Mexico: Part III - Mr. Virgil? This is your wakeup call.

Now that everyone is stuffed on Easter candy, it's time to continue on with our Mexican adventure.

As I said in my last post, we had decided to sleep in for a bit on our second day. We learned a lot on this trip. For instance, here's something I learned -- there will be no "sleeping in."

You know what they have in the jungle? Jungle birds. And these birds get up a LOT earlier than you do. I think when birds from other places are applying for jobs in Mexico, the classified ad looks kind of like this:

There was a dove-looking bird that sounded like a hoot owl. WHOO WHOO WHOO Whoooooooooo! WHOO WHOO WHOO Whoooooooooo! over and over until you wanted to cut a hole into your mattress and crawl inside. The other bird call that was especially pleasing to the ear was the one that sounded exactly like this. Unfortunately, it didn't include the explosion at the end. After about the second day, I started making the explosion sound under my breath every time I heard one - until my wife asked me what the hell I was doing. Then I just did it in my head instead of out loud. [edit: listen to the actual bird call here.]

Here's another thing we learned -- in Mexico, (at the beach resorts at least) you can't flush the toilet paper. Seriously. Instead of flushing it, you simply drop your butt-wipings into the wastepaper basket next to the toilet and the housekeeper picks it up the next day. It's a good thing that the bathroom had a door and a window, because a pail of crap isn't really conducive to indoor air quality. Luckily for both of us, Montezuma's Revenge didn't enter into the picture or things could have become interesting -- and not in a good way.

I found this a little bit revolting to be honest, and I felt bad for our housekeeper. I mean, she probably doesn't make much to begin with, and now she has to empty baskets of feces-laden paper on top of that? (I felt it was only fair for me to tip the crap out of her. So to speak.)

Our last lesson for the day occurred when we got to the beach. We learned that Playa Del Carmen beaches are a little more "European" than we knew.

We saw some things. Some things that should not be seen. Ever, by anyone, anywhere. Human breasts should not look like that. It's not normal. My first thought was, "Why does that old guy in the yellow bikini bottom have two giant brown leather satchels sitting on either side of him?" My second thought was, "Heyyyyy, leather satchels aren't supposed to have nipples." It was eye-opening, to say the least. You tried not to look, but every time she moved it was a brand-new train wreck. It reminded me of this picture. She clearly didn't give a shit what people thought, and I can certainly admire that.

We spent most of the day there, but I didn't go swimming. The wind caused the water to be quite rough and the red flags were out, which generally means you might get sucked out to sea and end up off the coast of Brazil or something. Both the water and the beach were beautiful, however, and the place wasn't very crowded because of the wind. Or maybe it was because nobody wanted to look at satchel tits. I'm not really sure, but there was no shortage of available beach chairs.

On the way back from the beach, my wife made friends with a stray kitten that was hanging around by the bar near the pool. He was all black with green eyes, and maybe 3 or 4 months old. The bar featured rope swings and as luck would have it, that's where we happened to be sitting. The kitten really seemed to like my wife. He was probably chock-full of diseases but he seemed pretty healthy overall. My wife was petting him and commenting on how cute he was and before the last word left her mouth, he squatted down and took a big dump in the sand right near her left foot. He nonchalantly covered it up and sauntered away. "Awww, he's so cute," I said.

But really when you think about it, if you're a cat, what better place could you live? It's like having 300 miles of clean litter box. You've also got great weather all the time, plenty of shelter, lots of birds, (too many frigging birds) and people feeding you scraps all the time. Pretty sweet deal. By the end of the week, we had this going on:

Don't ask. Cats just like her for some reason.

The next day we went on a tour of the ruins at Tulum, and my wife almost got ravaged by some local wildlife. More to come.

Continue to Part 4

Not even with a ten-foot pole....

Mexico: Part II. WTF, Walmart?

