Sweet Sweet revenge

So the other day Turbo scared the crap out of me and got punched for his trouble.
We were at the library and Turbo decided he would rather take the elevator. So I head down the stairs and as I get to the bottom the elevator door opens and some lady gets out, but no Turbo.
I quickly deduce that he's still waiting upstairs for the car so I jump onto the elevator and head on up.
As the door begins to open I flatten myself against the buttons so he'll be almost in the car by the time he'll be able to see me.
As he steps in I grab his arm and growl "look out kid"
He leapt about a foot in the air .
It was great. We originally stopped playing that game because it just got too hard to catch him off guard.
Now I have to fly down 3 flights of stairs and dive into an elevator just to have a little fun...

Cutting edge fast food technology

I saw a restaurant that was a combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.
How convenient.
Heart-burn and diarrhea in one stop!

I'm not trying to kill myself, I swear

If you've read my previous posts you will know at least 2 facts about me.
1) I am dangerous. To myself.
2) I have a hard head.

Recently I combined those 2 skills and maimed myself, again, and tested the tensile strength of my skull.

Let me give you a bit of history.
If forced to ask what kind of animal best represents me, my parents would have been torn between Monkey and Fish.
I could climb the side of anything when I was little.
Trees. Fences.....I would shimmy up into doorjambs and sort of linger there and then scare the shit out of someone as they walked into the room. (but that's another story)
I was on the swim team from the time I was 5. I swam nearly every day from before the time I could walk...
So, I'm part fish. I love the water.
I was swimming laps recently. I haven't done laps in a few years. But lately in addition to going to the gym and lifting weights,I have been doing laps. I swim 5 regular pace
and then 5 sprints, right?
So I'm sprinting. I get to the turn and instead of doing a neat little flip and turning?
I slam my head and shoulder full speed into the wall.

Turns out I am capable of swimming full speed into a wall head first and not knocking myself out.

Good to know.

I pop up out of the water and grab my head. I look at my hand.
Blood. A lot of it.
Great, a bleeding head wound...again.
Really, how many times will I have a bleeding head wound?
How many has the average person had?

My whole life I have been falling head first out of windows onto rocks (why the hell is a rock right underneath my bedroom window? mom? dad?) Getting into rock throwing fights (how does a kid get hit in the head and have a bleeding scalp wound and not know it? I did.)
Oh, and what about the time a bicycle frame fell on my head?!
A classic '50s Schwinn Cruiser frame hung decoratively above a door dropped onto my head and dramatically bounced off my skull (that was a real crowd pleaser, believe me.)
I have had what 3...4? Concussions? (having multiple concussions makes it hard to actually keep track of how many you have had....it's a vicious circle, really)
But fortunately I have experienced no lasting trauma.
Oh, and what about the time a bicycle frame fell on my head?!

I look over at Turbo in the shallow end and say "did you see that!"
he says "see what?"
so I swim over and he looks at my smashed up dome and says "what did you do?"
I say " I swam head first into the wall as fast as I could"
(because I may as well have some fun with this)
He says, "riiight.....Why?"
I say "to see if I could swim into a wall at full speed and not knock myself out"

(hey.....look....one of the styles of parenting is to convince your kids that you can read their minds and that you are completely insane, and that you know everything.
And so far I am fucking killing it with the boy.
He is pretty sure I know what is in his head, I am knowledgeable about most everything, and ....clearly, I am totally fucking nuts, what with the random punching and swimming straight into walls)

He says "Did you knock yourself out?"
I say "nope"
he pauses....puts out his fist for a pound and says "Niiiice"

Hey, did you know that there is no such thing as a "swimming helmet"?

Are you a ...vegetarian?

I came into work on Saturday and I brought some food with me.
Turns out Saturdays are easy at the office...they're easy like Sunday morning...
sorry, piss-poor song reference..
anyway...the smell of the food I brought with me drove the ladies wild...so I am telling a bunch of hungry women what I brought..Pad Thai...noodles, chili's, tofu, cilantro, egg, peanuts.
"tofu!? what are you vegetarian?!"...
the only reason this is funny is that they said it the same way you would say "what are you a pedophile?!
It turns out in Colorado Springs "vegetarian" is tantamount to "gay"...thank god I am neither ...
I'm just a metro motherfucker who eats right.
Yes, I have clean nails and I dress well. I'm thin and fit and I smell nice, and I can cook like a bastard...
'fucking fag', right?

