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.]

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.

A two day work week doesn't suck.

I could get used to this. Until the middle of October, I'm only in the office two days a week. I hope we get some great weather, because we plan on spending most of it in the woods and on the water.

Normally, when we go camping right after Labor Day, we never know what we'll find.

Well, let me rephrase that -- we know what we'll find will be disgusting, but we never know exactly what it will be. Sometimes it's piles of crap (human, dog, goose, etc.), sometimes it's used condoms, sometimes it's just a pile of empty beer cans or a pile of not-so-empty pampers.

I can see why you don't want to be packin' out the pamper poop, but why can't you carry out a can that weighs next to nothing empty when you carried it in full? And you have a canoe for god's sake. Take it with you. It makes me want to kill someone. Anyway, we've seen it all over the years.

Or we thought we had. This was entirely new:



Seriously, that's the nicest homemade pooper I've ever seen. Just sitting there in the woods. It was sanded smooth, polyurethaned, and stoutly bolted together. Someone clearly put some thought into this. I'm 99% sure most of that thought consisted of "I'm not walkin' all the way the eff up there."

I say this because there's an "official" state-sanctioned-and-installed pooper up the trail from the beach, not 500 yards from this one. Apparently that was too far to walk for the Labor Day crowd, because they brought their own and set it up within spitting distance of the campsite. Unfortunately, it was also within smelling distance. But, still. 'A' for effort on the construction. Solid 'F' for being a pack of lazy slobs.

I know it wasn't put here by the rangers because one, there was no hole. Well, on the top there was -- because otherwise it would have been a pretty bad design -- but underneath, no. It was just sitting there on flat ground, covering up a large mound of turds and paper. Secondly, it was only about 20 feet from the water, and any sudden downpour would have resulted in poop-slurry pouring directly into the lake. Rangers were not responsible for this. They'd have to clean it up, and they weren't going to like it, but they were not responsible for it.

Now lets talk about the wind. The wind never stopped. From the moment we put the canoe in the water to the moment the sun went down, the wind was blowing steadily at about 30mph. It was the sort of wind you'd normally associate with the jersey shore, except it was more like the jersey shore in November. It made it uncomfortable to sit and read, it made it hard to cook and made it a lot of work just to keep your canoe pointed in the direction you intended it to go. It was blowing hard enough that it was picking up sand from the beach and blowing it in our faces. It was not pleasant. It was not relaxing. The only good thing I can say about it is that it was blowing the pooper fumes away from us, so I never had to cover the box with a garbage bag or anything.

Something else happened too -- we think it may have been because of the wind, but a seaplane landed at the far end of the lake and then proceeded to take leisurely (and extremely loud) tour around the lake -- at about 4 knots. Normally this lake is very quiet, which is one of the reasons we go there. You might hear an outboard motor maybe once a day. I think they have a 3 hp limit on rowboats, but most of the people who use this place lean toward canoes and kayaks. Let me tell you -- a seaplane, even at trolling speed, is not a quiet machine. I kept asking my wife if she dared me to strip naked and strike a Bigfoot pose on the shore, but she wouldn't.

Because the water was so riled up from the wind, it was very silty. Because of this, it pissed off my water filter, which kept plugging up. It was taking me forever to get a liter of water. Unless you want to boil your life away, you have to filter your water because there are beaver dams nearby, and I'm sure the water contains more than its fair share of giardia cysts just biding their time.

We brought a small insulated bag cooler the first day, so by the second day, all those ziplock bags of ice were now ziplock bags of water. A short time later, we needed some water for cleaning something and had a conversation that went something like this:

Me: "Use some of the melted ice water in the bags."

My wife: "Good idea. We could use it for drinking too, if we have to."

Me: "Yeah, but it'll probably taste like freezer."

My wife, completely serious: "Well, that's gotta taste better than beaver."

OK, maybe it's funnier when you've been drinking Yukon Jack.


Sunset, September 13th

How I Spent My Summer Vacation.

The first day on my vacation, I woke up. Then, I went downtown to look for a job. Then I hung out in front of the drugstore.

No, that's not true. It would have been preferable, but it's not true.

The first day on my vacation, I woke up. I went downstairs to scrape paint off the porch with a heat gun and putty knife. Then I passed out.

The second day on my vacation, I woke up. I went downstairs to scrape paint off the porch with a heat gun, putty knife and a respirator. Then I passed out in front of the TV.

The third day on my vacation, I woke up. I hobbled downstairs to scrape paint off the porch with a heat gun, putty knife, knee pads and a respirator. Then I passed out in front of the TV.

The fourth day on my vacation, I woke up and regretted it. I crawled downstairs to scrape paint off the porch with a heat gun, putty knife, knee pads, rollerblading wrist braces and a respirator. I looked like some kind of psychotic exterminator. Then I passed out, but I don't remember where.

Basically, I dealt with 500 square feet of this:



That picture shows about 11 feet of a 70 foot-long porch. Trust me, the entire scraping process sucked ass. I have to say this though -- I give the utmost credit to people who do this sort of work day in and day out. It's a lot harder than sitting on your ass all day moving bits and bytes around, that's for sure.

On day five I rented a sander and vibrated two holes in the side of my thumbs, so the next day I added band-aids and gloves to my dashing ensemble.

On day 6 and 7, I painted.

On day 8, I watched the sun blister the paint, and I seriously thought about just burning my house down and starting over.

On day nine I said fuck it and celebrated my wedding anniversary, and my wife and I took the convertible out and ended up in Lake George on a lake cruise and I decided that the porch was done until spring.

Today, since it was cold, I turned on the heat for the first time this year. I was greeted with a screaming, grating noise that sounded like a squirrel trying to get out of a blender. I tracked it down to the power vent on the furnace. When I took it apart, the fan inside looked like this:



So that's where I've been. Wow. It really has been a while. In part, I blame Twitter. I think we have to break up. It's cramping my style. I mean, if I actually had a style.

Here's the other thing: I've been working on "the book." I hope to get something put together by Christmas, but if I'm writing there, I'm not writing here, so bear with me. I've got some childhood stories that I'm dying to tell, but part of me wants to save them for the book. (You know what they say about free milk and a cow. But you guys would buy it anyway, right?)

