Mr. C's Great and Wondrous Show.

I think it finally hit me this week that Paul is no longer here. His birthday was last Sunday, and that was difficult enough, but this past Tuesday night a few of us got together to begin the dismantling of his swordsmithing shop.

The other guys got there early, so most of it was done by the time I got out of work. It was jarring, and more difficult than I thought it would be to walk into that place that had been so much his, only to find that it didn't exist any longer. By moving equipment, piling up tools, steel and other supplies, it had simply become a storage room full of stuff.

He was gone from it.

I got the same feeling I had as a kid when they bulldozed the woods in which my brothers and I spent our summers. I wrote a small post about that way back in 2005. (I've been writing this blog way too long.)

Since today is the fourth of July, I thought I'd share a story about Paul that seems appropriate.

When Paul and I were still living at home, Paul's parents hosted an annual 4th of July cookout. Every year I would spend most of the day over there stuffing my face with hot dogs and hamburgers and pasta salads and chips. Before we turned 18, we'd steal beer when nobody was looking, chug them in the basement, and hide the empties behind the bar. Later on, when we were legal, we'd bring our own beer so we didn't have to drink his dad's Black Label. All in all, it was a good party, and we looked forward to it. The food was always good, and the fireworks afterward were the highlight of the day. I don't think I missed a single fourth of July there throughout all of high school and college.

After dark, when the coffee was brewing and the desserts were on the table, Paul's dad would break out a metric ton of illegal fireworks and put on a show for everyone in attendance. Most of the neighbors came over to watch, too. Everyone would applaud and oooh and ahhh over them, and Mr. C loved every minute of it. Because it was a residential neighborhood, he always went easy on the rockets and tended to stick with the stuff that stayed earthbound. I'm not talking snakes and sparklers here, I'm talking things like giant spinners, jumping jacks, boards full of nailed up pinwheels, and ground blooms.

Paul liked rockets, though, so his dad always got him a few extra-large bottle rockets that he was allowed to launch over in the baseball field of the nearby school. Part of our yearly routine would be to head over to the field at dusk and launch one right before the show started at the house. Then after his dad's show, we'd go back over with the others and send them up, too.

The one year I'll always remember is the year that things didn't go according to plan. That year, I think Paul and I were getting bored with the same old thing. We were probably around 16 years old, we were tired of the whole "family cookout" extravaganza. In our minds, we had become too cool for that. As we were walking down the street toward the shortcut through the woods to the schoolyard, Paul said, "I wonder what would happen if you lit one of these things horizontally? Ya think it would go anywhere?"

"Probably not," I replied. "It would have to be on something pretty smooth."

"Like the road," he said, looking up and down the street to see if there was anyone around.

There wasn't. Everyone was in their backyards with their grills going full bore. The fronts of the houses were deserted.

"Yeah, like the road," I agreed. "The road would do it."

The road that Paul lived on was about a quarter of a mile long, and straight as an arrow until the right angle turn slightly past his house. He laid the mammoth bottle rocket down flat in the middle of the street and took out his lighter.

"Think we should?" he asked.

I could already tell he'd made up his mind to do it, regardless of what I said.

"It's your rocket," I said. "I'm just here to watch."

For some reason, I think we both expected that the rocket would just shoot straight up the middle of the street and that would be that. A boom, a laugh, and it would be over. Looking back on it now, I have no idea why we would have believed that sort of trajectory was even a remote possibility. These rockets were powerful, and wanted to go up.

He checked again for cars and people, and when he didn't see any of either, he reached down with his lighter and lit the fuse. While we were clearly ignoring the majority of the safety instructions written on the rocket, among them being minor details like "CAUTION: VERTICAL LAUNCH ONLY," and "USE WITH ADULT SUPERVISION" we did follow the bit that said "light fuse and back away quickly." We very quickly put about 20 feet between us and the sputtering rocket.

If you've ever lit the fuse on a large rocket, you know there's always that second or two when the fuse disappears into the body of the rocket and nothing happens. You wonder if it's a dud, or if it's just taking its sweet time. You are torn between waiting for something to happen, or walking up to it to see what's going on.

The fuse disappeared into the rocket, and nothing happened. We looked at the rocket, then at each other, and then back at the rocket. Paul said, "I think it's a d--" and then the street erupted.

The rocket took off down the road with a deafening whoosh! amid a huge shower of silver sparks and billowing smoke. This was made all the more impressive because the rocket only traveled about a hundred feet down the street before it hooked left and jammed itself under the front tire of the neighbor's car with a loud, hollow PONK!

It sat there spewing an ever-increasing shower of sparks as we looked on in horror. I barely had time to think, "no, no, no, No, NO!" before the rocket petered out.

We had taken a step or two toward the car before we remembered what came next -- and decided that maybe moving toward this thing wasn't such a good idea.

What came next was not good.

As we watched, cringing, the rocket made a noise like a warm bottle of seltzer being stabbed with a knife, and then shot two dozen flaming red balls in all directions. The balls started spinning around madly, bouncing around under the car and jumping onto front lawns and driveways alike. Then, almost simultaneously, each of the 24 burning balls changed color to vivid green and exploded with a high-pitched crack. It sounded like a full-on .22 caliber gunfight.

At that point we figured the worst was over. We were wrong.

We had been watching this unfold for what seemed like an hour, but had been, in reality, perhaps six to ten seconds. A split-second later, fresh activity began under the tire. We looked at each other with expressions that were half "WTF did we just do?" and half, "WTF should we do?" For lack of an answer to either question, we just continued to stand there and watch as another huge cloud of smoke and a fresh burst of golden sparks shot out of the jammed rocket, right before it blew itself to tiny smoking pieces with an explosion that sounded like a mortar shell.

"HOLY SHIT!" Paul exclaimed.

I had no immediate answer to that that statement. It really said it all.

We waited another minute for the car to explode, and when it didn't, we walked cautiously toward it to assess the damage. Surprisingly, other than some gray powder burns on the tire, there wasn't any. There were some scorches on the road from the fire balls hopping around and exploding, but there didn't seem to be anything else burning. We figured we had gotten lucky and that maybe we weren't going to end up owing anyone a new paint job.

Unbelievably, we were still the only people on the street. We quickly gathered up all the bits of plastic, un-jammed the wooden stick from under the tire and nonchalantly walked away, as if it had been someone else entirely who had almost blown up the neighbor's car and lit the entire subdivision on fire.

When we got back to his house, we stole a couple more beers, drank them in the basement and then headed out back to watch his dad's show. It was great, as usual. We clapped and hooted at every one he set off, even the ones we thought were lame. Looking back on it now, it was great to be there surrounded by family and friends, with nothing but good times ahead of us. The potential of those days was staggering.

I think I need to find a big-ass bottle rocket, just for old time's sake.

Happy 4th of July, mate. I miss you.

Procrastination.

I just realized I owe a bunch of people a Brennin Hunt CD from this post. The winners of the CDs were:

6th place: Anhara
5th place: Deanna
4th place: Christina
3rd place: Tricialynn
2nd place: Melodie

I have addresses for Tricia and Melodie, but nobody else. If you haven't (or even if you have) already sent your address to me via my profile e-mail, please do. I have the CDs packaged up and I'll get them out next week.

Carry on!

PS - I have one extra, so whoever would like it and posts the first comment gets it.

Boot Camp.

So as I mentioned in a previous post, I've been looking for some new hiking boots. I don't think my foot size has really changed since I was in high school. I took a 9.5 then and I take a 9.5 now.

I have very stringent boot requirements. They have to give me great ankle support (old snowboarding yard sale injury), they can't be made in China (I modified that requirement - at first I tried "they have to be made in the U.S." but I discovered that we don't make anything here anymore), they have to be comfortable, have almost no heel lift and be made with Norwegian welt construction. A tall order, I know.

The one boot that fits all those requirements is the Merrell Wilderness. Made in Italy, tough enough for some light climbing, comfortable enough for long hikes -- I've had a few pairs of those and they've been great. They can be re-soled, and they aren't too difficult to break in. Lastly, they always fit. The one thing they are not, however, is waterproof.

Oh, they'll say they're waterproof, and they may even be waterproof right out of the box, but they are not waterproof for very long. Even when properly treated, a rainy, messy hike will mean your feet will get soaked.

I wanted another pair to wear when when the weather looked suspect. Something that included that magical material called Gore-Tex. I knew I'd have to give up the Norwegian welt, but I figured it would be a fair trade-off.

As you may already know, I hate shopping. I hate going to stores, I hate being waited on, I hate standing in line to check out, I hate just about everything involved in the entire miserable experience. That being said, you'd be correct in thinking that I am a big fan of ordering stuff online.

Boots, however can be an iffy proposition, because unless you're buying something you've purchased before, you have nothing to go on except for the reviews of others. So began my boot buying odyssey, which has not yet, in fact, ended. Right now there are boots in a box on my kitchen table, waiting to go back from whence they came.

Let me tell you why.

I know you probably don't give a shit, but I'm going to get this off my chest anyway, so what else do you have to do? I suppose you could go watch reruns of old American Idol episodes, but even if I just typed nothing but the word "moist" over and over and over for an hour and then made you read it out loud, it would probably be less annoying than doing that.

Anyway, after reading hundreds of reviews, I decided that these boots might be the ones for me. They had the Gore-tex, they had good reviews, and they were made in Germany. Sure, there were a few discrepancies in the reviews -- some people said they ran big, other people said they ran true to size -- you never know who to believe. I figured worst case, I'd take a shot, order my normal size and hope it worked out.

Here's how I pictured this happening:

1. Order boots.
2. Receive boots.
3. Wear boots.

Simple, right?

To make sure things happened as I wanted them to, I decided I needed to figure out exactly what my shoe size is. I always knew I was a size 9.5, but I never really knew my width. A? B? C? D? E? EE? EEEE? F? G? I had no idea.

"How hard can it be?" I thought to myself. "There are probably hundreds of sites out there with the info I need." The first site I went to told me to trace my feet, then click the "shoe size conversion chart" link. Since I always do what the internet tells me to, I traced my feet onto two pieces of paper, measured toe to heel and side to side, and then clicked on the link. It was dead.

So I had learned three things. One, I have duck feet:



Narrow in the back -- wide in the front, flat on the bottom. They are like triangular paddles on the end of my legs. Two, my right foot is a full half-inch shorter than my left. Three, static web pages suck.

Armed with that knowledge, I headed off to Wikipedia, the knower of all things, and looked up "shoe size."

That's when I started to get confused. It seems that along with religion and politics, nobody in the world can agree upon the best way to size a shoe. It seems that the US, Canada, Europe, Asia and the military all use different systems. Oh, and women's and children's sizes -- also different.

WTF.

I continue to read. It wasn't all bad. The first thing I saw was that there were three common sizing systems. The first one is used by NATO and other military groups. It's called "Mondopoint." There are length units, and width units. At least that makes sense, right? In a perfect world, you'd walk into a shoe store and if your foot is 10.5" long and 4" wide, you'd say "give me that shoe in a ten-five by four" and you're on your way. But no.

