Orlando: Day Five, Six and Seven

I'll make this quick because I'm sure you're as tired of reading about it as I am of writing about it. By the last day of the conference, I was almost used to the chairs that smelled of ass. I had gotten pretty good and didn't even really need to sit down to determine the relative nastiness of the chair. My senses were honed - I was a machine. A lot of the time I just sat on the floor in the back of the room, truth be told. But in my last session, I sat down in what I thought was a perfectly good chair.

A little while later, as the room is filling up, I smell what can only be described as rotten-cheese ass. I look around and there is nobody sitting to either side of me, and I'm pretty sure it's not me, since I just got out of the shower 30 minutes ago. I immediately assume it's my chair, and that my own hot ass reactivated some sort of latent funk that was embedded deep within its feeble padding. I bend down a little closer to see if I can make a positive ID, and I immediately see black dress socks directly under my chair. In my mind, I can see the invisible stink lines radiating directly into my nose. Goddammit, don't people understand that if your feet smell like your toenails are rotting off, you should leave your shoes on? You don't take them off and then shove your feet under someone else's chair. This has happened to me a few times on an airplane, but never before in a conference - so this was a first. I gave the guy a dirty look and then went to the back of the room and sat on the floor.

So that was my last day of the conference. I didn't stick around for the closing session. Instead, I spent that time changing my hotel from the the insanely expensive one that work was paying for to a slightly less insanely expensive one that I was paying for.

On Friday we hung around downtown disney and the highlight of the entire day was a fantastic dirty vodka martini that was the best I've ever had. When I ordered it, I didn't expect that the waiter would actually bring the ingredients to the table and make it in front of me, but that's what he did. Gorgonzola stuffed olives. My mouth is watering just thinking about this thing. My boss got food poisoning somewhere so never ended up meeting us for drinks.

On Saturday we took a quick day trip to Epcot, and if you've never been there it's pretty cool. However, if you've been there more times than you can count and you don't feel like going on Mission Mars, and the wait for the Soarin' ride is over two hours, then there's not much to do other than walk around and pay too much for stuff. We did see a really quick dolphin show at the Living Seas that was pretty amazing. Dolphins are smarter than me, in case you were wondering. I got to ride on a Segway, so that was something. It feels like snowboarding. That's the most accurate description I can give.

There are other things to see at Epcot, however. Amazing hairstyles is one thing that I particularly enjoy. This guy wins for 2007:



Bullets would bounce off that helmet. It was pretty damn breezy that day, and this thing did not move. My theory is that his hair was so ridiculously awesome that when he walked down the street, the wind actually stepped out of his way.

We also saw some cool skywriting. At first I was like, "Hey! Someone is going to propose to Jess!"



Then it all went directly to hell, (as I am sure I will be if hell actually exists):



It was pretty exciting to watch, and by exciting I mean excrutiatingly painful. After about 5 minutes more, the pilot had managed to squeeze out a "U" and an "S" and I knew then that Jess was out of luck and would remain single forever.

Ten minutes later, he had JESUS LOVES, and there was still some part of me that was holding out for "SPICY CHIMICHANGAS" or "DIRTY MARTINIS" but I knew it was not to be. The only thing left to determine was whether the pilot was an egotistical born again, in which case the next word would be "ME" or whether they were traditional christians and were going to go with the more generic "YOU" and really annoy me by pushing their faith on me from above.

Luckily as I said, the wind was pretty stiff so by the time he was finished (it was "YOU" by the way) all you could see was "VES YOU" and it wasn't really all that offensive. But still... VES YOU too, Mr. Pilot man. VES YOU and the plane you flew in on.

All in all, it was a marginally better visit to Epcot than my last one, which involved a random small child running up to me, screaming at the top of his lungs, and then punching me full force in the nuts.

I wish I could say it's good to be back.

But damn, it's cold up here.

I have a few Epcot pictures to download from my camera before making any sort of relevant post, but I just wanted to stop in and say that I made it back. Right now, I'm going to work out a bit, then negate all that healthy goodness with a bigass Irish coffee.

I do have one mildly amusing story that occurred in the Epcot bathroom yesterday. You may or may not remember the story about how I became a stall man, but apparently that sort of behaviour carries over to other public bathrooms and not just the one at my place of employment. The added bonus of an Epcot men's room, of course, is the sheer multitude of wildly pissing children. So I wisely chose a stall.

As I was standing there in the stall doing my business, there was a loud pounding on the door, followed immediately by some angry guy yelling, "Jeremy! ARE YOU POOPING?"

I said, "No, I'm Johnny. And I'm just peeing." Adding that second bit may have been more than he needed to know, but he sounded pretty accusatory and I think he was about one frayed nerve away from kicking down the stall door.

I'm not sure where Jeremy is right now, but with a dad like that, I'd be willing to bet that he's probably afraid to ever poop again.

Orlando: Day Four

I am nowhere near buzzed enough to write this entry, but I'm going to anyway.

I am cold, wet, and basically miserable. It was about 50 degrees here tonight, and raining like a bitch. And of course, tonight was the night of the big conference party. Traditionally on Wednesday night, the organizers of this thing will actually rent out one of the Disney parks and ship 7,000 people off on buses so they can hang out there for 3 hours. Everyone rides the rides, eats the bad food and drinks free wine and beer. I only had two little glasses of free wine and that's not near enough to offset the amount of water that is currently dripping off of me. My boss's kids were there with her, so it was a little more...um, subdued than the other nights.

This year's outing was at Animal Kingdom, and I'm not sure whose brilliant idea it was to go on a night-time excursion to a theme park where the main attraction is watching animals during the day, but that's what we did. If you're an animal, what do you do on rainy, cold nights? You guessed it. You curl up in your little cave or whatever and sleep, or you stay warm with the monkey sex. Well, if you're a monkey, I mean. Either way, you're not out sharing the evening with a bunch of nerds from all over the country.

The new Everest rollercoaster was pretty good. If you've never ridden it and plan to, then skip this part, because I'm going to tell you about it. The two big surprises are a big section of track that is all torn up -- you slow down and stop just short of it, and start falling backwards -- and then you get to see the giant bigfoot creature that is tearing up the track. The cool part is, after you stop going backwards, you start down the same track again -- the one you know is out -- only this time you don't slow down. At the last second you change direction somehow and drop down onto a different track. Here's how much of an IT geek I am: When the track changed direction and we started down the loop, I actually yelled, "Conditional Routing!!"

I am so ashamed.

I know what you will say. I should be. And you are absolutely right.

Orlando: Day Three

Just to fulfill my sponsorship duties, I'd like to get this out of the way:

Tonight's buzz is brought to you by RIM Blackberry and Skyy vodka.*

Something else I'd like to get off my chest right up front:

There are three very definite things people can do that will instantly get me to label them as a Giant Douche.

• Refuse to put your phone on vibrate when you are at a conference.
• Talk loudly to the person next to you while you are sitting behind me.
• Wear your stupid, LED blinking bluetooth earpiece 24x7 like some kind of retarded cyborg wannabee.

Ah, I feel much better now. Thanks for listening.

Last night, as we were heading up to our rooms after the JamFest abortion, My friend says "I'll meet you down by the fountain at 7:15." Normally, we don't have to show up for breakfast until 8 or so, but he wants to get an early start so I agreed after some haggling.

I was pretty beat, and I knew I'd be up late writing, so around 1:00 am I set my cell phone alarm to go off at 6:30. I hate doing that because my alarm sounds like a fire engine siren and it always scares the living shit out of me when it goes off. Jumping out of bed with my heart in my throat and scrabbling around for a non-existent AR-15 is not a fantastic way to wake up. I never remember my dreams when I wake up like that, and I have to tell you, I have awesome dreams so that pisses me off.

Anyway, the alarm went off, I screamed and leapt out of bed. I finally stopped hyperventilating, and jumped in the shower and got dressed. By 7:10, I was down by the fountain waiting. 7:15 comes and goes, then 7:20. Finally at 7:30, I checked my Blackberry and there's a text from scott that just says "I'm not meeting you."

