AnonymousCoworker

2006-12-15T10:30:00.000-05:00

Chicken Fried Bacon

2006-12-01T09:41:00.000-05:00

STANLEY SPADOWSKIS CLUBHOUSE PART 2

2006-12-01T09:40:00.000-05:00

THE MORTUARY SERVICE

2006-12-01T09:38:00.000-05:00

UHF - Raul's Wild Kingdom

2006-09-23T08:40:00.000-05:00

The Luke Johnson Phone Experiment

Let's not say 'goodbye,' let's just say 'see ya later'

2005-11-13T13:37:00.000-05:00

Well, I've been blogging for over a year now, and I've made some good bloggy friends, and some real friends via blogging. You know who you are. If you don't, then it's probably better that we never speak again, Kmart.

I'd like to say that I'm going to come back and post again at this here blog, but chances are, that's probably not going to happen. What a long strange trip it's been.

Actaully, I didn't really go anywhere, so the whole trip analogy is kinda busted. But hell yeah was it strange. Where else could you go to find a discussion of necrophilia so bizzare that Marilyn Manson himself called me a "perverted psycho with clear abandonment issues"?

That's right, nowhere.

So where will you go now to fulfill those needs? I guess you could check out so necrophilia forum or something like that. Maybe you could Google "I wanna joke about necrophilia but not talk about it with people who are seriously into it because that kinda skeeves me out a lot, okay, Internet?" Or you could just go to my new site, anonymouscoworker.com.

Oh, and by the way, this is my 666th post. Hail Satan.

This is 665

2005-11-12T13:36:00.000-05:00

Y'know. Just so it's even.

This is how big a dork I am

2005-11-12T10:16:00.000-05:00

This will also show that my brother and my friends are dorks too.

Our friend, and semi-frequent commenter on this blog, Tim, is in med school, and while he was waiting for us to meet him at the bar last night, he was working on some med school junk. I took one look at it, my brain did a backflip, and I wrote:

Pen15 = science

I showed my brother and our friend, Justin, and they began to add to the equation. In the end, it looked like this.

Pen15 = science when |x > 4|(n + 6)³!; / (SSS + pen15)^nipple!

The whole time ACWF and my brother's wife that he got free with the purchase of 10 pounds of jerky were saying, "This is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO boring."

They just don't understand an equation for funny when they see it.

Like a halo, but it's work

2005-11-11T15:06:00.000-05:00

I have a stupid project hanging over my head, and I say it's stupid because it was a cool idea a first where I would get to write. Joy of all joys, it would actually be something I would be writing that wouldn't be on the blog, yet it would still be during work hours. So it's like I'm getting paid for working, instead of blogging, which is what I sometimes feel like I'm getting paid for.

Anyway, this writing project has had all the joy sucked right out of its anus via some type of project fun-sucking office leech thing with really sharp teeth that dig into your sphincter and make you think you put extra fire sauce on your burrito last night.

Can I write about what I like? No, I have to write about what my boss wants. Can I at least write it in my own style? No, you have to put on a boring professional voice in order to put people to sleep in the first paragraph. Can I explain why I decided to write this paragraph in question and answer form? No, I just hope that it ends soon.

Anyway, it's weird because I wanted more writing in my job, and now I have it, but the writing is so conditional that I actually like my job a little less, even though I'm writing, which at first made me think I was going to like my job a little more.

At least I still get to keep an intern in the sub-basement and poke him with sticks whenever I run out of rotten fruit to throw at him.

Sweet fe-crikey!

2005-11-11T12:40:00.000-05:00

I had plans to day to post little tidbits of things that had been popping into my mind since this morning. Instead of creating a list of random thoughts, I was going to let each of these random thoughts have it's own post. I was going to do quick little blogs about things like how I got drunk last night and ate a bizarre assortment of food that caused my flatulence to nearly suffocate me in the shower this morning. I swear. The paint was ready to peel off the walls. I was going to tell a quick little story about a meeting we had the other day where we discussed how train engineers all have at least one suicide under their belt from people leaping in front of their trains and how the engineers should probably be given 50 gallon drums of windshield washer fluid to keep their engine's windshields clean of guts. We made little motions with our hands to suggest the engineers had levers like the windshield levers in our cars. We chuckled. A few guffawed.

But I've not had time to develop those stories today because I've been slammed with work. The little project I talked about a week ago is reaching it's climax this morning when we had thought its denouement had occurred Wednesday afternoon. It's a good thing for me, because it makes my idea, and the project as a whole, look all the better, but it's a bad thing for blogging. Hopefully, it's not as crazy in the second half of the day.

Apparently my blog has the characteristics of a spam blog

2005-11-11T09:24:00.000-05:00

I'm not exactly sure what that means, but I'm guessing that my level of posting (which is pretty light compared to some people) and because I get lots of searches finding my page because of the tenuous link I have created with regard to a generic office place are what leads them to believe I'm a spam blog. I mean, you can only have your blog hit with "how to talk to a coworker" or "greeting cards for coworkers" or "coworker birthday parties" or "secret email to a coworker" or "sex with a coworker" or "restraining order from a coworker" or "bastard child from one time tryst with a coworker and the eventual relationship that dissolved when the courts got involved and he filed a restraining order against me" before Blogger thinks you're running some sort of office supply spam blog. And it doesn't really bother me enough to be pissed off, but it does bother me enough that it's another mark in my book against Blogger.

So I guess I'll just wait for them to get back to me about the whole issue and realize that I'm not a spammer. Or, at least I wouldn't be if mokiejovis wouldn't keep whoring his charities all over the damn place.

I needs me some Blogger help

2005-11-10T13:05:00.000-05:00

For some reason when I try to post I have a word verification thing to get through. How can I turn this piece of crap off? I can't seem to figure out which switch to flitch. Or flip.

See?

Minty fresh

2005-11-10T09:03:00.000-05:00

This morning I awoke to find that we have no toothpaste. I scoured the house looking for another tube, but alas, we had nothing. We'd been using our travel tube for the past few days, but I guess ACWF used the last of it this morning.

We'd purchased toothpaste a few days ago, on Saturday I think, but it has remained in the trunk of ACWF's car, and we've been too lazy or too thoughtless to go out and get it once we remember it's in there.

So there I am, standing at the sink with the water running and the cat playing in the water, me holding my toothbrush in one hand like a prison shiv, imagining myself digging the tube of toothpaste out of the trash, carefully slicing it open with a razorblade in order to extract the last few remaining toothpaste molecules within the tube and then accidentally cutting myself with the blade after jumping for joy at being able to get a modest amount of toothpaste on my brush and slowly bleeding to death on the floor while the cat continues to play in the running water.

Instead of going to all that trouble I opted instead to just brush my teeth with mouthwash. Have you ever tried this? The mouthwash gets all foamy and then starts to really burn as you run the toothbrush close to your gums when you're brushing your teeth. My mouth didn't really feel clean after that, so I also did a regular mouthwash rinse while I was in the shower.

I still don't feel 100% clean in the mouthal region, but I don't exactly feel like first prize winner in the bukkake contest either. (Too far?) All I know if that ACWF reads the blog when she gets home from work, so this message is for her:

Hey hon! How was you're day? Right.... uh huh.... yeah.... whatever I don't care. Just go get the toothpaste out of the trunk. And make sure you have dinner ready on the table when I get home. I won't tolerate any of your misbehavior again. Smooches!

It's kinda like the Pepsi Challenge, but for your eyes

2005-11-09T13:23:00.000-05:00

I recently tried to re-up (what in the HELL does that mean anyway?) my prescription for contacts on 1800contacts.com. They called me the next day and told me that my scrip had expired and that I'd need a new one to get my contacts.

No, "Sorry that you'll be blind as a bat if you don't have contacts." No, "Sorry that we overcharge for a little piece of plastic to go in your eye just because you have astigmatism." Nope. None of that. Just outright douchery.

So I went to the eye-doctor on Monday and they ran all kinds of tests on my peepers. They tested me with contact in and with contacts out. Finally, upon arriving at the brilliant conclusion that, yes, I do in fact need contacts, they gave me an new prescriptionerino.

But not before the eye doctor found a miniscule tear in one of my current 1-month disposable contact lenses. So he offered me a replacement contact free of charge since I'm only halfway through my month (sounds like I'm on the pill, huh?) and I need to see to do things like read, walk, drive, or function as a normal human being. I swear. No contacts in my eyes equals pea and carrot succotash all over my face. Because I can't see. Not because I'm into sploshing, but because I wouldn't be able to see the food. Whatever. Shut up.

So now I've got 2 different brands of contacts in, and as the title suggest, it's like the Pepsi challenge for my eyes. I've got to determine which contact suits my eyes better, and which contact is a more refreshing beverage. Or something. Whatever. Shut up.

But I have no idea how I'm supposed to tell the difference because it's the combination of one image from each eye directed into my brain that allows me to see, so it's not like I'd ever really be able to conduct a thorough analysis of the effect each contact has on it's specific eye. I think I'm essentially gonna go with whichever brand is cheaper.

It's all about the Benjamins, what.

A modest comparison

2005-11-09T09:33:00.000-05:00

"Nevermind" by Nirvana is pretty much the most overrated album in the world. After I listened to the album on the way to and from work yesterday, and after I popped in Nerf Herder and listened to them rock-out twice as hard as Nirvana, the case was closed. Though, in fairness, Dave Grohl did tear the shit out of the drums.

I never really liked Nirvana when they were popular when I was in middle school, and for that matter, I also really hated Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Bush, and on and on and on. I realized later the impact "grunge" and "alternative" had on popular music, and I don't think it's clear yet whether or not that influence has faded or if that influence has led us to a worse place rather than a better one. All I know is that I'm not really a fan, and I wasn't really a fan when everybody else my age was.

I didn't really like any music back during that time period. I certainly can't claim that I was listening to some kind of crazy underground music that nobody has ever heard of, essentially making me a "cool guy", because I wasn't. I would just listen to the radio and wait to hear something new and different. Every time something new would pop up it would either be a novelty, or it would be a remarkably prescient 70's or 80's song.

It's been interesting to listen to all the CDs that ACWF bought in middle school when I wasn't buying anything. Some of it has aged pretty well, and some of it really sucks balls.

