What my wife likes to do in her spare time.

OK, as you all know, I've pimped other websites and products here and there, mostly either for fun or some sort of freebie giveaway (I never did get an assbrella, those bastards). I don't get many offers for that kind of thing, probably because I tell them upfront that I'll likely make fun of them, and that doesn't sit well with some of the blog advertising outfits.

Not this time. This time, to do so would cost me dearly.

So with all seriousness, I ask you to please check out my wife's website. No, it's not P0rn, unless you happen to be into the whole holding-down-animals-and shaving-them-bare-and-then-making-yarn-out-of-the-shavings kind of thing.

Dammit. I knew I couldn't be completely serious. I am definitely not getting laid tonight.

My eyes followed my mind into the gutter.

I think my new glasses are adversely affecting my ability to see without them. Yesterday, I was eating lunch standing at the kitchen counter and thumbing through a mail order catalog (the way I probably eat 85% of my lunches when I'm at home) and I saw a shirt in the Signals catalog and immediately thought, "Wow, you'd have to have no doubts at all about your status as a whore to wear that one."


Somehow my less than stellar vision worked with my twisted brain and translated that to "I HEART JUNK."

I guess I really *do* need reading glasses. My version of the shirt is more interesting though.

Planet Witless.

I joined this gym recently because it was too cheap to pass up. It's called Planet Fitness, and it's about 6 minutes from my office. For ten bucks a month, I figured that even if I got over there three times a month it would be worth it. Yort joined too, although a bit more grudgingly than I did. Still, we've managed to do OK and get over there at least once a week so far. It's harder than it sounds because we are only in the office three days a week since we work remotely the other two days.

The first time I was there, when I got back to the office I realized I left my combination lock hanging open on the locker because I'm an idiot. The next time we went, I asked the counter girl if she had any locks in the Lost & Found and she pulled out three. She looked at me and said, "I'm not sure how you'll know which one is yours." I looked up to see if she was kidding, but she wasn't, so I said, "Um, I'll open it." She allowed that this was a good way to figure out which one was mine, and the second one I tried opened.

My combination is a pretty easy one, and I will tell it to you now since it's integral to this story. It's 1-3-17. There. Now you can steal all my shit while I'm working out. Take my blackberry, will you? I have pager duty this week.

So today, Yort and I headed to the gym around 12:30. We supposedly get an hour for lunch, but on most days we end up taking a ten minute break and eating at our desks, so we figure on the days we actually make it out of the building we can stretch it a bit. Normally we can work out, grab a shower and be back at the office in about 60 minutes.

The locker room is kind of cramped, and there are only a handful of long lockers. Most of them are more like cubbyholes with doors. The long lockers are popular, and the majority of the time when you open them, they are full of people's stuff. I guess those people are either more trusting than I am, or don't have anything worth stealing. After checking three, I get lucky and find an empty one near the corner. I change into my gym clothes, lock up all my stuff and get through a pretty good workout. After we're done, I decide I'm going to grab a quick shower. Yort didn't break a sweat because he is apparently more efficient than I am, so he just gets dressed and goes outside to wait.

I stuff my gym clothes in my bag, and because I'm not one of those free-dangle dudes who just walks around stark naked, I wrap my towel around me. I lock up my stuff and head for the shower. The thing about the towel is, the gym doesn't provide them so you have to bring your own. Last time, I brought a bath towel from home, but my wife buys these giant fluffy white things that you need a suitcase to carry around, and it didn't fit well in my small duffel. This time, I rooted around in the bottom of the closet and opted for a blue towel I found in the back that is closer in size to a large-ish hand towel. It barely covers my ass, in other words, and when I wrap it around me, it looks sorta like a mini skirt with a slit in it. It's very sexy.

After my shower, I dry off and wrap my towel back around my waist and go to my locker. Only problem is, the frigging lock won't open. I try it ten times. 1-3-17. Did I go past the three? Let me try again. 1-3-17. Wait, am I supposed to go past it twice? I forget. Or is it 3-1-17? No, I can't be that brain damaged. I just opened this fucking thing 5 minutes ago. I can feel it, and it wants to open. On the last number it drops down, but then won't disengage.

I look around to make sure I've got the right locker. I do. I open the lockers to either side, and they are both full of stuff. I wonder for a second if I've picked up someone else's lock that was sitting on the bench. Unlikely, but you never know. The place is crowded. I try it a few more times. I curse MasterLock and their shitty quality control.

Finally, after I'm standing there like an idiot in my terry cloth miniskirt for about ten minutes screwing with this lock, this nice old guy next to me says, "Do you want me to try?" I tell him the combination, feeling like a freshman on the first day of school, except it's more like one of those dreams where you show up for class and realize you're naked. He tries it and fails too. So now there's about three naked guys giving me suggestions. One guy who is just about dressed to leave says, "I'm on my way out -- you want me to tell the guy at the front desk? I don't think you want to go out there like that." I agree that it's probably not the best idea. So he leaves, and help is imminent.

Ten minutes later, I'm still standing there and there's exactly nobody from the front desk showing up. I'm getting tired of holding my towel closed with one hand, so I sit down on the bench. The towel is really short, so I sit with my legs pressed together like a grade school girl, trying to make sure my junk doesn't fall out. Another guy gets ready to leave, and as he passes me, I ask him to tell the front desk to send someone in.

This time it works, and they send in a kid with bolt cutters. I stand up. He comes over to the locker and says, "You the guy who needs the lock cut off?" I affirm that this is so, and he asks me for the combination. I tell him, and he tries it. "If it opens, I'll have to kill you," I say. Lucky for him, it didn't.

At this point, there doesn't seem to be any other recourse. Yort has been outside waiting by the car for at least twenty minutes, I'm late for work, and I have no dignity left. "You're sure you want me to cut the lock off?" the kid asks. "Yeah," I reply. "It won't be the first six bucks I've wasted."

He hits it with the bolt cutters, and it falls open, and I can finally get dressed and get to work.

Or I could have, if the locker hadn't been full of someone else's shit.

He looks at my confused expression, then says, "Isn't that your stuff?" "Oh man," I say, feeling my face turn beet red. He just stares at me for a few seconds, and though I've never believed in telepathy until today, I clearly hear his thoughts. You are a fucking idiot, he thinks loudly. Oh yes, definitely, I think back, then look around.

My locker is on the exact opposite corner of the locker room. I slowly realize that the shower area has two entrances, and I walked into one, and after my shower, I walked out of the other. The identical lockers are on all four walls, and somehow I got turned around. Yes, I managed to get lost in a 15' x 15' room. I had simply walked out of the shower, and made a beeline for the first locked locker in the corner that I saw.

I get dressed, then I pay the counter guy six bucks to replace the lock of the poor unknown bastard who now needs to memorize a new combination.

As I am leaving, some guy says, "Hey, make sure you get into the right car!"

I think I'm going to work out at home from now on.

Five years of this? Holy crap.

Hey! So I turned five, and I totally missed it. January 14th, 2005. That's when I started this blog. Out the original "work" crew, only me, Sarah and Shamus are still at it. It seems like so long ago, yet at the same time it seems like no time at all. Blogging was pretty new to us back then, and more people were into them, I think.

Five years is an eternity in the computer industry. Since I am jaded and old, and bought my first computer back in the late 80's (an Atari 1040ST), I view blogging as Rock and Roll, and consider Facebook and Twitter as the social networking equivalent of Disco and Rap. I'm not sure I really like them, and at various times I wish they'd go away, but they probably won't. The father of a friend of mine made an astute observation at dinner a while back -- as everyone at the table was checking their Blackberries and iPhones, he said, "You know, social networking isn't very social since everyone is always looking down at their phones." He has a point, I think. I always find myself wondering what's next after twitter and facebook fade. What do I know? Maybe they won't. Does anyone remember Friendster? Yeah, me neither. That being said, I have to admit that the 140 character limit in Twitter can be a fun challenge.

What does that have to do with anything? Nothing. Just a rant. In fact, I started this blog as a place to rant about stuff that drove me nuts, and over the years I've done my share. But somewhere along the line, it became more than that. It became a place for me to share a bit of my life with kindred strangers. It became a place for me to collect the stories of my childhood, and talk about some of the things that make me laugh on a daily basis. And sometimes, it allowed me to spill my guts and sort through some fairly complex feelings about what was happening in my life.

I really just wanted to take a few minutes to thank all of the people who read my blog from the beginning, and all the people who stumbled on it for various reasons and decided to stick around. I appreciate the comments, and I love reading them. I enjoy laughing at your own stories and memories, and it makes me realize that so many of us could have been great friends if we grew up together, or if the years and geography had fallen differently.

In five years of writing this thing, I've received very few obnoxious comments. I'm sure that's just a result of my writing not being very controversial, but even so, it restores my faith in humanity just a tiny bit.

So thanks, everyone. Here's to five more years of this hot mess. Four and a half years ago, I figured I wouldn't have anything else to write about. I guess I was wrong. I'm going to have to start making shit up soon, though, because I think I'm running out of childhood.

On the outside, anyway.

Jays of Summer.

Through a haze of sleep, I heard the door bell ring, then ring again almost immediately. I heard it ring a third time, and even in my sleepy state I could tell there was an urgency about it.

My mother yelled "Come in, it's open!" because that's what you did in suburbia in the 70's. You just left your front door unlocked, and when someone stood on your doorstep and rang your doorbell or knocked on your door, you just yelled for them to come in. It didn't matter if it was the kid next door, the mailman or some dude wearing a hockey mask and holding a chainsaw. You yelled for them to come in, and if they were uncomfortable with that, (and some people were), it was too bad for them.

In this particular case, it wasn't a guy with a mask and a chainsaw -- it was just Markie. I could hear his voice drifting up from the foyer to my room. "Hi, Missus Virgil," he said. "Can Johnny and Snitch come over?"

She told him we were still sleeping, but that she'd send us over once we got out of bed and ate breakfast. I looked at my clock, and it was only 8:30 in the morning. It wasn't like Markie to make it across the street from his house until after 10 am at the earliest, especially during summer vacation, so I figured something must be up. I threw on some clothes and walked down the hallway toward the kitchen, stopping at The Snitch's bedroom on the way.

I opened his door and he woke up instantly. We didn't have locks on our doors, and he was ever-vigilant against me trying to sneak in there and put his hand in a cup of warm water to make him piss the bed. "Get up. Markie was just here and he wants us to come over."

After breakfast, we asked my mother if we could go across the street, but before she could answer, the doorbell rang again, and there was Markie.

He had his face pressed up to the storm door screen, and was shading his eyes in order to see in. He saw us looking back at him, so he yelled in. "Hey you guys! Come on out! I wanna show you something."

My mother gave us the nod, and we were out the door. "Be home for dinner!" she yelled after us. "And don't spoil your appetite by eating junk!" She was always worried about our appetites, and how they might be spoiled, even though the reason we pushed our dinners around on our plates was not because we were full of Ring Dings. We pushed it around because it was fried liver, or because it was dried-up pork chops and Spanish rice that even the dog wouldn't eat. On those days, we were lucky to have had the Ring Dings, believe me.

Markie jumped on his Schwinn Orange Krate bike, and we ran to the garage to get our inferior specimens.

"Where we goin'?" I yelled to Markie, who was already riding across the lawn, a habit which my father absolutely hated. "Follow me!" he yelled back, heading down the street toward The Path.

"The Path" was a narrow, hard-packed dirt track that ran between two houses and into the woods and field beyond. It was used by every kid in the neighborhood; sometimes on foot, sometimes on pedal bikes and sometimes on motorcycles, or as we called them, dirt-bikes. It was a pretty busy path, and during the summer we'd scope it out quick before using it to avoid running into any of the big kids. If things looked busy, we'd forgo the bikes and just walk through the woods directly behind Markie's house and then cut over. Even doing that, there were certain risks involved, but at least you wouldn't get your bike taken from you. Not this time though. He was in a hurry, and we weren't sure why.

We hit the path, pedaling hard behind Markie. His bike wasn't made for trail riding, shock absorbers notwithstanding, so we managed to catch up. Ours weren't really either, but at least our front and back tires were the same size.

