar problem a few years ago. Myself, along with twenty of my friends went to a midnight premier of 'The Fellowship of the Ring'. For years, we had anticipated the release of this movie, and expectations were running high throughout the group. We arrive at the theatre with plenty of time to secure optimum seating in the center of the theatre. We're all settled in, politely talking in hushed tones about how we can't wait to see the Balrog and stuff like that, when it happens. A crew of about 8 teenagers plops their carcasses down in the row in front of us. No big deal, we'll see what happens, right?

5 minutes till movietime, the lights are up, and they're being perfect little angels. However, they aren't bothering to evaluate their environment, which is a bold mistake, considering they've parked in front of one of the meanest man I've ever known, and he, like me, has waited a long time to see this movie.

Movietime! The lights go down, and the opening speech sequence starts, and with it, so do the mouths of the rebels without a clue. Calmly, badass leans forward, grabbing the futuristic polymer backed rocking movie seat and pulls. Anyone who has sat in one of these seats knows that at some point, the seat leans back no further. Badass didn't have that problem, as he pulled the child nearly prone. Looking him directly into his defiant eyes he calmly stated the following:

'Listen, kid, there's alot of people who waited a long time, and paid good money to see this movie, and I know you think I won't touch you because you're a minor, but listen up, if I hear so much as a peep out of you or your shithead friends I'll break your arm like a twig. You got me?'

Mutely the kid understood, nodding as if overcome with an epileptic fit.

'Good.' Badass iterated, and let the seat go like letting go of a taut bowstring.

The movie was great.

Later I asked "He wouldn't have hit that kid would he?"

The response came back, unanimously "Oh yeah, he really has no problem going back to jail."

The point being, the kid lost his nerve when confronted with the idea of physical pain. Asking politely would have achieved nothing but a further escalation of the problem. Not to mention someone would miss part of the movie getting the management and all that bullshit.

Unfortunately, no matter how much you try to candy coat it, or prove otherwise, nothing teaches quite like pain, because pain is an experience. Lecture is essentially theory. You don't know it for sure until you try it, and you don't really learn it until you try it and fail, and with failure, often comes pain. That's just life, get over it.

Death....or life in a box...choose

2005-05-16T13:55:00.000-07:00

Everyone has an opinion, especially regarding a volatile topic like the death penalty. Those who are for it claim it's a successful deterrent to aspiring capital crime offenders, while those who are against it claim that there is no humane way to end someone's life. Sure, there are other arguments posed by both sides, but I will focus primarily on these two for the time being.

Advocates of capital punishment, as stated previously, believe that the possibility of suffering the ultimate consequence for heinous acts serves as a deterrent in itself against committing these acts. I believe this is somewhat true and has worked well in the past, however, most death penalty proponents are forgetting something very important.

Capital punishment is most effective if it's put on display.

Large crowds gathered together to witness the terrible suffering of the criminal being brought to justice by his peers serves as a vicious reminder as to the indominitable will of the state. The problem is, nobody wants to see that. Well, wait a minute, some people want to see that, but they aren't necessarily the targeted audience the state has in mind. Huge throngs of necromantic goth kids and vampire want to be's aren't all that effective in getting the word out that society means business. So, what we get instead, is the watered down tv-news version of the execution, which sounds alot like 'he was given his last meal, took his last communion, and was pronounced dead at 12:06 this morning." If you want a good idea of what capital punishment is like, see the newest movie 'Bundy', where it goes into detail about how they jammed his hidden orifice full of cotton and vaseline prior to his trip to the chair, to hold all of his fluids in so he didn't leave a horrifying spectacle.

