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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monistat.^®

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

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

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

IM Conversations with Yort go wrong so quickly.

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

Yort: Nice

Johnny: 1024 pressure levels

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

Johnny: HULK DRAW!

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

Johnny: HULK NO HEAR GOOD ONE SIDE!

It just happens. I'm not sure why.

Who wants to draw something?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Too much.

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

Once upon a time.

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

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

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

The Irony, it burn's.

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

Also, a part of my childhood died today.

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

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

We just knew we liked it.

Hey, Hey.

Free Candy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then I cleaned my car.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On one side there's an embroidered patch that said "ELITE DIVISION" on it, with a sillouette of a Lion and two crossed spears, and on the other is a shield with what appears to be a phoenix and three stars.

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

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

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

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

FIGHT!

Best comment ever. (Or at least today.)

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

You gotta either laugh or cry, you know?

I'm shutting down this blog forever.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Valentine's Day, Ted.

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

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

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

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

So yeah. No idea on that heart thing.

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

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

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

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

Sadly for me, here's the inside:

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

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

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

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

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

Ted?

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

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

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

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

I'm shocked.

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

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

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

Final touch.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Spirit of Video.

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

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

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

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

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

I'm afraid to ask

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

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

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

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

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

Random stuff from my phone.

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

Why did I take this picture, for instance?

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

How about this one?

"Yo, OTIS! Elevator broke!"

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

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

No? It's just me?

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

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

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

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

I had absolutely nothing to do with that.

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

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

Man. I really have to start working out again.

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

All I have to say is this:

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

That you know of.

The long walk.

When Paul and I graduated from high school, he went away to Oswego College in western NY, and I stayed home and commuted to a local college. It was an odd time for two kids who had known each other since 7th grade and had spent the better part of six years as inseparable friends. For the first time since we met, we weren't a ten minute drive or a 20 minute bike ride away from each other. There also wasn't anything called "unlimited long distance" so we didn't talk on the phone much because it was expensive. Neither one of us was much of a phone guy anyway, unless a girl happened to be involved.

We both hated college, and hated what our lives had become. I had unexpectedly been accepted into my father's alma mater, and it was a great school, so I felt I had to at least give it a shot.

I had originally planned to go to RIT in Rochester, NY, but between my unexpected acceptance and (the ridiculously stupid reason of) not wanting to leave a rock band I was currently playing in, I decided to stay home and go to Union College instead. I think if I'm honest with myself, getting accepted there was also a little bit of a relief, since the thought of leaving home was a little scary to me at the time. That first year of college wasn't a great period in my life. The band broke up, I was miserable, I had no real friends because all my old friends were gone and since I wasn't living on campus, I didn't have much of an opportunity to make new ones. I wasn't even sure I had made the right choice of schools.

And electrical engineering? That shit is hard. I have to give my father credit for sticking it out, especially while working a full time job. I don't think I inherited much of his smarts, however, because I had no natural aptitude for math, and almost as little for physics, so it quickly became clear that I was destined to be a C student at best. Every day was going to be a constant struggle to study hard enough and long enough to pass my required engineering classes. It wasn't until I was almost a year into it that I realized the handicap I was working under -- all the other kids who lived on campus "studied together" regularly, and by studied together, I mean they passed around the test answers from the previous year's classes. I was the only idiot trying to get by on brains alone.

Paul was in a similar situation, but with the added burden of having left a girlfriend when he went away to school. He had been dating a junior, so when he went off to college, she got to stay behind. They tried to make it work for a while, but you know how it is when you're 19 -- your mind runs away with you and your head fills with all sorts of imaginary betrayals. Given the long distance nature of their relationship, they sort of unofficially broke up even though he was still in love with her, or at least he thought he was. At the time, I thought it was more of an obsession, since when we did talk on the phone, that's mostly what we talked about. I think she was a kind of anchor for him -- a link to home, a link to the the past, a link to everything good and honest and fine in his life. All the things that being "away" seemed to change and erode. I spent a lot of time doing what you need to do for friends sometimes; I reassured him, agreed with his assessments, told him things were going to work out; even though I knew I was probably just telling him what he wanted to hear.