He cut to the right in order to stay on the hard pack and avoid the soft, sandy part of the trail that ran out into the middle of the field. Before the pricker bushes and sand wasps took it over, the sandy part used to be a home-made baseball diamond, but now it was mostly a circular dirt-bike track. Nobody was using it right then, so we continued on without incident, moving right to a joining path that led around the outside perimeter of the field. We passed the trail to the pit, and about half-way to the Big Hill, Markie stopped his bike in a cloud of dust. We stopped behind him and dropped our bikes beside the path.

He walked into the woods a little ways and then pointed up. "Check it out!" he said, pointing to a thick pine bough about 10 or 12 feet off the ground. We followed his pointing finger with our eyes, and saw a large nest sitting out on the end of the thick branch.

"It's just a nest," I said. "Big deal."

"Yeah," Markie said, "but this one has eggs in it."

That changed things. That made it cool; irresistible, even.

"How do you know?" I asked. "You see the birds?"

"No," Markie replied. "I climbed up and looked."

The tree wasn't what we'd consider a great climber. There was only a single branch reachable from the ground, and it was a dead one. We learned early on it wasn't a good idea to rely on a dead branch unless it was at least as fat around as your arm and not rotten. Luckily, this one looked fairly sturdy, and I used it to get into the tree, climbed a bit farther, then swung a leg up so that I ended up sitting on the branch with the nest out on its end. The nest was a long way out, and there was nothing to hang onto but the branch itself.

"Shinny out," Markie said helpfully. "That's what I did."

I was pretty sure I could get out, but not too sure I could get back. I didn't want to look like a chicken though, so I wrapped my thighs around the branch, hunched forward, and started inching my way out. Other than getting the crotch of my pants caught on a small broken-off branch, I made it out to within viewing distance of the nest unscathed. It was tucked behind a spray of pine needles, and I reached out to move them aside. It was a pretty big nest.

"Eggs still there?" Snitch asked.

"Yeah," I replied. "There's six. Kinda tan with spots."

"Told ya," Markie gloated.

"I wanna see," Snitch said. "Come down."

I began working my way back from the nest, and when moving backward it seemed like the branch had somehow become three times longer. My pants snagged on the broken twig again, only this time it wasn't as easy to get myself unstuck. The branch was angled forward, which made it relatively easy to get past on the way out, but on the way back it was like the barb on a fishhook. Finally, I was able to lift myself up a little to get past it, but for a while there I thought I was going to have to chance dropping from the branch, which was just high enough so that I had second thoughts about doing it. After what seemed like an hour moving an inch at a time, all the while listening to commentary from Markie and Snitch about how best to accomplish the task, I made it back to the main trunk and let myself hang from the broken branch and drop to the ground.

The Snitch repeated my actions, right down to getting his pants snagged on the same broken twig. He checked out the eggs and then made his way back, and dropped to the ground.

"I'll bet we can hatch'em," Markie said excitedly. "See what kind of bird comes out. My sister told me if you put them in shoebox with a lightbulb, they'll hatch."

"No they won't," I said. "They'll just die and then start to rot. Remember the duck eggs?" My father had found some abandoned duck eggs on our lawn once, and decided to try to hatch them. When they hadn't hatched, he told me to get rid of them. Instead of throwing themout, I had wrapped them in a plastic baggie and buried them in a wooden cigar box. I had visions of egging a house with the rottenest of rotten eggs when Halloween rolled around in four months. Unfortunately, when I dug them up, I discovered that they had exploded in the bag and most of the rotten egg had leaked out. Even so, they were still juicy enough so that the stench was indescribable.

They both remembered that fiasco. "So whatta we do with'em then?" Markie asked.

"Nothin'," I replied. "They won't hatch if we mess with them. But I'll bet we can come back every coupla days and look. Maybe we can see when the babies come out."

So that's what we did, except instead of every couple of days, it was more like every single day, and sometimes twice a day. After a period of a week or so, we discovered that it was a blue jay nest. Every time we'd pull up on our bikes, the blue jay would fly to a nearby tree and yell at us. We also had made a pact that none of us would go to the nest without the other two, and we'd take turns being the first to look. I'm not really sure why we made this pact, or which one of us came up with the idea. It just seemed like a good idea at the time. A shared secret, I guess. After a short while, we became experts at the particular moves needed to get out to the nest, take a quick look, then get back down.

Finally the thing we were waiting for happened. It was Snitch's turn to look first, and when he got up to the nest, he flipped out. "THEY'RE HATCHIN!" he screamed. "I can see four out, and one more with his head stickin' out of a hole in the shell! The last one is still just a egg."

"Come down, it's my turn!" Markie said, and Snitch edged backward toward the tree. The mother blue jay was in the tree next to us, screaming loudly.

After we all had all taken a turn, we rode our bikes back to the Markie's house. We were beside ourselves with excitement. None of us had ever seen birds hatch before, unless you could count a field trip to a farm, but those eggs weren't sitting in a nest. They were in a big chicken wire box under glass, and when we saw them there wasn't much going on but a bunch of unhatched eggs and a bunch of fuzzy chicks running around.

The next day, it was my turn to go first, and when I climbed out on the branch, I could see that now there were only 4 chicks. One chick and the unhatched egg were nowhere to be seen.

"The last egg is gone," I said to Markie and Snitch, who were standing below me. "And one of the birds. But the other four are still here."

We checked on them every day for probably a a week and a half, and watched them change before our eyes. They went from unrecognizable lumps of mush to prehistoric looking monsters. Eventually we could hear them cheeping from the ground when we rode up. When we climbed the tree to look, they'd all have their mouths open, expecting to be fed. This nest had become the highlight of our summer so far. When we weren't riding our bikes over there to look, we were talking about riding our bikes over there to look.

One Friday afternoon, Markie came over and gave us some bad news.

"I gotta go to camp for a week," he informed us. "You guys have to promise me you won't go to the nest until I get back."

We thought this was not in the spirit of our agreement, but eventually we caved and reluctantly agreed -- mostly because Markie seemed desperate. I think part of him didn't want to miss out on anything, but another part of him was more concerned that we might see something he didn't and hold it over his head, like when we saw the hawk swoop down and grab the chipmunk, or when we saw the snake shedding its skin. I think he was tired of listening to us say, "You shoulda been there, it was sooooo cool!" every time we got talking about it. I think another one of those situations would probably have killed him, so we agreed to stay away until he got back.

As it turned out, his parents invited us to go as well, so it didn't really matter. We had a great week of water-skiing, swimming and fishing, and the nest temporarily slipped to the back of our minds. As an added bonus, I got to see my first real boob, but that's a story for another time.

When we got home, of course, the first thing we did was plan to meet up the next day and visit the nest to see what was up.

The next morning was hot and humid, and there was no breeze at all. We decided it was too hot to ride bikes, so we walked to the nest. At 10 am, it was already shaping up to be one of those energy-sapping days where the last thing you wanted to do was anything. Just moving around made you hot and sticky, and the bugs were everywhere. In the field, our footfalls on the powdery sand raised little dust clouds that just hung in the air, then dissipated slowly as we passed. The cicadas buzzed in the trees, and we could hear the distant sounds of traffic on central avenue, and the hum of faraway lawnmowers.

We didn't talk much. There was a hush in the woods, almost as if every living thing had decided that today was a day to kick back, endure the heat, and wait for it to cool off before doing anything that involved expending energy. Even the baby birds, normally raucous upon our arrival, seemed subdued. If it hadn't been for the mother blue jay scolding us from her normal perch a few trees away, we might have thought the nest empty.

It was Markie's turn to go up first, and even though it was hot and buggy, he couldn't wait to start climbing. He jumped up and grabbed the dead branch, pulling himself up into the tree, eventually lowering himself into a sitting position on what we had begun to refer to as the "nest branch."

As he worked his way out toward the end of the branch, we noticed that the commotion was becoming louder. A second blue jay had decided to join in the scolding, and we figured it was the father bird. By this time Markie was almost to the nest. When he got into final position, he reached out and moved the spray of pine needles from his view. Four baby birds looked directly at him.

Then they all jumped out.

He freaked and almost fell out of the tree. The Snitch and I stood there with our mouths hanging open while baby birds ran around us in circles. The Snitch moved first. "We have to put them back! We have to put them back!" Snitch screamed, and desperately began trying to catch the baby birds. The mother and father had been joined by a pack of about a half-dozen other blue jays, and now they were all screaming at us. We were catching baby birds and tucking them into the front of our T-shirts, then climbing up and handing them to Markie, who was laying out flat on the branch. Every time he'd put one back, another one would jump out. The nest had turned into a clown car, and the blue jays were getting increasingly agitated. The babies were jumping out faster as we could pick them up, and we were beginning to panic. Cries of "Get that one!" and "Another one just jumped out!" and "There's one by your bike!" echoed through the woods.

After 5 minutes of watching us try to bail this sinking boat, the ever-increasing crowd of blue jays decided they had seen enough.

One of them dove at Markie, pecking him on the top of the head. He lost his mind and either jumped or fell out of the tree, landing hard, but was apparently unhurt. I base this solely on the speed at which he regained his feet. He probably could have suffered a broken ankle and I doubt if he'd have noticed, since he was more than a little busy. The rest of the blue jays had joined the attack, and it was like watching an Alfred Hitchcock movie come to life. I'm not sure why, but they had Markie in their sights, maybe because he was the one who had been out on the nest branch. He was running in circles and screaming, "GET'EM OFF! GET'EM OFF!" while slapping wildly at his head, which was surrounded by a flapping, pecking, whirling dervish of pissed off blue jays.

The Snitch and I were still trying to pick up baby birds, but now we had nobody to hand them to. Markie finally decided to run in a straight line, and all I could see was him running full-speed across the field, a giant cloud of dust under his feet, and a half-dozen screaming, diving birds over his head. He was still ducking and waving his hands around, but at least he was leading the majority of them away from us. I just stood there and watched him run until one of the remaining birds dove at my head, and then I started running too. I'm not sure when the Snitch decided he wanted to stop picking up baby birds and run for his own life, but he eventually did the same. We tore ass through the woods and back to Markie's garage. Somewhere around the half-way mark, the birds gave up the fight, but we didn't slow down until we were inside.

We took inventory, and other than a few scratches from running through branches, and some small holes in Markie's head, we were relatively unscathed. When we noticed Markie's head was bleeding a little, we had to tell his mom. As she dabbed his lacerations with peroxide, she asked us what happened, and we told her our version of the truth -- We were just walking by the nest and the birds attacked us.

"Were you bothering them?" she asked, knowing full well that we were. "I hope you didn't touch them. Birds carry diseases, you know." She paused. "And if you handle the chicks the parents will smell you on them and won't feed them anymore," she added, to solidify our guilt.

We didn't tell her that currently their odor was probably indistinguishable from that of three sweaty kids, and as for the diseases part, no, we surely didn't know. As we sat there digesting the fact that we were all probably going to die of some heretofore unknown bird disease, we agreed it would be best not to go back to the nest for a few days. We had handled the crap out of the baby birds, and we were hoping against hope that even so, they would live.

When we finally went back, the nest was empty, and there was no sign of the blue jays at all.

"Think they got eaten by something?" Snitch asked, voicing the fear that we all had but didn't want to talk about. "You heard Markie's mom. Since we touched them, the mother bird won't feed them. Something prob'ly ate them."

"I don't know," I answered. "They looked pretty big. Like they were almost ready to fly. And I asked dad and he said it wasn't true about the mother bird smelling you on them and not feeding them."

"Yeah, I think they lived, too." Markie said with confidence, ignoring the fact that I basically just told Snitch that our father had called his mother a liar. "I bet anything they just flew away."

I thought about it for a few seconds, then said, "Yeah, you're probably right." The Snitch looked relieved.

It's amazing how easily kids can convince themselves of something, isn't it? In that moment, we knew, for real and for true, that those baby blue jays had just up and flown away. Sometimes I think the ability to conjure that level of belief would be a handy skill to have as an adult.

I dreamed about being attacked by blue jays for years. Even today, when I hear a bunch of them lambasting a squirrel or hawk for getting too close to a nest, I can't help but look up at them and think back to that hot, dusty, endless summer day when three little kids got their butts handed to them by a flock of those same fearless birds.

It always makes me smile.

Doctor in the house?

