Welcome to Man Town, Bitches.

One of my friends who reads my blog gave me an early birthday gift this past Saturday because she won't be around this coming weekend. Thanks to her, as I'm typing this, I am surrounded by the scent of Mandles* in (believe it or not) car air freshener form:

So I am here to give you the lowdown on each of these fine scents, but I have to type really fast because all of them together like this is making me a little sick. To encapsulate what I am smelling right now, it's almost like I'm cutting my grass behind the wheel of a leather upholstered, wood trimmed John Deere lawn tractor, and George Clooney is riding bitch.

That will make more sense in a bit, trust me. So without further ado, here's my opinion on each of these masterpieces:

2x4: I figured I'd start with this one because it's the biggest letdown. Sadly, it smells nothing like a 2x4. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it smells nothing like any sort of wood whatsoever. If you really stretch, you might say there is something reminiscent of pencil shavings in there somewhere. I can't exactly place the scent, but in my head I'm picturing a vending-machine vanilla wafer stick dipped in old spice and then shoved up an oompa loompa's ass. But that's my problem, not yours. Just know that it smells bad. Really bad. Like being trapped inside your grandmother's coat closet for three hours. (Also my problem.)

Riding Mower: This one smells like grass. A little too much like grass if you ask me. What do I mean by that? Well, I like the smell of cut grass as much as the next guy. I like the golf course, or when the windows are down in the car and I drive by someone mowing their lawn. It's generally a fleeting, pleasant smell. Now picture yourself being knocked unconscious and waking up here:

That's what it smells like. Overpowering. It smells like when you lift the lid on that giant garbage can full of grass clippings that has been sitting in the sun for three hours at the end of your driveway. Definitely not my favorite. Maybe not as bad as 2x4, because at least this smells like what it's supposed to, but that's still probably comparing oompa loompas to oranges. Although come to think of it, those little bastards were as orange as the cast of Jersey Shore, so maybe that's a bad example.

Touchdown: My Honda Fit has new leather seats now. At least, if you close your eyes and forget you're in a japanese tin can it does. If you've ever wondered how they get that pricey new car leather smell into pricey new cars, I will bet money that it's put in after the fact with whatever this thing has been dipped in. It smells like a new baseball glove, or a new leather sofa, or a new Lexus. (Or how I imagine a new Lexus to smell, since they generally see me coming and won't allow me on the lot.) This one is not bad at all. I have no idea if the actual mandle smells like this air freshener or not, but I would probably buy it on sale and then light it in the room where I have my cheap pleather couch. It won't stop your thigh skin from being torn off if you get up too fast on a hot day, but it'll make the experience much more olfactorily pleasant. It makes me feel like this.

Man Town: Here is a sentence I never thought I would say. Take me to Man Town and drop me off. This smells like the cologne I could never afford. When you get your first whiff of this, you immediately picture someone in a Brioni suit, flashing an understated Platinum Pearlmaster as they pay for their Grey Goose martini with their Centurion AmEx. In other words, you picture Bruce Wayne. Or George Clooney. But not George Clooney playing Bruce Wayne because that was just total shit, regardless of how you think it smells.

So I actually like this one. Man Town. Go figure.

My wife: What's that smell? Have you been rubbing that Man Town on your face again?

Me: What do you mean, again? It was only that ONE TIME. And no, I'm not a complete idiot. Even though it's ten times cheaper than that cologne I like, I wouldn't continue to rub a car air freshener on my face, day after day. That would be stupid.

My wife: Yes, it would.

Me: I plan to just keep it in my back pocket now.

My wife: Man Town deserves you.

*shout out to Domestic Goddess for the totally awesome name that Yankee Candle missed out on. Check out her blog and tell her Johnny sent ya.

These are real.

I found out today that Yankee Candle is now selling candles for men.

I don't even know where to begin. This is either a fantastic idea or the stupidest thing I've ever seen. I guess it depends upon how well they're implemented.

Take Riding Mower, for instance. It's clearly not just the smell of freshly-cut grass, or they would have named it "Freshly Cut Grass." No, this is Riding muthafukin' Mower, so my guess is that it has a more testosterone-y* smell to it. I'm betting this one has a top note of cut grass, however the middle note is probably gasoline and warm beer. They have to throw some realism in there, or it won't work. They can take it too far though, and that's what I'm worried about. If it were really realistic, ten minutes after you lit it, it would suddenly start smelling like you just chopped up a fresh pile of dog shit by mistake.

As a woodworker, one of my favorite smells in the entire world is the smell of freshly-planed pine boards. So I admit to you all that if this 2x4 candle smells anything like that, I'm buying a case of them. Of course, they do cost $27 each, which is not cheap for a candle. I could just go out to my shop, plane some pine boards, stuff the shavings into an old tube sock and hang it on the wall with a nail, but because I have a wife I will (probably) not do that. Not more than once, anyway.

But I'm willing to bet they screwed this up. Knowing Yankee Candle and their propensity toward making candles that smell like various baked goods, it probably smells mostly like wood, but eventually you'll notice the subtle undertone of Keebler Elf sex and underage gingerbread men.

"First Down" has a picture of a football on it, so I'm probably not qualified to judge. I haven't been forced to throw a football since high school, and every one of them smelled like a combination of dirt, wet leather and body odor. I can't imagine this scent would be appealing to anyone, but you never know.

Lastly, there's one they left out of the group shot:

I can't even imagine what this one smells like. Unwashed ass? Athlete's Foot? Moldy jock straps wrapped in a wet towel? In my experience, the whole point of lighting one of the Yankee Candles that smell like Keebler Elf sex is to to cover up anything that smells even a little like "Man Town."

Either way, I'm curious as to how these will do. In the meantime, I have another idea for them -- I call them "Complementary Scents."

So if, for instance, you cooked haddock last night and your house now smells like fish, instead of trying to get rid of it, you can just light up this candle and BAM! - you're good to go:

I'm tellin' ya, it can't miss.

*Testosterony - the other San Francisco treat

Come on over. We'll watch The Voice and have some soup.

I don't generally watch reality TV, but this season I watched a little bit of the Voice. I've learned the best way to watch it is via DVR. That way, I get to skip (a) commercials, (b) background stories I don't give a shit about (c) the long, drawn out, artificial suspense of the actual choosing process, built-up by saying "And the winner is..." and then NOTHING AT ALL for a solid 60 seconds while suspenseful music plays in the background.