I can't imagine any of the music that's being played on the radio now is going to age well at all, but I might be surprised.

How bizarre

2005-11-08T14:40:00.000-05:00

I was trying to think about something to post, and I thought I would just look up whatever I was writing about on October 20, 2004 and ruminate on that.

So I checked it.

Nada. I didn't post anything that day. That was back in the day when I thought 1 post a day was enough. Don't get me wrong, it works for some people, but the more I wrote, the more I wanted to write.

So here I am, a year later, and I've got little to say again on October the 20th. I actually had that crock-pot post written yesterday, so technically, this is my first post of the day. Is there some sort of cosmic force trying to keep me from posting on October 20?

Could it be the ratification of the Louisiana purchase in 1803?
No, I thought that was a good move by Thomas Jefferson.

Could it be that Peru and Chile signed the Treaty of Ancon, by which the Tarapaca province was ceded to the latter, bringing an end to Peru's involvement in the War of the Pacific in 1883?
No, because I wasn't even aware that event took place.

Could it be the House Un-American Activities Committee begins its investigation into Communist infiltration of Hollywood, resulting in a blacklist that prevents some from working in the industry for years in 1947?
No, but Joe McCarthy was the very model of a modern major douchebag.

I have no idea what it is, but it seems I'm cursed to be content free on the 20th of October.

UPDATE-
You may be wondering, at this point, why I keep talking as if TODAY is October the 20th. I have no explanation. It's just a complete and utter mental malfunction. I should have recognized it when I went to Wikipedia and Ocotber 20 was not featured as the current date, but I soldiered through Wikipedias apparent temporal misalignment. In fact, I didn't even notice Wikipedia as being temporally misalgined until I started searching for something else because my original Ocotber 20 search was done through my Wiki quick search bar in Firefox.

I am an idiot.

Jeez, I'm an idiot.

Here's what I did on the 8th of November last year.

Speaking of Child's Play

2005-11-08T11:04:00.000-05:00

The new site is up and running! You greedy bastards now have the opportunity to head on over and start donating willy nilly. It's cool if you don't have much money. You could even buy something as simple as a kid's book or game controller for a few bucks. If you have even less to spare, maybe throw a few bucks into their donation jar.

If you can't even spare a little bit for some sick kids, they have a flyer (pdf) that you could print out and post around where you work or go to school, and then maybe all of those poor, sickly children wouldn't hate your greedy ass.

I've got Barry White on laserdisc

2005-11-08T09:13:00.000-05:00

Hey baby, what you doin' over there lookin' so cold? What's that? You been here all by your lonesome? Well let me change that around.

First we need to get you all sexified and sleek. Slip you into that little silver number. Yeah. That looks good. You so fine. So fine.

Now, let me take a look at those sexy thighs you tryin' to hide. Mmm. Yeah, baby, that looks nice. I can't wait to get my hands on those smooth, sexy legs of yours.

And baby, what is that heavenly scent? Mmm, yeah it smells good. Oh yeah, you're lookin' so nice and sexy.

Let me just take you all in. Get a good look at you.

Oh yeah, that looks good. So good... ooh what's this? Don't be coy, don't be coy. I see what you're trying to hide. Let me see that thing. Let me see it. Oh yeah, I'm going to push that button. I'm going to flip your switch. I can see that you're already moist. Yeah, you're going to taste so nice. Mmm.

(Okay, so here's the story. ACWF and I cooked up a delicious meal for dinner, and we put it in the canister that goes in our crock-pot, and then we put that in the fridge. Yesterday morning I went downstairs and found a note on the counter in front of the crock-pot that said, "Please turn me on." Hence the weird post above.

So anyways, the note didn't specify whether the thing was supposed to be on "high" or on "low" so I just figured "low" was only for warming stuff, and "high" was for cooking stuff. So our delicious chicken meal cooked for 10 hours on high, and accidentally becamed blackened chicken.

It's not a complete loss though, because I pulled the chicken away from any of the blackened bone and used it for my sandwich for lunch today. I'll let you know how it is.)

Videogames

2005-11-07T13:30:00.000-05:00

Post by: mokiejovis

I loves me some videogames. I've been enjoying them since I was six, when my old man brought home a glorious Packard Bell 386 with a 40 megabyte hard drive and 1 megabyte of RAM.

"Sheesh," said my father, "how will we ever fill up forty whole megabytes?"

Then we got video games.

It started simple. We had a bunch of games on a variety of disks that were mostly simple pick-up games, like Janitor Joe and Q*Bert. Christ, were they awful.

One of the first games we all really got attached to, however, was a game called Hero's Quest. It was great. You played the Hero, and you walked all around and typed stuff to make the hero do things. Sometimes, you would fight stuff in the forest. It couldn't have been better! We were hooked, and myself, my two older brothers, and pretty much the rest of the neighborhood would plunk down in front of the computer and play the game.

The game had an interesting effect. With two older brothers, you either learn to be statisfied watching a computer game be played or you solve your problems via a duel to the death. Remarkably, my brothers and I managed to - for the most part - amicably trade turns playing this game. Because of this, my brothers and I are mostly capable of being able to derive almost as much if not more joy from watching video games be played rather than playing them personally.

They had to change the name to "Quest for Glory" because of some shitty board game that nobody remembers. Even so, we had tasted the fruit of what would become a new genre, the computer adventure game, and we went back and tried many others: Quest for Glory two through five, The Curse of Monkey Island, Kings Quest - just to name a few. The games typically involved complex puzzle solving and reading comprehension, and my mother has said over and over that despite how hooked we got on video games, she'd never choose differently if given the chance to do it all over again.

As I got older, the scope and breadth of the computer games we played expanded as our computer got more and more powerful. Soon it was me and my oldest brother (not my stupid English major of a brother who can barely work a blog) who were putting together the computers and getting games for ourselves. DooM, Heretic, Quake, and many others followed.

We never did have a console, though. That's where emulators came in. Once I could get my hands on emulators and download roms, I played everything I wished I could as a kid. Zelda, Metroid, Contra, you name it.

I am of the humble opinion that The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is one of the greatest video games ever created. I had so much fun playing it that I make sure to donate a copy for the Gameboy Advance every year to Child's Play, a nationwide charity run by the kind fellows at Penny Arcade for sick kids in children's hospitals. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy that I am able to anonymously share one of my favorite childhood video games with a random kid. If I could, I would totally share Quest for Glory with them.

You better believe that I'm going to be guilting you bastards full-time once Child's Play gets into full swing this year.

Video games continue to show me new and different ways to learn and to tell a story, and I eagerly await the day that I'll be able to share the games I enjoyed so much as a child with my own kids. I still get a hankering every once and a while for those old games, and I keep my eyes out for modern remakes of the classic games of my past.

Talk about phoning it in

2005-11-07T11:18:00.000-05:00

So I ask Mokie to do one simple thing and put up some entertaining blather for everyone to read, and what does he do? He turns my blog into some type of seedy pay-for-post blogwhoring cathouse.

Well, in light of doing such a shoddy job at being entertaining, I thought I'd post about last night.

ACWF and I had just been to the store, and we'd picked up the necessities for the week when I saw that they had pomegranate on sale. I hadn't had a pomegranate in about a decade, so I thought it would be fun to have one, and for ACWF to try it out.

We also had a couple of home-grown persimmons in the fridge that a friend have given us from her family's persimmon tree in their backyard. It would be an evening of exotic fruits.

The persimmon had the consistency of honeydew, and the muted flavor of melon and cinnamon. It was pretty good, but I'm not really a fan of that melon consistency, so half a persimmon later and we were both done.

The pomegranate was huge, and perfectly ripe. I sliced it in half and plucked out a seed for ACWF to taste. Her cold really prevented her from tasting anything, so I dug into the pomegranate slowly with a toothpick, plucking, flinging, and squirting pomegranate seeds everywhere. Finally I just peeled back as much of the meat as I could and smashed the seeds into my mouth, chomping on whole sections of seeds all at once. I may not have gotten every seed, but on the whole it was a much more rewarding experience.

We went to sleep about an hour or so afterward.

I woke up at about 3am with an extremely strange feeling. It was sort of like heartburn, but not quite. It can only be described as the taste of pomegranate rising slowly up the back of your throat.

I tossed and turned for a few minutes before I finally decided to get up and check out my condition. Maybe get a glass of water.

I walked into the bathroom and flipped on the light and freaked the eff out. My face was covered with red spots! I was thinking of how much more common it is to get food poisoning from fruits and veggies than it is from meat or seafood and wondering whether or not I was going to need to go to the hospital. I was imagining myself waking up ACWF and asking her to drive me to the hospital 3 hours before she needed to wake up to go to work.

Then I rubbed one of the spots off. Then another. Then a few more. I bent over the sink and washed my face with water and stood up again.

All better.

I guess the next time I eat a pomegranate I won't shovel it into my face so quickly that it leaves spots all over and citric indigestion.

Request Schmequest

2005-11-07T10:53:00.000-05:00

Post by: mokiejovis

After speaking to ACW's best man over the weekend, he reiterated his request that we get out the vote on his movie thingy.

If you haven't voted on it, go vote! And if you have voted on it, please feel free to post it on your OWN blog so that your miniscule number of readers can also see and vote on it.

Don't think of yourselves as blogwhores, just think of me as your pimp.

And if you're all good little bitches, you'll get a post in a bit.

Kinda really busy

2005-11-07T08:55:00.000-05:00

Maybe Mokie could deign to bless us all with a post about his feelings on being such a douchebag. Perhaps he could tell us what it's like to aromatically violate every toilet upon which he rests his hindquarters. Mayhaps he can relate an anecdote about his Pokemon fetish.

Christmas Presents

2005-11-04T12:26:00.000-05:00

Dear people who have a skill,

Can you knit? Do you take beautiful pictures? Is your art frequently commented upon? Do you have a craft or a skill that others wish they could hone?

If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, I have quite a deal for you.

You see, Christians and secularists alike celebrate an upcoming holiday called "Christmas" and one of the traditions involves exchanging gifts. I don't like buying people things, especially my family, but the tradition stands, and I'd be rude to not participate.

During this time of year, a particular weight is placed on gifts that are "handmade." Handmade items are considered "thoughtful."

Seeing where I'm going with this?