It's amazing how all-encompassing your problems can seem when you're in college, but when you look back on them ten or twenty years later, they seem so insignificant. Test scores, grade point averages, girls who like you and girls who don't, whether you'll have a part time job for the summer -- writing it down makes it look even more ridiculous. Even so, the pressure can seem immense; I think because behind it all, there is something so daunting that you are only able to think of it in abstract terms. Your future. Your career. The rest of your life. Abstract concepts that, if you were anything like I was while in college, you could only allow yourself to think about for short periods of time, otherwise the unanswerable questions might drive you insane.

The summer after high school graduation was a weird time for us. Summer had barely begun, yet the end of it was always in the back of our minds. We spent the whole three months wondering what was going to happen with our girlfriends and even with our own friendship. We hiked a lot in the woods near his house, talked about our plans and, because we were geeks, played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons. We played the same campaign on and off for most of the summer, until my character Jaxom died in a random cave-in while on a quest. It didn't seem fair, and still doesn't, but by that time in our lives we both knew that life isn't always fair. Sometimes a cave-in happens when you least expect it and there's not a damned thing you can do about it.

We did see each other on and off during that first year, but since my school used some ridiculous thing called a Tri-mester, which split the school year into three equal parts with short breaks in between, our time off never overlapped. He used to come home for break after I had already gone back, and sometimes just for kicks, I'd drive by in the morning and pick him up in the Impala and he'd go with me to my classes. We'd sit in the back and he'd spend about a week being a bad influence on me, drawing cartoons and designing knives and swords in the margins of his notebook while I was desperately trying to understand whatever the teacher was attempting to explain. Once in a while, just to be a wise-ass, he'd raise his hand and answer a question. I don't remember him ever getting one wrong.

It was during the first of these breaks that we vowed we'd start writing letters to each other while he was away, but instead of doing it the normal and sane way, we decided to do it in the spirit of our D&D campaigns -- complete with an ink-dipped fountain pen, parchment paper and medieval script. We called them Scrolls, and even managed to send the first few as rolled up parchments in mailing tubes. The tubes didn't last long because they were a pain in the ass and expensive to mail, so we switched to envelopes almost immediately. The scrolls themselves contained lots of ornate drop caps and plenty of thees, thous and thines with a lot of -eth endings on the verbs to keep things interesting. Over time, we named our own kingdoms and wrote as the relative monarchs of said kingdoms, both trapped by our responsibilities, both looking forward to the day when we could afford to leave our castles for a period of time and wander the land as common woodsmen.

Completely geeky, I know. Even so, it always brightened my day when I checked the mail and had a new scroll from my friend. They always began with "Hail and well met, Lord Virgil," and just reading that salutation brought a smile to my face and lifted my spirits. In fact, it still does. We imparted news officially, as if it were news of the kingdom, and we spoke of our women in couched terms, referring to them as m'lady, harlots or wenches, depending upon our mood and their behavior. The mailman must have thought we were completely nuts, given the sealing wax and weird crests and symbols on the outside of the envelopes.

I saved them, tucked away inside an old notebook from school, and tonight is the first night I've looked at them since Paul passed away in '09. After he died, his wife found some of the scrolls I had written to him - which he had kept the same way I had - and she gave them to me. It was interesting to see both sides of the correspondence in one place, and it was a shock to see, some 25 years later, how depressed and beaten down we both were, and how much strength we took from each other's words of encouragement, even though they were disguised as Kingly Missives.

