I'm just saying...

Don't Look Here!

2009-02-12T16:29:00.000-08:00

The blog is over here now: http://laserlikeprecision.blogspot.com/

I needed to make some changes and I decided a new blog was in order...I may lose a few readers...which at this point I think I had 8 regulars...so a full 3/4 of my readership will most likely be gone....yet unemployment still hovers at like 10%...so in terms of blunders, numbers-wise I have made a more egregious error by not posting for 3 months and then moving the blog than George Bush has done with our country...wow.
So I'm now re-assembling my self esteem and telling you why the blog has moved.
I went from my life being better than it had been in years, it's morning in America and my futures so bright I gotta' wear shades...to worse than it's been in a long while.

I wanted to give myself and the blog a fresh start. I want to vary the writing a little bit be a little more reflective and thoughtful, maybe add some new elements ie: food writing, music writing...less cursing perhaps?
I am going to allow myself shorter posts...I was never obsessed with word counts per se but I did try to make sure they were more substantive...I"m not going to focus so much on that anymore.

Anyway, as I said, I'm going to try to retain at least 2 of my regulars ..and since I talk to both of them at least once a week I think that's an attainable goal...

Gaydar

2008-11-08T21:14:00.000-08:00

Becca and I attended an information session for a Phd program she really wants to enroll in at the Morgridge College of Education.
One of the administrators that we got to sit down and talk to was a guy I would guess to be in his mid 40's. Nice understated suit, stylish glasses...and a nose stud.
A dainty little little nose stud like a woman would wear.
I didn't see it at first because I was hypnotized by a bronze bust very near the table we were sitting at. It was a bust of the man that the building we were sitting in was named after. Not terribly notable except for the fact that the man had an owl coming out of his right shoulder. Not on, coming out of .
"What the hell kind of half owl/half man hybrid had they named this building after?" I kept wondering.
So, it wasn't until the light caught the stud in his nose that I noticed it. The strange thing was I wasn't getting any kind of gay vibe at from him. Weird.
Later we were in the Coach store and I brought it up.
Becca said " I just think he's very Metro. I have good Gaydar and he wasn't setting it off."
I said, "I do too, and you're right no bells were going off."
Just then a smartly dressed young man flounced over and asked if we needed any help. I leaned close to Becca's ear and said under my breath, " beep...beep...beep"
I have to give it to her she held it together pretty well until he left then she turned to me, "Right! That guy was setting it off!"
Later that night we went out to dinner and the nice young man serving us was obviously gay as well. While he was talking to us I stared at Becca and watched her battle to keep from smiling too widely. I was really tempted to beep at her again...but it would have been odd behavior ...ok, I know I'm known for odd behavior at times, but frankly I didn't want to make the kid uncomfortable. He was, after all, about to bring me plates of food.
After he left she wheeled on me,
" All I could hear while he was talking was your voice in my head saying 'beep...beep..beep'. "

ps: I never found out why the man had an owl coming out of his arm. I went over and read the little sign under the bust and it said, "The bust of William Driscoll has been moved to another location until further notice" When clearly it had not.
pps: further study reveals he was a zoologist ...which still doesn't explain an owl coming out of his fucking shoulder instead of being on it!

The new Era

2008-11-08T06:21:00.000-08:00

The day after the election I had a customer buying a phone. The price was $100 minus a $50 mail in rebate.
I told her about the rebate but as always happens only the lowest number registered.
(when I say "we ordered your phone and it will be here 3 to 5 business days" the customer hears "I swear on my sweet grammy's grave that your phone will be here in no more than 3 days, regardless of holidays, weekends, fires, floods and tornadoes)
So she is staring at this receipt, pen poised, and she just can't bring herself to sign it because for the life of her she can't figure out how $50 became $107.35 after taxes.
I finally decide to help her out, I say matter of factly
"Taxes"
She looks up at me with a question on her face.
I say, "they warned us Obama would raise our taxes....but 100% seems a bit much to me."
She looked stunned for just a second and then I said, "the mail in rebate?"
She and her daughter cracked up.

I have found in sales if you can scare the crap out of the customers with something like 100% taxes and then reassure them it's just a mail in rebate that you may or may not get in 6 months it makes for a much better customer service experience.

Signs That Your Campaign Might be In Trouble

2008-10-27T19:05:00.000-07:00

ok.....if a former Secretary Of State...
and National Security Advisor...
and Chairman Of The Joint Chiefs Of Staff.....
who is a member of your party endorses your opponent?
Your campaign might be in trouble.
If your most recent endorsement is....lets see...oh, I know:
Kurt Schilling!
You are in even worse trouble than I thought.
That's deep shit right there.
Think about that, on one side you have Colin Powell backing Obama...you heard of Colin Powell, right?
Um, lemme' see.....MBA from George Washington University, served 2 terms in Vietnam, rose to the rank of 4 Star General blah, blah, blah...plus all that Secretary Of State horseshit I mentioned earlier....
On the other side, Kurt Schilling....lets see....3 world series rings, lifetime era of 3.46, 2001 World series mvp and a 98 MPH (in his prime) fastball. Of course his only experience in political matters up to this point is limited to testifying in front of congress in 2005 about steroid use in baseball.

In terms of having the faith of powerful, influential people behind you....
I'm going to go with the guy with all the "experience" in politics versus the guy that you would kill to have on your company softball team.

Enh....maybe I'm biased...

Guess What I Did On My Day Off...

2008-10-22T20:41:00.000-07:00

Ok take a flying leap at what I did with my day off yesterday.
G'head, I'll wait.
(at this point you should hear the theme music for Final Jeopardy in your head....or maybe even hum it to yourself)

If you guessed:
-did laundry
-went to the library
-worked out
-blogged
-wandered aimlessly around Whole Foods, listening to my music, chatting up the pretty woman in the cheese/produce/seafood department. Oh, and the guy behind the meat counter...but I couldn't accurately tell you if he's all that good looking or not...that's just not my thing. I am relentlessly hetero despite my metrosexual facade . Ask anybody.
-Subsequent to the Whole Foods trip cooked a needlessly elaborate meal considering it was for only one person

Any one of these (or perhaps several of these) would have been a good guess.
However, that's not what I'm talking about.
I voted.
I partook of the early voting process.
Heartily, I may add.
I voted long. I voted hard. I voted deep.
I voted the shit out of it.

The thing is, I am a political junkie. I can tell you, at great length, why I rated Reagan as one of my least favorite modern presidents until Bush came along. I am very much interested in the outcome of this campaign...and I wound up voting completely by accident.
I didn't set out to vote.
It's actually kind of weird.
I was at the mall. I fucking hate the mall. I was going to say I avoid it like the plague...but who even knows what the hell the plague is? I avoid the mall like herpes. Like kicks to the balls. Like tainted shellfish.....like taints...(ok that last bit may have been borderline inappropriate...taints..)
But...You get the picture?
So, for some reason I decided I wanted to see if I could find a protective case for my cell phone.
(they did have one, it was stupid-expensive considering it probably cost next to nothing to make and I passed on it.)
Anyway.I have developed a defense mechanism for places like the mall or Walmart.
I listen to mp3s on my phone and pretend I am in a video in which a cool, good looking, well dressed guy in his 30's ironically walks amongst the uneducated-unwashed masses.....
and if you think this is snobby and rude? Then you're stupid and you probably smell gross...I'm just saying...
So there I am, walking in the mall, trying not to hate or punch anyone and I round a corner and there it is, a polling place. It was like I turned a corner and I found a hot chick giving out free CD's and sushi and bourbon . I slowed down my pace as I approached, trying to take it all in ....to make sure I really was seeing what I was seeing.
I walked up to the nice old lady and she said, "are you here to vote?"
I was like a little kid, "Can I?!"
She broke down the rules (have a valid I.D. be registered etc...) and I got in line and voted like a madman.
I won't go into all the ins and outs.
But! If Obama becomes president, I am totally taking credit. I voted for him waaaay before all you fuckers and y'all just copied me.
I won't even get into all the reasons why you should vote for Obama.
The Real News (found on most channels) tells you why...and the Fixed News...or Fake news...or..umm Fox "News" tells you why by talking all kinds of retarded bullshit...and I apologize to Retards for saying that. Even Retards think "umm what you are saying? ....Fox "news" makes no fucking sense. And I'm a retard!" (you should hear a super fake, over the top, cliche, retard voice when you read that.)
(again...sorry to Retards. And that includes you Dubya.)
So.
I voted for Obama.
Duh.
But the other thing on the ballot that I voted for...or actually against as the case may be...
Hang on....
Here in Colorado they have a ballot initiative for a constitutional amendment to make it official that "life begins at the moment of conception" And....AND.!!..that little lump of egg and sperm, the millisecond that it bifurcates into 2 cells, it has the same rights as you and I.
Think about that. The fraction of a second that it takes.....the moment of fertilization...I'm near to speechless...what the fuck?
Is a seedling the same as a 100 year old oak?
Fuck no.
Come on.
A 2 celled organism, that may at some point become a human, has the same rights as you and I?
Get the fuck out of here.
I will barely concede that my 13 year old son has the same rights as me. And god only knows how many cells He has...he's going through puberty for fuck's sake...

So.
I voted for Obama. And I voted against giving double-celled organisms driving privileges, voting rights and the ability to supersize their happy meal.
And anybody that doesn't like it? Well, I challenge you and that ...that...collection of cells to a fight...you and the cells versus me and ...I don't know...um..a cage fighter? I mean, if you really think that is a human being with full human rights and not just a small assortment of cells...well then lets the 4 of us have a fight and you see how much back up those cells are versus my cage fighter...and I'll even let you pick...you can pick a guy that is 0-40 ...
40 fights 40 losses....
I could probably beat that fucker.... even with my separated shoulder (on account of spending so much time in that ditch?Remember?)
and I will still take that Human Being over your little pile of cells.

I'm.
Just.
Saying.

Hunh!

2008-10-21T10:18:00.000-07:00

I like when a comment taken out of context is funny.
I'm about to watch a boxing match and the announcer says, "it's the punch you don't see coming that knocks you out ...now lets talk to Larry Merchant who you can always see coming"
WTF? You can always see Larry Merchat cumming?
Really?
Then later in the fight they are trying to explain that the key to this fight is that the fighter that hits first is doing better because there is no counter-punching going on.
The other announcer said, " if Mosely gets off first he looks better, if Cotto gets off first he looks better"
Again,
WTF?
I was starting to think they had a bet going on Like in "Super Troopers" when the one trooper bets the other trooper he can't say "meow" a certain number of times and so the trooper says to the couple he has pulled over "meow listen here" amongst other things.
I think they got this bet going that they couldn't say on the air something that would imply the fighter is having an orgasim.
Right as I had this thought Lamply said, "Mosely is impressive at this age. He just keeps coming and coming and coming"

Oh shit now it's a three way tie!

Suddenly I was more interested in what the announcers were saying than the fight itself. What kind of innuendo was going to be dropped next?!
For the next few rounds it just punching and stuff.
ZZZzzzzzz Boooring.
I thought it was going to end in a three way tie until Cottos mouthpiece was knocked out and Jim Lampley seized the opportunity by saying, "wow, that left his mouth like Paris Hilton spitting out a wad in the back of the limo!"

A little artless and obvious but I gave him the win nonetheless.

(that last bit may have been embellished)

Censoship People has reared its Ugly head.

2008-10-21T07:31:00.000-07:00

I knew this day would come.
Well it's official, I have been censored on the internet.
You know what that means?

The Terrorists Have Already Won.

I can try to go to the mall and buy a bunch of useless crap I don't need like President Jackass has suggested....but it might be too little, too late. I'm afraid they really may have already won and there is nothing a vibrating leather chair can do about it.

I should explain. Last night I left a comment on a blog. That the blog owner refused to post.
It was my usual well thought out, expletive laden diatribe that only tangentially had anything to do with the the actual subject.
In essence I said "fuck Doulas."
Every doula I know is a lying douche.
Of course the one I know happens to be my ex wife and while I will grant the two facts about her: 1) shes a doula and 2) she's a lying douche may be independent of each other and doulas as a group might be good people....I'm just saying all the ones I know are bad people, ok?

But the censorship has already begun. The terrorist have already won and soon we'll all be sporting burkhas....of course this is still america so we'll have burkhas that say Phat Farm or Abercrombie on them...but that's not the point.....

Today Was A Good Day ( yes I am quoting an Ice Cube song)

2008-10-20T20:33:00.000-07:00

It was a good day today because Chris revealed himself to be a pirate.

I should back up a little.
Chris is one of 2 new guys (the other is Marvin, a black dude who talks with a bit of a lisp so to me he always sounds like Tim Meadows character The Ladies Man...so of course I like Marvin.)
Chris is black too...but he's one of the whitest black dudes I've ever met.
But of course I'm too white to point that out...fortunately Hamlet has had a great time of pointing out how 'white' Chris is.
Oh....have I ever mentioned Hamlet? First, this is not a pseudonym. Hamlet is a Dominican guy from New York. Hamlet looks,acts, dresses and talks like the absolute cliche of what you think a Dominican guy from New York should be. I think he's awesome because he says thing to me like "watchoo need nigga?" if I'm trying to ask him a question. Plus? He's a Dominican guy from New York named Hamlet!
Don't even try to deny it; that's awesome.
So, to give you an example of how Hamlet points out that Chris is white despite the color of his skin, yesterday I happened to walk into the office and Hamlet , Chris and a couple of other people were there...I walk in as Hamlet says to Chris, "c'mon muthafucka, name one other member of the Wu Tang Clan besides Inspecta Deck" and Chris says, "umm lets see, there's Inspecta Deck..." and Hamlet turns to me, points and says, "Nigga, name somebody from Wu Tang."
I say, without hesitating, "The Rza, The Gza, Old Dirty Bastard, Ghostface Killa, Method Man..." He interrupts me looks at Chris, "see bitch, Michael blacker than you!"
Then he turns to me and says, "knowin' Wu Tang don't make you black......you know Bobby Digital?"
To which I respond, "I'm vegetarian, bitch, I don't eat the beef. Wait 'till you go to sleep I'll pull ya' teef."
Which is a Bobby Digital lyric....Bobby Digital is the alter ego of The Rza....but I digress.

So. I'm blacker than Chris...who is technically black... ( one time he mentioned his wife is black and somebody said "a mixed marriage? Nice!")

What the fuck was I talking about?
Oh yeah, Chris is a pirate.
He comes in wearing a belt that has a skull and cross bones belt buckle.
I'm serious.
So of course we all spend most of the day making great sport of his piratical belt buckle. We start sentences with 'argh' and 'avast'
(holy shit, spell check was fine with the word "piratical"
...anyway)
But, the best part of all the fun we had at his expense?
(and believe me, we had great fun. At one point he asked me, "what am I supposed to do?" I said, "I don't know, invent a time machine and go back to the moment in which you put that fucking belt on and then stop yourself?....Or at the very least, maybe buy a mirror for the house?")
Ok. He was about to leave. Marvin had a very cute young customer. I asked her if she had ever seen a real pirate. She , of course, was all "what the fuck?"
I summon Chris over, he shows her the belt buckle and she says....
wait for it...
"where'd you get that, Hot Topic?"
Yes!
Nice!
I couldn't help myself, I high-fived her.
Those who know me know I'm not a high-fiven' kind of guy...but that was exceptional.
She did not pause, did not think about it.
"Where'd you get that, Hot Topic?"
I looked at the woman who came with her, I said, "M'am, is this your daughter?" she said yes and I said, (with absolute sincerity) "you must be so proud."

When I'm President King part XXIV

2008-10-18T19:48:00.000-07:00

I may have written about this before, if so I apologize to those have heard it already....
but when I'm President King the advertised sale price of grocery items (specifically the sale tags at the supermarket) will first have multi unit sale prices that are divisible by 2.
Ie: 2 for $10. I'm not going to even make them put a single unit price on something, I'm a fair guy. But we can all easily tell that the price per unit is $5. Even 4 for $5 is ok, (that's a buck and a quarter, easy enough) But when I see 7 for $13 or some random retarded fraction, fuck that. I shouldn't be forced to do algebra to find out how much my gaddamn cottage cheese is costing me. (sorry to those of my readers who may be retarded, nothing personal)
What brings this on tonight?
I was in the store and I passed through the chip eisle and saw that a brand of chips I happen to like was on sale....2 for the price of 1. The price of one being $3.98 a bag...so roughly $2, not a bad price I guess and easy enough to figure out how much it's going to cost me.
So....I happen to cruise by the "fresh" salsas (the kind they keep refrigerated) they have a brand I kind of like, which is unusual in this Wonderbread town, and it's on sale....3 for $5...damnit!...that's what, $1.67 each? Not bad I guess...then I happen to look at the salsa next to it....it looks kind of good too...but it is some other random fucking fraction.
Hmm...
So I think I'll get a little more clarity on this by looking at the fine print that
gives the price per ___...
Not much help there because the first tag says __ $ per ounce, the one next to it __$ per pound and the third brand? __$ per quart.
Ok, I was almost fine until I saw that last one.
Per quart? Really?
Why give me the price per quart? Who knows what a quart of salsa is? Who buys a quart of fucking salsa for personal consumption? What the hell am I doing with that much salsa...drinking it? Pouring it on cereal for fucks sake?
It is absurd to try to compare these 3 measurements. They may as well try to sell it to me in seconds per hectare. How the fuck am I supposed to compare a weight measurement with a volume measurement? Why not throw the per square inch price? Hey, why not go fucking metric with this bitch?! 3 euros per kilometer or some shit....
What the hell?
Nobody ever buys a fucking quart of salsa for personal consumption. What does a quart of salsa even look like?
What really annoys me is the obsfucation.
Why do you have to try to confuse me as a consumer? How about giving me clear information that will let me make an informed choice, fuckers?
It's not just obsfucation, it's unnecessary...do they think we'll just get all flustered and buy 5 for the price of 9 or something?
When I'm President King you will be able to look at a block of cheese or whatever and say, "OK, this one costs eleven cents per pound more than the other, but it's a higher quality product"
Or the reverse, "fuck that, the shitty cheese is 8 cents more per pound than the good stuff?!"
Informed choice without trickery ...is that so unreasonable?
The whole fucking point of having a sale is to increase sales so why not let people feel good about their choice because they have made an informed decision instead of just muddying the water?
I got so annoyed trying to do the math on this shit that I decided to forget the whole thing.
I refuse to pay $43,000 centavos for 7/16 of a decaliter of store bought salsa, I'm not gonna' do it.

I do have to say though..on the way out I happened to catch an awesome deal, the service deli had eleventy-five shmears of 3/4 fat cream cheese (which is soooo much better than 1/2 fat) on 75/15's* of a bagel.
Toasted!

* I was going to throw in some pi and 'squared' type mathematics and shit....but this stupid laptop** doesn't have the keys for that sort of thing)
** I'm going to change the name of 'laptops' when I'm President King.
First: most of the time people do not have them on their laps when they are using them.
Second: 'laptop' sounds vaguely sexual..... which is soooo stupid because if you are using a laptop in a sexual way (Internet porn? Heard of it?Anyone? Oh right, it's just me.) then the last place you want that fucking thing is on your lap)
I'm just saying.

2008-09-27T13:11:00.001-07:00

I was at the Dr.'s office and the 2 receptionists are having a conversation.
First receptionist: Are you sure it's not pronounced 'Focusia' ?
(as in focus-e-uh)
I assume they are talking about some new ADHD medication.
Second receptionist: I'm telling you, you're saying it wrong. Here lets ask him.
She points at me.
She hands me a piece of paper. It is a takeout menu.
She points to one of the sandwiches listed.
It comes on Focaccia.

PS: in case you are sitting there thinking "yeah, I'm not totally sure how it's pronounced myself" it's Fo-cash-uh...(middle syllable is an ah sound)

Breakfast with Cindy

2008-09-25T23:41:00.000-07:00

My friend Cindy and I have a place that we really like for breakfast. It's a 2 hour round trip to get there, the hollandaise is that good. I'm not going to tell you the name of it because you will go there and the wait will be even longer.
Usually it's about an hour wait to get a table...actually we could probably have minimized the wait but we specified the patio.
The first time we went there we said just sit us wherever and we wound up with a lovely table triangulated by the kitchen, a table full of 8 screaming toddlers (maybe a lamaze class reunion?) and a woman with a devastating case of cankles which she tried to draw attention away from through the clever use of cleavage. It wasn't working. I couldn't take my eyes off the things. Seriously the woman should adopt a style of dress that involves boots, lots and lots of boots.
So this time we said we would wait for the patio...we got a nice table, shady, not near any cankles or babies...but it was right by the door. Which is not that big of a deal except that it was an automatic door so it was kind of like having breakfast right next to the front door of a supermarket. But I'm not complaining. I think that pretty soon we will have it narrowed down to one perfect table and we will have to wait an hour and a half for it...
While I was waiting in line to put our name on the list a guy sort of scooted past me said excuse me ....and then stood in front of me.
I paused for a second and then my "Oh Hell No!" response kicked in. I said "Um excuse me?" The guy turned around and I said "Please tell me you did not just..." and then I made a little circular motion with my finger to indicate his little swooping in front of me maneuver.
Yes I did make a quick little mental calculation that he was wearing trendy glasses and a nice sweater I imagine you could get at Banana Republic (and not the outlet either) and was slight of frame and therefore was highly unlikely to be able to kick my ass.
But in my defense just today a big black guy that I work with kept repeatedly saying he was going to punch me, to which I finally replied , "look either punch me in the fucking face, or shut up about it" So I'll shoot my mouth off whenever it's appropriate.
Anyway, the guy says, "Um, actually I'm just getting to the coffee pot."
He points and, whaddya know, there is a coffee pot right next to the nice young lady taking table reservations! I apologize to him and the nice young lady takes my reservation.
I go outside and Cindy is sitting on a bench and the Trendy Guy and his girlfriend are standing Right Next To her. super. The guy gives me a nod and we both smile. As I sit down Cindy gives me a quizzical look and I say loudly enough for the couple to hear, "oh that's the guy I tried to pick a fight with in there"
He says he says " Yeah we were going to totally fight but then we worked it out" I explained what happened and she gave me the look that says, "Michael, you're a dumbass"
So while we were waiting for our table Cindy and I did what we normally do in situations like this.
We start talking shit about people.
For example Cindy says to me "have you ever seen cankles on man?" and honest to God the mans ankles looked like a couple of monster burritos. They were the color of flour tortillas, and they went straight down into his sandals without any tapering whatsoever.
(What is with this place and the fucking cankles anyway?)
Then a guy walks up...and his hair was dyed....have you seen these guys that their hair is going grey so they have died their hair .....and you're not really clear what color it was supposed to be?
Blackish, brownish, reddish...no fucking idea what color you meant but that ain't it dude.
He's wearing....I don't even know how to properly describe the shirt...satiny,thin white and black lines in undulating repeating patterns meant to create a 3-d effect of movement and depth at the same time.
Over this he is wearing a herringbone jacket. The effect gives me an instant migraine. I make a sort of woozy face and say to Cindy, "I think I have vertigo".
She glances over my shoulder and says "What color is his hair?"
Then, we both catch sight of this woman at the same time.
She is 50 to 70 something. Hard to tell because she has clearly had extensive cosmetic surgery. I have seen these women on tv but never one in it's natural habitat. They look like an alien trying to pass as human.
As if some other life form has been watching our tv shows and has a skewed idea of what we like a woman to look like.
I can try to describe the various plastic surgery horrors. The elfin appearance from the face lift, the enormous, inappropriate boobs, the Michael Jackson nose...
Where do I start? You know what, I kind of buried the lead.
Her lips.
They looked like her face had crashed and deployed the airbags. They looked like somebody had sewn a couple of bicycle inner tubes on her face and then applied lipstick. They looked so rubbery and fake that you got the impression that even after she stopped talking they would keep moving all wubbly-jubbly for a few seconds.
Cindy supposed that when she ate, to get the food past her lips, it would appear kind of like a pelican throwing food up a little and then sort of gobbling it down into her throat...I have to say Cindy does a pretty damn good pelican.
We watched as family member after family member said goodbye and with looks of horror had the ginormous fish lips applied to their cheeks.
The absolute best was a guy in his 20's, looked like a grandson maybe. He tried to hug her without actually having Grandma's huge rack touch him. It was like he was trying to apply some sort of force field with his arms around her without touching her. He did that exaggerated ass-out hug thing. You had to feel for the kid. Here he is trying to have a nice family breakfast and he has to at the last minute do evasive manoeuvres to avoid Geriatric Triple-D's.