Because Mondopoint is in millimeters and I live in the U.S., I can't convert that into actual inches without a calculator and a lot of time. So it wasn't ideal. Also, I am not in the military, and since nobody else uses it, it was dead to me.

I looked at the U.S. information next.

The calculation for a male shoe size in the USA or Canada is:

male shoe size = 3 x last length in inches -24

Then I had to look up "last length." Apparently, the "last" is the foot-shaped template over which the shoe is manufactured.

Wikipedia told me that the traditional US system is similar to English sizes but "starts counting at one rather than zero, so equivalent sizes are one greater." So one number higher than English shoes. OK. I'm good enough at math to figure that one out.

I started reading about the sizing methods used in the UK. "Shoe size in the UK (English size) is based on the length of the last..."

So far, so good. I mean, I now knew what a "last" was.

"... measured in barleycorn starting from the smallest practical size, which is size zero. It is not formally standardised."

Jesus Christ. Barleycorn? Where was I going to get my hands on a barleycorn at 11:30 pm on a Thursday? I don't know about you, but I don't have a barleycorn farmer on speed dial. Plus, it's not even standardized. What would happen if I inadvertently got my hands on some bigass barleycorns?

So it turns out that the barleycorn is a "basic Anglo-Saxon unit, literally the length of a corn of barley."

Wikipedia says that it "goes back to 1066, as the base unit from which the inch was nominally defined. Three barleycorns comprising 1 inch was the legal definition of the inch in many mediæval laws, both of England and Wales, from the 10th century Laws of Hywel Dda to the 1324 definition of the inch enacted by Edward II. Used in current UK shoe measurement."

Used in current UK shoe measurement. Did I just read that?

So apparently the English are currently using a unit of measure from 1066 to size shoes. Currently, as in Today. Right now. Exactly at this second, there's some UK bastard out there lining up his fucking barleycorns.

Then I remembered these boots are made in Germany. I immediately canceled my barleycorn order, and started looking at the Continental European system -- which is used in France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

In this system, the shoe size is the length of the last, "expressed in Paris points."

Seriously? Paris points? Son of a bitch.

So it turns out that a Paris point is ⅔ of a centimetre and it has been agreed upon in Germany that the last is the length of the foot plus two centimetres, so to figure out my shoe size, the simple formula is:



At this point, I was done. I just opened the Cabela's website in my browser, ordered my boots in a size 9.5, EE and called it a night. A few days later, they showed up.

I put them on, and they were too big. I'd say by at least three, maybe four barleycorns. I had to crank the laces down, and I still got heel lift.

So I did what I should have done to begin with. I got on the phone with the sales guy at Cabela's, and told him they were a little too big and I was getting some major heel lift.

"Yeah, they do run a little big," he said. "You ordered the wide boot -- the EE width -- is that what you wanted? Most people with normal feet go with D width. If I were you, I'd get the 9 D's. They'll probably fit you perfectly."

So now I need to send the other ones back, and in another week, I'll have a pair that will supposedly fit me like they should.

But I've been saving my poppy seeds, just in case. It turns out that according to modern-day UK math, they go four to a barleycorn, and they're much easier to get.

They're a real pain in the ass to line up, though.

Sometimes I get mail.

At least a few times a week, I get mail from people or companies looking for free advertising. They always pitch it as "Hey, I've got a funny idea for a blog post!" or "Here's a funny site!"

Just to show you the sort of high class companies that my blog attracts, I am going to share one of these e-mails with you.

To: me@verizon.net
Subject: funny idea for your blog!

Hey Johnny,

We have been enjoying your blog and thought you might be interested in our hilarious new product: the assbrella. It is the world's only umbrella featuring a huge picture of an ass! Check out our site at assbrellas.com for some pics and more info. Feel free to pass it along to your readers!

Thanks,

The Assbrellas Team

Problems I have with this e-mail in no particular order:

1. It's an ass. On an umbrella. And the top of the handle pokes out of the bunghole.
2. Asses look pretty damn creepy when there is nothing else attached to them.
3. They are lying their giant umbrella asses off when they say they've "been enjoying my blog."
4. They wouldn't give me one for free.
5. They have a team. Dedicated to the assbrella.

Picture this conversation:

Dad: "So, you want to marry my daughter? That's great, that's great. What business did you say you are in?"

ABGuy: "I'm a member of the Assbrellas team."

Dad: "Sounds impressive. I think I've heard of him. He's that Italian formula one race car driver, right? Antonio Aiezbrello?

ABGuy: "No. I am a member of a sales team that sells cheap chinese umbrellas. With pictures of hairy asses on them. You know. Assbrellas."

Dad: "Get the fuck out of my house."

So there you go. Order yours today.

More good times.

Due to a recent reorg, my boss got a new boss. He seems like a nice guy, but I don't really know him. Since my boss was out of the office today, I had my very first Instant Messaging interaction with my boss's boss. It went about as well as could be expected:

Big Boss: How's everything in the world of messaging today?

Me: So far so good

Big Boss: Are you on point for the disaster recovery test?

Me: No, not this time. I believe it's going to be Jim

Big Boss: ok. I'll check in with him on that. I hope it all stays quiet

Me: Yeah, so do I

Big Boss: OK, page me if anything comes up. Have a good one

Me: Will do, you too1

Me: too! I meant too!

[end chat]

Have a good weekend, everyone.

Good times.

I still have to post my followup, but I don't have time tonight. Instead, I'll share this small part of my day.

I was waiting in the grill line at the cafeteria today when I got a text message from my buddy Yort.

"Lunchin?" it said.

I had seen him sitting in a conference room on my way down to the chow line so I figured he was working through lunch.

"Waiting in line right now." I replied.

A few seconds later, I got another message. "Dammit!" it said.

So I bailed on the line and walked back to the conference room. He was gone. I walked back to his desk. Not there. I walked back toward the cafeteria just in case I had missed him somehow.

I sent him another message. "Where r u?"

While I was waiting, I decided to hit the bathroom down the hall. Just before I walked in the door, another message came in. It just said, "Baffroom."

I realized the implications of my friend texting me from a stall, but I walked in to take a leak anyway. I immediately saw his sneakers under the handicapper stall door. More room for texting, I guess.

I did my business, and as I was washing up, I yelled over to him. "Hey! Pinch it off and get out of there. I don't have all day!"

He flushed, opened the stall door, and walked out.

It was some dude I had never seen before.

Fucking New Balance.

There and back again.

So this is my 2nd and last night in beautiful downtown......Brooklyn, I think?

Brooklyn, Ohio. Yeah, I think that sounds right. As far as I can tell, it consists of a Friday's restaurant, a business park and a Hampton Inn. The latter location is where I am currently fighting with the heating/cooling unit and listening to the train rumble past, roughly 3 feet from my window.

Other than that, I have very few problems with my room. It's superficially clean, which is about all you can realistically hope for, the water pressure in the shower is decent, and while there was a very suspect half-inch brown smear on the front edge of the toilet seat, the rest of the bathroom is spotless. I cleaned the smear off with a washcloth and tossed it into the garbage can.

I'm sitting here listening to Wilco and wondering what to write about. I'm working on about combined seven hours of sleep over the last two days, so if none of this makes sense, I apologize in advance. I think I'll just tell you a little about my trip.

The toilet issue above makes me think that so far, this trip seems germier than most. Maybe my germaphobic tendencies are getting worse, or maybe people are just becoming more disgusting over time, but this trip seems worse than normal for some reason. Some of it was even self-inflicted, but I'll get to that in a bit.

It all started with the button on the ticket machine at the long-term airport parking garage. I pulled my car up, rolled my window down and reached out to push the button when I realized that there was something blobby and kind of red smeared on it. I'm not sure what it was. I am sure I don't ever want to know. For my sanity, I am calling it strawberry jelly. It helps me sleep better at night. I pushed the bare edge of the button and took my ticket with a shudder. After I parked the car, I walked to the terminal and picked up my boarding pass.

My next airport run-in was with the licky lady. She was stationed at the security check, sitting up on her little stool, looking over the top of her cats-eye glasses that were perched precariously on the tip of her nose. "Boarding pass and ID, please," she said, holding out one latex glove-covered hand. I handed her both the boarding pass and my driver's license.

If you've ever picked up your boarding pass via one of the kiosks, you know they dispense them on thermal paper, which is very, very thin. Apparently, too thin to separate from the folder easily. You know what makes it easier? Giving a good, solid lick to your filthy, rubber-clad finger with your knobbly old tongue first.

She wrote something on my boarding pass with her pen and then held up my license for inspection.

"Second row on the left," she said, handing me back my license and boarding pass. I could still see the little glistening spitspots drying on my license. I wrapped it in the boarding pass and tried to forget about it as I bent to take off my shoes.

I tossed them into one of the buckets, grabbed another one for my laptop and pulled all the crap out of my pockets. The guy in front of me was doing the same. I tossed my backpack on the conveyor belt.

"Do you have any gels, liquids or creams?" the security guard working the X-ray machine asked the guy in front of me.

"Yes, just the normal shampoo and toothpaste-type stuff," he answered.

"Can you remove it from your bag, please?" the security guard asked.

The man pulled a clear ziplock bag from his duffle. The security guard poked at it, and then spotted something.

He rooted around in the guy's bag for a second, then pulled out an extra-large tube of Preparation H with a 3-inch nozzle.

"The limit on tubes and bottles is 3.4 ounces," he said, holding it up. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to confiscate this."

The guy didn't argue. I think he just wanted to toss himself into the gears of the x-ray machine and call it a day. At least his ass wouldn't hurt any more. The rest of the ziploc bag passed through the machine without incident. The guy was so flustered, he left his laptop in the bucket and I had to point it out to him.

I was next.

"Do you have any gels, liquids or creams?"

"Uh, yes," I said. "Just the normal, uh, you know, toiletries and whatnot. Toiletries and whatnot? Where the fuck did that come from? Who am I? Queen of England?

"Take them out for me, please."

I took them out of my backpack, nervous, yet smug in the knowledge that the time I spent transferring shampoo and conditioner and toothpaste into small 3-ounce bottles was not wasted.

As I put the bag on the conveyor belt, I noticed something. My ziploc bag was vibrating. The guard noticed it too. He looked up at me and arched an eyebrow, clearly waiting for me to explain what he was seeing.

"Electric Toothbrush," I said sheepishly, opening the bag and holding it up for all to see, just to dispel any confusion. I clicked it off and shoved it back in.

After I made it through the security check, I survived a momentary gross out when I realized that while I was packing my computer and my "toiletries and what-not" into my backpack, I held my boarding pass and driver's license pursed between my lips. Is it any wonder we are all going to die of swine flu? No, it is not.

(As an aside, is it just me, or does everyone else feel like they are about to get called out for smuggling drugs or explosives or something when they go through these checkpoints? I'm always expecting someone to walk up to the head guy, whisper something, point directly at me, and the next thing I know I'll be on the ground with some TSA agent's foot on my neck while another one cuffs me.)