So I fast forward until I see someone singing, listen for a few seconds to find out if it's a good performance or a song I like -- and if it's not I fast-forward again. When they're doing the actual cuts, I just fast forward until someone jumps up and down really fast, then I stop it to see who got picked to stay. It's amazing how quickly you can watch a two hour program this way.

I stopped watching it a couple of weeks back when the guy I liked best got cut. I can't remember his name, but he was some older black dude with a great voice. I'm sure someone knows who I'm talking about. I think Christina let him go and kept the opera singer who made every rock song sound like it belonged in a Disney movie. Anyway, my wife told me who won last night, and she asked me if I wanted to see them choose the winner.

So I watched it, however I was not adequately prepared. I mean, I already knew who won, so I was prepared for that -- but what I was not prepared for, not even in the slightest, was the sheer, gut-wrenching roller coaster of emotions I experienced when I saw Christina Aguilera's big sparkly diaper.

What the hell was that thing? I could not look away. At first I thought I was looking at the commander of the Vl'hurgs after someone said "I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle." Talk about your terrible miscalculation of scale. I tried not to imagine the horror of three low-paid assistants with plungers desperately attempting to tuck all that ass up into what looked to be some sort of adamantium chastity belt, but I failed. It was like the Klein Bottle of underwear, with no inside and no outside. It was just all over the place and nowhere all at once.

And while I'm on a rant about this show, am I the only one here who thinks Cee Lo sucks? He really cannot sing. I mean, granted, he sings marginally better than I do, but then again, nobody is paying me crap-tons of money for doing something I suck at (contrary to what most of my co-workers probably believe). His voice has the timbre of a dull circular saw cutting through sheet metal and just goes to prove that the music biz is mostly all about luck and who decides you're going to be a star.

At any rate, I couldn't finish watching it, so I wandered out into the kitchen to find something to eat. I was looking for cereal in the pantry, but I saw a little box in the corner that caught my eye. It was a memory from my childhood that I haven't thought about in a really long time. It was this:

When did my wife buy Maypo? I thought, pulling it off the shelf. I haven't seen this stuff in years.

It turns out that was a very good question, because when I asked her, she said she didn't recall buying it. When I looked at the box, I immediately discovered why this was:

Yes, that is a 13-year-old box of Maypo you're looking at right there. Clearly I need to watch less reality TV and do more cleaning shit up. Incidentally, this one was the winner, if such a contest can even have winners. The runners up consisted of about ten cans of soup, a few boxes of crackers, some blueberry pie filling, three full boxes of instant oatmeal, 2 cans of breadcrumbs, a package of chocolate made for dipping fruit, and some unidentifiable dried things that I think used to be raisins or cranberries. Maybe both. Or neither.

Basically, what we had here was an evil pantry of horrific death, because the most recent date on this entire batch of carefully preserved botulism was -- believe it or not -- 2009.

I did take great pleasure in throwing out the Lentil soup though. I hate those filthy little skin-covered bags of sand.

Shiny.

I promised (the one person who asked) that I would post this.

Let the ridicule begin. Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!

Blockage.

I'm not sure what's up with me and writing these days. We don't seem to like each other anymore. I feel like Hank Moody, except without all the sex, drugs, money, fame, bad luck and worse decisions. OK, I'm now aware that I should have picked a better example, but you get my drift. I feel I've been walking around in a black cloud of unfunny the last few weeks and I don't know why. Normally, shit just happens, and I write about it, but that technique has been failing me lately so tonight I decided I would just start writing and see what pops out of my tired head.

In other news, I quit the Draw Something, and it appears I'm not the only one. I spent way too much time on it that would have been put to better use writing. It was really fun, and got me (sort of) drawing again. As a result, I'm asking for this for my birthday, but I'm done with the game, at least for now. I think I got burned out on drawing the same things over and over. I'll have to share some of my masterpieces with you and see if you can guess them.

Speaking of things that popped out my head, check this bad boy out:

Not only is it completely grey, but it's insanely curly. And it just appeared out of nowhere this morning. Yesterday, nothing -- today, my head has one of Morgan Freeman's pubes growing out of it, and I have no idea how it got there. If this is any indication of the future I am going to be forced to shave it all off. No way am I walking around looking like this. That's just bad for business all around.

My wife and I have been trying a new coffee brand from Maine called Wicked Joe, and I think we like it. It comes in a black shiny bag, and it's pretty easy to find in your local grocery store. They have a dark roast decaf she likes and it's cheaper than Starbucks. The other day we had this conversation:

Her: "I really like that new decaf coffee I bought the other day."

Me: "Oh yeah? Which one?"

Her: "The Big Black Bag of Joe."

Me: "I'm pretty sure that's not what it's called. However, you have a bright future ahead of you in the field of product marketing."

So now that I've stopped drawing stuff, I find I have all sorts of time to write and no excuses. Your job here, if you choose to accept it, is to bug the shit out of me if you find I haven't updated in a while. It'll keep me honest. Just pretend you're Mick, and I'm this guy:

I went to a musical reunion of sorts last night, and holy shit, it was like the 80's never died. Or a better description would probably be it was like the 80's died, then came back to life looking for brains. I'll tell you all about it this week.

Meet Max.

Consider this my obligatory pet post for 2012. 

We're over the hump.

This week has been the week of doing stupid things. Luckily, I haven't screwed up anything at work (that I know of) but since it's only Wednesday, it's still a distinct possibility.

The last couple of days, my problems have been car related. That's not entirely true, because they're mostly stupidity related, but my car seems to be taking the brunt of it lately. It all began when I got tired of paying someone 70 bucks to put my snow tires on the rims in the fall, and another 70 to take them off in the spring, so I uttered the immortal words of the dumbass*, and bought an extra set of rims. This worked well for 1.5 seasons, and I was feeling pretty good about it until last week when I tried to take the snows off and somehow managed to break off one of the wheel studs with my Bruce Banner-like strength. So instead of paying someone 70 bucks to change the tires, I paid them $120 to fix a busted stud. On the plus side, I just figured out what the name of my new country band is going to be.