Before you think I'm being mean to the woman, I'm not the jerk here, ok?
You want to know who the asshole is? The plastic surgeon who didn't have the temerity to say "Hey, look, you're 5 foot 2 and you weigh 115 lbs. soaking wet...maybe Triple D is not the way to go?" Or the surgeon could have said, "I know you want fuller lips...but normally we inject only 1 to 3 cc's of collagen...7 cc's seems excessive." Or perhaps, "look I can only stretch the skin of your face so much before your ears meet in the back of your head and you look like an elf."
Or maybe the husband who kept paying for it and encouraging her?
Not me.

But fuck all that.
The Dutch apple pancake was phenomenal and the eggs benedict perfection. Cindy was charming and funny and beautiful. The weather was ideal and we sang "There's No-one Like You" by the Scorpions at the top of our lungs on the way home and it was a pretty damn good day.

Skip down one post I got one out of order

2008-09-23T20:54:00.000-07:00

I somehow posted one out of order. Skip down one....

At least they're honest about it...

2008-09-22T20:45:00.000-07:00

I saw these organic sausages at the store so I thought I would check them out...All things considered I was pretty disappointed.

First off, I'll be honest I couldn't taste the rats.

Either they really skimped out on the rats...In which case I'm kinda pissed, because if I buy rat sausage I want to be able to taste the rat goddamnit!

Or the second possibility is that maybe rats just taste like chicken...which is disappointing in it's own way I guess...

Anyway if you want a decent organic sausage (I served them with a nice spicy mustard and new potatoes with a bit of Irish cheddar melted on top)

Then I would try these but, if you're looking for an authentic rat sausage, keep moving buddy this ain't your brand.

Self fulfilling Prophecies

2008-09-20T15:33:00.000-07:00

You know how some of the most horribly awesome schadenfreude filled stories start out like this:

"There I was, minding my own business...."

This is a story about a self fulfilling prophesy

I recently said something in the comments section about huniliating myself, and then corrected it and made a joke out of the typo...Yeah, well last night was so filled with huniliation it's not even funny....

No, it's fucking hilarious.

Ok.
So there I was, minding my own business.
I was sitting outside my apartment reading a book. Never has reading a book caused me so much pain.
Up rolls a woman who used to live upstairs from me and finds me very attractive and to be frank this chick is several miles of bad road.

(I'm not sure about the proper nomenclature here. I know that a woman that is nothin' but trouble is some certain set of miles of "bad road" but I don't know the proper number...but trust me she's at the very least Several Miles.)

SO up rolls Ms. Thang and I try very hard to convince her I have several pressing engagements and cannot possibly leave.
The fact that I am hanging out in front of my apartment with my feet up reading a book doesn't really sell my story and so I finally agree to go see her new apartment and am assured that I will be returned home in an hour or less. She lives very close to me, so it's no big deal right?

Sigh.
We get to the apartment and somebody slaps a beer in my hand and my day goes officially and conclusively off the rails.
Then Ms. Thang gets into a huge door slamming-yelling "mutherfucker!"-throwing shit kind of fight with her boyfriend...and then they get engaged...I think..

but that's not the point.

The point is the baby.

Inside the apartment I could hear a baby crying....
I can't stand the sound of a crying baby.
But not why you think...
It's not that I'm intolerant, it's quite the opposite.
Before Calvin was Turbo, and before Turbo was Hopper he was just a little colicky smidge.
He cried for hours on end. And i held him and sang to him and patted his butt and ....I cried too.
Sometimes he would cry for so many hours in a row that I would be holding and rocking and singing and dancing ...and crying right alongside him.
He seemed to like this one particular Blues Traveler song...if i hear that song ...to this day I can't help but feel a little bunched up, a little sniffly.

SO there is a crying baby. I say something brilliant along the lines of "what's with the crying baby?"
They bring her out, I say let me see her, and somebody throws me the baby like a shovel pass....I hold her for a minute and bounce her a little and sing a little ...and she stops crying.
I think this is where it officially went from being Weird to Fucked Up.

(hang with me it's a long story but the good news, for you, dear reader, is that later on it's going to go from Fucked Up to Totally Fucked Up)

So...I'm going to estimate the next part of this story at about 4-6 hours. I sit in a chair on a balcony with this sweet little 6 month old and I break out my super high tech phone. The memory chip I happen to have in at the moment is loaded pretty heavily (like 2 gigs?) with 80's-90's punk and ska.
So I spend a big ole' chunk of time listening to Husker Du and Suicidal Tendencies and Goldfinger and Common Rider and Bad Religion and Bad Brains.
With every song I tell Sierra a story about the song...where I was the first time I heard it, the meaning of the song, the time I saw them play the song live, why this band or song is significant in the history of punk...
Whatever comes to mind.
I have the most captive of captive audiences. Every once in a while somebody slaps a beer in my hand or slams a door or shoots a BB gun off the balcony. (I'm serious. I was all, "not around the baby!")

Off and on a woman comes to talk to me.
She is a little hot...a little not. She looks like a cross between Christina Ricci and Susan Sarandon....so... cute, but...maybe not from every angle?
Ok, this woman bounces in and out of the scene...I want to go home at some point...I almost stole the baby, I swear. It was such a fucked up scene and here is this sweet little innocent thing....
Then I find out, the woman who may or may not be attractive, is actually the babies mother.

What. The. Fuck?
I'm a pretty perceptive guy and I had no fucking clue this was the mother of the baby?

She left, for hours at a time, some random fucking man holding her baby.

Jesus Fucking Christ how did I wind up here....

So I finally have had enough and demand somebody take me home ...and I realize that there isn't a single sober soul available to drive me anyplace....
Tony, the new boyfriend of the cute/not cute babymomma is supposed to show up and give me a ride...this frankly, does not seem like a great idea to me.
I happen to wander by their apartment because I'm just going to walk home, fuck all y'all!'
(realize now that I was more intoxicated than I thought and walking anywhere was probably one of the poorer ideas of the night)
and a guy sort of snaps at me from behind the screen door "hey, are you the guy?"
I'll be honest....at this point in my day I was fixin' for a fight. It would have taken very little to provoke me into violence. I just spent hours holding and caring for a tiny little thing that has much chance of having a good life and I as very very mad to have been exposed to that. I know it exists, but I don't want to fall in love with it and know about it
I told my friend Cindy the whole insane story and I told her I kind of had this idea that I would volunteer to watch the baby a couple days a week and she pointed out that I would just wind up loving the kid and getting my heart broken and in the end I wouldn't be able to do any good anyway..
so...
Tony (as it turns out) says from behind the screen door "you the guy needs a ride?" I say something along the lines of "yeah, I'm the guy that got kidnapped, I'm the fucking guy that watched the baby all night"
And he kicks the screen door open and I square off to fight this guy who frankly was much larger than me...and he hands me a bill.
It's folded lengthwise, I don't look at it, I stuff it in my pocket, and say goodnight. Or fuck off, or peace out or whatever.

I began to walk. I have no answer for why I didn't just call a cab.
It wasn't all that far from my house. Right? I'll fucking walk home. Fuck all y'all
I am making good time and cutting through yards....
then I come to a bit of a thick piece, some bushes, some trees..
I break out of the trees and there is a ditch. A culvert, a cement river.... a drainage ditch...

45 degrees of cement on one side 45 degrees on the other.

I'm pretty sure my house is a less than a mile on the other side of this ditch...
So. I run down one side jump the little mucky river and run halfway up the other side........
and then I slide on my forearms and knees and feet down 15 or something feet of cement.
I'm not kidding, I tried a dozen different ways to get up and out of this fucking ditch. There was no purchase. I could not for the life of me climb out of this thing!
I tried every trick in the book.
I got a running start...nothing. I came at it from an angle...nothing. I tried to get all weird and crab-walk backwards up this fucking thing...not happening.

And?! it was twisty! so here I am walking along in a fucking cement ditch towards my house.....admittedly, I don't have the best sense of direction...but I know I'm going the right way. But at any given time I could only see a hundred yards or less and then it would bend again so I had no way of knowing if there was an actual way out or just more freakin impassible walls
And then i realize that up ahead it goes from being 2 feet of cement on either side of the mucky water to ...well..... just mucky water...Fuck That! I am not walking in the mucky water.
so I reverse direction...
I am looking for a way out, a fucking choice in life...because really, I am starting to think I may have to call 911 to get me out of this fucking ditch.

Really.

I was picturing first trying to figure out how in the hell I could even point them in my general direction....then I'm picturing firemen with ropes or maybe a helicopter and a little basket...
There is no way in hell I am going to be that guy. I will not be on the news.

So, I keep walking and around each bend I hope to see some way out of this mess and around every bend I have my hopes crushed.
On one side of the ditch I can see the back of a shopping center that I happen to know is pretty damn close to my house on the other side are peoples back yards.

Then I see it like a ray of hope up ahead. 2 branches hanging down from this overgrown tree in somebodies backyard.
I get a running start, I leap up grab onto the lowest hanging branch ....and it comes off in my hand!
I take that branch and use it to pull the other branch down to where I can reach it and then I begin to haul myself up hand over hand...I swear I felt like Bruce Willis in one of those die hard movies.

I stumble through the bushes and come to a backyard. I climb straight over the fence and walk through somebodies backyard.
Trespassing?
Whatever, I just survived The Ditch.

I pass through a gate, walk down a driveway and lay down at the foot of the driveway. I call the cab .
The cab ride costs me $5.00 that's how close I was to home. I'm pretty sure it costs $3.00 just to get in the fucking cab. I pull out the bill Tony gave me. $20.00. Well hot damn, Tony is a stand up guy at least. So I tip the cabbie %100 and go home.

The next day I tell My friend Cindy the story. When I get done she says, "and what did we learn from this experience?"
"Stay away from fucking ditches?"
she laughs, "ok that too, but what could we have done to prevent all of this? What did we learn?"
I pause for a second....

"OH! Don't get in the car!"
"That's right sweetie, don't get in the car."

2008-09-17T22:48:00.000-07:00

2008-09-07T20:53:00.000-07:00

I was flipping channels and I came across the US Open....
One of the Williams sisters was playing and my first thought was,
"When the fuck did Ru Paul learn to play tennis so well?"

This happens to me every time...

Grandpa Munster

2008-09-04T13:57:00.000-07:00

John McCain is speaking tonight at the GOP convention.
I don't know that I have much to say about him that hasn't already been said.

But I will say this. I have been saying this for months I think I have a couple of good ideas for campaign slogans/advertising ideas.

A poster of John McCain holding his fist up in furious anger...the tagline...
YOU KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN!!
In fact I think that should be the slogan for the entire campaign.
You kids get off my lawn!

I was also thinking maybe a commercial in which we see John McCain come out the front door of the White House to pick up the newspaper and then a soccer ball comes rolling up and McCain stops it with his foot. He picks it up and we see that it has the Iranian flag on it. The Presidents' face knots up in furious outrage. He holds the ball aloft with hands shaking slightly in anger and says:
"That's it Iran! Your ball has come in my yard for the last time! I keep this!"

Those are just a couple of ideas. As more come to me I may share.
Enjoy the speech...if you can stay awake.

Yeah...but I didn't think you would catch me...

2008-09-02T20:08:00.000-07:00

With my sister bringing up Space Food Sticks and me writing about The Big Texas it gave me a little moment of clarity regarding the difference between how my generation was raised and the way in which we're raising the next generation.

When I was a kid we would drive my parents nuts asking for Food Sticks and Cokes. They would get annoyed with us always bugging them to eat that crap.

BUT, not because it was crap. They would say no because they didn't want to have to go buy more of the crap...
not because it was bad for us, they didn't think twice about that.

When my son bugs me about having hot cheetos and root beer I demure because I don't want him eating junk like that.
(ok, I do give in more now that he is a teenager and has the metabolism of a triathelete.)

It's a whole different attitude towards kids.

They loved us just fine but if somebody would have suggested that we have to wear a helmet to go on a bike ride, it wouldn't have even made sense to my dad. He would have just said, "why does he need a helmet? The boy knows how to ride the goddamn bike!"

We were free range children. In the morning they would open the doors and say "get out "

Heaven forbid you come in before lunch time. I can remember trying to come in the house for a drink of water one time and being told if "I just want water we have a goddamn garden hose."

Don't think for a second I am complaining. If my parents had kept as close of an eye on me as I did on Turbo? They would have probably killed me at some point. I would ask if I could go swimming and my mom would say . "No you can't go swimming, it's raining out."

And then I would go put on my swim suit and jump in the pool anyway. She would think I was in my room playing and then there I would be at the sliding glass door shivering and blue lipped. She would run a hot bath....

Did I get in trouble?

Probably ......but not enough to never do it again.

You can be damned sure Turbo would not repeat that stunt.

It's a combination of me not being an easily controlled child....and parents who weren't really overwhelmed with a desire to control me.

Can I give you a perfect example of my uncontaineable nature?
(Christina and I have a running joke that my motto is "I'M MICHAEL I DO WHAT I WANT!")
When I was...I'm guessing here but I would say 4 or 5? My dad had a Corvette. I want to say it was a '59. I loved that car.
He loved it too of course.
So.
He washed it, waxed it, the whole nine yards. Then he went in the house.
A few minutes later he realizes he can hear the water running. He thinks, "shit, I left the hose on"
He comes outside to find me, no shirt on, whipping the hose above my head like a fucking madman, water going everywhere...including inside his 1959 convertible Corvette.
He goes over and turns off the hose.
I look down the barrel of the hose like "what the hell, where did my water go?"
He walks over, "what the hell do you think you are doing?!"
Me, "playing in the water"
Dad, "well you're getting that shit in my car, knock it off! If I catch you doing that again I'm gonna beat your butt."
He always said that but never did it.
(except the time I gave Jason a bloody nose. But that's another Oprah.)
So.
He goes back in the house.
He gets halfway to his chair and hears the water come on.
He comes outside to find me, no shirt on, whipping the hose above my head like a fucking madman, water going everywhere...including inside his 1959 convertible Corvette.
He goes over and turns off the hose.
I look down the barrel of the hose like "what the hell, where did my water go?"
He walks over, "what the hell do you think you are doing?!"
Me, "playing in the water"
Dad, "Didn't I tell you if I catch you playing in the water again I'm gonna beat your butt?!"
Me, "yeah...but I didn't think you'd catch me."

And yet I lived.

the waffle story.

2008-09-01T20:41:00.000-07:00

Sorry but you kind of gave me permission.

I'm an older brother. I think I have talked about this before. I wasn't always the sweetest to my little sister. She bugged me, I was annoyed by her very presence a lot of our childhood.
But.
I loved her.
I have always loved my sister fiercely. We survived a lot as kids and I adore her now.
But it was rocky at the start.
When they told me that there was another kid coming along I was resentful.
I had a good gig and I didn't see the need for another kid.
In a famous family story my mom came to talk to me (while I was watching TV ) about the impending baby and she asked what I thought would be a good baby name and I said, "I don't care! Name it Mazola!"
Yeah...our last name is Miller?
Mazola Miller?
I have to be honest......in hindsight?
That name would have been Awesome!
She could be a rapper right now instead of a stay at home mom.

So when we were kids I defended my sister With Extreme Prejudice.
(ask me about Royce)
But I also gave her miles of shit.
In my defense she was a bit trying for a person like me.
She has since come into her own, but as a kid she took the whole innocence thing too far sometimes as far as I was concerned. She was sweet and innocent and literal and it drove me batshit-crazy.
**editors note**
we talked about this and she freely admits she clung to glorious innocence for a very long time. I don't think I was ever as innocent as she was for a long long time. I Can't ever remember really believing in Santa Claus for example.
One time she was attempting to make orange juice from frozen concentrate and she was smacking the shit out of the bottom of the can. She was going at it like this concentrated O.J. owed her child support or something. My step dad couldn't take it any more and he said "use a spoon!" so I handed her a big ole wooden spoon and ...she started smacking the shit out of the can with the spoon.
We were required to eat an iceburg lettuce salad with every dinner.
Hyuk!
I cannot eat another one of those motherfuckers for the rest of my life. I don't care what it is, I'll take the soup, thanks. Put all the fried chicken and bacon you want on it I will punch you in the face rather than eat iceburg lettuce.
So every night we are have this iceburg nightmare and my sister takes the bottle of ranch dressing and smack smack smack GLORP ...she has a shitpile of ranch all the Fuck over her salad.
It's a ranch salad soup.
and Chrissy says.
"there."
and this of course drives me batshit angry.
So.
We have this relationship in which she bugs the hell out of me but I beat the everloving shit out of anybody that looks at her crosseyed. I thought at the time that it worked for us but in retrospect I was a bit of a dick to my sister.
(umm.... it made her a stronger person?)

SO I told you that to tell you this.
My stepdad would make waffles. Fresh homemade waffles. A pile of them.
Then whatever was left my sister and I would eat.
It was summer and I got up early to get a drink of water and I saw a plate of waffles, 8 or 10 of them. I thought to myself, "Ima have some waffles later!"
I got up an hour or 2 later...and there was one muthafuckin' waffle!
Chrissy and Deanna ate my damn waffles!
We didn't have this expression at the time but ...WTF?
So I'm standing there in the kitchen.
We had a long galley style kitchen and we are on either side of it.... showdown style. Like Sergio Leone was blocking out this shit.
I see that there is one waffle.
I look at the lonely waffle.
I look at my sister.
"Where the fuck are the waffles?"
She gives a little shrug like "whatchoo gonna do?"
I make a "imma stomp you" kind of gesture and she makes a
"Pshh you ain't doin' shit" kind of gesture.
I do a little surge towards her like I will come over there and beat her ass...and she shrugs like 'whateveah'......

Here's the thing...I don't think for a second my little sis thought I could rack my angry brain for a weapon to demolish her with and come up with a ........fucking flying waffle as a reasonable alternative.
Projectile waffle?

Who does that
Really, honestly?
But I did.

So i picked up that lonely waffle and threw it with great vengeance and furious anger.
How could she have anticipated that when looking for an airborn weapon I would choose a delicious undressed waffle?
(for the record, nobody has ever been able to accuse me of throwing a syruped waffle)
So.
I grabbed that waffle and I threw it.
(oh did you know that at the time I was on the water polo team and therefore very well versed in the art of throwing things? Yeah!)
Ok.
So i deploy the waffle and it travels at enormous velocity down the length of the kitchen and then....
Impacts Christina's face with a glorious ....

how do I describe the sound?
flop
kerblap
fwop
plap
shaplow
plap
sha-plap.....

I don't know. I feel all Suesian...
But it was the most incredible sound mine ears have ever beheard.
She shrieked, hopped and ran out of the room.
I told her friend Deanna (who she may have been showing off for? ) that she may want to head home.

The best part ?
(aside from the glorious, inexplicable sound?)
was that when my mom got home we both shouted at her about the event and she handed down a ruling to the effect of "both of you leave me the fuck alone!!"

Look I know that this makes me seem like a real dick to my little sister, but you have to understand, at this point in our lives......
I was her protector, mentor and caregiver...and she ate my motherfucking waffles!
Shit had to be handled.
This act of aggression could not stand.

The Sedaris effect.

2008-08-31T18:41:00.000-07:00

Have any of you fellow bloggers experienced the Sedaris Effect yet?
I recently had a brush with it and it's actually kind of cool.
David Sedaris has written about how his family is hesitant to tell him things for fear that it will end up in one of his stories.
A friend of mine, who shall remain nameless, recently went to....um...an "all male revue" ? in Las Vegas.
She sent me a text informing me that it would be all nude.
I recommended that she bring hand sanitizer.
Later that night she called me and told me about the experience...I was accused of jinxing the night with my hand sanitizer comment, by the way. The next day I asked her to tell me the story again and she said, " What, so you can blog about it? I don't know..."
And that is as much of that story I am at liberty to tell at this point.
You may never know the rest of the story because of the Sedaris Effect.
The problem is actually a combination of two things
1) the aforementioned Sedaris Effect
2) I have a policy that, if all possible, I will not spill your beans.

Before I get into the exact meaning of the Sedaris Effect, I would like to tell you about "spilling someones beans".
This is a concept, a phrase, a figure of speech that I invented. (If I have written about this before and you are a regular reader and you already know what this means, skip the next few sentences.)
When my sister was pregnant for the first time she told my mom. My mom turned straight the fuck around and told a very good friend of the family. My sister didn't get the chance to tell one of her best friends ...it's actually beyond that, she's like a sister to my sister.
When my sister found out that my mom told her shit straight away I was like "oh no! She spilled your beans!"

I realize that it's based off of an existing phrase. The difference is it's more proactive. It's dealing specifically with the fact that someone has told not just A secret, but , your secret, your story to tell not theirs.
I try on this blog to not spill other peoples beans. I realize I tell other peoples stories once in a while but I usually write it with pseudonyms first and email it to the person it is about. If I use a persons real name, usually it is with their permission.
Keen observers will note that I use my sons real name if it is a current story and his nicknames for older stuff. Part of that is because I now have his permission to use his real name whenever I see fit. He doesn't mind and he knows I will do my best to not embarrass him.
Part of it is because when he was 3 he was Hopper. He was only Calvin when he was in trouble. (and it helps delineate time frames) Part of it was that he wasn't old enough yet to really have an adult kind of discussion about the blog. I decided this summer that he is more than old enough to make that decision.
That boy is, as people have noted frequently, an old soul.

So.
The Sedaris Effect.
It comes from a fear of having told a story to a storyteller, (a blogger ?) and then having them spill your beans.
I realize now that I have actually suffered from it on more than one occasion, but didn't know it.
Whenever someone hesitates to tell you something or obfuscates or you learn about something well after the fact....
It may very well be The Sedaris Effect.

I have a quick question

2008-08-31T17:08:00.000-07:00

Why is it that the people with the worst breath have the most to say?

eybrow escapades

2008-08-27T20:36:00.000-07:00

You know how there are some women who draw on their eyebrows and they look like they are constantly surprised or maybe bemused? (Cindy says you can't trust those women because if they would lie about their eyebrows they will lie about anything.)
I had a customer today who had that look in spades. I have never seen a woman rock that look so hard.
Part of the problem was a physical attribute of hers: she had those buggedy eyes with the white showing all the way around the iris.
Then she applied her lipstick in such a way as to give herself a pouty look(she's one of those women of a certain age that color outside the lines when it comes to the lips)
...but when it was combined with the other aspects it actually looked like her lips were pursed in constant surprise.
The combined effect was that her expression at all times was one that said:
HOLY FUCKING SHIT! SWEET MOTHER OF BABY JESUS! I CANNOT BELIEVE WHAT I AM SEEING!
I must have jumped in fright a half dozen times because I glanced in her direction and thought for a fraction of a second that Bigfoot with his dick in his hand or maybe a great white shark holding an AK47 was looming up behind me. Every time I would tell her something of interest her eyebrows would heave even further up her face causing me to jump again.