Goddammit. The last time this happened I had to take a bus to downtown Cleveland and I ended up sitting across from moleman. At least this time I wasn't depending on him for transportation. I sent him a text message back that told him how much he sucks, and a few seconds later I got a reply that said, "I have a good excuse." I replied that the only acceptable excuse would be "I have a severe case of the runs" but he never replied. Later on, after I ran into Special Dark, I had to amend that short list of acceptable excuses to include:
"I am currently passing a jagged, baseball-sized rock through my urethra, and I am being rushed to the hospital as we speak."

Yes. Ironically, Big Tool Scott had Big Tool issues. Big Tool Scott had a kidney stone, and his kidneys were having a little trouble with the handoff of said stone to the bladder. This was all pretty new to him, but thank god for the internet. He was able to get on-line in the hotel room and self-diagnose. He narrowed it down to either Ebola or a kidney stone, and since he still had most of his skin when he got out of the tub, he figured it was the latter. Of course, even after all this, he did what any self-respecting 32 year old father-of-two-with-one-on-the-way would do:
He called his mom.
Seriously.

It was his first stone, and we were all so proud of him when he finally gave birth. I didn't find out the actual time of birth, but even so, I think we should have a small celebration every year on this day.

Also, at some point late this afternoon Special Dark realized he had his new T-shirt on backwards. Blackberry was giving out free T-shirts, and they must have given out 300 of these things. Everywhere you looked, there was someone wearing this shirt. I am not sure if it was his enormous sense of self-worth that allowed him to think that he was clearly right and everyone else so clearly wrong, or if it was just that he has no clue that the little white tag goes in back, but it was awesome.

Also, I've discovered something. It's pretty easy to write when you're sober. It's also pretty easy to write when you're drunk. But it's pretty hard to write when you're rapidly losing your buzz and the only option is a 15 oz., $13.00 dollar bottle of cheap merlot in the mini bar. My kingdom for a corkscrew.

*with special guest, Bombay Gin

Orlando: Day Two

So this morning we all meet up in the lobby to head out to breakfast and Special Dark is all pimped out. While we are all wearing jeans/shorts, t-shirts and sneakers, he is dressed in slacks, dress shoes, a dress shirt and a suit jacket. WTF? I have no idea. I said "Hey, I can see that pimpin' ain't easy, but is it necessary?" and he said "Eff you. I have to make a good impression." and by 5 pm he had given it up and was dressed like the rest of us. I am still not sure who he was trying to impress.

Our guest speaker at the opening session today was Neil Armstrong. A guy who walked on the fucking moon. How awesome is that? A true American hero. I actually got a little teary when they introduced him. I am a giant pussy when it comes to stuff like that.

Oh, and something I forgot to tell you about -- Last night there was a big party and the theme was gambling and/or arcade games. I'm not sure what they have to do with each other, but there was a bunch of shitty 80's arcade games like centipede and pacman set up, and a few air hockey tables and pool tables. The highlight of the night had to be when Big Tool Scott was playing air hockey like a crazy man and sent the puck flying about 20 feet through the air at roughly mach 3. It smashed directly into some poor bastard's forehead. I think the guy was probably walking around all day today with a red stripe of a welt on his head. I almost peed myself.

Tonight's wine drunk was brought to you by something called "JamFest" which was a party where anyone with any musical "talent" at all can get up on stage and play. I was going to do it, but the drum set was configured for a right-hander, and it was all mic'd up, so there was no way I was going to be able to move the drums around to fit a lefty. We were treated to horrendous versions of "mustang sally", "8675309" and various and sundry Lynyrd Skynyrd songs. It was pretty pathetic. We left when they were trying to get us to do a sing-along. I scored an XXL t-shirt, which I promptly threw into the crowd. I am nothing if not medium.

In our last session of the day, Scott and I were treated to something very special. There was an Asian dude sitting pretty much right next to us that had some sort of nasal issue. Throughout the entire hour-long presentation, he was busily snorting snot. It was the most disgusting thing so far this conference. Each snort was literally 4 seconds long, and the frequency had to be at least once a minute. I don't know how much snot this guy could have possibly had in his head, but during the last few snorts I swear I could feel all the matter in the universe inching its way toward his gaping nostrils. Goddammit people are disgusting.

Orlando: Day One

I'm pretty drunk on 3-dollar-a-bottle wine right now, so I take no responsibility for this post. It was suggested by someone else and I have no idea what I'm going to write.

The first thing I need to mention is this -- you guys all failed me miserably on my flight here. I was supposed to be sitting by the window with a winsome beauty in the seat next to me, but what I got instead was a huge guy who liked to golf. Not only that, he liked to talk about golf. A lot.

He liked to talk about particular courses and particular holes, all of which I really tried hard to discourage, but that didn't seem to work. It never does with these sorts of people. So finally I pointedly ignored him and loaded up a season two episode of The Office and watched Michael trash the warehouse on Valentine's Day. I am not sure if the guy actually stopped talking or not but I didn't give a shit. I did give a shit however, when he co-opted my armrest. Fat bastard.

When I finally got off the smelly-ass plane, I walked down to baggage claim where all the Limo drivers were standing with their little signs. There was one really tall Lurch-lookin' mofo holding a sign that just said "SICKO." I tried like hell to get a picture of it, but he was getting pretty annoyed at my blatantly transparent attempts to surreptitiously take his picture with my camera phone.

I did manage to finally get a decent shot, but the shitty "high-speed" connection in this hotel won't let me upload it for some reason.

Once I got to the hotel and checked in, it turns out that floor number 8 is really broken. If you get in the elevator, all the other floors work as designed, but floor 8 does not. If you choose eight, what happens is this:

The elevator reaches what you can only assume to be floor 8 - given that the number 8 is illuminated - and the inside elevator doors open, and you start to walk toward what should by all rights be a magic archway that leads you to the hallway of floor 8 and then right before you ram your skull into steel you realize that you are being denied by an additional set of internal blue steel doors that say "sorry assknob. not today." Don't ask me how I know this, but I am now typing this from the 12th floor.

For more than 200 bills a night, I expected more from my room. My carpet is kinda thread-bare and my internet connection is ass. The clothes iron works ok, and nobody seems to have pissed in it, so it's a step up from the Scranton Marriott.

I'll tell you what though. Free wine (cheap or not) and 70 degrees at 8:30 pm makes for a nice night when you just left -4 degrees.

Nerdfest 2007 here I come.

I leave tomorrow morning to attend a week-long geek conference in what's looking to be not-so-sunny Orlando. Tonight, I'm going to see my buddy Doug play guitar for Kasim Sulton (of Todd Rundgren/Utopia fame) and as a result, I will be doing some serious airplane sleeping in the morning.

Keep your fingers crossed for a skinny, non-talkative, un-smelly person in the seat next to me. I realize that a hot chick would be pressing my luck, but maybe with the combined mojo of all my faithful readers, this can be accomplished. Just to clarify, I still want her to be non-talkative. So get to work on that. I'll let you know how you do.

I am not sure how often I will be able to post from there, but I'm sure some Special Dark stories worth mentioning will be coming my way. At the very least, I'll get to "enjoy" the olfactory nuances of 47 different varieties of bitter ass while I'm there.

Goddammit, computer geeks. The water, shampoo and soap in the hotel are free. Shower once in a while. It won't kill you.

My big fat Italian wake.

Things that are apparently needed for a man over 60 to attend an Italian wake (in no particular order):

• black shoes and white socks.
• Light blue or tan polyester suit.
• Striped tie at least 5 inches wide at the bottom.
• Pants that are pulled up to somewhere around your armpits.
• A plaid cabbie hat, or a tan and brown Stetson.
• A crushing handshake that says, "I still got it," and a desire to advertise this fact.
• 5-10 interesting and/or mind-numbingly boring anecdotes about "the old days."
• A tan wool coat with flap pockets and a fur collar.
• Varying amounts of body odor.
• Garlic. As much as you can get.
• Old Spice. As much as you can get.