Did you ever notice how quick Google is to judge? I typed "Is there a" intending to finish that sentence with "fixpack for Lotus Notes 8.5.1," but before I could, Google jumped to its normal obvious conclusions about what I was looking for:



So it appears that Google thinks I am:

1. Questioning my faith in god (and, more importantly, santa claus)

2. Rightfully so, because Google also assumes I have a veritable smorgasbord of diseases that no self-respecting god or fat jolly saint who existed would possibly allow, and

3. I am also interested in listening to songs about ghosts while enjoying immediate celestial events.

So Google let me down, and I had to resort to texting a friend of mine who is in Orlando this week for the big geekfest at Disney. The fixpack comes out on Friday, if you're interested.

I realize I haven't been around much lately, but I hope to remedy that shortly. I've been busy doing "stuff" that doesn't involve writing, which makes me realize that I need to figure out a way to give up sleep completely in order to be able to do everything I want to do. I'm in the process of writing a longish childhood tale for your amusement, but it's not done yet. In the meantime, please enjoy this picture of a sign I saw in our mortgage broker's office this afternoon:

Words to live by, my friends.

Emerson, Lake and Board Games.

IM conversations with Yort always take a left turn out of the gate...

Me: Hey, I just found out that Keith Emerson and Greg Lake are playing down in Westchester. Want to go?

Yort: What are they playing? Football?

Me: No, Monopoly.

Yort: Borrrinng.

Me: No, no -- it's the Star Wars edition of Monopoly. And Emerson dresses up like a Wookie.

Yort: Sweeeet.

No Uggos or Fatties.

I am pretty looped on a couple of very good dirty vodka martinis right now, so no guarantees on this post. I saw this on the BBC the other day. I guess the holidays weren't kind to some of the beautiful people:

It sort of confirms what I always suspected. The Beautiful People are like a pack of wolves. If you show any sign of weakness, they are on you in a quick second, tearing off the tastiest parts and saving the rest for later.

"Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model."

Uh huh.

All I can say is I hope none of these so-called "fatties" finds out where you live, because if they do, your business model will be lying in a pool of blood next to your dead, beaten body. Especially if you don't have six-pack abs and a chiseled jaw. Or maybe especially if you do.

Out of curiosity, I checked out the site. Right on the front page I was immediately hit with a picture of a guy and a girl, and it could go either way as to whether the guy is actually prettier than the girl, and I'm not even gay. He actually looks a little like a girl who needs a bit of a shave. This got me to thinking about what constitutes "beautiful" since they cater to just about every country, and let me tell ya, there are some really ugly countries out there.

I also wondered where age fit in, if at all. Would someone like George Clooney be considered one of the Beautiful People even though he's getting up there? Or are all the BP's under 30? If you got kicked out for putting on a few pounds, would you get kicked out if you posted a picture that showed your crow's feet or your laugh lines? What about someone like Mick Jagger? He's probably had more sex in his lifetime than all the people on that site, yet in the classical sense, he's ugly as sin. I used to look at Mick Jagger and think that if he were a cab driver in New York City, he'd probably die a virgin. It's all relative, I guess. Power, wealth, plastic surgery or talent -- they can all make you appear more attractive. Then again, so can hanging out with people uglier than you are. That's what I do. (Hey, where are you guys going? You can't leave! Wait! Come back! OK, that's it. I'm not paying you to be my friends anymore.)

Speaking of paying, once you have been deemed "Beautiful" by the Others, you apparently have the privilege of paying $25 a month to continue your "membership." The founder said he'd rent out the membership list for things like exclusive club openings and such. But I think this will cause confusion and probably result in a bad rep for the club, because what will happen is this: On opening night Joey from Jersey will go to the club and then the next day he'll tell all his friends about the tons of hot women who were ignoring him there. Then the next weekend they will all go with him and Joey won't understand why the place is a now a sausage factory, and an ugly one at that.

Just for fun, I decided to see if the vaguely middle-eastern version of Johnny Virgil from this post could become a member of beautiful people, since I knew my real picture wouldn't have a shot. Since he appears to be from a foreign country of unknown origin, I randomly decided it should be Turkey, since I figured they had a pretty high tolerance for the ugly given the name of their country. I've never been there, so I have no idea how ugly they may actually be. After I signed up and created my profile, I did a Google search on "Turkish Girls" and the first image that came up was this one* so I obviously have no idea wtf I'm talking about. And now I want to move to Turkey.

Once you submit, there's a period of time where the already accepted Beautiful People can vote on you. After that, you're either a member, or you're Too Ugly To Belong. So far I'm doing pretty good:

Yeah. You can't see it well in the picture, but there's a white indicator line that is slammed so hard to the left side of the bar that it's practically become part of the frame. If that graph were really in 3D, that red X would be poking your eye out right now. And apparently looking like Lionel Ritchie doesn't count for much to the Beautiful People of Turkey. Maybe if I attached a .wav file of me singing "Sail On" it would help. Or maybe not.

Once you're on the site, there's a little window where random comments by existing members go by, accompanied by a thumbnail photo. I clicked on the first one that went by after I noticed it scrolling and it was a guy who looked kinda like an old version of Heath Ledger. He had a shaved head, a fake tan and he was wearing a suit jacket with no shirt underneath. Presumably, he believes he has found the loophole to get into those "jacket required" restaurants, and yet still be able to show off his abs. I think he got confused and he really meant to sign up for ridiculousdouchebags.com.

In another six hours, I'll lose my access, and go back to being just a regular Turkish guy with a stupid blog.

Oh well. I guess I'll never be an emo vampire.

*Kumho? That sounds like the battle-cry of the amazon hooker warriors or something

Balls.

I am typing this on one of my two favorite Christmas presents. I've been saving for one of these for over a year, and my wife's christmas gift was the difference between what I had and what I needed. So yeah, I'm a Mac now. As least as far as my portability goes. I'm still a PC in most other aspects of my life, like at work and when I have to sit down and pay bills. So far I'm digging it, other than some weirdness with the keyboard layout (Apple thinks DEL is Backspace) and some flakey wireless connectivity I'm still trying to iron out.

Anyway, I love it so far.

Of course the day after Christmas, we were driving around in Wilkes-Barre and the A/C compressor seized up, and the only place open on a late Saturday afternoon the day after Christmas was a Sears Auto Center, so I brought the car over. The guys there were great -- even though they couldn't fix it, we poked around for about an hour and determined exactly what the problem was. I tipped them $20, then snipped a wire that kept the clutch from engaging, and that let us get home.

Yesterday I spent most of the day sitting around waiting for the garage to call me. The definition of "extra money" is "what you have right before shit breaks." I really wish it could have happened last month instead, but if it had, I probably wouldn't have a new computer right now, so I guess it was in the cards.

Current estimate is approximately $800-900 bucks, and unfortunately it's not as easy as saying "It's winter, who needs air conditioning?" and simply forgetting about it until June, because apparently when the bearings in the compressor clutch go south and the car is making a noise like a 55 gallon drum full of marbles being pushed down a cobblestone road, it also tends to get extremely hot. Not only does this spell almost certain death for the fan belt, it also has the unfortunate side effect of making the heater smell like BO and burning hair, which is no good for anyone. At least the quick fix at the Sears store let us drive home without being forced to smell burnt armpit the entire way.

My second coolest present was a set of BuckyBalls. I received them from my good friends who always get me something either funny and useless or cool and useless every year. If you've never seen BuckyBalls, (which I never had until I received them), check out this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JpM4A4657k

Awesome right? So I immediately opened the package and placed the perfect cube on my desk:

After about an hour, I was a master at this. I could do exactly none of the things in that video, and I couldn't even get it back into the little cube it came in. I was going to shoot a video similar to the one above to show off my prowess, but I didn't have time. Instead, I give you the "after" picture:

Once I got done picking the tools out of it, I promptly lost one ball somehow. I have no idea where it is, or what it's currently stuck to, but it seems to have simply disappeared into whatever alternate universe buckyballs come from. Since you can't make the cube without all 216, I decided to write to the company and ask about getting one ball replaced. Here's their reply:

From: Buckyballs [mailto:getbuckyballs@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 30, 2009 10:53 AM
To: johnny virgil
Subject: Re: You've probably been asked this a million times..

Johnny,

We're so happy to hear that you've had such a great time playing with our balls. What a bummer you're missing some... lost balls are no fun. We do have great news for you though, you can click here to purchase a set of 10 replacement balls so you'll never have to worry about missing balls again. In the meantime, enjoy playing with the balls you do have.

Thanks!

Bb

So I officially love this company and you'll all be happy to know that my new balls are on order.

On a completely unrelated topic - it's apparently newsworthy that Rosie O'Donnell has a new "partner." Unfortunately, this has caused her to be in my face more than usual, which is not a pleasant state of affairs for me. But since I notice things, being forced to stare at her horrific visage every time I turn on the TV or open a news site has brought something to mind: Is it just me, or does her smile make her look like she's trying to gnaw a tough piece of gristle off an antelope haunch?

Gah. That's just scary, if you ask me. It could be from too much botox, I'm not sure. What I do know is that I can almost hear her low growl from here.

I hope everyone has a great new year, and had a fantastic NYE. Ours was pretty mild, other than the scalpings. We had dinner with friends, drank a bunch of sake, watched Inglorious Basterds, paused the movie mid-scalp at 11:55, popped a bottle of champagne, watched the ball drop, had a short toast and went back to the movie. Good times.

Pay Etenchen!

This post will be multi-faceted. (I originally mistyped that as mulit-faceted, but that's an entirely different thing.) As you guys know, I have been writing this blog for quite a while, and I've been writing in general since before the internet was even a gleam in Al Gore's eye. I dug around a little and found this incredible story my mother had tucked away from when I was 7 years old (click to make bigger):



If you look closely, you'll see I made a "mestake" with my paragraph spacing, but all in all, a riveting piece of fiction, wouldn't you agree? And it was fiction too, as you can probably tell by the teacher's added note.

I also found this finely wrought winter scene among the stories:



It's clear that at some point in my young life I stumbled on naked blue aliens making metallic snowmen somewhere close to my house, and subsequently repressed that memory.

Obviously, my writing is marginally better than my artwork, so with that in mind, here's a little piece of geek fiction I wrote a long time ago:


“No! This can’t be happening NOW!,” John said, his fingers flying over the keyboard. “I think the whole database is corrupted. Nick’s going to kill us.”

“What about the backups?” Terry asked. “I did a full backup of that server just last night - we should be able to restore from optical.”

“Do you know how long that will take? This stuff was supposed to be done by 4 at the latest,” John replied. “But if we have to do it, we need to.... Damn!”

“Now what?”

“I think we just lost our server connection. Let me try to log off and log back on....Nope. I can’t connect to it. If the SQL box went, we’re toast. Maybe it’s just the NIC in my machine.” John wiped his sweaty hands on his jeans, and hit the power button on the front of the computer.

“Uh, John, I don’t think so. Look around. We lost all the other workstations too,” Terry said, as the room full of computers began popping up dialog boxes.

“Let’s try killing the rest of them before Nick calls in,” John said, as he stood up. “I’ll start in this room - you go down to the vault and bounce the server. Check the RAID controller, and make sure it’s working. If the first drive dropped dead, see if the rest have cut over. It should’ve kicked in automatically, but maybe something’s screwed up. Remember last month when we lost that unix box during the brownout? You know how the power is around this place.”

“Yeah, it stinks,” Terry said, shaking his head. “I keep telling Nick we should have a line conditioner in here, but with all the cutbacks it’s always last on his list.”

“Well, this might change his mind. Load the last set of backup cartridges while you’re down there. That way we can mess with the restore from here.”

“Will do,” Terry replied, heading off in the direction of the vault. He paused at the door. “Maybe you’d better call him.”

“Yeah, I will. Unless you want to do it.”

“No way. Not me. Not tonight,” Terry said as he walked out the door.

John finished shutting all the workstations down, sat down at his desk and picked up the phone. He dialed a number, took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“Hello, Nick? Yeah, it’s me, John. We’ve got a potential problem down here - No, no, nothing too serious yet. We just wanted you to be aware that there was a problem...no, I don’t think it’ll screw up tonight -but we’ll keep you posted. Uh huh. Yeah, I know you can’t - that’s why we went to this system in the first place. No, I don’t think that’s necessary. I -- hello? Hello, Nick? Are you still there?” John put the phone back in its cradle, and rubbed the back of his neck. Great, he thought. The old man was coming down to the control room.

When Terry came back, John was still sitting with his head in his hands. He looked up hopefully.