Good. I will buy your handmade items from you and present them to my family as if I had created them myself. Everybody wins!

My stupid, greedy family gets their gifts, you get paid, and for about a month I'll be remembered as a thoughtful gift-giver. After that the greed will once again swell their brains.

So what do you say? Anyone want to pitch me some of their wares?

(I'm totally serious. If you make stuff, I'll probably buy it from you. I'm all about supporting bloggers this Christmas.)

Did you eat paste as a kid?

2005-11-04T09:41:00.000-05:00

Settle something for me. When you were a youngster, did you eat paste and/or glue? If so, did you eat crayons? If so, did you eat your boogers? If you did eat one or two of the above but not the other one or two, please say so and mention why.

I never ate any of them. You people are crazy.

Netflix Settlement

2005-11-03T12:52:00.000-05:00

If you have Netflix and got and email about the Netflix Settlement, you need to read this right away.

Here's the short story:

A guy sues Netflix because the delivery for Netflix is slow. A class-action lawsuit against Netflix allows Netflix users to increase their subscription for free for one month.

Here's the real story:

Some greedy, bastard lawyers are going to collect over 2 million bucks and the guy is going to get 2000, and all the Netflix users are going to get a month upgrade. Then we're going to get hit with an increased bill to cover the cost of the lawsuit payout to the lawyers.

Object to the lawsuit.

According to the Long Form Notice posted at the settlement web site, you must send a written, signed request to opt out, and state:

1. Your name, address, email address and telephone number associated with your Netflix account.
2. Your current name, address, email address and telephone number if it's different from the above.
3. A reference to the litigation (i.e., Chavez v. Netflix, Inc. Case No. CGC-04-434884)
4. Approximately when you became a Netflix member, if and when you cancelled, and what service level(s) you subscribed to.
5. That you wish to opt-out of the class.

send your request to:

Netflix Opt-Out
5654 Geary Blvd., #210511
San Francisco, CA 94121

Not intentionally trying to stir the pot

2005-11-03T12:20:00.000-05:00

So, I've had this thought rolling around in my head for a while.

So the God of Christians is whatever he would have them have him be. Angry, just, righteous, holy, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, pissed off, frustrated, loving, etc. How do Christians know this? Because it's written in the Bible.

But what if the Bible isn't the Word of God? What if the Bible is actually written by the Devil in an attempt to trick people to behave in such a morally ludicrous way that they can't help but fall at his cloven feet?

It would explain all the inconsistencies and contradictions in the Bible.

What evidence do we have that the Bible is the written Word of God and not an extremely elaborate trick being played by the Devil? You've got to admit that if the Devil was going to write a Bible as one of his tricks, he would certainly write it in such a way as to make himself look like the loser and the bad guy.

Has anyone else ever thought of this? Can anyone positively show that the Bible wasn't penned by the Devil?

A hidden message

2005-11-03T08:32:00.000-05:00

As you may recall, ACWF and I had ants some time ago. We took them out with some ant poison around the exterior of the house, but it seems like they're back. They haven't quite made a swarming presence like last time, but we're ready for them.

But what's this? The backing on the ant poison seems to be coming away. I wonder what's under there...

Sweet merciful crap! It appears that those bastards at Combat are in league with the Nazis!

Honestly, ACWF and I are both shocked an appalled at the makers of Combat ant traps. Shocked, and appalled. And quite honestly, doing a poor job of faking being shocked and appalled. Really, hon? Would it have killed you to take even a moment to pretend like you were pretending to be shocked and appalled? Sheesh.

Weird ass-dream

2005-11-02T13:42:00.000-05:00

No, I put that hyphen in the right place. The other night I had the craziest damn dream.

First of all, I woke up about a million times the other night, and it felt like my dreams were all shorts at a film festival. They would have been called "Dream Shorts" or something.

But anyway, I'm dreaming that ACWF and I are walking in the backyard of some house and we're with a group of people. Suddenly someone's like, "Okay, pair up!" and everyone gets into pairs.

I got stuck with some woman and ACWF was with some guy.

Then somebody said, "Okay, now everybody have sex." and I'm like, "No way, I don't want to have sex with that ugly chick, and I don't want ACWF to have sex with that dude," because he was all muscular and stuff.

ACWF was like, "Don't be such a stick in the mud," and then happily went off with her partner. Meanwhile the ugly chick is frantically calling me over. She's like, "C'mon, we've gotta have sex!" and I'm like, "No way! I don't wanna have sex with you!" and she says, "Okay, well I guess we can just fool around then. I'll just blow you," and I'm absolutely opposed to the idea and am about to make such a statement when she's like, "Too late, the train's here."

So the whole group gets on to the train, and I find ACWF and she's like, "Oh there you are! Do you want to hear what happened?" and I'm pissed so I say, "Are you crazy? Of course I don't want to hear what happened!" So she looks at me funny and says, "You're such a prude."

Right at that moment the husband of my old boss wanders through the train and ACWF calls to him, "Hey Jim, wanna hear about the sex I just had?" and of course he's like, "Hell yeah! Lay it on me!" so she starts telling him. And even though I can't hear what she says, I guess my dream persona hears it and I say, "God damnit I thought I told you that I didn't want to hear about that shit."

Then I woke up.

Is that a freakin' crazy dream or what? I guess I just shoulda had sex with the ugly chick.

But here's something weird, and I'll probably get mocked for this, but it's impossible for me to cheat on my significant other, even in my dreams. I've never had a dream when I've been in a relationship where I've had sex with anyone but that person. It's like I can't even cheat in my subconscious. Not that I want to, but I find it strange that my subconscious is wired that strongly.

Weird.

Fraternizing with the common folk

2005-11-02T09:04:00.000-05:00

I don't really watch TV anymore. I used to come home and plunk in front of our cable-free TV and watch reruns of Friends, Seinfeld, and the Simpsons, and then I'd watch whatever was on TV for that evening. I probably spent a good portion of high school in front of the old boob tube. I'm guessing about 6 to 8 hours a day.

College was even worse because I had free time in the middle of the day, so I found myself watching such reprehensible programming as Digimon, Pokemon, and The Price is Right. It's not a period in my life of which I am proud.

My girlfriend during the first part of college had to get cable in her apartment in Baltimore in order to get any channels. The reception was so bad that she sometimes couldn't even get static. She got basic cable, and the basic cable package included about half of the local channels, the Food network, and the Discovery channel. I started watching stuff like Antiques Roadshow and Emeril. (Bam.)

When I started dating ACWF (and what a mistake that was)* her family had the full cable package, and my brothers and I had purchased Direct TV for my dad for Christmas. I was watching TONS of TV. I'd plunk myself down and watch any number of shows on any of the hundreds of channels.

Living with Kmart I began watching less TV. We were watching more movies from Netflix, Blockbuster, and On Demand. To be honest, I preferred it to the roped in feeling I always had when I wanted to get home for a program, or the anxiety I would feel about trying to cook dinner or get my laundry done in time for a show, or between that show's commercials.

For a while, when ACWF and I moved into our house we had no TV. No problem, we had lots of work to do. Once we finally got the cable hooked up, though, I found that I wasn't really interested in watching many things. I'd sit down and watch Ghost Hunters or CSI with ACWF, but it wasn't because I particularly liked those shows, but because I wanted to spend time with her.

Now I've started reading and doing chores while ACWF is watching TV (in her defense, she usually does chores and cooks dinner while she's watching the Simpsons, before I get home), and I don't really watch very much TV at all anymore.

But last night I sat down to help ACWF cut out some stuff for her classroom, and she wasn't feeling well, so she went to bed and I was left with a big pile of cutting to do. Since I couldn't read I flipped around the channels to find something that might be interesting and I settled on that Earl show of which everyone seems so fond. I thought it was just okay. It was entertaining enough to keep me from changing channels, but not entertaining enough that I'd try to ever watch it again.

Then I watched the US version of The Office, and I must say, that show is pretty damn funny. I think they captured the feel of the original while also building their own sense of humor and their own style. I'd probably tune in to see this one again if I can remember the night and time it comes on.

Then I watched Law and Order SVU, and it was Law and Order SVU.

What would you say is absolutely the best show on television right now?

*Just kidding. She's pretty much my favorite person in the whole world.

You like me, you really like me

2005-11-01T13:47:00.000-05:00

I have become lax about checking my Sitemeter stats. The reason? They stress me out.

I used to obsess over every little hit. Every link was to be pored over and deconstructed in order to determine how I might best serve that anonymous IP address. I used to check my ranking on The Ecosystem daily. I had any number of different systems going on that I would use to monitor and evaluate my blog.

I felt like a teenage girl going home to exercise and have tic-tacs for dinner in order to change the way people felt about her. About me.

So I killed all that stuff a while ago. I removed myself from The Ecosystem, and I pulled out all that other tracking crap, except Sitemeter. I liked Sitemeter because it referred me to people who were linking to me. I liked seeing that, because it meant that I would have someone new to read. I've read every blog that's linked to me, as far as I know. That's the feedback aspect that I live for. The numbers are insignificant.

So, after going through the referrals today, and seeing a plethora of referrals to warm my heart from all the different blogs over there on the right, I decided on a whim to take a gander at my stats for October since the month had just ended. I saw some serious spikes, so I checked my yearly traffic to see how it compared to the past couple of months.

Sweet merciful crap, people! I took in 700 more hits in October than in my previous best month. I'll take that as confirmation that you like it when a spend a little bit more time on my blog posts and don't just post whatever crap flutters into my head, and that you don't seem to mind me poking my head into your blog and leaving whatever absurd comment comes to mind.

Thank you all, so very much, for continuing to stop by my little corner of the world. My grammar-ignoring, poor-spelling, corpse-humping corner.

Lost Sunglasses

2005-11-01T10:23:00.000-05:00

If you're a lady and you lost your tortoise-shell sunglasses, I think I found them in my couch.

Hallowaftermath

2005-11-01T09:15:00.000-05:00

Last night the little piggies came a-swarming to gorge themselves at our candy trough. We saw some pretty good costumes (a 3-year old mariachi, and a classic Dracula) and we saw some crap costumes (a kid with a Jason mask and a Ravens t-shirt, and about a million Barbie princesses), but more than anything we saw piggish, bratty, snotty, greedy, little, germ-spreading ankle-biters.