On a completely unrelated note, I saw these smug bastards just sitting there in Lowe's this afternoon:



I think they may be coming for me tonight after I go to sleep. I like how their expressions say "No, no -- Don't get us wrong. We're definitely gonna kill you. But we're gonna have some fun with you first."

One last thing: Over there on the right, I've had a link to a blog called The Sheila Variations basically since I started blogging in 2005. I loved her writing style from the first read, and I still do. Sheila is a stage actress, a fantastic (and prolific) writer, and..ok, I admit it. I might be a little jealous of her talent. Anyway, her brother Brendan e-mailed me asked me to pass along a link to his new band, so I said I would. It reminds me a lot of Paul Westerberg. Check it out here if you get a chance, and let him know what you think.

I'll be back soon, but this is September and I have some backpacking to do. So, maybe tomorrow. Maybe early next week. (I'm like herpes. You never know when I'm going to flare up.)

Into the light.

Just a quick post to celebrate -- some long time readers of this blog may remember this post from 2005. A couple of days ago, after more than eight years of working on it once a week for 3 hours, we finally rolled it out of the garage and lifted it onto the trailer:



In a couple weeks, we'll add water and two incompetent sailors and see if this thing floats.

Some Pig.

My wife called me in a panic yesterday morning. You see, she's a little afraid of spiders. And by that I mean she will wake up in the middle of the night and flip on the light and point to a tiny black speck on the ceiling 20 feet away and yell, "SPIDER! SPIDER! THERE'S A SPIDER ON THE CEILING!" while frantically poking me in the back with her other hand. It's like some sort of spider-sense, but not the good kind that warns her that The Green Goblin is about to take off her head with a glider wing. This is the bad kind that wakes me up in the middle of the night and makes me kill things.

Generally, I'll get up and kill it, and she'll sit there in her guard tower with her pointing finger locked and loaded, making sure that nobody escapes the yard. God help me if I miss the spider and it makes it over the wall, because that means the alarm sirens go off, the search parties are formed, the hounds are released and nobody is getting any sleep at all until the spider is found.

If I'm not home, the story goes a little differently. What happens then is that I walk in the door and see some sort of container upside down on the floor. Most of the time it's a drinking glass. There's no note or anything -- just some kind of bug with his face pressed up against the glass, looking at me forlornly.

In these cases, most of the time I scoop up the spider or whatever and take it outside, and when she asks me what I did with it (she always asks me what I did with it) I tell her I killed it. That's to address the argument that "if it's still alive, it might try to come back in." Now, I know that's true of mice, but I don't think spiders have the innate navigational skills to find their way back from a good fling across the lawn. So I fake-kill them. Trust me. It's just easier. Plus, spiders are one of the good insects because they eat deer flies, and anyone or anything that lowers the deer fly population in my back yard is OK by me. Unless they look really fast, in which case I might actually kill them. It's not really a karma thing with me. It's more about less deer flies and a peaceful night's sleep.

So back to the phone call. It turns out that she walked out onto the deck and got a spider web across her face. She looked up and the spider was hanging directly over her head. I'm not sure if she thought the spider was going to lasso her with webbing and pull her up into the web or what, but she freaked out and ran back inside and immediately called me at work. I was informed, in no uncertain terms, that the spider had to go. I'm pretty sure she would have preferred that I drive home right that instant and take care of it, but I work about an hour away and the spider was outside so I was granted a little grace period.

When I got home, I saw this sign on the sliding glass door:

That's just so I wouldn't forget.

I walked out to the garage and got a can of insect spray. The label says it's supposed to kill spiders and ants and just about anything else that crawls, and I've used it on the ants in the garage before and it's pretty quick acting stuff.

I found the spider pretty quickly, and sprayed the hell out of it. It laughed at me, and dropped down on a strand of webbing. It landed on the deck and started running toward me. I sprayed it again. It kept coming. I hit it again. I sprayed it so much it looked like it was covered in shaving cream.

The spray had no effect. It walked out of the foam pile without even changing direction. This thing was like the Terminator. It just kept walking toward me and I just kept spraying the shit out of it and backing up. I thought about just stomping on it, but it looked pretty juicy and I didn't want that shit on my shoes.

I sprayed it again. It was starting to slow down a little but it was still walking purposefully, like it had a bone to pick with me. It walked like it had a plan -- like it was thinking "OK, first I'm going to deal with this douche bag with the fucking spray can, and then I'm going out for some sushi."

A few seconds later, it started drunk-walking. Then it slowed down, and finally stopped. I swear I could almost see the red lights in its eyes fade out.

It was dead. It didn't really look dead, since it didn't do that curl-up-and-die thing, but I was pretty sure it was. I poked it a little with my boot, just to make sure. I know that's a bonehead move (I've seen all the movies), but I did it anyway.

Normally, I laugh at my wife's fear of spiders, however, in this particular case having this particular spider almost drop on her head might have actually justified a little hysteria. Bugs don't bother me unless they are actually on me, but this thing even freaked me out a little.

Here's a picture I took after it was safely in spider heaven (click to make it bigger if you're a glutton for punishment):



Jesus, just look at the spikey legs and that body. It looks like Shelob for chrissakes. And you know how when you get a spider web across the face it just sort of tickles? Well, this web was so tough it just stretched. It had actual resistance, like a rubber band.

So I went back in the house, and when she got home I told her the spider was dead.

What I didn't tell her was that after I killed the giant spider, I looked up toward the web.

Apparently, mama's egg sac hatched and there were about a dozen smaller versions of this spider stationed about every 3 feet under the eaves. Smaller versions that the spray wouldn't reach.

So I won the battle, but I'm a little worried about the war. I mean, they watched me kill their mother, and that had to piss them off, right? I think they're just biding their time.

Watching. Growing. Planning. It's been nice knowing you all.

**********

PS - on a completely unrelated note -- if anyone reading this has ever been to Daddy O's restaurant on Long Beach Island, NJ and liked it, please send me an e-mail (address in profile). I have a small favor to ask.

Lastly, if you want to read some really weird shit, click on that new ad over on my banner that points to buttelf.com.

Happy weekend, everyone!

Stand by me.

This is a first. I now have a tree stand on my property.