Things that are apparently needed for a woman over 60 to attend an Italian wake (in no particular order):

• Enough perfume to consume all the available oxygen within a twenty-foot radius.
• Said perfume must smell like decaying flowers, or a mixture of Glade and Raid.
• Bright red lipstick specifically designed to come off on the cheeks of others.
• The genetic predisposition to slobber-kiss complete strangers.
• The ability to touch and kiss deceased people with no qualms whatsoever.
• 5-10 interesting and/or mind-numbingly boring anecdotes about "just last week."
• More fake fur than Chewbacca and the hairclub for men president combined.

The night was incredibly sad, and many tears were shed, but it wasn't without its laughs. For instance, before the wake when we were all at my wife's grandfather's house, I realized that I forgot my black wool coat that I normally wear with my suit. Her grandfather, in an attempt to be helpful, went into his closet and brought out a full-length tan overcoat with a white fur collar and said, "Here, wear this." I laughed and said, "I can't wear that. I'll look like a pimp." He said, "What do you mean? It's the coat I'm wearing tomorrow!" Then I asked him where his bitches be at. No, actually I'm lying about that part, but the rest is true.

Later on, after most of the crowd had gone, we got to reminiscing a little. Somehow or other the conversation came around to M____'s last words. I'm pretty sure her last words to my wife were "I love you so much."

Her last words to me were:

"They stuck it in my rectum."

Apparently, she was talking about her recently received dose of Tylenol, but she didn't initially clarify that fact. I didn't find that out until a bit later. It did clear up a few things in my mind, as you can imagine.

The previous day, before I had reluctantly learned how they give Tylenol to patients who can't swallow, she felt she needed to share another important fact with me. Obviously, since she had a stroke her voice wasn't always very intelligible and she had to work at it quite a bit. Sometimes, when she concentrated really hard on what she wanted to say and took her time, it came out right.

On this particular day, she made a little "come closer" motion with the finger on her good hand, and so I did. I held her hand and leaned in close to her face so I could pick up her whisper. She paused for a second, took a deep breath, and then said:

"Papa....is a fantastic lover."

I burst out laughing, and blinked away the tears that were starting to form. Why she couldn't just tell me "I love you so much" and leave it at that, I'll never know. I dutifully passed the proclamation on to my wife's grandfather, and it made him blush and laugh a lot, so... there's that.

She was a special lady.

Farewell.

You welcomed me into your family and showed me the meaning of unconditional love.

You will be missed every single day.

Two years of my life. Down the drain.

So my blog turns 2 years old tomorrow, and I wasn't really sure what to do about that. I could write a bunch of stuff about how it's been a lot of fun, and thank all you guys for stopping by to read my crap and while that's all certainly true, it still seemed a little cookie-cutter.

Instead, I opted to take a page from this post by Sarah, over at Okay Seriously, who actually has a little party for her blog every year. I thought that was nice, even if the idea was tarnished somewhat by the fact that her blog is a complete whore and will get it on with portable computer games and other miscellaneous desk accessories.

Instead of just staying in, I decided to take my blog out for an early birthday celebration. So last night, we hit the bar circuit pretty hard. We grabbed a quick bite to eat and then started hopping from club to club. I was the designated driver, and by around 10 pm my blog was pretty blasted. He was drinking Tequila and (don't tell him I told you this) he can't really hold his liquor.

He wouldn't shut up about this one club he likes, so finally I drove him over there. It didn't look too bad from the outside, and the inside was even nicer. I really didn't expect that of him, so I was pleasantly surprised. We grabbed a couple of open seats and waited for our server. Here's a shot of where we were sitting:



I knew something was up when the waitress came over and told me there was a two drink minimum. I explained to her that I was the DD, but she said we'd have to leave unless I ordered at least 4 drinks. I said "Fine." and told her that my blog was already shit-faced and would have no problem at all downing four more himself. She seemed satisfied with that and left to get our drink order.

I looked around the place, and noticed something strange. There was a serious sausage fest in progress. I realized exactly why that was when the stage lights lit up the other end of the room and I saw the stripper poles.

Goddammit, he did it to me again. Still, it seemed like a fairly nice place, as these places go, and I have to admit they had some high-class dancers. So we stayed.

Well, long story short -- by the time the drinks were gone and he was out of singles, he started asking me what I got him for his birthday. Truthfully, I figured that by picking up the tab for dinner and a bunch of drinks that would be enough, but you know those kind of friends -- no matter how often you're there for them, you're only as good as your last post.

So under the circumstances, I did the only thing left to do.

I bought him a lap dance. This place seemed to have two sets of girls -- there were the ones that do the stage dancing, and then there were the ones that do the lap dancing. As I'm sure you can imagine, the second string girls aren't of quite the same caliber.

You're not really allowed to take pictures of the lap dances in progress, but I snuck this one while the bouncers weren't looking. The most amazing part of this entire story? You will never believe who works there:



The best part? TEN BUCKS. That's it.

Afterward he said that Sarah's blog smelled a little like hand-held Tetris, but that all in all, he thought it was a pretty fine birthday celebration.

He was seriously hung over this morning, and spent a really long time in the shower, but I think he'll probably be fully recovered by tomorrow.

This one does it all.

You can get your very own fan-foreskin-tastic mug and be the envy of all your friends. Failing that, you can completely alienate them until they don't want to hang out with you anymore and then you can just loiter in public libraries and use the free internet terminals, all the while making people around you extremely uncomfortable.

It holds beer, coffee, vodka or water -- or in the event of an extra-long staff meeting -- urine!

Get one for each, but don't mix them up. I'm just sayin'.

Roll over Bay Tovin.

I've been a drummer since high school, and I've played in more bad bands than I can count. I even collected drummer jokes. (What do you call a drummer who just broke up with his girlfriend? Homeless. How can you tell if a drummer is at your door? The knocking speeds up, then slows down, then speeds up. What do you call someone who hangs out with musicians? A drummer) Needless to say, the drummer doesn't get the chicks and doesn't get the respect. I resigned myself to that fact a long time ago.

But there was always one thing nagging at the back of my mind.

I always wanted to play a real instrument. I wanted to play something that you could actually use to write a song. I wanted to learn actual notes. Play a tune and not just a rhythm.

Tonight, on this 11th of January in the fan-foreskin-tastic** year of 2007, I took my first piano lesson.

I want you to look at something very closely. Here is a picture of my right hand:



It's not a piano player's hand, by any stretch of the imagination. The fingers aren't long and slender, they don't have much reach. From a practical usability standpoint, it's not too bad -- all the fingers are there, there's no webbing, everything works. Not too shabby, as hands go. It's served me well for most of my life. In truth, my left hand has probably served me a little better if I'm being completely honest with you,* but all in all they work pretty much as designed. Memorize that picture because you are going witness a miraculous transformation. Got it memorized? Good.

Here is a picture of that same hand the exact second it touches a piano:



Well, it wasn't quite that bad, but close. The first lesson was only a half-hour long, so by the end of the night I was playing this pretty well:



OK, I can see nobody is buying that, so I'll admit the truth.

In the space of 30 minutes, my innate musical skills allowed me to completely master this complex piece of music:



Next week, I will attempt the awesome feat of using not only my right hand, but my left hand as well. Maybe even (dare I say it) both at the same time!

My practice book is filled with amazing and arcane insights into the shadowy and mysterious world of the instrument called Piano. Let me share some of my hard-won wisdom with you all, just to prove to myself that I am not wasting my money.

PIANO TONES
When you hit the key with a little weight, you make a SOFT tone. When you use MORE weight, you make a LOUDER tone.

I mean, that was not at all intuitive, right? Also -- and don't tell anybody this, because I am not sure if word is supposed to get out -- I learned that LOW sounds are on the LEFT side of the piano, and HIGH sounds are on the RIGHT.

Now you all need to give me twenty dollars, because that is apparently what the information I just imparted to you is worth.

We'll see how this goes. I could fail miserably, or you could all be looking at the next Elton John. Only, you know -- with a more tasteful fashion sense and way less butt sex.