We're not big travelers, as most of you have probably surmised. I can count the number of times I've actually been out of the United States on one hand. In fact, I could count the number of times I've been out of the States on one of Mickey Mouse's hands, and still have one fat, white finger left over. So, yeah. We don't get out much.

Believe it or not, the first thing I did before we unpacked anything was to give the room the once-over for bed bugs. I can hear your collective eye-rolls from here. Shut it. You can laugh, but ever since Nessa brought them home from a 5-star hotel last month, I've been doing some research, and I've come to the conclusion that it's not paranoia. If there's one thing you don't want to bring home to your house, it's these little bastards. They are very much like quarter-inch-long vampires. And I'm talking about the old-school scary-assed vampires, not the new sparkly emo ones with the fucked-up hair and the feelings.

Getting rid of a bedbug infestation will more than likely cost you thousands of dollars and a little bit of your soul, neither of which I can spare.

I don't want to get off on too much of a tangent here, but the parallels are obvious: They are immune to most everything, they only come out at night, they feed almost exclusively on the blood of humans, and they can live for 6-8 months without a meal. Also, the most efficient way to kill them is by exposing them to temperatures over 120 degrees. I imagine a tiny stake to the thorax would work too, but it would be very time-consuming. Anyway, the room looked amazingly clean.

After the settling in, the first order of business was to find the ocean, and the second order of business was to figure out the booze situation. We walked out to the beach and took a quick look, and then since we figured the ocean would probably be there for a bit, we turned our attention to the important stuff. We had two bottles of rum from the airport, which was a good start, but since we aren't hardcore enough to drink Bacardi straight from the bottle, we wanted to take a trip to Walmart for some fruit juices and miscellaneous munchies. We also wanted to pick up a cooler since the place we were staying didn't have refrigerators in the rooms.

We walked out to the lobby and grabbed a cab to Walmart. Our cab driver was great and very friendly. When we got there, we asked him if we could pay him to stay put while we ran in to pick up a few things, since we had no idea where we were and we weren't sure if cabs regularly hung out at Walmart or not. I gave him 50 pesos for the ride out, and he said he'd wait. I figured we'd be in and out in five to ten minutes, but that was before we walked into the place. Or "glided in," I should say.

I'm not exactly sure why, but to get into this store, you had to sort of walk under it, and then get on an upward-slanted moving walkway that takes you to the store level. It was like an escalator only without all the pesky stairs. I assume that's so you could take your shopping carts on it.

We have a Walmart about 20 minutes from our house, and although I don't make a habit of going there, I can assure you it's nothing like this one.

They certainly did know their turistas here though, because the first thing we saw when we walked in was a ten-foot-tall stack of styrofoam coolers. The place was a madhouse. And by that I don't mean it was crammed full of people, even though it was. I mean it looked like it had been organized by an actual inmate of an actual insane asylum. There were so many displays that you didn't know where to look first. People handing out samples of food and drinks, kids running around -- It was a little like a street bazaar inside a building. I half expected to see a clown walking down the aisle on his hands.

Like any busy retail establishment with too many customers and not enough help, there was shit all over the place, but I kind of got the feeling that it was probably always like that. Kid's toys, bathing suits, and discarded packages of meat sitting on top of tables filled with bottles of Absolute vodka; Soft drinks and chips left with the lawn chairs and tires. Rum, Tequila and power tools sitting next to a display of fresh mangoes. It was totally surreal. We ran up and down the aisles until we found the juices -- we grabbed some orange, cranberry and pineapple, then went looking for some tonic water and a bag of pretzels or chips.

It was actually harder than it sounds, because everything looks kind of familiar, yet it's just different enough so half the time you're not exactly sure what you're looking at. You feel like you're in one of those movies where you go back in time and step on a bug and when you get back to your present time, everything is just a little....off. I found myself looking at the pictures on the packages, and scanning the shelves for familiar logos -- just trying to find something I recognized. (Hooray for Zucaritas, featuring Antonio El Tigre.)