After that, I went to grab a cup of coffee at starbucks, and the woman making it coughed directly into her hand and then used it to press the lid on my coffee. I brought it over to the sugar/cream stand, and then promptly dropped the lid on the floor. I picked it up, thought fuck it, and put it back on. I was already dead.

My last gross out on the way here was, as you've probably surmised, bathroom related. Right before boarding, I decided I'd make a quick run to the men's room to get rid of some of that coffee I had ingested. As I was standing there doing my business, I realized I was standing in a puddle of piss. Nothing out of the ordinary there, I guess. I rotated to the outside of my feet to keep as much of my shoe off the ground as possible, but the damage was done. I walked out just in time for our flight to board. As I was stuffing my backpack under my seat, I realized something. The only place to put my newly contaminated piss feet was right on top of my bag.

Man, I hate traveling.

It's late and I have an early shuttle to catch to the airport in the morning, so I'll have to tell you about the rest of the trip tomorrow. I'll give you a hint: It involves heavy drinking, other peoples' dirty balls and socks of unknown origin.

You can't go wrong with that combo.

Flower Power.

You may remember my awesome neighbors. I've written about their "interesting" taste before, in this post about their bedazzled mailbox. As predicted, chunks:



Granted, it took longer than I expected, and most of it is still hanging in there like a persistent rash, but that's OK because the wrought iron baby buggy, robot cat and dog, and reflector posts took a lot of the focus away from the mailbox:

The best was yet to come. A little while ago, a wrought iron bird cage (with two fake canaries), a section of picket fence with a yellow ribbon on it, and a pair of wicker chairs made the scene. It was getting a little crowded out there.

Hey, to each his own, right? We get a kick out of it when we drive by, but sometimes we can't help but wish they stuck to the chainsaw-carved bear they started with.

Their latest addition takes the proverbial cake, however:

Yep. Giant, fake, pink flowers in a milk jug. Totally awesome, right? Every time we drive by, it reminds me of this. I cannot figure out what they are thinking. It's like they are a couple of stoners instead of retirees.

I never claimed to have great taste, but here's what I built in our garden today:



I might add some giant pink satin flowers.

One more completely unrelated thing -- if anyone has one of these they want to sell, please let me know. Thanks.

2 more things I will never need.

The other day I was surfing the web looking for new hiking boots that aren't made in China, and while I was at it, I figured I'd pick up a nice three-wolf moon t-shirt. As I was reading the reviews to make sure this was the three-wolf shirt for me, (you have to read the reviews) I stumbled on the answer to my prayers in an adjacent ad:

Well, maybe it would be more accurate to describe it as a book about the answer to my prayers.

Prayers that were, unfortunately, duly ignored.

So really, stumbling on this book is probably more of a cruel cosmic joke than anything else. I like to think of it as just another well-placed brick in the wall of my agnosticism.

On the other hand, if the person who wrote book this is actually making money on it, I salute him for his brilliant idea. Seriously, it could be blank inside and I'm sure he'd still sell quite a few of them as jokes.

The funniest part for me wasn't actually inside the book though. It was this:

This hurts my head. Who out there is thinking, "You know what would go perfect with this book about how to live with my giant crank? A terra cotta Obama with a green afro."

I would have guessed the answer would be "nobody," but I would have been wrong.

Apparently, there are enough people out there who want a Chia Obama that they sell them in two poses -- which are labeled "determined" and "happy."

When I look at them, I see something entirely different:

Happy Memorial Day Weekend, everyone. Please remember our fallen troops.

Total Recall.

In an ongoing effort to make my blog both fun AND useful, I've decided to keep you up to date on current consumer product recalls. Not all of them, of course --just the ones that made me laugh for some reason. That's another way of saying if the grill you bought explodes, you're on your own. Unless, of course, said grill is made of gold and goes over your teeth, in which case you totally would have read about it here first.

With that introduction out of the way, here are some recent recalls I think my readers should be aware of.

This first one I'd like to file under the category of "Unfortunate Company Names":

Children's Hooded Sweatshirts with Drawstrings Recalled Due to Strangulation Hazard

Name of product: Hooded Fleece Sweatshirts
Units: About 450
Distributor: Dysfunctional Clothing LLC, of Irvine, Calif.

Hazard: The jackets have a drawstring through the hood which can pose a strangulation hazard.

Apparently, I am not the only one who can't really understand how you could kill yourself with your own sweatshirt. There are a ton of clothes companies who just got fined for "failure to report drawstrings" on their sweatshirts. So while the topic of strangulation isn't funny, I still laugh when I think of the company president of Dysfunctional Clothing, LLC sitting in his office thinking, "Why? I'm an idiot, that's why! What made me think that name was a good idea?"

[edited: Jess, Marbles --holy crap, I had no idea little kids getting killed by drawstrings was that common. How did we ever survive the 70's? No helmets, strap-on rollerskates with metal wheels, drawstrings on our clothes ... ]

This next one goes in the file folder marked "Irony."

Skull-And-Crossbones Necklaces Recalled By Spencer Gifts Due to Risk of Lead Exposure

Name of Product: Skull-And-Crossbones Necklaces

Units: About 8,400

Importer: Spencer Gifts LLC, of Egg Harbor Township, N.J.

Hazard: The skull and metal clasp of the necklace contain high levels of lead.

Let me get this straight: They sold 8,400 of these things? What sort of lead product were these people sucking on before? I mean, something had to make them think a skull and crossbones necklace was a good idea to begin with, right?

This next one I file under the heading of, "Things that make me simultaneously cross my legs, bend at the waist and cover my crotch with both hands while breathing in sharply between clenched teeth."

Under Armour Recalls Athletic Cups Due To Injury Hazard

Name of Product: Under Armour Athletic Cups
Units: About 211,000
Importer: Under Armour Inc, of Baltimore, Maryland

Hazard: The cups can break if hit, posing a risk of serious injury hazard to athletes.

Incidents/Injuries: Under Armour has received five reports of cups breaking/splintering, including an injury involving cuts and bruising.

Yeah, that's what I want covering my junk. A futuristic codpiece that explodes into razor-sharp shards when it's hit with something. It's safe to assume that they did no product testing on this at all. It looks like kevlar/carbon fiber body armor (or maybe a super villian mask), but apparently it's made of untempered glass.

I don't even know where to file this last one. Under "Things that make you go "Ewww," maybe.

Target Recalls Dive Sticks Due to Impalement Hazard

Name of Product: Dive Sticks
Units: About 365,000
Importer: Target, of Minneapolis, Minn.

Hazard: The recalled dive sticks could remain in an upright position, posing an impalement hazard to young children.

So they're telling me that kids are actually getting impaled on these things? They throw them in the pool and then jump on them, and because they're sticking up in the water they get impaled? I find that hard to believe. OK, maybe once, but what are the odds? I feel bad for the manufacturer on this one. It's not like they have jagged edges like that cup up there. They're round and smooth, for god's sake. What they should do is recall them, jack the price up to ten times what it was, re-label them as "Sexx Stixx: Sensual hot-tub fun for everyone." and sell them exclusively through Adam & Eve.

See, Dad? My marketing and advertising degree didn't go to waste, regardless of what you're always telling me.

So until next time, beware of any street corner cup deals that look too good to be true. I mean, usually you're fine buying that sort of thing out of the trunk of someone's car, but you can't be too careful these days.

They say 24% of California's air pollution comes from overseas.

A friend of mine sent me this article today. It's a story from India, so needless to say, it's very effed up. Also, I have questions.

Indian dad avoids washing for 35 years

NEW DELHI (AFP) - - An Indian man who fathered seven daughters has not washed for 35 years in an apparent attempt to ensure his next child is a boy, newspapers reported.

Kailash "Kalau" Singh replaces bathing and brushing his teeth with a "fire bath" every evening when he stands on one leg beside a bonfire, smokes marijuana and says prayers to Lord Shiva, according to the Hindustan Times.

"It's just like using water to take a bath," Kalau was reported as saying. "A fire bath helps kill germs and infection in the body."

Kalau, 63, from a village outside the holy city of Varanasi, outraged his family by refusing to take a ritual dip in the river Ganges even after his brother died five years ago.

"I still don't remember how it all began," he said in Saturday's edition of the paper. "I just know it started about 35 years ago."

Kalau's hygiene regime has taken its toll on his professional life.

The grocery store that he used to own closed when customers stopped shopping there due to his "unhealthy personality" and he now tills fields near Varanasi airport.

Kalau, who wears two pullovers all through the Indian summer, said his pledge not to wash was a commitment to the "national interest."

"I'll end this vow only when all problems confronting the nation end," he said.

But his neighbours in the village of Chatav said there was another reason for Kalau's washing boycott.

"A seer once told Kalau that if he does not take a bath, he would be blessed with a male child," a man called Madhusudan told the paper.

Most Indians prefer sons, who are typically regarded as breadwinners, while girls are seen as a burden because of the matrimonial dowry demanded by a groom's family and the fact that their earnings go to their husband's family.

Where to begin? The first sentence is probably a good place. Not washing for 35 years is supposed to guarantee him a male child? First off, I think that for the last 34 years, 11 months he has not been able to get within yelling distance of another living thing, let alone an actual woman. I am guessing that does little to help the whole procreation process. Also, I feel bad for his daughters. Can you imagine? I thought my dad was embarassing to me when I was a kid.

"It's just like using water to take a bath." No, it is not just like using water to take a bath. In fact, it's just about the direct opposite of using water to take a bath. One, it's not a bath, unless stewing in your own sweat counts, which it does not. Two, how exactly do you brush your teeth with a bonfire? That's like saying you can comb your hair with a car. Three, while I can understand you smoking weed in an attempt to dull your senses to the point where your own putrefaction doesn't make you vomit, wtf does standing on one foot have to do with anything?

And here's a news flash -- people didn't stop shopping at your store because of your unhealthy "personality." They stopped shopping at your store because you sell food and also have small chitenous creatures living off your body. They probably couldn't bring themselves to breathe in the same air you just exhaled. If you're going to do this kind of thing, move to Bombay. The air smells like raw sewage there most of the time anyway.

And as for ending your stank-ass protest when "all the problems confronting the nation end" -- know this:

You, my crusty, malodorous friend, ARE one of your nation's problems.

And Shiva? I am betting he is glad he has those extra arms. That way he can cover his eyes, plug his nose, and still have two hands left over to smack the shit out of you. I would also bet my paycheck that your neighbors and your family are also wishing for some extra arms right now.

Here's some unsolicited advice. Take a fucking shower and find a new seer. After 35 years, I think it's safe to assume that the old one isn't working out for you. Or for anyone else.

The Butterfly Effect.

Traditionally -- if, in fact, a blog that is only 4 years old can be said to have anything resembling a tradition -- I do a Mother's Day post, where I tell you some crazy story about my mother. Last year, when I was recounting the tale of the speed bumps, I said I was going to tell you the story of the other time she ran afoul of the law.