On the other side of the argument, the opposition to the death penalty prescribe to the belief that it is much more humane to imprison someone for life. I can see their point of view, because I personally would not want the death of another human being on my conscience. But, is it truly more humane to lock someone away forever with no hope of freedom? Spending the remainder of your days concerned that you may get knifed in the shower for bumping into someone the wrong way, or that you may get raped by another man in the laundry with no hope of reprieve seems to go a long way towards 'cruel and unusual'. People on this side of the argument often swing the argument 'well, what if you kill an innocent man' around like battle axe, and they make a good point. But, it's just as wrong to take 40 years from the same innocent man's life and put him in such a purgatory. I think it's ludicrous to keep someone imprisoned for a lifetime at the age of 22. What quality of life will that person enjoy at that point? I understand that a lifer is in that position because he tread upon the rights of another, and as such, has relinquished all rights of his own, but where is the line to be drawn?

It's thoughts like these that kept me from studying law, because my luck, I'd end up a judge someday and have to make this goddamned decision.

I, personally, see both sides of the issue. Each side is right in their own way, but neither side is 100% correct. Somewhere in the middle lies the key, and I believe it rests not on the state, but on each of us as human beings to treat each other with kindness, charity, and goodwill.

But envy, avarice, and selfishness are forces far more powerful and self-gratifying, unfortunately.

it's official...

2005-05-16T11:40:00.000-07:00

Which Family Guy character are you?

Let the panic and fear begin.

Everything looks cooler on fire.

2005-05-13T08:42:00.000-07:00

Friday the 13th, and I can think of at least 1000 other places I'd rather be than at work. The dentist comes to mind.

It occurs to me that today would be a good day to detail one of the stupider things I've ever done. Many years ago, in my bedazzled youth, I attended college in the hopes of becoming a boon to my fellow man. In order to finance any fun activity I wanted to participate in throughout my school year, I took a summer job working as part of a maintenance crew at a campground just outside my home town. Mostly our daily duties consisted of parking campers for customers who were otherwise incapable, maintaining the cobbled together septic system, ensuring the lights worked, and other horrible, menial tasks of that nature. All of these were tasks that only cemented my resolve regarding two things:
1. That I would finish college. Dumping other people toilets is NOT a worthy occupation for one as well read as I.
2. I will never own a recreational vehicle of any kind. Vacationing in a rolling toilet is not my ideal retirement.

Weekends were much more relaxed. The supervisors were gone, which made no sense at a members only campground where most of the members came on the weekend, but hey, we spent much of our time chasing each other around with pnuematic grease guns and racing the company vehicles around the gravel storage lots. It was on one of these weekends that my partner Will and I were charged with the duty of properly disposing of two filing cabinets of old documents.

"Can do!" We said with excitement. We knew this task would involve flame, and we were 'can do' guys. Plus, everything looks cooler on fire.

The plan we formulated was perfect. We took the bobcat (mini-dozer), attached the backhoe, and made our way to the trailer storage lot where we had strategically positioned the two filing cabinets out of the view of the relaxing camp members. With us, we also took 5 gallons of gasoline, a lighter, and our swaggering sense of bulletproof invulnerability. 10 minutes later, an 8 foot deep hole rested just inside our secret perimeter. We then began throwing in the files, followed by a dash of gas. Toss in files, add some gas, until eventually our stock of combustibles was spent.

Will began driving the bobcat a safe distance from the hole, while I carried the gascan out of harms way.

It felt a bit light.

But the significance of this was lost amid my primary thought, which was 'Let's light this candle!'.
I knelt over the single foot of empty space that was left of our hole, lighter in hand.

Click.
Click.
Click.

The damned thing wouldn't light. In retrospect, I'm sure this was God's way of letting me know I was embarking on a journey into dumbassdom and that he would in no way be held responsible for the consequences. In frustration, I reached into the hole and yanked out a single piece of paper, determined to set the load alight.

One flick later, my face parted with a grin denoting success as I tossed the small, flaming ball into the breach.

Breach is a good word to use, because in reality, we had unknowingly constructed a cannon.

WHOOSH-BOOM!!

During the .02 milliseconds it took for ignition to occur, snippets of the fire safety course for which my mother had dutifully spent 250 dollars of her hard earned money came rushing back to me. It didn't light because the hole was saturated with gas vapor, which, being heavier than air, was the only gas occupying the hole before I tossed a flaming ball of paper into it.