Wandering around looking at pictures on stuff reminded me of something funny that happened when I worked for a small supermarket chain. An Asian guy who barely spoke English brought back a gallon can of Crisco, and he kept pointing at the outside of the can, and saying "MONEY BACK! MONEY BACK!" It took me a while to understand what he was getting at, but it turns out he was bringing it back because when he had opened it, he had been surprised to find it contained greasy white paste instead of the succulent fried chicken pictured on the outside of the can. I felt a little like that guy.

Because I am pretty sure it's required by Mexican law, I also grabbed a bottle of vodka and some limes from the massive alcohol display in the front of the store. As we were deciding which line would be the fastest, I realized that there was one extremely long line with about 50 people in it, and a half-dozen short lines. Then I realized the long line was long for a very good reason: It was the only one in which you could purchase cigarettes and booze. As my dad used to tell me, nothing worthwhile is ever easy.

At this point I figured we already owed our cabbie about 500 pesos, assuming he was still actually waiting for us. I half-suspected that he'd probably just packed it in and left us there because we were taking so long, but I really didn't want to leave the vodka behind. We had bonded a little, this bottle of vodka and I, since vodka in Spanish is still spelled "vodka" and I could get behind that.

When we finally glided out of the store like we were descending from heaven, we saw our cab driver waiting for us at the bottom of the escalator. I think he was getting a little worried that he might have missed us. I was glad he waited, but was concerned that I might not have enough money to actually pay the guy.

He brought us back to the hotel, and when I asked him how much, he laughed and said, "50 pesos." I said no, and gave him a hundred, and even that was a bargain, considering how long we had made him wait outside. (His name was Eliel, and he was awesome. His English was very good, and if you're ever in Playa Del Carmen, his phone number is 9841330594, taxi 1307.)

We dumped everything in our room, and then I went to the hotel bar and grabbed a bag of ice for 35 pesos, and life was good. We headed back to the bar for 2-for-1 happy hour, and then went to dinner at the hotel's restaurant. The dinner was included, and the first night was the only night it wasn't buffet-style. They offered a choice of steak or fish. I ordered my steak medium well, and my wife ordered the fish. My steak was closer to beef tartare than to medium well, but I ate it anyway because I was hungry. Long story short, I've named my tapeworm Timmy. After dinner, we went back to our room to make few drinks from our new stash.

We wanted some Vodka tonics, but discovered that the only thing we didn't remember to buy was a knife to cut the limes. I felt funny about going to the bar and asking him to cut up my limes for me, so I started looking around the room for something I could use. The only sharp thing I could find was the top to the rum bottle, so I did this:

I twisted the top into the lime until a little lime plug popped out.

Yes, I am the Mcguyver of mixed drinks. I don't know what the housekeeper made of all the swiss cheese limes laying about, but I'm sure she's seen stranger things.

Our first day of vacation was officially over, and we were beat, so we decided to turn in since it was closing in on midnight. Our room was on the top floor, and so had the official "palapa roof." Here's a shot of it:



We both like to read a bit before going to sleep, so we were just lying there with the reading lamps on, enjoying the ocean breeze and the peace and quiet.

The next thing I know, some kind of weird looking, big-assed beetle dropped onto my face and latched on. I immediately flipped out, and jumped up out of bed and started slapping at my head while my wife stared at me like I'd completely lost my mind. Normally, I'm fine with big bugs, and I think they're kind of cool, however I've discovered that I don't like it when they grab my face.

So much for the pre-sleep relaxation. I quickly turned off my light because I figured that was probably what had attracted the beetle in the first place, and if there were any more waiting to drop in for a visit I didn't want to encourage them.

It was OK though, because the next day was our first beach day, and I wanted to sleep in a little. That wasn't going to happen, but I didn't know it at the time.

continue to part 3

You're going to Mexico? Are you nuts?