*Get your mind out of the gutter. My father, in a completely misguided attempt to make me a fearsome baseball player, made me throw lefty. As a consequence, I am ambidextrous, with a decidedly left-leaning preference.

**What google spell checker insists on substituting for "fan-freakin-tastic"

Farewell, sweet silence.

Well, I guess all good things must come to an end.

I've decided to quit blogging.

It's been a fun almost-two years but....No, I'm kidding. You aren't quite rid of me yet.

Unfortunately, the "good thing" ending is my current cube situation at work.

For quite a while now, I've been in a "stand-alone" cube, in a part of the floor that was inhabited by nobody. That meant the only annoying person around me was me, and that's the way I liked it. It was so quiet, I didn't actually need my iPod to stay sane and my ear canals had even started to go back to their normal, non-earbud-expanded shape.

But lately, there's been some jibber-jabber, to quote the big guy. About 2 weeks ago, a couple of loud talkers moved into adjacent cubes one row over. One of them has a laugh that sounds like the Joker has Janice from friends stuck in his throat. I almost wrote that in the reverse order, but the analogy lost something vital in conjunction with that unwanted and disturbing mental image.

Last week, one of the two loud people decided she wanted a bigger cube, so she moved all her shit to a nice double-wide over by the window, far away from her original neighbor. At first I thought that would be good, as it would cut down on the combination idle chit-chat/laugh-fest over the cube wall, but no. Now the idle chit-chat is actually yelled across the room, because for some reason I'm invisible and they think they are the only two here. They are also both signed into the Instant Messaging system, and I know this because I made it a point to find out their names and add them to my buddy list, which I expect to grow quickly over the next few weeks:



Apparently they lack the motor skills to master typing, because even when both of them are online and available, they yell across the frigging room. One of them usually stands up to do it. I am fairly certain they just use their buddy list status to know when it will be most effective to scream at each other.

It's not foolproof, however, since on at least a few occasions, I've heard "HEY _______! Are you over there?" when that person's icon clearly showed them in "Away" status. I can almost see this person at home at night, quickly opening and closing the refrigerator door trying to see if the light really does go off when the door closes.

The other day I got a third neighbor and this one is also pretty close to me.

She's a nice enough lady, and I liked working with her on the few projects we've had together, but sometimes she likes to have what I call "walking phone conversations." She talks. And paces. For some reason her pacing always brings her to the space between my cube and the window, a small area of about 3 square feet. She will stand right there and converse. It's awesome. I'm betting in another couple of weeks, I'll know all her kids' names.

She also has some sort of palm device that she incessantly "syncs-to-desktop." Every single time she does this, it makes a noise like "Bee Doooooooop!" which goes from high to low.....and then a few seconds later, another noise like "Dooo Beeeeeeeeep!" which goes from low to high -- which is about as pleasant to listen to every 60 seconds as it is to read. There's some weird acoustic thing happening as well, because I hear her phone voice bouncing off the plate glass window to the left of me even when she's sitting in her chair. It literally sounds like she's curled up under my desk. Oh, and the same thing happens with the "easy listening" muzak that she was playing from her clock radio the other day.

This new person, while quite adept at using IM, is apparently not adept at a little thing I like to call "hearing," because she has an extremely loud notification noise set to trigger on every single incoming IM. It sounds like PING! I was almost gonna go out to my truck and get my synthesizer to give you the full effect, but instead I will give you my day in visual format:

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! BEE DOOOOOOOOOOOP! PING! PING! DOO BEEEEEEEEEEEP! PING! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! BEE DOOOOOOOOOP! PING! PING! DOO BEEEEEEEEEEEP! BWAHAHAHAHAHAH AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! BEE DOOOOOOOOOOOP! PING! DOO BEEEEEEEEEEEP! PING! PING! HAHAHAHAHAHA PING! HAHAHAHAHAHA! BEE DOOOOOOOOOOOP! PING! PING! DOO BEEEEEEEEEEEP! PING! WANNA GET KAWFEE? PING! "Biiiillly, Don't be a heeeero...don't be a fooooool with your life....." (with nothing but violins) BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! BEE DOOOOOOOOOOOP! PING! DOO BEEEEEEEEEEEP! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHA! BEE DOOOOOOOOOOOP! PING! PING! DOO BEEEEEEEEEEEP! BWAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA PING! HAHAHAHA! BEE DOOOOOOOOOOP! PING! DOO BEEEEEEEEEEEP! PING!

If one of them gets a cold and starts in with a phlegmy cough, I may have to quit.

This morning I saw a few post-it notes on 4 other empty cubes that said something to the effect of "reserved for other loud people" so I can't wait to see who moves in there.

The two cubes directly across from me are still unoccupied, at least for now. I really need to figure out a way to work from my house permanently before the "reserved" signs go up there.

God, I hate people.


On a completely different note, I am totally getting one of these for our long-ass weekly staff meetings because it never fails that my 32oz. coffee comes calling about 45 minutes into it. Besides, I can always use a little more comfort and confidence in my day.



I know it says one size fits all, but it looks like it might be a little big. Or maybe not. I'll let you know.

Placeholder. It looks kinda like a coaster.

This is a first -- I'm writing a blog entry and I must confess that the Tanqueray has been very good to me so far this evening. I have a few minutes before "You, Me & Dupree" starts. If it sucks, I blame you all for not warning me. I'll let you know.

I had to pick up the cat at the vet after work today, so I asked my wife to call me close to the time I leave to remind me. I have a tendency to get on the highway and start listening to music, which usually results in a lot of terrible singing, and ends with me arriving at my house with no actual recollection of how I got there. So she called to remind me to pick up the cat. Then she said, "Do you want me to call you while you're driving, to remind you again?" I told her I was forgetful, not retarded. Although I did almost miss my turn on the way home so maybe I shouldn't be drinking because I am apparently pretty adept at killing the brain cells that I actually use instead of the ones that are just lying around doing nothing.

At any rate, as I was driving home at roughly 20 miles over the speed limit, I passed a cop. Luckily, everyone around me was also going the same speed, and there occurred a simultaneous mashing of brakes that stopped the forward momentum of about 50 tons of steel in 3 seconds flat. This is generally not a good thing, and it results in lots of finger waving and swerving.

That got me thinking. What's up with this whole cat and mouse game, anyway? It started with the cops getting radar guns. The next thing you know, someone invents a very useful object that detects the microwave radiation that the guns put out. They call this a "radar detector" and sell a zillion of them. So after this, the cops aren't catching many speeders, so they have to invent craftier radar like "instant on" and Ka band and even go so far as to create something that uses lasers, which I assume is called a laser gun. That's pretty cool even though they don't actually slice moving cars in half as the name would make you think.

The detector companies come up with ways to counter all of these, which results in the cops not catching many speeders once again. What do they do? Pass laws to outlaw radar detectors, and then invent something called a radar detector detector. This little bit of high-tech can actually tell whether a car has a detector in it, in which case the cop can hand out a ticket if detectors are illegal in that state.

The detector companies decide that they can actually detect the method that the police are using to detect the detector, and they make their detector actually sense when it is about to be detected, and temporarily shut itself off. They call this "stealth mode" which is, essentially, a radar detector detector detector. About 2 minutes of research on the web reveals that there is also a radar detector detector which claims that "its anti-cloaking system defeats radar detectors with this feature" -- which actually makes this radar detector detector a radar detector detector detector detector. Are you following this because I'm barely hanging on here.

I guess my point is that the whole thing is just a game to amuse the cops and make money for the manufacturers of the various and sundry detectors. This really strikes me funny when you're talking about a toll road, like 87 south or I90. At least once a week I drive on these roads. I get a little ticket when I get on, and I surrender my ticket and pay my toll when I get off. The thing has a frigging time stamp on it. All they have to do is figure out the minimum time it can possibly take you to get from exit to exit while going the speed limit, then when you surrender your ticket, they can tell if you've been speeding. They could just issue a summons right there.

See, I think they like to play, because if you do it the smart way, it's no fun for anyone. OK, my movie is starting and I have more drinks to prepare so you guys are on your own. Rest well, and dream of large women.