I know each of us looks in the mirror in the morning and has a greater or lesser degree of acceptance or denial about how we look but how can you not be aware of the fact that your face looks like those guys in Raiders of the Lost Ark when the ark of the covenant is opened and their faces are all horrified and blasted.
Really?
Honestly?

Hey shit! look a postscript!

PS: just saw a Vonage commercial and they kinda sorta do a Mac Vs. Pc style commercial? the Vonage chick has one eyebrow perpetually thrown up in the air like she just don't care..awesome. A drawn on skeptical eyebrow.

thoughts on becoming a man

2008-08-21T19:37:00.000-07:00

Part of being a man is knowing yourself and your limits. Knowing what you are capable of and when to say 'when' is an important part of being a man.
This summer Calvin made an important first step on that long journey.
My friend Cindy was trying to buy a new car and I volunteered to go with her and help negotiate.
But, before I talk about Calvins' realization....
An aside.
Cindy's daughter Devany? This kid is a force of nature.
Charming, funny, smart...and cute? Holy cow. I haven't seen a kid this cute since Calvin.
(For the reals, in case you weren't lucky enough to see it yourself, Calvin was one of the cutest kids in the history of cute kids. Big blue eyes, chubby cheeks, perpetual smile...everybody loved that kid)
Oh and?
She has the devil in her.
I can say this because it's the same brand of devil I had in me as a child.
We were at dinner and the manager came over to see how things were and she said to him "You're a bad man!"
apropos of? ...
Nothing. First time she lays eyes on the guy "you're a bad man"
What I wanted to say is "sorry... but...she has the ability to see into mens souls"
What I actually said was someting along the lines of " hey, you not a bad man, I'm sure you're fine...she's a toddler?...I like my fajitas!"
But the best line of the day from this little firecracker?
She has a dog. A stuffed animal named Blackie that looks like a Black Lab. He is her best friend, her babie, her nemisis. ( she alternated between coddling, chastising and dragging him around all day)
So...a salesman walks up to us and starts trying to build some rapport...
He gets my name, shakes my hand, does the same with Cindy, says 'what's up little man?!' to Cal and then gets to Devany...
"Hey there, what's your dogs name?"
She looks him up and down like he walked up in 'da club and asked her to dance or some shit...
and then says "Blackie"
Oh...did I mention the salesman is african american?
Yeah.
So he does a little stutter step and I say something like "She named the dog!" and we all pretend it never happened.
So, on to Calvin's quest for manhood.
It was a long day with not many quality opportunities for nurishment.
He had some hot Cheetos before we left the house.
Then we fucked around at the dealerships. He ate some regular Cheetos at Carmax.
Then we went to ...On The Border? I don't know at this point.
Cal chose a taco that in all honesty was made for the boy.
Buffalo Chicken Taco.
Sure it has all kinds of jalapeno ranch sauce and lettuce and tomatos and shit to take away some of the sting but Calvin ain't havin' that. He wants just the buffalo chicken, cheese and jalapenos.
So he eats his stuff, Devany tells the manager he's a bad man, we go home and Devany and I watch ancient episodes of Pink Panther cartoons on Hulu and Calvin eats the rest of the hot Cheetos........
and then vomits.
I rub his back and tell him he's a super kid...
and he technicolor vomits.
And then he vomits some more and talks about "the burn"

He is now a man who knows his culinary limits.
Step one.
Hot Cheetos, Cheetos, Jalapeno, buffalo wing taco.
Fine.
Add more hot Cheetos?
Not so much...
So now he knows...

2008-08-19T21:16:00.000-07:00

So...today I was at the video store and 2 different interesting things happened.
First, I was walking the eisles and I overheard a guy ask the clerk:

Guy: Have you seen the "Dark Knight" yet?
Clerk: yeah ...6 times.
G: So...did you like it?

Wait! WTF dude?
No, he saw it once and it sucked and then he was all like, "boy that was a stinker, but maybe I missed something...I'm gonna see it again"
Then he just kept seeing it and seeing it hoping it would get better...
So, I stopped and I said to the guy, "seriously, dude, why would he see it more than once if it sucked?"
And the clerk and the guys girlfriend cracked up and the girlfriend kind of smacked the guy and said "duh, of course he liked it"

Then something else happened in the store...
I don't know how to even warn you about this. It just reared up and smacked me in the face so I may as well tell you it the way it happened...

I was squated down looking at some videos and I happened to glance over and see a woman standing near me bent over a counter.
I noticed 2 things about her right off the bat:
1) she was wearing low rider jeans that exposed the top of her asscrack.
2) she was storing a set of keys in the aforementioned asscrack.

At what horrible fork in the road does the crack of your ass become a viable option to store your keys? Do you say to yourself "I know I look good in these tight assed jeans...but where can I put my keys? I know! There's nothing in my ass right now...usually there are all manner of things in my ass, but right now my ass is open for buisness!"
I dread the day she goes to put her keys there and finds a lost cell phone...

I'm not going to that video store anymore.

2008-08-15T20:43:00.000-07:00

I probabaly should have just put this blog on hiatus. I have a bunch of half written blogs that I can't find the time to finish while Cal is here
So until ...well around the 20th...this blog is on hold...
which brings me back to the whole " I should have put this on hiatus" thing...I know it's coming a bit late.
But I will resume writing by the middle of next week.
Oh and The Foodie will get some love too.

2008-08-05T23:10:00.000-07:00

As far as I can tell Calvin spends all day doing absolutely fuck-all in the way of actual physical activity...and then the minute I sit down to write he picks up a tennis ball and bounces it against the refrigerator...which happens to be very near the table I am sitting at.
I don't say anything about it because ...well I guess it's Karma.
I used to spend hours bouncing a ball against a dormer on our house and I knew that it drove my parents nuts...but I didn't care.
So I feel as if I can't say, "quit bouncing that fucking ball!" without being a bit of a hypocrite.
So that's why this post sucks...and I have a half dozen 3/4 written posts that I have yet to finish and for the first time in months, the other day I had not a single visitor to this sight...not even me.
Sigh.

Jamie

2008-07-29T19:03:00.000-07:00

I made mention of the fact that I work with a woman named Jamie that is a bit of a bitch.
I'm fixin' to talk about Jamie.
She is nonstop drama. Some people are like that everything has to be a big fucking issue. Whatever.
I realized pretty quickly that everybody is automatically on her shit list and I tried to get off that list by being cool with her...that was a mistake.
I decided that if I'm on the shit list I may as well do something to get on that list. You know, be proactive?
So I spent the better part of a day antagonizing her...and we got along famously.
Then the next day whenever I would ask her to get a phone for me (I won't bore you with the details but inventory has been going missing and so now if I want to replace someones' phone I have to go through someone else to get the thing)
So I say, "Jamie, can you get me the phone for Jones please?"
she says, "Umm no. Do you need anything else?"
So I say " get me the damn phone, Yo!"
and she laughed and got me the phone.
So that worked.
Then later, same situation, I need a phone and I know she is going to give me shit again so I walk up and say "woman! get me the phone for Smith!"
She laughs even harder than the first time and gets the phone.
This is progress for us.
The other day she comes into the back room and sees me watching TV on mu phone with only 5 minutes left on my break. She says something about "youdon'twannabewatchin'noTVwhenyouonlygot5minutesleftyoubettah'eat!"
When a woman talks to me like that I can't even hear it. It's like when Rosie Perez goes off....
I make eye contact with the manager and she is smiling at me. I ask, in a voice loud enough for Jamie to hear "What ethnicity is she?"
Racheal says, "Jamie? She's white."
I say, "hmm...'cause when she starts speaking Peurtorican I can't understand her."
Jamie goes ballistic and repeats what she said about my "5 minutes" at close to maximum volume and, out of politeness, half the speed.
One of the funny things about this whole affair is I tell Cindy about all this and she says "are you two flirting?"
Enh, no.
I have to say that is not a bad guess though...many times my flirting takes the form of verbal combat....but not in this case, not at all.
So today, I come into work on my day off. I got a text from the boss that DJ called in and they are short. So I show up to cover lunches and get a little OT. I log into DJ's station which is right next to Jamie. Somebody says something about me being in the back of the store instead of where I usually house..up front.
I say yeah "I'm rolling with the 6-7 Mafia (I am at station 6 Jamie at 7)
Jamie laughs hard enough to pee a little.
Then later somebody else makes a comment about me hanging in the back....I say "aww hell no, you fuckin' wit' the 6-7 mafia!"
Jamie loses a it a little bit more.
I swear, if I keep this up, we may end up homies.

Best Customer Evah!

2008-07-19T18:19:00.000-07:00

I deal with a lot of irate people in my job. The more bent out of shape and rude people are to me the more I go into passive-aggressive mode. When I'm at work I don't have much of a choice. My normal mode during any sort of confrontation is aggressive-aggressive as anyone who knows me personally will attest.
I had one of the best experiences with a customer the other day. I was overjoyed...it was so much fun.
A kid with pierced lips and a nasty concert t-shirt and his 3 stupid friends came into the store and dropped off his phone for repair. An hour later he came back to pick it up and instead of getting on the wait list like everybody else he stood around for a while goofing around with his dumb-ass friends. When he realized someone wasn't going to walk up to him and ask how they could help him he went up to Jamie and said, "I'm late for work can you get me my phone?" in a very abrasive manner. Which is exactly the wrong way to approach Jamie.
(I haven't written about Jamie yet...I know I will at some point though. Jamie kind of looks, sounds and acts like....I guess the best way to describe her is if Rosie Perez had an older sister...but waaaay bitchier. In case you don't know who Rosie Perez is, she is an actress who plays almost exclusively really bitchy Puertorican girlfriends. She's always the girlfriend and always a bitch. Jamie could give her bitch lessons.)
So they go back and forth about him not being on the list and she finally says give me the ticket and goes to grab his phone. I am loitering innocently in the back room and Jamie approaches me "you need to go give him his shit because I ain't tryin' to put up with his sorry ass."
I say "sure" for 2 reasons
1. I am doing my best to remove myself from Jamie's shit-list. It seems that you have automatic enrollment on the shit-list and getting off of it requires diligence. I made small strides recently during the staff meeting when as I was speaking she made snoring sounds and I responded with "get the fuck out of here, I have one thing to say and I have been listening to you ramble on about your bullshit all morning" She's like one of those bullies that will be your friend if you stand up to them.
2. this might be fun.
Here's why it might be fun: his phone is not fixable. We have to replace it in the store with a new one, but we don't have the phone in stock...so we have to order him one. He's not going to be a happy camper and Jamie has already pissed him off.
So, I grab the phone and I walk out front and Jamie says, "he's going to help you over there" and she points.
So we go to my work station
Me: unfortunately the technician was unable to fix the phone so I'm going to order you a replacement.
Pierced Face Kid: what!? I wasted 2 hours and you didn't do shit with my phone?!
Me: well I wouldn't say we didn't do anything. The technician did assess your phone and conclude it's unfixable. I can order you a replacement.
PFK: Replacement?! I need a fucking phone now!
Me: I can order you one...
I don't think I actually got to say that whole sentence.
PFK: What the fuck am I supposed to do!?
now here is where I start to have some fun with it
Me: well I think you have 2 options. You can let me order you a new phone. Or, you can take the phone that you broke beyond repair and leave.
PFK: FUCK YOU! I'm late for work motherfucker! You people made me late for work!
he then grabs the phone and begins to stomp out.
He gets a few feet away, the whole time yelling expletives, and I say, "have a nice day"
He yells "FUCK YOU!"
He gets to the door and I say, "buh bye" and make a little wave with my hand.
He kicks the door open and says:
"SHUT THE FUCK UP STUPID!!!"

Ok, at the time I thought that was pretty funny.

But here's the blowback on this one ...for a week now at least a few times a day I try to ask a question or make a comment and somebody shouts at me
SHUT THE FUCK UP STUPID!!
that's not happiness for me, I have to be honest.

Chick Norris

2008-07-08T22:39:00.000-07:00

I got a text from Cindy yesterday:
Fucking Ridiculous! I just pulled a Chuck Norris!

I can't say I wasn't extremely intrigued.

She went home for lunch. She decided to use the facilities before going back to work.
(I support that decision. I go at home whenever humanly possible. Public restrooms are so unseemly.)
So she attempts to do the next natural thing which is leave...and she can't. The door isn't locked, it's stuck. She calls to her mom to help her out.
Reports are sketchy, eyewitness accounts vary.
We still don't know exactly what was transpiring on the other side of the door...we do know her mom was attempting to use scissors to free her from the bathroom.
It became clear that no help was forthcoming from the other side so she decided to take the pins out of the hinges and pull the door out from the other side. Her mom had opinions about this. To which Cindy responded, "Well, clearly you can't get me out of here!"
So...she gets the pins out and ...nothing.
She decides to climb out the window.
Hang on. You have to understand, she's on lunch. She has to be back to work.
Calling back and saying, "Hey, I'm not going to be back in today, I'm stuck in my bathroom" is not the kind of thing you will realistically be able to live down any time soon. Every time you go near a bathroom someone will offer to "spot you". It's just not possible.
So she decides to go out the window.
But, of course she's wearing a skirt on this day, so going out the window and possibly showing the neighbors your big girl underpants, is not an option.
She calls her mom back to the door and has her stuff under the door something to cover her legs...pajama bottoms.
So, instead of piling out the window in a skirt she piles out in a blouse and pajama bottoms....I have to be honest, I have questions about which is more dignified.
So, she gets a quarter way out the window and realizes it's actually pretty fucking far to the ground.
So she calls mom again. Mom puts a stepladder underneath the window.
She climbs out the window and ....
this may be the moment she lost her shit.
She goes into the house and at a run, kicks the fuck out of the bathroom door.
Kablam!
The door drops in one shot.
She was mad at that door!
That door got a round house kick to the face!

Then she went back to work and I got a text:
Fucking Ridiculous! I just pulled a Chuck Norris!

Today I got another text:
I just had to Chuck Norris Sandra out of the bathroom!
Turns out her 15 year old daughter got stuck in the bathroom.
I can't tell you how gratifying it was to hear that two days in a row my friend went
Kablam!
....on a bathroom door.
I know that from now on, if I ever get in a situation that I need to fuck up a door, I don't have to do it myself, I have a friend that can do it for me.
Doors?
Don't be so smug, I have a friend.

ps: the second best thing about this story?
Sandra on her cell phone,
"umm hello, I'm locked in the bathroom?

When I was a kid I kicked my uncles ass one time

2008-07-04T16:35:00.000-07:00

That title is totally misleading and inaccurate.
Let me clarify.
First, the misleading part. My uncle is only about a year and a half older than I am. By saying that I kicked his ass it makes it seem as if I was a tough little kid who somehow took on a grown-ass man.He was bigger than me though.

I was small for my age...
This is a picture of me playing football. Not to sound pedantic but can I explain an artistic concept? Foreshortening is when things closer to the viewer appear larger and things in the background smaller. So why the fuck am I closer to the camera and yet I look so much smaller?
I always joke that I was the smallest kid in my class...except for one Asian girl. I was also the smartest kid in my class...except for that same goddamn Asian girl. This led to me getting into a lot of fights...but that's another Oprah.
(By the way, at what age do they stop saying you're small for your age? I mean you never hear somebody say "how old is that guy? 36? Wow, he's small for his age!"
'Little People' don't count...I guess if I saw a guy who was totally normal and fully formed..but he was the size of a baby, I might say, "He's small for his age"
Yeah right!
I'd say, "holy jumping Jesus did you see that baby sized man?!")
But I digress.
Second. The thing about the title that is inaccurate is that I said I kicked his ass one time. I actually did it plenty of times. We used to scrap all the time. Usually I'd be on the losing end...but somehow that never once stopped me from throwing down.

I want to talk about one time in particular.

I'll tell you right now, the point of this story isn't the fact that I kicked his ass, the point of the story is that I said one of the stupidest things I have ever said...which compelled me to kick his ass.

We were arguing about something.
Look. We were best pals, like brothers. If anybody said shit to either one of us they had to deal with the Miller Boys collectively. Michael and Mark would happily fuck up your world...but we kept our skills sharp by battling each other.
So we are going at it about something and he pushes my last button and I snap and smash my fist into an Etch A Sketch and crack the shit out of it.
He runs over and looks at his smashed Etch A Sketch and he says, "how stupid can you be?!"

Hey, look...Ok...what had happened was...
I meant to say " not as stupid as you"
But what I actually said?
"Stupider than you!"
People.
"Stupider than you"?
That got the poor boys ass stomped.

And he didn't even say it!

2008-06-19T22:27:00.000-07:00

Last night Calvin surprised me as I came out of the kitchen, "hey dad check this out" and he opened his mouth in a gaping grin...he had a hole where a molar should be.
When I went into the kitchen he wasn't a meth head...wtf?
Then he brandished a tooth.
-what the hell dude?
-I lost a tooth
-I didn't know you had a loose tooth
-yeah I don't tell anybody when I have a loose tooth...cause they'll try to pull it
-Who the fuck is trying to pull your teeth?!
-yeah... mostly just mom.
His mom is one of those weird people who can't keep her hands off other people.
Ever know one of those people? Always fiddling with your hair and shit.
I made a comment about it and my friend Cindy said I was being mean but I had to prove my point so I said to Calvin, does your mom pop your pimples? he said "no...I had to make her stop"
How much do I fucking hate people that pop other people's pimples? Hyuk!
Seriously, are you a fucking monkey? Keep you hands off the rest of the pack. Jeebus Crispers.
(See how I substituted that for saying Jesus fucking Christ? I'm gaining sensitivity in my old age)
I had a friend in high school that used to get ingrown hairs on his back (Hyuk!) and we would be at his house and he would lay on the floor and his mom would pop them! (hyuk) in front of me (hyuk) Have some fucking decorum people!
But the worst?
Absolute Fucking Worst?
(I caution you, if this has been unpleasant up to now, you will hate me afterwards)
Some people have no sense of boundaries.

OK
we were visiting my Grammy Betty. She lived up in the mountains in northern California.
They left my sister and I at a babysitter. I remember 3 things about this experience.
1) I had withe me a Harlem Globetrotters lunchbox that contained, among other things, oreos.
2) it hailed chunks of ice the size of golfballs. (or as I like to think of it, commercially produced meatballs, the kind you get in a giant bag at sam's club)
3) the woman was breastfeeding.

Lets discuss why I remember that last bit.
I was about 7. My sister about 3.
This woman was breastfeeding a baby in the livingroom.
She had a daughter about my age and her daughter had a friend over. She whipped the boob out to do her thing, which made me uncomfortable. ( I confess, I was pretty uptight at 7, I'm much cooler now) Then the daughter asked if she could have some and the mom said sure. Then the daughter offered it to the friend! And the friend was all
"oh milk from my best friends mom's boob? hells yeah!"
I was definitely in hyuk mode ...then she looked right at me and said, "you want to try?"
It was like I was in some kind of bad vampire movie.
Everybody seems all cool and everything then they are all like "hey we drink blood by the way, that's cool right?"
What The Fuck?
Personal Boundaries people!

Uni doesn't sleep ...it waits

2008-06-13T16:14:00.000-07:00

Ever since Cindy and I had The Uni Incident uni has become a catch-all reference for things horrible and disgusting.
Recently we were talking about how much we really want to trick others into eating it....I think if we can get enough people to do it we will be able to spread the hate exponentially and eventually I will design a t shirt that says "I ate uni" with a little pictograph of a guy making a "hyuk!" face. I'll sell them on my website www.iateuni.hyuk.com.
It's a dream...
I was discussing my plan to try to trick my co-workers into eating it. I've been going to lunch all week with the same three people and I think I may have earned just enough trust to get at least one of them to try this abomination.
Cindy told me that I should tell them it's an aphrodisiac. I said yeah because after you manage to choke the stuff down you yell out "Fuck Me!" Cindy said, "no it's an aphrodisiac because after having that shit in your mouth bodily fluids are nothing"
She commented that uni tastes like ass, I said "actually it tastes like an ass that someone wiped with an even dirtier ass" then remarkably the conversation actually devolved from there.
You may be wondering how it could have gotten worse but I am going to be merciful and spare you the details.

In other Cindy related news I got a new phone.
Which doesn't directly relate to her ....yet.

I was playing with my new super high-tech-cool-ass phone....and frankly it was infuriating me.
All I wanted to do was send a text message and I could not make the thing behave. I hadn't figured out this predictive text thingy it has and so I was trying to write "goodnight" and it thought maybe I was trying to say something about ghosts. It reminded me of talking to a person who is:
1) insanely obsessed with trying to predict what you're going to say next
and
2) very bad at it
So you say, "hey the other day I was out in the woods and I saw"
and before you can finish the sentence the person says
"the Pope shitting?!"
What? NO!
(by the way that was an extremely obscure Steve Martin reference and anybody who can tell me where that comes from gets a severely abused vinyl copy of "Lets get small")
So it thought I wanted to talk about ghosts instead of simply saying goodnight to Cindy.
Fucking great.
It has all kinds of quirks.
Oh and ? This is an unapologetic phone.
Literally.
I can not get this thing to type the word "sorry".
It may make me more of an asshole because I'm about to give the fuck up on trying to say
"I'm sorry." I'm just going to be all "I ain't apologizing for shit...'cause my phone won't let me."
But you know what? The phone learned the word "fuck" and all it's various permutations very quickly. Who didn't see that coming?
Oh, also, when I try to type the word "go" it defaults first to "ho" so sometimes if I am texting too fast I suggest to a friend that she should "ho" instead of "go".
Not good.
It's similar to T9 texting, but with wider predictive abilities. I gave up on T9. It was even more fucking weird and random than this phone.
When I complained about the capriciousness of T9 to Cindy she told me to
"put on your big girl panties and learn T9 already"
Gotta love Cindy she can be a real peach sometimes.
Thanks Peaches.

Market forces and whatnot

2008-06-07T15:38:00.000-07:00

I have been job hopping lately and I don't much like it. I can always get a job but it's a matter of will it be profitable.
The situation with the housing market sort of took all the fun out of being a loan officer.
I went back to selling cars but even selling the best product at the best store didn't do much to help the fact that the automotive market was the only consumer segment to show negative growth last quarter.
Oops.
So, I decided to sell one of the most recession proof things I could think of: cell phones.
You may cut back on eating out or the deluxe cable package, but nobody is shutting off their cell phone.
Nobody.

So I'm sure I'll have all kinds of anecdotes to share. Don't worry, no matter where I go I see something funny.

I used to think that I hate people. I mean, lets be frank, I don't have a terribly high opinion of my fellow man. But I realized recently, I don't hate people, I just hate when they don't conform to my standards of normal behavior.
This is an interesting insight because up until now I haven't been able to make sense of the fact that I have this general animosity for people yet I love working with the public.
I'm trying to have fun with this job because it's kind of a step backwards in terms of career development, my skill set is far beyond what the job actually calls for. This gives me the ability to be more relaxed and have some fun.