Normally, our land is posted against trespassing, hunting, walking, breathing, etc., but a friend of mine -- let's call him Tank -- asked me if he could put up a tree stand and hunt on our land. Since I figured a few less deer won't hurt, I said sure. I assumed this would mean he would come over, walk into the woods, set his shit up and then when hunting season came around I'd hear a few deer carcasses hitting the ground, a dragging sound, then a car door slamming and that would be that.

I had no idea that I would actually be involved in the tree stand setting up process. And it was a process. I knew things weren't going to go as I had planned in my imagination when he showed up towing a trailer. On this trailer was a steel ladder-looking thing with a double tiered basket on top, which I assumed is where you sit and wait. It looked almost exactly like this, except much taller.

There were some differences, however. The biggest difference is that the one in the picture is actually standing upright, and the one on the trailer definitely was not. There were other things too -- like how the one in the picture is in a tree that you could probably drive up to in a Range Rover, whereas the tree he wanted to put his stand in was buried deep in my woods, surrounded by scrub brush and small saplings and mud.

"So you think you can help me set this up?" he asked, "Shouldn't take too long." And thus began the three and a half hour odyssey.

Since Tank is 6' 5" and I'm only 5' 6" -- and since it was his tree stand -- I figured I'd let him tackle the heavy end. So I grabbed onto the ladder end, and I immediately noticed something was wrong, because it felt like I had grabbed the outside of a sticky honey jar.

"Uh, why is this sticky?" I asked, looking down at my newly blackened hands.

"I painted it almost 2 hours ago, and all I had was flat black paint for barbecue grills. It's not dry yet? Weird. It must be too humid out."

Great. We lifted the stand off the trailer and headed into the woods on the most humid, non-paint-drying, buggy day of the year so far. Or rather, tried to head into the woods.

This thing did not want to go in the woods. In fact, it did not want to go anywhere. It was 16 feet long and not really optimally designed to weave in and out of closely growing trees. It was also heavier than it looked. To top it all off, there was an extra four foot section of extension ladder just sort of resting on top, and it was almost impossible to keep it from sliding around. After almost killing ourselves, we managed to get it through the bramble and into a thinner area of large pine trees that didn't let enough light through to allow scrub to grow. We were both soaked with sweat and surrounded by bugs. We found the tree he wanted to set it up against, and then the real fun began.

"OK, now what?" I asked Tank, having never put up a tree stand before.

"Now we just lean it up against the tree, throw this zip tie around it, put the brace up in the middle, fasten the whole thing with the straps, and we're done."

I wasn't going to point out that I thought it would be impossible to get this top-heavy piece of shit to lean up against a tree without probably killing one or both of us, but I assumed he knew that, and had a good technique to get it up there. And he did, sort of. First, he tried to hammer the extra four foot section of ladder on the bottom, and since the part we needed to hammer it into was packed with clay that had the consistency of bunker cement, this did not go well. He spent another ten minutes digging at it with a screwdriver while I looked on and swatted mosquitoes. Finally he banged it in, and it went about halfway home and he called it good enough. It actually wasn't good enough, but we'll get to that bit later.

We got it sort of lined up where we wanted it, and he lifted it up and started walking underneath it, pushing it higher and higher as he walked toward the tree. My job was to stand on the ladder end to keep it from moving, so he could get it vertical. After a few seconds it was completely vertical and then it just sort of fell toward the tree. Unfortunately he had judged the position of the ladder wrong so it wasn't set up with enough of an angle, and it was also at the wrong angle to the tree and started listing to the right.

"OK, you hold the ladder while I climb up and use this zip tie to strap it to the tree," he said.

I wasn't sure I was cool with that. It was leaning at a crazy angle, he weighs about three times what I do and if this thing decided to go, it was taking him, me, and probably the tree with it. I wasn't sure what else to do, so I volunteered.

"Uh, maybe I can climb up there and strap it down," I said, doubtfully. "I weigh a lot less than you."

"OK," he agreed reluctantly, knowing I didn't know my ass from my elbow when it came to setting up a tree stand. "I'll hold it steady."

So I climbed up, and the first thing I realized was that the zip tie was way too short for a tree of this size. I looked around and saw the main support strap hanging there, so I grabbed it in my right hand, tossed it around the tree, caught it in my left hand and cinched it tight, then climbed back down. Problem solved.

Almost.

We backed away a few feet and looked at it. The angle was still off, and it wasn't quite close enough to the tree to hold the center support up. The steel center support swings up from a ladder connection and has to rest against the tree. When the stand is strapped tightly to the tree, it holds the center support in place. So we put the center support where it needed to go, and then it was time to get the other straps on. Tank got under the ladder to kind of pull it toward the tree, which would hold the center support in place and also hold it so I could climb up the front.

I put one foot on the bottom of the ladder to start to climb it, and the ladder shifted, causing the center support to immediately crash down on Tank's head, forcing him to let go of the ladder and stagger around. I jumped off and the whole thing twisted sideways and just sort of hung there.

As you can see, this was going extremely well. Next, we tried to twist the stand in the opposite direction and when we did that the extra four foot section of ladder fell off the bottom. Then the whole stand slid down the tree about two feet and got stuck.

So here's where we stood: The stand was securely fastened to the tree and wouldn't come down. It also wouldn't go back up. That meant we couldn't get the four foot section of ladder back underneath it.

"OK, fuck that section." Tank said. "I'll hold it while you climb up and release the strap so it'll come down. It'll only be 16 feet in the air instead of 20, but that's fine."

Tank grabbed the bottom rung of the ladder and affected a stance that was half-way between "Look at me! I'm a sumo wrestler!" and "Don't look at me! I'm taking a standing shit!" and said "OK, go for it."

I clambered over him and onto the ladder, and started climbing.

When I reached the top, I half stood and half crouched on the platform, and got my hand on the spring release for the strap. I realized that when I released the strap there would be nothing holding the stand to the tree, but I didn't really think it through. Tank's a big guy, but there is no way he was going to curl 145 pounds of me, along with another hundred pounds of stand. Instead of realizing this out loud, I realized it in my head which did nobody any good at all.