So that sort of sets the stage for this week's car idiocy. Right now, for instance, my car smells like someone boiled hazelnuts and old socks in a vat of sour milk and then dumped the whole mess in my car. Of course, you'd have to replace the word "someone" with the word "I" because I'm the idiot that attempted to balance a twenty-four-ounce cup of hazelnut cream coffee on the armrest of the open driver's-side door while trying to reach across the seat and grab my backpack. The cup fell over, hit my knee, and exploded. The top flew off and extremely hot coffee poured down my leg, into my shoe and basically filled up the driver's side floor pan with the other 20 ounces that hadn't been absorbed by my clothes. So that was the start of my Monday. I uttered a few choice words and cranked the windows part-way down, figuring it would help it to evaporate. In retrospect, I think all I did was help it go bad faster.

Since I get to work so early, it was just me and the security cameras. Because I park right in front of the door, I was able to run inside and get to my desk before anyone had a chance to see me and ask if I had pissed myself. As luck would have it, I was wearing a pair of dark brown khakis instead of the white corduroy bell-bottoms that I usually wear on Mondays, so I didn't have to worry about how it looked when it dried. I smelled like hazelnuts the rest of the day, but I suppose I've smelled like worse things.

After lunch, I decided to go for a walk because it was beautiful outside. As I left the building and the sun hit my face, I remembered what my wife said about always wearing my sunglasses to protect my albino rabbit eyes, so like a good little husband I walked over to my car to get them. Unfortunately, I have a habit of locking the car with the remote after I park, and I had done that as I left the car that morning. Also unfortunately, my keys were sitting on my desk upstairs.

So I did what anyone would do -- I reached into the open window, popped the lock, and opened the door.

So here's something I didn't know about this car that I've owned since 2008. It has some kind of half-assed, piece-of-shit, stops-absolutely-no-one factory alarm system, and if you unlock the car in this way, the fucking horn starts beeping in very loud, very insistent one-second intervals. Since it was high noon at the OK corral, there were about a dozen people either coming or going, and my car was parked literally 25 feet from the front door of the building. Another thing about this car I didn't know until just then? The only way to make this hellish noise stop is to either completely destroy the car with high explosives, or produce the ignition key/remote, which was sitting on my desk two floors and three security checkpoints from where I was currently standing.

I ran upstairs as fast as I possibly could, grabbed my keys from my desk, ran back downstairs to the car and jumped in. I slammed the door, jammed the key into the ignition and...the horn didn't stop.

I took the key out and pushed the panic button repeatedly and still nothing. At this point it had been beeping for five solid minutes, but to me it felt like five hours. I even started the car and that didn't stop it. By this time there was a small crowd forming to watch the show, so I did the only thing I could think of -- I put the car in gear and drove it away, horn blaring.

Why yes, I did steal my own car, thank you for asking.

About a mile up the road I pulled over and sat there with the horn beeping, barely able to form a coherent thought. Yes, I still looked like an idiot, but at least I didn't have people staring at me. (If an idiot sets off his car alarm and there's nobody around to hear it, is he still an idiot?) I finally just mashed all the buttons on the remote like I was playing an X-Box game I didn't understand and it stopped. (After a little analysis and a trip to the owner's manual, it turns out the magic button is the one labeled "unlock" which you have to push and hold in, even if your door is already unlocked. WTF.)

After a few minutes of sitting there enjoying the blessed silence, I drove back to the parking lot. Someone had taken my spot near the door, but that was fine by me. I just drove right past it and parked on the other side of the lot, pretending like nothing had happened. Then I ninja-walked my hazelnut-smelling ass in the side door when nobody was looking and finished out my day. It's a good thing I'm taking tomorrow off.

Wish me luck.

*I can do it myself and save a buttload of money.

Stick your family.

Since I spend about two hours a day on the road, I see a lot of vehicles with those stick figure family decals on the back. For some reason, those things annoy me. I mean, don't get me wrong, I know you're happy you have a big family you're proud of, and have a need to share it with the world, and I have to admit that those stickers are marginally better than the Jesus fish stickers, but here's the deal: I don't care how many kids you have, and I don't care how many animals you have, and I don't care what your hobbies are, I just want you to get the fuck out of the passing lane if you're going to go 55.

Most of the time, the stickers just make me judge you, because I know that if you have ten cat stickers on the back of your car, your co-workers are eating cat hair and trace amounts of feces every time you bring cookies to the bake sale.

It got me thinking though. If I were single and rich, I would totally do this:

Full disclosure: I actually just bought a geeky sticker for my car on Amazon. I didn't get it yet, but supposedly it shipped so I should have it soon. I'll post a picture when it shows up so you can all bust my balls.

Step away from the kid, Kid.

I've never posted about one of my dreams before, because I figure it's like posting about your pets -- nobody wants to read it. Most of the time, when you're trying to tell someone about a dream you had it ends up just sounding like you're a little insane. You know what I'm talking about. Everyone has a friend who springs one of these on you at one time or another:

"We were cruising down the highway in some kind of armored car, and you were singing a Katy Perry song at the top of your lungs, except it wasn't a song she's recorded yet, but I still could tell it was one of hers, you know? And suddenly Simon Cowell pulled up next to us in the bat-mobile and he held up a sign that said, "I will make you a star" except he was looking at me not you, and then I'm standing in the hallway at school, right? But it wasn't really like school. It was more like the dairy aisle at Price Chopper, and all I could smell was sour milk, but I couldn't remember where my locker was until all this milk started pouring out of locker number 45 and I remembered that I brought my pocket cow to school that day. I was just about to let him loose and call Matt Damon to mop up the hallway when my alarm went off and I woke up."

Keep in mind, the only reason I'm even sharing this is because I woke up laughing, and when my wife asked me what was so funny, I had to answer, "I was dreaming that Kid Rock and his girlfriend had kidnapped my sister's baby."

So apparently I was babysitting my nephew, and I had taken him to the mall. Keep in mind, I've never watched either of my sister's kids, because she lives in another state and she probably wouldn't trust me to watch their dog. I can't say I blame her because I'm sure I'd do something like forget him on the roof of the car at the gas station, or in a shopping cart in the Lowe's parking lot. In my dream, he could speak in coherent sentences even though he's only two. We were having some spirited conversations about why he couldn't go the Footlocker and check out the new running shoes, and it was really starting to creep me out because on some level, I knew it wasn't normal. The mall we were in happened to be in Tower City in downtown Cleveland. I have no idea why, since we have plenty of perfectly serviceable malls right here in New York.