Terry shook his head. “We’re in serious trouble. The whole thing is history. The main SQL box won’t even power up again. And the clustering was effed up, so even though the backup server is up and running, the data isn’t there. We’ve got a ton of restoring to do. Hey, what’s wrong with you?” Terry asked, seeing the look on John’s face.

“He’s coming down.”

“Now? Tonight? Jesus, he’s gonna be pissed.”

“Tell me about it. We’ll be lucky if we don’t end up on the assembly line in the factory. Hell, we’ll be lucky if he doesn’t fire us outright.” John sat up in his chair and rubbed his temples. “Well,” he said, “let’s load up a restore and see what we can do.”

A minute or two after the restore kicked off, Nick stormed into the control room, slamming the door behind him. “What the hell’s going on here? Don’t you realize how important that data is? I thought this system was supposed to be foolproof.”

“Nick, you gotta understand, it’s about as foolproof as we can make it,” John said. “We need new equipment. This stuff is old, and we’ve been pounding on it for quite a few years.”

“Old? We bought it less than 4 years ago!”

“Yeah, but in the computer industry, 4 years is like – “

“We don’t have the cash, and I’ve told you that before. We never had these problems with the old paper forms system. It was slow, but at least it couldn’t crash. Now what the hell am I going to do?” Nick asked, pacing the room. “ I was counting on that data.”

“We’re restoring it now,” Terry said, avoiding eye contact with his boss. “But we’re not sure how long it’ll take. These optical disks are slow, and there’s a pile of data. The transaction logs are brutal. The database seems like it gets bigger every year.”

“How long?”

“Looking at the percentages, maybe four to six hours if nothing goes wrong.”

“I can’t wait that long. I have to leave in less than two, and I need that data with me.”

John stood up and took a deep breath. It wasn’t often that he was forced to go against his boss’s wishes. “Fire me if you need to sir, but I have to tell you -- it’s just not going to happen. There’s no way we can get the data off these disks in time.”

Terry piped up. “If you let us buy that SAN solution like we --”

John shot Terry a warning glance that shut him up in mid-sentence, then continued. “I think we need to look at other possibilities. Maybe you could do without the raw data this one time. Bring the sat phone with you, keep in touch. Hell, maybe we could even tether the laptop to it. We might be able to send you hourly status reports, shoot the data over as we restore it. It won’t be as easy as having the whole thing with you, but at least it’s something. What do you think?”

Nick thought it over, and his expression softened a bit. “It has been a while, hasn’t it? What the heck, I’ll give it a shot. His expression hardened again, and he glanced back and forth between them. "But I’m warning you, if this thing isn’t fixed by the time I get back, you’ll both be out of a job. And I want a formal disaster recovery plan, and I want it on my desk first thing Monday morning. And schedule a quarterly DR test. Understood?”

Terry and John nodded humbly, and set about their repairs.

Nick walked over to the phone, and dialed the hangar. “Hello? Yeah, it’s Nick. Hook up the team and bring the sleigh around to the front of the computer building. Of course I want Rudolph in front! What are you, an idiot? Right. Yes, I know it’s short notice, but I need the extra time. We’re having some computer problems.”

He hung up the phone and turned to John and Terry. “Well,” he said, grabbing his satellite phone out of his desk drawer, “it looks like we do it the old-fashioned way this year.”


Merry Christmas, everyone. Hope you all have a great holiday season!

+++

Mr. & Mrs. JV tree, 2009.
(featuring my mother's childhood train)

Vomiting pinwheel girl? E-mail me.

That right there is something I never thought I'd type.

I read through the stories again, and while there are many great entries, I'm going to have to say it's the mental image of the vomiting pinwheel girl rolling down the hill and the crazed dog following that actually made me laugh the most.

On the other hand, just the sheer brass balls of the dude who posted about the bus-stealing, riot gear-inducing Chinese drunk fest has wormed its way into my shriveled, black peach pit of a heart. If there hadn't been video proof, I think I would have thought the entire thing was made up. Master Waster, you also get style points for a well-written inner dialogue, although I think we've all had the same conversation with our inner voices on occasion. Usually, my inner voice is way drunker than yours, but still, good story. Also, props to Cory and his naked Cat in the Hat. My memories of Dr. Suess will never be the same.

So here's what I'm going to do -- the martini glasses go to the vomiting pinwheel, and the other entries I mentioned get a mystery prize of my choosing. So shoot me an e-mail with your name and address and I'll get them out in the next week or so. Congratulations, and I'm sorry. That apology is really for the consolation prize winners, because they'll probably end up with something weird and useless.

To everyone else, thanks for playing along. You guys are great!

Damn, people. You're lucky to be alive.

Those are some crazy-assed stories! Regardless of which comment I pick, I will need to see this chinese bus-stealing video. I just want to get that out there right up front.

I'll try to pick my favorite story by the end of this weekend. It's going to be a tough choice, no doubt about it. I may have to pull together a team of professional drinkers to see if I can get some sort of majority rule.

In other news, a buddy of mine dropped off a bunch of old wooden water skis a couple of weeks ago. He just purchased a little camp in the Adirondacks, and he wanted me to make him something out of them. So here's his Christmas present:

I'll be back shortly with the announcement of the winner, and maybe a Christmas story if I can think of one....

Hey, Liver! It's almost Christmas. Buckle up.

It's time for a little holiday cheer, I think. I am using up the last bit of my vacation starting right now and I don't have to go back to the office until Wednesday of next week and that's just fine by me. They are gutting the building and most of the construction is on my floor, so it's almost unbearable anyway. Not to mention that the place is so full of frickin' construction workers that you can't hear yourself think in the cafeteria since all those guys seem to be permanently set on 11. Just today, for instance, I heard a conversation about vagina from about 60 feet away, and that doesn't happen every day.

Usually.

Anyway, to kick off this little vacation, I'm planning on having a nice martini tonight. I love martinis -- even the ones the purists don't consider martinis. I love traditional gin martinis, Americanized vodka martinis, dirty martinis of both types (blue cheese stuffed olives, please) appletinis (when I'm wearing my tight purple t-shirt) and even espresso chocolate martinis.

Basically, if you call it a martini, load up one of those ridiculously unstable glasses with some kind of kickass alcohol, chances are very good that I'll drink it and like it. Of course, the problem with martinis is that they get right on top of you. They will ride you face-first into the dirt before you know what happened, especially if you go light on the food and weigh 150lbs soaking wet like I do. I've found it's generally a good idea to have one or two and then quit for the evening and switch to something else. I can't even imagine a "three martini lunch" -- I would never make it back to my car, let alone my desk.

So in the spirit of responsible drinking, I think I'm going to have a little contest. The prize is a brand-new set of 4 of these guys:




That looks pretty damn festive, am I right? This prize was donated by CSN Stores, a company that sells all sorts of glassware and cookware, both bar-related and not. All I had to do was mention them in a post for some glasses, and I thought they'd make a neat giveaway. So there ya go. I'm a man-whore for you guys. Oh, and martinis. I'm also a man-whore for martinis.

But in all seriousness, I get offers like this all the time, and if the company looks sketchy or the product ridiculous, (assbrella, I'm talking to you) I'll pass. In this case, I spent about 30 minutes on their site looking for a good holiday giveaway, and they have a ton of bar-related stuff. If you are looking for a wine rack, or any other wine-related stuff, it's a great place if you happen to be in the market. We've actually owned this one for years, and it's perfect for a random kitchen corner where nothing else would fit.

So what do you have to do to win these? It's easy. In the comments, you have to tell me the stupidest/funniest thing you ever did while drunk. Or tell me why you quit drinking, since those two things seem to go hand in hand most of the time. The contest will end Friday at 5pm, and the post that makes me laugh the hardest will be deemed the winner. Extra points if you were shaken or stirred.

So go to it. You know you want to. Come on, confess to Johnny. Tell me about your walk of shame, or the time you were arrested wearing nothing but a tiara, I won't judge you. I may or may not have a picture of myself sliding down a steep set of stairs on my stomach, is all I'm saying. I was bruised for a week after that one.

Want some advice? Don't love the ocean too much. It doesn't love you back.

And with that line, Mega-Shark vs Giant Octopus really got rolling.

The best part of the movie had to be the story. No wait, it was the special effects. Or maybe it was the acting...sorry, I don't know where in this crap factory I should start the tour.

After some deliberation, I've decided that there is just no way I can review this movie. It's too horrible and yet unintentionally laugh-out-loud funny. I simply cannot do it justice.

I fully intended to give you an actual serious review. I did. I swear. I even sat through the entire thing and took notes. That's how dedicated I was to this idea. Instead, I present you with my notes. You can make your own judgement.

It starts with stock footage. The stock mountains. The stock glaciers. The stock under-sea life.

A fake ice slide occurs, to show us that fake ice slides are always occuring:

A nefarious government helicopter drops a low frequency active sonar device. LFAS. The helicopter pilot inexplicably yells "Holy crap!" and then flies straight into an ice wall and explodes.

A fake mini-sub is watching a pod of whales lose their shit because of this LFAS. In this sub are Debbie Gibson and some fat guy who has no business in a mini sub:

The whales are crashing into the ice walls, confused by the sonar.

Suddenly you see:

A drawing of Mega Shark and Giant Octopus! Behind a wavy piece of bathroom privacy glass!

Debbie makes her combo scared/disbelief face:

Someone shoots a bb-gun at the glass (what it looked like) or it got hit by a whale (what actually happened) and they're free:

....and they drift down to the ocean floor, somehow still alive and not frozen to death.

Cut to an oil rig, where there is a mystifying conversation about peeing on a co-worker and something about how Japanese custom frowns upon that. Then, this happens:

Now we're back in Cali, on the beach with the fat guy and Debbie. There's a beached whale with giant chunks taken out of it. I'd like to interject here that Debbie looks like a washed up stripper:

Also, there are some of these:

Then she steals a giant prehistoric shark toof out of the blubber:

Next we go back to Tokyo where a guy who looks like substitute Sulu is interrogating one of the oil platform guys.

Then we're flying somewhere on a fake jet:

Just so you know, this face:

is what happens just before this:

Then Debbie gets fired for trashing the sub and goes to see Sean Connery. Well, not really. It's just some old Sean-lite Irish guy who is an "ex-navy paleontologist guru," and they play with colored water in test tubes and computers with pretty graphics and then he tells her that what she has is a giant prehistoric shark toof.

So then SubSulu flies in to Cali and meets up with Sean-lite and Debbie and they put two and two together, and discover that he has a giant octopus to match their giant shark.

"The polar ice caps are melting because of our thoughtlessness." Debbie says, staring wistfully out to sea. "Maybe this is our comeuppance."

Then they climb into their car with the Obama Change bumper sticker and drive away.

And then we're in a battleship, with the crazy captain who looks like the love child of Hunter S. Thompson and Dr. Cox from Scrubs:

He's tracking the Megashark, but then suddenly it's swimming right at them at 500 knots, and it's not leaving a wake:

That's some awesome special effects right there. As is this:

Of course, Coxhunter's orders from Washington are to destroy the Megashark, which he does. Just kidding. He only thinks he does, and then the shark eats the battleship and his acting career is over.

Then Subsulu, Debbie and Sean-lite get abducted by Government agent Lorenzo Lamas, who can't admit he is no longer Renegade and so still has a pony tail and a coating of grease:

They aren't really prisoners, he just needs their help - and taking people at gunpoint is obviously the best way to get help from people who actually want to help.

At this point, things got dicey, and I stopped taking screen shots and just started jotting down random thoughts as the movie unfolded. Favorite quotes, observations, questions. Oh yes, I have questions.

"They don't rest. They just kill."

Debbie Gibson, Super Scientist. She's making octopus and shark pheromones to lure them together to capture them, but her experiments fail, I think because mixing test tubes full of water tinted with food coloring really doesn't make pheromones.

I thought for sure Subsulu was gay. Then he and Debbie did it in the storage room. My gaydar must be off.

Yay! Good pheromones. You know how I can tell? Because it's no longer food coloring in water, it's the stuff out of a green glow-stik.

Oh, I see. They are trying to draw them in with "breadcrumb trail" of pheromone droppings.

"What, may I ask, is your trap exactly?" "Oh you can ask."

Oh, Lorenzo. It's been too long. Only Bill Shatner rivals you in the overacting department. Or maybe Coxhunter.

And then a fighter plane is slapped out of the air by a tentacle.

"We're going into their world now.. Their pond..."

Cartoon experimental mini-sub again.