Flat on my back, a full 10 feet from where I had been standing, through my remaining unfused left eye, I could see a 90 foot plume of flaming papers and boxes scattering like a flaming fountain throughout the storage lot.

It was beautiful.

Luckily, I was able to wedge my right eye open from where the melted eyelashes had fused it shut, regain my feet, and put the fire(s) out with the extinguisher we had brought. When it was over, I took inventory of the damages.

All of the hair on my right arm was gone. I couldn't have shaved it that close for a million dollars. The initial fireball swept around my head in such an aerodynamic fashion, that it singed the front of my hair, and the back, but left the sides untouched. My right eyebrow was mostly gone, and my eyelashes took a month to recover. I got the bonus prize every time I got in the shower for the next 2 months, when all I could smell was burnt human hair.

Even so, everything still looks way cooler on fire.

5 more pet peeves from the grouch

2005-05-12T11:34:00.000-07:00

#1859 Madly rushing people who zip in and out of traffic. I normally take no small amount of glee in coasting next to them at the next stoplight. I hope it irritates them that they drove like they had a 3 decal on the side of their car, and I drove like Miss Daisy, and we're tied.

#42 Any new and improved product, particularly shampoo. I thought you told me this product was the ultimate in hair care technology last year, suddenly it isn't? Why should I believe you now you lying soulless corporate bastards?

#534 People who interject 'um' between every third word in a conversation. It's indicative of a lack of confidence, and makes you look shifty and deceptive.

#1 Having to repeat myself. I make a decent effort to pay attention when someone is speaking to me, why can't you afford me this same small modicum of respect? If I was a fan of repeating myself, I would have developed a stutter long ago.

#820 Celebrities who feel the need to coach me in all matters political and environmental. One viewing of celebrity jeapordy, or celebrity weakest link was enough to cement my stance that these yo-yo's really don't know shit about anything, and anyone who made any decision, other than one related to fashion, based on the testimonial of one of these hair tossing puppets needs to have their decision rights as a free adult revoked for a year.

My dinner with...

2005-05-12T05:45:00.000-07:00

I used to maintain a mental list of famous people I always thought it would be interesting to have a conversation with. Whether it was over lunch or coffee or whatever, these were people I felt would be cool to talk to just one time, provided you could count on total honesty and they could count on total secrecy. I've never met a famous person face to face, so I'm a bit naive to the reality that any celebrity would rather be lowered feet first into a sausage grinder than spend an hour talking to me. But, the list doesn't take into account the desire or willingness of the targeted celebrity to sit with me, so to hell with 'em.

The people on that list should be thankful they aren't on my 'plane-that-could-be-crashed-into-a-mountainside' list.

The list is a dynamic beast, forming and reforming as I catch media snippets and quotes from those celebrities that intrigue me. Over the years, there are some steadfast members of the list who have never lost their status, just as there are some who have been removed as well.

For example, I always felt Clint Eastwood would be an interesting fellow to talk to. Charismatic, engaging, with a tough exterior, I would love to ask him 'why Sandra Locke, of all people?'. Of course, I'd probably get punched in the nose for my trouble.

Hunter S. Thompson fell into that category, until recent developments, but I always felt I'd want to have him scanned for weaponry first.

A recent addition is Matthew McConaughey, who traveled the nation in an airstream trailer to promote Sahara. The great part was, he would park it in backwoods trailer parks, call up all the local radio stations, and have a cookout with people. Something about that violates every celebrity rule that seems to exist, and has an attitude about it that has been missing in this country for quite some time.

Mariah Carey was someone who captivated my interest in the early 90's. Her angelic face, and matching opera trained voice captivated and moved me as a young man. Then she won an award, and I bore witness to the train wreck that was her acceptance speech.

'Yo, I gots to send out props to mah homies..'
Click.

Right this way to the plane Miss Carey.

I can't listen to borderline illiterate people for more than 5 consecutive seconds, it makes my nose bleed prior to giving me an aneurysm.

The list is a bit longer than this, but nowhere near as long as the passenger list for the plane.

I remember when..