I wanted to look at one of those new light wave cameras, and for some reason the mall was full of places that sold them. I took my eye off the kid for a second and I looked back just in time to see Kid Rock and his girlfriend scoop him up and start running. I started running after them, but it was useless because Kid Rock is one fast son of a bitch. He must have quit smoking. No, actually that's a lie. It wasn't that Kid Rock is really fast or anything, but here's something weird about all my dreams:

Sometimes I can fly, but I can never run. I don't know why this is. If I need to run, either toward something or away from it, I invariably become some sort of shambling idiot. I'm either running like the hunchback of Notre Dame when he needs to take an emergency crap, or it feels like I'm running through the shallow end of a swimming pool that has been filled with lime jello. Both of them are horrible, but at least with the first one I can cover some ground.

Anyway, after Kid Rock got away, I had no idea what to do, so I sat down on a bench and went over my options. I could look for my nephew, or I could look for my nephew and compare pricing on cameras at the same time and kill two birds with one stone. So I decided on doing that second thing, because hey - I still wanted a camera. So here's where it gets weird. When I came out of one store, OKSeriously was there. I don't know why. Maybe because she doesn't blog anymore she has all this free time to hang out at the mall.

"What's up?" she asked me, probably noticing the panicked look in my eyes. And also my camera brochure.

"Kid Rock and his girlfriend took my sister's baby," I said, rather calmly, considering the circumstances. "I really need to find him or she's gonna be extremely pissed when she gets back."

"Oh man," she said. "You shoulda stayed away from Kid Rock. He's a baby stealer." I was a little irritated at her because obviously he was a fucking baby stealer -- I knew that now. However, being the kind soul that she is, she agreed to help me find him, so I couldn't get too mad at her. She looked like she was into it, too, almost as if last week's baby hunt at the mall got canceled at the last minute, and this was going to be her only chance until next season. "You look upstairs, I'll look downstairs and we'll meet back here in 30 minutes," she said. "I'll text you if I find him." Then she took off.

I walked upstairs, and Kid Rock was nowhere to be found. I did stop and look at a really nice blue lightwave camera, but it was $800 and the salesman was kind of a dick because he kept telling me I was going to have to pay a premium because nobody had them yet. I knew there was like ten different places in the mall carrying them, so I didn't argue, I just left. I got back on point after that, and only stopped at one other store as I was searching and found one for list price. It was the best I could do.

A little while later, my phone buzzed and I had a text message from OKS. All it said was, "I got him. Meet me at the entrance to the RTA." So I went down the giant-ass escalator and saw OKS in the distance, holding my nephew in one hand and a Mexi-Melt from Taco Bell in the other. I never felt so much relief in my life.

When I got close enough, though, I could tell something was wrong. She said, "See? Got 'im!" and then turned him toward me. Except it wasn't him. She had the wrong baby.

"It's the wrong baby!" I said, instantly panicking again. "Where did you get that one?"

"I got him off some lady," she said.

"What? You just randomly stole some woman's baby?" I asked, incredulously.

"No, it wasn't random," she said, defensively. "She looked like someone who would be Kid Rock's girlfriend." She finished the Mexi-Melt and crumpled up the wrapper, tucking into the waistband of the baby's pants.

"Well, it's not him," I said, as something else dawned on me. "Ummm....where's that lady now?"

"Oh, don't worry, she's fine. She got on the Rapid right after I sent you that text," she said, then continued. "What if you just give your sister this one instead? She probably wouldn't even notice."

"It's not like we're in a sitcom and he's a goldfish or a hamster, for god's sake," I said. "I'm pretty sure she'd notice." She held up the baby again, and raised her eyebrows questioningly. "You sure? It looks like a pretty good one."

I was out of options and I knew it. "OK, it's worth a shot," I said. "Can you help me get him back to the car?"

"Yeah, no problem," she replied as we got on the escalator for the ride up to ground level. "And stay away from Kid Rock from now on, because he will steal a baby like it's his job."

She thought about that for a second, then said, "Me too, apparently."

"Yeah, you had good intentions though."

"That's true," she said, reconsidering. "I mean, it's not like I plan on doing it all the time or anything."

I agreed, and held the door open for her. "Maybe that could be your new go-to line to prove your loyalty to your friends. When they ask you if you'd take a bullet for them, you could say, "No, but I would totally steal a baby for you."

"I would, too," she said. "All my friends know it."

"Hey, check out this camera I bought," I said, as we walked to the car. "It's pretty sweet."

And then I woke up and made this:

It's not the heat, it's the humidity.

I know it's been a few months since I went to Florida, and I also know that I've been slacking off horribly when it comes to my blog, but I've had a bit of writer's block lately. I've also had my fair share of doctor's appointments to try to figure out what's going on with my neck/spine/arm/etc.

I am pretty sure that my body is rejecting my bones. I fully expect to wake up one morning lying next to my skeleton because it decided it couldn't take it anymore. I am still trying to get to the bottom of it, but the arm weakness and finger tingling appears to be some combination of a cervical disk bulge pressing on a nerve and the fact that I have carpal tunnel syndrome in both my wrists. This I found out by being connected up to electrodes and having needles stuck into my muscles while they jabbed me with a taser. At least that's what it felt like.

On the plus side, I now have to wear these black neoprene bowling glove-type things to bed every night so I don't bend my wrists under me while I sleep. They make my hands sweat like a bitch, but I do look a little like a super hero. As anyone who has ever worn a wetsuit will attest, neoprene is a hell of an insulator. I can't even imagine the gallons of sweat that must be sloshing around in Scarlett Johansenn's boots when she's been running around in that Black Widow costume.

The Florida trip this year was pretty good. My wife came down with me for the full week, which was boring for her during the day, but we did manage to have some fun at night. No, not that kind of fun (and there are reasons for that I will get into later) but we went out to a great dinner, and hit Epcot for the fireworks, did some shopping in downtown Disney -- that sort of thing.