There was one scroll from Paul that I find myself thinking about every Christmas eve. It was a particularly bleak one because he had finally come to the conclusion that it was over between him and his girlfriend and he was feeling depressed and a bit adrift, and Christmas break was coming up. For the first time since he had gone away, he wasn't planning to see her when he came home for break. At the same time, I had a crush on a girl who liked me "as a friend," and she was all I could think about. I was also seriously contemplating a change of schools, and I hadn't had the guts to spring that on my parents just yet. I had finally figured out that electrical engineering wasn't for me, and I was averaging somewhere around a 2.5 GPA. Needless to say, neither one of us felt much like celebrating.

In the correspondence, we talked about honor and friendship, our own mortality and the future, and the importance of staying true to your beliefs, and to your friends. The scroll began with his news of the break up, and ended with him asking me to write back and tell him what I truly thought about his situation. We knew that even as events in our lives forced changes upon us, we would always be friends -- and through this series of scrolls, two very introverted geeks were able to admit to each other that sometimes in life you need to lean on your friends, and that each of us would be there for the other, no matter what our futures may bring.

He closed his scroll with this:

Snow, falling softly.

Songs and bells ring through the winter night.

People laughing and close....distant they seem.

This is Christmas - a time of love, or so they say.

Where is that love for me? Do you feel the same, my brother?

While others are merry, I shall be empty.

In your kingdom, is it the same?

I will walk in that dark and holy night,

and I will meet you in the fresh snow, and I will smile.

For this Christmas, we celebrate friendship and brotherhood.

Merry Christmas, my Brother. My friendship and fellowship is my gift to you.

Geeky? Without a doubt. Heartfelt and sincere? As sincere as a 19-year-old kid can be, and that's pretty goddamned sincere. Corny? It may seem so now, but it didn't at the time. At the time, it was a lifeline. That was a dark Christmas for both of us, but we helped each other get through it.

The following year, I transferred to Siena college and he did the same, and we spent four more years in Academia where we muddled through most of computer science, decided that it sucked, and ultimately switched to marketing and advertising, which was interesting and pretty easy if you were creative. Mostly what I remember about those years was the sheer amount of fun we had.

Eventually, we got out of school and got decent jobs; I somehow managed to marry the girl I had that crush on, and a couple of years later, he married a girl he met one summer up at The Slug's family camp. On some level, it's like that first miserable college year never existed. Time fades memories and if you're lucky, you remember the good times better than the bad. Based on some of the stuff I wrote, I think that's definitely the case for me, because I was one gloomy son of a bitch on paper.

Even back then, we both realized life was short. I think Paul felt it more intimately than I did, and I think he also somehow knew that he'd have less time on earth than most. We had more than one conversation about how the life expectancy of your typical viking was about 39, and the life expectancy of a viking warrior was probably much less than that. We marveled at the fact that you could be considered a wise old elder at the age of 35, even though as 19 year old kids, we couldn't even imagine being that ridiculously old. I think that knowledge of his mortality drove him much of the time -- then and later on in life -- and it's probably why he had accomplished more in his 45 years than most people could given twice that number.

Back in 2004, we found ourselves once again living in houses that were roughly ten minutes from each other by car. As a result, for five years we spent countless Sunday mornings drinking coffee and hanging around in each other's workshops. When the snow flew, we'd invariably joke about that scroll, and swear that one Christmas eve, when both of us were home and our wives were asleep on the couch, we'd take that long winter walk. He'd start out from his house and I from mine, we'd meet somewhere in the middle and, with little fanfare save a handshake and a quiet "Hail and well met, brother," we'd break out the flask of Drambuie and toast our lives and the sheer, unbelievable good fortune that had graced us with this enduring friendship.

Every Christmas eve, especially when the moon is full and there's fresh snow on the ground, I sorely regret never having taken that walk. Maybe someday, many years from now or in the blink of an eye, it will still happen -- if there is indeed something after this life, as he always believed.

In the meantime, I'll raise a glass of Drambuie to my friend, my brother, and take a moment to remember the good times we had.

Merry Christmas, Mate.

Hail, and well met.

Step on my back, break your mother's crack.