I heard that sentence at least a half-dozen times before we left. I think the media is slashing the tires of Mexican tourism, and it's kind of a bummer. This was our first trip there, so we had no idea what to expect, but I had heard great things about the Riviera Maya, and the price was right.

Here's my take on it: Mexico is a pretty big place, so saying you're afraid to go to Playa Del Carmen because of the violence in Ciudad Juarez is like saying you're afraid to visit Washington, DC because you've heard there's been a lot of drug-related gang violence in Dallas, Texas. Seriously, they are that far from each other. Also, Cancun, Playa Del Carmen, Tulum, and Akumal are all on the Yucatan peninsula, and don't share a border with the US. No border = no easy smuggling route. I know Cancun has it's problems, but so does NYC. Anyway, enough of my ranting. Has it been established that I hate the media? Good.

That said, here's the first installment of our Mexican adventures.

The flight out was non-eventful. That fact alone should have scared us. Me flying somewhere is usually a complete disaster, and because this time it wasn't, some deep alarm bells should have been going off inside my brain. I should have been on guard. I should have known that payback would be coming.

We landed in Cancun, and the lines were crazy. The first thing I noticed was that the entire airport looked like Abercrombie and Fitch drank too much and threw up. The place was crawling with college students on spring break. The duty-free liquor store in the airport was doing its best to keep them all on their best behavior by giving away free samples of rum and tequila, so we stopped in and bought a couple of bottles.

Once we were through customs, we ran the gauntlet of taxi drivers asking us where we were going and if we needed a ride, and we found the guy holding a placard with our last name on it. He said, "Hi, my name is Juan. Follow me to my car. Do you want to stop on the way for a drink?" I was relieved that he spoke English. We declined the drink offer, and jumped into his van.

The month before we left, I started listening to "How to speak Spanish" recordings in my car on the way to and from work. I knew that almost everyone in the touristy areas would speak some English, but I wanted to be a little prepared. At the very least, I wanted to be able to recognize and respond to few phrases. How are you, I am fine, Please, thank you, where's the bathroom, how much for your women, please don't kill me, that sort of thing.

About ten minutes out from the airport, I realized I forgot to hit an ATM machine to get some pesos. So I asked, "Is there an ATM on the way?" Unfortunately, Juan had pretty much exhausted his English with his initial speech, and since I didn't need a bathroom, I had exhausted my Spanish. I mimed putting a card in a slot and said "Dollares to Pesos?" and he said, "Ahhhh....7-11?" and Juan and I were bonding. At the 7-11, I headed right for the ATM machine. The place was full of local working men, and I could tell that I was the whitest thing that had been in there in a really long time. I mean, there's regular old "white people white," and then there's "IT guy white." It's not a pretty sight. I got some pesos from the ATM, picked up some pretzels and a red bull, and then did the stupid tourist thing of not giving the clerk enough money the first time.

The ride to the hotel wasn't too bad, but it was our first experience with this particular sign:

Topes are the devil's own speed bumps and you do not glide lightly over them. Most of them consist of a gully on either side of a platform, or staggered metal lumps the size of half-coconuts. These things are ridiculous, and they seemed to just pop up in random places. Picture driving along at about fifty on a 4-lane highway, and suddenly there's a freaking speed bump from hell that causes everyone to suddenly slam on their brakes and drive like a bunch of 90-year-old Asian women with bad eyesight. And you have to slow down for these things, because if you didn't, and hit one at anything over 10 miles per hour, you would immediately shit your own kidneys. They are that bad.

Along the way to our hotel, my wife was asking me about some of the phrases I had learned from the audio lessons. I told her how to say "How are you?" and "good morning" and "good afternoon" and "thank you" and a few other phrases I had memorized. The last minute lessons worked out well for her. Her first conversation in Spanish went something like this:

Hotel Clerk: ¡Hola! ¿Cómo está?

My wife: (flustered) Gracias?