I like messing with people and I have a phenomenal poker face. I can say the most absurd things in the most plausible manner. Sometimes when people say" are you kidding?" I say yes but I use the exact same straight face. This then causes them to wonder if I'm joking now or if I was really joking before.
This older woman comes in with a phone so old it has a fucking rotary on it.
Ok maybe not that old but still in cell phone years this thing is an antique. The cell phone market is like computers, almost as soon as you buy it it's yesterday's news. In cell phone years (like dog years?) this thing is old as John McCain.
I upgrade her phone and I take it to the back to transfer all her contacts from the old phone to the new one. I come back out and I hold her shiney new-hotness phone in one hand and her old- brokeness phone in the other.
I hold the new phone aloft and proudly say "I have taken all the contacts from here" dramatic little shake of the phone, "and moved them to here" dramatic little shake of the old phone.
She looks bewildered, "don't you mean the other way around?"
"Nope, I took them from here" I beam with pride as I show her her new phone, "and I moved them all here" again proudly brandishing the wrong phone.
Partially what sells this joke is that I am wearing a name tag that, in addition to my name, says "in training" It may as well say "I be an retarded"
I let her dangle a bit before taking her off the hook and saying "naw, here's your new phone, you're all set"

I had another customer come back after she had already gotten her new phone and I had taken the old one to the back. She said she needed to get her old phone because she forgot to get her memory card out of it.
Me: unfortunately it's already been chipped
Her: chipped?
Me: yeah, chipped. Have you ever seen when they cut down a tree and then they toss the branches into a giant chipper? Well we have a new program that is very "green" and exciting.
We toss the old phones into the chipper and then the pieces are recycled into various consumer goods. Park benches and stuff I think.
Her: so you're saying that my old phone has been destroyed?
Me: not at all, I'm saying it's been recycled. Maybe one day your kids will play on a slide made out of your old phone!
Her: but I need that memory card!
Me: oh it's right here.
and I produce the memory card.
she smiled at me. "you didn't throw my phone into a chipper did you?"
Me : no...it's more like a "cardboard box" than a chipper

Pre Employment Drug Screen

2008-05-19T16:43:00.000-07:00

So I go to get a U.A. today and this is an exact transcript of my conversation with the tester:

Her: man you really opened the floodgates didn't you?
Me: I will as soon as you make with the cup.
Her: no, I mean the waiting room was empty until you showed up.
Me:Oh...um, seriously can I get that cup, I've been holding it in?

Is it just me or is that a very poor choice of words on her part, considering the circumstances?

On the lot

2008-05-11T16:14:00.000-07:00

Funny stuff happens on the lot every day, I really should make a point of noting them here.
So, a couple of funny things yesterday?
We are going through this process of become a Signature Dealership. Every manufacturer has a designation like this, Subaru is Stellar Performer, Nissan is Owners First Circle Of Excellence...whatever.
It just means you have all kinds of systems and procedures in place to give an above average customer service experience...again, whatever.
So we are having this meeting to discuss things that need to be changed.
So, we are discussing the way in which you direct someone from the sales area to the service department. Instead of pointing and saying "go down that hallway, turn the corner" ...etc.
You are supposed to walk with the customer, making pleasant conversation along the way, and then introduce them to a service adviser. Fine so far ...
unfortunately in corporate speak this is a "Warm Personal Transfer"
Really?
You want me giving the customers a Warm Personal Transfer?
Oh, I'll give them a Warm Personal Transfer!
Just not here in the service drive, that's gross...we're gonna go back to my place for the Warm Personal Transfer...
Ahh how times have changed...You know with everybody being P.C. and all....when I was in high school they called it the Hot Beef Injection...

Anyway.

So we have this new guy, well actually we have 2 new guys, one has a Business Mullet, and the other looks like Michael Douglas from Falling Down. If he shows up to work with a duffel bag I am sooo running for my life.
The funny thing about Rick (Business Mullet) is that he coaches hockey. Not funny in and of itself, but funny because the Business Mullet is the favored hairstyle of hockey coaches.
Do they require you to have the hairstyle to get the gig? Makes you wonder.
But the second guy? I don't know what his name is. Every time somebody wants to refer to him and differentiate him from the other new guy they say, "the new guy, the Canadian, not Rick"
So he has proved himself to be a tool to me and I am doing my best to ignore him. Trust me, I could tell you How I know he's a tool but it's a boring story.
So I'm sitting there texting my friend Cindy and he's loitering nearby. Mike walks out the door and makes a sound like he's annoyed to have to be walking outside.
Canadian New Guy says, "he seems impatient with the customers"
(without looking up)
I say, "It's because he's gay"
"He's gay?"
"Yup, totally gay"
I can tell he's a little perplexed. Mike is gay, so it's fun to tell new guys he's gay, because he seems straighter than me. It sends them into a bit of confusion, "is he gay? Are you just fucking with me?"...
"Umm, do you mean literally, or physically?"
Now..... I know he means "figuratively", but he asked "physically."
So I say,"Both literally and physically"

And then I hit send on my text and walk away.

Uzo and Uni or why you should never eat foods begining with the letter U Part Two

2008-05-06T09:33:00.000-07:00

So the plan for Sunday was lunch at Jake and Telly's 15 year anniversary party and then antiquing.
After lot's of lame directions from me, we got to the restaurant.
( I have the worst sense of direction in the world. The only person worse is Turbo, and that's only because, in addition to having my terrible sense of direction, he has his mothers terrible vision. Word to the wise? If you find chicks in glasses hot? Good chance you will wind up with a kid that wears glasses.)
We hit the buffet and I constructed an replica of the Empire State Building out of food. I have to be honest, I had to quit piling food on before I even got to the end of the line because I had structural integrity concerns. I really didn't want to get trapped under a foodslide.
Then?
Cindy excoriated me for my Universal Buffet Theory!
I should explain.
The whole "all you can eat" thing sucks for me because I can't eat all that much. I'm more of a small meals kind of guy.
So when presented with a buffet I take a lot of different food and I sample and determine what I like and then go back and get some more of that.
So, my bad, I wasted a bunch of food.

We were sitting about 8 feet from this lamb spinning over an open fire.
I was afraid I was going to have to make a scene to get them to stop cooking it and start serving it.
Finally they took it off the spit, dropped the thing on a table and I watched C's face as she watched them butcher it....there was lots of cringing.
We got back in the fuckingly long buffet line in the hope we'd finally get some lamb. I was there for the lamb dammit! I think when we walked in the door and the lady "said how many?" I said "where's the lamb?"
So we're back in the buffet line and I notice something.
The funny thing about these kind of events is that it really brings out the Greeks. I never knew there were so many Greeks in the Springs. It's like they live among us, silently hiding their Greekness. I bet if you run into a Greek any other day of the year and said "are you Greek?" he'd be all, "What!? No I'm Italian and Irish. That's funny...Greek"
But get them all together and it's Big Hugs! Opa!
(I kept saying "man these people love them some Oprah" whenever there was a particularly boisterous opa!)
In line I noticed a woman with so much makeup on that Tammy Faye Baker would have counseled for a little restraint. I turned to Cindy, " Have you heard about this new product Revlon has? It's a shotgun shell loaded with makeup that you have your friend shoot you in the face with. It's a real time saver."
I got a courtesy laugh and then a real one when she caught sight of the lady.
Cindy asked me what she did for a living. I said "Mary Kay?"
She rolled her eyes, "She ain't driving no pink Cadillac"
So we finally get through the line and guess what?
No Lamb.
So we dejectedly went back to our table to find some chick walking around dishing out lamb to these fuckers that just showed up. And she was already past our table. I was in danger of punching somebody and Cindy looked as if she might begin stamping her feet and yelling "I want lamb!"
This was a potentially dangerous situation.
I flagged down our waitress. "We seriously need some lamb."
I have to say once we got the lamb?
It was The Bomb.
Then a friendly, hairy man came around with little shots of uzo. Cindy asked what it tastes like. I told her it's like licorice.
She said, "can't they just give me a bag of licorice instead?"
I convinced her it was part of the fun and so she agreed to do the shot.
We both yelled out Oprah! and did the shot. Just as I remembered: fiery, horrible, licorice flavored gasoline.
Cindy very daintily picked up her water glass and spit the uzo out.
It was like adorable.
"You like that shit?" she said incredulously.
"Fuck no! I hate uzo, but it's part of the fun."
"Note to self, do not try new things begining with the letter U"
Word.

I have to say, that lamb was so good, I was tempted to stuff some in my pockets for later...but I really didn't want to be brushing up against Cindy all flirty-like and have her say, "what's that smell?"

Uzo and Uni or why you should never eat foods begining with the letter U. Part One

2008-05-04T16:57:00.000-07:00

You're "you" every day, right?
You're never not "you".
But... do you ever feel that some days you are more "you"?

Or maybe a more perfect you?

I had a great weekend.
And, for the most part, I felt like a "more perfect me".

Cindy came to see me this weekend.
We were going to hang out and watch Superbad and the next day we were going to go to Old Colorado City and and hit up this big shindig at Jake and Telly's and then go antiquing.
Lets address the antiquing thing...I know it may sound supergay or pussywhipped on my part to say I enjoy it..but the reality is I have always found cool stuff in antique stores...
this one we went to Sunday had a bunch of blocks from a printing press, how cool is that? Also....if you kinda have a crush on someone or if you just started dating? Antiquing involves a lot of standing close to each other to look at something and it's usually close quarters so lots of chances to brush up against someone. It can become this little game that you play, sort of a seduction...if the person you're with wants you to see something , it's an easy excuse for leaning on her, putting your hand on her hip...
So. Fuck it, I am totally cool with antiquing and I will punch anybody in the face who says otherwise...
although, after a day of antiquing I do have to come home and watch some old UFC tapes to detox...
Anyway.
Cindy shows up and we decide to go get sushi.
Cindy is like me in that we are both very willing to try new things and she had only had sushi one other time so it seemed like a good idea.
Ok, so we go to the sushi bar and I order up a bunch of shit and Cindy says "order uni"
...I feel I should take some responsibility, I was thinking of sea urchin roe which is kind of like any other roe. But uni? It's the fucking sea urchin itself.
So we get our stuff and I'm acting like the experienced sushi jerk: showing her how to mix the wasabi into the soy sauce and pontificating about yellowfin...all the while using the kiddie chopsticks because I can't use regular ones because of the plate in my wrist. Pretty ridiculous, I know but we were having fun.
Then a guy walks in and sits at the bar. He seems to know everybody and is acting all "Mr. Bigshot"
Cindy says, "Hey, lets play, "what does that guy do?"
I say "Ok...you go first"
She muses for a second and then says, "restaurant critic"
That's not a bad call!
He has the demeanor of someone who feels like an insider at a restaurant.
He is fat...yet kind of stylish...hmm, just might be a restaurant critic.

I should mention something.
I have this synergistic thing where on a normal day I will say almost anything to anybody...but if I am with a person who is a catalyst for me?
I most definitely will say anything. Cindy is one of those catalyst people for me.
For example on Sunday we were walking along and she sees this dog and she says, "is that a Labradoodle?" I shrugged my shoulders and she said, "ask him what kind of dog that is." Normally I wouldn't have, what do I care what kind of dog he has? But she told me to, so I asked the guy what kind of dog it is and he said, "a Golden-Doodle"
Which seems stupid to me.
I think if you have a Golden Retriever /Poodle mix you should call it a G'Doodle and you have to say it with an Aussie accent like "G'Doodle mate!" because then you'd sound like an Australian Ned Flanders. Maybe when I'm President King.

So she says, "I dare you to go find out what he does."
So I head to the bathroom and I make extended, annoying eye contact with the guy.
Then on my way back I do a fake double-take and say, "I'm sorry, I feel as if I know you from somewhere...what do you do for a living?"
He says " I'm a restaurateur I own &*^%&* in Colorado City"
I didn't hear what restaurant he owned...but I thought Cindy was pretty damn close, not a restaurant critic, just an owner...I gave her the win on that one.

So...as far as the uni?
You know how some stuff tastes like something else like smells?
I think uni tastes the way horse manure smells.
Cindy thinks that it tastes the way baby shit smells. (it definitely looks like baby shit poured on top of a California roll)
I blame the waitress. When we ordered the uni she egged us on. She was all, "It's an acquired taste....but it's my favorite."
Then when we actually put this shit in our mouths?
After the initial shock of finding I had put something that tastes like manure in my mouth I just swallowed like a motherfucker. I don't know why, but Cindy had to battle through and chew the shit.
The waitress came over...she saw what was happening and was kinda like, in a really absurd cartoony japanese accent "oh no! She going to be sick? She look barfy! I'm here white girl, you can do it!"
It was one half cheerleader...one half "I'm so going to laugh if this bitch pukes"
So we stomached down the fucking uni and headed back to my place to wash our mouths out with bleach and watch the movie.

The whole 'trying new things' bit us on the ass where the uni is concerned.

So I'm at it again...

2008-04-28T17:59:00.000-07:00

Once more I have done myself grievous harm.
This Sunday I was cleaning in a furious fashion. I got thirsty. I went to the fridge to grab something to drink. I opened the freezer and my iron came rocketing down off of the top of the fridge like a goddamn scud missile and impacted my ankle with bad intentions.
That fucking iron was out to get me.
You know the knobby little bit of bone that sticks out on the side of your ankle? My iron hit that bone at a high rate of speed.
I happened to be on the phone with my friend Cindy at the time.
I unleashed the most unholy string of expletives known to man. I put together 5 and 6 word combinations that the English language has never heard before.
Cindy was troubled.

C: What happened?!
M: My fucking iron got me!
C: What?
M: My fucking iron hit me in the ankle
C: How the hell did your iron hit you in the ankle?
M: It was on top of the fridge and when I went to get some ice that fucking thing fell off and hit me in the ankle...I'm bleeding.
C: Why was it on top of the fridge?
M: I don't know!
C: Ok never mind that. Here's what you need to do, go put on a sock.
M: A sock?
C: Trust me I once nursed a rooster with a broken leg back to health.
M: They have socks for roosters?
C: Shut up Smartass! (That is her pet name for me, Smartass) The sock is going to help with the swelling. Then you need to get a bag of peas or corn out of the freezer.
M: No way! I'm not going to open that fucking freezer again!
C: Calm down sweetie. Where is the iron?
M: Well, after it fucked me up I kicked it over by the sink.
C: It's Ok, it can't hurt you anymore, you're safe.
M: Ok I'm going over to the freezer...wait, I'm not really that hungry.
C: You're not going to eat the peas you're going to put the bag on your leg.
M: Right I've heard of that....hang on... shit,I don't have any frozen peas or corn, you know I have this thing about fresh food.
C: Well what do you have?
M: Broccoli
C: Put it on your leg.
M: Are you sure?
C: Do you trust me or not?

So I woke up around 4 in the morning with my leg resting in a wet spot and a bag of defrosted vegetables flopped across my ankle.
I told everybody at work today that I got attacked by a pit-bull. No way am I admitting that my fucking iron turned bad and attacked it's owner.

I'm at home now...I've got peas all over my ankle.

Workplace sabotage

2008-04-19T22:05:00.000-07:00

I read a book back when I was working for the phone company about sabotage in the workplace.
(By the way, I was an operator, how seriously old school is that? You picked up a phone and dialed zero...and there I was. How quaint. Maybe if I can remember some good ones I'll tell a few operator stories.)
So the gist of this book was that if employers piss off their employees they run the risk of the employee causing them financial loss through various methods. It had stories about butchers that would grind prime cuts of meat into hamburger and campaign workers who would shred $10,000.00 checks.
I'm not going to go into all the ways over the years I have cost employers money when they have screwed me.
I will tell you this.
Where I work now they have a key system that works like this: You have a little metal doo-dad that looks like the end of an amp chord. ( the cord that connects a guitar or microphone to an amp, know what I mean?)
On the other end of it is a light. You type the stock number into the computer and the appropriate drawer unlocks and when you open the drawer the end of the doo-dad attached to the key you want lights up.
When I first started I asked somebody what I do with the doo-dad when I sell a car. He said " I throw them out, fuck Ray"
Ray is the owner of the store.
Interesting response.
I was pretty sure that was not S.O.P, so I asked another salesperson. Turns out there was a little bucket in the office. Ok.
So I put the doo-dad's in the bucket...but I was kind of curious so I started asking around. It turns out they cost $8.00 each. How should I say this...several people did not properly handle the doo-dads.
One guy in particular told me an interesting story. He said that when he first started at the store Ray screwed him over on a deal and cost him a couple hundred dollars. So he started collecting the doo-dads. He figured once he had cost the store an equivalent amount of money he would stop.
But then a funny thing happened, he got screwed over again before he reached the limit. At that point he stopped keeping track. He just kept collecting the doo-dads.
So to cut this short?
He now keeps every one of the doo-dads and uses that to track how many cars he has sold for the year. Then at the end of the year he throws them out. I estimated he has cost the store at least $5,000 so far.
In reality, they probably haven't fucked him out of half that much money. But the fact that they continue to fuck him over on any amount of money means he isn't going to stop.
It all comes down to the whole "penny wise, pound foolish" cliche.
The owner of our store is so cheap that we don't have hot water.
That's right, a customer walks into a restroom at our dealership and even though there is a 'hot' tap, no hot water actually comes out.
Umm..we live in the Rockies? Tap water is fucking cold here.
How pathetic is that? They sold more cars than any other dealer in town last year, made millions of dollars and yet hot water is an unnecessary luxury? Not since communist Russia has hot water been a luxury.
All of this was none of my damn business...until they fucked me over on a deal.

I have a dozen doo-dads so far.

The thing is...I'm finding I get more satisfaction out of having the things than out of knowing what they represent. (I thought the reverse would be true.)
I have a confession to make.
I love to collect a bunch of one thing if it has some intrinsic beauty. Even if it's useless.
For example? I used to be quite the beer aficionado when I was younger. I loved trying a beer I had never had before. I kept the bottle caps in a big vase on our coffee table. It was colorful and tactile and kind of a work of art.
At this same time I was obsessed with shooting pool.
The supermarket that I went to had the usual gum ball machine conglomerate up at the front of the store and one of the machines had superballs. Most of them were your usual swirly designs...but mixed in they had little super-ball-billiard-balls.
Cool.
I spent all my quarters trying to get a full rack.
I had quite the collection of super balls. I kept them in another vase on the table.
Again, tactile, colorful art.
People were actually really fascinated by these two vases. They would paw through them , they would dump them out and play with them.
Both collections were totally useless...except for, sometimes I would take out the superballs and, a handful at a time, I would slam them on the hardwood floor and watch the cats go absolutely
batfuck-crazy trying to catch the balls...that's as close to practical as they got.
Anyway, I loved having hundreds of bottle caps and superballs in jars.
and, I get the same feeling from the doo-dads.
They have no purpose...but there they sit all shiny and tactile on my desk.
I'll find something cool to do with them.

I Bought A Snobby Apple

2008-04-18T13:13:00.000-07:00

Oh.my.god this is one uppity apple I bought myself.
It was sitting there amongst the 'regular' apples. (I don't know how it could stand it really)
Visually you would not be able to tell it's an upper crust, well bred apple.
It looks kind of like a Jonagold or a Fuji. Looks can be so deceiving.
The first clue I had that this was going to be an apple from the right family was it's name:
Corail Pinova.
Sounds like like a French Viscount, no?
The little sign below the apples told me they are organically grown (but of course) in Washington. It even went so far as to tell me the exact county in Washington. I didn't take note of it because I didn't anticipate enjoying the apple so much that I would feel the need to make a pilgrimage to it's birthplace.
I did however write down the description:
A combination of Orange Cox, Golden Delicious, and Duchess Of Oldenburg. A perfect blend of tart and sweet.

Are you fucking kidding me?
Really? Duchess of Oldenburg? Honestly?
I could not have made that up if I wanted to.
I feel like I should have gotten a pedigree with this apple.

It better be a pretty damn good apple with a lineage like that.

I don't hang out with those guys no more

2008-04-16T22:52:00.000-07:00

I was just thinking back to a time I was riding in a car with friends; people I would most likely not hang out with now.
I guess maybe some of those friends have grown as I have ...but I know some of them haven't.
It's not possible to have been that guy ....and now be any different.
This was when I was in college. Most of my friends weren't in college they were people I worked with at restaurants and bars. People I met shooting pool. (I have shot a disproportionate amount of pool in my life. I had a regulation table in my living room. You know how if you played too much Tetris you had Tetris dreams? Yeah, well I had pool dreams.)
So, we were riding in my friends '70 something GTI. She had a sticker on the rearview mirror "stupid people shouldn't breed"
I'm in the backseat with Shaun. Shaun is chemically-induced stupid. Not just in the momentary sense. In the permanent sense as well. Hanging out with Shaun is like babysitting an ADHD first grader that can legally drink. He looks at the sticker, "Yeah, stupid people shouldn't breathe!"
"How many kids do you have Shaun?" I know he has a kid that he doesn't see. He knows it's better if he's not around.
"one, dude. That sticker is wrong in one way...my kid is pretty smart. Way smarter than me."
Then he does something weird....he sort of rubs his hands over his face, like he's washing his face, but with no water....then he does a sort of all over body shudder, like a dog shaking water coming out of the lake...and he says, "Man I did a lot of acid"
Everyone in the car is thinking the same thing, "oh shit. When did Shaun get a hold of some acid?"
This could be bad. Shaun is unstable enough already.
I should mention, when I got in the car I noticed he was wearing a plaid shirt over a plaid shirt, plaid shorts, plaid fishing cap...plaid fucking Converse hightops. I said..."um is it plaid day?"
"Naw...I was just listening to the Bosstones today"
I say," Where the fuck did you get acid...when did you take it?"
"No, I just meant in my life I've taken a lot of acid"
I reached into the half rack of Henry's between my feet and pulled one out.
(In Portland, Henry Weinhards ale is the house beer and a "half rack" is the term for how they come. Twelve shortneck bottles arranged 4x3 in an almost cube shaped green box. I remember one time walking down the street, having just come off the train, headed to a party, dangling a half rack. A homeless guy asked me for change, I broke open the half rack and gave him a beer instead..he said "God bless you")
I cracked the beer and just as I went to take a drink Kelly swerved for some reason and the bottle clinked my front tooth and chipped it.

That chip is mostly worn away, and I can't even feel it with my tongue . I don't hang out with those guys no more.

2008-04-14T23:10:00.000-07:00

I have a single friend that works for the un-employment department.
She's single so I like to tease her about meeting guys at work.
If you worked at an art gallery or a BMW dealership, meeting guys at work would be viable...but at the un-employment department?
Enh, maybe not so much.
So it's a running joke.
Sometimes she goes to High Schools to give seminars about resumes and applications and I tease her "any minor league prospects?"
Nope.
The other day she got to talk to parolees.

Me: anybody cute?
Cindy: yeah this one guy, Damien.
M: Damien? How the fuck do you know his name?
C: he had it tattooed on his throat?
M: well...you can't always trust a throat tattoo to be accurate ..
C: that's true.
M: did you get his number?
C: Yeah...I don't think I'm gonna' call him...

Love is a battlefield

What you gonna do with all that funk?