Search and Rescue 2007

I need one more picture of a particular mailbox before I subject you to that upcoming post, and I really didn't want to get all introspective on your asses again, since the guys would be all like, "He sucks now. He's all sensitive and shit. What a pussy." and the girls would be all like "Eww...he's so Nicholas Sparks these days, only less hot and not rich." With that in mind, I'm going to go neutral, and lean on Site-Meter for this post. Yes, that's right -- it's time for:

Fantastic Searches that Somehow Led People To My Site

my testicles are the size of coconuts and I shoot fire from my ass - Oh, man. I'm so sorry. No, wait. On second thought, I think I'm jealous. That shit right there will get you noticed. You can't be all shy and introverted when you are shooting fire from your ass. The coconuts balls are just a bonus.

conversation starters undescended testicle - If you're looking for ways to mingle at a party, I have some better suggestions. Try talking about: The weather, what you do for a living, hobbies, favorite television shows, even music. If, however, you've already done that bit and you've found someone who wants you to drive her home and you're desperately trying to come up with a way to tell her about your recalcitrant nut, you might want to say, "Hey, by the way, one of my boys is still hiding. You want to try to coax him out on the way back to your place?" because that always works.

tiny weenie guys - I think I am insulted that you found my blog with this search. On the other hand, it does go to show that Google Knows All. John and Shamus were also on that list, so I don't feel so bad. I was before them, true, but I'll take what I can get.

how many feet does quikrete cover? - It really depends on the size of the feet, and of course the weight of the body. If you are dumping the body in the ocean, you don't need that much coverage. Between the sharks and the depth, you'll be fine with 4 feet per washtub. (That's two bodies, unless you're creative.) A river is a different story completely. River, you want to use a 55 gallon drum.

why does my saliva smell like shit? - You have to ask yourself a few questions to get to the bottom of this one. (1) Have you been eating shit lately? If no, then (b) have you pissed off your roommate to the point where he's doing something with your toothbrush on a daily basis?

How does a male person felt when he was stranded alone inside a circus Trailer in a Circus Town and when he was lock inside he was surprised to be alone with two Circus clown girls who were wearing with two beautiful Circus Ladies - I'm only guessing here because I've never been with two beautiful ladies or girls at the same time, circus or otherwise. But my thought here is that two circus clown girls wearing with two circus ladies would really have to quadruple your fun. There's squirting flowers, honking noses, colored scarves from all sorts of places...I think I'm going to have to go with "Like he died and went to heaven." Also, if this male person happens to be you, you might want to skip the oral because I hear clown girls taste funny. (I'm here all week, folks. Tip your waitresses!)

turkey bukkake - I saw this recipe on a japanese porn site once, and it is safe to say that I will not be coming over to your house for dinner. Ever.

how to build a house out of wooden pallets - Holy shit, I really have no idea. But I will put you in touch with my neighbors and alla y'all can work something out.

how do I stop smelling of pee in the morning - (1) Stop peeing on yourself. If that's not the problem and in fact someone other than you is peeing on you, then (2) Find a girlfriend/boyfriend with a different, less urine-intensive fetish. And don't come back here all "How do I stop smelling of sour cream and chives in the morning" either.

my wife's problematic labia - Ah, this was my favorite show when I was a kid. I wasn't born early enough to catch them the first time around, but I loved the reruns. All the labial hi-jinks! I was excited when I heard that it was finally out on DVD.



The special features and outtakes are a riot.

Little Rock.

The first full moon of the new year is tomorrow night. I know that most of you probably couldn't care less, but maybe after reading this a few of you will make it a point to search it out at some point during the night, if only for a few seconds.

Make a wish, even. Hey, 47 million Koreans can't be wrong.

I'm not sure why, but I've always loved the moon. There's just something about it that fascinates me. Maybe because it's so close, cosmically speaking. Maybe because out of all the things in the night sky that I can look at through my telescope, the moon is the one that most willingly reveals its secrets.

Or maybe it's only because in a world full of stress and unwanted change, the moon remains a constant.

I like the thought of that.

Sometimes it can be hard-edged, jewel-like and alien -- other times, orange-tinted and warm. Always a thing of untouchable, majestic beauty. But men have touched it. Men much greater than I.

No matter what form it takes when it appears in the sky, looking at it -- even for a few short moments -- always comforts and centers me in a way I can't really explain. It makes me think of what's...possible, perhaps.

Some of the quietest, most peaceful moments in my life have been spent sitting under that cold, soft light while the world sleeps. Whether I'm inside or out, it doesn't matter. For a moment, life is uncomplicated. Nothing can touch me. Time stops. The illusion is complete.

Here's a little ditty I wrote a while ago for another site. Enjoy. Or not.

Lunar, Eclipsed

Sometimes, when I look at the moon, I think back to the late summer nights when we sprawled on the hood of my car and stared up at the night sky. We wondered about our future, and whether we'd be together for a month, a year, a lifetime. We held hands and kissed and swatted bugs and drank our cheap wine under the stars.

And we laughed.

God, even now, just remembering the sound of your laughter can make my heart feel too big for my chest. When I close my eyes, I can still smell your perfume -- mingled with the faint, sweet scent of fresh-cut hay.

Sometimes, when I look at the moon, I wonder if, at that exact moment, you're looking at it too...and perhaps thinking of me.

We were just kids, I know.

But sometimes, when I look at the moon, I miss you more than I can bear.

Here's wishing everyone has a great 2007. Especially my fellow moon freaks out there!

They're right. Tattoos *are* permanent.

Do not drink this, ever:



Unless you actually like burping what tastes like a combination of Dr. Pepper and Vick's Formula 44 cough syrup for ten hours.

You have been warned.

Also, My belated christmas gift to you all.

Happy New Year, everyone!

I want to party with these people. Wait. No, I don't.

I have questions about this. For those of you too lazy to click on the link, it's a story about a lovely woman named Rebecca Dawson, who was charged with "malicious castration" for nearly tearing someone's scrotum off at a Christmas party -- with her bare hands. 50 stitches, my friends. Frankenjunk -- for the rest of his life.

So my questions are as follows:

(1) What the HELL kind of Christmas parties do they throw down there in North Carolina? Also, if you get an invite to their New Year's Eve bash, I'd give serious consideration to not going.

(2) "Malicious Castration?" I have to ask: Is there really any other type? As a guy, I would have to say no. (I know you women are out there counting them off on your fingers: "Intentional, deserved, completely necessary, just-for-fun, etc., etc.)

(3) To put it in terms of the holiday -- why was the baby jesus out of his manger in the first place?

(4) She did it with her bare hands. Will I ever again be able to tear the skin off a raw chicken without wincing just a little bit? I think not.

(5) Apparently, it was reported as a domestic disturbance. I would like to know who called this in. "Hello? 911? Yes, this is Rachel Fitzwater and I live across the street from the Dawsons. I can't be 100% sure, but I think I just heard the sound of a scrotum being ripped from someone's body. Yes, I'll hold, thank you."

(6) Why did they feel the need to inform us that "the arrest was the first of its kind in Lillington?" Does that fact really surprise anyone? I would think that if it wasn't the first time, then it *might* be worth a mention.

Slow news day, I guess. Slow blog day too, and that's why you're getting this post -- But really it's just because I couldn't stand looking at Pooping Santa's giant red butthole any longer.

Squeezing out one more post for Christmas.

You might remember the smoking baby Christmas gift I got last year from my friends who buy me weird shit. They're always like "Oh, I saw that and I immediately thought of you." This year, I opened my Christmas present from them and this fell out:



I am not sure why a Santa that poops hard candy makes them think of me, but that's something for their respective psychiatrists to iron out. Pere Noel surprise, indeed.

The first thing that struck me funny was that Santa, in addition to having a freakishly large bung-hole, also prefers to crap directly through his pants.



I wanted to make sure I followed the detailed instructions that were thoughtfully provided on the back of the packaging. I started with Step One:



OK - Remove the head. Put in Candy. Replace head. Seems simple, right? Not so. The head on my Santa does not come off, and is in fact one with the body. To get this particular Santa head off would require a chisel and quite possibly a band saw, and he would never be right again.