The opening session speaker was Michael J. Fox, and he spoke about optimism and overcoming adversity. He was very inspiring. (If you're curious, here's his closer.) As usual, after the third day, I felt like my brain was going to explode. I was also down there with our team's resident genius, which meant that I was basically an understudy. Unless his plane went down, the chances of me actually learning something that he didn't already know were slim to none. I did notice one thing that was different this year. I haven't gone in a few years now, and it seemed that people stunk less. The last time I went to the show was in 2009, and this year was a distinct improvement. The only other explanation is that my nose is becoming less sensitive, but I don't think that's it. I still managed to see my fair share of grossness and I even snagged a picture or two for you because that's the kind of guy I am. In one of my early sessions, I sat behind this guy:

He looked pretty clean, and he didn't have B.O, but he kept scratching himself like he had ear mites or something. The fact that he wouldn't sit still was pretty distracting, but I didn't actually get up and move my seat until I saw this:

I know it's hard to make out, but about half of his scalp skin was resting ever-so-delicately on the back of his chair, just waiting for something to take it airborne. I wasn't waiting around for that, so I relocated.

There was another guy who wore snow camouflage every day. Here's a picture of him hiding in plain sight:

Now I like to consider myself a bit of a woodsman, and I know some of my readers may not be well- versed in the finer aspects of camouflage, but snow camo is one of the harder patterns to spot, because your eyes lose all the benefits gained by being a human who is able to see in color. With that in mind, I figured I'd help you all out a bit:

This next guy sort of scared me. He had a lot of holes and stuff in his face that he poked metal bits through, and he wore more mascara than most women I know. His fingernails were painted black, and his shirt said this:

I didn't know what it meant, exactly, but I was pretty sure it wasn't something I'd enjoy having upon me. I mean, are scourges ever good? I don't think that they are. And to wish one upon someone you never met is just plain rude. When I got home, I looked that phrase up. The most hits I found were related to this song by a band called Nile. Here's a bit of the lyrics:

The scourge of Amalek is upon you, The seed of Amu hath oppressed you
They hath urinated upon you and made you eat feces
They know not Ra
They are the enemies of Asar, they hath defiled your tombs
Violated your women and made victims of your little ones
They hath befouled the writings of Thoth
They hath burned sacred papyri, they hath cracked open your heads
Smashed your teeth and gouged out your eyes
They hacked off your limbs and thrown your mutilated bodies
Towards the heavens mocking Ra

There's a lot of defiling and befouling going on there. And no small amount of smashing and gouging and hacking. They also seem to be pretty pissed at the Egyptian gods for some reason. Every time I hear music like that, I can't help but think that maybe the cookie monster started a band.

I have no idea where this next picture came from, but it haunts my nightmares:

In retrospect, she probably has the ideal physical shortcoming for attending a tech conference. The next picture is one of me sitting outside the fake Rose & Crown and drinking a real $15 Guinness:

That's how you know you're in Disney. You pay $15 for a freakin' beer. Even the vending machines outside the parks have prices that are beyond belief:

For that much money it should be the size of a hardcover book.

Disney is always so clean, and I (as a full-time consumer and part-time germophobe) appreciate that. The streets, the bathrooms, the buses, you name it. So spotless you could make someone else eat off of it and they wouldn't die. Probably.

I was especially fond of these hand-washing tips provided by the kind folks at Brawny:

I was surprised there wasn't another paragraph that said something like, "Lots and lots of paper towels. On second thought, just go ahead and use the whole roll."

One of my favorite places to visit in Epcot is Japan, because it is wonderful and horrible at the same time. They have taken consumerism to the pinnacle and turned it into fine art. On the one hand, they are responsible for things like this:

But on the other hand, they are also responsible for things like this:

If I could draw like that, I would never leave the house.

Now, let me get back to the issue of not having any 'fun' at night. My wife will probably kill me for even telling you this story, so if I don't get laid for six months, it's your fault. The week before we left for Florida, she had a sinus infection and was on antibiotics to get rid of it. That's all well and good, except you know what can happen to women when they go on antibiotics for any length of time, right? That's not normally a problem, because there are drugs readily available if the worst comes to pass. So here's a fun fact: Do you know what there is absolutely NONE OF inside Disney proper?

Monistat.^®

That stuff is like gold down there in Mickey Town. Not a tube to be found anywhere. We didn't have a car, so we were stuck with wherever the Disney transportation could take us. Needless to say, the highly-tuned apparatus was out of service the whole week. On day three, we finally tracked down a tube of the single-dose miracle cure, but the next day there were still problems below deck so we resigned ourselves to the fact that we'd have to settle for simply enjoying some alcohol and the warm weather. Our last night there, we were sitting outside in a gazebo at dusk, drinking a twenty-dollar bottle of six-dollar wine. She was talking about how beautiful the weather was, and our garden at home -- how it was almost time to order new flowers and how she wanted to add some new flower beds, and the massive amount of clean-up we have to do every year.

There had been an ice storm the previous week, and the large juniper bush just outside the garden entrance had snapped off about half-way down due to the weight of the ice. We had planted it when we had moved in to our house, over 15 years ago, and she was really sad about losing it, because it hid the screened-in porch from the road. The conversation lagged, so we sat there in silence for a bit, enjoying the warm summer breeze and sipping our last glass of wine on our last night visiting the happiest place on earth.

She looked up at the darkening sky and sighed. Then she said, "I still can't believe my bush broke."

IM Conversations with Yort go wrong so quickly.

Johnny: That new graphics tablet I bought for the mac is awesome. Way better than my old Wacom and about 1/8th the price.

Yort: Nice

Johnny: 1024 pressure levels

Yort: But you only have two. Mash and un-mash.

Johnny: HULK DRAW!

Yort: Don't make Picasso angry. You wouldn't like him when he's angry.

Johnny: HULK NO HEAR GOOD ONE SIDE!

It just happens. I'm not sure why.

Who wants to draw something?

A few days ago I bought an app for my iPad called "Draw Something" and it's actually a bit of ridiculous fun. You can invite your friends to join, or you can just hit a button and start a game with a random stranger. I've been playing it on and off for a while and I've come to a few conclusions. My advice? Don't play with random strangers.

Somehow, and I don't even know how this is possible, a lot of people don't get that it's called "Draw Something" and not "Write Something." So listen up random stranger: if the word you are supposed to be drawing is "Sugar" don't draw a five pound bag and then write SUGAR across the front of it, dumbass.

Here's a recent example. See if you can guess what this might be:

I'll give you a few minutes to work on it. Calculators are allowed.

The good thing is, you can resign games if the people you end up playing with are complete idiots, so yeah I resigned that one. Mostly because he or she drew the outline of the United States and somehow managed to leave off Florida. Stay in school, kids.