Hey, it's a 500 knot shark. (faster than a jet, she says.)

To make the sub go faster, you just have to lean forward in your seat really hard and look serious. Who knew?

Oh shit. It just ate the golden gate bridge. As far as I can tell, its entire diet consists of planes, battleships and bridges. That can't be good for your digestion.

The octopus is still in Tokyo. "Our military has only succeeded in angering it. My god. What have we done?"

OK. The navy wants to nuke them and not capture them, but you knew that.

"I suggest we get some rest and reconvene. Nothing can be accomplished in this state of exhaustion." Yeah, let's take a break while all this shit continues to go down.

Oh no! Dream sequence! Kissing SubSulu! Seeing stuff that only we saw from our omniscient standpoint!

Debbie's breakthrough! Get them to kill each other! Just say no to nukes!

"They were frozen in battle." Wait, how fast did this ice age happen? It's not like Pompeii for fuck's sake.

"They are natural born enemies. They chose to stay and fight to the end. A hate stronger than their combined survival instinct is our only hope."

So what he's saying is, they basically hung around getting colder and colder, and their fight got slower and slower until it looked like a fight on Walker, Texas Ranger, and then they went into suspended animation somehow.

"Neither has followed a consistent pattern." "Yeah, but somehow it makes sense."

annnd...then he quotes Julius Caesar.

The people actually driving the sub? Perfectly still. The people in the back? Bouncing around like they're in a washing machine.

"I want that commander on report!" "That commander saved your ass!" "He should have done it in a more timely manner!"

Emergency turbos activated? Subs have emergency turbos? I'm seriously expecting someone to yell "the engines canna take any more, Captain!"

"We must remain optimistic," he says, looking like he has to shit really bad.

Nuclear subs are driven by one guy with a joystick. Who knew?

"Captain, I'm picking up a massive underwater disturbance. Two bogies. Hard to say what they're doing."

Oh, apparently, they're fighting. From what I am seeing on my TV, I would have sworn they were fucking. And why does it sound like a little kid splashing around in the sink?

"Who has the upper hand? It's impossible to tell. It's just a massive sound." Of a kid splashing around in a sink.

Ooooh, sharky just bit off a tentacle and got hisself inked. The tentacle is back again. Now it's gone. Now it's back.

Could have sworn the captain of the Japanese sub just said there was a massive disturbance in the vicinity of hairy slut. No wait. It has to be something else. OK, I rewound it three times. They are heading towards hairy slut. Case closed.

Everyone in the sub gets tossed to the floor, all the emergency lights go on, there's smoke, all sorts of beeping...and what does the captain yell? "Something hit us!"

Giant Octopus handled that sub like a loaf of french bread.

I just saw Debbie's "O" face.

It's the fight to the death!

"Looks like they finished what they started 18 million years ago."

Oh no, Subsulu is dead.

Debbie is sad.

No wait! Subsulu is alive.

Debbie is happy.

Epilogue: Beach blanket conversation with Debbie and Subsulu.

They're kissing again. Subsulu is so gay in real life. It's like watching George Takei after he came out.

Suddenly, Sean-lite is there. They are needed by the government to chase other newly thawed giant creatures in the north sea. As a team. How romantic.

Roll credits!

Awesome. Go watch it right now.

I'd watch it again, but I have to watch Frankenfish.

These things just happen.

Which is why my wife rarely asks me to cook dinner when she's not home.

Random stuff.

OK, I saw this Virgin Mobile commercial last night and it freaked me out.



First off, I don't know about you, but if I were planning on having some sort of disgusting crotch-rot conversation with my mom, I probably wouldn't do it in public. Secondly, how does your mom know about your rot to begin with? Did she catch a whiff at brunch last Sunday and ask about it? I'm glad you're airing that thing out, and "the smell means it's healing," because the alternatives are too horrible to contemplate. If you let it get out of hand, it could result in.. oh, I don't know...maybe something like your mouth falling off your face and sitting there on a locker room bench like some kind of masochistic pocket pussy. Maybe something like that.

Jesus, that chomper is going to give me nightmares. Or sex dreams. I'll let you know which way it tips.

Has anyone seen the trailer for this new Disney DVD called "Snow Buddies?" How shitty does this movie look? Not just from a plot standpoint, but from a production standpoint, too. The CGI in the e-trade talking baby commercials is heads and shoulders above this horrible mess.

In every trailer I've seen, the dogs are basically just standing there with their lifeless, shark-like eyes fixed forward, like they are waiting for a doggie treat (since they probably are). Only their mouths are moving. Nothing else on the face moves -- no eyes, no eyebrows, no nothing. The whole effect looks like it's from 1987. Hell, knowing Disney, maybe it is. They probably outsourced the animation to India.

Speaking of lifeless and sharks, I saw this movie in my Netflix Instant queue, and the title alone made me laugh, so I'm going to watch it and write you guys a nice review:



How can I not? It has both Debbie Gibson AND Lorenzo Lamas. The only way this could be any more awesome is if the Shark and Octopus turn out to be David Hasslehoff and Gary Coleman.

Of course just finding a picture of that movie led me to some other "recommendations" like this one:


I absolutely love the look on the black dude's face. He's like, "OK, you guys set me up in a sweet beach house with a hot chick wearing a bikini. What's the catch?"

I'll let you know how these experiments in cinematic splendor turn out.

Other stupid shit I've noticed lately:

Apparently Americans are either too dumb or too lazy to figure out how a roll of tape works, and so now we have to have individual, pre-cut, dispenserized pop-up tape. There's even a video showing you all the things you can do with pop-up tape. Of course, it's all the same stuff you could do without pop-up tape, unless you only had one hand (or maybe had two but one of them was busy with the S&M virgin mobile thing.) Then pop-up tape is probably pretty cool.

Also, am I alone here in hating the Snuggie? Let me clue you in. Here's what the Snuggie is: A crappy polyester robe with no belt, that you wear backwards. That's it. Go to Target, buy a nice XXL fleece robe and wear that backwards. You'll be warmer, and you'll be the only one in your neighborhood with a plaid Snuggie, plus you won't look like a monk who escaped from Renfaire.

Even worse, now they have snuggies for dogs. And if you act now, you can get in on this BOGO deal:



Lastly, it's become obvious to me lately that Vietnam has many problems --foremost among them, their economy. They are suffering from accelerating inflation and a widening trade deficit and a general devaluing of thier currency, which I recently learned is called the Dong. So Vietnam, I have some advice for you. The first step in fixing your economic mess is obvious: Rename that shit. I'm just saying that nobody takes you seriously when you offer to pay for dinner and then whip out a pocketful of Dong.

Tell you what -- If our economy ever recovers, I'll even take you all out for some nice Vietnamese food. Or as you call it, "food." There's probably, what? 10 or 12 of you left over there? I think we probably owe it to each other to have some grub, play some tunes and get shitfaced. What do you think?

Can I get a hog snout with that?

I hate going to the dentist almost more than anything. Maybe not as much as I hate public speaking, but it's a close second. I haven't had a cavity in probably 20 years, but I still hate it, even if it's only for my 6 month cleanings. I go religiously, however, since I know that the longer you put it off, the worse it will ultimately be.

Unfortunately, my regular dentist decided to retire and he sold his practice to some new guy, who I'm not sure I like. Suddenly, I have all these teeth on some sort of "watch list" - which I assume is like the one Homeland Security has for suspected terrorists, except this one's for radical bicuspids and suicide molars instead. The teeth that have made his list all contain 20-year-old fillings that he thinks need to be replaced because of tiny fractures he can see in the enamel. He wants to replace the existing fillings with that composite stuff, which supposedly holds the tooth together instead of wedging it apart, like the old silver fillings do. It sounds logical but I'm not sure I'm buying it.

There are a few reasons for this. First of all, he looks exactly like this guy, whom I've always hated. Has that guy ever not been a dick in any show he's been in? Seriously. He's a dick. Second of all, these are cracks my old dentist never mentioned, which I find a little suspicious. Even if they really are there, he apparently didn't think they were an issue. So I'm trying to decide if this new guy is practicing progressive dentistry and trying to fix small problems before they become big ones, or if he's practicing progressive bullshit because he has a new building to pay for.

I think he suckered me in though. He already knows I hate that place more than anywhere else on earth, but as much as I hate the thought of him drilling old fillings out, I hate the thought of someday breaking a tooth and being faced with a root canal and a crown even more. The bastard has me cold.

There was a new receptionist too. While she was swiping my credit card, I looked down at the counter and noticed a stack of the new guy's business cards sitting there. Up until that moment, I hadn't known his name. Turns out it's Dr. Moreau. I asked the receptionist if he had his own island and if she thought maybe I could get some quick tail work done next time, but she just looked at me like she was going to call the cops so I let it go.

In other news, I went to a fantastic rock show on Saturday night. We drove down to PA to see the reunion of The Badlees. You might remember them from the late 90's when they were signed to Polydor. They had a video on VH1 and a couple of pretty popular songs. (You can check out the videos on that link to jog your memory.) My buddy Pete is/was the lead singer, and they have a new record out, so they're doing a couple of shows to promote it and have a little fun. You can sample the new tunes here at CDBaby. Check it out if you get the chance. (There's a kick ass tune on it called Anodyne that I can't get out of my head.)

As for the show, all the guys were in top form, and the new songs sounded fantastic live. It's been five years since they shared a stage, but it was like they never stopped playing together. Jeff, their old rhythm guitarist, apparently found Jesus and doesn't play the devil music that much anymore -- so Aaron Fink from Breaking Benjamin was playing guitar with them in his place. We saw a lot of old friends and had a great time.

The funniest thing was the Pottsville PA crowd. Holy crap. I don't think any of them have changed in the last twelve years. The same hair, the same clothes, the same Yuenglings. It's like the land that time forgot down there.

It was a blast from the past, that's for sure. I haven't stumbled into a hotel room at four in the morning in a longggggg time. I had almost forgotten what that was like.

I kinda miss it.

Hanna-Barbera got it wrong. Who knew?

It's been an interesting week. I was working from home last Friday and while I was in my office, I heard a crashing noise. I was on the phone and figured one of the cats had knocked something over, so I didn't think much about it.

About a half hour later, Jesse, our Siamese, limped in to the office and sat there on his back legs like a woodchuck. I picked him up and flipped him over and instantly knew what happened. He had jumped up on the top of the blazing wood stove, apparently not knowing that hot=pain.

All the tough outer skin on his paw pads was blistered off and hanging, and underneath was swollen, red, raw skin. Just looking at it made my feet hurt. So I immediately called my boss, logged off and drove him to the vet. She had to clip the blistered skin off of 3 of his feet, apply ointment and bandages, and give him an antibiotic. All to the tune of $250 bucks or thereabouts.

That's not the bad part. The bad part is that we have to change the bandages twice a day for about three weeks, give him antibiotics and keep him secluded from the other two cats because he isn't supposed to scratch around in their litter. Instead, he gets to use this horrible shit made from compressed newspapers that looks exactly like rabbit food pellets (except they're grey) and is about as absorbent as it sounds, which is to say I might as well fill the litterbox with m&m's.

He's been amazingly tolerant of the whole twice-a-day procedure, and his paws are healing up nicely. The pain medication makes him think he's invincible, and he beats the hell out of his feet -presumably, because they don't hurt. The drug also turns him into a crazy wild beast who won't sleep and is determined to chew his own legs off, so we've stopped giving it to him.

The problem we have now is that his paws dry out and crack and start to bleed, so we've been pretty religious about changing out the bandages. We feel horrible that this happened, and it's partially my fault for leaving the kettle off the top of the stove -- but still, he has to take at least part of the blame. The other cats never did that shit, and he's supposed to be the smart one.

I know you're all thinking, "Who cares? We don't want to hear about your cat. Entertain us! That's what we pay you for!"

With that in mind, there is one funny thing that came out of all this. Every time we change his bandages, he does this for the first five minutes:



And I laugh my ass off. Every single time. I'm mean.

Watch this space.

Two things that made me laugh out loud in the last few days -- first, this incredibly well-targeted e-mail that I received because of my "ahead of the curve" blog. (click for larger image):

I only have a few comments about this:

1. Their users are clearly effed in the head.

2. The reviewing editors need to cut down on the weed when they are doing their reviews.

3. I am totally getting a Top Science Blogs banner for this place.

Secondly, today I bought a practice test from a place called Cert FX to study for a Blackberry server exam I have to take before the end of the year. This was an actual question, which I did not change in any way:

I think they are outsourcing their dev to Gungan City.