The kids would come up to our house, dragging their bags along behind them, so full of candy that the bags were bursting like Mr. Creosote, and one of the smaller children was complaining of a hernia. First they'd shove their bags in my face, then they MIGHT say "Trick or Treat" or "Happy Halloween", and after I gave them A WHOLE GODDAMNED CANDY BAR they'd say "Thank you" if I was lucky. More frequently the brats would oink and squeal with displeasure. "Can I have more?"

More? MORE? FUCKING MORE? You little shits are going to have scoliosis from the candy you're already lugging around, not to mention the WHOLE CANDY BAR that I gave you.

Sigh.

It wasn't a complete loss though. Many kids were polite and said "please" and "thank you" before holding their bags up, so I gave them extra.

And after two girls dressed as dead ballerinas or dead prom queens or something got their candy they went running back to their parents yelling "They gave us WHOLE candy bars!" That felt pretty good.

ACWF said I was being a jerk, but my parents raised me to not be a snotty little douchebag when people were kind enough to give me anything, and even though I hated it when an old lady would reach into a bowl and drop a handful of pennies into my bag, or religious literature, I always said "please" and "thank you" and I certainly never asked for more.

Next year I'm making laxative brownies and the greedy kids can have as much as they want.

It's all about meme

2005-10-31T15:30:00.000-05:00

Go to Google Image Search and type in the city and state/province of the town where you grew up, no quotation marks. Then select the picture you like best from the first page of results and post it on your blog. Here's mine:

Next do the same with the town where you currently reside. My result:

Next your name, first and last, but no quotes. My result:

Next your grandmother's name. My result:

Next your favorite food. My result:

Next your favorite drink. My result:

Next your favorite smell. My result:

Lastly, your favorite song. My result:

I'm shooting for the 8-18 demographic

2005-10-31T12:41:00.000-05:00

Tonight ACWF and I will be handing out candy to the youngsters for the first time in our new house. I'll probably be handing out more candy than ACWF because ACWF has a medical condition known as Paralyzing Comatose Laziness. That, and I object to ACWF putting razor blades into candy bars. Everybody knows that straight pins go in much more easily and inconspicuously.

We're giving away full-sized candy bars (as opposed to the lollipops that I usually use to lure kids into the back of my van) in order to build some positive "buzz" about our house. The reason for this is twofold. First, you don't TP or egg a house that gives away whole candy bars. That would be like biting the hand that sells you your inhaler you asthmatic freak. There are plenty of hoodlums running around our neighborhood, so this is like an investment. Second, full sized candy bars ensure repeat customers next year, and next year I plan to build a haunted house in my backyard.

ACWF isn't keen on the idea, but I'm pretty sure I just heard the internet say, "Hells yes! That would be awesome! Can I help?" just as everyone else has said to me when I've explained my plan.

Given the layout of our house, we can get people in and through and out with enough room to deliver some solid scares, but without having to worry about any damage done to our property, or a ton of expense put into the creation of the haunted house. I think we'll probably do donations or a baked goods table or something to recoup any cost.

So who's with me?

Happy Halloween, and to be on the safe side, Hail Satan

2005-10-31T09:04:00.000-05:00

I wrote you a story for Halloween:

Through the dingy window I can see it limping. Its eyes find me like a spotlight and I can see the bones in its neck popping against the fatty skin as its head turns. It runs unevenly toward the house. The white hair that hasn’t fallen out is matted against its face and neck, held in place like a second skin by mud and crusted blood. Pale skin is pockmarked with fat, wriggling maggots and worms that have taken residence in its neck and shoulders. Its clothes are rotten and brown, revealing a dried, gaping wound under her ribs where its spongy intestines dangle and wrap around bare legs. Leathery skin stretched tight clings to sinew, bone and hard, muddy muscle. Something like a necklace, a choker, is rust-covered and digs into dry, papery skin around the throat and below its crackling spine.

It’s not the shuffling that bothers me, I told him as I hurried him through the outer wall.

Twilight had descended over the earth, but the moon had not yet climbed above the evergreens. The oily smoke coiling off of the flaming branch in my hand would have to wait to transfer to the signal torches. We’d struggled through 6 harvests since the last time we’d seen anyone foolish enough to travel on their own, yet he was in remarkable health. The absence of people is more common than groups. Groups are more common than lone travelers. Frayed, frenzied, and at each other’s throats. You can tell the leaders because they always have the eyes of someone who’s had to kill a member of their group. You can tell the burdens because they break down psychologically on arrival. You have a better chance guessing when a rattlesnake is going to strike than guessing when a group of starving travelers is going to go to hell in a handbasket.

It’s not the smell that bothers me, I told him as I dragged a heavy, wooden chair from under the rough table.

My wife, she’s a sleepwalker, a somnambulist. Her doctor’s word. The doctor advised me to not wake her when I found her rearranging the house in the darkness before the sunrise. He said it wouldn’t cause her any harm to outside of waking up exhausted each morning. I didn’t worry until she started sleepwalking outside. I’d wake in a cold sweat after standing over her bloody body, a coyote or a mountain lion sliding into the treeline.

It’s not the heavy silence of the winter that bothers me, I told him as my boots flexed the ancient floorboards of the kitchen.

We must have been some of the last people to be notified. Our house is miles from the nearest highway, and we never wanted anything to do with television or the noise coming out of the radio. There’s enough to do to keep my hands hard and calloused around this old place without worrying about such things. Our wood stove has charred a spot into the floor, and I keep the handle of the well pump loose and rust-free. You’d have to go miles to hear another generator, and we don’t want to hear them around anyway. Whenever the troopers stopped by with news I shrugged my shoulders and raised my axe to split another log. It made sense that they’d all be drawn toward the cities. People are packed in there like greasy fish in a tin. I guess it’s been about 12 years since then.

It’s not the sight of them that bothers me, I told him as his head collapsed into his hands.

We saw more people those first few years than we’d ever seen before. They crashed through with military vehicles and ATV’s, mopeds and mountain bikes. Next were the whine of snowmobiles and the silence of skis. Then leaves and twigs crackled underfoot, and the walkers were the first of any of them to take the time to notice the house. Some stalked up to the wall to see if the windows in our home burned with light or if they were cold and empty like the cities and the suburbs they had left in the control of those things. They’d snoop, and throw pinecones over the wall, but they’d always keep moving, thinking no one lived here. Even if the barbed wire at the top of the wall hadn’t sliced them up enough, they would have found this old house occupied, and souls with no intention of leaving their haunt.

It’s not their unhumanity that bothers me, I say as his skull collapses under the weight of my hammer.

The first person we cared to contact since the troopers was a frightened young woman with crazed eyes. Her skin was rubbery and sallow, and she needed help. The reinforced door in the wall shuddered as it opened and rust flaked from the hinges as I rushed out to collect her. Her mouth threw up a sound of terror and salvation. Halfway between the wall and the safety of our house her weight nearly toppled me as she collapsed in my arms. Her heels bounced along the bumpy path to the porch. My wife burst onto the porch with an old bucket full of fresh water and dishrag with a rooster embroidered onto it. She cleaned the grit off of the young woman’s pale skin as I loped back to force the rusty hinges to allow the door to swing closed.

It’s the moan that bothers me, I say as I heave his deadweight out onto the porch.

That thing lurches from below the dingy window to the porch with an animal urgency. Through the railing it digs its bony fingers into his shoulders and drags him against the wood closer to its lipless mouth. All teeth and tongue, ready to devour his flesh. It rips off his ear with its sandpaper fingernails while clawing open his stomach and spilling his slippery guts onto the wood. His shoulder dislocates with a sickening pop and he’s pulled halfway under the porch railing, the hinged collar around the papery skin of its neck. The chain on the back of the collar runs to a piece of rebar welded onto the weed choked bulk of an old tractor. The chain jingles and clanks as it drags dried offal in its links, keeping it from getting any closer than the edge of the porch.

It’s the moan that bothers me. It’s that abysmal, rasping moan that burst from that young woman as her chest heaved forward, and her arms and legs shot back like harpoons into the ground. It’s not even a moan. Its air, and mucus, and blood forcing its way out of the throat. The unnatural cacophony of life being restored to the dead. I didn’t know what it was then, and I was too far from my wife to keep that thing from biting a chunk out of the fleshy part of my wife’s palm. She scrambled inside and locked the door as I throttled the young woman. I crushed her still-chewing, blood-soaked mouth with an axe handle that found its way into my hands. She was no more than a skin-sack of chunky pulp when I buried her in a shallow grave as far as I dared venture outside our walls.

It’s the moan that I hate. The moan that escaped from my wife’s cracked lips, covered in spidery purple veins, after she had cursed my name with her last living breaths as she struggled against her restraints.

thanks for reading, feel free to critique in comments

Everybody do the no-pants dance

2005-10-28T13:14:00.000-05:00

Pretty much, I don't have anything to blog about but I'm all like, "Why should that stop me from writing anything?" So it don't. As you can see, or read, or have read to you in a sexy James Mason as God voice, I'm writing nonetheless.

It's like when you have nothing to do but the book you're reading is way over there, and VH1 is showing I Love the 80's for about the fudillionth time, so you decide that you're going to steal your neighbors lawnmower and cut your lawn in a baseball diamond design after getting lacquered on paint thinner and margarita mix.

When the cops pull you over going 7 miles an hour down the middle of the interstate in your neighbors riding mower and your breath stinking of Jimmy Buffet meets This Old House, you realize you've hit bottom.

So you dedicate yourself to yourself in prison. You start by bench pressing stacks of Bibles. Then you move on to benching lesser prison bitches. By the time you're getting a crying clown tattooed on the whole of your back you can tear cell doors open with your still delicately deft classically trained pianist fingers.

A pianist to prisoner outreach program (Concerts for Convicts) takes notice of this an enrolls you in their education program. All seems to be going well until you perform Chopsticks as a joke to warm up the crowd at the annual prison rodeo. You had no way of knowing that Chopsticks was the trigger song that the Russians had brainwashed you in responding to.