It kind of reminds me of when I first started trying to get healthy again...I quit drinking 3-5 cans of coke a day....I substituted water like a smoker chewing on gum and carrots and pencils...but my body craved the sugar still. So I started drinking orange juice. a lot. At least a carton every couple days. I 'd be sitting there at my desk negotiating a deal swigging OJ...here is where it gets surreal though...I had, more than a few times, some asshole that smokes a pack a day and drinks as if he is trying out for the Nick Cage role in "leaving las vegas " come up to me holding a 97 ounce tankard of Mountain Dew and say ..."you know that juice has a lot of sugar"
yes......Natural sugar you fuck wit!..ok...easy...you are better than them...
there really is no point to this other than...it turns out, if you try to be healthy and take care of yourself?
you are fucking weird.

Turbo as Kato

When he was little Turbo used to play this fun game with me. I would try to jump out and scare him whenever possible, and he would do the same for me.
Except ...instead of trying to scare me he would physically assault me. So I would come sauntering out of the bathroom and this little maniac would attack me. (think of Kato attacking Inspector Clueso in the Pink Panther movies)
It would have been cute if not for the fact that given his height at the time his opening attack was usually a nut-shot.
Not so cute.

Fast forward 7 years.
The other day I'm coming out of the shower. It's 7 in the morning. Which is approximately 4 hours before I would be fully awake.
I looked in on Turbo to wake him up. Just as my mind begins to compute that he is not in the bed (which frankly was several seconds of me looking at an empty bed and wondering what that could possibly mean) he grabs my arm from behind and yells something.
I jumped.
I yelled.
My flight or flight response kicked in and I punched him in the arm.

I don't think we are playing that game ever again judging by the way he was rubbing his arm.

Squeamish? Avert your gaze, this one gets gross.

I get a lot of spam in my email...who doesn't , right?
There are 2 kinds that I get the most.
First the "penny stock pumpers". It is always the same..."this stock is about to blow up and you better buy now because tomorrow it will fucking be up 600%!"
Right, and you figured you would , unsolicited, share it with ME?
Thanks!...Except ...if one has the intelligence and the werewithal to manage to buy an individual stock? Are you really going to fall for this bullshit?
individual stocks are purchased in lots of 1,000....that's why they invented mutual funds. So regular Joes' could get in on the fun. Think about it.
Today Apple shares closed at 143.75....so if you decided today you were going to buy shares in apple because you love your new iPhone so goddamn much...it would cost you $143,750. Do you really think if I have the cheese to do that I'm taking the advice of some fucking spammer?

So ok, fine...
Then there is the other kind I get. Apparently someone out there is under the impression that I am unhappy in my sex life. I get a lot of emails offering various Viagra type products. They claim to make me longer , harder, and longer lasting.
Whatever. Deleted.
BUT I got one recently that intrigued me. I had to open it. It said "Increase the amount of your..." Hang on. This is where it will start to get gross. "Increase the amount of your sperm by up to 800%! Cover her in it!"
wait....what?
GET THE FUCK OUT !!
I have to know.
I open it . The text (which I will refrain from re-creating here) essentially says you can increase your...
Stuff
by an insane percentage...."bathe her in it" is the gist of their suggestions.....riiiiight.
so, me being me, I did the math...If the average man produces a certain amount of the "stuff" at one time and you multiply it by 800% ...the amount I came up with was in the range of 3/4 of a cup. Which doesn't seem like a lot...but it's...
the fucking "stuff"!
It's not jello or pudding.
Oh, and before you even start to think I did some hands on testing in the lab? I googled how much the average man produces..
Here's the thing.....For the most part I have found that women don't really want your "stuff" on them.

Mostly.