Sorry. Geek joke.

Doctor my eyes.

Are all eye-doctors a little crazy? Is there something about spending most of your work day in a dark little room with your face three inches from someone you just met 30 seconds ago that eventually makes you turn into some sort of white-coated psychopath who wants to collect skin suits? Or is that creepiness factor the main reason you became an eye doctor to begin with? I'm just curious because it seems like every time I get my eyes checked at a Lenscraft or a Dinapoli because I can't get into see my regular eye doctor, I end up with one of these fruit loops.

The dude who ended up doing my exam looked like a 60-year-old version of John Denver, including the "rocky mountain high" part. He kept making stupid jokes and then chuckling at them, which really didn't do much for my confidence in his professional abilities.

At one point he said, "Wouldn't you like to see better, Johnny? Wouldn'tcha? I'll bet you would. I can do that for you!" Then he laughed like a mad god. Or like Willy Wonka. Actually, maybe that's the same thing.

A little while later, as I was sitting comfortably with my left ankle resting on my right knee, looking through the machine at some light he was blinding me with, he leaned in whispered, "Put your legs to either side and let me slide in there." I felt so dirty, but I did what he asked. After all, he was paying for it. No wait, that's not right. I was paying for it. Dammit.

Anyway, all I wanted was for him to get on with the exam because I was on my lunch hour and quickly running out of time. Also, his breath smelled like he had pastrami and coffee for lunch, and I was sick of breathing that shit in. Since his face was so close to mine, it was still warm when I smelled it. After the first couple of times he exhaled directly into my nasal cavity I started holding my breath. I'm sure the stars I was seeing from the oxygen deprivation helped the accuracy of my test results.

The entire procedure was a comedy of errors, but I walked out of there with a piece of paper that I could barely read that had something approximating my presciption written on it. There are few things about this piece of paper that I immediately realized:

1. I'm old. I need both reading glasses and driving glasses. In other words, bi-focals. I'm just going to find an old pilled-up grey cardigan and start wearing it to work with my polyester slacks. I'm thinking I'll get one of those fake gold chains to hold my spectacles, too. Maybe a fedora.

2. The results are based on crap. He was constantly asking me questions like, "Which is better? A.....(flick) or B?" and they were both exactly the fuck the same. "Uh...they look exactly the same," I say. So he says, "Which is better? A.............(flick) or B?" like I didn't hear him the first time. After he flips it back and forth three more times, each time asking me the same question (only with longer pauses between the words, like I have suddenly become Norwegian and don't have a firm grasp of the English language), I just pick one randomly, because that's the only thing I can do to get out of that Groundhog Day pastrami loop from hell. I also loved the question "Are the letters clearer or just darker and slightly farther away?" WTF.

3. It's going to cost me an ass-ton of money. I looked around at the frames they had available and the prices on them started at $400 and went up from there. That's before they even have lenses in them. The thing I don't understand about this racket is that the frames don't seem to be any better in quality than the ones on my $20 dollar sun glasses. The reason I was in there to begin with was because I was cleaning my glasses and the weld between the lens and the nose piece broke. That's bullshit, right there, considering those were $200 frames and my $20 sunglasses are still going strong. Also, if you don't want the old lady bi-focals, you have to spring for these progressive lenses which run about $700 bucks without the frames. I still haven't gone back to pick out glasses yet, due to the sticker shock and the pastrami. I mean, holy hell. That's halfway to laser eye surgery. Maybe I'll just squint for another 6 months and save up some more money for that.

I'm thinking of trying one of those internet places where you can pick out frames, input your prescription and your pupil to pupil measurements, and they make the glasses and send them to you -- all for about $60. I'll probably end up looking like this:



It worked for my replacement hot tub cover is all I'm saying.

[update: Just as an experiment, I ordered a couple of pairs from Zenni. One pair of progressives and one pair of single script sunglasses. Total cost: $80.75. I'll keep you posted.] *update* - I cancelledthe Zenni order because they were on a slow boat from china and ordered from 39dollareyeglasses.com instead. They weren't 39 dollars, but I did get brand name progressives for about a hundred bucks.

Reason #3,983 that I am a computer geek and not a mechanical engineer.

It's sad, but usually when I screw something up in real life like this, my first thought is Edit, Undo.

Tall Boys and Big Mouths: Part II

If you missed part I, it's here. Go ahead, read it. We'll wait.

OK, where were we? Oh yes, Part II. And then we got grounded. The End.

No, actually I think we were stumbling drunkenly down the street, heading toward the new construction. We had cracked open two more cans and even though it was a pretty dead subdivision as far as vehicle traffic goes, we were still a little freaked out carrying cans of beer, so every time a car came, we assumed it was a cop and we'd run and hide behind a bush or a parked car.

At one point we were running across a lawn trying to dodge a car, and at the last second I saw one of those short "stay off the grass" type border fences that are about shin-high. I jumped over it, but The Slug didn't see it and went down hard, his beer can flying. Before I even knew if he was OK, I started laughing. I'm a good friend. It seemed as if everything was the funniest thing I had ever seen. I sat down hard on the grass and waited for him to get up, trying not to spill my own beer.

The slug rolled slowly to a sitting position, and rubbed his shin. "Stop laughing, asshole," he said. "And give me a swig of your beer." I gave him the can and he tipped it back and chugged it, just out of spite. "HEY!" I yelled. He laughed and flipped me off, then tossed the empty can back at me. He stood up and juicily belched A through H of the alphabet song.

We had two beers left.

"We prob'ly shouldn't open these ones anyways because of the open container," The Slug said blurrily.

"What're you talkin' about?" I asked. "That doesn't make no sense. No sense at all."

"It's a law," he said. "One my brother told me about. You can't walk around with a open beer, or wine or nothin'. It has to be in a bag. If the cops see you they arrest you on the spot."

"Really?" I said. "No shit."

"No shit," he said knowingly. "But there's...here's whatcha do. You put yer thumb over the hole in the top of the bottle or can, see, and then the cops need a warrant to make you move your hand. Then it's like a Mexican standoff. As long as the hole is covered up, they can't arrest you."

"That doesn't sound real," I said, doubtfully.

"Swear ta god," he said.

By this time we were both slurring our words, and while we didn't really think our reasoning was impaired since neither of us had been completely shitfaced before, we definitely noticed that it was getting harder to walk since the ground kept moving in odd directions under our feet. The Slug took the last two beers and stuffed them inside his shirt so we didn't have to dodge cars any more. It didn't really matter at that point because we had reached the row of new houses, and it was a pretty desolate stretch of street to begin with.

We walked toward the first house that didn't have a door or windows yet and went inside. We didn't have a flashlight, and there were no street lights, but the moon was full. It's amazing how well you can see once your eyes get acclimated. Still, at first we moved around with outstretched hands, since neither of us were very steady at that point. We stood in the foyer for a few minutes waiting for our eyes to adjust.

"Let's find the stairs to the second floor. We can climb out that front window and sit on the porch roof," The Slug said. "Then we'll drink the last two."

We started wandering around, looking for the stairs to the second floor, but then discovered that there weren't any yet. The second floor had been laid down, but there was just a hole above and a hole below. The hole below had a 2x4 ladder dropped into it.

"Let's grab that home-made ladder," I said. "Lean it. Climb it. Boom, on the porch." I was pretty incoherent at that point.

The Slug apparently understood what I was getting at and was down with it, so he took the beers out of his shirt, and we tried to pull the ladder out of the basement hole.

At first we thought it was just too heavy, but after a few minutes of drunken analysis and significant straining, we determined that it was, in fact, nailed in place. It seemed we weren't going to the porch roof after all. It's probably a good thing, because at that point, we didn't have much in the way of balance or good sense, and excessive heights probably wouldn't have been a great idea.

Instead, The Slug had a different idea. "Let's go down ta the..the basement and check..check'er out. It'll be dark. Spooky. He waggled his fingers in front of my face. "OoooooOoooooooo," he added, helpfully.

"OK, but you first," I said, looking into the inky hole. I could see the first two rungs and that was it.

The Slug carefully turned around, got down on his hands and knees and started backing towards the hole, feeling for the opening with his feet. He looked like a dog trying to figure out if it had to crap or not. When his feet touched air, he fished around for the first rung and got his foot on it. "Got it!" he said triumphantly. He started down the ladder.

I was on my hands and knees looking down the basement hole from the other side, and I watched him until he disappeared. I stuck my head into the hole. "What's down there?" I asked, hearing my voice echo back with a flat, strange reverberation. The blood was rushing to my head and making it spin.

"I dunno. I dint get ta the bottom yet," he said, "Going slow so I don't --"

Right when he said those words, I heard a grunt, then he yelled "OH SHIT!" and then I heard a giant echoey splash, like someone doing a belly flop into a half full indoor pool. Which is basically what had just happened. It was the absolute last sound I expected.

"FUCK!," The Slug said. "It's FLOODED! The whole fucking thing is FLOODED! There must be three feet of water down here!"

I heard more splashing and more swearing. I couldn't help myself. I started laughing. I laughed until I couldn't breathe. I laughed until my head spun. I laughed until I saw stars.

I laughed until I projectile vomited into the basement hole, then kept laughing.

"WHAT THE?...DID YOU JUST BLOW CHUNKS?!" The Slug screamed. "YOU PUKED! YOU ALMOST PUKED RIGHT ON ME! OH, FUCK. OH FUCK, THERE'S PUKE IN THE WATER! I HAVE PUKE ON ME!"

He sounded like a wounded alligator thrashing around in a small pond. Then I heard him retching, and he puked too. I got sick again, avoiding the hole this time. The Slug catapulted out of the basement like someone had zapped him in the ass with a cattle prod. He cleared the hole but stayed on his hands and knees and retched again, letting loose a stream of beer punctuated with an incredibly loud BRRRRAAAAAAAAPPPP! sound that triggered another bout of insane laughter for both of us. If you've never laughed your ass off and puked your guts up at the same time, it's an odd feeling to say the least. I've been drunk-sick a few times since then, and there's never anything funny about it, so I'm pretty sure that's not normal.

By the time we stopped laughing and puking, the entire house was spinning. "Oh man," The Slug said. "This sucks so much." I indicated my agreement with an incoherent groan. It was about the only sound I could manage. Puking takes a lot out of man, I guess.

Without a word, The Slug reached out with his foot and pushed the last two beers down into the basement. They kerplunked in the water and that was it. That was the last time either one of us drank Schlitz or Mickeys.

We lay there for a while, too tired and sick to move.

"Whatever you do, don't close your eyes," he said.

So of course, I closed my eyes. Then I dry heaved, and opened them quickly. "We have to walk," I said, vowing to myself that I would not blink again for as long as I lived.

We got up and made our way out the front door. We were both holding our stomachs and I'm sure we looked pretty green. The Slug was soaked with basement water, vomit and who knows what else. Luckily, it was a very warm night so he wasn't cold. We finally walked far enough so there were street lights again, and we took inventory. There didn't seem to be any visible chunks, so that was good.

The Slug held his elbow up to the light and inspected a small gash.

"You OK?" I asked. "Prob'ly a good thing the water was there or you would have landed right on your back on the concrete."

"Yeah, nothin' much," he said. "Just the elbow. I'll wash it when we get back. My stomach's sore, though. I still feel sick, but I'm not as drunk, I don't think."

I felt better after heaving my guts up, too. I looked at him closer and concentrated, trying to focus. Something looked...weird. Then I realized what it was and started laughing again. "What?" he said, defensively. "What's so funny?"

I pointed at his shirt and pants. He looked down and realized that he was completely covered in sawdust from lying on the floor of the house while soaking wet. Even the back of his neck was covered in sawdust. He looked like a breaded chicken breast.

"CHICKEN BREAST!" I screamed. That struck him funny, even though I don't think he knew what I was talking about, and he started laughing too, and pretty soon we were rolling on the grass holding our stomachs and crying with silent laughter.

"SHAKE AND BAKE!" I yelled, and this brought new fits of hilarity. We finally just lay there, exhausted, looking up at the moon and watching it dance around the sky in small, sickening circles.

We stopped looking at the moon.

At that point we decided that we should probably head back to my house so he could get some dry clothes, and we could try to maybe avoid getting sick again and just go to sleep. We didn't know about hangovers yet.