That's not to imply that he's in any way "right" when he comes out of the package, but still. Instead of trying to forcibly remove his head, I decided to use the convenient trap door in his back that, oddly, appeared to be designed for this exact purpose. I'm nothing if not versatile.

Unfortunately, the trap door seemed to be glued shut, so I was reduced to shoving the poopsweets up his butt one by one like little candy suppositories. That felt a bit wrong to me, so I eventually pried open his trapdoor with a butter knife. And that's not a euphemism for... well...for anything.

Once I had him loaded up with poop-sweets, I continued on to Step Two. That step seemed to work flawlessly. He shook like a baby's rattle and sounded chock-full of very settled joyful Christmas turdage.

Onward to Step Three.

I gently held the Santa around his body, (I may have even caressed him once or twice when nobody was looking) and pushed downwards, in anticipation of a sweet, sweet, Pere Noel poop. Would it be green? Would it be red? I waited with bated breath.

Nothing happened. No poop-sweet issued forth from the shiny-red oversized butthole of holiday spirit. Something was wrong. Santa was clearly constipated.

I read further down in the instructions, and noticed this bit:

Dammit. My Santa was all jammed up inside with what was apparently an odd-sized poopsweet. Contrary to the manufacturer's hopes, this was, in fact, stop me enjoying this product. So I opened his trapdoor, shook out his candy turd nuggets and tried again.

Success. As you can see from the picture, this time it was obvious he was ready and willing to drop a deuce for my pleasure:



Looking at the ingredients, I can see why he was initially holding back:



I don't know about you, but pretty much the last word I want involved when I'm going to the bathroom is the word "acid." I think that even beats the phrases "shards of glass" and "rusty staples."

There were no further instructions to be had, so I was on my own. The moment of truth was at hand.

I pushed him gently down and... Voila! A green poopsweet ricocheted off the kitchen counter and dropped to the floor, where it bounced under the refrigerator to sleep for all eternity.

Judging by his facial expression, I think he was both happy and relieved when it was all over:



In fact, I think we both were. By the way, if you were wondering, the candy tastes like crap. The green and the red are the same exact flavor. Stupid rip-off pooping Santa. Even so, I have awesome friends.

Next year, I'm filling him with raisinettes.

Just Filling In.

I was driving home from the store today and it was almost dark -- That time of night when the sky has sort of a blue-tinted glow and it gets a little hard to see. Not quite dark enough to turn on the headlights without feeling like your dad, but not quite light enough to see everything in razor-sharp detail.

As I drove past someone's side yard, I saw something odd out of the corner of my eye. My brain registered "Bathtub Virgin" (or "Mary on the half-shell" depending upon what part of the country you're from.) I'm sure you all know what these are, if not from personal experience, then from reading my blog...but something was odd about this one.

I craned my neck behind me, but couldn't make it out. So I did what any of you would do. I said fuck it and went home. No, of course I didn't, because I am not any of you. I turned my car around, parked it in their driveway and got out to look.

I am not privy to the current practices of the Bathtub Virgin Illuminati, but this display caught me by surprise. It seems that when Mary can no longer fulfill her matron-of-god duties, the best of all possible stand-ins is:



Yes. Water fowl. Swans are evidently preferred. And it's always good to have a second swan standing by in case the first one gets called away on important business.

I have no idea. People are strange. They make me laugh.

------------------------------------------------------

ps - According to my most recent site-meter search results that lead people here, there are entirely too many people forcing other people to wear butt plugs. Stop it.

Don't read this post. It's not going to be funny. Seriously.

Currently, I have three posts in the works. The first is about what makes something funny. I have been poking and probing at this question like a six-year-old pokes and prods the hole in his gums when he loses a tooth. I'm not sure I have any answers, but it will be an interesting discussion, as I'm sure you're going to recognize a few of my observations in those around you. I envision that post will be a semi-serious look at the different types of "funny" that exist, and why some people and things are funny and some aren't. It will also include some truly effed-up pictures of our company's nativity set as an example.

The second post is about living in rural America and how there is absolutely no controls on what your mailbox has to look like. You would not believe some of the shit around here that passes for a U.S. Mail receptacle.

The third post is this one, and it's about this particular on-going holiday season. And since that's the one I chose to open with, that's the reason this post isn't going to be funny. It's going to be sad, and maybe a little bit angry, and I'm going to say some stuff in it that I need to get off my chest. It seems to be the thing lately to use your blog as an outlet for something that it's not usually used for; to break out of the mold a bit and change up the format. Maybe it's something in the air, I'm not sure. So this post, while probably not appropriate for a humor blog (as I've come to call it - your opinion may differ) also might be a little hopeful in the end, and help me to sort out a few things. At the very least, maybe it'll help you guys who are reading this who are currently in or have been in a similar situation. Maybe, in some way, it'll help to know that you're not alone, and JV is out here pullin' for ya.

To lay it on the table, I have two people in my life who are currently dying. One I care about deeply, the other, well...not so much. That being said, however, both have impacted my life, and continue to do so. As a result, I'm having a hard time finding humor in things, and I'm afraid I've been phoning in my last month's posts in a (misguided?) effort to inject some levity into my life in spite of everything that's going on.

The weird thing is, I find it actually does help, but I'm not sure I'm doing you any service, since I presume that you come here to be entertained, and if I'm doing my job at all, you get a smile out of whatever it is that I wrote. So --If after this post I continue to be unfunny, well, I apologize in advance.

I was never really sure about this whole blogging thing anyway. People I work with (Special Dark, you bastard) have told me that I'm not as funny in person. While my first reaction was a sincere "eff you" -- I have to say that I actually agree with him (that bastard).

I thought about why that is, and it comes down to one thing: I'm pretty introverted and quiet, and as a result, when I am with a group of people I mostly don't ever say what I'm thinking. At any rate, that's part of my current dilemma. As a bona-fide introvert, I have a tendency to go into hibernation mode when I'm in a funk or under stress, and not want to socialize or be as supportive as I could be under more normal circumstances, which even then takes a lot out of me. I'll get to why that's an issue in a moment.

It's been over five years since my mother died, and the first time around for every holiday was incredibly tough. The first Mother's Day. The first Thanksgiving. The first Christmas. The first time her birthday came and went, and I wasn't able to call her up. My friend shop dungs is going through that now, and I know how difficult and incredibly sad this Christmas will be for him. I wish there was something I could do, but I know that there really isn't. Telling him that it "gets better with time" sounds incredibly trite, even though it's mostly true. The wounds are still too raw for any of that crap advice to have any meaning. It only means something when you discover it for yourself; when you've had the time to get used to the pain, and then begin to heal.

Right now, it's my wife's turn to feel raw inside and mad at life. It's her grandmother who is lying in a nursing home, unresponsive and being fed through a tube in her stomach wall, a result of a stroke almost a month ago. Her father had been battling skin cancer, which last week he found out has spread to his lungs, liver, stomach and adrenal glands. The doctors say he has maybe 6 months. My wife's grandmother is everything to her, and practically raised her. Their bond is one of friendship, mutual respect and an immense love.

Her father means almost nothing to her. He has basically ignored her all his life unless he needed something, and he's the most cold-hearted, self-centered person I've ever met in my life. His dying might not seem like an issue unless you know my wife, who is one of the most caring people I know. It causes her no end of guilt that she feels very little for her own dying father. He's not helping the situation in the slightest, which is typical for him. I didn't think it was possible to dislike someone as much as I have learned to dislike him over the years. He's a taker who has a sense of entitlement that makes me want to smash his face. The only saving grace in this whole debacle is that her grandmother doesn't have to watch her only son die -- If you can call that a grace of any sort.

Therein lies my problem. I feel like I have to be upbeat and supportive for her, yet all I want to do is go into lock-down hibernation mode. I don't want to be funny. I want to sit in my office and write shit like this. I want to forget about the hard choices that I'm sure she and her grandfather are going to have to make. I want to wish myself into next year, and maybe bypass all the heartache that is bearing down on us. Mostly, I want to sit in a corner near the woodstove and lick my wounds like a hurt animal.