Also, even among people who actually understand the one simple rule of this game, there are a lot of people out there who seriously can't draw for shit. The funny thing is you get to watch them as they're working on the drawing, so you get to witness the mistakes and the do-overs. You can almost see the thought processes that are going into the drawing. Some of them just defy description.

Here's one that I didn't guess. In retrospect, it's actually not bad:

The first person to guess it will win something. I'm not sure what yet, but rest assured it will be worth almost nothing and most likely be completely useless. But then again, maybe not.

And since the first one was apparently too easy, here's another chance for everyone else. I actually got this one so maybe I'm not as slow as I thought:

So anyway, this is where you come in. If anyone wants to play, you can look me up in the game using johnnyvirgil. I promise not to make fun of you.

Too much.

p.s. - Since I turned off that word verification thing I've gotten about 50 spam comments. They come to my inbox regardless of whether they show up on the posts or not, so I get to mark them as spam every day. Sigh...the things I do for you. Also I appear to be coming up on 2 million visitors sometime soon. So thanks for that. I wish I had a way to determine who the 2 millionth person was. I'd buy them a beer or something. I'm pretty sure it's going to be a spammer, though.

Once upon a time.

File under "The things I find while cleaning out my hard drive."

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, I decided to get married. I asked Paul if he would compose a little instrumental for our wedding video, and this is what he came up with:

Almost 25 years later, it still fills me with peace and makes me want to sit on the shores of a mountain lake with my wife.

The Irony, it burn's.

It took all of my nerd super powers to resist adding "So's he don't end up like me" to the end of that paragraph.

Also, a part of my childhood died today.

I'll never forget doing the "Monkee Walk" down the street with my brothers.

Davy was a large part of the soundtrack to my childhood. Even though the show was in syndication by the time we saw it, it was new to us, and we didn't know any different.

We just knew we liked it.

Hey, Hey.

Free Candy.

I have a bad habit of turning the passenger-side of my car into a dumpster. It drives my wife nuts. But since I rarely if ever have passengers, it just sort of happens over time, especially in the winter when I don't have a chance to clean my car. For instance, I've had the Miata's license plates sitting on the floor since I took the car off the road in October. I never actually made it to the DMV to turn them in because I'm a lazy piece.

Sunday morning I stopped over to Paul's house to help his wife figure out what to do with some of his camping gear, and ended up taking a few things. They also ended on the floor in my car. I had some tools in the back that I wanted to remember to take into the house, so I put those there too. Of course, that didn't happen, and so everything sat there.

The next day was monday and as a result I sucked it up and went to work, since that's the kind of guy I am. I figure it's bad form to call in sick on a monday. Unless you're actually sick, I mean. Since I get there very early, I parked where I usually park, which is right in front of the building because, well, lazy piece.

As I grabbed my coffee and my laptop, I happened to look over at the floor of the passenger side and saw this:

Jesus. I think the only thing missing was a bottle of chloroform and a rag.

After work I drove home very carefully, going the exact speed limit the entire way.

Then I cleaned my car.

I think there's a little crack in the family tree

I have one of those families that's strewn all over hell's half acre, so it always seems like getting together on the holidays never happens. It's a shame since I have nieces and nephews I don't get to see without making a three hour drive. As far as my wife's family, her brother is the only one we see pretty regularly. Her mother is a bit "colorful," shall we say, and we tend to avoid contact with her and my sister-in-law. To digress for a second, let me tell you a short story.

We lived at my in-law's house for about four months while we were building our house, and I once spent about forty minutes smelling candles. Let me explain.

One day we came back from the store and when we walked into the house, we were hit by the stench of weed. The house smelled like backstage at a Peter Tosh concert. Being the tactful sort of guy that I am, I immediately said, "Holy shit! It smells like you were smoking weed in here." Her mom stammered for a bit then managed to think of a lie and think of it quick.

"No, no, that's not what you smell," she managed to say, "I had some candles going, and I blew them out. That's probably it."

"Noooo, I'm pretty sure that's weed," I said.

I should have just kept my mouth shut, because then she made me sniff every one of her multitude of scented candles to determine if any one of them could have been the culprit. I finally told her that unless Yankee Candle had released a new Purple Kush line of candles that I was currently unaware of, none of her candles came even remotely close to smelling like the cloud of smoke we walked through to get to the kitchen. She eventually relented and let me go.

We agreed to disagree on what I had smelled. Even though we repeatedly told her that we didn't care whether or not she smoked or didn't smoke, she never admitted to it, even though she had obviously been exhaling the last lungful 30 seconds before we walked in the front door and had probably been surprised into swallowing a lit roach.

So that sort of sets the stage. (Remind me to tell you guys about the time she buried the pet bird. Alive. That's a fun story.)

Anyway, with the family such that it is, we always end up holding on to Christmas and birthday presents until they finally get so far past the intended date that we end up shipping them weeks or months later -- which explains why my mother-in-law told my wife that she wanted to have lunch because she had some Christmas gifts for us.

My wife was kind of dreading it, but her mom was all excited, especially about my gift. "I found a really nice shirt for Johnny!" she said. "I can't wait for him to open it." The lunch went off without a hitch, and they caught up a little on the craziness, and the gifts sat in my wife's car for a few days. The other night, she remembered to bring them in and we opened them up.

I do have to say, my mother-in-law knows my taste in clothes. You know how I can tell? Because the first thing I saw when I opened my gift was a mirrored sticker that said "OFFICIAL PARTNER OF THE UFC" in block letters. If you don't know, UFC stands for Ultimate Fighting Championship, and I am pretty sure she didn't even know that I am currently training to become the ultimate fighter in between working and blogging.

The shirt itself is black (befitting its bad-ass status) with white stitching, and has "MMA FORCE DIV." in block letters over the pocket. I'm not sure what MMA stands for, but it might be either "Mixed Martial Arts" or "My Muscles Atrophied" since I haven't worked out for a few months.

Not to be outdone by the pocket, the sleeves have their own ridiculousness to share. On one side there's an embroidered patch that said "ELITE DIVISION" on it, with a sillouette of a Lion and two crossed spears, and on the other is a shield with what appears to be a phoenix and three stars.