After I told her she had responded to the question "Hi, how are you?" with "Thank you," she decided that she was going to say "Gracias" as a response to everything from then on. Her theory was that you can never go wrong with "thank you," even when it's completely out of context. It seemed to work.

Luckily, almost everyone there did speak at least some English, and it was enough for us to get by. We did finally get used to saying Thank you, please, and hello in Spanish, so at least everyone knew we were trying.

After we checked in, the bellman took us to our room, which was in the cheap section, but still only about a 2 minute walk to the beach. After he unlocked our door and put our bags inside, he took two hammocks out of the closet and hung them on our porch for us. They were glorious.

After he left, we decided that we wanted our very first picture together in Mexico to be sitting on our porch in one of our very own personal hammocks. I sat in the hammock and my wife set up the camera for the picture. The timer on her camera gave her about eight seconds to push the button, and then run around the table and join me in the hammock. The resulting picture is one of our favorites from the trip, so I wanted to share it with you all:

Yes, we're very photogenic.

Stayed tuned for parts 2-6. Things get better.

Continue to part 2

Hola!

I'm finally back from Mexico and just wanted to stop in, open the doors and windows and air this place out a little.

I'm collecting my thoughts, checking my notes (yes, I have notes and yes, my wife just shakes her head and wonders why the hell she married me...) and since today was my first day back to work after being reamed with a dried-out corn cob by US Airways, I'm just going to say that the trip itself was fantastic, we had a great time and we managed to completely avoid running afoul of the drug cartel. Suffice to say, I didn't even have to yell "Donde esta el baño!" at anyone, so I consider the trip a success.

I'm downloading the pictures as we speak. All in all, it's good to get away, but it's also really good to get home. I managed to get my lazy ass out of bed for sunrise on the last day:

There's a funny story about that (which I'll share with you all shortly) but in the meantime, it's back to the grind.

You can't fix stupidity.

At least that's what I've always believed. Apparently if you're IBM, anything is possible.


In a completely unrelated event, we were watching the end of Hitch the other night because it was on. In the dramatic and romantic scene where Kevin James is running down the street after the love of his life yelling "Allegra! Allegra!" my wife loves it when I yell back, "Claritin! Nasonex!"

Yes, watching television with me is hard work sometimes.

Winter can (snow)blow me.

When you have 33 inches of freshly fallen, heavy, wet snow in your 200 foot-long driveway, and haven't had electricity for 14 hours, this is not how you want your snow blower to be:

Unfortunately, you are looking at the state of my snow blower at approximately 7 pm last night.

The day before, I had noticed that this giant behemoth monster snow-thrower (that I bought with my approximate life savings two winters ago) was kind of laying down on the job and not so much "throwing" as it was "dribbling." Whereas it used to throw snow to the other side of the street, now what it was doing was more akin to what a baby does when it doesn't like its creamed spinach, or what toothpaste looks like coming out of the tube or -- well, I'll just stop right there because you are all perverted and you will take it to weird places in your collective heads. It seemed ok as long as I wasn't pushing it hard and it wasn't under load. As I was taking tiny little nibbles at the snow bank to avoid jamming the chute, I thought, Well, the snow is really heavy and sticky so what can I really expect? and then I realized I was making excuses for my man-machine. (It's not the first time, and it won't be the last.)

After about the 5th time the chute plugged up and I had to stop it and manually eject a solid tube of slush with my frozen hand, I decided that there was no way that this is how it should work, regardless of how heavy the snow was. Something was clearly wrong in the underpants of my snow blower. I sighed and broke out the wrenches.

I flipped it up into the sad position you see it in the picture, and unbolted some stuff. I've never had it apart before, but when I looked in there I could see that the drive belt was loose and partially shredded, so using all of my mechanical aptitude in one fell swoop, I deduced that was the problem. After a few more minutes of poking and prodding, I managed to get the old belt off. I knew that I didn't have a shot at finding an Ariens dealer that was open, so I did what anyone would do in my shoes. I went to Lowes. I reasoned a belt is a belt is a belt, and they sell snow blowers so what the hell. I planned on going there first, and then hitting the auto parts store on the way home if I didn't have any luck.