2005-05-10T14:00:00.000-07:00

At the risk of dating myself, something a bit less negative:

I remember when:

The only people referred to by silly nicknames like 'sugardaddy','papabear', or 'hotrod69' were habitual CB users with alot of time on their hands.
A hard drive was the D-FW loop during rush hour.
Stewardesses were always female, and always pretty.
I could get a tank of gas without having to apply for financial aid.
One could use 'He' to broadly include everyone rather than 'He/She'.
Geraldo Rivera was just another daytime talkshow host.
Geraldo Rivera blew that gig opening someone's basement and calling it Al Capone's vaults.
Han Solo shot first.
An air bag was a term of endearment for someone's overly talkative spouse.
A sissy bar was an attachment on a bike, and not a place to hang out.
Principals gave swats, and nobody got shot.
George Bush said 'No more taxes'.
George Bush raised taxes.
I said New Year's Eve 2000 would kick much ass.
Going to bed early December 31st 1999.
A hacker was just a really bad surgeon.
Everyone was responsible for their own behavior.
MTV played music.
Video games imitated life, there was no storybook finish, just an endless, accelerating progression of the same board over and over until you died.
There was no Pepsi generation, it was just a soft drink.
Red M&M's caused cancer.
Hearing Mikey died choking on poprocks.
A rain event was called a thunderstorm.
People played professional hockey.
Beef wouldn't kill you.
The television had 5 channels and there was always something on.
A guy who rambled on and on to the general public would either be locked up, or in broadcasting.

Just a few things, maybe I'll come up with more some other day.

Here I go again on my ownnnnn...

2005-05-10T05:47:00.000-07:00

Nobody takes a good mugshot.

I think if she jumped on the hood of my car looking like this, I'd throw her a dollar before she tried to wash my windshield with a dirty rag and a bucket of piss. It's nowhere near as bad as the one Nick Nolte took after his vodka bender, but then again, Nolte didn't make his name flaunting his genitalia on the hood of a Bentley. Or was it a Rolls? I don't remember, I never paid any attention to the car in those videos anyway.

Ah yes, those were the days, when music television played music. Music television not playing music is like ESPN padding their programming with game and reality shows. Oh, wait, that's already happening isn't it.

Our beloved Mrs. Kitaen-Coverdale-Finley took this lovely snapshot following a recent domestic abuse charge against her baseball playing husband. I have to give credit where credit is due, because I'd be hard pressed to not slap her so hard the botox left a smear on the front door if she treated me that way. They say you aren't supposed to hit a woman, but I wonder if you keep the contact to just the fake parts if it really counts.

Atheism is only for the young..

2005-05-09T06:30:00.000-07:00

Eventful weekend I had huh? In addition to the ER debacle, I was also on call. Sunday morning my data server went belly up for a bit. Unfortunately, I am human, and was asleep at 7 am when my nextel went off on a Sunday after only 5 hours of sleep. Turns out it just needed a reboot, and the boss was just letting me know he was already doing it.

An old friend of mine, whom I've known for over 20 years, and I had an interesting discussion. Over the years that we've known each other, he's often called into question why and how I could possibly believe in God. His arguments were no different than any other atheist I've run across, and over the years I slowly developed the attitude of 'to each his own' and we always endeavored to agree to disagree. I'm like most christians in that I do not go to church, but different in that I don't feel the slightest bit guilty about it, I also try not to thrust my beliefs down the gullet of others, and respect the beliefs of others. However, I will respond when asked, which occurs more than you would think, especially here in the midwest. Like most atheists, my friends point of contention is that it's foolish and childlike to believe in unseen, unproven forces, and to do so renders one no more intelligent than people who believe in the boogie man, easter bunny, or santa claus.

To date, I have yet to witness him miss a single christmas.

Here's the thing. While atheists scamper about giggling at the rest of us for believing in an unseen God, they are forgetting a very important point. According to the only written proof of God's existence, one thing is crystal clear. If he has to get up, people are going to suffer in ways that defy description. Anytime big G gets out of his easy chair, the sky cracks open with flaming hail, or frogs, or earth ending floods, or people are covered in boils, or your best crack troops are swallowed by the red sea, or all the first borne die, or your wife turns to salt, etc, etc, etc..