This story starts in late spring/early summer. The time of year when my mother's interest in landscaping became all-encompassing. Spreading mulch, planting flowers, poisoning weeds and killing grubs became her passion. She loved flowers, and every year she would buy so many flats of flowers the garage floor would be covered with them the week before the planting and my father would have to park outside. In addition to the normal sort of planting that went on, there was always one wild goose chase. It was different every year. I called it The Quest.

The Quest was a name I made up for her incessant search for something unique for her landscaping. It had to be something nobody else had, and it was even better if it were something free.

As an example, for years we had something called a mimosa tree in our back yard. For those of you a few hours south or southeast of where I grew up, you probably see these things all over the place. They are a beautiful flowering tree my mother fell in love with and decided that she wanted.

The only problem is that Nature did not intend for mimosa trees to grow in upstate New York. It's too cold, and they die. That's just the way things are. That little fact didn't stop her from trying, though. On our annual trip to the Jersey shore, she dug one up, brought it home and planted it in the back yard next to the pool. She did everything short of building a heated greenhouse around this thing to keep it alive. Believe it or not, she was remarkably successful. Every fall she would wrap the tree, put a chicken wire cage around it and fill it with leaves for insulation. This was apparently enough to keep the roots from dying, and even though the dead branches had to be cut back every year, we had it for probably a decade. It never did well enough to flower, and while disappointed, she was proud of it anyway. At some point it got too big for chicken wire* and a particularly harsh winter ended the grand experiment. I guess you can't fight Mother Nature, although my own mother would have argued that point.

The Quest could get you in trouble with the law on occasion. How, you ask? Well, it's like this -- "free" means different things to different people, and there's a fine line between "free" and "free, as long as nobody cares and/or you don't get caught."

When I was probably 15 or so, my mother and I were driving back from the store one day. Suddenly, my mother shouted what sounded to me like, "Lou Pins! There's Lou Pins!" I didn't know who this Lou guy was, but before I knew it we were pulled over on the shoulder of the highway, 15 minutes from our house. My mother got out of the car and ran a short way up a hill and examined some small, blue flowers growing in the sandy soil near a scrub pine. The next thing I know, my mother is back in the car. "We have to go get some pots and a shovel," she said excitedly. "Those are lupines growing right there on the side of the road."

That was my introduction to Lupinus perennis. Wild blue lupines. The way my mother was acting, I figured these flowers had to be so valuable they could be used as currency in a post-apocalyptic world. I went along for the ride. The Quest was not to be denied.

Thirty minutes later, we were back at the hill, and my mother was furiously filling pots and buckets with the bright blue flowering plants. She had about ten pots full, and was in the process of placing them in the trunk when the police car rolled up behind us, flashed its siren and lights briefly, then stopped.

The trooper got out of the car and walked up to us. "Ma'am, can I ask what you're doing?" he said.

"We're just collecting some wild flowers, officer. We saw them growing here on the side of the road," my mother replied.

"Are you aware that this is state land, and it's illegal to remove plants from state land without a permit?" he asked.

"No, I wasn't aware of that," my mother said.

"And those plants you're digging up? Do you have any idea what they are?"

"Yes, officer, they're lupines." my mother said.

"Those are wild blue lupines, and they're an endangered plant species in New York," he said.

"Ah, I didn't know that."

This was getting better and better. Damn this cop and his bottomless botanical knowledge. I wondered if my mom would forgive me if I just bolted for the woods.

He continued. "Those flowers? They are the sole food source for the karner blue butterfly caterpillar, which is also endangered."

Entomology, too? WTF.

At that point I was thinking about our single phone call, because I was sure my dad would be bailing us out.

So far, we had removed plants from state land --strike one. The plants we had dug up were endangered plants - strike two. The endangered plants were the sole food source for an endangered butterfly -- steeeeee-rike three, and that's the game. I felt like we were being busted for running drugs across state lines.

My mother explained to the cop that she had no idea what she did was illegal; the cop said ignorance of the law is no excuse. He then explained about the various fines for just about all of our activities that day, and then after he had scared us, he took pity on us. Instead of tossing us in the back of his cruiser and impounding our car, he simple instructed us to immediately replant what we had removed, and promise to never do it again. We complied with both requests and made our home without further incident.

Wasted time and effort aside, we had a good story for the supper table that night. My father just shook his head, knowing that only my mother could get herself in so much trouble so quickly with nothing but her love for brightly colored flowers and a small shovel.

From that moment on, my father let my mother buy whatever she wanted for the yearly landscaping. I think he figured it was probably cheaper than hiring a lawyer.

Happy mother's day, Mom. I hope that wherever you are, they have lots of flowers.



*Too Big for Chicken Wire -- my next band name.

Open (Closet) Door.

I might as well grab the bull by the horns and tell you a story about Paul's memorial service/wake.

It was incredibly hard to be there. There was a slideshow video running through all these pictures of Paul growing up, us backpacking in college and sitting in his parent's finished basement when we were teens. I didn't know she was going to do it, but his sister had enlarged my blog post and it was sitting on an easel next to the table that held his urn. The post and the picture from it were surrounded by other pictures of Paul with his friends. One of our finished swords was sitting on a sword stand next to the urn.

It was a hard thing to see, but I'm glad she did it. If there's one thing I'm not, it's a public speaker, and there was no way I was going to get up there and say anything in front of a crowd.

The deal was that from 5-6pm it was just friends and family, then from 6-8pm it was open for the general public to pay their respects. We had arrived at around 4:30 to help get everything set up.

Earlier in the week Paul's wife had asked me to put together a CD of a song or two that he had liked, so I did. I made a CD of 4 songs, and I figured they'd be playing them in the background during the wake or something. Turns out, that wasn't the case.

Instead, she had asked all of his friends to bring a song that was special to him. After the minister gave his sermon, he invited us one by one to get up and speak if we wanted to, and after each person was finished speaking, the funeral home employee manning the CD player would announce the title of their song, then play it. Apparently, since I had provided a CD, the minister had assumed that I wanted it played even though I wasn't speaking.

Unfortunately, my CD wasn't clearly marked by song. I had just quickly scribbled "Paul" on it with a sharpie right before I left the house. There were four songs on it, as I mentioned. When the minister said, "Here's a CD from JV entitled 'Paul,'" I quickly decided the song I wanted them to play was the 4th song -- "Rivendell" by Rush. Paul was a huge Tolkien fan and a serious scholar of Middle Earth, so the song seemed fitting.

I looked at Paul's wife across the room, who I assumed was sort of managing the song thing, and held up 4 fingers to indicate the fourth song. I found out later she took that to mean there were 4 songs on the CD. Instead of the song I wanted, the CD player guy queued up the first song. It just so happened that it was a song called "Open Door" by Genesis. Here are the lyrics:

There's the morning light
Shining in your hair, and in your eyes
And just a little way behind that smile of yours
I see another one, oh so far away
If only for one second, I could hold you close to me

When the Master calls for me again
There's nothing I can say, or I can do

Goodbye, my love
Time has come to say farewell
I hear the call again
Goodbye to the world
I've sheltered for so long
Oh there's so much my love, that I can never say

And in a little while, in a little while
There's nothing left to see

As the years go by and I have not returned
And the night has come, falling all around
Ooh, if you count the stars you'll know
How many have gone out

And when the Master calls for me again
There's nothing that I can say Or I can do

Stand in the sun
Shut your eyes and feel the world
It's changing every day

Goodbye my love
Each day will seem so long
Ooh there's so much I feel, that I can never say

I can't see you
I can't feel you anymore
I've just a memory of that open door

So while it's a hauntingly beautiful song that both Paul and I loved, it wasn't quite what I had in mind.

The song ended.

The room was totally silent.

I sat there for about 5 seconds, then applied the JP rule of humor which states that if something is at least twice as funny as it is inappropriate, then you are morally obligated to go for it.

I took a deep breath and announced:

"I'M NOT GAY.*"

Most people thought it was funny, although think I may have pissed off a relative here or there. It doesn't matter though, because I know Paul would have laughed his ass off.

As for the ghost story, here it is. Keep in mind that I've never had any supernatural experiences in my life. I've never seen a ghost, I've never seen a UFO, I've never witnessed anything weird first-hand that couldn't be explained away by logic. I consider myself more or less an agnostic. I don't *not* believe in a creator, or an afterlife -- I just figure I don't have enough facts either way to make an informed decision. Paul and I used to joke around and say that whichever of us went first had to come back and let the other know if there was anything after.

On the dresser in our bedroom, there's a cast resin candle holder that looks like a round castle. It's been up there for maybe twelve years, (I know, I should clean) but it was an early gift from my wife when we first got married so it just sort of moved with us from place to place, and I never had the heart to toss it or store it away. It also happens to have a music box mechanism in it that plays Camelot. Since Paul died, there's been a picture of him leaning against it.

Two days ago, early in the morning, it played very slowly for about 5 seconds.

Here's the thing: It hasn't been wound up for at least ten years.


*not that there's anything wrong with that.

Look at all the dust in this dump.

Thanks for your comments, everyone. This one really hit hard, and continues to. Even though I expect that hurt to last a very long time, one thing I know for sure is that Paul wouldn't want me to be sad, so I'm doing my best not to be.

Toward that end, I'm going to pick up this place a little and get back into the groove. Not tonight, but perhaps this weekend. I'm just trying to figure out exactly how to proceed.

Oddly, things are starting to look a little brighter, and I guess it's in my nature to find humor in things, even when there might not be much to laugh at. Paul was the same way, and one big reason we were such good friends.

I may start with a ghost story. I'm not sure yet.

Anyway, thanks for waiting, and thanks for the words of sympathy, encouragement and kindness.

See you soon.

Rivendell awaits.

My best friend died yesterday.

I type those words, and I still can't believe they're true. I stood in a room at the hospital for hours, his body on a gurney three feet in front of me, and it doesn't seem real. I feel like I could pick up the phone right now and call him, and in 15 minutes we'd be drinking coffee together and talking about our latest shop projects -- his of forged steel and mine of wood. He was a swordsmith, and his swords were functional works of art -- my lacquered wooden scabbards simply trying to keep up. I know he probably could have found a professional to make them, but he wanted them to be ours. That he is no longer in this world, and no longer in my life is inconceivable to me.

I'm not sure how you sum up in a few paragraphs a friendship that spanned 30 years. It's just not possible. When you meet by chance in 7th grade, you are friends of circumstance more than anything else. Something as simple as seating students in alphabetic order, picking the teams in gym class, or even the random assignment of adjoining lockers can determine who your friends are in high school. If you are lucky, at least one friendship will take root and last throughout your high school years, and you will have someone who can join you in a united front against your own burgeoning adolescence. You have each other's backs, and somehow you make sense of it together. That single friendship can shape you in your formative years, and to a large extent it can determine the kind of person you will become.

For that friendship of circumstance to take hold, blossom and then strengthen over the course of three decades is a rare thing indeed, and I know how lucky I am. It's a true gift, and one that I will never take for granted.