I have encountered the occasional intrepid soul who is cool with...the "stuff"...but most women are somewhere on the continuum from 'tolerate'...the"stuff" to flat out 'do not get the "stuff" on me you motherfucker!'
I once knew a woman who didn't much like green beans, but was actually kind of cool with ..the "stuff". She had a pretty liberal policy about what happened when 'scene' was called. As long as I let her know where it's final resting place was going to be she was cool...except it could not wind up in her hair. That was a firm rule. She once said to me, "Don't ever try to feed me green beans and then cum in my hair, that's a deal breaker"

The point is, if this is a material that generally shouldn't wind up on a woman, why the hell would I want to increase the amount of it exponentially? And another thing? What if this is your first time with this woman? If it's ON her? yeesh. If it's in her and comes pouring out in a torrent? Not cool. But the worst? If you are wearing protection? When you pull out it will look as if you have a goddamn water-balloon hanging from the end of Mr. Happy....NOT COOL...how do you explain that? Do you tell her you're a virgin and that is 15 years of the "stuff" saved up?

why did I get this email? who is the target audience for this?....is this a real product?...OH! this would be the most awesome practical joke if you are married....imagine the look on your wife's face?!....
actually, I think that might be a direct quote from the email now that I think of it....

The rapid decline, or why can't I just get a cold?

I am really fucking annoyed right now. Even more than when I had my mini
road–rage incident the other night..

When I was fat I had high blood pressure. The Dr. wanted to do blood work, get me on meds etc. I said "forget that, I'll get it in line with diet and exercise." He said "everybody says that. No one does it". Yeah, well you don't know me very well, Dr. Nick.

So fast forward almost 2 years. I weigh about 30 pounds less, my stamina and energy levels are off the chart, I look better than I have in 15 years and I have high blood pressure.

Fuck!

I am just flat out annoyed by this development. The Dr. gives me these pills to take. I look at the little sheet of paper that comes with it. It's a diuretic.
Oh that's priceless. I am already peeing more frequently than a little girl in a Cool-Aid drinking contest. (sorry for the tortured metaphor )
Since I had kidney stones 18 months ago (yes kidney stones, I never get the flu or a cold or anything, just stuff that invloves surgery and things with names like "The Silent Killer")
I drink a lot of water already. Then I moved to dry-ass Colorado and I drink more water. I have constant chapped lips as it is…I'm already borderline "ashey"…now this?
Come on.
What the hell is going on? I eat like I'm training for the Tour De France, I'm in the gym so frequently you'd think they pay my salary…now this?
I know what is going on and I am dead set against it.
My body is acting as if I am 37 years old.
Which I am…but still…what kind of crap is that? So now I get to go have
blood work done!
Fasting?
Needles?
Great!
I asked if we could do an hiv test while we were there...I am a single guy...if I ever trick a woman into sleeping with me again it would be nice to be able to bust out with a pedigree "see I'm clean on the inside too". She asked if I wanted to do a hep- c & b , I said no I never sucked Tommy Lee's dick ...
I did tack Pammy ( that was my pet name for her) but way before Tommy soiled her...

I left her office with 3 prescriptions….one for my high blood pressure, one for my insomnia and one for my migraines….she didn't offer to prescribe anything for my Ennui...oh I forgot to mention, I diagnosed myself with Ennui...Cindy confirmed the diagnosis and prescribed a Nuprin...I don't know if that will do the trick....(Jebus, that joke is so inside it's sitting next to my mutinious kidney saying ' the fuck you lookin' at pinche guero kidney?') ( and of course THAT had to contain an inside joke...2 of them!)

I'm seeing a pattern here…I may be a little bit high strung…I'm starting to suspect I may be a little too intense...great, I think the Dr. telling me my blood pressure is high has caused my blood pressure to go up...

And I am really starting to suspect I may not live forever…

ok...I have an up-date.
Further proof of my rapid decline.
I just got pink-eye!
What fucking grade am I in? Really?
I walked into the Urgent Care with my sunglasses on.
"Can I help you?"
I whip the glasses off
"Yes, I think something is wrong with my eyes"
(that almost got a laugh)
what is next? Mono?Thrush?
jesus fucking christo
how is it possible that I look this good and feel this bad?

Don't leave me! This is freaking me out!

I had this friend...lets call her....Cannes
(that only rhmyes with her name if you say it all wrong, like an American would...crap did I lose you already?)
So...Cannes has this one boyfriend. It's all new and lovey-dovey. They stay the night together. First time , right? She has this dream in which her teenage son is leaving her with some crazy person that is ready to kill her...(she has no kids by the way)
So as the son is leaving she yells out "don't leave me!" and wakes herself and her new paramour up. He says "were you having a dream about me?" ummm, no! but that's funny.
"Don't leave me!"
Fast forward a month or 2...new boyfriend, same deal ...first night jitters perhaps? She is dreaming that she is careening down a flight of stairs...she yells "this is freaking me out!"
really?
"this is freaking me out"?
priceless.
new boyfriend says "relax it's gonna be cool"
I love it.