I really can't argue with the the ELITE status since I am sure if I wore this shirt my ELITE status would already be confirmed. The phoenix seems to indicate that I will rise from the ashes, which I am interpreting to mean that my plans to become the ultimate fighter are completely justified.

I immediately put it on (for the first and most likely last time), threw a spinning back kick at my wife and shouted, "I WILL FIGHT YOUR ASS RIGHT NOW!" Then I took it off and wrote this blog.

Just in case you cannot seriously believe this shirt exists, I present you with this photographic evidence:

I am torn between keeping it for its sheer awesomeness, or dropping it into the salvation army bin and taking a chance on having to fight a homeless guy wearing it at the final round of a UFC tournament somewhere.

FIGHT!

(p.s. -- totally unrelated -- but check out my friend pootie's first vandyke brown print. Awesome.)

Best comment ever. (Or at least today.)

I was reading an article this morning about the rioting kicked off as a result of someone somewhere burning a pile of Korans or Qurans or however it's spelled. My opinions about crazy people rioting -- whether it's over a supposed religious slight or the fact that your sports team won or didn't win -- notwithstanding, this comment thread made me laugh, so I figured I'd share. (Click to enlarge)

You gotta either laugh or cry, you know?

I'm shutting down this blog forever.

A little while ago, I took my blog down for one day to join what seemed like the rest of the world in protesting SOPA -- except I wasn't exactly sure how to do it so I ended up applying a password to the blog instead of making it go away. Shortly thereafter, I received an awesome e-mail from a woman named Angela telling me how much she enjoyed reading my mental diarrhea, and asking if I'd share the password with her. To sweeten the deal, she said she'd send me some coffee samples from a new line her company was launching.

I told her the shutdown was only temporary, and it would be back to normal the next day, and then I pretty much forgot about it. A few days later the UPS guy staggered up to the door holding a giant box, and had me sign for it.

When I dragged it inside and opened it, this fell out:

That's like 25 lbs of free coffee from mother-parkers.com. I'm thinking about shutting my blog down permanently just to see if I win the lottery.

Each bag is filled with coffee from a particular region, and the coffee comes from 5 different regions. I had really expected some sample packets, maybe enough to make a cup or two of each flavor. It's pretty good stuff too, but I wish it wasn't pre-ground. (Beggars can't be choosers as my mom used to say.) So far I've tried the 100% Colombian and the 100% Ethiopian, and both were really tasty.

Tomorrow morning, for the first time ever, I'm going to take an extra-long shower and then go 100% Brazilian. (I've heard it's very smooth but a little hard to get used to at first. I'll let you know.)

[Edit: I've shut off that horrible new captcha. Let's see how much spam I get.]

Happy Valentine's Day, Ted.

Am I the only one who thinks Jane Seymour should stick to acting and leave the jewelry design work to someone more qualified? Every time I catch her "open heart" necklace ad on TV, all I see is a fat sparkly ass dangling on a chain.

So it's Valentine's Day and everything everywhere is covered in hearts. I've always wondered where the "heart" shape came from. It looks nothing like an actual heart, right? I suppose with the internet at my fingertips I could look this up, but the depths of laziness you can achieve when you have that sort of research tool at your disposal are pretty amazing.

It used to be that if I thought, I wonder where the traditional symmetrical image representing the heart originated? I'd either have to drive to the library, look it up and make some photocopies of the pertinent info, or just decide it wasn't worth the effort to know and remain ignorant. Doing the latter, however, would ultimately drive me crazy enough so that I'd probably end up at the library anyway trying to find answers.

These days if I ask myself that question, I can either: (1) type a single sentence into a search engine and have instant gratification with a couple of mouse clicks, or (2) refresh my twitter feed to see what @wilw's dog just said. (Dog: IMA PLAY WITH YOU! Cat: Fuck off. Dog: POUNCE! Cat: Watch me run across the wall like I'm in the Matrix.)

So yeah. No idea on that heart thing.

I did manage to rummage around in my old third-grade Valentine's day card pile and come up with the most terrifying card I ever received:

In case you can't make it out, it says "Howdy Pardner" across the top of whatever that is supposed to be. A red hat? Bloody hair? I don't know, and that's just the head covering. The creature itself appears to be a pig of some sort. Why he's wearing a red bomber hat and has a heart tattooed on his forehead remains a mystery to me. And that grin. It haunts my dreams and I don't know why.

I think Tracy is the only one who will ever know for sure. Thanks, Tracy, wherever you are. Sorry I couldn't be your Valen-swine. Please don't hunt me down and kill me for my bacon.

The next one I found deserves an "A" for effort. Purple mountain majesties, beautiful multi-colored flowers, a scalloped edge, and in case you can't make it out from my horrible picture, actual glitter. Glitter, you guys.

Sadly for me, here's the inside:

Danny. Not Tina, not Donna -- either of which I would have been more than thrilled with -- but Danny. It's the story of my life.

I'm afraid Danny and I never really hit it off. I think maybe if he had gone with "Love, Danny" things may have turned out differently. Who knows? OK! I admit it! I liked the movie Burlesque! Xtina's costumes were to die for! Oh wait, sorry. That movie sucked. Cher sings like a transvestite and can't move her face. Christina Aguilera did look pretty hot though when she wasn't made up like a hooker clown. OK, I'm back now.

Lastly, I found this Valentine's day mural of my family, each represented by a different heart and helpful label:

So we have Mommy, Daddy, Kevin (Houdini), Brian (The Snitch) and baby. That about covers it, as far I can recall. Two parents, three boys, one girl... yep, that was it.

Then we apparently have other baby, small small baby, and Ted.

Ted?

Who the eff was Ted? I can almost see missing a couple of babies, because I really wasn't all that observant when I was eight -- and in my defense, small small babies are really small -- but Ted? I think I probably would have noticed an entire other guy living with us.

I still have no idea who Ted may have been, or why he ranked high enough on my list of important people to rate his own large blue heart, but I hope that wherever he and the missing babies are today, they are doing well.

So anyway, Happy Valentine's Day, everyone else. And let me know about that paper heart thing.

FYI, I'm all caught up on Wil Wheaton's dog.

I'm shocked.

Beach towels? Flip flops? Green screen photography? Professional teeth whitening? Six-second tanning?

How is it possible that this place could go out of business? If those things are not the basis for a solid five-year business plan, I'm not sure what is.