A friendship like that is one of firsts -- first girlfriends, first cars, first breakups, first jobs and first marriages. We were there for each other through all of those things, and many, many more. We were closer than brothers, and I truly couldn't have asked for a better friend. He had the heart and soul of a warrior, and a fierce loyalty to those he loved.

At a little after 7:00 am Saturday morning, he responded to an e-mail I had sent him the night before, referencing a Bill Whittle essay. We were supposed to get together for coffee, as we had on countless weekends past. He had picked out a particular quote from the essay and sent it back to me. The quote was this:

"From this transformational experience I learned something new and re-learned something old: first, a dream becomes a goal once you make a viable plan and stick to it, and second, the single most important thing you do in life is choose your friends."

A few hours later, he was gone. I didn't get his e-mail until later that morning, after it was too late to reply. Too late to tell him what a great friend he was, and how much he meant to me. Too late to say goodbye.

He had so much left to do. We had so much left to do together.

I will miss him every day for the rest of my life.

I'm going to take a break for a while. I'll see you guys on the flip side.

My next recurring nightmare. Shrubmonks.

They might not look that scary in this daytime picture, but try walking past them on a foggy, moonlit night at about 2 am when the only sounds you hear are the rustling of their filthy cloaks and the echo of your own footsteps.

They will reach out their shrubby arms and pull you inside them, where you will meet The Things That Live In The Branches.

Sleep well.

Wow. I'm a little verklempt.

Thank you all for your amazing comments.

I don't know what else to say, so I'll leave it at that. You guys are great.

(and one more picture, sorry.)



We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.

Losing a friend.

Where to begin?

First, I had a 3-day training class from hell last week, complete with an impossible test at the end that I am pretty sure I failed.

Second, my best friend since 7th grade had a heart attack. (Thankfully, full recovery expected.)

Third, Our kitty JD died, and as a result, our house has been filled with sadness. He was a special kitty, and a beautiful boy. He was my wife's best friend and my faithful writing companion. He slept in the crook of my arm almost every night, and his unconditional love and his trusting personality made him better than most people.

If you'll indulge me, I'd like to tell you a little bit about him. This post is probably more for me than for you, so there won't be any funny this time around. If you are here for a laugh, check back later, or see this previous post about JD. This was, to put it mildly, a bitch of a week.

About eight years ago, we were driving home on a back country road during a rainstorm, when my wife said, "What was that? I think I saw kittens! Stop!" so I reluctantly pulled over, having seen nothing myself. It turned out she was right -- she did see kittens. They were lost, abandoned and scared, but when my wife got out of the car and called to them, they came running. She scooped them up and tossed them in the back seat, and suddenly we were the owners of two kittens who smelled like cow crap and looked like drowned rats. When we got them home, we put them in my shop, gave them some food and water, and turned on the heat so they'd dry off. They ate like they hadn't had a meal in three days, which may have been the case.

I hope there's a special place in Hell for people who abandon their pets on the side of the road.

The next morning, we went out to see what we had found and clean them up, but they had apparently spent the entire night cleaning each other because they were dry and totally clean. I got a friend to adopt one, we adopted the other, named him JD, and our adventure began. We took him to the vet, had him checked for worms and feline leukemia, got him his shots, and had his little man-bits removed.

We already had two other cats. I didn't really feel like we needed another one, but there was something about him. I'm not sure if it was his bright blue eyes, or the fact that he acted more like a dog than a cat, but he quickly wormed his way into our hearts. Our other cats are nice enough, but they're not the same. I don't know how to explain why he was different, or why we became so fond of him so quickly, but we did. Maybe it was because we rescued him from an almost certain death, and he acted as if knew that. Or maybe it was because bonded to us both so completely. I'm not sure.

He never begged and never made a pain the ass of himself, which is rare for a cat. He'd sit and wait patiently for his food while the other two zig-zagged between my wife's legs and pawed at the counter and meowed like they never ate before. He'd follow my wife around the house, and he always wanted to be a part of whatever she was doing. He came running when she called his name, and he'd search the house for her when he noticed she was missing. He developed routines; we developed routines -- and he trained us well. To be honest, we spoiled the hell out of him.

He loved the summer and the warm weather, and would look forward to keeping my wife company as she gardened, or as she sat on the porch with her latest crocheting or knitting project. All winter -- on the sunny days especially -- he would run to the front door and wait to be let on to the porch, expecting it to be warm. It was always such a disappointment to him when it wasn't, and he'd turn around and march back into the house like it was somehow our fault.

After about 4 years, he started getting sick. We thought it was hairballs, or maybe he was eating too fast. To be on the safe side, we took him to the vet, and the vet gave us some sad news: An ultrasound confirmed that JD had small, malformed kidneys, and as a result they were only functioning at roughly 20%. He also had some stomach problems, and she suspected pancreatitis. Toxins were building up in his bloodstream, and that's why he wasn't eating. The treatment for this was to inject 150ml of saline solution under his skin every three days, to ease the strain on his kidneys, which I learned to do. She gave us two other drugs, one to help with his appetite when his stomach was off and he didn't feel like eating, the other to help with his stomach ulcer issues. This seemed to stabilize him, and he remained a happy cat for quite a few years, although he would go in cycles where he'd have a stretch of a few good weeks, then a bad week, then a few more good weeks, etc.

Every few nights, he'd sit on my wife's lap and patiently allow me to stab him with an IV needle, and he never complained other than a low-pitched moan here or there. He never scratched or tried to bite. He trusted us, and even though what we were doing to him must have hurt, he forgave us each and every time. He'd run away and hide, and in twenty minutes he'd be back to see what we were doing.

Because we had to give him so much daily medication, it was difficult to leave him behind when we went camping or visited friends for the weekend. We'd have to board him at the vet's office, and that wasn't inexpensive, or very pleasant for either of us. That's when we started taking him with us when we went places. He got used to a harness fairly quickly, and he loved going on canoe trips and camping in the Adirondacks, and having him there with us was actually pretty fun. I know our canoe trips this year won't be the same without him.

During one of his visits to the vet last year, we got some more bad news -- our vet heard a pretty significant heart murmur, and she suggested we take him to a cardiologist. Yes, believe it or not, cats have their own cardiologists. The cardiologist did another ultrasound, and it turned out that JD had an enlarged heart and high blood pressure, most likely as side effects of his failing kidneys. We agreed that we'd treat him as long as he didn't realize he was sick, and that's what we did. His life became a routine of pill-popping morning and night -- two types of beta blockers, plus antacids -- interspersed with squirts of liquid medicine down his throat, in addition to the subcutaneous fluids every couple of days. Still, he was spunky and happy, and other than a bad few days here and there, he was still loving life and being with us. His blood pressure was down, his enlarged heart started shrinking back to normal, and we thought the worst was behind us, at least for a while. His murmur seemed to have improved slightly as well.

Sometimes when you're lucky enough to find a good pet -- one of those animals that transcends the ordinary owner/pet relationship and seems to know more about your feelings than you do -- there is a kind of wistful sadness built into every interaction. I think it's because on some level, you know your time together is short, and even with a healthy pet, you realize the day is coming when you will have done all you could for them -- when there's really nothing left to do except to let them go, and hope they know they were loved.

For us, that day came early last week. On Saturday, JD and I sat together on the porch, soaking up the sun and waiting for my wife to get home from work. When she pulled up, he ran down the stairs and greeted her half way. That night, everything was normal -- he sauntered up the stairs, jumped on the bed and poked at me until I pulled my arm out from under the covers. I knew if I didn't, he'd walk around and start sniffing my eyebrows until I did. Then he curled up under my arm and I fell asleep to his big purrs and the small ball of warmth at my side. The next morning, everything seemed fine, and my wife and I both had the day off. We were looking forward to just hanging out in the sunshine and enjoying the day.

After breakfast, my wife noticed that JD was breathing a little funny, and looked like he couldn't get comfortable. He was moving a little slowly, and we thought maybe he just had one of his routine stomach aches, since he had suddenly stopped eating earlier. He walked over to me, gave my leg a little head butt, then plopped down on the floor. I petted him for a few seconds, and then he got up and went upstairs to find my wife.

As soon as she saw him, she knew it was something besides his normal stomach issues, so we immediately jumped in the car to bring him to the emergency vet. It was 30 minutes away, and I drove like a maniac. My wife was holding him in a blanket and about half-way there, his breathing became extremely labored, and he started crying and trying to breathe through his mouth.

He kept reaching one paw over and touching my arm as if he was asking me to fix what was hurting him. It was heartwrenching, and I could barely keep my eyes on the road. We finally got to the vet's office and they quickly put him in an oxygen tent, but it didn't do much good. The vet said they were going to give him a sedative and take a chest X-ray to see if they could determine what the problem was. We waited.

When the vet finally came to the waiting room a half-hour later, I could tell by her face the news wasn't good. She told us the prognosis was poor -- heart failure and pleural edema. She told us that that even if they could treat him and he made it through the night, the treatment would be extremely rough on his kidneys, and he would probably go back to being sick and uncomfortable all the time, and the chances were that the same thing would happen again.

We always said that we'd treat him to the best of our ability for as long as he maintained his quality of life. The walk to the clinic's operating room was surreal, and I felt like I was watching it through someone else's eyes. JD was lying on a soft, folded towel placed on an operating table, with the vet's assistant holding an oxygen mask to his face. The vet unwrapped a syringe, and placed it on the table next to him. We petted him and talked to him and told him how much he meant to both of us, and how sorry we were. The vet picked up the syringe, and I almost told her to stop. But then JD looked at me, and I knew it was the right thing to do. We couldn't put him through any more. Putting him down was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. It wasn't the first time I've had to do this, but it was the first time I've had to do it to a pet that I truly loved.

There are people who immediately think, "So? It was just a cat. Get another one." and to those people I say fuck you. I'm alternately sad and angry, and I know that such a sweet cat deserved more than the life that was handed to him. Most of all, I wish we could have given him one last summer.

I'm so glad we got to be with him for 8 years, and I'll never regret the lengths we went to in order to treat his illnesses. I hope he knew, on some cat-level, how important a part of our lives he was.

Rest in peace, buddy. We'll never forget you.


Adirondack Canoe Trip - Autumn, 2008


My favorite picture of him.

And the winner is....

Not Diesel. And not that guy in the picture, because he's wearing speedos with a little bow and probably has paper cuts on his junk.

First off, thanks for voting for my buddy Brennin, and if you get the chance to vote again, please do so. It'll be a kick to see him on TV. I don't know about you, but every time he snaps that old permed-up picture of Ellen and does that sideways head-bob thing, I laugh out loud. You may say I'm easily amused, and you'd be right of course, but that's ok.