I tried to electrocute myself and blow up my car

Not simultaneously mind you.
I don't know what is wrong with me lately.
This last weekend I checked the oil in my car. The dipstick showed that the oil was pretty much gone. So I poured some oil in ...still nothing. Hm. Then I realized I was parked on a bit of an incline.
Duh.
So i move the car. It's still showing low so I put a bit more in ....
I get the car all squared away and head over to Walmart to get some hair clippers.

Look, I have gotten a thousand haircuts. I have been paying attention. I am ready. I can cut my own damn hair. (oh...and I accidentally wind up at the Ghetto-Ass Walmart. Great. I admit to being a bit of a snob but who has a 4 year old that looks like Lil' Jon ? Down to the grill. Really? Honestly? Not even on Halloween is that cool.)

So there I am all ready to clip my hair. I realize I don't want hair all over my shirt, so I take it off. Then I think I don't want hair all over the floor, why don't I stand in the tub and do this? And ....since I'm going to want to take a shower to wash all the hair off...I may as well take my pants off, right?
Sooo...there I am standing in the tub clippers in hand.Naked.
Then something funny happens. The nerve endings in my feet send me a message."ummm, dude? We're in , like , an inch of water down here?"ok...thanks feet..whatever...Wait....What?"
"Is this bad?"
I Jump out of the tub all cat-like.I toss the clippers in the sink and wipe my feet dry .....Was I in any real danger? Who knows....but when did my I.Q. drop to the point that warning labels are meant for ME?
So...as I am trying to figure out when I became retarded, it occurs to me...had I actually succeeded in electrocuting myself, when they FOUND my body? How does that look? Think about it...there I am : clippers in hand, in the tub...NAKED."What hair do you 'spose he was about to clip?"You don't need to be naked to give yourself a haircut, right?
Right. Not a pretty picture now is it?

Ok fine danger averted. I drive to work the next morning. As I pull into the parking lot I notice there is some smoke coming out of the engine bay...."hmm. I wonder if that's 'good' smoke?"
probably not.So I pop the hood. My car has blasted oil all over itself! There is no oil cap. Great! So I need to get down to the auto parts store and get a new 710 cap..
but now the car is low on oil again because it's been shooting all over itself.so i need to add MORE ....right?
Finally my brain shows up on the set. WHY is the oil cap gone? It got blowed off!...But why? I check the dipstick...there should be about 2-3 inches of oil on the stick? I have about 5-6...whoops.
So for my lunch on Monday I drive over to Walmart
( I really suspect Walmart has something to do with this shit by the way)
I have no 710 cap so my car is continuing to ejaculate oil all over itself...I fixed the car in the parking lot of Walmart. End of story.
But ....
When did I become so retarded?

Why am I suddenly such a danger to myself?

This call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes

They record the calls and then they listen to them and go over a checklist with a couple of hundred things that I am required to say in a certain way and type the proper codes into the computer and somehow make it sound as if you and I are just having a friendly conversation about borrowing a couple of hundred thousand dollars from my bank.

I missed this one recently:"is the person registered as a member of a civil union in NJ?" hmmm...he's a single, retired actor, living in Oregon...so..."no"?
WRONG!...it should be NA because he does not live in that state and therefore the very question is not applicable...but wait...if he doesn't live in that state and is not in fact a registered member of a same sex couple the answer is NO, right?WRONG!
Whatever.
I had a customer today that fucking rocked. He was an actor in Hollywood for 30 something years. I looked him up on IMBD while I was processing his application...he appeared on Bonanza...the Incredible Hulk....CSI...He told me a story about doing coke with Nick Nolte (to be fair, anybody working in Hollywood for more than a few years was bound to have done a line or 2 with Nick...but still, that's cool)
He says, " We were writing the script for 48 Hours...it was getting late, I was tired, I told the guys I was going to head home to bed...Nick says 'no, here try this' ( he didn't do a cool Nolte voice which diminished the story somewhat for me)I said 'naw I've never done any drugs' 'don't worry we won't let you jump out the window or anything'
So I tried it. We turned into jabbering monkeys and didn't write another decent line that night" ...
If you are only going to do coke once in your life? That has to be one of the best goddamn ways to do it. I love the fact that that was one of my QA calls. Some tight assed QA dweeb had to sit through the Nick Nolte cocaine story. Awesome!

