A little contest

I took this photo today.

I guess someone's apology didn't go as well as expected.

There's a story here, and I want you to write it.

For a free copy of my book, leave me a funny haiku about the circumstances behind this picture.

I'll pick my favorite and declare them the winner. Deal? Deal.

(Yes, I'm stalling because I haven't finished my next post yet.)

Have fun!

Find me Lil' Scrappy, beotch.

Good old Travis got me hankerin' to do one of these, and since I haven't done one in forever, and I have another post that I'm still working on, I figured it was time. So thanks to the modern wonders of search engine tracking, allow me to present:

Fantastic Google Searches That Somehow Led People To My Site.

Your tits rotated -- I know you can't be talking about *my* tits, so I'm assuming you're talking about someone else you know. My first thought is that you have to be more specific if you want my help. You can't just walk up to your friend and be all nonchalant like, "Oh hey, by the way, your tits rotated. Just thought you might want to know." My guess is she'd probably already know, because that shit hurts. You are going to need to be prepared to give her some solid advice. For instance, did they just do a 360 in place? (That's considered the most painful of the tit rotations.) Or did the end up on her back? These are important questions, and before I give you any advice, I really need more info. For instance, if she's old, and starting to sag, I hope she got the 180. They are rare, but they're also the best of all possible tit rotations. That way they stay perky for a few more years. Kind of like flipping over your mattress.

Biggie Gibb - Being very knowledgeable about music, I think I can help you in your search for this rare information. Ah, Biggie. I remember him well. The one Gibb brother who went his own way. While Robin, Maurice and Barry formed the BeeGees and subsequently became huge stars along with their brother Andy, Biggie chose to blaze his own trail after he was asked to leave the band due to severe anger management issues and his desire to take the band in another direction. The final straw was an altercation with Maurice in the recording studio, over the elder Gibbs' refusal to use the original title of Biggie's soon-to-be-hit song, "How Deep is Your Love now, Motherfucker?"

Here's a very rare early promo picture:

May I see a real picture of drackila? - No you may not.

What kind of fungus smells like burning? - I am pretty sure it's this kind:

They say a blast of Tinactin will fix everything.

Do guys need to wash their ass? - For fuck's sake, YES. FECES COMES OUT OF IT ON A (hopefully) REGULAR BASIS. I get like 20 of these a month. Who the hell started this rumor, anyway? Some dirty-assed son of a whore, I know that much. It's ridiculous. Why wouldn't you wash the one thing on your body that has the most potential to smell the absolute worst?

Dremel sex - I'm not sure I'm your guy on this one. To me, this just sounds painful. The only time I've used a dremel tool is to carve - coincidentally - wood. As a general rule, I don't think "sex" and "carving things" go well together, if you really want the relationship to last. If you are ending a relationship abruptly, however, I think sometimes carving is involved. That and super-gluing seem to be pretty popular options. I'll take the superglue if I have to pick one.

google get me information on lil scrappy -- OK, first of all, Google is not a person. It's also not a genie, or a leprechaun or anything else that grants you wishes. You don't have to address it by its first name, because it really doesn't have one. Nor does it have a last name. It's not like some guy in an orange apron who comes up to you in Home Depot and says, "Hi, I'm Google Lewbowski. Can I help you find anything?" It's a search engine running on a server. You don't have to be polite. Second of all -- lil' scrappy? Google should just tell you no. Is that some rap guy or Scooby Doo's nephew? I always get them confused.

OK, there's more, but I'm out of steam, so I'm going to bed. I'm still not quite over this cold, which has been kicking my ass since Monday. Have a great weekend, everyone!

p.s. -- Just one more small reminder. I know I'm a pain in the ass, but if you actually bought my book, please try to leave a review on Amazon or B&N's website. I really appreciate it!

Happy Valen....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Last night, I could NOT fall asleep. My mind was full of ideas; stupid stuff I didn't have to worry about at all, and other stuff that was slightly more important, although truth be told, there wasn't much I was going to do about any of it at two in the morning. I had a head full of random bits of information, all whirling around in my brain like it was one of those clear plastic cages that they pump full of money and you have to stand in the windstorm and grab whatever you can. I usually drop into a snooze the second my head hits the pillow, however last night, that didn't happen. I basically pulled an all-nighter, for no good reason. In fact, the reason I'm writing this now is so I don't fall asleep -- because if I do, I'll be up late again, thereby perpetuating my misery. So I'm here to say this post will suck, and you can blame it on the sleep deprivation.