When I released the strap, the entire weight of the stand was suddenly resting on Tank's arms and thighs. It immediately fell another foot and Tank said through clenched teeth, "You better come down. I'm not sure how much longer I can hold it."

I heard something like panic in his voice. Maybe it was just my imagination, but I had instant visions of crashing to the ground in a pile of twisted metal and shredded Tank meat. So I did the only thing I could think of -- I lunged for a nearby sapling with my right hand and simultaneously leapt into space, hoping to put as much distance between me and the falling stand as I could.

Luckily for me, I've had previous experience with this, although Tank didn't know that. All he saw was me leap to my death in an apparent panic.

What actually happened was this: The sapling bent and slowly lowered me to the ground like Mary Poppins. Tank saw me float by him, and started laughing so hard he dropped the stand and fell on the ground. His laughing started me laughing and pretty soon we were both so hysterical we were almost crying.

When we both could see again, we straightened out the stand once and for all and strapped it into place. Looking at the results of our three and a half hour's worth of handiwork, Tank said, "When I put my one-man stand up, I'll make that one the twenty footer."

I am thinking I should probably arrange to be somewhere else for that installation.

No funny here. Nothing to see. Move along.

Once again, mama wood thrush decided to build her nest in our hanging plant. Four eggs this time, instead of three. I took this picture a few days before they took off:

I like how the one in the back is all, "Eff you, man. You're not my real mom." And then two seconds later he's like, "OK, maybe you have some food."

And since I've had a few requests for sword pictures, here's a bumch of pics of the last sword my friend Paul and I did together. Hard to believe it started out as black sand from a lakeshore. (click for larger pics):

Also, I wanted to mention that my buddy Brennin's new CD is now available. Jeff Juliano (John Mayer, Lifehouse, Dave Matthews and Jason Mraz) even offered to mix it after he heard the rough cuts. It's good stuff.

You can listen to it (and buy it, if you're so inclined) here.

That's it for now, I'll be back this weekend with something funny.

OK, I caved. I'm a twit.

People have asked me if I was on Twitter. "No," I would say, "I barely have time to blog let alone twit, or tweet, or twat, or whatever the kids are calling it these days."

But ... as you can see over there on the right, I've finally caved. I only have 9 followers so far, so yeah, it's a pretty exclusive club.

I have no idea how it even works or how long I'll be using it before I decide I've had enough, but if you feel like it, join up or sign up or follow me around or whatever you call it. I am asking you this mostly because I don't know if I can keep thinking shit up for 9 people, no matter how awesome and ahead of the curve they are.

Tell your friends. Originally I was thinking your real, live friends and not your Facebook friends, but OK, you can tell your Facebook friends, too.

As the banner up there says, "Don't Expect Too Much."

I'll try to deliver at least that. Thanks!

Pink and Grey Butterflies.

Since I haven't had time to write a proper blog entry what with all the roofing woes I'm having, I decided to let Site Meter have at it. I will apologize in advance for the subject matter, but I am not the one who is frantically clicking on random sites for answers to perverted questions. That you know of. That being said, here's another edition of :

Fantastic Google Searches That Somehow Led People To My Site

do porn stars eject stuff into their penis to make it bigger? - I assume you meant inject stuff, because really, ejecting stuff has the completely opposite effect. To answer your intended question instead of the one you actually asked, in this age of anus and scrotum bleaching, I wouldn't doubt it, but I am guessing probably not. I think most of them are simply born with huge cranks and decide the porn industry is their ticket to ride. And ride and ride and ride.

They always give me too much time to get undressed at the doctor's office. I can't decide if that means my doctor is just slow or if I'm a slut - I figure this line is from someone's stand-up routine, but I thought it was funny enough to include in its own right. You slut.

spraying piss all over the place when I go to the bathroom - I have two suggestions for you, depending upon your situation. One, try to remember to take your thumb off the end. If that doesn't do it, I suggest you go get it checked out by a doctor because that shit ain't right, and I don't want you pissing in/on/behind/in front of my urinal.

sweaty pussy vs. sweaty balls - This just sounds like a cage-match waiting to happen. I can see the event poster now. I'm really not sure what the fight would be about, because generally they both end up in that condition if you're doing it correctly. Maybe if there were a large purse involved and some decent odds, I'd place my bet on the SP, but really it could go either way.

my driveway look like a parking lot i got the bitch riding my dick with no shocks keep talkin and ima make the soda pop we always strapped when we hit the club - I actually checked this one to see why someone would click on a link to my blog based on the results. Turns out, my blog is the number one result for this search:



In fact, I'd go so far as to say that what Google displayed could be used as the second verse. Great. Now I have visions of Xzibit making millions by typing random strings of words into Google and cruising the search results slapping together dope rhymes. Yeah, I know. I'm way too white to say things like "dope rhymes." And "Xzibit.*"

homosexual rectum - I know you keep trying to change its ways. You beg, you plead, you make threats -- all to no avail. You're straight, but your rectum isn't. My advice to you would be to take baby steps -- start by keeping your rectum away from penises, and work your way up from there.

my butt feels sticky - see aforementioned advice.

booze cruise clothing optional - Wait. Aren't all booze cruises clothing optional if there is enough booze? It always seemed that way to me. Maybe that's why I'm not allowed on them anymore.

zombies triathlon backpacks - What a great idea! Come to think of it, those fast zombies in the 28 Days movies could really have used backpacks. They would have come in handy for all the spare entrails and what not. I'm not sure about the triathlon bit, however. I doubt you could pull it together since Zombies seem pretty disorganized as a general rule.

due sex pee pee online - I'm sorry, but I don't know what you're looking for, my friend. I do not believe the great and all-seeing Google knows either, since it sent you to my humble blog. Either someone owes someone else a virtual golden shower, or you are confusing your homonyms. Good luck and godspeed. I hope you get your due/do.

why does my cat's butt squirt out nasty stuff? - I think most of your problem stems from the fact that butts and nasty stuff go together like chocolate and, no wait - bad example. They go together. Let's just leave it at that. As for the "squirting" part -- I would check to see what you are putting in the other end of the cat and maybe modify it. Garbage in, garbage out and all that.

what happened to the dust floating on the water when the drop of soap was added - Welcome to my blog, you lazy piece. Here's an idea -- stop looking up your homework assignments on the internet and oh, I don't know....maybe just do them. Even though the world wide web can seem like the Cliff Notes of the Universe, sometimes you just have to do shit for yourself to really appreciate and understand it. Like sex, for example. It's the same idea, except the dust won't be disappointed with your little drop of soap and eventually tell you that it might be time to see other experiments.

what does it mean if a girl put a pink and grey butterfly on her door for a guy - You got me on this one. However, I am clearly no expert. Here is the total list of things I've had a girl put on her door for me:

(1) A different lock.