The next few years are a haze of cigarettes, superettes, and marionettes as you implant yourself as the successor to take over as Kermit the Frog's muppetteer. Once you make it onto national television you can begin to sing the song that Americans have learned subliminally for dozens of years. As soon as that song is sung, you'll be one government overthrow away from fulfilling your mission and eating the cyanide capsule that has some how stayed in the shoe that you have somehow managed to hold onto lo these many years.

My baloney has a first name....

This just popped into my head for some reason

2005-10-28T08:44:00.000-05:00

When I was in my freshman year of college, my girlfriend at the time, Megan *coughpsychotichellbitchcough* was a senior in high school, so of course I went to the beach with them for Senior Week.

For those of you who don't know, Senior Week is the first or second week after graduation where parent's who are just phoning it in allow their high school senior aged children go down to the beach and get alcohol poisoning.

Because we didn't know anyone who was 21 once we got down to the beach, we knew we'd need to buy our booze before we left. My assistant manager at the pool where I was a lifeguard took pity on us, and he said he'd buy us whatever we wanted, with only a very slight mark-up for his trouble.

After he walked out of the liquor store and deposited two cases of Zima in my trunk, he told me that I needed to learn how to drink beer, and that he wasn't buying me anything else until he saw me drinking beer. My objections that the Zima was for the ladies (my hellbitch went to an all-girls school) fell upon deaf ears. He simply shook his head as he walked to his own car with a case of Maryland's Best (it makes Boh seem like immaculate ejaculate).

We made it down to the beach without any trouble. By without any trouble I mean the hellbitch called me every 30 minutes to get me to change my schedule at the pool so I could get down there a day earlier and once someone took my shift and I was able to make it down there she gave me the cold shoulder for not getting there faster. Bitch.

The first half of the week was filled with craziness. People were getting drunk every night, a half-dozen people were sunburned after the 2nd day, and we were quickly running out of food due to drunken munchies. Then we hit the wall.

We were running out of Zima and we had no one to buy us booze. By a strange stroke of luck, or a bizarre coincidence, or something, it turns out that the guy who was staying in the apartment below us was a guy who I had gone to pre-school with. Oh, and he was friends with my cousin who was 21 and also staying below us. So, they gave me a bowl of gin, and I took it back upstairs to try to find something to mix it with and I see everyone in our apartment sitting around and talking.

All of a sudden the hellbitch bursts from the bathroom wearing only a tshirt and her underwear. Her overall-shorts things (which I always hated) were crumpled in a ball beneath the toilet. She stumbled towards the kitchen and grabbed the last two Zimas from the fridge. She gave one to her friend, and she took the other one for herself, before flopping down onto the couch Al Bundy style.

Her friend was pretty drunk so she set her full Zima on the corner of the table and helped me look for something to mix with the gin. The hellbitch continued to pound her Zima as she talked to my buddy Joe, who was leaning up against the table. By some stroke of misfortune, Joe knocked over the Zima on the table and it spilled onto the carpet. The filthy carpet of the beach place that probably had been there since they built it.

Hellbitch's eyes go wide and she dives onto the carpet and starts licking the Zima out of the rug. Between licks she's saying, "This is the last Zima guys. C'mon! Help! Don't waste it!"

At this point her sort-of-but-not-at-that-moment-friend Heather comes into the apartment wasted off her ass, eyes completely glazed over, and barely able to stand up and sees the Hellbitch licking the carpet and starts laughing her head off. Then Heather starts spanking my ex-girlfriend, the hellbitch.

I grabbed Heather's arm and pulled her away and told her to take it easy because they were both drunk. For a second I saw a glimmer of rational thought in Heather's eyes, but then it disappeared and Heather leaned her head into my shoulder and bit me, and broke the skin, through my shirt.

Mind you, I'm not a violent guy. Though I did terrorize my brothers when we were children, they can both vouch that now I'm a chilled out dude. So I shocked even myself when I grabbed Heather, picked her up under her arms, and forced her backwards until her back was against the closet and her feet were dangling in the air. I looked at Heather, and I loudly, but calmly said, "If you ever fucking bite me again I'm going to rip your fucking head off and show you your body so you can watch yourself die."

There was then a pause so long that I thought the world had stopped spinning. But then, a flicker of life in Heather's eyes and she started laughing. She cackled. I couldn't help realizing how ridiculous this all was, so we went back to laughing at my ex-girlfriend who was till licking Zima off of the floor.

Everybody thinks they'll be the one

2005-10-27T09:00:00.000-05:00

Go wish Huw some luck as he attempts to ingest a gallon of milk in an hour.

Here's what happened to me when I did it.

Some other stuff, and praise for pants

2005-10-27T08:20:00.000-05:00

1) "Waiter?"
"Yes, sir?"
"What's this dragon doing in my soup?"
"It looks like early nineties indie rock."

Ha ha ha. I was listening to the aforementioned band on the way to work this morning, and I suddenly heard a siren fast approaching. I swiveled my head around to see where it was coming from before I realized that those tricky Scottish bastards had pulled a fast one on me. Touche.

2) When I got to work, I watched a woman get out of her car and close the door with the keys in the ignition and the engine running. She must have had something on her mind. So I hit her with my Corolla.

I'm just kidding.

I drive a Tercel.

3) The pants I'm wearing today are pretty much the greatest pants in the world. Say what you want about Tommy Hilfiger (that he's a racist, that he exploits workers overseas, that he uses underage women in sexually suggestive and potentially abusive poses and situations to market his wares, that he invests heavily in the secret government project to clone the devil and use his clones to create the most destructive army the world has ever seen, that he has gold-plated bidets that squirt chocolate-flavored soy milk installed in all his stores just in case he decides to stop in and has to use the bathroom) but he makes a hella fine pair of pants.

I got mine at Value City (holla PLD!) for like 9 bucks, and I think the number that they blacked out on the tag was 45 hojillion dollars and 95 cents, so I paid an extremely reduced price.

The pants feel like they were broken in by my identical, evil twin. They fit like a sock. A tube sock. Get your mind out of the gutter. Furthermore, I may have mentioned to you before that I frequently make my daily dalliances sans undergarments. Today is no exception. Yet these pants have some sort of special built in section of fabric so that my delicate bits have all the warming comfort of boxers, but none of the restriction.

In conclusion, I will kill you if you try to take my pants, and I think my pants are probably built for killing, what with Tommy Hilfiger's predilection of sacrificing the first-born children of his employees.

Turning over a new leaf

2005-10-26T11:59:00.000-05:00

I just volunteered for a job at work that may consume the vast majority of my time for the next month. So, blogging might slip a bit.

The thing is, before our most recent staff meeting, I was taking a look at my job responsibilities, and there's a component of my work that has remained unfulfilled. It's not an essential part of my job, and the fact that they still employ me shows that it's a task that's completely superfluos. I proposed a proposal (as proposals are wont to be prosposed) to get this task going, and it turns out that my boss has been thinking of doing the exact same thing. So that shows some good initiative on my part. The only problem is that she wants it to coincide with "National [Our Industry] Awareness Month" and she wants it to be over before Thanksgiving, and she wants it to last for a few weeks. So, I have two weeks to plan a two-week implementation of my idea. If it flies, it might be something we do each fiscal quarter, and I'll be the lead each time.

Here goes nothing.

After Karaoke

2005-10-26T08:27:00.000-05:00

After Karaoke we headed over to Frazier's on the Avenue. I hadn't been there in a while, and Mike was determined to buy us some Bohs. Damned nice of him.

While walking to Frazier's Mike and his Wifey pointed out the brick in the sidewalk that had their names on it. It was joined by bricks with other people's names and businesses. I stepped on the brick and Wifey was all, "Oh no you di'int!" and I was all, "Oh yes I di'id!" and it looked like it was about to be broughten, but it wasn't, because we were just joking around.

Once I made it into Frazier's I almost immediately ran into an old friend of mine, Ryan. Ryan is an interesting guy, to say the least. Just recently Deanne was lamenting how frequently she's had to nearly fight some "chav scum" for their want of her cigarettes. I told her about my friend Ryan.

Ryan used to keep 2 packs of cigarettes. From one pack he'd remove a single cigarette, pee on it, and then let it dry. Once it was dry, he put it in the other pack. He'd carry both packs around, and whenever anyone wanted to bum a cigarette, he'd give them one of the cigarettes from the "special" pack. It brought him a sick sort of pleasure.

I run into him from time to time, and he's one of those people with whom you don't have stupid back and forth forced conversation about the weather. I can't even remember what we were talking about (the time he got kicked out of a Billy Idol show? The time he got kicked out of a Foreigner show? Both?) but in the middle of the conversation he removes the napkin from on top of the plate of food resting on the bar between us and he starts eating. He starts eating the half-eaten potato skins and onion rings and pizza bread that someone else had left behind.

At first he looked at me and said, "What? I'm just eating the stuff that they didn't touch." He held up and unblemished onion ring for me to examine. Then he stuffed it in his mouth.

"Dude, that's so gross. Think about what you used to do to cigarettes."

"Meh. I'm hungry. No sense wasting good food."

He paused for a moment as he finished the last of the untouched food, looked at me, and then started eating the food that already had a few bites taken out of it. I was disgusted, but not surprised. Ryan, at the ripe old age of 23 or 24, has always been like this.

I made sure to bum a cigarette from his friend.

Karaoke

2005-10-25T12:40:00.000-05:00

Saturday night ACWF and I headed into Baltimore for some Karaoke at Molly's.

It was our first time there, and the 2 buck Bohs and PBRs were quite a treat. We saw quite a few people there that we knew, including Jennetic, Fool (and her hat) and Eric, Mike and his Wifey, Snay, Kmart, and I even got to meet Benn and Rachel.

The karaoke was lots of fun, and I think I've determined that if I ever get drunk enough to actually sing karaoke, I'm going to sing Neil Diamond's "Forever in Blue Jeans" (so I can adlib parts in between singing and say stuff like "This next song I wrote after I killed a drifter to get an erection") or I'm going to sing some AC/DC, cause I can do that high and squeaky rock and roll singing thing.