But I can't.

I have to be there for my wife and her grandfather, who is one of the nicest, bravest, most inspiring men I've ever known. I'll tell his story some day. In the meantime, all I can do is watch, and offer support where and when I can. I'm not always good at it, I admit. I'm not perfect, and so I sometimes take the easy way out. It's a constant fight between what I feel I should do and what I have the strength to actually do. So hit me with the good mojo, because I'm going to need it. We all are.

The reason I'm writing this now is because I got blindsided in a Toastmaster's meeting today. I'm shitty at public speaking because of that whole "introvert" thing -- so I decided that even though the thought made me physically sick, I was going to join Toastmaster's. It's about nerdy as you'd think it would be, but it does get you speaking in front of a group. For those of you who don't know, at every Toastmaster's meeting there's a thing called "Table Topics" which basically means that they ask a random question on a random subject, and then choose someone to talk about it for 30 seconds. I got picked. The question was, "If you had the chance, and money and power were no object, what would you give to someone you care about as a Christmas present?" Before I even knew what I was saying, I said, "I'd make my wife's dad not have terminal cancer and I'd take away her grandmother's stroke." You could have heard a pin drop. In a room full of people I barely know, I blurted this out for no good reason other than it was what was on my mind.

I thought I was handling things pretty well until that exact moment, when I sat there in stunned silence with tears in my eyes. It was then that I realized that I had to write some of this down, just to get it out and maybe try to make some sense of what I was feeling. Unfortunately for you, I followed through with that, and this gibberish is the result.

I guess if there's a message to this post, it has to be one of hope and healing. Hope that the future holds joys and contentment that you might find it hard to imagine now. Whether you're dealing with loss, impending loss or just plain loneliness, remember this: You can plan for tomorrow, but don't do it at the expense of the present. As crappy as it may have been, take some time out to look at today, and the people you shared it with. Call your friends. E-mail or IM them if you have to. Call your parents, and your grandparents, if you're lucky enough to still have them around. Tell them how thankful you are that they're in your life, even if they're a giant pain in the ass most of the time. Tell them how much they mean to you, and tell them why. Or if that's too hard, just tell them that you love them, because you never know when a conversation you're having with someone you care about will be the last one you ever have. I can't remember the last thing my mother and I talked about before she died, and that still bothers me. Knowing her, I'm sure it was something that made me laugh, which makes it even more difficult.

It can all go away in an instant, and if it does, you don't want regrets. Talk about the good times you've had with the people you love, because those memories may be the only thing that gets you through the bad times.

As my father always tells me, you have to do what you can for the people in your life.

Then he usually adds, "Unless they're an asshole."

Advice to live by, my friends.

I'll be back with something funnier later this week. I promise.

(Like that will be tough, right? Hey I warned you in the subject line. You just never listen.)

Day Tripper.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of flying to Cleveland for the day. That means I get up at 3:45am, and catch the 6 o'clock flight, and then catch the 7pm flight home. It makes for a long-assed day, I can tell you that. I knew it was gonna be another fun one when the geezer checking my boarding pass burped into his mouth and then blew it in my face. If you've ever wondered what dead animals floating in a pool of old coffee and cigarette butts smells like, I can tell you. It smells bad.

Really bad.

The next thing that happened is that I get stuck in line behind a 400lb black kid. Like 6'4". HUGE. Probably somewhere between 18 and 20 years old. The metal detector keeps going off. He takes off his bling. It still goes off. He loses the belt. It goes off again. Finally they shunt him to the side and start wanding him. It appears that he must have a plate in his head. No...not his head. The problem is head-related, however. More specifically, the problem is in his MOUTH. He has a full set of gold teeth. I was witnessing a highly entertaining episode of "Grills Gone Bad." Eventually, they let him go.

When I got home, I did a little research on airport metal detectors and found this little tidbit:

The Metor 300 also incorporates an advanced Random Alarm function, which enables discreet search of non-alarming passengers.

So who knows. Maybe it wasn't his grill after all.

Other than that, I did get to witness someone almost knocking themselves unconscious on the overhead bin. That was fun. Besides the numbnut behind me who kept slamming something down on his tray table and waking me up, and the caffeine-addled, non-stop talking machine with the armor-piercing laugh in the seat across the aisle, the rest of the flight wasn't bad.

When I got on the train to go downtown, at the first stop a black kid in a hoodie sits down in the seat across from me and starts making a noise like, "ARRRRRGHHHH!" and pounding on the seat in front of him every 20 seconds.

He's talking to himself about something that is clearly making him very angry, since between the seat-banging and yelling, every other word in his monologue is the F-word, used in more variations than I thought possible. Finally, he slouched down, pulled his hoodie over his eyes, muttered something about hanging a motherfucking Grand Theft Auto poster in his room, and went to sleep.

Or died. I'm not sure -- I didn't check. Man. How much would it suck if your last words were "motherfucking Grand Theft Auto?"

At the second stop, a older white woman sits behind me and all is well until about 30 seconds after we leave the stop, and she lets loose with a chest-rattling phlegm-filled cough. It wouldn't have been so bad, except that she didn't even make a half-hearted attempt at covering her mouth with her hand. She just let loose. After the 2nd time it happened, I turned to her and said, "Could you stop coughing directly on me?" After that, she covered her mouth -- but only when I was watching her. When she thought I wasn't, she just sprayed the back of my head again. Ignorant people. I really need a driver when I go places.

If I thought the train ride in was bad, the flight home (delayed, of course) was worse. My seat was the second to the last one in the plane, and the whole area smelled like a dirty litterbox. It was pretty brutal. I had a screaming baby across from me, and I was surrounded by people with some sort of affliction. All signs pointed to Tuberculosis. I had my recorder on me, so enjoy.

This is just a 5-second snippet of a one hour flight.

It didn't stop the entire time.

I love day trips. All of the shittiness and none of the fun. How can you beat that?

I used to like a good kiss.

A word of advice:

When you see what appears to be a Hershey's kiss on the kitchen floor -- and you have cats -- it's probably not a good idea to pick it up and smell it.

$2.69 buys you 4 rolls and a social conscience.

The other day, I sat down and made myself a sandwich. I try to eat fairly healthy fare, and as a result most of the sandwich rolls we have in the house are shitty -- and by that I mean whole wheat. In this particular case, they were Barowsky's Low Fat Wheat Bulkie Rolls. They're awesome if you like the taste of shredded cardboard, but you'll learn to -- well, you never actually learn to like them, but you do learn to choke them down. (Now I sound like my wife.)

I took the last one out of the package, and since I'm a whore for any written words put in front of me, I started reading the bag. (I do this. I don't know why. I can't NOT do it. I read cereal boxes, milk cartons, soup labels, toothpaste tubes -- it doesn't matter. If there are words in front of me, I'm reading them, even if I read them a thousand times before.)

At any rate, I get to this bit, and start choking on my food, and not because the roll is dry as dust, which wheat rolls generally are:



In case you can't read it, it says:

"We also care about the environment. Our packaging, which provides our products with a good seal against the elements and staling, is recyclable. When you are ready to dispose of it, it can be recycled where it could end up as a variety of things such as carpeting, insulation, or a toy. If incinerated, it burns cleaner than home heating oil and actually helps all the other waste burn better."

Forget that recycling crap. According to this, these bags are like magic and I'm keeping them. In fact, ever since I saw this, I've been collecting them. I may be on my way to a serious gluten allergy from eating so many rolls, but I already have more than enough bags to cover the hardwood floor in my living room.

They're also not kidding about the insulation bit. I've taken to stuffing them in the arms of my coat and down my pants, and I've never been warmer in my life. I smell a little like stale wheat bread, but it's totally worth it and not that different from how I smelled before.

Just yesterday I wrapped up a half dozen of them to give to my friend's kids as a Christmas presents. I never know what sort of toy to get them, and when you think about it, there's lots of fun things an unsupervised little kid can do with a plastic bag.