When I walked in the door at Lowes, it looked like a someone had chucked a cow carcass in a piranha pond. You'd think it was a one-day sale at Macy's or something. Apparently, there were a lot of people who had shitty snow blowers at home. Who knew? Lowes had a guy standing at the door acting as the Blower Greeter. As far as I could tell, his entire job consisted of asking people "Snow blower parts?" and then pointing them down the aisle to another guy standing in front of two metal shelving units full of nothing but shear pins and snow blower belts of all sizes. He took one look at me standing there holding my owners manual and old, cracked belt, and he just pointed and said, "See the guy in the red."

"The guy in red" was a little confusing since Hello? All the fucking Lowes employees wear red and there were about 4 or 5 of them standing around in this crowd of people. So I headed for the guy in red who was yelling like a short order cook taking orders on a busy lunch shift.

I walked toward him, and from ten paces away he made eye contact with me and demanded, "Belt or Shear pin?" I held up my disgusting belt in my blackened paw. "Manufacturer and Model Number!" He caught me off-guard so I said, "Uhhhhhh...." and that was it. He was on to the next guy. "Make and model!" "MTD! Model 2810, Tecumseh engine!" someone yelled back. The snow blower savant would then roll his eyes up into his head, and yell out things like, "V-groove, MTD28PD!" and one of the other guys would grab the correct belt and toss it to the customer. It was a sight to behold. He was the Rain Man of Snow blowers.

As I stood there with my belt in my hand and my thumb up my ass, I realized something: The belt supply was quickly diminishing. I ran over and started pawing through them like Tallahassee looking for a Twinkie in a sea of Snowballs. Since they were all made for models of snow blowers that I didn't own, I was really just hoping to find one that was close. I knew my old one was stretched out and too big, so I was trying to find one slightly smaller. I just eyeballed one from the dwindling supply, snagged it and decided I'd buy it since, at worst, it was head and shoulders above the one I had. As I turn to leave, Rain Man catches my eye and says, "Won't work! V-groove is different on the Ariens. It'll jump out. Definitely. Definitely jump out." OK, so I added that last part.

For a second I wondered how the hell he could tell I had an Ariens by looking at my crappy old belt, and was suitably impressed. Then I remembered I was holding the owner's manual in my other hand. I thanked him, and told him I was going to try it anyway. He said, "Auto parts store! Bring the old one!" and then turned away to help the next person waving a broken belt in the air. I was half expecting him to add something like "83 Buick LeSabre! Air conditioner compressor belt!" but he didn't.

I stopped at the auto parts store, and when I walked in there were two people behind the counter -- a bored, cynical, jaded looking guy on the phone, who clearly wanted to be anywhere else but there, and a young, clean-cut college-age kid bouncing off the walls. While I normally gravitate toward the assholes who know what they're doing, in this case I figured the kid was the better bet. I walked up to the counter and said, "Dude, you gotta save my life." then I tossed the snow blower belt on the desk and added, "Snow blower."

He immediately grabbed onto this challenge with claws and teeth, and I knew my snow blower was going to be working again shortly. We went through a few different belts until I found one that I thought was the right size. Slightly smaller than the one I bought at Lowes, but with the correct V-groove. He had a pretty good sense of humor, or maybe it was just late. At one point I asked him how much it was going to be, and he said, "Just give me all your money." We then had a five minute conversation about how it would be really funny to stand behind the counter with a gun and just rob the random people who came into the store to buy stuff. I'm sure the grizzled old dickhead he was working with probably hated his guts, but he liked his job and was friendly and helpful, so I give him +5000 JV points.