But that's not the point of this post. The point of this post is to tell you how ragingly drunk Snay got at Molly's. After a few beers and a cider or two he was simultaneously the friendliest and angriest drunk I'd ever seen. He went from giving me a huge hug, to trying to break my arm in 2 seconds. I'd watch that guy if you're around him and he's gotta couple a drinks in him. I told him a story about how I peed on my cat (by accident, which is not to say that the cat didn't deserve it, but the cat came into the bathroom and jumped right into the toilet while I was peeing) and he tried to relate it to the internet at the end of his post, here. "acw opeef all ovewr hisa furbalz." Pretty clear, huh?

After we left karaoke, Snay rode home with Kmart, and promised not to throw up inside the car. Darn nice of him, if you ask me. I just wish we could have talked him into singing.

I need a favor from you

2005-10-25T09:24:00.000-05:00

The best man for my wedding has been working on a short animated commercial with his wife. There's a contest at Geico, and the winner gets some fabulous prizes like a tupperware set; a bag with a dollar sign on it filled with stinky, sweaty cash; and maybe like some old cheese. And a trip to Hawaii.

Help my best man win this trip to Hawaii by

1) Go to the video's page and check the box that says, "I am selecting this movie as my favorite movie in this category," and click the "Submit Votes" button.

2) It will tell you that you haven't voted for anything else yet. If you want, watch movies in the other categories and vote for them (winners in other categories won't impact us) - or you can just cast your vote for us and only us, and click the "Submit these Choices" button.

3) Please pass this email along to all of your acquaintances,
coworkers, family, and friends and ask them to vote for our video, too!

So do me a favor and vote for the video, and if you can, also, maybe paste the link (http://tinyurl.com/9f2mh) into your blog as well so even more votes can be accumulated.

Thanks, doods.

David's Bridal

2005-10-24T12:40:00.000-05:00

So ACWF and I went to David's Bridal on Saturday and I tell you whut- Women. Are. Crazy. You might say that my statement is hyperbole. It's not hyperbole if every woman is actually crazy.

As soon as we walked in I saw a woman in a wedding dress 2 sizes too small RUN by us, in bare feet no less, towards the back of the store. I'm not sure when during her wedding that she plans on looking like a chiffon-covered sausage casing being chased by the LAPD, but at least she'll have had practice.

As we continued through the store (to look at bridesmaid's dresses) we were frequently subject to the wild-eyed glares of women throughout the store. Some women's wild eyes were filled with love, while other's eyes were filled with hatred. Some eyes were filled with an all consuming mix of bloodlust and rage that seems to only present itself when wedding bells are in the air.

Not a single one of the women in the store were in their right minds. Mothers and daughters were having shouting matches as they tried to observe their asses over their left, then right, shoulders.

Bridesmaids were secretly mocking brides in dresses so hideous that they were painful to view. (I have no idea why a wedding dress would be designed with lace sleeves, a lace headband, AND a train made completely of the skulls of ex-boyfriends.)

Even the employees were bonkers. "CAN I HELP YOU WITH YOUR WEDDING PLANNING?!" perked a perky perk-a-pot at the front door. Seriously, I think her dimples were augmented. And I think she was looking through my face at the back of my head, because she certainly wasn't focusing anywhere near my eyes.

All in all it wasn't too bad a trip, but I'm having a hard time thinking of the store without imagining dozens of Gollums clutching dresses while clawing and hissing at me, "It wantses to takesss my preciousss. Preciousss!!!"

Doom Review

2005-10-24T09:03:00.000-05:00

Went to see Doom on Friday with Mokie and his friend Chris. We all grew up playing the games, though Mokie and Chris have played quite a bit more of Doom 3 than I have, since my video card is unable to support Doom 3. Or something. Maybe it's the emulator.

All in all, it was an entertaining movie. Lots of explosions, gunfire, shouting, cursing, and blood. Something you can take your kids to see.

I know many people were worried that the 1st person perspective a la the gameplay of the 3 games would interfere with the movie. The director only uses the 1st person perspective one time, and it's only for a few minutes toward the end of the movie. It's not artsy, or inspired or anything like that. It's just kind of cool. If you spent a few hours playing these game sin the past, it should whip you into a frenzy as it did us. We were laughing and cheering. It was fun.

In the end, I imagine the movie is going to be exactly as you think it's going to be. There are really no surprises here. But if it makes any difference to you at all, I didn't feel fleeced of my time, or my money.

Because I was demanded to do this

2005-10-21T11:58:00.000-05:00

Here is my rendition of my stupid older brother, who is keeping me from playing video games on my day off.

Brotherly portrait

2005-10-21T11:49:00.000-05:00

Kendra sent me an email *coughstalkercough* wondering what mokie looked like, so I've drawn a picture. Mokie will put up a picture of me in a lil' bit.

I'll put up a pic of ACWF if it's desired by you, the unwashed masses.

Who has a cool phone number?

2005-10-21T10:54:00.000-05:00

Not me. Mine all spell, "10-xrt-010-g".

Inspiration

2005-10-21T08:44:00.000-05:00

I just spoke with the CEO of a company that you have heard of. He was extremely interesting, had a very extensive career path, and has given me the last boot I needed to focus the majority of my daily attention on my work.

I've stopped playing video/online games during downtime, and as some of you may have noticed, my comments haven't inundated each and every one of your posts.

I'll still be blogging (it really doesn't take very much time when you just post everything after the first draft), and I'll still be commenting, but it may slip from time to time as I strive to make work my priority. I may be doing more blogging from home.

Now, my biggest problem at this point is that law school looks like something I should consider doing. I encourage the Malcontent and Bliss to talk me out of this.

To those of you who may have purchased Powerball tickets

2005-10-20T11:23:00.000-05:00

In the future, just send the money you would have spent on tickets to me. You get the same result in the the end.

Happy Hour Recap

2005-10-20T08:40:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I left work at about 5:15 or 5:30 and jumped on 95 to head into the city for Happy Hour. Getting into the city much more quickly than I thought I would have, I opted to take the always crowded MLK to kill some time.

Just as I had suspected, it took me about 40 minutes to go 2 miles and I imagined there would be beaming group of smiling faces stuffed into a nook and/or cranny at the bar.

No dice. I was the first one there. So I headed up to the bar and ordered a Yeungling (YING-ling) and a tuna club. You can read more about the tuna club in my previous post.

About halfway through my meal I heard someone call my name (when did I tell these geeks my for real name? ;) ) and I looked down the bar to see textureslut, j-e-s-s-i-c-a, and Frank. I told them I'd join them once I'd finished my food, and when back to eating and reading the City Paper.

By the time I had finished, Linda, Linda's friend, and Linda's cousin were walking towards me as I was walking towards the group that had trickled in unbeknownst to me. The group being Fool, her friend (I'm TERRIBLE with names), and everyone else I mentioned before.

Linda, her entourage, and I joined the group at the table, and the topics of conversation ranged from gay Scotsmen, the royal wedding, Nicole Kidman's breasts (or lack thereof), and how many blog posts I could get out of an attempted fondling of Nicole Kidman as well as the subsequent jail time and trial. I was guessing at least 3 posts. At some point during all that, I think Jason came in. Well, I know he came in, but I think it was during all that.

Then Jennetic rolled in, as did Mike and his Wifey, followed in short order by Cara, Kmart, and Jwer. w00t!

Sitting with Mike and Wifey, we wondered aloud where Zenchick was, so I gave her a call. She berated my ignorance and poor memory by reminding me that she had told me 5 times that she wouldn't be at the happy hour. Then she accused me of being drunk. Yeah right, like I would be drunk after 9 beers. A little tipsy, maybe. Actually it was just 2 or 3 beers. Over the course of about 2 hours. Not very tipsy at all.

It was just about this point where the conversation from the previous post took place. I was caught off guard because Wifey asked where my significant other was, and I asked her if she meant ACWF or Kmart, who had risen from the table to get another Guinness. Wifey said she meant ACWF.

It was, unfortunately, at this point that I had to bail. ACWF had been up since 5am in order to make it to a 6:30am doctor's appointment, and at this point it was about 8pm. I knew I'd have to leave quickly in order to have any time to spend with her while she was conscious.

I'm sorry if I missed out on meeting anybody new, or if I missed anyone that I've met before, but, there's always November. Who's calling dibs?

It's up to you

2005-10-20T08:12:00.000-05:00

Dear internets, I need you to settle a situation.

Last night at the happy hour, two bloggers were wondering what to order, and I remarked that I had the tuna club, and it was so good I remarked, "It's like nibbling on Jesus' member between two slices of bread."

j-e-s-s-i-c-a (who will be called Jessica, from here on out) leaned over and asked me, "Didn't he die?"

(Warning: if you're offended by this post at this point, I suggest you stop reading the rest of it RIGHT NOW.)

Jessica was suggesting that I had just unwittingly talked about necrophilia. In the interest of fairness, I will try to describe both of our arguments to the utmost, and then I will let you, the internets, decide if Jessica gets the 2 dollars and the SUPER SPECIAL PRIZE.

My argument is that it's not necrophilia.

1) If you do believe in Jesus, then you believe he's not dead, and saying that I was going to nibble on his member is more a case of deificannibalism, or perhaps, a very literal version of taking the Eucharist (if you're Catholic). It's no more necrophilia than those who accept the Eucharist at Church. If you do believe in Jesus, and in transubstantiation, then at some point you have to realize you're going to be eating Jesus' wang, sack, or even butthole. Chances are many Catholics have participated in this type of thing, and they just call it Communion, so I argue on this point that it's not necrophilia.

2) If you believe in Jesus, then you may have faith that he died and was then risen from the dead which either makes him a) not dead and thus not capable of being part of an act of necrophilia (unless he's the pitcher, but I don't think Jesus rolls like that) or b) a zombie. And as I discussed yesterday, sex with zombies is different because they're undead.

3) If you don't believe in Jesus, like me, then making an allusion to eating a Holy Wang sandwich is no more realistic that saying the sandwich was like eating Hamlet's wang. Both are characters to me. You can't really have sex with someone who doesn't exist, whether or not within their literature they are alive or dead.

Jessica's argument, on the other hand, is brilliant in it's simplicity. Jessica argues that because Jesus died, he still retains his status as a dead guy, thus retains his status as a candidate for necrophilia, and the fact that I mentioned that it was a WANG sandwich gives the whole situation a sexual nature. So if Jesus = dead guy, then Jesus + wang sandwich = necrophilia.