2008-04-14T22:41:00.000-07:00

When I was with Honda I had this guy come in to look at a Civic for his daughter. He was acting all Mr. Bigshot with me. Do you have any idea how many times I have dealt with Mr. Bigshot?
Dozens...hundreds...
Do you know how many times Mr. Bighsot has actually turned out to be a bigshot?
Never.
But...I did sell a car to the guy who invented the hybrid. You know...the Prius? regenerative breaking?
I sold a Prius to the guy who invented the technology 30 years ago...that's a big shot as far as I am concerned.
Yes, the major players in the market waited for his patent to run out...but...I read his patent.
Homeboy invented the shit.
Know what else? He lives off the grid. Has for years. He is Mr. Sustainable
So...I was at Honda, dealing with Mr. Bigshot. He's gonna buy a Civic for his daughter, never paid sticker...blah, blah, blah. But...the dude smells funky.
Not like B.O....just weird.
I can't place what weird smell is coming off the man...it's a kind of old dude-old school cologne. Like, Old Spice or something...but...also a weird funky smell.
So we get to the bone. We have negotiated this thing as much as we can.
and he splashes his card.
He throws his card down like he's splashing the pot.
It's a poker term...when the bets are down and you kind of throw your bet in and make the pot 'splash' ...he splashes his card down...
I look at it.."Mr. Bigshot, Plant Manager, Purina"
Oh shit.
This clown is the big-boss-man at the dogfood plant.
That explains the smell.
You have to know, if you have a dog-food factory, that shit stinks.
So I say the only sensible thing...
I sort of exclaim..."Dogfood!"
I am laughing because I have figured out why this fucker stinks.
Dogfood.
He says, "What?"
"Oh, I thought I knew you from somewhere..."

I don't need you to make a fool of me I can do it all on my own

2008-04-12T08:38:00.001-07:00

Walking into the store last night a man and I were approaching the entrance at the same when time all of a sudden his arm shot up in a greeting.
Kind of like when you see someone you know in a crowd? Just a big friendly "hey!"
I give him a nod back like "how ya' doin'?" but the look on my face definitely says " who the fuck is this guy waving at me?"
Then I realize he was just shooting the sleeve on his jacket trying to get it adjusted properly.
Then he kind of frowns at me because he sees some guy giving him a head nod combined with a bit of a scowl that translates into " tha' fuck you lookin' at?"
He scurries into the store avoiding eye contact with the psycho.

Later I'm in the produce department and I realize the poor guy has various tics. He's flinching and flailing around the oranges.

Great, I mad dogged a poor disabled guy.

A new Feature!

2008-04-11T19:24:00.000-07:00

I don't really write a lot about all the crazy stuff I've seen working at dealerships over the years.
I'm going to try to write one every once in a while as the good stories come to me.

We had a feisty older lady that was a dealership groupie.
First, I should explain.
A dealership groupie is someone who is around the dealership an inordinate amount of time;
way more than is necessary. It happens more at a family owned dealership than corporate ones. I don't really know why that is...but they come around because they are lonely and eccentric and they know they will get attention from the staff...it's kind of like being a regular at a bar.
This lady is a classic dealership groupie. She comes around and acts all comfortable with everybody. She feels fine talking smack to the staff. She acts like she knows everybody.
Usually a groupie buys one car and then lingers like someone staying too long at a party.
This one? She buys cars all the time.
She had a ranch and a church and they were always needing cars.
(we all were suspicious of the "church" it seemed more like a tax shelter...but I digress)
So she comes in one day and buys a car ....shooting her mouth off the whole time and generally getting on every ones nerves.
A couple of days later she comes back and asks to see her salesman. He's not available.
"Well you're not doing anything, you help me."
Yeah, I'm not paid by the hour? Helping you could cost me to actually miss getting a customer and therefore lose money?

Me: Sure! What do you need?
Dealer Groupie: Come here and look at this light on my dash.
(we walk to her car. She points to the tire pressure monitor light. If one or more tires has pressure below a certain percentage of the other tires it warns you. It's a symbol of a tire and it looks like danger is happening...wavy lines and all)
DG:What's that?
Me: hmm...have you had this on the highway since you bought it?
DG: yes, why?
Me: Did you exceed the legally posted limit of 55 mph?
DG: umm, yeah why?
Me: (putting a concerned, "oooh, no" look on my face) Was it in excess of 10mph over the limit?
DG: (trying to cover her tracks now) I...I don't know, I guess it's possible. I don't think so..
Me: I guess you haven't heard about the federal law enacted last year. Basically the NTSB enacted a law requiring that all manufacturers have a system on any new car sold in North America that monitors if the vehicle has been driven over the posted speed limit.
DG: So...what does that mean?
Me: (very cavalierly) It means you have voided your warranty, your salesmen must have covered this with you.
DG: What!? Nobody said anything about that! So I have no warranty coverage on a car I bought 3 days ago?
Me: Well...they do have a program where you can buy extended coverage....it doesn't cover nearly as much as the original warranty, considering you are a "speeder", but I think it's pretty reasonably priced.
DG: (gasping in a kind of fish on the deck way) Speeder?
Me: (casual shrug)
DG: So, what about the light, will it go off?
Me: Oh no, quite the opposite.
DG: Opposite?
Me: Yeah, actually the light will begin to increase in intensity...I can't believe nobody told you all this.
DG: It's going to get brighter? How bright does it get?
Me: In the training they said 8,000 lumiens. I really don't know how bright that is but I have seen the dash of a speeder who bought her car about a year ago and man...it's pretty distracting...kind of like when someone hits you in the eyes with one of those key-chain flashlights? I don't know if she's at the 8,000 lumien level yet, but...whew!
DG: are you serious?!

FINALLY! The words I have been waiting to hear! Oh how I love to hear those 3 little words. Are. You. Serious.

Me: naw, it's just a tire pressure monitor. Service can get you fixed up in a few minutes.

I have to tell you, I haven't had someone punch me in the arm that hard since jr. high school.

Odd Dream

2008-04-09T21:57:00.000-07:00

I know it can be the most boring thing in the world to listen to somebodies stupid fucking dream.
It's always like:
"then I was talking to my mom, but she didn't look like my mom she looked like a pony...but somehow I knew it was my mom...oh! then I was floating...and there was a squirell!"
And you want to flay open your wrists just to make it stop...

So I had this dream last night.
I was on the phone ordering some stuff that had nothing to do with God or tea.
(hang with me that will make sense in a minute)
The lady asked me

Her: would you like to go to heaven?
Me: umm, yeah I guess.
Her: are you on our website?
Me: yes.
Her: Ok, do you see the little picture of the travel mug?
Me: yes.
Her: that travel mug comes with 4 teabags and it has the serenity prayer on the side. If you make yourself 4 separate cups of tea, and say the prayer you will go to heaven. Oh and the tea it's called "serenatea" get it?
Me: no kidding? What if I drink the tea but don't say the prayer? Do I still get into Heaven?
Her: I don't know....I would say the prayer just in case?
Me: Yeah, I'd hate to spend the 10 bucks and then fuck it up and not get into heaven.
Her: That's what I'm thinking......so, do you want to take advantage of this special offer?
Me: yeah, why not.
Her: Would you like to upgrade to the larger size for only $2.00 more?
Me: oh shit, I can supersize my heaven? Do I get into a better heaven if I get the bigger one? Like instead of just plain old heaven it's heaven but with strippers too?
Her: um I think it's the same heaven...I mean, heaven is perfect and you can't have anything better than perfect, right?
Me: so no strippers?
Her: umm...I don't know.
Me: so what would be the advantage of getting the upgrade if I can't supersize my heaven?
Her: well I'm not supposed to tell you this but the regular travel mug is only 12 ounces, so lets say you wanted to put a can of soda in there it would be totally full ...but if you get the larger one? You can have ice and the soda.
Me: ok, seems worth it.

Then I woke up.

picky eaters

2008-04-09T15:46:00.000-07:00

We have a lot of picky eaters in my family. I swear it must be genetic.
In mine and Turbo's case it's exacerbated by the fact that we both have a type of hypoglycemia that allows us to go a long time with out eating and not suffer any loss in energy....until it's too late and our system crashes. Turbo was in the hospital at least a dozen times early in his life. He wouldn't eat enough and eventually his little system couldn't keep going and he'd spike a really high fever and we would be back in the emergency room.
It was so bad that I got almost daily calls from my family simply to find out what Turbo had eaten for the day.
My dad loves to tell the story of when Turbo was around 4 and they took him to a nice restaurant. The kids meal was prix fix so it included everything from the drink to the dessert.
He proceeded to just shove the food around for the entire meal, including a dish of ice cream.
My dad tried to get him to eat a piece of pie and Turbo politely declined. My dad says "are you sure, it's pretty good?"
Turbo gestures to the ice cream he's not eating and says, " I'm ok Pa-Pa I've got my ice cream."
It flabbergasted my dad that Turbo was declining a bite of pie based off of the fact that he already had a dessert...that he wasn't touching.

Things started to change for the better when Turbo was about 5 or 6 and I discovered I could get Turbo to eat nearly anything as long as I ordered the hottest thing on the menu Suddenly i could take him anywhere in town and I knew I could get him to eat. I'd order Jamaican jerk chicken or General Tso's and he would be fine.
He would frequently complain about the salsa not being hot enough which usually got a funny response from the waitstaff. I loved going to the local Indian restaurant and ordering whatever I wanted : chicken tandoori, stewed eggplant with chilies and the staff would gawk as Turbo ate whatever I put in front of him. He actually developed a standard line that he would say whenever somebody acted concerned if the food was too hot for him. He'd say " Pretty good...could be hotter but it's got nice flavor."
Then things got even easier once Turbo discovered the magical sauce that changed his life.
Buffalo Wing Sauce.
He was around 7 when his appetite went into overdrive. He ate constantly and it was all covered with Wing Sauce.
He could tell you the top five places to get wings in town and rank them in order for you. He traveled with a bottle of sauce in his backpack in case he wound up having a meal someplace that didn't have the sauce. He put it on his school lunch.

I never had a magical sauce like that when I was a kid...in high school I did go through a pretty serious fling with barbecue sauce. But there were many unpleasant times that I was at a babysitter and I had to skip lunch and wait until my mom picked me up because all they had was peanut butter and jelly or the tuna fish had celery in it.
The ultimate example of this was a time when a lady tried to serve me some PB&J on wheat. I asked as nicely as I could if possibly there might be something else and she said.
"like it or lump it."
My response was to say "well then I lump it!" and smash my fist into the sandwich and storm out of the room.

2008-04-08T14:46:00.000-07:00

I don't know how she will feel about this...

2008-04-08T05:22:00.000-07:00

I was recently talking with a friend on the phone and she said I need to get her a shop vac for mothers day. I can't imagine what a single woman would do with a shop vac...
(I can imagine what a single man would do with a shop vac, and while not technically illegal it is wrong fellas)
she said she needs it to vacuum up the leaves on her patio so she isn't "sweeping up leaves like an idiot in the wind"
I found that an interesting turn of phrase: Like an idiot in the wind.
When I pointed it out to her she amended to say "sweeping leaves in the wind, like an idiot"
which had more clarity but was less evocative.
So, I have appropriated and added to my lexicon a new phrase.
Shall I use it in a sentence for you?
George Bush is staying the course in Iraq, like an idiot in the wind.

2008-04-06T16:34:00.000-07:00

So I was sitting here reading blogs and watching Fox Noise and getting comfortably numb.
(I have some booze left over from Saturday night and I really don't want it to spoil so I figured I should drink it)
I started thinking about Ann Coulter...
the reason I started thinking about that skinny bitch is that the "news" anchor was this woman who has a nose job just this side of Michael Jackson in terms of severity. I imagine that it sounds like a referee's whistle when she breathes hard.
Ok, sure, a sink hole hasn't opened up in her face like the King of Homosexual Pedophiles..
(did you know they changed his title from King Of Pop, officially?)
but...this woman's nose looks like the blade on a fucking pocket-knife.
A key-chain pocket knife.
And it somehow made me think of that skinny-skank Ann Coulter.
Then I had a revelation.
She is a performance artist in the style of Andy Kaufman and Sacha Baron Cohen or Tom Green.
Never break character, make people completely uncomfortable with an over the top offensive character.
Done.
She can't believe her own rhetoric right?
It's a joke.
I don't think she will ever let us in on this joke, she will take it to the grave...but it's not possible that she is sincere.
It's all theater, it's a goof.
I feel much better now. I still hate that fatass Rush Limbaugh...sure he lost a few pounds, but he is still in his heart: a fat, sad, pathetic loser. And he believes what he says.
Ann Coulter is goofing on us. I gladly ignore her now.

I feel fine.

Let go let...go

2008-04-05T21:24:00.000-07:00

I was reading a blog Christina wrote recently. I started to leave a comment and then it started to turn unwieldy for a comment and more blog-like...so here we are.
She was talking about letting go.
Letting go of anxiety and fear.
I am in a similar place which is interesting because in many ways we are in very different places.
It seems like more and more she is becoming comfortable in her skin and growing into who she is supposed to be.
Maybe she doesn't see it that way but looking at it from my point of view, she is truly on a path. She has started at "A" Proceeded to "B"..."C - E " are on the horizon.
Her life is heading somewhere.
She has a good husband, good sons, a nice house ....a nice life really.
In a few years her boys will both be in school full time and she can do or be whatever she wants as far as a career is concerned. I am very envious of this. I wish I could go back a few years and be this aware of where I was taking my future...I have been simply plowing forward and hoping for the best.

As for me?
I'm a little bit lost.
I am on my 5th or 6th career and I think I have a couple more to wade through before I find my place.
I don't have a girlfriend or wife.
(not that I have really been trying to find one, but that's another Oprah...the whole issue of love is so complex. Sometimes you are somebodies type but they aren't yours...lots of weirdness...anyway, I'll figure that out later. I know that Eventually I will get a handle on everything. I just need time. I feel confidant that given enough time I will understand Everything.
I haven't got this one down yet. )
I don't even know where I will be living by the end of the summer. As I said, a bit lost.
But?
It's OK.
I know that whatever I decide to do next it'll be ok.
I will be able to find work. I don't fear being fired or not being able to find work. I know I will always have a position somewhere.
I know that once I figure out where I am going to be and what I am going to do: I will find work I want, I will find someone to be with...
I have always been able to get the girl...I need to work on keeping the girl now.
At the end of the summer I'll either stay here or move there. I am not worried either way. Both have their merits and I will focus on what is good about whatever the end result is.
The big thing is?
I let go of fear, I let go of anxiety...as much as is possible.
I don't mean to sound overly sanguine but the reality is...fear....
of loss, of death ...whatever?
It does me no good.
Certainly, the simple fear of injury prevents me from randomly walking into traffic...
I'm talking about the generalized fear that I am going to die someday.
I relinquish that.
Of course I am going to die.
So what?
Also?
I have nearly let go of material possessions.
Nearly.
I still love my cell phone and my lap-top and my car...and I really covet a nice lcd tv...
but I don't buy anything that I don't really need...part of it is the whole uncertainty of my future ( the whole end of summer issue?).
But...
If I break a glass I don't immediately go out and buy another. I think, "do I need 4 glasses? Can I get by with 3?"
So I had 3, then 2, now 1.
I have one glass.
When I want to drink I rinse it.
(and really? I mostly just drink water anyway)
I have a chair, a desk, a bed.
Clothes, computer, phone , car...that's it.
I haven't bought anything in a while.
I spent the last decade or 2 losing things.
(divorce, theft etc.)
and I am at the point where I am like Tyler Durdon.
"The things you own wind up owning you."
I am Graham Dalton in Sex Lies and Videotape.
My favorite line from the movie...it seems I am the only one who knows this line:
everything I own is in the car, and I just... I like that; you know, I mean, I just - if I get an apartment, that's two keys, if I get a job, you know, um, I might have to open or close, that's more keys...
I have keys to 2 cars, and a mailbox key.
I love how entirely clean and light my key chain is.
My life is portable in a Mazda Miata.
I live in such a minuscule amount of square footage... I have reduced my life to bare necessities.
It's all about letting go.
Of things, of desires, of fears.
Don't worry.
Everything is going to be fine, I promise.

Cell phone maladies

2008-04-05T20:39:00.000-07:00

Whenever I see 2 people in a car and they are both talking on cell phones I fantasize that they are calling each other.
Part of what fosters this is that it is almost always a young middle class white couple...I guess I just naturally assume they are very cold and passive aggressive and so to communicate they need to insert a layer between themselves to say what is on their mind.
Kind of like how your parents would say something to you but really they were talking to each other?
"Well, if daddy thinks dinner should be ready by 6:30 maybe he should skip having a drink at the bar with his pals and come straight home and cook it himself"
"why should daddy have to do that when mommy sits on her ass all day watching Oprah?"
But they don't have the kids to talk through yet so they use the cell phones?

" Hey honey, I was just noticing that you kind of ran that red light back there ? Do you think you could get us to the movies without killing us?"
"Thanks sweetie, I'll keep that in mind...hey while we're noticing things? Have you noticed you've got the heat in the car up to like 100 degrees? I'm thinking this is a Ford Escape not a fucking sauna."
" Sure, and I'm thinking that maybe it just seems hot to you because you had to do 3 shots of Jaeger before we left the house. Who does that , really?"

Also, while we're talking about automotive-cell phone behavior?
I have come up with yet another syndrome/condition.
It's called Cell-Phone Tourettes.
Have you ever been talking to someone and they are on the phone and driving at the same time and they say something along the lines of :
"Yeah, we are going to be at Moms around 4 and then... SURE JUST COME ON OVER MOTHER FUCKER...then we'll eat around 5"
and you're thinking "wait, what?"
So you say, "what did you just say to me?"
And they're like, "oh this guy just cut me off"

that's Cell-Phone Tourettes

april fools

2008-04-02T17:45:00.000-07:00

An extreme bout of ennui kept me from writing this yesterday on the actual "April Fools" day...but since I provide this wonderful blog gratis I'm ok with being a day behind schedule.

I worked for a dealership in Flagstaff that had as it's General Sales Manager one of the most heartless unendurable pricks I have ever met. Consequently I either quit or was fired from the dealership every 6 months or so because of some conflict between the manager and myself.

The morning of April 1st a few years ago I was in the conference room eating some breakfast when the manager Jeff walks in. He tells me that because of a drop in business and a less than stellar performance by me the month before he has decided to let me go. I tell him he's full of crap, I'm not getting fired because I am one of the best salespeople he's got. We argue for a few minutes and he finally says, " I've already made up my mind" and he puts his hand out for me to shake. I refuse, "I'm not shaking your fucking hand." and I go back to my breakfast.
Jeff leaves the room.
The door opens a minute later and in walks Rob. Rob is actually a good friend of mine. He says "So Jeff talked to you?"
I've got a mouthful of food so I just nod my head.
"Here's the thing man, Carrie is demanding that we cut at least one salesperson because we've got too many people. You know Jeff hates you so that's why he wants you gone. Here's my issue: you're a lot better salesperson than most of the guys we have here and you'll get another job in a heartbeat. Some of these newer guys may not be able to get a job right away....that's why I'm supporting Jeff on this."
I was instantly furious.
First because of the betrayal. Rob is my friend he's supposed to have my back. The secondary thing is the fact that the reason is so incredibly stupid. Why on earth would you fire somebody who makes you money in favor of somebody that is so inept you are concerned they won't find another job?
I was spitting mad.
LITERALLY.
I leap out of my seat. I try to speak but my mouth is too full of food. I rush over to the trash can and begin spitting the food out.
It takes a few tries before my mouth is clear enough to launch into a profanity laced, top of my lungs diatribe about the incredible stupidity of what he has just said and the complete lack of loyalty as a friend on his part.
Jeff hears me and pokes his head in the door. I unleash a few opinions about his character in the most profane way possible. I don't remember what he said next but it was enough to put me over the edge. I lunge at Jeff and Rob grabs me in a bear hug.
I should mention at this point that Rob is a cage fighter. He weighs 245 lbs. and stands 6 feet 4 inches. At this point in his life he has had a half dozen or so professional fights. The odds of me getting away from him are slim but I give it my best shot.
Now I have graduated to hopping mad.
Rob leans down and whispers in my ear " April Fools".
My head exploded.
Once I was calm enough to be let loose without the danger of someone getting hurt
and I had reassembled my cranium I said, "Who are we going to get next?"

2008-04-02T13:01:00.000-07:00

I was in the Sprint store waiting to be helped. The man called out the next persons name, but nobody responded so I tried to jump ahead in line
" that's me"
"umm, sir....your name is Diamond?"
"It's my stage name?"
"I don't think so. John, I can help you here?"

The Easter Story

2008-03-23T17:48:00.000-07:00

Ok, not the Easter story...but My Easter Story.
A few years ago we were at my moms house around Easter time.
My mom asked me if it was ok if she took Turbo to an Easter egg hunt at her church. It was kind of funny how she asked.
I don’t attend church. I am not against church attendance per se it’s just not for me. But sometimes my family acts like I would freak out if they so much as drove Turbo by a church.
When they wanted to play a Veggie Tales video for him I got profuse promises that it would in no way endanger my son.
So when I was asked if he would like to go to the Easter egg hunt I was told there would be no religious indoctrination whatsoever.
I wasn’t scared.
I’m pretty sure it’s not like:
“OK, so first thing: We have a race where the kids balance an egg on a spoon and run 25 yards. Then we have an egg toss with an unboiled egg, then the egg hunt, then everybody gets baptised”
“Sounds good to me…wait, what was that last part?”
So I said “I don’t have a problem with it, let me see if Turbo wants to go”
I talked to him:

Me: do you want to go to the Easter egg hunt with Grandma?
Turbo: what’s an Easter egg hunt?
Me: well the adults hide a bunch of eggs outside and then the kids run around trying to find them.
Turbo: wouldn’t the eggs break?
Me: no, they use hard boiled eggs.
Turbo: oh, I don’t like hard boiled eggs.
Me: me neither. The point isn’t the eggs.
Turbo: doesn’t sound like much fun, finding something I don’t want.
Me: well it’s like a competition to see who can get the most.
Turbo: But why would I want to find the most of something I don’t even like?!
Me: You’re focusing on the wrong part,the point isn’t the eggs it’s the contest!
Turbo: but I don’t want ANY hard boiled eggs!
Me: then don’t do the damn Easter egg hunt, I don’t care!
Turbo: Fine I won’t!

Turbo skipped the Easter egg hunt.

2008-03-23T17:36:00.000-07:00

I’m always gratified when one of my friends or family calls and asks for recipe advice or help. I’m a pretty good cook and it’s nice when people look to me for help in that area.
A friend of mine called from WalMart and asked for some tips on au gratin potatoes. I pulled up a recipe for her on the computer. (I’ve never made them before so I couldn't be of much help on my own)
She asked for some ideas of what to serve with it and I suggested green beans.
Is it just me or do green beans always show up whenever ham and au gratin potatoes are around?
Do you think ham is all like, “oh great here comes fuckin’ green beans” and then green beans is all “hey guys what’s up, why didn’t you tell me you were going to be here?” and au gratin is like “oh ,hey green beans….um, you didn’t get my voicemail? Weird”
Anyway.
I gave her a recipe for green beans: Garlic, sauteed in red wine and then tossed with some bacon and the green beans. Bam!
But she wanted to leave out the red wine…and the bacon.
Um, if you are deleting %50 of my recipe then it’s no longer my recipe. Lets say you make some lasagna for your kids:
“Mom, what is this?”
“lasagna”
“but it’s just noodles and ricotta”
“hey if you don’t like it blame Michael it’s his recipe.”
Whatever.
I can only impart the knowledge. What people do with it is their choice.
I made a few adjustments to the au gratin recipe and then emailed it to my friend. I don’t have an oven at my apartment (long story) so I can’t try it out myself…I’ll include it here. If anyone wants to make up a batch and tell me how it is that would be great.