With that in mind, I'll do fine without any proof, thank you, though. I think I'll just have the blind faith with a side of meek shall inherit the earth, thank you.

Atheism is only cool when you're young, but I understand some of their finer points. I hate church too, and I'll agree that more men have died in the name of God than have died to cancer, but what I won't agree with is that an all seeing, all knowing God who is good at heart wouldn't allow these things to happen and is directly responsible. He was willing to do that, but rather than allow that to happen, we decided we wanted to do it ourselves.

Remember the snake, the apple, that whole story?

Now, we're two decades older, my friend and I. Like most atheists I know, as time creeps up on us all they tend to loosen the strings on their militant, super-realistic views. I don't know if it's a matter of encroaching mortality, or if time lends us the wisdom to realize that people as a whole are utterly full of bullshit, but I bet it's one of these realizations that gives even the most faithless cause to question their own beliefs.

How can we as a species unequivocally say there is no scientific basis to establish the existence of an allmighty being when we can't even be counted on to decide if eggs are good for you or not. For that matter, we're talking about a scientific community who once thought, without a doubt, that the earth was flat, headaches were caused by demons in the skull, and hanging raw meat kept infection at bay through absorption of bad vapors.

I know what you're thinking, we've progressed a long way since those dark times. Sure, we can make a bomb that will incinerate anything at any time, we have a pill that will allow a 70 yr old man to father children, we can make a 50 yr old woman look 30, but we still can't get a handle on a light bulb that doesn't go out, a boat that won't sink, or a way to replenish the ozone. Hell, plants can do that, but we residing at the top of the food chain just can't seem to get it done.

We can't even draw infinity, we had to turn an 8 sideways for a graphical representation that would fit in our heads, how then, can we be arrogant enough to try to quantify the being responsible for it's existence?

Suffice to say, he believes. He believes and it didn't happen because I thumped the bible in his face, bicycle riding mormons didn't do it, doorbell ringing jehovah's witnesses didn't do it, a terminal illness wasn't required. No, all it took was the observance of his fellow man to realize someone, somewhere HAS to know what's goin' on, because these numbnuts sure as hell don't.

Hi, I'm Dave, and my brother is an asshole

2005-05-08T07:14:00.000-07:00

Happy Mother's Day, to all of the maternal folks.

Someone should start a club, Asshole Brother's Anonymous. ABA for short.

Check this shit out:

My mother got to bring in her Mother's Day in the emergency room. She isn't ill, or dying, in fact she's in pretty good health all things considered. Rather we were there for my asshole brother, who had made the decision early in the day that he would knock back a few too many of his anti-depressant medications with 5 pints of vodka, call for help, and then watch the show.

I get the idea someone, somewhere just read that and thought " he's not an asshole, he needs help, you're the asshole for coming and talking about it on the internet".

Trust me, he's an asshole. In addition to being your run of the mill asshole, who has to tell you how much better he is than you because he pumps more iron, has raced more bikes, cooked more steaks, banged more quiff, shot more 'roids, fixed more cars, etc.. than you ever dreamed possible, he's an asshole because this isn't the first time he's done it. In fact, this was his fourth time. Three previous "attempts" he cut himself up with a pocketknife, then tried to fight the police, the doctors, the nurses, and my mother while he "bled out his last" in the emergency room. He's an asshole because two of those last three times, he thought it would be cool to drive and be hauled out of his truck at gunpoint before he killed someone who had no idea what was going on.

He's an asshole because he never does it without an audience. This time was a little different, because taking pills is the kind of thing you have to ease into. It's not the spur of the moment decision you make with the knife, and the wrist and all of that, demanding a live audience for maximum effect. But, I'll give him credit, he isn't totally stupid. He managed to call my house earlier in the day to make sure someone was going to be home for the show later.