Or something like that.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a muscle spasm in between my shoulder blades, up toward my neck, so I went to the doctor. He gave me a prescription for a week's worth of muscle relaxers, and sent me on my way. I took maybe three of them over the course of the next day, and in a few days the spasm was gone. Also, I almost missed work because you do NOT want to wake up in the morning after you take one of those things.

I thought that would be the end of it, but no. For some reason, ever since then, when I hunch over at the computer to type, or extend my left arm while I'm sitting, I get what feels like a tingle in the middle of my back, and it radiates down to the first finger and thumb on my left hand. It's the weirdest thing. I figured it would go away in a day or so, but it didn't. So finally, last week I told my wife I was going to go back to the doctor, and she said, "Why don't you try my chiropractor? He's really good." I was skeptical. I watched as many Two and a half men reruns at dinner time as the next guy, and I'd never really been to a chiropractor, even though I've had friends and relatives swear by it. Me, I've always thought of it as a pseudo-science at best, similar to acupuncture. Maybe there's something to it and maybe not.

So I agreed to give it a shot. I know there are some bone-crackers who get into the kooky-spooky spiritual aspects of things and start talking about your energies and your aura and the color of your poop, but when I had my first appointment, this guy didn't seem like that at all. He seemed to be pretty much focused on the mechanics of your body; your posture, your joints, your spinal curvature, things that made sense to me. It was more like talking to a physical therapist. The other thing I liked about him is he put me on the table with my face nestled in some kind of vinyl butt, looked at my spine, felt around a little bit, and said nothing major was "out," which I think is the highly scientific term chiropractors use when they describe your bones. "Your C5 and C7 are out," they might say. Where they have gone, and what they might be up to while they are out is anybody's guess. Whatever it is, they are apparently not supposed to be doing it. I'm pretty sure it involves a hot-sheet hotel in a seedy part of town.

So he asked me more about the referral pain down my arm, told me to lie facedown on the table, and then hooked me up to electricity. He put contacts on my back and connected wires to them, and then I'm guessing he took the ends of the wires and jammed them straight into a 220 volt socket, because suddenly my shoulder muscles contracted, my arms went straight out and my head tried to pull itself into my ass from the wrong direction. (On second thought, there's probably not really a right direction.) Anyway, this went on for a few seconds until he got it adjusted. After he dialed it back to 11, I was just ever-so-slightly shrugging my shoulders every three seconds, like I just didn't care about something over and over. He put some some sort of moist heat pack over the electrodes and my shoulders, and then left me there for 10 minutes.

When he came back, he worked over the shoulder muscle for a few minutes, rubbed some sort of camphor and menthol goop into my neck, told me he thought my pain and weird tingling fingers were due to a muscular problem, and charged me $65. I didn't feel much different, other than now I smelled like someone rubbed me down with Ben Gay and vodka, so I made another appointment and went home. In my head, I figured I'd give this guy a week or two, and then I'd head to an orthopedic or something.

The next appointment went about the same, and again there wasn't much improvement. He sent me for an X-ray, and what that told him is that due to not having great posture (have you ever seen an X-ray of a drummer's spine?) I had lost some of the "curve" in my neck. There was also some bone spurs in my cervical vertebrae because I'm old as dirt and I guess after you turn 40 your bones start doing weird shit to protect themselves and in another 20 years I'll probably have extra phalanges sprouting out of my coccyx or something.

He said the X-ray wouldn't show a disc problem, so he wanted to get an MRI if my insurance would cover it. Either way, he said he thought I could benefit from a good stretching and decompression. I figured he was going to give me some 5th generation, crooked, copy machine printout of some exercises that featured a faceless figure with an oval head and lots of dotted lines, but instead he brought me into the next room where there was a table that looked like it had recently been vacated by Frankenstein's monster.