Here's an example of my thought processes last night that, in real time, took about 20 seconds: Man, I wonder when those 20 books I ordered are going to get here... I knew I should have paid extra for fast shipping. They probably didn't even start making them yet, then after that I have to wait for UPS. I'll bet the UPS truck is probably going to get stuck in our driveway. This snow sucks. Good for snowboarding, though. I have to get the rack back on the car before we go with Doug and Colleen at the end of the month. Hope Gore's not icy. The ice on our roof is brutal. Has to be four inches thick. How the hell am I going to melt all that? I really don't want it raining in the living room again. That sucked. I should have planned on being home tomorrow -- I could turn on the heat cables. I don't need water dripping from the basement rafters again, either. I wonder when the contractor is going to call with the pricing on finishing the basement? It's been like two weeks. Shit, I have to go to sleep. I'm going to be a zombie tomorrow. I could get a solid 4 hours of sleep if I just fell asleep NOW....no NOW.....OK, NOW... relax and think about nothing... deep breaths, breathe in, breathe out...Whose brilliant idea was it to put nipples on George Clooney's Batman costume? It clearly didn't need nipples. Wow, that was a screwed up movie. I have to remember to update my netflix queue...

Now picture 6 more hours of that.

I finally fell asleep a little after 3am. For those of you keeping score at home, I have to get up at 4:30 for work. I must have been crushing some last minute dreaming, because when I woke up I remembered about four different discrete yet seemingly simultaneous dreams. I wasn't even sure the human mind could do that, but I think I was probably delirious. When my alarm went off, I was flying and sailing a boat. At the same time. I mean like it was a big sailing ship, and I was sailing it myself, however I was also flitting around the ship like some sort of faerie pirate. I have no idea.

At work today I was fine until after I ate lunch. My morning coffee wore off and I was so tired that I actually almost fell asleep installing the new Microsoft Office 2010. Damn that is a pig of an install. It had to take 30 minutes, easy. During the install, I closed my eyes for a second at 20% and a split-second later, I opened them again and it was at 15%, which confused me and made me think of this cartoon:

So I'll be skipping my workout tonight, and heading directly to bed and I plan to be asleep by nine. Added bonus, I'm coming down with a cold. I love winter. Hey, here's a random fact for you -- this month, 67 searches for some variation of "Why do I shiver when I Pee?" landed people on my page. I am the new pee shiver expert of the internet, you guys.

Lastly, before I fall asleep, there's a new little link over there on the upper right -- if you want to buy a book and have me deface it for you, that's how you go about getting it done.

So anyway, Happy Valentine's Day, everyone. Speaking of that, here's one I got from my buddy Mike in second grade:

P.S. - How the hell does Joan Cusack keep getting work? Her voice was made for silent film and her face was made for radio.

It's raining Wrens.

The other day I stumbled on a story related to all those birds dropping dead last month and it turned out that apparently, some of them were killed intentionally.

Here's an excerpt:

"Not all the mysterious bird die-offs that have been witnessed around the globe recently are due to unexplained causes. A recent mass die-off event witnessed in Yankton, South Dakota was traced back to the USDA which admitted to carrying out a mass poisoning of the birds.

After hundreds of starlings were found dead in the Yankton Riverside Park, concerned citizens began to investigate. Before long, a USDA official called the local police and admitted they had poisoned the birds. "They say that they had poisoned the birds about ten miles south of Yankton and they were surprised they came to Yankton like they did and died in our park," says Yankton Animal Control Officer Lisa Brasel, as reported by KTIV.

The USDA then confirmed the story and explained it was all "part of a large killing" in Nebraska. Some of the birds that ate the poison apparently flew all the way to Yankton before succumbing to the poison.

According to the report, the USDA has killed more than four million birds over the last several years. There's even an official spreadsheet here from 2009.

Here's a few examples on the spreadsheet that caught my eye:

96,000 feral pigeons. Feral pigeons? Holy shit, those sound pretty dangerous. It's probably good that they are taking those things out.

1,259,714 european starlings. That right there is a whole lot of birds. The USDA must really hate europeans for some reason. The really odd part is that each animal has a few different categories, and two of them are Intentional and Unintentional. For instance, the starling breakdown looks like this:

Intentional Unintentional

1,259,714 2

So somewhere a conversation like this took place:

"Hey, how many starlings did we kill? Was it 1,259,714? "

"Yeah. Oh, and those two that Steve ran over with his SUV. Don't forget those."

I'd also like to know how they got such specific numbers. Who's the poor bastard who gets the job of counting up all the dead birds? "One... two... three... four...wow, this job really sucks... five... six... seven..."