BEST-EVER SCALLOPED POTATOES BITCHES!

4 medium potatoes
milk
shredded cheddar
1 large onion
garlic powder
oregano or some of the "sticky icky" if ya' got it

Scallop potatoes by slicing width-wise to create very thin circles. Thinly slice onion and separate into thin strips. Dance around like a fucking maniac to your favorite Next jam.
Layer alternately: potatoes, onion, cheddar, dash of spices; repeat until casserole dish is 3/4 full. Or until you feel that the dish has "had enough" Top with cheddarnipples.
Pour milk into casserole until it's about 1/2 filled up the sides. Pour remaining milk into a shoe
Bake at 350°F for about 1 1/2 hours until potatoes are tender and sensitive. (sometimes longer for thicker-cut potatoes). Test with fork, let sit for 10 minutes before serving.
Leave a small portion on your back porch for the Gypsies.

I hope she appreciated the change I made.

High School Is a Brutal Buisness

2008-03-19T22:39:00.000-07:00

In high school I had a good friend named Dave. His brother Reese got his first car from his mom. It had a horn.
A special horn.
It had this control box about the size of a paperback book. It had a dozen or so buttons and each one played a different tune.
It was like the ringtone of the 80's. It would honk out Dixie, the Mexican hat dance, La Cucaracha etc.

Reese's best friend was Scott.
(Scott later became our best friend because we rocked and Reese didn't. Reese can invest the hell out of your money for you...but he was never much fun to party with.)
We would roll up to a light and stop....if the person in the car next to us was a young lady
(or better yet? Ladies.)
Scott would glance back into the back seat, give Dave and myself the nod and we would all drop down so that it appeared to onlookers that Reese was traveling alone.
If it was a Black girl he'd play Dixie. Hispanic girl? La Cucaracha.
Then Scott would say, "did she look?"
Reese would would say, without moving his lips "Yeah, she looked. Now get up."
Scott would hit it again." now what?"
Reese: knock it off! She's giving me dirty looks!
Scott would hit it once more.
Reese: Ok cut the shit! She just flipped me off and rolled up her window!
The great thing about this was that Reese couldn't do what he wanted most in the world to do which was to yell and scream at us.
Bad enough that he appears to be an asshole for repeatedly honking his obnoxious horn but to be seen yelling to himself, like a maniac in an empty car, would be too much.

(actual) good deeds

2008-03-19T21:04:00.000-07:00

I sometimes write about my "good deed of the week"
You'll notice this feature doesn't actually happen every week.
That's because my "good deed" is usually me having a perfect opportunity to be a dick to somebody and not taking it.
Clearly a rare event. My sister used to introduce me to her friends thusly: "this is my brother Michael, he's an asshole."

This weeks good deed was an actual good deed.
I was sitting at the intersection nearest my house. It's a complicated affair with freeway on and off ramps, weird angle cross streets and complicated traffic light cycles. Frankly I'm surprised their aren't more accidents.
I notice a guy pushing his car across this intersection by himself. I pause a beat and realize all the people in their cars that are closer to this poor guy than I am are just going to watch.
Including a police officer.
So I jump out and sprint across the intersection and I hit his car running. I'm digging hard to get this guys car moving faster. It takes a moment and then the guy looks back at me with a surprised look on his face.
"what, you thought you suddenly got super strong?"
He laughed, said thanks and I got him over to the shoulder. I turned and sprinted back to my car...and for my good deed the lady behind me at the light gave me an unkind look.
Fuck you lady.
You know what gets me about this? When I lived in Portland or Austin I would not have been the only person to help push the car...but here I live in a town that is so overtly "Christian" and there were at least 8 people closer to the action than me that were looking at their watches wondering how long we would take to get out of their way.
Pathetic.
I don't mean to indict Christians, but the odds of at least one of those people being a practicing churchgoer is pretty high, yet not a single person flinched...not even one guy getting out of his car at the last minute going "did you need me to...oh you got it? 'cause I was gonna'...ok cool.."
So... my good deed of the week, I pushed the hell out of some dudes car.

Today I am Japanese!

2008-03-18T11:35:00.000-07:00

Turbo has multiple grandmas.
Before he was born we asked all the grandmas what they wanted for their name. One picked Grandma Gee...she was called Gee by my sister when she was little so it seemed fitting. Fine.
One picked Gramma Bunny...because she likes bunnies and collects bunnies...
we actually had a little issue with this one. "Bunny" is not the kind of name you can give yourself. If the little ones happen to notice you have a shitload of bunnies laying about fine...but you can't pick it.
So I told "Gramma Bunny"
(where is the sarcasm button?!...I'm still getting used to my new laptop.)
That she needs to think of something else.
Then a funny thing happened. My Ex started sarcastically referring to her as Gramma Bunny.
IE, the phone rings she looks at caller ID and says, "you get it, it's Gramma Bunny"
(where the hell is that sarcasm button?!)
So it stuck.
You won this round Gramma Bunny.
Then My ex's mom chose Nana.
She would. Boring, predictable, stupid.
Perfect.
(look, nobody likes her,OK? I'm not being mean)
So...fast forward 6 years. Nana is coming out to visit. We live in this tiny little house in Flagstaff that was built around the same time as the university. It has hard-wood floors that if you drop a marble in the dining room it rolls all the way to the front door. It is a funky little abode.
But Nana has to put a nice sheen on everything so she spends a lot of her visit wandering our cottage saying "cozy, cozy, cozy"
Because it would not be nice to say..."man this crib is Tiny!"
We are getting ready to go see the Grand Canyon and she says "Well, you're not a real American until you've gone to see the Grand Canyon"
Because she cannot help but filth the air with platitudes.
And a friend of ours says, " No you're not a real Japanese until you've seen the Grand Canyon"
(did you know that the Grand Canyon is absolutely Lousy with Japanese?)

So. We arrive at Le Canyon Grande Merde!
and Turbo steps out of the vehicle, stretches a bit and then boldly, loudly, proudly declares, with arms thrown wide in dramatic declaration:

TODAY I AM JAPANESE!
NOW, I AM REALLY JAPANESE TODAY!!

Cozy, cozy, cozy.

Confessions Of A Closet Pen Geek

2008-03-16T18:06:00.000-07:00

I like pens.
My sister likes purses.
We are the kind of people that will spend quadruple what you would spend at Target to get a nice piece.
(don't lie Christina.....Umm, Coach? hello?)
I own somewhere between $500 and $1,000 ( retail) worth of pens....I have 4.
A Mont Blanc, Waterman, Shaffer and a no name.
My workhorse is actually kind of a sleeper (the no name). It's not a name brand per se ( or "For Say"...for those of you in the inner circle of stupid inside jokes)
It's something you can get for $30 at an office supply chain.
But I have to say...it passes the test of price VS. quality with flying colors.
I own pens made of better material that write better and cause people to say, "nice pen"...but not at this price point.
It's a pen I can use every day at work, it performs admirably...yet, if I lose it, it won't break my heart.
So, the one I had fouled up and I brought it in to exchange.
When I got my new pen the kid said " you wanna test it?"
I said "Sure" and wrote something on the pad he shoved in front of me.
I proceeded to tell him that 90% of people, when testing a writing instrument, write their name.
It stands to reason. Aside from: the, a, an, it, and , as...etc. what word do you write more often than your own name?
So I get my new pen (a brushed aluminum Foray Focus) and head out the door.
As I reach the threshold I look back to see the kid turn the pad around to see what I have written:

BIG DICK DADDY FROM CINCINNATI

Pretty much everybody writes their name.

The voice Of God Sounds Like Dick Cheney Talking Into a Coffee Can

2008-03-12T14:48:00.000-07:00

Do you remember when Bush/Cheney took office and Cheney had a secret meeting with a bunch of top executives from the oil industry? He refused to reveal what was discussed in the meeting other than "future energy policy."
The documents have been unsealed and basically what they were discussing was a plan to attack Iraq to secure the oil rights for American companies.
They had maps of the oil fields. They worked on issues such as how do we go about nullifying deals that Iraq already had in place to allow Russia to drill...you know, minor details.
All of this of course took place prior to 9/11.

I remember being a little baffled when Bush came out and said we were going to invade Iraq...
Afghanistan at least made some sense.
But Iraq?
I only now just put this together...but do you recall Bush saying that God spoke to him?
I bet when they were trying to convince Bush of this hair brained scheme even he was a little confused
"So we attacked Afghanistan 'cause that's where those bad Saudi guys came from....but why are we going to Iraq?"
I'm picturing him getting all confused by their stupid excuses, "Yellow cake uranium? Sounds delicious!"
So they set up a Chinese screen and a chair in the Oval office:
"Hey Mr. President, we're thinking about putting some more of these chairs in the White House, can you sit here and tell us what you think?"

GW: OK, did you know I can tell if a chair is comfortable just by sitting in it?
(Dick Cheney sidles up on the other side of the screen with an empty Folgers coffee can)
DC: (talking into the can) George, can you hear me?
GW: Is that you Mr. Cheney?
DC: What? No! It's me God.
GW: oh, 'cause you sound a lot like Mr. Cheney talking into a coffee can.
DC: Ummm yeah I get that a lot.
GW: Mr. Cheney scares me, God. He's like The Emperor in Star Wars.
DC:Uhh, yeah it's ok, don't be scared for I am the Lord? Anyway, look I need to talk to you about Iraq.
GW: Oh man! I was just talking about this with Mr. Cheney! He thinks we should invade them and stuff.
DC: Mr. Cheney is a very wise man, you should invade Iraq. Saddam Hussein is an evil man. He must be taken out.
GW: Is he eviler than The Emperor?
DC: (sigh) Yes George, much more evil than The Emperor.
GW: ok God I'll do it.
DC: Good boy George...before I go I have one other thing to discuss with you...have you been hiding Mr. Cheney's heart pills from him?
GW: Heh, heh, heh, yeah I have been doing that. It's funny he gets all mad and his face turns red..
DC: George, do you realize that he could die without those pills? Do you know what would happen if Mr. Cheney died?
GW: Umm no..
DC: Then you would have to be in charge of the country and you would have to make the decisions instead of Mr. Cheney. Do you want that George?
GW: NO! I won't do it anymore I swear!
DC: Good, so no more shenanigans?
GW: Heh, heh, heh...that's what Mr Cheney Always yells at me "George! No more shenanigans!"

One big ass balloon story

2008-03-09T06:20:00.000-07:00

Turbo and I were driving along one day and I saw a balloon floating high above a new housing development. I made a comment "look at that big balloon"
Turbo wasn't impressed.
I tried to make him understand that it happened to be a huge fucking balloon.
No dice.
We went back and forth a bit as to whether or not it was actually all that big until I finally got fed up and I stopped the car and got out and began hauling this balloon in....
Oh, for perspective?
We were in a Honda Crx...in case you haven't heard? That's a tiny little car.
I wanted turbo to see the balloon looming, towering over our car so he would see how big the balloon is because, honestly, you can't let a 8 year old win the argument when the subject is a big balloon.
As I'm hauling in my catch a man comes out onto his balcony which is less than 50 feet from where we are, and yells at me, " hey that's not yours!"
Oh, really? I lost a giant fucking balloon and I thought maybe this was mine....
So I yell back "Ok, thank you" and ignore him.

Super Uptight Suburban White Guy: I'm calling the police !"
Me: And telling them what?!
SUSWG: ......
Me: You gonna tell them that a guy is attempting to steal a balloon that is twice the size of his car?
SUSWG:......
Me: or maybe you could say that someone is attempting to hide a CRX inside a giant balloon?
SUSWG: That's not yours!
Me: You said that already!
The guy goes into the house. I get the balloon down next to our car so he can appreciate this ginormous balloon and Turbo has the absolute appropriate Turbo response in this moment, "Huh...that is a big balloon. Can we go get pizza now?"

If I thought for one second that the police would have actually shown up I would have stuck around.
I can't tell you how much I would have loved to have had that conversation.

The Secret Thumb

2008-03-07T21:38:00.000-08:00

It is my firm belief that if you want me to keep a secret for you, the first step is that you need to tell me it's a secret.
When my brother was born he had an extra thumb.
He was a 'miracle baby' so it was cool, I guess.
(my step mom was not supposed to be able to conceive but then along comes The Great Wazoo)
So there we are, he's 5 I'm 15, and he is looking at this tiny scar on his hand.

Waz: you know what's weird? I have this scar, but I don't know how I got it.
Me: that's where they cut off your extra thumb dude

Hang on.
At this point, I am just about the ultimate prick older brother. I love my 2 younger siblings but they were keeping me from being a spoiled only child and so they had to pay for the offense, sorry.
I was a benevolent but harsh older brother.
I protected them, but I had no time for their shit.
So , clearly he is not about to believe me when I tell him he showed up with an extra digit.
So, Waz runs to his mom, "did I have an extra thumb!?"
Michael!
Look..... I didn't know it was a secret.

Then, a year or so later?
My sister and Waz and I are chilling around an inflatable pool or water filled bucket or something, and I say " do you ever wonder what Janon and Joey are up to?"
Waz says "who are Joey and Janon?"
"Ummm....
Hey, look...
Ok between my mom and your mom? Our dad was married to this woman Joelee?"

Nuh-unh!
Eh...yeah.
Moooom!....

Michael!
Yeah.
You want to have everybody keep your secret? Tell everybody it's a secret.
Oh...and I am pretty sure Christina ruined the whole Santa Claus thing.

The Governor of Montana rules!

2008-03-07T20:42:00.000-08:00

He doesn't just rule the state of Montana...he kicks ass.
I was listening to an interview he did on NPR. The reason they were talking to him is that the federal government is requiring that states send out a letter promising that once the Fed comes up with guidelines for a national ID card, whatever the requirements are, the states will abide by them.
Get it?
We the federal government are going to enact a program that will cost the states money and we will come up with some guidelines...later...like 7 or 8 years...but you have to agree to the terms now.
Plus?
The way you get this card?
Show up at your local DMV with a birth certificate and get the card....but is there a standardized birth certificate?
No.
Give me a few hours and a decent printer and I'll make you a birth certificate.
So Gov. Schweitzer told the fed to go F_ themselves.
In the interview he basically says that the fed comes up with hairbrained schemes all the time and usually Montana just ignores them and then if it comes to a head they tell the fed to go to hell.
Rock on.
The Montana legislature passed a bill that said 'we will not abide by these rules'. It passed by a 151-o vote.
Might I just inject, this is one of my biggest pet peeves about the political right.
When it will save them money they say, "states rights! keep the fed out!"
But, when it comes to issues the Right is obsessed with?
IE: Abortion, weed, death with dignity, gay marriage?
Well, all of a sudden the fed has something to say. Suddenly the states can't supersede the federal government.
All of a sudden when it comes time to infringe on our rights: wire tap, ID cards?
Now the fed is all up in our business.
So The Governor ain't havin' it.
The fed basically said if the deadline passes and the state hasn't sent the letter it's the same as if the Montana citizen is showing up without an ID.
The best part of the interview?
The interviewer basically says, 'what happens when the deadline passes and a person with a Montana ID tries to board a plane'?
His response?
" They board the plane. Blah blah blah deadline"
I assure you, he said "Blah blah blah deadline"
The federal government says some shit, and he says, "Blah blah blah"

The Governor of Montana fucking rocks.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=87991791

2008-03-05T20:20:00.000-08:00

I have been following the primaries pretty closely. Right now there is a trend in the campaign reporting that is driving me nuts.
The line of reasoning goes like this,
"Sure Obama has more delegates, more states etc. But he hasn't won "the big states" California, New York etc. Therefore Hilary is the more viable candidate because those "big" states" are the Democrats core states and a crucial win for them."
I have several problems with this.
I haven't seen a single person on any of the talk shows say anything to contradict this bit of "conventional wisdom".
So I will.

1) The primaries are within the party. So, Obama lost to Hilary in those states, which only means Hilary would beat Barak in the general election in those states. It doesn't indicate how he would do against McCain.
Are we to assume that in the general election ALL the people who voted for Hilary in the primaries would not vote for Obama?
No, the opposite is true. Most of those Hilary supporters would vote for Obama over McCain in that case. So the Dems still win California and New York.

2) Why are the votes in states that are classic Dem states (California, New York?) more important than ones that are not? Logically wouldn't you want someone who is strong in states where you are traditionally weak?
If you have a guy that can perform in "the big states" (as I have shown he will) and maybe gain some ground in "the little states" that would be an advantage.

3) If the number of votes/delegates picked up in "the little" states is greater than in the "big states" that's good, right? If you have more votes/delegates then you win, regardless of where the votes came from, right?

This is annoying me.
Barak has more votes (by 500,000 something ).
He has more delegates. (by a couple hundred)
He has won 27 states to her 15.*
In all measurable regards he is winning but because Hilary won a few
"big states" we have to listen to this BS.
If this was the general election at this point Obama would be the winner. More votes, more states, more delegates= winner. We wouldn't be listening to stupid crap about "well McCain won more of the "big states"

* Michigan and Florida don't count. Sorry, but they broke the rules and they knew their delegates wouldn't be counted. Barak didn't campaign in either state and wasn't even on the ballot one state. Hilary can't count as a win a state when hers was the only name on the ballot. That's like saying Kruschev "won" his premiership.

Warning may contain annoying content

2008-03-05T18:08:00.000-08:00

I sometimes like to troll through blogger just clicking to the next blog to see what I might randomly come across.
I don't know how to say this without sounding mean...but enough with the "Baby Blogs"
I know you're so proud of Riley Nicole or Dustin Carmichael or whatever.
I get that you want to let friends and family know about every little poop The Miracle issues forth...
but we, the Rest Of The World, don't really care.
Sorry if that sounds rude but it's the truth.
If there were any justice in this world I would be able to click "flag blog" whenever I cam across a "baby blog" and then when the next unfortunate soul accidentally comes across the blog a warning would pop up giving the user the right to skip over such content. Like they do with "adult content"?

I guess it'll have to wait until I'm President King.
(oh, and if I see another blog written from the perspective of a 6 week old child
"momma says she's breastfeeding me because it's oh-so-much better for my tummy"
I will hunt you down and pimp slap you.)
(I really need to keep my pimp hand strong...I've been backsliding on that)

Dreams

2008-03-04T20:13:00.000-08:00

How much stock do you put in dreams?
I am very fascinated by dreams.
...I have extremely vivid, bizarre ones.
I know everybody thinks their dreams are weird...
trust me they aren't.
Last night I dreamt I got tagged by an E250 Econoline van...
just ....ran the fuck over...
And in my dream, I stunted and rolled a bit and then walked
away...We were on our way to a fancy restaurant...I was leading a rag-tag crew to the safety of a high class joint...and then I got ran down by a CARGO VAN...and sort of juked and side-stepped and then kept leading the pack to the promised land of a foodie paradise...
What the hell does that mean?
I'm sure I don't know.
I could go on and on, but rest assured, your dreams are not as strange as mine and be thankful they aren't. I'm not bragging, I'm just saying I have stopped trying to tell people about the stranger ones because I get that look from people like I' m a crazy person..
I am pretty sure, having dreams like mine are a true sign of mental instability...
I could tell you about them...but I won't...

How can someone so smart act so stupid?

2008-03-04T19:26:00.001-08:00

That is a paraphrase of a question someone very close to me has asked me numerous times over the years.
The only answer I have ever had is:
I don't know.
Last night I was getting out of my work clothes and for some reason I had massive trouble getting my right hand out of the sleeve...then I remembered it had been bit of a pain getting the right hand in...
so of course my analytic mind goes into overdrive to figure out why one hand goes easy and the other does not....
Clearly one hand is larger than the other!
I start to panic...
Why do I have one big hand?! ....Have I been masturbating excessively?!
I do switch hands....but still....could I have over-muscled my right hand?!

Right about then my rational mind says "well, unbutton the sleeve to get your Giant hand free"
Oh, wait...I have one sleeve buttoned on the first button...
and one on the second

So...good news ?
I don't have One Gigantic Hand...
Bad news?
I'm a fucking retard who can barely operate a dress shirt.

Kiss me first buddy

2008-02-28T21:30:00.000-08:00

I was watching a movie tonight and there was a line in the movie that made me laugh...not because it was funny in the slightest but because it made me think of something funny that happened to me in the exact same situation.
The scene is thus: a man and wife are going to bed, their toddler son is crashed out in the middle of the bed. The man tries to move him, the wife objects "he's sleeping so soundly"...he says, "I'm sick of waking up with his foot in my face"
I laughed out loud because if that had been the script of my life?

More than once when Hopper was sleeping in our bed did he manage to, in his fitful sleep, jam a toe in my ass.
Do you know what it's like to have a little tiny person shoot his leg out and with great force put his big toe between your buttcheeks?
I do...and you know what?
It's not as cool as it sounds.
And then, when you exclaim( as rightly you should)
"Hey! Shit!"
in the middle of the night and you wake up your whole family? Well, you get scolded. Like you're the one violating people in their sleep.
And, did this ever happen to my ex?
no. And the ironic thing is, his mother used to kick me in her sleep...so I guess having your leg randomly shoot out in your sleep is genetic.
But why was I always getting kicked or poked or prodded? Because all living creatures who have ever lived with me...well except for the turtles I had as a kid...
they have all cuddled up to me in the middle of the night. Not because I'm lovable.
I am a fantastic source of heat.
Sleeping with me is like sleeping with a large, warm, living rock in your bed.
So, the cats, the Black Lab, Turbo, his mom...they all have felt the need to flop all over me...sometimes all of them at the same time. So when it comes time to kick someone (Kristen) or toe fuck someone (turbo) in their sleep, it's me

Then everybody goes back to sleep, except for me, because I am haunted by the sense memory of a toddler toe up my butt.

Space food sticks Vs. The Big Texas

2008-02-28T13:30:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid we would drive my parents nuts asking for Food Sticks and Cokes. They would get annoyed with us always bugging them to eat that crap.

BUT, not because it was crap. They would say no because they didn't want to have to go buy more of the crap...
not because it was bad for us, they didn't think twice about that.

It's a whole different attitude towards kids.

We were free range children. In the morning they would open the doors and say "get out "

Heaven forbid you come in before lunch time. I can remember trying to come in the house for a drink of water one time and being told if "I just want water we have a goddamn garden hose."

Did I get in trouble?

Probably ......but not enough to never do it again.

You can be damned sure Turbo would not repeat that stunt.

It's a combination of me not being an easily controlled child....and parents who weren't really overwhelmed with a desire to control me.

The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills

2008-02-27T22:19:00.000-08:00

I just spent 5 minutes staring at a vending machine.
If that doesn't sound like a long time stop and just stare at this line for five minutes.

I was craving salt so I walked over to the vending machine to get some chips...and they had the Big Texas.

Do you know the Big Texas?

It's a Cinnamon roll they sell in machines that Turbo used to love.

His mom was living in Va. It was kind of a hard time being a single dad and selling cars for a living ....but I look back on it as one of the happiest times of my life.

Turbo and I had so much fun. This was the hey-day of the super heroes Wind and Storm.

Not every day, but damn nearly, we would be running late.

I would get up on time and something would conspire to hold us up.