As for the prize drawing, I thought better of drawing names from my underwear (although there's plenty of extra room in there) and instead just used....my hat. Yes, original, I know. But to be fair, it's the hat I don't wear out in public. It's the hat I only wear when nobody is home and I can run up and down the stairs pretending to be Indiana Jones. This hat:

Really, this is just to prove to you all the painstaking effort I put into this endeavor. I typed all your names into notepad because trying to paste html into excel was pissing me off. Then, THEN, I printed them out and cut them into strips.

And do you know why I went to all this effort and took all this time? You are correct. It's because I really should be working on my taxes and I will literally use any excuse to avoid doing that until I absolutely have to.

Here's the fruit of my labor:

Since my wife is working and not able to don her tiara and sparkling onesie in order to draw a name from the hat, I had to do it myself. Since Brennin said he's sending me some CDs, I am going to draw 6 names from the hat instead of just one, and the first five people will get a copy of Brennin's first CD. Drum roll please......

6th place: Anhara (please, please, please don't be in the far east)

5th place: Deanna

4th place: Christina

3rd place: Tricialynn

2nd place: Melodie

And the grand prize winner of the JV Box 'O Junk is: Tracey

Jeez, that list reads like the Tuesday night line-up at the Bada Bing club. Congrats everyone!

Drop me an e-mail (see my profile) with your mailing addresses and please allow 6-8 weeks for delivery. Not really, but that gives me some time to do my taxes. (I'll let you know after the IRS has their way with me if I'll need to collect postage. Just kidding. Probably.)

And if you curious about what wonderful assortment of junk is in the box, here it is:

A copy of Brennin's 2007 self-titled debut CD.

A FULL-SCREEN DVD of Ghost Rider starring Nicholas Cage. Yeah. My Dad doesn't know the difference. I mean, FULL sounds better than WIDE, doesn't it? Who doesn't want their screen FULL?

An opened and played once copy of the debut CD by Glasvegas, given to me by my buddy dUgE of Kasim Sulton and Isle of Q fame. They're supposed to be the Next Big Thing. They are not going to be the next big thing for me, because I don't like singers who sound like Bono.

The candy pooping Santa Claus from this post.

A new copy of Good Charlotte's "Greatest Remixes" CD. I am not a fan of rap, even when it's dressed up in punk pop clothing. A rap remix of a song is like saying "Here, let me pour some shit on that for you." It might not be that bad, but I didn't want to chance it, so it's still in the cellophane.

A graphic novel of the Family Guy episode "Peter the Great"

A sunglasses-wearing Coke can from 1991 that dances to music. Batteries not included. Well, they were included but they were dead, so I figured I would take them out to save on shipping.

An unopened tin of Ironport mints from a trade show that says "Mints made in USA or China." I supposed that means if you're a gambler, you will either get an enjoyable mint or your USDA recommended daily allowance of melamine.

A weird, suction-cupped stick-on digital clock from IBM/Lotus that gives me nightmares because I'm convinced it walks around at night. Just look at it. You know I'm right.

A $20 gift card from the store that shall not be named.

A home-made wooden prototype of a rubber band pistol. It never made it into production, although I did make a really nice cherry and maple "executive edition" for my father before he retired. Don't shoot your eye out, kid.

And last but not least, a BRAND NEW pair of Toasti-Toes foot warmers!

Thanks for playing along. You guys are the best.

As for me, I'm going to go make a fresh pot of coffee and get out of this tiara and onesie.

Brennin Hunt and "The Ellen Show" Update.

You guys asked me to keep you posted, so I am.

I guess they pick the winner next week. If you get a chance, go here and click on Brennin's video.

I'll tell you what -- If you vote and leave a comment below, I will randomly pick a voter from a hat (or some other random article of clothing) and award a prize box of my choice. It will most likely be worth almost nothing, make you shake your head in disappointment and wonder, "WTF was he thinking when he bought this stuff?" Or it could be something cool and actually worth something.

I'm like Monty Hall.

The last prize I sent out went to the first person who told me what needle ice was, and I sent him a book of Rolling Stones interviews and stuffed Brian and Stewie dolls. So that's the equivalent of winning a donkey behind door number three, I think. Hey, it's what I had handy.

I'll be more original this time. Or not.

Weapons of Recess.

In the last couple of weeks, I've seen a lot of stories about kids getting kicked out of school and/or arrested for such life-threatening behavior as texting, or for much less dangerous things like carrying weapons, sexually harassing classmates and assaulting teachers. When I was in grade school, there was always the rumor of "that one kid with the switchblade" who would stab you just as soon as look at you, but the reality was a bit farther from the truth. Sure, the kid failed 3rd grade five times and had started a beard, but generally he was pretty harmless.

Today, it seems like the kids getting kicked out of school are all 12 years old. When I was 12, yelling "You're dead!" or "I'm gonna kill you!" was perfectly normal and fine, because we didn't mean it literally like they do today. In other words, we didn't come in with our dad's .40 cal the next day and shoot the place up. Most of the time, the worst thing that would happen is you'd get punched between the shoulder blades at recess and maybe have to eat a little dirt. Now, they have metal detectors at the entrances to elementary schools and if you piss off the wrong kid you have a good chance of ending up face-down in the dirt -- permanently.

I got thinking about what sort of things we'd get in trouble for when I was 12, and other than the time my friend Roger brought in the severed deer leg and put it on Laurie Risler's chair before she got there, we were a pretty tame bunch. We really had very little to work with in the trouble-making department, so we had to improvise.

The annoying things always seemed to go in phases. One year the teachers would have drawers full of confiscated butterfly yo-yos, another year it would be clackers, or god knows what else.

Of course, there were other things we'd do to make giant pains in the asses of ourselves besides bringing in toys. Luckily for us, and not so luckily for our parents and teachers, some of these things were free.

Here's an annoying thing we used to make called a "Popper" :



A classroom full of these things was a nightmare of noise. It took me a while to figure out how to make one again, and the sound it makes is something you never forget. I haven't folded a piece of notebook paper like that in a long time.

While most of the home-made stuff we got in trouble for was pretty tame, there were a few things we'd make when we wanted to inflict pain on a classmate.

Perhaps you remember these. We called them "Snappers" :



I know it looks pretty harmless, but that mofo could raise a welt on your leg that you'd have for a week. And that's with a small bobby pin. If you used one of those mongo bastards that my mom always had laying around, the thing would end up at almost four inches from tip to tip. If you got hit on bare skin there was a good chance you'd end up bloody. When this fad was going on, you were in constant fear of getting hit in the ass by the Giant Snapper. It hurt a lot more when you weren't expecting it. You'd just be walking down the hall minding your own business and a passing kid would reach out quick and the next thing you know, you'd be writhing on the floor and the back of your thigh would feel like someone just shot you with a nail gun. Getting caught with one of these in your possession would get you detention. Using on another kid (and getting caught) would get you suspended for three days. I never got caught, and that's because I didn't so much as use them on other kids as I did manufacture and sell them to other kids. I was an industrious little effer.

I never got hit by one of my own creations, and I never got caught with one in my pocket. I think that's because there's and old saying that goes something like "You don't bite the hand that feeds you, or the one that supplies you with giant snappers for a quarter." This lasted until the crackdown, whereupon I closed up shop and was saved by plausible deniability. I was a solid "A" student selling to mostly solid "D" students, and so had the scales of justice artificially tipped in my favor. It may not have been fair, but it was the way of the world.

Given my history of schoolyard money-making schemes, you'd think I'd be a rich millionaire by now, living off the proceeds of my famous invention, or my high-end importing/exporting conglomerate. Unfortunately for me, you'd be wrong. I was always being shut down by the man, and my next invention was no exception to that rule.

I was always about taking a good idea and making it better. If you want to be kind, call it my innate ingenuity. If you want to be honest, call it my lack of originality.

Take spitballs, for instance.

Spitballs are timeless, and I'm pretty sure they're universal. Somewhere a billion light years away, Garg is sitting in a classroom on Xlagmat IV, with a giant wad of spotchkath in his mouth, working it around and getting it to just the right consistency so he can shoot it through one of his nasal tubes at the back of the teacher's fourth head.

I constantly saw kids shooting spitballs through straws, and more than enough times I was the unwilling recipient of a sloppy smack in the back of the head that had been destined for the black board but fell short. The problem, I surmised, was one of range. An 11-year-old didn't have enough lung power to create the pressure necessary to shoot a spitball very far with any sort of velocity.

Once again, I jumped into this untapped market with both feet. I created this:


It looked like a pen, but worked like a tiny spud gun. You'd jam a spitball in, push it down with the ramrod, jam another one and push that about halfway down. Then you'd slam the ramrod in hard and you'd hear a noise like a pellet gun being fired, and the spitball would come out of the end at about 200 feet per second. Aiming was an acquired skill, but after a while you'd get pretty good at it.

I never made much money on this one because unlike giant bobby pins, every kid had access to Bic pens and coat hangers. I only sold these to the kids who were too stupid or lazy to make their own. Eventually, due to the counterfeiters and their knock-offs, I left the business.

The story of how I modified one of these with a pin and flight stabilizer and then shot it into my brother Houdini's chest as he walked out of the bathroom is a tale for another time.

As James Hetfield once said, "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye. Then it's just fun and games that you can't see."

Truer words were never spoken.

Curry and Death.

I spent most of yesterday shoveling ice and slush -- from the inside of my garage. The entire thing flooded, despite a 2-foot-deep trench I dug in front of the garage doors. The trench just filled up with water and then overflowed. I must have taken about 20 five-gallon buckets of half-frozen water out of that trench yesterday afternoon. Needless to say, it sucked ass. The first thing I am going to do when the snow is gone is hire someone to regrade my driveway so it's no longer higher than the garage floor. I don't care if they have to dig it down so deep I end up needing fucking stairs to get from the driveway to the lawn -- this is the last year I will have an ice-skating rink (and then a pond) inside my garage.

As I was trying to get my lawnmower unstuck from the ice-encrusted garage floor, I was pondering what to write about. Not a lot of funny stuff has happened to me lately, and I've been slacking off in the blogging department because I've been sick for the last week and a half with the worst headache of my entire life. It was so bad I thought I blew a tube in my brain but it turned out to be my first-ever sinus infection. What the hell, sinuses. After all this time you decide to screw with me? Tonight is the first night I'm able to think in complete sentences, so what am I doing? I'm entertaining you, that's what. Why? Because I care. Anyway, yanking the shit out of my frozen lawnmower reminded me of a time when I was still living home and my parents got new "across the street" neighbors, and I think it's a tale worth telling. Or maybe it's not and that's just my inflamed sinuses talking. I guess we'll see. It's a little gross, so be prepared.

When I was a teenager, the house across the street went up for sale. It wasn't for sale for very long because this was the 80's and aside from parachute pants and mullets, things were swell. We lived in a pretty middle-class, tighty-whitey neighborhood, so it was sort of a surprise when an Indian couple moved in. I think I found out later he was a doctor, and I don't think his wife worked, since she was home all day. I don't remember her name, but for the sake of this story, I'll call her Ahladita, because I just looked it up and it means "in a happy mood" and she was always smiling and waving.