*which sounds like a card game Captain Kirk made up.

CYC.

Ever since the big Swine Flu media blitz, these signs have been popping up all over work (click to make larger):

Yes, you are correct. They are badly drawn posters that tell you how to sneeze and cough like a civilized human being instead of like...oh, I don't know...a farm animal, perhaps.

The pictures (which I assume some ad agency was paid big bucks to create) are comically bad, and the subject matter ridiculous. I also tend to think that the sort of people they are aimed at are exactly the sort of people least likely to read them. That's because they are too busy cleaning their ears with a car key, or scratching their sweaty nuts while standing at the urinal and then borrowing your favorite pen during a meeting.

I've decided to create my own equally ridiculous version. If I replaced one of the posters at work with this one, I wonder how long it would take for anyone to notice?

I'm betting the answer would be "Never."

My breakfast was glad to see me.

Mr. C's Great and Wondrous Show.

I think it finally hit me this week that Paul is no longer here. His birthday was last Sunday, and that was difficult enough, but this past Tuesday night a few of us got together to begin the dismantling of his swordsmithing shop.

The other guys got there early, so most of it was done by the time I got out of work. It was jarring, and more difficult than I thought it would be to walk into that place that had been so much his, only to find that it didn't exist any longer. By moving equipment, piling up tools, steel and other supplies, it had simply become a storage room full of stuff.

He was gone from it.

I got the same feeling I had as a kid when they bulldozed the woods in which my brothers and I spent our summers. I wrote a small post about that way back in 2005. (I've been writing this blog way too long.)

Since today is the fourth of July, I thought I'd share a story about Paul that seems appropriate.

When Paul and I were still living at home, Paul's parents hosted an annual 4th of July cookout. Every year I would spend most of the day over there stuffing my face with hot dogs and hamburgers and pasta salads and chips. Before we turned 18, we'd steal beer when nobody was looking, chug them in the basement, and hide the empties behind the bar. Later on, when we were legal, we'd bring our own beer so we didn't have to drink his dad's Black Label. All in all, it was a good party, and we looked forward to it. The food was always good, and the fireworks afterward were the highlight of the day. I don't think I missed a single fourth of July there throughout all of high school and college.

After dark, when the coffee was brewing and the desserts were on the table, Paul's dad would break out a metric ton of illegal fireworks and put on a show for everyone in attendance. Most of the neighbors came over to watch, too. Everyone would applaud and oooh and ahhh over them, and Mr. C loved every minute of it. Because it was a residential neighborhood, he always went easy on the rockets and tended to stick with the stuff that stayed earthbound. I'm not talking snakes and sparklers here, I'm talking things like giant spinners, jumping jacks, boards full of nailed up pinwheels, and ground blooms.

Paul liked rockets, though, so his dad always got him a few extra-large bottle rockets that he was allowed to launch over in the baseball field of the nearby school. Part of our yearly routine would be to head over to the field at dusk and launch one right before the show started at the house. Then after his dad's show, we'd go back over with the others and send them up, too.

The one year I'll always remember is the year that things didn't go according to plan. That year, I think Paul and I were getting bored with the same old thing. We were probably around 16 years old, we were tired of the whole "family cookout" extravaganza. In our minds, we had become too cool for that. As we were walking down the street toward the shortcut through the woods to the schoolyard, Paul said, "I wonder what would happen if you lit one of these things horizontally? Ya think it would go anywhere?"

"Probably not," I replied. "It would have to be on something pretty smooth."

"Like the road," he said, looking up and down the street to see if there was anyone around.

There wasn't. Everyone was in their backyards with their grills going full bore. The fronts of the houses were deserted.

"Yeah, like the road," I agreed. "The road would do it."

The road that Paul lived on was about a quarter of a mile long, and straight as an arrow until the right angle turn slightly past his house. He laid the mammoth bottle rocket down flat in the middle of the street and took out his lighter.

"Think we should?" he asked.

I could already tell he'd made up his mind to do it, regardless of what I said.

"It's your rocket," I said. "I'm just here to watch."

For some reason, I think we both expected that the rocket would just shoot straight up the middle of the street and that would be that. A boom, a laugh, and it would be over. Looking back on it now, I have no idea why we would have believed that sort of trajectory was even a remote possibility. These rockets were powerful, and wanted to go up.

He checked again for cars and people, and when he didn't see any of either, he reached down with his lighter and lit the fuse. While we were clearly ignoring the majority of the safety instructions written on the rocket, among them being minor details like "CAUTION: VERTICAL LAUNCH ONLY," and "USE WITH ADULT SUPERVISION" we did follow the bit that said "light fuse and back away quickly." We very quickly put about 20 feet between us and the sputtering rocket.

If you've ever lit the fuse on a large rocket, you know there's always that second or two when the fuse disappears into the body of the rocket and nothing happens. You wonder if it's a dud, or if it's just taking its sweet time. You are torn between waiting for something to happen, or walking up to it to see what's going on.

The fuse disappeared into the rocket, and nothing happened. We looked at the rocket, then at each other, and then back at the rocket. Paul said, "I think it's a d--" and then the street erupted.

The rocket took off down the road with a deafening whoosh! amid a huge shower of silver sparks and billowing smoke. This was made all the more impressive because the rocket only traveled about a hundred feet down the street before it hooked left and jammed itself under the front tire of the neighbor's car with a loud, hollow PONK!

It sat there spewing an ever-increasing shower of sparks as we looked on in horror. I barely had time to think, "no, no, no, No, NO!" before the rocket petered out.

We had taken a step or two toward the car before we remembered what came next -- and decided that maybe moving toward this thing wasn't such a good idea.

What came next was not good.