Yes, there ARE stupid questions

The trainer for my class keeps saying that if you have a question go ahead and ask because there are probably 4 other people wondering the same thing.Sure.
Except there is a guy in our class....lets call him Mr Dumas...this man has an uncanny ability to ask the question nobody is wondering.
Ever.
In fact his ability is so diabolical that even though I try to, I can't possibly predict what assinine question he is going to ask.
I play a game : the second Mr. Dumas indicates he is going to ask a question I try to guess what the most obvious question regarding the material at hand would be. He bests me at every turn. I was going to make up something exceedingly stupid to illustrate my point comedically. Fortunately Mr Dumas has done my work for me. Today he asked how the marital status of 'seperated ' is different than 'divorced' Once that was defined he then followed up with "so if they say 'seperated' we should mark down 'single' on the application?"no, mark them as 'seperated'"so when would you mark them as single then?"
You can see how there would be no beating this man. However Mr. Dumas does have one redeeming quality. He has an inflection disorder. When asked to read aloud Mr. Dumas sounds as if he doesn't comprehend a single word of what he is reading and therefore assigns random inflection to his words. He sounds like that computer program that says out loud whatever you type but the voice seems to rise and fall on random syllables. It goes like this:
"communicate TO THE customer THE combined NATURE and information regarding their asset AND HOW their equity position...."
by this point I am stiffling laughter across my upper palate and through my nose. One other person in our class has noticed the robotronic nature of his reading style. God forbid I make eye contact with this person because then I start to lose it.
This brings up another issue. Mr Dumas is making me look like the kind of maniac who laughs at completely innapropriate times.
I don't want these people thinking I'm the kind of person who would laugh hysterically if for example you were to tell me the Vice President shot his best pal in the face with a shotgun. ( I am that kind of guy but they don't need to know that)
I would like Mr. Dumas a little more if we could make 2 new class rules.1) whenever there is reading to be done Mr. Dumas is our class representative.2) no more asking questions such as "so if the sun is out it's daytime?

My first blog...aww precious moments

Ok I started blogging elsewhere...but I'm draggin' my old shit over herr...
so
first one...no editing


I came to Colorado with this idea that I had this person waiting here for me and we were going to be together...it seemed beyond inevitable. Then a funny thing happened. ....well actually nothing happened. I'm not sure where it stands now other than we won't have to argue over who sleeps on which side of the bed...I certainly have learned ( at least a little bit...because really I'm not so smart and I'll probably have to re-learn this lesson a few times more before it sticks) to check my expectations at the door and wait and see what happens.
But here's the thing, expectations run both directions.
I was not expecting to like my new job as much as I have so far. Ok, yes, I haven't actually started doing my new job, I'm still going through the training...but I like the schedule I'm going to have, I can pick up all the overtime I want ( I am cursed with free time so I may as well do something productive instead of all the things my little impulses could get me into) and the people that I work for? I have never seen such a relentlessly upbeat group of people. Not pollyanna bullshit either. They seem to really like the people they work with and the company they work for. There is actually a manager whose nickname is 'tater-tot' If i could make shit like that up I wouldn't be 'blogging' i'd have a book deal.
Then last night...(maybe I should mix up the time frame so that the woman I'm about to talk about doesn't know it's her...or maybe I already did) I went out with a woman for drinks. A person who shall remain nameless (it rhymes with Sharlot...that's all I'll say) looked at my dates myspace picture and said.." she won't be smart enough for you" ...what? "I have a feeling about these things" ok whatever. But I think the seed was planted. Because I was kind of surprised when I got there ..I wasn't bored ...at all. We had a good time, a nice conversation. Even the Holy Trinity of first date no-no's came up ...exes, religion and politics... fortunately we agreed on all three (she's better off without the ex, George Bush is an idiot and the fact that he says nuke-u-lar, instead of nuke-le-ar proves it, and we don't attend services...ever.)
So what happens next? I don't know...but I certainly am not going to entertain any sort of expectations...I'm going with the flow until further notice

Pikes Peak hill climb or why I love those crazy...