She spoke very little English, but she seemed friendly enough. She would periodically bring over dishes of indian food that my mother couldn't stand the smell of. To her credit, she actually tried it the first time, but it was so spicy she couldn't eat it. So from that point on, she would politely accept it, and then when Ahladita left, she'd immediately bury it in the backyard. No, not really. She just double bagged it and put it with the outside trash. Basically, it got the same treatment as the used cat litter. We were an Irish-Italian meat and potatoes family. We didn't know what curry was, and we didn't want to know.

My mother worked part-time as a medical transcriptionist, so she worked out of her home office. I found out later that 'home office' was IRS code for what I normally just called 'the dining room table' but that's between my father and the government. It's only relevant to the story because as a result of working part-time from home, the bulk of the weekly yard work fell to her.

My mother would plant flowers, weed the flowerbeds, mow the lawn, rake the leaves, put mulch down, you name it. The first week they moved in, my mother would see Ahladita across the street, doing the same chores, and they would wave to each other, even though they didn't have a common word between them. One day, my mother noticed something. Whenever she would start to do a particular chore, so would Ahladita. If my mother weeded the flower beds, Ahladita would weed the flowerbeds. If my mother decided to trim the shrubs, Ahladita would trim the shubs. It occurred to my mother that Ahladita thought there were proper times to do things, and was trying to fit in by doing the same things my mother did at exactly the same times. You can't fault the logic, really. It was just a little creepy.

The following week, my father came home from Sears with a new self-propelled, walk behind lawnmower for my mother. As she was using it, she noticed Ahladita watching from across the street. After my mother was done mowing, Ahladita came over and took a closer look at at it. The next day, my mother saw Ahladita pushing the same exact lawn mower back and forth across her lawn.

It was about 95 degrees outside, and Ahladita was streaming sweat, and her sari was soaked. She was leaning into the lawnmower like an ox into a yoke. My mother watched for a second, then realized that the lawnmower Ahladita was pushing wasn't making any noise. She was pushing a non-running self-propelled lawnmower back and forth across the lawn. My mother called my father downstairs, and he went over to check it out. Turns out not only was the lawnmower not running, it also didn't have any gas or oil in it. She basically took it out of the box and started pushing it around.

My dad went back to his garage and got some oil and gas and the mower set up, then showed her how to use it. After that, my parents sort of adopted Ahladita and her husband. Any time they had a question, they'd come over and ask.

One day, Ahladita came over and wiggled her fingers and asked my mother something about worms. My mother wasn't sure what the heck she was talking about, and for five minutes she tried to get her to explain. Eventually, she got something out of her that sounded like "carpet worms." My mother told Ahladita to show her, figuring that would be much easier. So Ahladita brought my mother into her house, and my mother knew immediately that something was very wrong. The entire place smelled like curry and carrion. Ahladita brought my mom into the family room, and walked over toward the fireplace. She stopped in front of the hearth, and knelt down and started slapping the rug. As soon as she did it, hundreds of maggots boiled up from the carpet. My mother completely freaked out, grabbed Ahladita and ran outside, where she then tried to explain to her what they were and where they came from, and why it was never good when maggots came out your carpet when you slapped at it. Something horrible was happening with the fireplace and the rug underneath it.

When my father came home from work, my mother told him what happened, and he went over to check it out. He came back, completely grossed out, but grabbed his shop vac and headed back over. After vacuuming up maggots for twenty minutes, he started checking out the fireplace. There was definitely something foul going on up in there, and my father figured a bird had gotten in there and died. When he tried to open the flue, a rain of maggots fell down and the full stench was released into the room. This was no bird. It was something big, heavy, and very, very deceased. No, it wasn't Santa Claus.

This went way beyond what my father had signed up for, so he admitted defeat and called animal control, who referred him to a local pest control company. They came out and took the damper apart. As it turned out, the chimney ledge above the damper was the final resting place for a very large, very dead raccoon that had apparently been in there for weeks. It took a month for the stench to finally dissipate. The pest control guy installed a screen on the top of the chimney so it wouldn't happen again, and that was the end of that. I think everyone in the neighborhood got screens for their chimneys within the space of 2 days. I am pretty sure not having carpet maggots was a big purchase incentive there.

After that, my parents kept their distance. I think they decided that a friendly wave from across the street followed immediately by jumping in the car and driving away at high speed was the best course of action going forward. A couple of years later, Ahladita and her husband moved away, and the carpet worm story became one of my mom's favorites.

I only hope that wherever they moved to, Ahladita isn't walking slowly around the yard, waving a leaf blower that isn't turned on.

I'll bet you my paycheck they have a screen on their chimney though.

If you're bored...

So a buddy of mine is trying to get on the Ellen show. Apparently she's been hosting this "bathroom concert series" where people send in videos of themselves singing a song to Ellen from their bathrooms. She picks the best videos and she's been showing them daily, and his got picked.

Now she's turned it into a contest, and the winner gets to come on the show and sing. So if you're bored and you want to do me a small favor and vote for him, it's here. It takes a while to load, but his name is Brennin Hunt, and if you could give him a quick click, I'd appreciate it. His song is called "I'll Make Love to You." When she played it on the show, she did a rebuttal song where she lip-synced "Never Gonna Get It" while holding a picture of him. I've never been an Ellen fan, but she went up a few notches when I saw that.

He's an upcoming singer/songwriter that I think sounds a bit like Edwin McCain. He's also got a myspace page here if you want to check out some of his more original tunes. Thanks!

ps - I promise I'll be back with something funny this weekend. I have a few things cooking.

Update: Brennin is doing really good. He's # 2 on the show's comments board, and #1 on the show's music comment board, by about 200 people. Second only to Pink, which is probably a good thing because I'm pretty sure she could kick his ass.

The Musical Box

When I was nine years old, Peter Gabriel left Genesis. Phil Collins took over as the lead singer, and I was devastated. OK, that may be a slight exaggeration. Truth be told, I was completely oblivious.

That's because I didn't know who Genesis was. Ditto Gentle Giant, Rush, King Crimson, UK and ELP. I was listening to McCartney and Wings singing silly love songs, Wild Cherry playing that funky music (for their one and only hit,) and learning 50 ways to leave your lover from Paul Simon. Sara Smile, Afternoon Delight and Gary Wright were my thing, and Casey Kasem's top 40 didn't have room for a song called "Squonk" or any other song from A Trick of the Tail for that matter. At that point in my life, if it wasn't music from one of my mom's old 45's or on AM radio, I didn't know it existed.

Fast-forward 9 years. A band-mate friend of mine handed me a cassette tape and said, "The first time you listen to this, you'll think it's weird and you probably won't like it. The tenth time you listen to it, you're going to think it's a masterpiece. Promise me you'll listen to it at least ten times."

I promised, and he was right. That cassette was "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" by Genesis, and to this day it remains one of my favorite recordings. By the time I was a full-blown Genesis freak, Duke had come out, and Genesis was on their way to becoming a household name. I was disappointed that I never got to see Genesis with Peter Gabriel, but still, I burrowed deep into their back catalog, and within no time I owned all the Genesis there was. I then expanded into other areas of prog music, and became a huge fan of Marillion, Spock's Beard, ELP and Rush.

Which brings me to this past weekend. Yort, my wife and I went and saw this show:



It was fantastic, and I highly recommend it. Two years ago, I saw the same band (with a different lead singer of course) play the entire Lamb Lies Down on Broadway Album. I think they do a better job with that line up, but the Phil version isn't shabby at all, especially if you like the Trick of the Tail CD. For that show, we sat far enough away to preserve the illusion, and it was truly like going back in time. They use the same lighting, the same stage props, same slides, same equipment, you name it. And they are top-notch musicians to boot. I guess they'd have to be in order to pull off album-perfect renditions of Genesis tunes.

If you want to feel really old, have a conversation with your friend's 16-year old about the concert you're going to see.

"They're a Genesis tribute band."

"Who?"

"Genesis. You know who Genesis is, right?"

"Uh, no."

"Phil Collins? You HAVE to know who Phil Collins is."

"I think I maybe heard of him."

At that point, since he was clearly lying through his teeth, we just laughed and gave up.

Fame is fleeting, I guess.

I'm going to bed. Old people need their rest.

Instant Messaging: Geeks at Work.

Co-worker: So what was wrong?

Me: For some reason the ldap sync didn't have CN in the sametime buddy name field, so no valid buddy names were being populated. I also changed the connection from the ip address of the sametime server to actually be the FQDN of sametime.domain.com. I forced an ldap sync, restarted the service to pick up the ip/name change and that was it.

Co-worker: So simple I should have known.

Me: Well, there was also a slight misalignment in the high frequency electromagnetic field which caused an imbalance in the magnetic eddies induced in the dilithium crystal structure, so it had a problem keeping the charged particles away from the crystal lattice. It was a close one.

Co-worker: Whew, I knew there was more to it.

Yeah. I know. Out of all the people reading this, there's maybe one star trek geek who still lives in his mom's basement who is thinking, "Heh, good one!"

Facing your Fears.

I recently joined FaceBook. I don't know why. One day my buddy Yort asked me, "Are you on Facebook?" and I replied, "No, why?" and he said, "Why not?"

Why not, indeed. I was hesitant at first: I didn't really need another way to waste valuable time that I should be spending on other, more productive things like watching television and surfing the web. It's been interesting getting back in touch with people from my past. There are some bits of Facebook that are kind of goofy, but the overall idea is pretty neat.

The ads though, are something else. The vast majority of them seem to revolve around get-rich-quick schemes, and they alternately creep me out and/or make me laugh at their sheer ridiculousness.

Here are my favorites:



I seriously doubt he makes $1000 a day online. From the picture, I'm guessing he makes ten bucks a day offering hand jobs in the parking garage.


He is not here to make friends, and it's a good thing too, because he looks like a total dick. Regardless of what he says, I don't think he is better than me, even though he also says he makes millions online. My guess? About 5 times a year, he makes $150 a day working as an Andy Samberg impersonator. OK, he still might be better than me.



She wants to hang out at singlesnet, but it's too late. She's already pretty much hanging out everywhere.



"I have four 25-cent ties. Because of this, all the women want me." Totally plausible.



97.6% of what? Blind people? Hamsters? What? And what about that double set of chompers? Apparently, nobody is interested in what percent of something-I-know-not-what is a little skeeved out by that. Why would you click on that ad? I would be afraid of where it would lead me, not to mention the additional damage it might do to my IQ.



He makes more cash than me. In fact, he makes so much money he can afford to go to a car show and get his friend to take his picture while he stands with two booth babes who seriously hate their lives right now.



I am not buying her sales pitch, because she says people like me can earn $50-90/hr online. The truth is, she is not people like me. She is hot people, in short dresses. It's easy for her to make $50-90/hr online. All she needs is a web cam, a domain name, and a VISA merchant account.



I think I can already tell you the steps involved:

1. Move to a gated, residential community.
2. Have countertop sex with a black drug dealer.
3. Set up a grow house and sell Milfweed.