Jessica can feel free to modify her argument, if she wants, but the voting will be closed at exactly whenever I get into the office tomorrow. So cast your votes in favor or in opposition of a Jesus' wang sandwich equaling necrophilia.

/weirdest post ever

60 minutes of happiness and contests galore

2005-10-19T12:51:00.000-05:00

Happy.

Happiness.

Hap-piness.

Hap-penis.

Penis.

PENIS.

PENIS!!

Sorry, I just had to get that out of my system*. So the happy hour tonight is at Dougherty's, and you should be there. So you can hang out with other nerds like yourself. I'm going to be there, and I'm going to be a walking contest.

Here's the contest. I don't want to talk about necrophilia. If you trick me into talking about necrophilia, I will give you 2 dollars, and a SUPER SPECIAL PRIZE.**

Here are the rules:

1) I can say that I don't personally find necrophilia appealing.
2) I can say that I'm not going to talk about necrophilia.
3) You can't threaten me with violence to make me talk about necrophilia. (Well, you could, but I wouldn't give you the SUPER SPECIAL PRIZE.)
4) Me talking about zombies having sex doesn't count as necrophilia because if both zombies are dead (as zombies tend to be) then it's something else entirely.
5) Jokes about Kmart having sex with the dead don't count because he actually does. (Stand strong bro. Legalize it!***)
6) Just about anything else is fair game but may be subject to review by a third party that was out of earshot.

Game on, bitches.

* Now that I got that out my system, watch me stab up the track as if my name was OJ Simpson. (Here's where things get crazy. If you can identify the artist who rapped this lyric, and the song, and the album, AND if no one tricks me into talking about necrophilia at the Happy Hour, I will mail you the SUPER SPECIAL PRIZE.)

** I'll have to give it to you later because I left it at home this morning.

*** "It" being necrophilia. I gotta support my homies.

I think I blew an O-ring

2005-10-19T08:54:00.000-05:00

Today started like any other day. I woke up at 7am to reset my alarm for 7:15am. I brushed my teeth while trying to keep the cat out of the sink, and I went to the bathroom while trying to keep the cat out of the toilet. I have no idea what his fascination is with things that come out of my body, but I suspect it has something to do with him being a stupid cat.

I jumped in the shower and nearly killed myself because we have sliding shower doors, and if you try to jump into a shower that has sliding shower doors you will smack your face on the upper door-track, crush your genitals by landing on the edge of the tub with one foot in and one foot out, and finally smash your head on the edge of the toilet where your cat is frantically trying to lift the lid and cover himself in water swimming with fecal colliform bacteria.

After my shower I got dressed, went downstairs, and ate 3 of my shit cookies. I figured that they were full of fiber from the oats, and protein from the peanut butter, so they'd be a perfectly bland tasting breakfast treat. They remind me more and more of Powerbars. After 74 glasses of milk to wash down the 3 cookies, I was on my way out the door.

I jumped in the old Tercel, checked my new mirrors, and was on my way. In a few minutes I was merging onto the highway, and the trailer I had suddenly accumulated a la Katamari Damacy was being pulled along splendidly. Wait. What? I don't live in a video game. What the hell is behind me?

I checked the rearview mirror again and realized that the thing that I had assumed was a trailer (because only a trailer would have a reasonable excuse to be that close to me) was an idiotic woman (I know, it's redundant) in her Camry, so close to the rear of my car that I could see clearly that she was smoking a Virginia Slim and her pink lipstick was coloring the filter.

I quickly realized that she was planning to slowly massage my tailpipe open and begin to slide her car inside like some sort of porno flick for Herbie and Christine, and I wanted no part of it, but I did want her to pay for her grievance.

I took my foot off the gas. My car, being a 96 Tercel P.O.S., began to slow down immediately. Within 10 seconds I had slowed by 15 miles per hour, and the Camry behind me clearly wasn't happy that my tight little Tercel tailpipe wasn't presenting as nicely as it had been before.

I continued to let my car slow until I was going about 35 miles per hour, my rear bumper as warm and appealing as an ice cream cooler in Siberia. It didn't matter though, because the Camry was a whore, and this raging hard-on of an automobile flew past me and it's true nature was revealed. I was just an appetizer for a chubby chaser. The Camry looked as if it was trying to get UNDER an 18 wheeler. There's not enough 10w-30 motor oil in the world for that relationship to work.

Dog-vomit poop-cookies

2005-10-18T08:53:00.000-05:00

Last night ACWF and I were settling into the couch after dinner when ACWF remarked that she wished she had some cookies. Being the GREATEST FIANCE IN THE GODDAMNDED WORLD, I took the opportunity to make some cookies. I found a cookbook, checked different cookie recipes against our available ingredients, and finally settled on some chocolate oatmeal cookies from the Betty Crocker cookbook.

I threw all the ingredients together and followed the instructions to the letter. When the cookies came out of the oven, they tasted bland and mealy. I thought I could melt some peanut butter and drizzle it atop the cookies because everything is better with peanut butter (including surgery).

I put some peanut butter in a bowl, put the bowl in the microwave, and let the stuff melt. After about 2 minutes the peanut butter was thinner, but not as thin as I would have liked, so I popped it back in again.

After another minute the peanut butter came out dry and pasty. It was like play-doh. I was so frustrated that my cookies turned out to be tasteless, mealy, and looking like ground up pinecones; and the "topping" came out looking like dog vomit that I just started flinging the peanut butter onto the plate of cookies with my spoon mumbling, "Stupid fuckin' cookies look like dirty diaper dog vomit pieces of crap taste like garbage stupid Betty Crocker crock of shit shitpile crap cookie pieces of crappy crap."

ACWF walked in just as I was flinging the peanut butter at the cookies and she started cracking up. Laughing! At me! I was making her cookies and she was laughing at me when they turned to shit. Now she'll never get cookies out of me again.

If anybody wants the recipe for shit cookies, just mix oatmeal, baking cocoa, sugar, butter, an egg, some milk, some salt, and some baking soda in a bowl. Heap it onto a baking pan, and cook it at 350 for 10. You'll have bland, tasteless shitlogs in no time.

Tackiest. Gift. Ever.

2005-10-17T14:30:00.000-05:00

I just bought ACWF a dozen.

(You may need to scroll down)

My favorite words

2005-10-17T14:21:00.000-05:00

This is a short list of my favorite words to say:

thwart
moist
drawer
throttle
down
twelfth
fifth
halved
percolate
paddle
droop
slop
fungible
lathe
tabernacle
scrum
porch
flimsy
festoon
flagellum
obfuscate
abattoir
clod
pickle
February
Tuesday
dearth
shamble
jostle
port
smelt
frond
combust
putrid
feet
carp
perch
slippery
smolder
socket
particle

That's all I can think of for now.

Happy Hour Wednesday

2005-10-17T09:46:00.000-05:00

This dude, and this lady are hosting the next Happy Hour. It's this Wednesday, and it's at Dougherty's.

If anyone tricks me into talking about necrophilia (besides me ONCE AGAIN saying that I'm not into it, and then saying that I'm not going to talk about it) I'll give that person 2 dollars. And a special secret prize.

The gauntlet has been thrown down, bitches.

That sound you just heard (FIXED)

2005-10-17T09:23:00.000-05:00

That was my heart exploding with merriment.

(Link is to a Quicktime file)

Honeymoon

2005-10-17T08:22:00.000-05:00

ACWF and I have decided that we're going to Scotland for our honeymoon. We're going to hump from Hadrian's Wall until we're shagging on the Shetland Islands. Yeah, we're that kind of classy.

Problem is, we know nothing about Scotland outside of the stereotypical tartan kilts, bagpipes, and haggis. We've got the internet, and a new book at our fingertips, but who can hook us up with some personal information?

Apparently, I'm a jerk

2005-10-14T20:19:00.000-05:00

ACWF says I'm a jerk for saying in the previous post that she went to the hospital without letting all of you know that she was fine.

I say ACWF is a jerk for making me go to the hospital to check on her when I could have been reading blogs or playing video games.

There, now we're even.

(It's a long, boring story that starts scary and then ends anti-climatically with ACWF and I watching a movie and drinking cream sodas. She actually made me pause the movie and come up here to type this.)

Matthew Sweet was a chunker

2005-10-14T13:28:00.000-05:00

I mean, at least in terms of svelte emo rockers and waifish emo whiners. And neo-rock hipsters. And hipster-rock emo-ers. And Emock hipstocks.

Here he is.

I mean, he's no slouch. In terms of the music industry, he's between old John Popper and new John Popper. John Popper lost a whole Matthew Sweet, is all I'm saying.

Anyway, while I drove back to work after bringing ACWF home from the hospital this afternoon I popped in the old 100% Fun CD by Matthew Sweet. I was floored. Nobody writes a pop-song like that anymore. It's all fluff now. I think Matthew Sweet really had his heart in writing a good pop-song, and you know what? I was really enjoying listening to the CD. I know it's going to kill my street cred, but I don't care. That dude put together some catchy tunes.

I know you all have the CD. It's right next to your copy of Monster by REM. Listen to it next time instead of using it as a drink coaster. At least it's better than Geggy Tah.

This is where I sound like a Republican

2005-10-14T08:17:00.000-05:00

On my way to work I drive under an overpass that is topped by two chain-link fences. At some point, someone had the genius idea that these fences could be used to display signs by placing cups in the gaps in the fence, like it's some sort of huge Lite Brite.

Unfortunately, the people who live around me are ragingly stupid, so the things that they put up say things like, "Rick N. : I do !" or "I luv U Chris".

Let me dissect these for you. At first glance, the Rick N. one makes sense. Rick is apparently getting married to some bimbo who wanted to let him know that she has accepted his proposal of being his penis-holster for the next 45 years. But when you really think about it, "I do" is something you say at the wedding, not at the engagement. And if it is their wedding, why the hell would you take the time to spell out "I do" in giant letters before the ceremony. It's stupid. What's stupider is that it was left up there for a month. Thanks darling, but could you clean your shit up now?

The second one is twice as ridiculous as the first. If you're going to take the time to put up a giant sign made of cups, wouldn't you want to represent yourself as slightly smarter than an 8-year-old in a chat room? Do you really want people to know that you're so dumb that you can't even spell things correctly when you know hundreds of thousands of people are going to see the steaming pile of shit you left on your NATIVE language?