As we watched, cringing, the rocket made a noise like a warm bottle of seltzer being stabbed with a knife, and then shot two dozen flaming red balls in all directions. The balls started spinning around madly, bouncing around under the car and jumping onto front lawns and driveways alike. Then, almost simultaneously, each of the 24 burning balls changed color to vivid green and exploded with a high-pitched crack. It sounded like a full-on .22 caliber gunfight.

At that point we figured the worst was over. We were wrong.

We had been watching this unfold for what seemed like an hour, but had been, in reality, perhaps six to ten seconds. A split-second later, fresh activity began under the tire. We looked at each other with expressions that were half "WTF did we just do?" and half, "WTF should we do?" For lack of an answer to either question, we just continued to stand there and watch as another huge cloud of smoke and a fresh burst of golden sparks shot out of the jammed rocket, right before it blew itself to tiny smoking pieces with an explosion that sounded like a mortar shell.

"HOLY SHIT!" Paul exclaimed.

I had no immediate answer to that that statement. It really said it all.

We waited another minute for the car to explode, and when it didn't, we walked cautiously toward it to assess the damage. Surprisingly, other than some gray powder burns on the tire, there wasn't any. There were some scorches on the road from the fire balls hopping around and exploding, but there didn't seem to be anything else burning. We figured we had gotten lucky and that maybe we weren't going to end up owing anyone a new paint job.

Unbelievably, we were still the only people on the street. We quickly gathered up all the bits of plastic, un-jammed the wooden stick from under the tire and nonchalantly walked away, as if it had been someone else entirely who had almost blown up the neighbor's car and lit the entire subdivision on fire.

When we got back to his house, we stole a couple more beers, drank them in the basement and then headed out back to watch his dad's show. It was great, as usual. We clapped and hooted at every one he set off, even the ones we thought were lame. Looking back on it now, it was great to be there surrounded by family and friends, with nothing but good times ahead of us. The potential of those days was staggering.

I think I need to find a big-ass bottle rocket, just for old time's sake.

Happy 4th of July, mate. I miss you.

Procrastination.

I just realized I owe a bunch of people a Brennin Hunt CD from this post. The winners of the CDs were:

6th place: Anhara
5th place: Deanna
4th place: Christina
3rd place: Tricialynn
2nd place: Melodie

I have addresses for Tricia and Melodie, but nobody else. If you haven't (or even if you have) already sent your address to me via my profile e-mail, please do. I have the CDs packaged up and I'll get them out next week.

Carry on!

PS - I have one extra, so whoever would like it and posts the first comment gets it.

Boot Camp.

So as I mentioned in a previous post, I've been looking for some new hiking boots. I don't think my foot size has really changed since I was in high school. I took a 9.5 then and I take a 9.5 now.

I have very stringent boot requirements. They have to give me great ankle support (old snowboarding yard sale injury), they can't be made in China (I modified that requirement - at first I tried "they have to be made in the U.S." but I discovered that we don't make anything here anymore), they have to be comfortable, have almost no heel lift and be made with Norwegian welt construction. A tall order, I know.

The one boot that fits all those requirements is the Merrell Wilderness. Made in Italy, tough enough for some light climbing, comfortable enough for long hikes -- I've had a few pairs of those and they've been great. They can be re-soled, and they aren't too difficult to break in. Lastly, they always fit. The one thing they are not, however, is waterproof.

Oh, they'll say they're waterproof, and they may even be waterproof right out of the box, but they are not waterproof for very long. Even when properly treated, a rainy, messy hike will mean your feet will get soaked.

I wanted another pair to wear when when the weather looked suspect. Something that included that magical material called Gore-Tex. I knew I'd have to give up the Norwegian welt, but I figured it would be a fair trade-off.

As you may already know, I hate shopping. I hate going to stores, I hate being waited on, I hate standing in line to check out, I hate just about everything involved in the entire miserable experience. That being said, you'd be correct in thinking that I am a big fan of ordering stuff online.

Boots, however can be an iffy proposition, because unless you're buying something you've purchased before, you have nothing to go on except for the reviews of others. So began my boot buying odyssey, which has not yet, in fact, ended. Right now there are boots in a box on my kitchen table, waiting to go back from whence they came.

Let me tell you why.

I know you probably don't give a shit, but I'm going to get this off my chest anyway, so what else do you have to do? I suppose you could go watch reruns of old American Idol episodes, but even if I just typed nothing but the word "moist" over and over and over for an hour and then made you read it out loud, it would probably be less annoying than doing that.

Anyway, after reading hundreds of reviews, I decided that these boots might be the ones for me. They had the Gore-tex, they had good reviews, and they were made in Germany. Sure, there were a few discrepancies in the reviews -- some people said they ran big, other people said they ran true to size -- you never know who to believe. I figured worst case, I'd take a shot, order my normal size and hope it worked out.

Here's how I pictured this happening:

1. Order boots.
2. Receive boots.
3. Wear boots.

Simple, right?

To make sure things happened as I wanted them to, I decided I needed to figure out exactly what my shoe size is. I always knew I was a size 9.5, but I never really knew my width. A? B? C? D? E? EE? EEEE? F? G? I had no idea.

"How hard can it be?" I thought to myself. "There are probably hundreds of sites out there with the info I need." The first site I went to told me to trace my feet, then click the "shoe size conversion chart" link. Since I always do what the internet tells me to, I traced my feet onto two pieces of paper, measured toe to heel and side to side, and then clicked on the link. It was dead.

So I had learned three things. One, I have duck feet:



Narrow in the back -- wide in the front, flat on the bottom. They are like triangular paddles on the end of my legs. Two, my right foot is a full half-inch shorter than my left. Three, static web pages suck.

Armed with that knowledge, I headed off to Wikipedia, the knower of all things, and looked up "shoe size."

That's when I started to get confused. It seems that along with religion and politics, nobody in the world can agree upon the best way to size a shoe. It seems that the US, Canada, Europe, Asia and the military all use different systems. Oh, and women's and children's sizes -- also different.

WTF.