The Boy and I have been 3 or 4 times now. The first time I heard of it, it had all the hallmarks of a great-goddamn time.
Men barreling wildly up the side of a hill in highly modified cars, whilst we, the spectators cling to the side of a cliff watching their insanity? YES!
Oh wait, they have crazy fuckers in side cars and on motorcycles running 3 or 4 at a time ...so potentially somebody could elbow another off the side of a cliff (in the spirit of competition, right?) I'm there.
Ok, you do have to show up at like 7 am...the only thing I have arrived on stage for fun at that hour willingly ...um...nookie?
(look you can wake me at any time in a 24 hour cycle, and if I am getting some? I will not yelp a bit. but any other reason to wake me up aside from the house being on fire is unacceptable . I assure you, in the past, I have been pissed off for being awakened to witness an earthquake. Been there done that. I'm from Los Angeles. Unless you have something in excess of the Northridge quake? leave me be.)
anyway.
you go up the hill, find a spot to cling to the side of a cliff and then.....
wait...
and then you trade rumors about what kind of psychotic might be driving maniacally your way...
then you wait...
then some guy with a walkie talkie screams at you to "get off the road!"
then you wait some more.
then?
you hear a faint Buzz-Roar.
a Buzz -Roar is the kind of sound where, right now it's just a Buzz....but you know that when that thing gets close ? it's going to be a fucking roar.
so the sound gets close and you see a helicopter sort of dashing in and out among the peaks and then it's on you.
the Buzz-Roar is now more Roar than Buzz and it's just around the corner....
and then it flies insanely into view. A 400 hp Saab with no interior and a crazy Swede behind the wheel, sliding sideways on gravel and a 3,000 foot drop to his right. And on his left? YOU.
Watching his crazy ass with your 4 year old son.
He slides by at 103 mph and you and your 4 year old son (who, most likely, is crazier than that Swede because if given half the chance will gladly sit on top of your fridge in the nude and eat chips) throw your hands madly in the air and yell something like "YEEEEAAAH!!!" while the crazy swede slides by.
then you wait.
you see the way this is shaping up, right?
crazy fucker in a Big Rig sliding sideways, you screaming "yeeeeaaah" etc.
crazy fucker in a mustang...blah blah blah....
but....
here's where we got hooked.
I think it was "crazy-fucker-in-a-day-glow-orange-propane-powered-Shelby-Cobra"
he came around the corner "wide"
"wide" is the condition where the driver has taken a corner wider than everyone else and therefore that driver is now trodding upon the debris that the other drivers have pushed to the outside. In practical terms this driver is now throwing dirt and rocks.
So the yell goes out...
"WIDE!!"
I grab Hopper like I'm Bruce Willis and the building is about to blow ... and I am running from the calamity.
We get to within a few feet of safety and a dirt clod hits me in the head.
On the scene reports claim that it was the size of a cantaloupe.
Using the "algorithm of exaggeration" I determine that it was most likely 'grapefruit' sized. (which is still a "real-fuckin'-big" piece of dirt to get hit in the head with)
I stagger and sort of toss Hopper
the huddled masses run to me and praise me for the density of my cranium and tell me the size of the piece of dirt I disintegrated with my skull ( cantaloupe is the consensus. Grapefruit is most likely the reality. I'm just saying)
so, that rocked.
then later Hopper had to use the restroom. I encouraged him to whizz upon a tree....but as much as he would have loved to do that, he told me he had another...agenda...
so as we are dashing across the road to the "porta" I skitter on the gravel and I do a sort of break dance move and in mid stride I have to slap a hand on the ground but still we keep on running because who wants to be the guy who died because he got hit by 2 crazy fuckers on a sidecar careening up "the hill"?
and here is what's cool ...my little "running like mad holding the boy's hand , oh shit I almost fell but then didn't"
got the biggest applause of the day!
In my heart I'm sure I looked like Neo doing some bad-ass-slow-mo move.
My head tells me I looked more like the local weather man slipping on some ice on Action News 5.
so, i love you crazy fuckers that race up the side of the hill. One day I'd like to join your ranks.
And I love you crazy fuckers that love the crazy fuckers.
we have a weekend planned!