As we were walking up the street toward my house, I saw our cat sniffing around by the mail box.

"Here, Kitty!" I said, walking toward the cat.

Yeah. His name was "Kitty." Original, I know.

"Here Kitty!" I repeated, then turned toward The Slug. "Help me get the cat," I said. "My mother doesn't like to leave him out all night." We started creeping up on him so he wouldn't run away, hoping to corral him from both sides so he didn't have anywhere to run. We were about 6 feet away from the cat when The Slug froze.

"Don't move," he said, quietly. "Don't. Move."

"What? Why?" I asked, confused.

As still as a statue, he didn't even look at me when he spoke. "Skunk." he whispered.

I froze. I looked again. He was right. What I had thought was our black and white cat, was in fact a black and white skunk.

We both stood there silently, hardly daring to breathe as the skunk snuffled and sniffed and dug at the soil in front of the mailbox not six feet in front of us.

"I'm gonna run for it," I whispered.

"NO!" The Slug hissed. "No. If you do, we're getting sprayed for sure."

I gave in and we waited it out, standing there like two frozen idiots. Eventually, right about the time when we both were about to cramp up and get doused for our trouble, the skunk wandered across the lawn and into the little patch of woods on my parent's front lawn.

"Holy crap, that was close," The Slug said.

"Yeah," I agreed. "Lets go inside before it comes back."

We walked around back to the sliding glass door, all the while scanning the yard for the skunk, and let ourselves into the house. All was quiet.

There was no sign of my father on one of his 2 am PB&M runs, so we opened the slider to the kitchen, and sat down at the kitchen table. I went down in the basement and got The Slug some sweats and a fresh T-shirt and he tossed his wet, smelly clothes outside, next to the back stairs. I gave him blanket and pillow from the closet and crawled upstairs to bed.

The next morning when I woke up, it was close to noon and The Slug was gone. I had a horrible headache, and my stomach muscles hurt, but otherwise I felt pretty good. I went downstairs to get some breakfast, and my mother was in the kitchen drinking a cup of coffee and talking on the phone. I walked into the family room and looked out the sliding glass door, just to make sure The Slug's clothes were gone. They were, so I walked back into the kitchen, poured myself a cup of coffee, and sat down at the table. My mother glanced at me, then held up her finger and mouthed the words "One cup, that's it." and went back to her conversation. She used to tell me that coffee would stunt my growth, and I used to tell her that it wasn't the coffee stunting my growth, it was the fact that she's only 5' 1" tall that was doing all the stunting. Kitty was sitting on the other kitchen chair, sleeping soundly.

Oddly, he didn't look much like a skunk. I'm not sure why. OK, I am sure why, but that's neither here nor there.

I vowed to never drink again. You can guess how that worked out.

So that's the story of my first honest to god, skunk-pettin', crazyass, basement swimmin' solid gold drunk. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

I'm sure The Slug would approve.

No, this isn't the new post. Well, it's new, but not part II

Just wanted to mention that today is John Cleese's birthday. He's 70 years old, which is what - seven in dog years? I don't know, my dog math may be off. Either way, it makes me feel old because I grew up on Monty Python's Flying Circus, Fawlty Towers and the MP Movies.

I am 100% certain that quotes from "The Life of Brian" and "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" are taking up valuable brain space that used to contain Linear Algebra, Calculus 1-3 and French.

I say this because I can remember none of those things even though I spent five years and an enormous amount of my parent's money to learn them -- yet on the other hand, I can quote from the Monty Python movies and the Flying Circus skits for hours on end.

Coincidence? I think not.

Oh well. (Dad, I'm sorry. Next time you come over we'll sit down and watch the Holy Grail together. You're a really religious guy -- it should be right up your alley.)

Anyway, if you are as big a fan as I am, check this out -- the BBC is releasing a remastered box set of the Fawlty Towers series. Even though it was only on for a short time, it has to be one of the funniest sitcoms ever made. They are also having a facebook look-a-like contest where you can submit photos of yourself as one of the characters and win some sweet prizes. It doesn't look like there are any submissions yet, so your odds are probably pretty good even if you just put on a fake mustache and stand around looking British while someone takes a picture.

"When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England. "

Yeah. That was from memory.

Dammit. My wife just put a bucket on her head. Now I've got to get into the fish tank and sing. And nobody even said "Mattress." WTF.

Tall Boys and Big Mouths: Part I

After I wrote that title, I realized it sounds pretty gay but I'm leaving it. Not too long ago, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who has two sons around the ages of 15 and 17. In the course of the conversation, I asked him if either of them had come home drunk yet. He informed me that his kids didn't do that sort of thing, and that they knew better. So I sat him down and gently explained to him that Pamela Anderson's boobs aren't real.

I then told him that for the next few years, he will begin to notice a strange phenomenon. For some unknown reason, his Ketel One and Bombay Sapphire might start to taste a little weaker than he remembered. His top-shelf booze would seem watered down, almost as if, somehow, water had been added.

So anyway, it reminded me of a story. It's the story of the first time The Slug and I got mildly intoxicated before we were technically allowed to by law. We were 16 years old, and we both had just gotten our driver's licenses, but because of some screwy NY law, we weren't allowed to drive after 9 pm, unless it was to and from work or school or school functions. Now they call that a "junior license" I think.

Since I had my parents, however, it wasn't 9 pm for me -- it was whenever it got dark. This wasn't bad in the middle of the summer when it didn't get dark until 9, but it sucked when the days started getting shorter and I had to be back by 7. Suffice to say I was home before sundown every single night that I wasn't working, with no exceptions. My parents even checked my work schedule. It was like my mother believed that if I drove after dark, I would be run off the road by teenage vampires with great hair and cool cars and then drained of my blood. The Slug, on the other hand, who had his own set of - shall we say - "less involved" parents, basically did whateverthefuck he wanted.

One summer night around nine, the phone rang. I picked it up, and The Slug said, "I'm on my way over. I have something to show you."

"What is it?" I asked him. "You didn't put a 3rd set of fog lights on your mom's car, did you?"

"I can't talk now," he said. "See you in 20 minutes." Before I could say anything else, he hung up. There was nothing left to do but wait.

I walked to the door of my room and yelled down the stairs, "MOM! MIKE IS COMIN' OVER TO WATCH TV AND HANG OUT."

"HE SHOULDN'T BE DRIVING." she yelled back. "DO YOU WANT ME TO PUT A FROZEN PIZZA IN THE OVEN FOR YOU?"

"YEAH, THANKS! WHAT KIND DO YOU HAVE?"

"PEPPERONI."

"THAT'S PERFECT.*"

About twenty minutes later, the doorbell rang and my mother let The Slug in the door. "Hello Michael. You shouldn't be driving after 9," she said.

He shrugged. "My parents don't care," he said. "Besides, I'm an excellent driver."

"That's not the point. It's against the law," my mother said.

"I'm on my way home from work," The Slug said, clearly lying.

My mother gave up her crusade and went back into the kitchen. I knew I would get the "you do realize that just because he does it, doesn't mean you should do it, too" speech later, but that was OK. That was later.

We went into the family room and turned on MTV (back when they actually played music videos) and opened a couple of Mountain Dews while we waited for the pizza to finish cooking.

"So what was so important that you had to come over and show me?" I asked him.

"Come out to my car for a second," he said, grinning.

"It's more fog lights isn't it?" I said, as we were walking out to his car. "Jesus, your mother is going to kill you. Her car already looks like a city snow plow."

"No, jerk off, it's not fog lights," he replied. "Check this out."

He opened the passenger side door and there was something on the seat covered with his sweatshirt. He pulled up the corner of the sweatshirt and revealed a six pack of these:



Six hand grenades. Six barrels of beer on the seat. A six of Mickey's Big Mouth. Malt liquor, baby. (Well, not exactly those. Back then they had razor sharp, 2" wide pull tabs instead of twist offs, but I couldn't find a picture of one, believe it or not. The internets have failed me.)

"Holy crap!" I said. "Where'd you get those?"

"My father bought a shitload of it on sale and I just took one out from the bottom case. If he notices he'll just blame my brother anyway."

"So...what? Are you planning on us drinking it? How? In case you haven't noticed, my parents are home."

"That's easy. Tell'em I'm staying over night. I'll call my mother and tell her the same thing. She doesn't need the car until tomorrow afternoon anyway -- she's working nights this week. After they go to bed we'll sneak it in and drink it."

We went back inside, and by that time the pizza was done. We brought it into the family room, closed the sliding glass door between the family room and kitchen, and turned up the volume on MTV. After we ate, we basically just sat there watching TV, nursing our Mountain Dews and waiting for my parents to go to bed. (A couple of years later, when we were "legal," we'd sit in that same room and drink way too much Genessee Cream Ale [we called them "Genny Screamers" due to their fart-inducing qualities] and wait for this video to come on. What? Can you blame me?)



Too bad she's a shoe-throwing bag of crazy now.

At any rate, I told my parents that The Slug was staying over, and eventually, they wandered off to bed. I was still paranoid about bringing the beers in, because my father had a tendency to roam the house at all hours of the night. It wasn't uncommon to be watching TV and suddenly see him standing at the kitchen counter in his underwear at 3 am making a peanut butter and margarine sandwich. Yeah, I know. Don't ask. (You'd think that lesson would have stuck with me, but in college I almost got caught with a girl in the family room due to one of his midnight peanut butter and grease runs. Different story. NSFW.)

As I said, I was paranoid, so I came up with the bright idea of us going outside and drinking the Mickey's while sitting in The Slug's car. So that's what we did. We sneaked out the back, and took the dome light out of the car so we could leave the doors slightly ajar. By that time, the beer was only slightly cooler than room temperature, but we didn't care. It was the first time either one of us had had more than a few sips of beer, and we wanted to know what all the fuss was about. We chugged the first one.

Nothing.

So we chugged a second one. That's the good thing about the Bigmouth. It's like drinking beer out of a glass. Actually, it's probably closer to drinking piss out of a mason jar, but you get what I mean.

Still nothing. Not even a little tipsy. Granted, we didn't exactly know what to expect, but "absolutely nothing" wasn't it.

"We only got one left each," The Slug said.

"Let's do it," I said, letting out an enormous belch.

We toasted Mickey, and drained the last of the six. Then we sat there just listening to the radio and waiting to be drunk.

After a while, The Slug asked, "You feel anything?"

"Not really. I feel like I need to burp again, I know that."

"Your father got any beer inside?"

I looked at him in disbelief. "I'm not stealing my father's beer. He'd freakin' kill me."

"He won't even notice. He never drinks beer unless there's a barbecue or a party," The Slug said, being annoyingly right.

I thought about it, and that seemed to make sense. I'm not sure why.

"OK," I said. "Lemme go look. I'll be right back."

I sneaked back in the house and went down to the basement and opened the spare fridge. I struck the mother lode. A week earlier, my parents had a big get together on July 4th, and the downstairs fridge was filled with the leftover booze. I grabbed the first six pack of cans that I saw, and ninja-walked my way back out to the car. I opened the door and jumped in, being careful not to slam the door.

"Whatdja get?" The Slug asked.

I held it up. It was a six pack of these:



Schlitz Tall Boys. The beer that made Milwaukee famous. I didn't know a city could become famous for diarrhea but there you go. These things were huge -- they dwarfed the Mickey's Big Mouth bottles. 24 ounces of carbonated drain cleaner in each can.

We each popped one and chugged it, then opened another to drink more slowly. I had to pee, so I got out of the car and pissed on the back tire like a dog. I noticed that my eyes felt a little weird. Kind of like my head was floating sideways, but my feet weren't. I got back in the car.

"Did you piss on... uh, piss on yer feet?" The Slug asked me slowly. "Cuz I think I smell it."

"No, I pished on your car," I said, wondering why I was having trouble talking. Probably because my cheeks were kind of numb. "I think there wass...I think maybe some splashing."

"That's gross," The Slug said. "I gotta piss too. Be right back."

He opened his door quietly and stood next to the car, pissing straight out into my father's driveway. I stage-whispered out the window, "Don't DO that! Don't piss on my father'ses driveway!"

"You just pissed on my mother's car," he said over his shoulder. He had a valid point, so I sat back and took another pull on the can.

After we finished the rest of our respective tall boys, we were feeling decidedly more drunk. We started laughing hysterically at mostly nothing, and I had the good sense to realize that we were making way too much noise and we needed to move away from the house and my parent's open bedroom window.