I continue to read. It wasn't all bad. The first thing I saw was that there were three common sizing systems. The first one is used by NATO and other military groups. It's called "Mondopoint." There are length units, and width units. At least that makes sense, right? In a perfect world, you'd walk into a shoe store and if your foot is 10.5" long and 4" wide, you'd say "give me that shoe in a ten-five by four" and you're on your way. But no.

Because Mondopoint is in millimeters and I live in the U.S., I can't convert that into actual inches without a calculator and a lot of time. So it wasn't ideal. Also, I am not in the military, and since nobody else uses it, it was dead to me.

I looked at the U.S. information next.

The calculation for a male shoe size in the USA or Canada is:

male shoe size = 3 x last length in inches -24

Then I had to look up "last length." Apparently, the "last" is the foot-shaped template over which the shoe is manufactured.

Wikipedia told me that the traditional US system is similar to English sizes but "starts counting at one rather than zero, so equivalent sizes are one greater." So one number higher than English shoes. OK. I'm good enough at math to figure that one out.

I started reading about the sizing methods used in the UK. "Shoe size in the UK (English size) is based on the length of the last..."

So far, so good. I mean, I now knew what a "last" was.

"... measured in barleycorn starting from the smallest practical size, which is size zero. It is not formally standardised."

Jesus Christ. Barleycorn? Where was I going to get my hands on a barleycorn at 11:30 pm on a Thursday? I don't know about you, but I don't have a barleycorn farmer on speed dial. Plus, it's not even standardized. What would happen if I inadvertently got my hands on some bigass barleycorns?

So it turns out that the barleycorn is a "basic Anglo-Saxon unit, literally the length of a corn of barley."

Wikipedia says that it "goes back to 1066, as the base unit from which the inch was nominally defined. Three barleycorns comprising 1 inch was the legal definition of the inch in many mediæval laws, both of England and Wales, from the 10th century Laws of Hywel Dda to the 1324 definition of the inch enacted by Edward II. Used in current UK shoe measurement."

Used in current UK shoe measurement. Did I just read that?

So apparently the English are currently using a unit of measure from 1066 to size shoes. Currently, as in Today. Right now. Exactly at this second, there's some UK bastard out there lining up his fucking barleycorns.

Then I remembered these boots are made in Germany. I immediately canceled my barleycorn order, and started looking at the Continental European system -- which is used in France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

In this system, the shoe size is the length of the last, "expressed in Paris points."

Seriously? Paris points? Son of a bitch.

So it turns out that a Paris point is ⅔ of a centimetre and it has been agreed upon in Germany that the last is the length of the foot plus two centimetres, so to figure out my shoe size, the simple formula is:



At this point, I was done. I just opened the Cabela's website in my browser, ordered my boots in a size 9.5, EE and called it a night. A few days later, they showed up.

I put them on, and they were too big. I'd say by at least three, maybe four barleycorns. I had to crank the laces down, and I still got heel lift.

So I did what I should have done to begin with. I got on the phone with the sales guy at Cabela's, and told him they were a little too big and I was getting some major heel lift.

"Yeah, they do run a little big," he said. "You ordered the wide boot -- the EE width -- is that what you wanted? Most people with normal feet go with D width. If I were you, I'd get the 9 D's. They'll probably fit you perfectly."

So now I need to send the other ones back, and in another week, I'll have a pair that will supposedly fit me like they should.

But I've been saving my poppy seeds, just in case. It turns out that according to modern-day UK math, they go four to a barleycorn, and they're much easier to get.

They're a real pain in the ass to line up, though.

Sometimes I get mail.

At least a few times a week, I get mail from people or companies looking for free advertising. They always pitch it as "Hey, I've got a funny idea for a blog post!" or "Here's a funny site!"

Just to show you the sort of high class companies that my blog attracts, I am going to share one of these e-mails with you.

To: me@verizon.net
Subject: funny idea for your blog!

Hey Johnny,

We have been enjoying your blog and thought you might be interested in our hilarious new product: the assbrella. It is the world's only umbrella featuring a huge picture of an ass! Check out our site at assbrellas.com for some pics and more info. Feel free to pass it along to your readers!

Thanks,

The Assbrellas Team

Problems I have with this e-mail in no particular order:

1. It's an ass. On an umbrella. And the top of the handle pokes out of the bunghole.
2. Asses look pretty damn creepy when there is nothing else attached to them.
3. They are lying their giant umbrella asses off when they say they've "been enjoying my blog."
4. They wouldn't give me one for free.
5. They have a team. Dedicated to the assbrella.

Picture this conversation:

Dad: "So, you want to marry my daughter? That's great, that's great. What business did you say you are in?"

ABGuy: "I'm a member of the Assbrellas team."

Dad: "Sounds impressive. I think I've heard of him. He's that Italian formula one race car driver, right? Antonio Aiezbrello?

ABGuy: "No. I am a member of a sales team that sells cheap chinese umbrellas. With pictures of hairy asses on them. You know. Assbrellas."

Dad: "Get the fuck out of my house."

So there you go. Order yours today.

More good times.

Due to a recent reorg, my boss got a new boss. He seems like a nice guy, but I don't really know him. Since my boss was out of the office today, I had my very first Instant Messaging interaction with my boss's boss. It went about as well as could be expected:

Big Boss: How's everything in the world of messaging today?

Me: So far so good

Big Boss: Are you on point for the disaster recovery test?

Me: No, not this time. I believe it's going to be Jim

Big Boss: ok. I'll check in with him on that. I hope it all stays quiet

Me: Yeah, so do I

Big Boss: OK, page me if anything comes up. Have a good one

Me: Will do, you too1

Me: too! I meant too!

[end chat]

Have a good weekend, everyone.

Good times.

I still have to post my followup, but I don't have time tonight. Instead, I'll share this small part of my day.

I was waiting in the grill line at the cafeteria today when I got a text message from my buddy Yort.

"Lunchin?" it said.

I had seen him sitting in a conference room on my way down to the chow line so I figured he was working through lunch.

"Waiting in line right now." I replied.

A few seconds later, I got another message. "Dammit!" it said.

So I bailed on the line and walked back to the conference room. He was gone. I walked back to his desk. Not there. I walked back toward the cafeteria just in case I had missed him somehow.

I sent him another message. "Where r u?"