Turbo would be hard to wake or I would be daydreaming in the shower or I would forget to iron my clothes the night before...2 or 3 days a week.

I wouldn't have time to make Turbo breakfast and he would say " Can I get a Big Texas?" and I'd say "where's my wallet?" which was code for "yeah, but I don't want you to."

And he'd put milk in a travel mug and have milk and a Big Texas for breakfast in the car.
I always felt kind of guilty...but looking back? He probably has fond memories of us running around those mornings me yelling at him good naturedly to get his ass in gear and him eating the Big Texas on the way to school.

I know I do.

This is a picture of Turbo during that time. He hated the school uniform...yet insisted on wearing the shirt buttoned to the top.

Isn't he looking all James Spader?

I am not about to Kick off a nature Vs. nuture debate

2008-02-26T20:32:00.000-08:00

I have a very dry, sarcastic sense of humor. I believe I was born with it and then I have honed and refined it over the years.
I look to this story as proof that I was born with it.

My Aunt Sissy ( whose name is actually Claudia, which my sister and I didn't know for quite a long time and were completely shocked when we were told that we were going to Aunt Claudia's. "What?! We don't have an Aunt Claudia!")
She had a husband, Rob. Uncle Rob was stupid. One time he bought a gold colored Plymouth Duster. He excitedly showed my dad his cool new car. Then when we went back to visit a few weeks later? He excitedly asked to show my dad his new gold Plymouth Duster. After several minutes of arguing that he had already seen the car, my dad went out to see the car ...there sat another gold Plymouth duster...this one with the super sporty white vinyl hard top.
So clearly Rob was stupid.
Anyway, I was 5 years old and we were getting ready to go over to Aunt Sissy's house and my dad sat me down and had a talk with me.
"Don't make fun of your Uncle Rob, it just upsets your Aunt Claudia."
"ok, I'll try Dad."
"I'm serious, if you make any jokes at Uncle Rob's expense I'll beat your butt." He would always say that "I'll beat your butt" but it never happened.
"Ok Dad, I'll try to not make fun of him."
So we go over to Aunt Sissy's and Rob starts in on my dad right away:
-Hey Rex have you heard any good jokes lately, do you know any jokes ...
-No Rob I haven't heard any good jokes, no I don't know any jokes...
then Rob say the immortal setup line:
" Come on, don't you know any good Pollack jokes?"
And I Say:
"No Rob, You're the Only Good Pollack Joke We Know"
BAM!
Brutal. You just got dropped by a 5 year old.
Like a sniper, one shot one kill.
I have thought about it and 33 years later I can't think of a funnier retort to "don't you know any good pollack jokes?"

I don't remember this but I'm going to tell you anyway

2008-02-26T19:40:00.000-08:00

Do you ever tell a story about yourself but it's not one you actually remember? It's a story that someone (in my case it's always my dad) tells about you when you were little.
One of the things I find interesting about these stories is that it kind of shapes how you think of yourself as a child. Obviously you know what you were like at 10 years old...but what were you like at 5?
How do you know, other than from what somebody else has told you about yourself, what you were like at those early ages?
Judging from the stories I have heard about myself I was an ornery little cuss who kind of got a long leash to speak my mind and do my thing. I think part of why my sister is having the issues she is having with her oldest is that he is a lot like me and they don't give him that freedom to be the little maniac he wants to be.
And I support that %100.
That's why we had so many issues when I hit 13 and all of a sudden they tried to enforce...lets say a bed time?
I am sure I would be a much more focused successful person if when I was a child they had tried to point me in the right direction and hold tighter reins on me instead of letting me be a free range child.
I'm not complaining about my childhood. That would be so boring considering how relatively spoiled I was.

But that's not what I want to talk about.

My dad and I were in Zody's
( now we are getting deep with the old school So-Cal shit. Zody's was like Kmart...but not as cool. Think Wal mart Vs. Target...but down an entire notch in the food chain. We had one right by our house and I remember as an older kid being terrified every time we went in there that another kid from school would see me there)
I was about 4 and I had on my usual summertime attire: shorts, cowboy boots, no shirt, two six shooter cap guns on my belt.
About the no shirt thing.
I know they would have loved for me to be wearing a shirt in the store but frankly my dad was lucky I was wearing pants. My whole life I have always been hot. I can remember being yelled at all the time,
"put your shirt on!"
" but I'm hot!"
I bet I was 7 years old with high blood pressure.
The other thing about me being shirtless all the time?
I swam nearly every day of my young life. I was on a swim team from the time I was 5. I would climb anything. I would climb up into the top of a door frame and wedge myself there and just hang out and scare the crap out of people as they walked into a room. I had as a little kid a classic V shape muscle-man kind of body. That's creepy on a little kid.
Anyway.
There I am in my usual get up. Up to me walks a very large woman. She looks down at me and says "aren't you the cutest thing I've ever seen?"
I look up at this mountain of a woman and say " and aren't you the fattest thing I've ever seen?"
My dad says sharply " Michael!"
I say "what! Look at her she's huge!"
I have said it before and I will say it again, Nothing will embarrass you in the store faster than your own kid.
(Christina? "My daddy has 2 balls" Hmm?)

Stop me if you've heard this one before

2008-02-26T19:10:00.000-08:00

I have this fear that I will think of a funny story and write about it and then someone will point out that I have written about it before.
This is not an unfounded fear.
I got my ability for story telling from my father. If you spend any amount of time with him you will inevitably hear a story for a 2ND...or 32ND time. I think part of why my dad has been so accepting of my brother in law is that he views him as a fresh audience. Chris has not heard the story of Chrissy yelling "I think I'm going to throw up!" in the restaurant a dozen times....well maybe he has by now but you get my point.
I have to say in all honesty it doesn't bother me too much because they are usually funny. I liken it to coming across an old Seinfeld re-run on TV. You know all the punchlines but you can still appreciate the quality of the humor even if the punchlines aren't fresh.
My stepmother on the other hand is driven to distraction by this.
They actually have a routine: he will start to tell a story and she will interrupt and say you've already told him this one...and then he proceeds to tell the story.
I don't know what the solution is...I have a great ability to find the humor in a situation and I am observant and consequently I have a lot of funny stories...but I don't want to bore people writing the same stories over and over...of course that presumes that anybody would keep reading my blog frequently enough or long enough for them to actually catch me repeating myself...you know what? It may not be a problem after all.

Christina? Just please just send me an email if it happens, don't embarrass me in the comments section, OK?

What will your legacy be?

2008-02-26T15:45:00.000-08:00

When I see something like this I have to stop and wonder about my short time on this earth. Am I making an impact?

Will I be remembered after I'm gone by more than just friends and family?

Will I have a memorial water fountain?

This is one of the drinking fountains at my work: The Ed Mansfield memorial water fountain. This brings up sooo many questions for me. Who was Ed Mansfield? What did he do to deserve his own fountain? Was there a dedication ceremony?

And most crucially:

Why a drinking fountain?

Did he die of complications related to kidney stones and his dying wish was that no other man should suffer that fate?

Did his widow sue over the lack of water availability and this was part of some kind of settlement?

I remember when I was a kid going to Emerson Elementary they dedicated a bike rack to some boy who had died of cancer or something.

At the time I remember being haunted by the question: why a bike rack?

Did the kid really like bike riding before he was tragically felled by disease?

It's these types of things that make me so restless.

How the heck can I get a good night's sleep when I have the Ed Mansfield memorial water fountain on my mind?

A funny thing happened on the way to my sisters blog

2008-02-26T15:31:00.000-08:00

I have some blogs that I check daily and some that I only look in on occasionally.
I recently had a weird experience when I went to my sisters blog. I read it, I made a comment and then I went back to my home page and clicked on a link to another blog I read less frequently. There was my sisters blog again but this time she was talking about Obama and driving from Seattle to St. Paul recently ...what the hell? She hasn't driven to St. Paul....and why would she start off in Seattle?
Then I realized that the blog on my list directly below my sisters is using the same template and color scheme as my sister.

Ok, not earth shattering , there's a rip in the space/time continuum kind of weird...but odd nonetheless.

2008-02-25T19:12:00.000-08:00

I'm generally not a jumpy, easily scared person....but I manage to startle myself on a fairly regular basis.
I think the problem is that my mind is always on, always turned up to 11 . So I tend to be forgetful or absentminded. I go to the supermarket to buy toilette paper and I get distracted because the cilantro is particularly fresh today and then I build a whole menu around cilantro and I make 3 trips back and forth across the supermarket because I forgot garlic and then I remember that I don't have any chicken stock...then I am out in the parking lot going "oh shit, I need toilet paper"
So the other day I left the house and did my usual back and forth in the supermarket (oh and making lists doesn't help because I just forget that I have a list) and when I come home right as I walk in the door a madman cackles at me and I jump about a foot in the air.
I had left the TV on. It was Miracle Max from the Princess Bride.
Damn you Billy Crystal!

A few weeks ago I had to go to the DMV to register a car.
I was running late and I couldn't find the damned title (I couldn't remember the "safe" place I had hidden it) so I kind of ransacked my apartment looking for it.
I go to the DMV, I go to work, and 14 hours later I come home to find?
I have been robbed!
Motherfucker!
Oh wait...no... I was looking for my title this morning...

About a month ago I jump into the Miata and I toss my book on the floor of the car. I get the MP3 player going , I turn the heat on, I glance up into the mirror and there is AndrewVachss looming in the mirror.
I jump. What the hell is Andrew Vachss doing in my back seat?!
In the next instant I realize that in fact it's just a reflection of the back of the book on the windshield that happens to show up right below the mirror.
This is, of course, ridiculous.
Andrew Vachss would not ride in the back seat!
He would sit up front with me.
We can talk about dogs and Burke and I can mention that even though the Prof supposedly talks only in rhyme I have noticed that many times his "rhymes" don't fit the classic masculine/feminine version of rhymes and I think that most readers are not aware of the different types of rhyme and may in fact think the prof actually doesn't always speak in rhyme...
(masculine rhyme: at the end of the sentence: Spain, main, rain)
(feminine rhyme: on the penultimate syllable: stinky,pinky)
um, anyway.
Also? The Miata has no back seat. Clearly he is not going to sit on the parcel shelf.
But I jumped out of my shorts for a fraction of a second thinking Vachss was in the back seat.

The art of the backhanded compliment

2008-02-24T01:58:00.000-08:00

I don't normally ask for reader responses ...mostly because I don't get many responses.
Lets be frank, I know there are people reading, but I only know one actual person who reads this...
Anyway.

Have you ever gotten a backhanded compliment?
I'm thinking something along the lines of:
" you don't sweat much for a fat girl"

Recently when somebody found out I was in my late thirties they said "Wow, I had you figured for hard 20's"

You see what happened there? They thought I was somebody that was 24 but looked 29. They thought I was a hard livin' rough around the edges 24 year old.
Uh....Thanks?
but really I'm a 38 that looks 29...it's a compliment...but not...
what do you make of that, how are you supposed to feel?
Has this ever happened to you?

Craigslist Mumbai India

2008-02-22T22:21:00.000-08:00

Just now, out of boredom, I went to Craigslist Mumbai.
I found a listing for a car called the Tata Indica.
There is no picture..but I googled it ...it's just a little 4 door hatch back econobox...but that's just about perfect.
How awesome would that be as a first car for a young guy headed off to college?
In case it hasn't occurred to you yet:
Tata= slang word for tit ( which is a slang word for boob) (which is a slang word for chi-chi ) (which...well you get the point)
Indica= weed

So would you say the perfect college guy car would be a cheap hatchback named the Boobie Greenbud, the Titty Sticky-icky, or maybe the Chi-chis Mota?

2008-02-22T21:40:00.000-08:00

When did Cosmopolitan turn into a dirty rag?
I can't say that I have ever really "read " the thing...I've glanced at it in the past but it's been a long time I guess.
I was at the supermarket and I happened to glance over and the title of one of the articles was:

YOUR VA-JAY-JAY

That's pretty messed up right there.
Then below that:

NEW AND INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT YOUR LOVELY LADY AREA

Come on now.
I don't mean to sound like a prude but I really don't think that is appropriate for the supermarket.
Turbo is a 12 year old boy and that is exactly the kind of stuff that he finds hilarious. I really don't want to have that added to his vocabulary.
I know for a fact he would make every attempt to make "va-jay-jay" the punchline of numerous jokes.
Plus I have a problem with the very premise of the article.
New and interesting facts?
Oh really?
Did they re-invent the vagina since the last time I saw one in person?
Admittedly it has been a bit of a dry spell lately....not a million years mind you ...hey, how long do you think it would take for the vagina to evolve anyway?
Ok, that's not the point.
The point is, I'm pretty damn sure there are no new and interesting facts about that part of the body.
Most doctors/researchers are men. So if I had to rank areas of the body that I think have been pretty thoroughly investigated the vagina would have to be pretty high on the list.
And really? If there was groundbreaking news about the vagina? Would it really be in Cosmo under the title of YOUR VA-JAY-JAY?
No.
Oh, hell no.

You know what? I'm going to have to call bullshit on this one.

the thing about having a dead phone...

2008-02-22T08:48:00.000-08:00

I haven't had a functioning phone for about 2 weeks now.
I feel like I'm on a desert island with no way to communicate with the outside world. It's lonely and scary let me tell you.
The only way I have to communicate with anyone is email. Which is kind of like throwing a message in a bottle and waiting to hear back from someone...only a little more accurate....so maybe it's like throwing the bottle directly at them, but still.
Oh...and instant messaging....and I can send text messages from my laptop...but that's IT!
& I suppose there's always webcams..but nobody I know is on webcams....
So, complete isolation from friends and family...

I'm not an early adopter...but I'm close

2008-02-19T21:15:00.000-08:00

My cell phone died. Not like the time I accidentally dropped it into a glass of beer (which is actually a lot worse for a phone than you would think) But my phone started dropping calls and then it started doing this thing where it turns itself off for no reason and then it started flashing...and not in the good way.
So I went to the Sprint store and they professionally confirmed my amature diagnosis: my Phone is Phucked.
So my gay-girly cell phone is being replaced with the newest latest version of my phone which coincidentally matches my new laptop. They are both wrapped in a glossy black case. Now I look like ' that guy'. The guy who has a matching cell phone-laptop combo. Like I planned that?
Whatever, at least I don't have a girl phone anymore. You have to understand, I have never seen a man carrying the same phone as me. I have met several women....actually, girls, that said "hey we have the same phone!"
Great.

The thing is, this is my 3rd new phone in a year.
3 phones ago I was one of those people who didn't know shit about phones and didn't care. Now I say things like "oh you have the A900...have they fixed the software expansion issues?"
I am not quite a phone geek but I know my shit a little more now.
Ok, so the point of the first replacement phone was that I wanted a phone that played mp3s.
So I got that. Loved that phone.
Then it broke.
They don't sell that phone anymore.
I got the girly phone (it's white...it has removable face plates...green, pink, blue?)
Then it broke.
They don't sell that phone anymore.
Now I am getting a new phone.
It's shiny and black.
Cool.
But really? Why the hell have I gone through 3 phones in a year?
And? Why have they stopped selling 2 of the phones I have gotten in a year?
Am I the only one who sees something wrong with this picture?
The funny thing is it makes me look like an early adopter, switching phones every 4 months or so...

Not earth shattering...Simple yet deep

2008-02-19T21:02:00.000-08:00

This just occurred to me...
The United States has at least one person from every nation on earth living within it's boundaries.
Think about it...we must have at least one person from every country here....can any other country claim that?
I'm not sure what all it means but it's an interesting thought...

2008-02-19T20:25:00.000-08:00

I have a hard time relaxing, but the other day I managed to do it for an hour or so.
I went to Whole Foods (one of my happy places) to have lunch. I have not had much luck lately having lunch there but this time was different.
I had garlic mashed potatoes and chicken cacciatore.
To drink I had 2 shots of espresso, iced with hazelnut syrup. This is a drink that does not allow one to hide bad coffee.
My sister recently wrote a mini-manifesto in defence of Starbucks. Her thesis was that you can go to Starbucks and be assured that no matter where in the world you are you will get a decent cup. I concur...with a caveat.
If you can find a good local haunt that will do you right? Go there instead.
Whole Foods serves up a good cup of espresso. I have a hard earned opinion on these matters. For a few years in college I was a baristo in Portland OR.
You think Seattle knows coffee? PDX thinks Seattle is a punk.
I know my espresso.
So, I drank my coffee, ate my chicken and just .....was.
I think part of this letting go was possible because I did not have my cell phone on me.
More about that next post.

I think I am going to be a Fox analyst

2008-02-19T10:37:00.000-08:00

I watch the news in the morning. Actually the news is almost always on but in the morning that's the Only thing I watch.
I happened to land on Fox Noise and they were discussing the fact that Hillary is going to try to:
1) woo delegates that Obama has legitimately won.
2) try to have the delegates in Florida counted even though they were off the table from the start because Florida moved the date of it's primary up at the objection of the DNC.

I am very torn by this because, while I have sorely missed the kick ass and take names style of politics that the Clinton Machine is so good at, I hate to see it used against another Dem. Especially Barack Obama, who I happen to have called as the Golden Boy of the New Democratic party back when he gave that speech at the last Democratic National Convention. Yes I called it. I told anyone who would listen that he was going to be the next big thing.
I hate to sound like I'm blowing my own horn but as someone with SO many opinions it's nice to finally be definitively right.
Anyway.
This "expert" is on Fox and the first thing he says about this whole delegate thievery thing is:
"Politics ain't bean bags and unfortunately for Obama, Hillary's bag is filled with jumping beans"

Wait, what?
First, it's a mixed metaphor.
Second, it makes no fucking sense.
Third isn't "jumping beans " racist?
If anybodies "bean bag" could be said to be filled with "jumping beans" it would have to be Obama's for that metaphor to make any sense. As in: Obama needs to be concerned about his beans "jumping" into Hillary's bean bag.
But I go back to the fact that the metaphor makes no goddamn sense!
The delegates are jumping beans inside of a bean bag? What?

I think I will send Fox Noise a tape of that guy and then a tape of me explaining how stupid that is and then ask them to hire me the next time they need a talking head because I am pretty sure several Americans had their head explode today when they heard that and Fox probably doesn't want to be accountable for that kind of collateral damage.

I got done with a good deed!

2008-02-15T19:19:00.000-08:00

I left my wallet at home which wouldn't have been all that big of a deal if it weren't for the fact that the Saab is running on fumes.
I had a very bad feeling that I wouldn't make it home so I dug around in my back pack and managed to find $1.30.
Brilliant.
So I stopped at a gas station and walked in and said, "I know this is pathetic, but I left my wallet at home and I'm running on fumes ...so, $1.30 on five please."
The guy looked me up and down, saw a clean-cut white guy in a Ralph Lauren shirt and tie and figure I was a good risk for a microloan.
So he told me he was going to pump an extra $5 and I could just bring the $5 back tomorrow.
Nice.
I went to the store (after going home to get the wallet, duh)
and there they were...girl scouts.
I don't buy the cookies.
Ever.
I feel guilty about it, not helping out those sweet little girls and all....but I really don't need to be eating a box of cookies.
I never order desert, I rarely buy sweets...sometimes I will go nuts and get some sorbet at the store...
I was thinking about it and I decided, if I were to get rich somehow, I would buy Girl scout cookies every time I was asked. Then I decided I would also give change to every person that asked me.
Then I thought about having all those boxes of cookies....I don't need all those cookies. I mean sure, if I'm that rich I will have a personal trainer...
Then I had another idea.
I will give the cookies to the guys asking for change! Which would you rather have, .87 or a box of Thin Mints?
That's a no-brain-er.

So, my philantrophy master plan is really coming together...I've got that going for me.

Hack Blogger Alert!!

2008-02-13T20:08:00.000-08:00

I don't normally go to blogs written by talking heads such as Bill O'Reily or Tucker Carlson. For the most part they are boring and not very well written.
I happened to tune into the last 5 minutes of Greta Van Susteren on Fox Noise. She was plugging her blog and going on about what a wacky unexpected adventure it is to go there and how you can "expect the unexpected."
I know you are going to be shocked when I say this....But I was a little skeptical.

So I went to her blog.
Oh wow.
I underestimated how badly these things can go.
First, do not go there. If you go there you will blame me for your IQ dropping a few points. I bear no responsibility.
Ok I think I will begin with the punctuation. It appears as if Fox gets it's exclamation points and question marks in bulk at Costco and then tells their employees to use them as freely as they see fit.
So you get treated to sentences like this!!! Would that get on your nerves?? I know the 5 minutes I SPENT there were unpleasant for me!! Oh, I forgot to mention, SHE also utilizes random all caps for no clear REASON!!!
I know I use my own sort of stylized syntax and manner of formatting my blog so technically I can't really talk about others choices because my blog is written in a non-standard fashion as well.
I try to write things in my own voice ....and then I go back and delete %60 of the F-Bombs.
But this woman just flat out sucks. If you didn't know better you would think this is the blog of a 14 year old girl with an interest in news. Don't believe me?
Read this.
Seriously? These are the musings of a national newscaster?
The articles or essays...most of the actual writing comes from the AP or other sources so I decided to dig around to find some writing by Greta herself....I won't put you through the whole piece...but here's an excerpt. She's talking about McGovern V. Nixon back in 1972. Her point ( I think) was that Mcgoverns running mate gave a speech at her college and whipped the crowd into a frenzy.Tell me what you think:

The result? Yes….President Nixon clobbered Senator McGovern in the general election
Why? positioning yourself as an extremes can be great for primaries…it is appealing to “the base” who you need to nominate you…but when push comes to shove, when the general election happens, the moderates have a great voice. If the Democrats want to win, they have to keep their eyes on the moderates no matter who their candidate it….likewise, the Republicans need to keep their eyes on the moderates.

WTF? Typos, tortured syntax, fuzzy/faulty logic...

If nothing else, this makes me feel better about my little blog. I think for the most part you know what the hell I'm talking about and sometimes I may say it in a stylish, funny way.

I will sacrifice the flow of the conversation for a funny joke.

2008-02-10T16:24:00.000-08:00

I was talking to my friend Cindy the other day.
She works for the unemployment department. She was talking about one of her co-workers and she said he works primarily with migrant farm workers.
I said "but not fragrant mineworkers?"

yes it did slow down the conversation...but man I crack myself up sometimes...

2008-02-09T22:54:00.000-08:00

I like the Internet but it is has some strange and terrible corners.
I came across tonight a video of an autopsy. And not this HBO-sanitized autopsy BS it was a training video.
I wasn't looking for it...but ....
OK, I started out on BoingBoing. There I came across a youtube video called La Pequeña Prohibida. The very fact that the video was there is odd because it's not usually the kind of thing they post, but anyway.

If you don't want to follow the link I'll just tell you it's a transvestite midget dancing to bad electronic music.

What I find personally interesting and odd is that I don't find this video all that interesting or odd. It's a cross dressing midget dancing around.

So what?
Am I weird for not finding that weird?
Anyway. From the readers comments I followed a link to a video of two Arabic guys who are either amputees or were born with no legs (Or a combination of the 2 I suppose) and these guys were dancing around to Arabic sounding music.
The cool thing about this video is that the 2 little guys are jumping and cartwheeling around the stage and the looks on their faces are like "oh yeah, I am that good".

And from there I got the link to the autopsy.

How did I run aground like this??
really... you can watch an actual woman...tan-lines and all...be given a Y incision...
WTF?
I mean, the tag said it was an autopsy, but nothing can really prepare you for seeing that kind of thing.