I bought the belt and headed out to my car to make the 20 minute drive home. By this time it was getting pretty late, but the rumor was we could get another 16" of snow tonight, so I knew I'd have to install it before I went to bed. When I got home, I measured the pulleys, and ended up installing the belt from the auto parts store. I flipped it back onto its wheels and started my man-machine up. It stunk a little bit like burning flesh, but I ignored that and immediately ran it full-speed into a snowbank -- and was completely amazed. Holy crap, what an improvement. It was no longer throwing snow like Richard Simmons in a snowball fight with a group of high school boys. It was throwing snow like...like...someone who throws baseballs really fast and strikes lots of people out. Yes, it was that good, and yes, sometimes I wish I watched sports just so I could use sports analogies effectively. Also, I've realized that any sentence that includes Richard Simmons and high school boys sound dirty regardless of what they're doing.

Winter can officially suck it. I am trying and failing to learn some rudimentary Spanish for our trip to Mexico, but I haven't learned how to say that yet. I'd like to, because they'd probably get a kick out of some pale white gringo running around screaming that phrase at the top of his lungs.

Lastly, my wife got this e-mail from her website "contact me" page today:

Me has sent you a message using your contact form at: www.ANNIESORIGINALS.COM
Senders email: google@gmail.com
Subject: WTF are you selling?

Message: Seriously? What is it you are selling, the little flower thing on the itchy hat, just the hat or both?

I would just like to thank you, whoever you are, for your constructive criticism. I'm guessing from the bogus return e-mail address you provided and the assholish tone of your message that the entire purpose of this exercise was to try to make someone else feel like shit, and in the process, feel slightly better about yourself.

I'd like to take this opportunity to say I'm sorry for your small, petty existence. Good luck in the future, and please don't jump in front of a bus. That would have the unfortunate consequence of making everyone on the bus late, and that's just plain inconsiderate. I suggest pills.

To everyone else, thanks for the kind words. She's doing it for the same reason I write this blog. It's fun, dammit!

Giz. It's what's for dinner.

I was driving home the other day, and passed this truck:

I know it's a crappy picture and you can't tell what he's hauling, so I'll just tell you what it is.

Milk.

Jugs and jugs of milk. I'm not sure what he was planning to do with it, but if you see a really great sale on milk somewhere in upstate NY over the next couple of days, I'd probably pass.

And speaking of great sales at the grocery store, they were practically giving this away:

Chicken Gizzards & Hearts? Why?

There has to be a cook or three out there reading this right now, so riddle me this: What does one actually do with gizzards and hearts? I'm guessing that you don't deep fry them and eat them like juicy little tater tots, and I'm pretty sure you probably aren't supposed to boil them and then toss them lightly with angel hair pasta and olive oil.

As far as I can tell, the only possible use for these things would be to give them to your kid on Halloween so he can chuck them at girls and stuff them in mailboxes. Yes, I would be a bad parent, but that's beside the point.

So it's up to you, gourmet chefs of the world. Tell me what's up with these things. And while you're at it, please explain to me the allure of head cheese. Thank you.

What my wife likes to do in her spare time.

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

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

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

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

My eyes followed my mind into the gutter.

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


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

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

Planet Witless.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Five years of this? Holy crap.

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

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

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

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

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

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

On the outside, anyway.

Doctor in the house?

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



So it appears that Google thinks I am:

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

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

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

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

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

Words to live by, my friends.

Emerson, Lake and Board Games.

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

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

Yort: What are they playing? Football?

Me: No, Monopoly.

Yort: Borrrinng.

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

Yort: Sweeeet.

No Uggos or Fatties.

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

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

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

Uh huh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Balls.

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

Anyway, I love it so far.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Johnny,

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

Thanks!

Bb

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

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

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

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

Pay Etenchen!

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



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

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



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

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


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

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

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

“Now what?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“He’s coming down.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How long?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

+++

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

Vomiting pinwheel girl? E-mail me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Usually.

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

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

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




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

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

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

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