I sat back on the table and he put my neck into a vise, and then strapped my head to this sled-like assembly. Attached to the sled was a cable that ran up to the back of the table, and the whole thing was attached to a computer. He programmed it, and after making sure I wasn't too uncomfortable (I wasn't, considering I was strapped to a machine being controlled by what looked like an IBM 486 pc from the early 90's) he turned the lights on low and told me he'd be back in 15 minutes.

The first time it went to 27 pounds of pull, I was pretty sure I was going to be paralyzed from the neck down. I remembered the quality of the graphics on that video screen and prayed it wasn't running Windows Me under the covers, because that OS was so bad it would pull your head off your body just for the fun of watching you die.

After a while though, it started to feel kind of good. It would slowly pull up to 27 pounds, then release to 14 or so. Then back up again. Before I knew it, the 15 minutes were up, and I wanted one of these things for my living room.

I've been on it twice so far and I can't really tell if it does anything or not. It feels pretty good when it stops, but then again, so does stabbing a fork into your eye. I know one thing, I'm going broke in this place. Really what's happening is I'm paying thirty five dollars for someone to give me a half-assed back rub and then pull gently on my head for 15 minutes.*

What I mean to say is, if it's truly muscular like he says, I could probably go to an actual massage therapist and pay about fifteen bucks more for an hour-long massage.

I have the MRI scheduled for Wednesday, so I'm probably not going back to him until I have some pictures of the inside of my spine. Wish me luck.

*That sounds dirty, but I'm leaving it.

Beans, Beans are good for your heart.

So the other day, I made these:

Well, I didn't actually make them, I mean I didn't grow them in my garden or anything. But still, I had something to do with their transition to that state.

If you didn't know, I'm a bit of a coffee snob. If someone offers me a cup of coffee and I accept, and they immediately take the can of Maxwell House out of the freezer, I always have second thoughts. Sometimes I'll change my mind and say I'd like tea instead, or sometimes I'll choke it down if I'm trying to be polite. I think "Good to the Last Drop" is probably one of the biggest and oldest marketing lies out there. In other words, I prefer to grind my own beans and I am partial to a darker roast and using a french press.

And then it all went to hell, because I read a stupid article on the stupid internet about how I could roast my own stupid coffee using nothing but a stupid $20 ebay popcorn popper.

I had to try it. Apparently the popper I wanted was called a WestBend Poppery, or Poppery II. I found a Poppery II cheap, so I Bought it Now, baby. Then I went on a search for green coffee beans, having visions of the sweet, sweet aroma of freshly roasted coffee wafting through my house.

I researched a few other things, too. Technically, coffee is "stale" about 5 days after it's roasted. You can slow that down with vacuum packing, but once you open your bag, use it up quick. Green coffee beans supposedly stay fresh and good for 6 months to a year in their unroasted state. I learned about chaff, and first crack and second crack. I found a place called Sweet Maria's, and I ordered up some coffee.

I got the popcorn popper first. It sounded like a worn out blow dryer with a bad bearing, but it got pretty hot and looked clean. I cleaned it up a little more, found a glass lantern chimney to replace the plastic top, and waited for my coffee to arrive.

I had ordered the "sampler pack" which means I got about 8 pounds of coffee total, with four different types of beans from different countries. It finally showed up a few days after the popper, and I was ready to roll.

The labels on the beans read like terms you'd hear at a wine or beer tasting. "Fruited bittersweet balance, chocolate biscuit, plum, sweet spices like cinnamon, ginger, clove and coriander" was on one package, and another read "Dried mango, peach, tamarind, rustic chocolate" (Rustic chocolate? That doesn't sound very appetizing.) I was excited. I had to try this asap.

I set everything up on the kitchen counter and plugged the popper in. I opened one of the bags of coffee and dumped in around 4-5 ounces of green beans, and got a wooden spoon to stir it with until it lost enough moisture to stir itself.