Then like 14 hour later, "8,764...no wait...765? Crap, now I have to start over."

In other news, there's a group of feminist activists in Kiev, Ukraine. Femen's leader, 26-year-old Anna Gutsol, explains: "Our goal is active Ukrainian women who want to be involved in society and politics."

To me, that doesn't really sound like a traditional goal, per se, because saying your goal is "active Ukrainian women" makes you sound like someone who posts personal ads on Craigslist. But lack of effective mission statement aside, their main claim to fame is that they apparently do all their protesting topless.

Their official slogan is "Our God is woman, our mission is protest, our weapons are bare breasts."

Far be it from me to question their choice of weapons, but here is a short list of things bare breasts cannot generally do:

1. Shoot holes in stuff.

2. Protect your home.

3. Kill from a distance.

4. Kill.

You'll note that I said generally do, and that's only because I'm aware of this.

Do you like boxes of shit in your house? Get a cat.

We have three cats, one of which is an incredibly spoiled Siamese named Jesse:

He's pretty awesome, and he jumps up and drapes himself over my shoulders and rides around. We also have two other "lesser cats" that were here long before him. Unfortunately, he hates the idea that they even exist, and we're constantly breaking up fights.

Periodically, my wife will talk about getting another Siamese kitten, and my usual response to that is, "Three cats is my absolute limit. When we're down to two, we'll think about it."

So the other night, we were sitting on the couch and she started talking about it again...so I just sat there and stared at the other two cats sleeping in front of the wood stove. Finally, she said, "What are you doing?"

"Oh nothing," I said, distractedly. "Just trying to figure out which one of the other cats I'm going to have to kill."

Fast forward to the next day. I'm working from home, and sitting on the couch with the computer on my lap, and my wife is at work. Maggie, one of the two 14-year-old cats, is standing behind the wood stove and suddenly starts hacking on a hairball. She finally coughs it up, and then just... falls over. Like someone tipped over a statue of a cat. She's lying there, not moving. I run over and drag her out into the open and try to stand her up. She falls over again. I feel like I'm trying to balance a bike that doesn't have a kickstand. All I can think is, "Shit! This fucking cat is going to die, and my wife's going to think I killed it." I immediately call her at work, to throw off any suspicion, should worst come to worst.

"Hey, um...I think something's wrong with Maggie," I said.

"What do you mean?" she replied.

"She just... kind of... fell over," I said, warily.

"What do you mean, she fell over?" she asked, alarmed.

"Hang on," I said, and put the phone down.

I tried again to stand the cat up, and this time she stayed up. She was shaking like a leaf, but she wasn't falling over and that was a decided improvement.

I picking up the phone again. "I thought she was gonna die, but now I don't think so," I said. "Maybe. It could go either way. She looks a little weird. Stoned. Shaking a lot."

I started to feel like I was constructing a shitty alibi or something, so I wrapped it up.

"I'm not sure why I called," I said. "Don't worry about it, she's probably fine."

I could tell she didn't believe me, but she hung up anyway, since she was at work.

I turned my attention back to Maggie, who was now lying down in one of the cat beds, looking a little tired, but pretty much normal.

"You just have to last until she gets home from work," I said, pointing my finger at her. "Don't fuck me over."

It turned out she was fine, and still is.

I'm pretty sure I got punk'd by my cat.

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ps - if you get a chance, check out my buddy Glen's blog here. He's trying to convince me to do a book reading with him at a local bookstore. I'm a little apprehensive about it, but if I did do it, which story or stories from my book do you guys think I should read?

Don't Fear the Scraper.

Yesterday, I got this e-mail at work from the company that handles our travel. I think either they're sensationalizing things just a little, or... we're all dead.

Brace For Travel Delays As Multi-Day Dangerous, Destructive Winter Storm To Hit Monday - Wednesday

A multi-day, multi-region potentially historic and destructive winter storm will unleash its fury beginning Monday and will last through Wednesday. When everything is said and done, the storm may very well impact a third of the population of the United States; approximately 100 million people. Its reach will be felt from the Front Range of the Colorado Rockies to the Ohio Valley to the coast of New England.

Accompanied with the winter storm will be a severe thunderstorm threat across the South capable of producing damaging winds, hail and a few tornadoes.

Incredible ice accumulation with some towns/cities experiencing as much as an inch of ice. This is a destructive and crippling amount of ice which could knock out power to potentially hundreds of thousands of customers for days or even weeks.

I especially like "Unleash its fury." It's better if you read it in the voice of that guy who does all the movie preview voice-overs.