Vampires! Getcher Vampires here!

A while back, my buddy Dave wrote a vampire novel called "Blood Witness" and he's recently converted it into a free audiobook. You can read about it, listen to it and download it at bloodwitness.com.

It's an interesting look into the life of a Jehovah's Witness who gets tangled up with a vampire, and a pretty fun listen. Check it out if you get a chance. Did I mention it's free?

Can You Feel The Love?

It's been a week. Funerals, duty pagers, roof leaks, you name it. So.... a belated Happy Valentine's Day to everyone. I'm not normally a big fan of this holiday, but believe it or not, it was a bright spot in a pretty shitty week. I got to spend some time with my wife, and I actually (wait for it...) cooked dinner. Believe it or not, I made this. I know, even a monkey could make that, but still -- it beats boiled hot dogs, which was my next choice. (Hey, it has meat AND broth.)

When I got to my desk yesterday, there was a pile of mail, and this:



Now, normally on Christmas or my birthday, there will be a little something on my desk from the girls in support, who I spend most of my day assisting. Usually it's a nice card signed by everyone, some candy, maybe some homemade cookies or a small, funny gift. Last Valentine's Day, I think they got me one of those Reese's miniatures foil hearts.

Typical office-type "thank you" stuff.

Sadly, I may have to step up my game, because they're clearly not trying any more.

First off, let's talk about the card. It's not signed, and frankly, I don't blame them for leaving it blank. I wouldn't take credit for it either. It was worse than the cards I got in second grade. Just look at it -- it's a black kid on a three-wheeled, heart-shaped skateboard, and it says "You're Co ol."

Clearly, I'm not black. I'm certainly not cool. I think they may be mocking me. And the single lollipop? At first I thought, "Well, at least I got a lollipop." Then I looked closer to see what flavor it was and saw this:



That's a ten-month old lollipop right there.

I'm hoping that this week will get better. Happy Easter, everyone!

Us doing Disney. And vice-versa.

After the conference, my wife and I decided to stick around Disney for a while and enjoy the beautiful weather, and take in some of the Disney parks. We've been there quite a few times now, and after the first couple of times you don't feel so obligated to get up at the crack of dawn and do everything there is to do.

The progression goes something like this:

Year One: "Wow! Look at this place! It's amazing! We'll never see it all in 7 days!"

Year Two: "We know our way around this time! We'll spend a day at each park, go to Blizzard Beach, eat dinner at Rain Forest Cafe on Tuesday, Mexico in Epcot on Wednesday, and the House of Blues on Thursday."

Years 3-5: "How 'bout we just hit the roller coasters at each park and catch the fireworks at Epcot? Holy fuck. I just paid $20 for two pretzels and a couple of bottles of water."

By the third time you visit, you've pretty much resigned yourself to the fact that Mickey and Friends are going to give you a major ass-reaming every day you are there. You also realize that every store there sells the same over-priced shit, and traveling around by bus can get very old very quickly. It's ironic really - here you are with all this free bus transportation everywhere you want to go, but two mixed drinks will set you back $24. You can't afford to get drunk in Disney. It's a horrible state of affairs. Although for a second, I thought maybe I was drunk when we walked into a Disney store and the first thing I saw was this very un-disneylike shirt:

Alas, it was just a bad fold, although I think they should give serious consideration to making a shirt like that.

Speaking of un-Disneylike, what about that Minnie mouse? I learned a dirty little secret about her when eating Goofy's Gummies. I know that sounds dirty, but it's really not. These are gummy bears in the shape of Disney characters, and for some reason they are fresher and better tasting than gummies you can get elsewhere. My wife usually stocks up, buying some to eat when we're wandering around, and a bunch to bring home. As I was eating Minnie, (again, not dirty) I noticed something. Here's Minnie:



As I was marveling at her freshness and gummability, I happened to do this:



OK, now that's dirty.

Gummy fun notwithstanding, the only way to get the party started in earnest at Disney is to (1) be very, very rich, (2) leech off some big company's expense account, or (3) have an outside contact. Lucky for us, Shamus was down for the same conference, and he and his family were staying in a condo off the Disney campus. Therefore they had rented a car, and offered to get us out of the Goofy bin for little while. Ah, sweet freedom! They became our window to the outside world, where you could buy things like affordable food, chewing gum, Pepsi products and reasonably priced booze, all without pictures of Disney characters on them. We all decided to have dinner at their place on Saturday night, so we went to the supermarket and bought the fixin's for steak and chicken fajitas, and it was glorious.

Needless to say, we stocked up while we had the chance. Our room had a tiny little refrigerator and we filled every inch of it with munchies and cold drinks. We bought way too much booze, although we only ended up leaving behind an unopened bottle of wine and half a bottle of gin.

That's the thing about 5th time's the charm. After a while, you just decide that it's not so bad to get up at noon and then spend the rest of the day hanging out by the pool with a book and a rum drink. Although in retrospect, I think we could probably go somewhere tropical with way fewer screaming kids for about the same price. I realize Disney is primarily for children, so I can't bitch too much, but I've also noticed that a single kid in the "grown-up" swimming pool is a lot like a single motorboat on a wilderness pond. It has a tendency to wreck the mood, and sometimes you just want to shoot a hole in it and watch it sink.

The reason we were there for an entire week after the conference ended was, oddly enough, because of the state of the economy. We were already staying for an extra 3 days, and in an effort to drum up some business, Disney was offering a "buy four, get three free" deal. We figured that we would stay over one extra night to pick up the 3 extra freebies. Since the park tickets are tiered that same way, (the fourth and fifth days of a park hopper ticket are almost free) we picked up a couple of those too. We figured we wouldn't have to buy anything but food. That sounds good until you realize that the cheapest thing you can buy anywhere in Disney is a 6" miniature frozen pizza (cooked on a chain-driven conveyor belt) that will still set you back seven bucks plus tax. Speaking of taxes, if you go there, be prepared. There's "room tax" and "resort tax" and "late-night Tinkerbell visit" tax and these will add another $40 bucks a night to your room price. OK, I may or may not have volunteered to pay extra for that last one - but the other ones just automatically showed up on the bill.

We stayed at the "moderately priced" hotel -- Port Orleans Riverside -- quite a downgrade from the Swan/Dolphin I stayed at during the conference. The first room we were assigned was horrible. We walked in, and the room was so humid it felt like you couldn't breathe. There was condensation running down the window, and it smelled like a tropical rain forest, if a tropical rain forest could somehow grow bitter ass and dirty feet. It did have one redeeming quality -- it was on the top floor, which is great because then nobody is walking around above you. We called the front desk and got another room that was marginally better, but on the 2nd floor, with a family of 14 in the room above us. I never actually saw them, but I surmised that they were in some sort of horrific accident, and as a result had been fitted with prosthetic legs made of a newly-discovered metal I can only assume is called Stompium. Also, they had bladders the size of dwarf peanuts.

How do I know this? It's all because of the crazy toilets. When you flushed one, you feared for your life. In an effort to avoid plug-ups, the hotel installed jet-assisted flushing mechanisms that would practically pull your clothes off. I was more scared of that toilet than I am of my 3 horsepower table saw. They flushed so violently, and so loudly, that your ears popped if you had the bathroom door closed. Sadly, I am not even exaggerating. Because of the aforementioned peanut bladders, I got to hear this jet noise no less than 14 times a night. I can only hope that we were able to pay them back in some small measure by exposing their 12 children to the raucous sounds of late-night, drunken sex.

In very short intervals, separated by many hours of snoring.

What? I'm not a machine.

On Monday we went to Animal Kingdom with Shamus and the family. We met them there, and he had already thoughtfully grabbed some FastPass tickets for the Everest roller coaster, which is big on scenery and not so big on coaster. I remember the last time I rode it, a giant Yeti made a swipe at you when you went under him. Oddly, he was missing this time. Either he was out getting a fresh Sherpa for breakfast, or he was being repaired. I remember him being pretty close to the cars, so I have a feeling he's been the victim of more than his fair share of vandalism. They probably have to clean the gum out of his fur periodically.

It was a riot to hit the parks with Shamus' kids. At one point I noticed his son walking funny, like he had a load of crap in his pants and cramps in his arms. I asked Shammy's wife what he was doing, and she replied that he was "being a T-Rex" and that she has to periodically tell him to "be a boy" when they go out places. I watched him for a second, then said, "In a way, you're lucky. At least he picked something that walks on two legs." The funny thing is, once you realized what he was doing, I'll be damned if he didn't have it down cold. Their daughter is a year or two older, so as far as I could tell, she stayed a girl the whole time.

If you've been to Animal Kingdom, you know about the Tree of Life, a giant artificial tree that houses the "It's a Bugs Life" attraction. As we were walking around the jungle, we were watching these water birds, and suddenly they all started swimming toward this one tree stump in the middle of the small pond. Apparently, when I had glanced away, this stump spit out a sizable amount of food, and the birds were going nuts. We promptly dubbed it the "Stump of Life."

My wife likes to watch the Silverback Gorillas. I think if I didn't keep an eye on her, she'd climb right in there with them. God only knows what would happen then -- Gorilla queen or silverback sex slave would be my guess. It could go either way.

Me, I was partial to the fruit bats. Was. Now, not so much. If you've never seen a fruit bat, they look like full-sized Chihuahuas with giant, leathery wings. Apparently, along with a 4-6 foot wing span, they also have great eyesight and like to sunbathe. Who knew? Well, I'm sure lots of people knew, but I wasn't one of them.

I learned something else about them that I didn't know before. As Shamus and I were standing there watching them eat lettuce and groom each other, and our wives were standing well back from the open bars, one little guy was looking right at us:

He was really cute and cuddly, and I was about to comment on how I would love to have one as a pet when all those words just stuck in my throat. Why, you ask? Well, he showed us what was behind the curtain:



So it turns out fruit bats have major tackle. I, for one, had no idea. Apparently, they are the Ron Jeremys of the Animal Kingdom. Shamus looks at me and says, "That's some genitalia, right there." As a dozen women covered the eyes of a dozen children, the bat hung there (no pun intended) and gave us the inverted full monty. When finding some pictures for this post, I found out that their testicles are approximately 2% of their body weight. Holy shit. No wonder they have a 4-foot wingspan. They need it to get that thing off the ground.

I don't remember much after that. I may have been in shock. I think we just parted ways in the parking lot and my wife and I went back to the hotel and made some drinks. The alcohol helps me deal with the fact that a bat is hung better than I am.

We came back on the 29th, and it sucked. At 10:00 AM, I was sitting in the sun wearing a T-shirt, and at 10:00 PM I was on hour number three of trying to get the cars into the driveway.

Looking outside, it's like our vacation never happened. Well, except for the batcock. That part sticks with me.

Mostly because the nightmares won't let me forget.

Two things:

(1) What the eff is wrong with people?
(2) Google needs to work on their sponsored links algorithm.



Next up: Disney on a budget, and Animal Kingdom with the O'Drunkahans.