The first thing I noticed was that roasting coffee smells like ass. It smells nothing at all like coffee, and instead of a heavenly aroma of coffee wafting through my house, instead what I had was something that smelled like rotten grass slowly heating up in the sun. I turned on the fan over the stove, and started stirring the beans with the handle of the spoon. Immediately I noticed another problem. In order to look at the coffee, I had to put my head directly over the top of the popper, and since it's a hot air popper, air that smelled like ass was blowing directly into my face. It was like being forced to talk to someone with bad breath because they have something you want. After a minute or so, I noticed the chaff starting to come off the beans. This is the outer skin of the coffee bean, and it's very light. Think of that thin covering over a peanut when you take it out of the shell. Like that. This isn't so bad, I thought, leaning in for another stir.

Suddenly, I was in the middle of a brown, smelly snowstorm and chaff was blowing all over the kitchen. I had half-expected some kind of mess, which is why I decided to do this when my wife wasn't home. It was then that I heard what they call "first crack" and it sounds exactly like it was described. Sort of a popcorn-y sound, but not quite. It was less violent, maybe more like the sound you'd hear if you broke a candy cane in half. Suddenly, all the beans were doing this, and the popper was getting pretty lively. The smell didn't really improve much, however.

After most of the chaff had blown away, the beans started to brown. After about 14 minutes of this, I heard what I thought was "second crack" which sounds just like first crack except it's one higher. I wanted a nice dark roast, so I kept things going for a bit, watching the color of the beans until I had what I wanted. The fan over the stove wasn't cutting it, and the room was getting a little bit hazy. I was pretty sure that I saw the beginning of a little smoke, but I wasn't positive. Maybe the bean fumes were getting to me.

When I had a color I could live with, I unplugged the popper and dumped the beans into a metal colander, in order to quickly cool them. As I swished them around, I leaned in to take a little whiff, and sadly, things hadn't improved. It didn't smell like rotten grass anymore, but it certainly didn't smell like coffee. But that was OK. It was my first try, and I figured I did something wrong. I dumped the beans into an airtight container, and cleaned up my mess. Mission accomplished, sort of.

That night while I was in bed, I kept smelling that ass-grass roasting coffee smell. My wife didn't mention anything when she got home, so I figured airing out the house had worked OK, but this was really strong. It took me a few minutes to realize it was my hair. From sticking my face over the popper, I had that oily stench pretty much embedded in my scalp.

The next morning, I went downstairs to the kitchen and opened the container and...it was coffee! Honest to god, fantastic smelling, fresh-roasted coffee that smelled like you would expect it to. I brewed it up, and I thought it tasted pretty good for my first attempt. It wasn't as strong as Starbucks, but it wasn't as bitter either. I am now going to try a bunch of other bean types, and roasting times, just to see what I end up with. Also, I'm doing this in my shop now. No more kitchen counter. Here's a little video of that roast in the first picture when it was almost done.

I've tried all four in my sampler pack and here's what I've written down in my log so far:

Ethiopia Harar Longberry:

What I am supposed to taste: Hints of dried mango, peach, tamarind, and spicy cinnamon

What I actually taste: Weak-ass Coffee

Sumatra Dry-hulled Aceh Bukit:

What I am supposed to taste: Fruity, chocolate biscuit, plum, sweet spices

What I actually taste: Your Basic Really Good Restaurant Coffee

Brazil Cerrado DP Fazenda Aurea:

What I am supposed to taste: creamy body, very nutty, chocolate in darker roasts, banana, melon

What I actually taste: Average Coffee

Costa Rica Bajo Canet de Tarrazu:

What I am supposed to taste: Brightness (?), heavy fruit aromatics, banana, melon, orange peel, dark brown sugar

What I actually taste: More Coffee

So clearly I have to work on my tasting skills, because I have none. They all taste like coffee to me. Good, and fresh, but similar in nature. I need to learn more about the limitations of this corn popper method, too. Maybe that's my problem. Maybe I need to get an $800 home roaster so I can turn into a pretentious dickhead and pretend I taste all that stuff in those descriptions.

More so, I mean.