If all goes according to plan, by next year at this time I should have enough saved up to heat my house for the winter. I wrote to the company asking them how many BTUs I should expect per bag, but they haven't gotten back to me yet --I told them it wouldn't be until next year, so they're probably just researching it a little so they can give me a more accurate number.

Behold the Pop.

I am a huge, huge sucker for the power pop - especially old school. The Rubinoos, Nick Lowe, Graham Parker and the Rumour, Squeeze, Jellyfish and Todd Rundgren & Utopia, to name just a few. If you never heard of them, you never worked in a record store* in the 80's, and nothing has been written in the last ten years that perfectly captures the pop sound.** Rooney came damn close. Fountains of Wayne probably came the closest, and if it wasn't for Rachel Hunter as Stacy's Mom, you probably wouldn't know who they were either. Be warned, it doesn't float everyone's boat.

It's melodic, it's exuberant, it's fucking happy, sometimes even when the song is about something sad. A handful of the more current bands I enjoy incorporate a pale measure of this pop sound -- bands like Bowling for Soup, Nine days, Nerf Herder, Silversun Pickups, American HiFi and New Found Glory come to mind.

A perfectly crafted pop song is a thing to behold. It's impossible to listen to true, honest to god, sugary-sweet pop music and not be instantly transported to a better place in your head.

So without further ado, I present Head Automatica, my new favorite fantastic pop band.

It's so over the top it's amazing. You can listen to the whole CD there, and it will start playing when you hit the site if you have a quick connection.

Enjoy. Turn it up and dance around. Play some air guitar power chords. I won't laugh, I promise. Because I'm doing it too, and I can't dance for shit.

I'll be back with something mildly amusing shortly.

*flat discs of vinyl, with a single, spiral groove that runs from the outside edge to the inside spindle. In this groove resides a teeny, tiny group of musicians who play their music while being chased by a gigantic needle of death. You need a microscope to see this. Alcohol helps too.

** If you know of something fantastic that I'm unaware of, please share.

Now even the women can get in on the fun!

I've been doing this for years, and now with this handy kit, I can finally share one of my favorite pastimes with my friends and family this Christmas.

Toxic Tree

It's 3 days after Thanksgiving, so of course it's time to kick the Turkey carcass and pumpkins to the curb and break out the Christmas decorations. I hate people who do this, but we have extenuating circumstances this year, so I found myself cutting down a Christmas tree on Black Friday while wearing a T-shirt and jeans. It's just not the same experience when you can still feel your extremities.

Anyway, we had friends in town and it was only opportunity we were going to have to do the whole tree thing, so we did it. I'm a little concerned, because we got some new lights for the tree this year and after I put them up, I read the side of the box and saw this:



So I'll probably be dead soon -- or at the very least, dead from the waist down -- since I didn't wash my hands and I was snacking throughout the entire process. Luckily, I didn't have to pee during the light stringing, so I avoided direct transfer of lead dust to my man junk.

I like how they don't even say "may expose you to lead." Nope, this shit is guaranteed. No question. You WILL have lead on your hands when you are done handling these things.

So when did stringing a set of lights on a Christmas tree become a life-threatening endeavor? At what point did the coating on the outside of the wires become more dangerous than the electricity on the inside?

I don't know. I think I'm just going back to those big-ass bulbs we had when I was a kid. So what if they actually raised the temperature of the room and got so hot tinsel melted to them? At least if you died in a fire, you'd die with your reproductive organs intact.

Happy Turkey Day.

Traditionally on this holiday, I have one job.

A single responsibility.

My wife cooks the turkey. She makes the stuffing. She bakes the pies. She sets the table and cleans up. She's awesome that way.

The one thing she will not do, however, falls to me. That one, holiday-centric task is this:



Yes.

I must remove the thing-that-must-not-be-named.

I have to reach inside the bird and remove the loose turkey neck from the innards, and -- along with the little packet of turkey guts -- spirit it away before my wife sees it. I have no idea why, but if she is forced to do this deed herself, she will literally gag. I've witnessed this, and it's the funniest thing ever.

So this morning, I will do my part. I will pull the giant penis-neck thing from the pale, cold bird carcass, and I will wrap it in a plastic bag and throw it in the garbage.

Eventually.

First, of course, I must honor the JV Thanksgiving tradition and chase her with it, just once, around the kitchen.

As you've probably surmised, I never get laid on thanksgiving.

Ah, the good old days....

My wife was watching the old movie channel and I walked in during this scene:



Apparently -- contrary to popular belief -- people CAN change.

Searching for the meaning of it all.

It's been a while since I've inflicted this upon you, but since I have nothing funny to report, I'm gonna lean on Site-Meter for this one. Once again, I'm pleased to present:

Fantastic Google Searches That Somehow Led People to My Site

somebody put shit in my pants - I included this one because once, about ten years ago, I was walking to work downtown and a drunk homeless guy said almost this exact same thing to me.

I'm urinating every five minutes. What's up? - the phrasing on this one made me laugh. As if you walked into your co-worker's cube and asked him, "Hey, whatcha doin? Do you have a sec to go over something?" and he replied with this line.

Can mayonnaise grow hair? - I can totally vouch for this one. Mayonnaise can indeed grow hair. Just leave it in the back of the fridge for about 6 months, and it'll have some hair on it you won't believe.

pictures of christian slater sober - You might as well be searching for "Real Live Unicorn Sightings" or "Video feeds of Jesus preaching" because you will never, ever find a picture of this anywhere. It simply does not exist.

butt bottom offensive - This was one of the lesser-known battles of WWII. It involved a platoon of marines who had nothing to eat or drink for 5 days except Beef n' Bean MREs and some contaminated well water, who were trying to occupy a small patch of enemy territory on a tiny but strategically valuable island in the pacific. I guess it got pretty rough in the end, but they took the hill and captured 36 unconscious Japanese soldiers in the process.

my wife forces me to wear a butt plug and panties - To me, it doesn't sound as if she had to really twist your arm much. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if maybe you asked her to twist your arm. Ditto on the buttplug and panties. My advice: Think up a "safe word" -- one that is still understandable when your leather mask is zipped up, or the ball gag is in place.

questions to ask a new girlfriend - Question number one: Have you ever forced any of your old boyfriends wear a butt plug and panties?

My husband needa bra - your husband needa lose some weight.

clowns and pedophiles - If you are trying to decide which one to get for your daughter's 5th birthday party, be advised that you can usually find a two-fer-one special, but they are rarely if ever advertised as such. If that is not your plan, however, then here's some advice: You probably want to go with the clown. A pedophile might well be remembered for much longer, but trust me -- you're not going to want to foot the bill for all those visits to the shrink when she's older.

stealth nudist - I am pretty sure I saw one of these guys in the public library once. The day I happened to surprise him in the stacks, only about 5 or 6 inches of him was a nudist.

how to get your girlfriend to try the zoophilia - My advice: You need to take her to a really nice place, where you know the zoophilia will be expertly prepared. Order an expensive bottle of red wine and when the waiter comes, order the zoophilia for both of you. Some women don't like when men do that, but most of the time the zoophilia isn't on the menu. So in this case at least, you will look like you know what you're doing. Also, slipping the waiter 20 bucks beforehand will get him to act all impressed and say "The zoophilia is excellent tonight. A very good choice, sir." That's sure to score points with your girlfriend. After that, if she likes it, you can make it a regular thing, like on your anniversary or her birthday.

I'm shedding hair but that doesn't mean i'm balding - Shock. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Acceptance. Get to steppin'.

undescended testicle talking to my girlfriend - I find myself wondering if you've taped any of these alleged conversations, because I am very curious as to what they talk about. I mean, they come from such different backgrounds that I can't imagine that they have much in common. I wouldn't worry about it too much. In time, they'll realized they live in different worlds and the friendship will fade away.

That's all she wrote for now. If anyone could have told me last week I'd be getting 10 hits a day on "flava delicious" and 10 more variations on that general theme, I would have never written about it. Between that and people looking for "nudies" It's taking me a lot longer to sort through my searches to find the good ones.