They probably should have added pizza, tattoos and psychic readings. That would have been too big to fail.

Final touch.

I went to AC Moore the other day to see if they had any poster framing/hanging-type stuff, because I had ordered a few posters on-line and I was going to (foolishly) try to frame them myself.

If you've never heard of these stores, they are chock-full of the type of crap that keeps old ladies busy when they're not playing bingo. Scrapbooking supplies, beads, baubles, loose buckets of creepy doll heads, painting and drawing supplies, you name it. Oh, and shitloads of over-priced fabric paint. I haven't seen fabric paint in squeeze bottles since I drew an REO Speedwagon logo on the back of a denim jacket and thought it was cool. Shut it. You can't fight this feelin' and don't tell me you can because I will know you're lying. Anyway, I am pretty sure you can't go to this place without coming home with inadvertent glitter in your asscrack.

About 30 minutes later, I walked out of there with a can of spray adhesive, a couple pieces of foam board, two giant frames, and glitter down my pants. And yes, that was intentional. What? I needed the glitter.

I've never used this spray adhesive before, but I'm an expert now so let me give you a few tips. One, don't spray it inside your house. In fact, I would go so far as to recommend you don't spray it at all, unless what you're after is mild hallucinations, probable neurological damage, missing short-term memories and a splitting headache. Two, I would not recommend spraying this in the vicinity of open flames or even static electricity unless you have a deep burning need to violently explode, or at the very least, burn off all your body hair. Just by the smell of this stuff, you can tell it would go up like the Hindenburg.

Speaking of your high potential to be sporting vast quantities of errant body hair (I know you guys), cover that shit up, because if you don't you'll be sorry. Especially watch out for your arm hair. If you have arm hair, I mean. If you do, you should probably wear long sleeves when you spray it, otherwise you will have a matted pelt on both arms by the time you are finished, and trust me, this glue does not wash off. I never had dreads on my arms before. It's not a good look for me, fyi.

So long story short, after almost turning myself into human flypaper with the spray adhesive, I ended up with this:

I was originally thinking of going for The Crow and Army of Darkness, but I went old school instead. Plus, I kinda like to look at Audrey Hepburn whenever I get the chance.

I didn't really notice this until after I had the new posters in, but I'm pretty sure my frames were happy to see me, based on the "stock" picture I removed:

Maybe it's just the leftover adhesive fumes talking, but if it were my company, I would have probably thought twice before naming my product Supreme Wood.* On the other hand, who can say? I mean, it IS Supreme, so I think you are pretty much obligated to go with it. Anything else is just pedestrian wood, and nobody wants that.

In other news, I have the on-call pager this week, so be prepared for some additional bitching and moaning. #firstworldproblems, as the kids say.

*Unless it was for erectile dysfunction, in which case you really couldn't pick a better name.

The Spirit of Video.

OK. The project which has been sucking up almost every available second of my weekend time since July is finally (almost) done, and I wanted to share a picture with you:

Thanks go out to my buddy Yort for all his donated time and effort. Without his help, I'd probably still be framing the walls. We made our share of mistakes along the way, but every time I was pissing and moaning about something we screwed up, Yort would wave his hand and say, "Ah, nobody will ever see it" and even though I didn't believe him at the time, it turns out that he's right.

It still needs a coffee table, some old framed movie posters, one less bentwood rocker, and a small bar/fridge area and I'm going to call it finished and get back to work on my book-in-waiting. Either that, or I'm going to watch every movie in my collection in alphabetical order. So it might be a while is all I'm saying.

I haven't forgotten about the Orlando Geek-fest post -- hopefully I'll get to that later this week. In the meantime, here's a photo I call "Lotusphere: Encapsulated."

That's a day four snow crash you're looking at right there.

I'm afraid to ask

But I'm hoping my wife is doing this with her finger or a spoon and not her tongue.

I'm back from Orlando and this weather can suck it.

So after a week-long geekfest in Orlando, I'm back in the beautiful northeast. The day before we were flying home, I texted my friend Vidna and and told him I wasn't coming back and to just go ahead and sell all my stuff and send me the money. Unfortunately, he couldn't work fast enough and we got kicked out of the nice hotel we were squatting in and had no choice but to book a much cheaper room for a couple of days.

We did get to visit Epcot, and it really hasn't changed much in the last few years. I was kind of surprised that China was still the same size. I figured it would have taken over by now but I guess Mickey keeps a tight reign on shit like that. I am currently moving pictures from my phone and my blackberry and my iPad and yes, even an actual camera and should have something to report in the next day or so. A work-trip like this one is usually 90% exhausting and 10% fun, and this one was no exception, so I'm still sorting out the good bits from the pain.

Also, I'm pretty sure I need a new spine if anyone has a spare. I think mine is crumbling to dust.

Random stuff from my phone.

Sometimes when I see something that makes me laugh, I take a picture of it. Then I forget about it completely. Eventually I need to clean them off my phone to make some space, and I try to remember what it was about that particular thing that made me laugh. Sometimes it's obvious, and sometimes... well, not so much.

Why did I take this picture, for instance?

I have no clue. It was something I saw at work, but now I have no idea what the hell I thought I was going to do with it. I really have to start writing some of these ideas down.

How about this one?

"Yo, OTIS! Elevator broke!"

I saw this CD in the store a few weeks ago:

Did you ever notice it makes Art Garfunkel look like he has a giant porn 'stache?

No? It's just me?

At what point in someone's day do they decide they'd like nothing more in life than a tramp stamp for their SUV?

If you're gonna do that shit, at least center it on the window.

I'm really glad they're finally getting rid of all the Christmas decorations at work. This deranged looking Santa has been standing on the corner of my row for almost two months now:

He looks like he should have a bottle of Jack in his hand. But he doesn't. What he does have in his hand is what really has me worried:

I had absolutely nothing to do with that.

Or how about this picture I've entitled Cleveland, Encapsulated:

Here's some gay mermen christmas ornaments for your enjoyment:

Man. I really have to start working out again.

Lastly, have you heard about this new thing called Owling? It's supposed to be the new "planking." If planking wasn't quite stupid enough for you, now you can perch somewhere and have someone take a picture of your dumb ass. I'm not even sure if Owling is a real thing, but go see for yourself.

All I have to say is this:

Ok, so that last picture wasn't from my phone.

That you know of.