While I was waiting, I decided to hit the bathroom down the hall. Just before I walked in the door, another message came in. It just said, "Baffroom."

I realized the implications of my friend texting me from a stall, but I walked in to take a leak anyway. I immediately saw his sneakers under the handicapper stall door. More room for texting, I guess.

I did my business, and as I was washing up, I yelled over to him. "Hey! Pinch it off and get out of there. I don't have all day!"

He flushed, opened the stall door, and walked out.

It was some dude I had never seen before.

Fucking New Balance.

There and back again.

So this is my 2nd and last night in beautiful downtown......Brooklyn, I think?

Brooklyn, Ohio. Yeah, I think that sounds right. As far as I can tell, it consists of a Friday's restaurant, a business park and a Hampton Inn. The latter location is where I am currently fighting with the heating/cooling unit and listening to the train rumble past, roughly 3 feet from my window.

Other than that, I have very few problems with my room. It's superficially clean, which is about all you can realistically hope for, the water pressure in the shower is decent, and while there was a very suspect half-inch brown smear on the front edge of the toilet seat, the rest of the bathroom is spotless. I cleaned the smear off with a washcloth and tossed it into the garbage can.

I'm sitting here listening to Wilco and wondering what to write about. I'm working on about combined seven hours of sleep over the last two days, so if none of this makes sense, I apologize in advance. I think I'll just tell you a little about my trip.

The toilet issue above makes me think that so far, this trip seems germier than most. Maybe my germaphobic tendencies are getting worse, or maybe people are just becoming more disgusting over time, but this trip seems worse than normal for some reason. Some of it was even self-inflicted, but I'll get to that in a bit.

It all started with the button on the ticket machine at the long-term airport parking garage. I pulled my car up, rolled my window down and reached out to push the button when I realized that there was something blobby and kind of red smeared on it. I'm not sure what it was. I am sure I don't ever want to know. For my sanity, I am calling it strawberry jelly. It helps me sleep better at night. I pushed the bare edge of the button and took my ticket with a shudder. After I parked the car, I walked to the terminal and picked up my boarding pass.

My next airport run-in was with the licky lady. She was stationed at the security check, sitting up on her little stool, looking over the top of her cats-eye glasses that were perched precariously on the tip of her nose. "Boarding pass and ID, please," she said, holding out one latex glove-covered hand. I handed her both the boarding pass and my driver's license.

If you've ever picked up your boarding pass via one of the kiosks, you know they dispense them on thermal paper, which is very, very thin. Apparently, too thin to separate from the folder easily. You know what makes it easier? Giving a good, solid lick to your filthy, rubber-clad finger with your knobbly old tongue first.

She wrote something on my boarding pass with her pen and then held up my license for inspection.

"Second row on the left," she said, handing me back my license and boarding pass. I could still see the little glistening spitspots drying on my license. I wrapped it in the boarding pass and tried to forget about it as I bent to take off my shoes.

I tossed them into one of the buckets, grabbed another one for my laptop and pulled all the crap out of my pockets. The guy in front of me was doing the same. I tossed my backpack on the conveyor belt.

"Do you have any gels, liquids or creams?" the security guard working the X-ray machine asked the guy in front of me.

"Yes, just the normal shampoo and toothpaste-type stuff," he answered.

"Can you remove it from your bag, please?" the security guard asked.

The man pulled a clear ziplock bag from his duffle. The security guard poked at it, and then spotted something.

He rooted around in the guy's bag for a second, then pulled out an extra-large tube of Preparation H with a 3-inch nozzle.

"The limit on tubes and bottles is 3.4 ounces," he said, holding it up. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to confiscate this."

The guy didn't argue. I think he just wanted to toss himself into the gears of the x-ray machine and call it a day. At least his ass wouldn't hurt any more. The rest of the ziploc bag passed through the machine without incident. The guy was so flustered, he left his laptop in the bucket and I had to point it out to him.

I was next.

"Do you have any gels, liquids or creams?"

"Uh, yes," I said. "Just the normal, uh, you know, toiletries and whatnot. Toiletries and whatnot? Where the fuck did that come from? Who am I? Queen of England?

"Take them out for me, please."

I took them out of my backpack, nervous, yet smug in the knowledge that the time I spent transferring shampoo and conditioner and toothpaste into small 3-ounce bottles was not wasted.

As I put the bag on the conveyor belt, I noticed something. My ziploc bag was vibrating. The guard noticed it too. He looked up at me and arched an eyebrow, clearly waiting for me to explain what he was seeing.

"Electric Toothbrush," I said sheepishly, opening the bag and holding it up for all to see, just to dispel any confusion. I clicked it off and shoved it back in.

After I made it through the security check, I survived a momentary gross out when I realized that while I was packing my computer and my "toiletries and what-not" into my backpack, I held my boarding pass and driver's license pursed between my lips. Is it any wonder we are all going to die of swine flu? No, it is not.

(As an aside, is it just me, or does everyone else feel like they are about to get called out for smuggling drugs or explosives or something when they go through these checkpoints? I'm always expecting someone to walk up to the head guy, whisper something, point directly at me, and the next thing I know I'll be on the ground with some TSA agent's foot on my neck while another one cuffs me.)

After that, I went to grab a cup of coffee at starbucks, and the woman making it coughed directly into her hand and then used it to press the lid on my coffee. I brought it over to the sugar/cream stand, and then promptly dropped the lid on the floor. I picked it up, thought fuck it, and put it back on. I was already dead.

My last gross out on the way here was, as you've probably surmised, bathroom related. Right before boarding, I decided I'd make a quick run to the men's room to get rid of some of that coffee I had ingested. As I was standing there doing my business, I realized I was standing in a puddle of piss. Nothing out of the ordinary there, I guess. I rotated to the outside of my feet to keep as much of my shoe off the ground as possible, but the damage was done. I walked out just in time for our flight to board. As I was stuffing my backpack under my seat, I realized something. The only place to put my newly contaminated piss feet was right on top of my bag.

Man, I hate traveling.

It's late and I have an early shuttle to catch to the airport in the morning, so I'll have to tell you about the rest of the trip tomorrow. I'll give you a hint: It involves heavy drinking, other peoples' dirty balls and socks of unknown origin.

You can't go wrong with that combo.