This is why I am resisting getting Turbo a laptop. That's what he wanted for Christmas. You can get one for less than $500.... but how do you balance being a good parent that wants to give a kid enough leeway to grow and become the best version of themselves with keeping them from seeing stuff that you think will be harmful to them?

Internet filters? Blogger please! I guarantee he could figure out how to disable or get around any filter faster than I could install it. The funny thing is I am more worried about him finding the really horrible shit by accident versus him looking for weird stuff.
He is a 12 year old boy. At some point he is going to try (and succeed) to look at some boobies.
I accept that, but I just don't want the women that have those boobies to also be wearing a diaper or a horsey-tail butt plug. (although maybe that's what will prepare him for high school...perhaps I'm being old fashioned)
I don't have the answer to this problem other than direct parental supervision. Which is kind of hard to do if he's taking a lap top to school, no?

So....Turbo?
No laptop for you!

Kirby

2008-02-06T22:13:00.000-08:00

Talking about Vacuums And Dragons got me thinking about a prank I played on a guy I worked with.
The guy was a bit of a moron.

We were in training together, studying for our series 6 and 63 licenses. (This was when I worked for Chase.) That means we were stuck in a room together for about 6 weeks.

He is going on and on about how he wants a Kirby vacuum because this guy came out to the house and this thing is like a regular vacuum on steroids ...
(regular readers? You see what I did there? With the "on steroids" thing?)
He figures out he can buy a Kirby on eBay for about 1/2 the price. The thing about the Kirby vacuums is you can't just pick up the bags from Target, you have to get them from Kirby.

Ok. Game on.
I call him and put on my best Bill Lumbergh voice.
(Office space? Anybody?)

Me: Ummm yeah, may I speak to Jason?
Jason: This is Jason.
M: Hi Jason, I am Mr. Danson from the Kirby company. It has come to our attention that you recently purchased a Blackmarket Kirby vacuum?
J: Well, I wouldn't call it blackmarket...
M:Umm yeah, did you purchase the vacuum from an authorized Kirby distributor?
J: no...but I mean, if somebody doesn't want their vacuum anymore it's their right to sell it...
M: first it's inconceivable that someone wouldn't want their Kirby anymore...it's more likely that someone has come upon hard times and finds themselves in the position of needing to sell a valued asset. And you were there to take advantage of that.
J: hang on! I didn't take advantage of anyone!
M: ummm yeah, calm down sir. It's not really the concern of the Kirby Corporation if you purchased a vacuum valued at $1,800 for only $900. We are simply calling about the simple process of registering your Kirby.
J: registering ?....wait, how do you know how much I paid for the vacuum?
M: ummm, you mean the Kirby vacuum?
J: yeah, how do you know how much I paid?
(Ok clearly he wasn't totally dumb)
M: Yeah, we have very sophisticated tracking software that pulls data from the Internet regarding all Kirby sales, whether blackmarket or legitimate. I wouldn't expect a layman to understand sophisticated computer technology.

Hang on. I need to mention here. Jason, before he worked for Chase, sold Dell computers. He took orders over the phone. When he found out that myself and another former car salesman were getting the maximum starting salary and he was getting significantly less, he was offended. That offense was deepened when the other former salesman told him that selling cars was "hard sales" and selling a Dell to someone who called in to buy a Dell was "order taking". He tried to say that there was up-selling involved. To which I replied up selling and closing are 2 totally different things. Then he tried to make himself feel better by pointing out he knows more about computers than me. I replied I know more about selling than him.

J:I understand computer technology just fine!
M: umm, sir? You are getting unnecessarily upset here.
The Kirby Corporation no longer brings suit against blackmarket profiteers who take advantage of legitimate Kirby owners. I am simply calling to give you the opportunity to register your Kirby.
(I think he decided to ignore that last bit just to get me off the phone)
J: You said something about that earlier. Why do I need to register?
M: simply put registration allows you to purchase Kirby replacement bags through legitimate channels instead of buying your bags on the black market.
J: how much is it?
M:If you purchase it today ...gimme a sec here...(I tap on a noisy calculator I have handy)
ummm yeah, without taxes...$799.00.
J:Wha..wha...
(I can see him across the lobby gasping like a fish)
J: that's ridiculous!
M: I know! It's absurd how cheap it is to actually own a Kirby when you consider what a fine product it is!
J: I'm not paying that!
M: Umm yeah, I don't feel comfortable letting you make that kind of big decision in your current state of mind. Please consult with you spouse or domestic partner and I will call you in exactly 24 hours. (click)

Post script: First. Yes I did write out some notes of things I wanted to say to mess with the kid beforehand. I had a feeling I would be able to keep him on the line a while. I wish I could claim that was all ad-libbed.
Second. I had intended that if I could get off the line with him still believing the hoax I would call him the next day. Unfortunately the second he was off the phone the rest of our team flat out lost it. They were holding their stomachs and wiping tears.

That was one of my favorite pranks I have to say.

Yet another Self diagnosis

2008-02-06T21:35:00.000-08:00

A few years ago I diagnosed myself as having an inflection disorder.
I sometimes will say something like " I like your shirt " and the person I am saying this to will get offended and say archly "thanks pal" assuming I was being sarcastic. But I wasn't! I meant it. Part of the problem is that sometimes my sense of humor can be so dry that people don't know when I'm kidding or not.
Then back in July I diagnosed myself as suffering from ennui. (That has since metastasized into mild depression.)
Just recently I realized that I have a rare form of dyslexia. I read proficiently and profusely. I'm fine on the reading part...
I suffer from Signlexia.
I don't know if it is technically recognized by the AMA.
Sometimes I will read a storefront sign and the letters transpose and the sign doesn't make any damn sense to me.
For example there used to be a store I passed frequently in Portland it proclaimed in large letters:
WE PAY TOP DOLLAR FOR USED ELVIS!!
I found myself wondering if I have a used Elvis laying about because I sure could use top dollar...and then I realize the sign is offering to buy used LEVIS....
There is a store near the video store I go to that is called "
Budget Farmer.
Hmm...do they have cheap carrots I wonder?
Oh wait, Budget Framer. They frame your pictures for a reasonable price. Gotcha.
This happens to me with alarming frequency. Am I the only one suffering from this I wonder...could I be the first recorded case?
Incidentally, next door to the Budget Farmer? The liquor store proudly calls themselves:
YOUR
MICROBREW
HEAD
QUARTERS
I find it troubling. What are "head, quarters"?
And in more sign related news, there is a store right by my new office:
VACUUMS AND DRAGONS
Excuse me? Turns out it was a vacuum sales and service center. It seems that people just don't buy $1,200 vacuums so much anymore or get the ones they have serviced. By my math you can buy a decent vacuum at Target for $120...and you can figure that vacuum will last about 10 years...so a $1,200 vacuum represents a 100 year supply of vacuuming?
So they had to expand the business.
And what would be the natural companion business for a vacuum store? I hate to sound sexist but I would imagine that the demographic for a $1,200 vacuum would be a middle class or higher stay at home moms? So, lets have some kind of mom related side business...maybe some kind of scrap-booking store?
Wrong!.
The perfect companion business?
Dragons!
Apparently they have all kinds of medieval crap.
Little pewter statues and swords and shit. I haven't been in because I know I'll get a case of the giggles. But I asked around and word on the street is my hunch was right.

So if you're ever in the Springs come on down to the Budget Farmer, they're right around the corner from Vacuums And Dragons.....
Now if only we could get a store that will buy all these used Elvis I have laying about.....

carbon silicon

2008-02-05T22:48:00.000-08:00

The Clash is one of my all time favorite bands.
Lets be frank, I am an alternative music junkie.
So when I recently heard a promo on NPR that they were going to interview Mick Jones and
Tony James for their new band Carbon/Silicon...my ears pricked up.
Mick Jones was The Heart of The Clash. Tony James was the bassist of Generation X.
What, you don't know Generation X? They were a "punk" band from the UK circa 1976...I never really felt like they were authentic, their music always kind of sounded forced and generic to me.They had one line of lyric that always struck me, "never sell out like they
did, they diii-iid"....
this belief was later confirmed when the lead singer Billy Idol went on to become, well....
Billy Idol.
And Tony James helped form the band Sigue Sigue Sputnik, which gave us the wonderful single "love missile f1-11"
You don't remember that one?!
Lucky you.
That boy sold the fuck out.
But what about Mick Jones?
Oh, well... after the glorious triumphs of The Clash?
He formed Big Audio Dynamite. B.A.D.
god help us all.
The Horses Are On The Track?
BOTH those boys sold out.
It makes you wonder. Sometimes an artist hits it once and then... that's it they should just hang it up.
But then again....Nirvana gave birth to Foo Fighters...so nothing is absolute...
But Carbon/Silicon is not bad. The music kind of sounds like if the guy from the Clash hooked up with the guy from Generation X and formed a band.
It's a sweet story when you consider they were best friends when they were teens and both of their first bands was together with the unfortunate name of London SS...which has Nazi connotations for most people but they meant it to mean "London Social Security"
The point is, our idols all fall, nobody stays cool forever...unless they die...

I'm Learnding!

2008-02-01T19:14:00.000-08:00

I stole the title of this post from Ralph Wiggum, possibly my favorite Simpsons side character.
I have been so proud of myself lately.
I managed to diagnose and fix a problem my car was having without so much as consulting the Internet for help. Yeah!
Then a couple of days ago I installed an external hard-drive. When I bought this computer I remember thinking "80 gigs? Wow I can't possibly fill up an 80 gig hard-drive!"
Then the music downloading started, then I started ripping copies of nearly every CD I could get my hands on from the library, friends, etc...and BAM! I have 1% free space.
So before Christmas I bought a 250 gig hard drive on sale...I bought it Christmas eve so it was super cheap.
Now those of you with access to a calendar might have noticed that there is more than a month between the purchase of said hard-drive and installation.
I tried installing it. It didn't work. I called the tech line. The very helpful man in India asked me all kinds of interesting questions that got exponentially more indechiperable until I was reduced to answering questions he hadn't asked.
Tech guy:"Is it a 32 bit or 64 bit?"
Me: "umm...it's facing west?"
He finally deduced that there was something wrong with Windows Installer and cheerfully informed me that he couldn't help me with Windows software. Frankly he seemed pretty freakin' happy about the fact that he couldn't help me at all.
He asked if I had any other questions.
I said, "Yes, how is the weather in India today"
"I'm afraid I'm not allowed tell you that"
"is it hot? I bet it's hot."
"Sorry sir, I am not allowed to tell you that. Is there anything else I can help you with.?"
"Nope, I just wanted to get this hard-drive installed and find out what the weather in India is like and since you can't help me with either I guess we are all done here."
So there it sat mocking me for more than a month.
Then after I fixed my car I decided I was a capable adult and I sat down and did a little research and I fixed the Windows Installer thing myself.
I Rule!
Then tonight I installed tracking software on my blog. (thanks Sara Kay whoever you are!)
So now I can track how many times a day my one reader checks my blog. Hi Christina!
Give it up for my sistah, big up, chigga what, what! (the roof has now been raised)
The thing is, doing those 2 computer related things myself in one week...I felt like one of those hackers you see in the movies.
Ok maybe not, but here's the thing, my computer skills normally rate just above one of those people who has to have their kid log onto their email for them.
Of course I still can't figure out how to put a Youtube link in the middle of a post or how to make an archive of my favorite posts off to the right there ->
but still...

I'm on a roll. I have to go now. I'm going to take apart a microwave or something.

Good News Bad news

2008-01-30T01:52:00.000-08:00

So the bad news is Heath Ledger is dead.
I think he was a pretty decent actor and in terms of him as a person he seemed like less of a douche-bag than your average celebrity.
The good news?
It seems HBO has devoted one of it's channels entirely to Brokeback Mountain.
Hey great!
I have not actually seen the whole movie. However, since HBO has devoted one of it's channels to the movie entirely I have caught random 10-15 minute segments.
I will be honest, I can't force myself to sit down and watch the thing in it's entirety for 3 reasons.
1) I can't tell what the fuck Heath is saying most of the time.
I have read numerous reviews of the film and never once did anybody mention that he sounds like Boomhauer from King Of The Hill.
2) Every time I watch the thing at some point a wrasslin' match busts out. I am just too scared that the wrasslin' is going to lead to sodomy. I am a straight guy, not homophobic, just straight ...and as such I try to scrupulously avoid seeing men have sex with each other.
Hey...It's not like I'm a prude.
I'll be honest, if I was walking down the street and I turned the corner and there were an ugly man and woman doing it?
I'd stop and watch for a minute.
But if it was 2 dudes? I would not stop.
3) the parts of it I have seen seem terribly depressing somehow. I just haven't seen any part of the film where anybody is having any fun...

So, It's too bad that Heath is gone....but do they have to devote an entire channel to making the majority of men in America uncomfortable?
Maybe I should send them an email pointing out he was also in A Knights Tale? I actually kind of liked that movie, it was sort of fun the way they extensively used anachronistic plot devices...plus you could understand what he was saying...

But, all Brokeback, all the time?
I wish they could quit that.

A few words I am Happy with and One I am not

2008-01-30T00:55:00.000-08:00

Ok first, I have one word that I am so proud of.
Ginormous.
You made it into Websters? Good job!
Now 2 others that I am quite pleased with?....
Crack
&
steroids

I love these 2 words because they have added 2 new descriptive modifiers to the English language.
Think about it, you can say
"oh The New Thing? It's like The Old Thing On Crack."
Or,
"It's like a ____ on steroids"

You see what I'm getting at?
What did we say to make sure you knew how extreme this new thing is compared to the old thing before we had crack or steroids?
"oh man it's awesome, it's rad...it's extreme."

Hang on "extreme" I have a bone to pick with you.
You have been showing up in places you have no business being.
Without going into a strict dictionary definition the word means "of the greatest severity or drastic".
So now we have "extreme sports" is there any fire involved? Does anybody die, ever? Are the participants at least naked?
Ok, so not strictly extreme.
What about the TV show, "Extreme Home Makeover"
Um, yeah, I've watched the show a little bit and there is never a hot-lava moat around the house, never a second floor made entirely of glass so you can look down into the living room or up into the bedrooms. You never even see a stripper poll or a "grotto"
Not extreme.
But the most egregious offenders?
Food products.
Did you know you can buy "Extreme Jello"
Really?
Jello is hospital food. How extreme could a food product be if it can be liquefied by squishing through your teeth?
You know what extreme Jello is? Jello with ground glass. Or gravel.

NO, I have it!

New extreme Jello! Pick your flavor:
Cranberry- Crack
Strawberry-Steroid
Or super-new and improved!

Viagra-Very-Berry!

2008-01-26T19:03:00.000-08:00

My sister recently wrote this and I can confirm emphatically that they did try to scare the Jesus into us.
She forgot to mention they also made her scared of Mormons...
(rest assured, she's not scared of them anymore.
I recently confirmed this by yelling "look out! Mit Romney is right behind you!" and she didn't even blink.)
Then today I saw a guy in a Chevy Cavalier (which for those of you that don't know? It's the Ford Pinto of our time.) It had a graphic on the rear window that said "will you be left behind?"
It was accompanied by a stupid ginormous wing and a non-functioning hood scoop.
I thought, "Um, no I am in a Turbo Saab, you will not leave me behind"
But then it occurred to me it was meant in the "Left Behind" sense.
Wow. One day she writes it, and then a guy in a Cavalier lives it.
weird.

I bought the Saab

2008-01-26T17:37:00.000-08:00

I got the Saab and my "friends" told me it was slightly less gay than a Miata.
Oh how wrong they are.
The Saab is a chick magnet.
You read that right.
I was driving the car today with the top down. I looked up in the rear view mirror and this woman behind me waves at me. Hello.
I wave back ...um..hello?
She motions pull over. I'm thinking the back of my car is on fire or something. I did just buy the thing...it may have a problem with flames coming out of the trunk that I am not aware of yet.
So I pull over. The woman pulls into the parking lot next to me. I roll down the passenger window. She says, "Hey how are you?" almost like she knows me....but I'm pretty sure I have never seen this woman before.
"do I know you"?
"Look at you with the top down, isn't it kinda cold?"
"No, I have heated seats and the heat is going....but....do I know you?"
"what are you up to tonight?"
At this point I realize
1) she's drunk.
2) I have never seen this woman in my life.
"so are you married"?
"Why yes...yes I am! Look I have my wedding ring tattooed on and everything!"
I show my lamentably tattooed on wedding ring.
"Oh cool. So what are you up to?"
I point to the pizza from Whole Foods sitting on the seat next to me, "just bringing home a pizza...to the Family!"
"oh, cool .......man I'm almost out of gas, 'wanna give me like 2 bucks for gas?"
"no. I am strictly plastic." I make a credit card swiping motion.
"oh...well you could follow me over there (she points to a nearby gas station) and pump a couple of bucks for me"
At this point I figure why not have a little fun here,
"Did you wave me over to try to pick me up or to get gas money?"
"What! Naw I'm just kiddin'...have a good night"

I didn't actually peel out...but I have to admit I exceeded the speed limit all the way home.

For the first time in ....about 3,650 days? (that's 10 years) I am finally glad I have this stupid wedding ring tattooed on my finger.
Also? My friend Cindy pointed out that the car may not actually be a "chick" magnet...but rather a "hick" magnet...

Chuck Norris is Hilarious

2008-01-24T18:16:00.000-08:00

I have to admit I never watched Walker Texas Ranger because I always assumed it was a stupid drama for people with low standards of credulity.
Oh how wrong I was.
It is actually an hilarious comedy. Brilliantly funny stuff people.
I happened to catch a few minutes of Walker right before a commercial break.
It seems that Walker was on some kind of undercover operation. He was working amongst some men that appeared to be migrant workers of some sort. Chuck was wearing an absurd black wig. I don't know if this is a standard feature of the show or if it was because he was"undercover". Either way the wig was super funny looking.
So this one migrant guy goes to get some water and the slave driver redneck type boss yells at the guy for getting water twice in one day.
This is where the funny starts to happen.
Walker steps up for the guy, and the fight is on!
(I think one of the migrant guys in the background might have even yelled "It's ON!" in Spanish)
So this really funny fight sequence breaks out....at one point Walker is holding a guy by the scruff of his neck and punching the guy in the stomach. It was priceless the way the guy kept hopping up in the air every time Walker "punched " him. i have seen a lot of fights and I have never seen anyone get held by the scruff of the neck.
Anyway, the next part is where it gets really funny. One of the rednecks grabs a rope and lassos Walker and then somehow they tie the rope to a truck really quickly and start dragging Walker around...and then cut to commercial.
Wow! That was one of the funniest things I have ever seen.
I couldn't wait for them to come back from commercial so I pulled up Youtube where I found a clip of Walker fighting a bear.
Koala?
no.
Panda?
No, Grizzly!
Ya' heard!?
So this bear spends a lot of time chewing on Walkers sleeve and going "RAWR!"
Then Walker wins the fight through a clever combination of "stink eye" and "stare down"...maybe a little "gas-face" thrown in.
That was pretty funny too....but here's how I would have written it.
Instead of a bear? It would have been one of those Killer Whales that beaches itself to grab a sea lion off the shore...and right as the Killer Whale comes up on the sand Walker steps up and round house kicks the whale in the face.

How cool would that be?

I have to stop eating out for lunch

2008-01-21T10:48:00.000-08:00

The other day I went out to lunch at a local Italian place. Normally I would grab lunch and go back to work so that if a customer shows up I'm ready to work. This day I needed to get away for at least an hour.
I sat down in a completely empty restaurant. I literally was the only person in a restaurant that has 20 or 30 tables.
A guy comes in and gets a couple of slices of pizza and sits at the table right next to mine.
What the hell?
Then if that's not bad enough he starts eating his pizza wrong. It's big floppy New York style slices. The proper method is to fold it in half, but nooo. This clown starts cutting his slices into tiny little bites. So I have to listen to him slice, slicing away at his food instead of just being able to ignore the fact that he sat at the table right next to mine.

Yesterday I went to have lunch at Whole Foods. I went out on the patio with my lunch and sat at a table off to the side to enjoy myself.
A group of people comes and pulls 3 tables together right next to me.
Great.
Then they proceed to have a discussion about how hard it is to be a Christian in this town.
What? In Colorado Springs? Try living in a place like Portland or Austin.
They were going back and forth talking about how they feel like sometimes people they work with are watching them; looking for them to make a mistake.
I'm sorry but if you publicly profess to have a value set that most people are familiar with don't be shocked if people are expecting you to honor that.
If someone tells me they are a devout Jew and then I see them one day eating a ham sandwich and showing off their new tattoo I have a problem with that.
Not that I have a problem with ham sandwiches or tattoos. I do have a problem with the disconnect between what you profess to believe and what you do.
Boo-hoo, people are expecting me to act like a good Christian just because I profess to be one.
Then if that wasn't bad enough, once they ran out of whine, they didn't seem to have much to say to each other. I was really trying not to listen in but with them pushing their tables together I actually was sitting closer to some of the people at the table than they were to each other.
I got to hear juicy tid-bits like this
"What kind of cake is that?"
"Oh it's actually corn bread."
"wow that's a big piece of corn bread."
"Yeah, and you want to hear the crazy part? It's the smallest piece they had!"

Thank God I was there to memorialize and write about that stimulating exchange, no?

I got Fired!

2008-01-19T10:43:00.000-08:00

It was fun. I've never had so much fun getting fired.
I walked in and Harry told me they were going to pull the trigger.
Whatever.
There are probably 30 other dealers in town and I got job offers at every one I applied at before and I didn't have references then, I do now.

So if you know they are going to sack you why not have fun with it?
I was at my desk getting some papers together to make sure they paid me all my money when they paged me to the conference room.
I made them wait.
When I told Dennis I was leaving he said, "In a way I'm sorry to hear that." I said "Thanks, I almost liked working with you too."
He clarified that he was sorry to see it devolve into such a bitter, useless type of conflict....I won't go into the details but it was sweet in a Nordic, dry kind of way. (his last name is Skovgaard..he was an airline pilot...very clinical, not very expressive)
Steve paged me three times. (you can look down out of the conference room and see my desk)He waited 30 minutes before walking down to my desk and asking me to come up.
I said, "in a minute buddy" and went out to my car to look for something.
I finally decided I was ready to go talk to them ....so I went to the coffee bar and got a latte.
I went upstairs & sign, sign, signed.
Regina the office manager was there, she had to come in on her day off. Steve was on the other side of the room about to go in his office.
I said, "Regina, I'm sorry you had to come in on your day off. Hey Steve? ...Thanks for coming in on your day off."
I went downstairs and said goodbye to my friend J.T. and wished him luck (his girlfriend is pregnant....they are both 21...they go to New Life church, her mom works for Focus On The Family...not an easy situation) Sitting across from him was Adam.
I said, "Adam..." he acknowledged me in a 'good day to you too' nod. "you're a fucking tool and I never liked you." and I walked away.
(I got a text message"You really made Wells mad!" Good, that was the point. If it was me? I would have been out of my seat and in his face before he got 2 feet away.
Look, the guy is taller than me by 4 inches and outweighs me by 30 pounds. If you let a shrimp like me talk to you like that? You're a punk . So, I stand by my original statement the guy is a fucking tool.)
I shook a few hands said my goodbyes and left.
It was kinda fun. The most fun I ever had getting fired anyway.