"We gotta walk thissoff," I said, getting out of the car. "Let's check out the new devel..devilpment..the new houses."

"Good idea," The Slug said, grabbing the rest of the six and slamming his car door out of habit. "Shit!" he said. "Sorry!" This was, of course, the funniest thing in the universe at that particular moment, so we stumble-ran a little way down the street, laughing until we couldn't breathe.

At the time, our house was in a brand new development and there were about a half-dozen other houses down the street and around the corner that were in various stages of construction. We figured we could find one that was recently framed up and maybe hang out on the porch roof and finish our beers.

We quickly realized we couldn't walk in a straight line. Somewhere along the way, The Slug decided it would be fun to spin around and then try to walk. He did this until he fell on the grass and couldn't get up.

"What time issit?" he asked me, lying on his back on someone's front lawn.

"No watch," I said, "but I see a clock in a car. I'll go look."

I know that doesn't sound like it makes much sense, but there was a Corvette parked in a nearby driveway and I could see it had a digital clock in it. So I went to look, except the window was fogged up. So obviously I did the non-drunk thing and opened the door to get a better look. The Slug yelled, "Shit! Don't get innit! Are you nuts?" But it was too late. I was already sitting behind the wheel, trying to make out the time glowing on the dash. I yelled back to him, "It's 12:30. Or 13:30. It's one of those."

Finally, The Slug got up and staggered over. "Get out! Get out of the car," he said.

"Why?" I asked.

"Dome light!" he said. I looked up and it suddenly dawned on me that I was sitting in someone else's expensive car in the middle of the night, in plain view of anyone who happened to hear something and look out the window. I didn't want to go to jail, so using what was left of my good sense, I got out of the car. We continued zig-zagging our way down the street.

To be continued, because it's past my bedtime.

*That's what's known as a yellversation. My brothers, my sister and I all had our bedrooms upstairs, and I would guess that about 60% of all of our conversations were held in this fashion, with us in our rooms and our mother or father yelling from the bottom of the stairs. It's easy to see why my father installed an intercom system shortly thereafter.

I'm off pizza for a while.

Has anyone else seen this very disturbing commercial for Tabasco sauce? If there are two things I hate, it's creepy pepperoni slices that look infected, and barbershop quartets. You know what's worse than either one of those things?



Creepy pepperoni slices that look infected singing barbershop music, that's what.

This commercial not only made me swear off pepperoni indefinitely, it also made me re-swear my original swear-off of all barbershop quartets, which, as it turns out, was a very good decision back when I made it the first time. I mean, really -- has barbershop music ever sold anything?

Doubtful. Ear plugs, maybe. Or straight razors.

The other thing that immediately jumped into my mind when I saw this commercial was that these four guys auditioned for this. Somewhere, some time, an ad agency or a video production company held open auditions and these guys were the best lip-synching pizza boils out there. There were probably 30 other guys who couldn't get this part. That just makes me sad. It also makes me glad I have my job.

Even at first glance you can tell they are clearly insane pizza boils, what with their bulging eyes and gigantic, soul-devouring grins -- and I am 99% sure that one down on the tip of the slice is actually doing something dirty underneath his cheese:



I can picture the director during the shoot:

"Number four! Look more savory! Number two, for the love of god, you're lip syncing like Ashley Simpson! Three! Good job, good job. Sell it! BELIEVE that you're singing pepperoni brought to the surface of the pizza by the Tabasco sauce. Own the role! Own it! Great job! Number one! Give us your O-face! YES! That's it! That's it!"



Here's the video, if you haven't seen it.

Sleep well. And just a word of advice -- stick to the mushrooms. Tabasco has no adverse effect on them as far as I can tell.

Doing it wrong.

A group of Somali pirates has been captured after attacking a French navy ship by mistake, apparently thinking it was a harmless cargo vessel.

I'm sure they're glad to have me back.

My first instant message of the day from the help desk:

Support: I forwarded you an e-mail issue. Yoonjie can send e-mail to Ming Ming but Ming Ming can't reply. I don't see anything in the logs. Any thoughts?

Me*: Yes. Here's my first thought - Should cartoon teddy bears be allowed to have e-mail?

*in my mind.

Everybody is Sick. It's not just me.

Yesterday I had the day off from work, which is probably a good thing because as I said in my last post, I'm sick. I decided that I would lay around all day and stream Netflix, since I didn't really feel well enough to do anything else.

When I first turned on the television, I couldn't believe my eyes. I saw a stage, two burly security guards, and two black dudes beating the hell out of each other, and a cheering studio audience. One black dude was wearing tight black pants and a muscle shirt (and was completely devoid of muscles) and the other one wasn't wearing a shirt at all, and had about 8" of his underwear showing because his pants were so low they were about to fall off.

WTF? I thought to myself. Is this the sort of shit stay-at-home moms get into when their kids are at school?

Apparently, it is.

It got weirder. The bouncer guys broke up the fight and then the two black dudes started talking smack to each other. They were both flaming homosexuals. Turns out one was a stripper/pole dancer and the other was a ballet dancer. They were lovers. Why were they cat-fighting on television?

Because the ballet dancer slept with the pole dancer's sister, that's why. Normally I wouldn't know what's required to get the sister of a gay pole dancer to put out, but apparently a square meal is all that it takes.

I learned all this in approximately 20 seconds. Then I realized with horror that I was watching Jerry Springer. I guess it's been a while since I've seen this show, because I didn't remember it being one step away from a boxing ring. All that was missing were the ropes. I certainly didn't remember bouncers, and a studio audience that was basically one step away from a full-scale riot, but I guess that's what it's come down to. The episode was called "Dancing Queens" which was clever and also very, very obvious.

As I watched, whatever they were talking about devolved into another bitchslap-fest, and that somehow turned into some sort of surreal grudge-match dance-off, because the one dude started doing very angry pirouettes and the other one started riding a pole and doing jiggly things with his ass that made me want to dig my eyes out and then I couldn't take another second of it and I could feel my mind melting inside my skull and I was desperately clawing at my chest for a non-existent radio mic to call in a major airstrike on the entire studio.

Daytime TV sure isn't what it used to be.

The Hungerfords vs. Those Stupid Witches

I'm baaaaack. Just like the herp.

We had a couple of great days, weather-wise. The first day, there was absolutely no wind. It was dead calm. Beautiful blue skies. The weather couldn't have been more perfect.

The lake itself -- well, not great, but not too horrible. When we arrived, there was a family of five just launching. They were spread out between a canoe and a couple of kayaks. They paddled out and were having a great time. I didn't notice it, but my wife told me that they had some sort of tiny dog in one of the kayaks -- a chihuahua or something. They were quite a ways ahead of us when we finally got the canoe on the water, but when it's still like that, sound travels. You can literally hear a spoken conversation from across the lake. We didn't have to listen to their conversations to know their whereabouts, however. Why? Because the poor dog was howling like someone was holding a blowtorch to his nuts. He was terrified of being in a kayak. I'm not sure if the thing eventually stroked out or if they just stowed it below decks, but after about an hour it stopped. Luckily they were only there for a day trip, so we didn't have to listen to it very long.

We paddled out to one of the nicer sites and when we got there it was in pretty good shape. Nice and clean, no trash in the fire pit, no wrappers (of any kind) on the ground, etc. The one bad thing about this particular site is that it has no state-sanctioned pooper -- you have to bring a shovel. Amazingly, people don't get that. So I always check out the site beforehand to make sure there's no fly-covered piles just lying out in the open, because seriously, sometimes there is. At least cover it up with some leaves, people. Anyway, this time there wasn't. I couldn't figure it out at first, since it was still only a couple of weeks after Labor Day, but then it all became clear. A few hundred feet down the trail I stumbled on to this:



Yes, it's the super duper grouper pooper. You can't really tell from the picture, but there's about a bushel and a half of shit and tp piled up behind that cross member. Not only that, but they hacked giant notches into two live trees to hold it there. I'm not gonna lie. It was pretty nasty, and again, way too close to the water. People are fucking idiots. The next morning my wife woke up and said, "Oh my god. Last night I dreamed that for some reason I sat on that thing and lost my balance and fell backwards. It was horrifying."

Turns out it was also the last week of Canada Goose season. So there were a couple of yahoos down at the marshy end of the lake motoring around in a flat-bottomed boat chasing geese with semi-automatic shotguns. Unfortunately, because it was so still, all we could hear between the frantic shotgun explosions were the two of them yelling inane shit to each other over the sound of the motor. Followed, of course, by the indignant honking of pissed off geese that circled the lake and settled down to be shot at again. Geese are stupid. But I guess that's what I get for going camping during hunting season, so I can't complain too much.

Here's a shot from our second morning:



Whenever we go camping, we always bring our friend Jack. He's a bit of a black sheep, who was born of hoary nights, when lonely men struggled to keep their fires lit and cabins warm. He also does a great job facilitating fascinating conversation. Here's an example:

Me: What's that show you watch that I can't stand? The one with the stupid witches? Why is that show always on? Always. Is there some all-witch-all-the-time TV channel I don't know about?

Wife: Hey! Don't bust on the witches - I know it's a stupid show. I don't know why I watch it -- I got sucked in while I was on the treadmill. Besides, it's better than that ridiculous show you watch.

Me: What? Venture Brothers? That's not ridiculous, that's genius.

Wife: No, not that one. The other one. The Hungerfords.

Me: The Hungerfords? What the fuck is that?

Wife: You know, Hungerfords. The one with Meatball. And Fries.

Me: Meatwad? Do you mean Meatwad? And Frylock? Are you talking about Aqua Teen Hunger Force?

Wife: Yeah. That one. Stupidest thing on TV.

Me (almost pissing myself from laughing so hard): Meatball? Fries? The HUNGERFORDS?

Wife: Shut up and pass the Yukon.

She made a good point, though. Then we talked about astrophysics and string theory.

On the way home we stopped at an antique store in Warrensburg. While my wife wandered inside I decided to go grab a slice of pizza a few doors down since I was working on a couple of packets of cream of wheat I had eaten approximately 6 hours ago. I walked in and saw a nice cheese pie in the display. An old guy came out from back and asked me what he could get for me. I told him I'd take a slice and a can of mountain dew. He reached into the case to take out a slice and that's when I saw his hands. They were black. And not for any expected and normal reason, like, for instance, he was born a black man. No, this guy was white. But only racially. When he turned around to put the slice in the oven, I noticed his elbows were also black, and he had dirt packed into his neck creases. Then I looked down at his feet when he walked away. Apparently, he had opted to simply walk the excess length off his dark brown pants because they had about six inches of frayed material just dragging on the ground. And then I noticed that his pants had actually started out as tan.

I watched him handle my pizza with his bare, dirt-blackened hands as he tossed it in the oven. I watched him rub his nose right before taking my slice out of the oven and tossing it onto a paper plate. While I was waiting, a woman came in to bum a cigarette from him. She was shaking pretty badly, and had a horrible head cold. After about 5 minutes of listening to them talk, I realized she was there not only to bum a cigarette, but to start her shift.

I almost didn't eat it. Almost. I was soooo hungry and it smelled soooo good. So against my better judgement, in a feeble effort to take my germaphobic bull by the horns, I just ignored my other senses and chowed down.

So now have a nasty head cold. I tell myself I caught it from my wife, but If I don't post for a couple of weeks, assume I succumbed to the filthy pizza flu.

After I ate the pizza, I wandered down to the store to find my wife. I did eventually find her, but first, I found this treasure:



I am pretty sure it's Sammy Davis Jr.

In a thong.

It haunts me, and I hope it haunts you as well.

I immediately sent a picture of it via text message to my buddy Mark and said, "I think this original oil painting would look fantastic hanging in your living room on the wall behind your couch."

A few moments later, I got a reply that said, "I'd pay half to make that happen."

Unfortunately, it was out of my price range.

That's probably good, because if that thing had been less than fifty bucks, it would most likely be somewhere getting framed right now.

The best part of waking up..

....is Folgers in your cup.



In your cup. NOT on your desk, keyboard, mouse, lap, shoes and floor.



In your EFFING CUP.

Is that too much for me to handle? Apparently, yes. Yes it is.

Damn your retarded packaging and your creepy-weird crystalline structure, Folgers.

My keyboard is still crunchy and smells vaguely like the floor sweepings at Dunkin' Donuts.