He's an asshole for making my mother sit in the waiting room exhausted after a full days worth of farm labor with my stepfather, while he lay unconscious and passed out in exam room 1. He must have worn himself out berating us with the same old tired bullshit about how we don't love, care about, need, want, or even like him. Meanwhile, the nurse is in there saying 'Now, now, if he didn't care, he wouldn't be here'. Would it have been wrong to say "No, he's right, I really don't care at this point, I'm just here to sign paperwork to lock him up."? Probably. So I didn't say that, or anything else for that matter.

It was while I was standing in there, that I had the epiphany. It suddenly occurred to me the REAL thing that makes him an asshole. I finally figured out what to say to the huggy huggy types who will say to me "but he's your brother, how can you feel this way?".

Here's how:

The whole time my brother lay restrained in bed, gnawing at his bonds like a retarded monkey, yelling at nurses, demanding to see the doctor, telling me what a horrible brother I am, what he was really doing was demanding attention. Attention from everyone within earshot, but most notably, attention from the staff because he can't take it anymore, and wants to end it all. All the while, in beds next to, beneath, and above him, good people with good families are dying, and they don't have a choice. But they sure as hell need the nurse that has to babysit him so he'll sit still.

I'm pretty sure every one of them would give anything to switch places.

It's his abject disregard for God's greatest gift, and the flaunting of it's total lack of value to him in the faces of others who cling to it desperately, like waving a bottle of water in the face of a man dying of thirst, that makes him an asshole.

I had an uncle who did the same shit.

The word had is used because he went too far, taking his estranged wife hostage with a shotgun. Unfortunately, the police officer wasn't aware it was a "cry for help", and blew his brains out at point blank range.

Someday, I should probably write about that too. Everyone says their family is crazy. Too few of them really know what that means.

Funny side note, while my brother was laying in there screaming at being restrained, there was a 3 year old in the lobby doing the same thing. Don't you just love irony?

The day I get a call to be on a talk show, I'm going straight to jail...

2005-05-05T19:02:00.000-07:00

Do not pass go, do not collect $200.00.

Actually it was a standing rule in my first marriage. In a time before reality tv, Springer, Sally Jesse, Oprah.. these were our voyeuristic windows into other peoples lives. Often I asked myself:

"Who in their right mind would go to the Springer show?"

Nothing good ever happens. Well, not to the guests anyway, you get brought on stage to find out your wife of 12 years is a semen addict or some other horrible revelation. As if that isn't bad enough, you not only find out in front of a live studio audience, and millions (that number may be a bit lofty these days) of viewers, but chances are if you've been married 12 years she's not even addicted to your semen.

Hence, if the phone ever rings, and it's the booking agent for Springer, I'll be seeing ya on CNN.

A diamond is forever..

2005-05-05T09:52:00.000-07:00

Only 8 fingers to go!

But it's only really valuable to you. In fact, it isn't even all that valuable when you think about it. Come on, it's a rock for Christ's sake! If you want proof that your keepsake diamonds are worthless, try liquidating them. It's quite a humbling experience to have the recently paroled guy behind the counter at the pawn shop tell you he'll give you 50 bucks for it.

"But my husband paid $3500.00 for this ring!"

"Yeah, and I'll give you 50, take it or leave it."

You won't get a jeweler to buy it, probably because they were ecstatic to sell you a rock for 3500 bucks in the first place, they surely aren't silly enough to pay that kind of money for it.

You might be able to get someone on Ebay to buy it, but God forbid his wife finds out he bought a used ring. He'll have plenty of time to rue his decision during his month of sleeping on the couch.

No, the only reason jewelry is worth shit at all is because you think it is. Well, moreso because the people at DeBeers TELL you it is, and you believe it. My advice to the women of the world, before biting on this recent marketing ploy is this:

This happened to men a long time ago, and we're still paying the price for it. When you're thinking about buying this symbol of feminine empowerment, picture yourself in that Saturday Night Live sketch where Joe Pesci is trying on pinky rings and ask yourself "Do I really need that level of ridicule further down the road?".

I do find it hilarious, however, that when the going gets tough in the jewelry racket, they just pick another digit and unleash the hounds.