The worst part is, the "luv" one didn't stay in the fence like the other one did, so now the highway is littered with red cups. How about the waste of skin who put the sign up coming out to clean up their idiocy? How about some personal responsibility?

See, the "personal responsibility" thing would make me a Republican, if it weren't with regard to the environment. (Republicans don't care about the environment. Unless they're eating bald eagle eggs and wiping their asses with baby harp seals.) This way, I get to keep my "so-far-to-the-left-that-I-make-socialists-look-like-Reagan" status.

This just in: Powerpoint used at Abu Gharib

2005-10-13T14:00:00.000-05:00

I just got to sit through an AWESOME meeting. Why was it so AWESOME? Because the people who decided to organize it started with a teleconference, which is AWESOME enough in and of itself, but then they had the AWESOME idea to make it into a webinar.

What the hell is a webinar? Apparently it's the bastard child of a teleconference and a powerpoint presentation, resembling, to a very close degree, the office equivalent of the eventual Cruise/Holmes spawn. A worthless creation from two worthless sources.

So, we listened to some AWESOME speaker ramble for an hour and basically read her AWESOME powerpoint slides. I should have gotten up 5 minutes into the meeting, thrown the printed-out version of the powerpoint presentation that they gave us beforehand into the trash and said, "I just finished reading it. I'm going to do something productive."

I swear, the AWESOMENESS of teleconferences and powerpoints, and the mental succubi that they create when brought together like an evil, bespectacled, tie-wearing, Lumbergesque Voltron will bring the US workforce to it's knees when Japan shows up and rubs 2 or more brain cells together.

I CAN'T TAKE ANYMORE STUPID PEOPLE TODAY.

Fuck Verizon

2005-10-13T08:54:00.000-05:00

Fucking lying motherfuckers fucked us. God fucking dammit I am so pissed off right now.

About 2 months ago ACWF and I had the opportunity to get new phones, and when we did, we were told that our phone plan was obsolete and that we should upgrade to the new plan. The new plan, according to fucking whore-bitch lying sack of shit behind the counter, was "exactly like the old plan, except you get more minutes."

In a fucking pigs eye.

We are now paying 15 to 20 dollars a month MORE for cell service from the fuckasses at Verizon for an extra 300 minutes per month. I could use a fucking payphone and it would be cheaper.

Jiminy fucking Cricket on a mother-fucking crutch am I going to skull-fuck every customer service representative I speak to until this is fixed.

I'm going to be a millionaire!

2005-10-12T12:01:00.000-05:00

Just got done talking with a financial advisor type guy. Friendly chit-chat that turned into me posing some questions and him giving me free advice.

I have a Roth IRA that was opened when I was 16 that now has some dollars in it. My mom matched anything I put in there for 3 years, and after that I was on my own. I've not been able to afford to put anything into it in the last 3 years or so.

I also have a 401K through work, and I have no idea how much is in there.

I have no idea on what the rate of return is for either of them.

But, according to this guy, if I I'm putting money into the Roth IRA or the 401k at the amount of 285 bucks per month until I'm 65, with an assumed rate of return of about 8%, I'll have a million bucks when I'm 65.

Freakin' awesome. It might even be MORE than a million if my rate of return is higher (probably not) or I might have to invest more if my rate is lower (probably). Either way, I think I can swing being able to invest close to the 285 per month.

We'll see. Sorry for the nerdy investment post, but I was just excited by the fact that I could be more than a hundredaire at some point in my life.

TMI

2005-10-12T09:50:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, after I've finished *ahem* sitting down in the bathroom, I get a renewed sense of energy, and feel like I can accomplish anything, as if I were Superman and had just worked out a processed, Kryptonite-burrito.

Free tickets to the new Zorro movie

2005-10-12T07:42:00.000-05:00

If you're in the Baltimore area, get them here. The show is tonight, and I can't make it, but the MD Film Fest just sent me the email, so I'm passing it along.

I don't care about your political views

2005-10-11T09:53:00.000-05:00

This cracks me up.

When Meetings Attack

2005-10-11T08:49:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I was absurdly busy traveling from meetings to meetings, considering, in the end, how much input I offered (or, realistically, how little input I offered) at each meeting. In no small way I needed to be at each meeting, but when it was all said an done, I uttered merely a few sentences.

When I was leaving my last meeting, I had a choice to make. I could take the way back to the highway that Google Maps had led me, which I had noticed was rife with construction and heavy with back-up, or I could take another route of my own choosing.

The red route in the link below shows what Google Maps would have had me do. The blue route shows what I did. The green blob shows where I started. In the end, it took me about an hour and a half to get home. It should have taken 20-30 minutes.

Lost. (Caution: hugemongous file of how dumb I am)

Normally, I have a very good sense of direction. I can almost always tell you where the poles and horizons lay. Yesterday, that feature was not equipped in the ACW v. 25.1 Sexmachine. I kept trying to get back to the freeway, but when you have north and south reversed in your head, you keep getting surprised by what you're running into. Northern Parkway shocked me, but it was a good landmark. I took it to Route 1, and took Route 1 in the direction that I thought was north. It turned out to be south once I saw the city in the distance and once I passed the VW dealership where mokiejovis bought his precious, pomo-hipster, bourgeoisie, TDI Golf. From there I knew I needed to get on Moravia Rd, but rush hour was starting, and so was the traffic dickheadery in the city. So I was forced past Moravia Rd, forced to pull a U-turn in the middle of Route 1, and then I finally made it back to 895 from Moravia Rd.

My internal compass needs some fine tuning.

The Best Part of Waking Up is Job Security in Your Cup

2005-10-11T06:23:00.000-05:00

Post by: mokiejovis

I was a little nervous over the weekend. See, in case you're not aware, I'm an IT guy. The company I work for has a corporate network with a corporate IT plan, and then all of the sattelite offices typically supply their own IT guy.

What left me nervous over the weekend is that there is a plan by my corporate overlords that will assimilate me into their corporate overlord collective. Seems like a good thing, right? Well, then I accidentally get sent this message*:

In order to achieve the consolidation of IT services we find it necessary to state that time is drawing extremely close for the migration of your services. To date we have accomplished some of the tasks necessary toward completing the migration.

Baltimore, MD – We have received your transition workbook and are prepared to complete the necessary arrangements for the transition.

Denver, CO – Due to current efforts to reduce the cost of IT delivery the transfer of the employee that is currently employed at that location cannot be guaranteed for more than 30% of the position. Therefore, the locations adjacent to yours in Colorado will be providing support for your location.

Bowie, MD - A meeting with your management laid some very important ground work for the completion of the migration and we need merely to implement the correct charging mechanisms to complete the transfer.

So, I'm reading over that email. My eye has focused on the poor bastard in Denver. To put my thoughts into a single word: FUCK!

The office I work in isn't so large, either, I'm thinking to myself. I work very close to a large corporate office - what if they just say, "We can't afford to support that guy, so he's fucked. We have plenty of OTHER nearby folks that can easily take on his job. No worries. So sorry you're fucked."

Well, as it turns out, corporate has no desire to do that. I will be fully absorbed by the corporate borg** and don't have to worry about being fired anytime soon. I even get to stay at my office and don't have to move anywhere! This is nice, you know, not having to worry about being bankrupt.

* Names and places have been changed to protect the innocent. Namely me. Well, okay, arguably I'm as innocent as all that. Whatever. Shut up.
** That's right, this blog just had a Star Trek reference. Eat it, stupid older brother!

Dayum

2005-10-10T08:27:00.000-05:00

I hate a busy Monday. It's 9:18 as I sit down to type this (I always post the time it is when I'm finished), and I've already met with 2 clients because our office is approaching a major deadline, and I'm going to be out of the office after noon today to attend some rather important meetings.

I like a Monday that starts light. A Monday that doesn't bother you with a bunch of work up front so you can settle yourself in for the week. A Monday that dumps all the extra work on Wednesday so that Wednesday looks like a jerk and Monday improves Monday's own reputation as a cool dude. A Monday that brings you a cup of coffee (or a smoke, or an offer to get lit behind the dumpster (whatever frosts your cookie)). That's the type of Monday that I like.

Is that the Monday I get? Noooo. I get a Monday that broke up with Saturday on Friday when Monday found out that Saturday was sleeping in with Tuesday. So Monday rolls in here today all pissed off and bitchin' and not giving a shit about reputation and just dumps a pile of work on my lap while Monday goes off to find a hobo to kill just so Monday can get an erection.

Maybe I'll have to move Thursday to Monday's spot because Thursday is always like, "Fuck, dude. It's Friday tomorrow. I ain't doin' shit."

So...

2005-10-07T14:58:00.000-05:00

which one of you fuckers tried to hack into my Blogger account?

Feelin' groovy

2005-10-07T08:21:00.000-05:00

Nothing like a couple of buttons of mescaline and a dime bag of some prime herb to get you feeling good again.

Just kidding.

It was actually a quarter ounce of chronic.

Actually, I'm not feeling 100% again about blogging, but I've got something on the horizon, now, to look forward to, so that makes things a little bit better. In the meantime, I'll try to get back up to speed posting about my kitten attacking my balls, necrophilia, idiotic things people say and do, and necrophilia.

I'm also going to start commenting on your blogs again, so consider your reprieve from having to read the idiotic crap that I write wherever I go over. (Bad sentence)

So, what have I got for you this morning?

The DJ Interview:

We went to interview a DJ last night, and though he was a really nice guy, he kept reading us all wrong. He showed us a list of wedding songs that looked like this:

# YMCA - Village People
# We Are Family - Sister Sledge
# Celebration - Kool & The Gang
# Be With You - Enrique Iglesias
# Rhythm Divine - Enrique Iglesias
# Try Again - Aaliyah
# Everything You Want - Verticle Horizon
# It's Gonna Be Me - N' Sync
# There You Go - Pink
# Absolutely (Story of a Girl) - Nine Days
# Oops I Did it Again - Britney Spears
# Back Here - BBMak
# Maria Maria - Santana Featuring The Product G&B
# Smooth - Santana Featuring Rob Thomas
# Jumpin, Jumpin - DestinyÂs Child
# Say my Name - DestinyÂs Child
# Savage Garden Savage Garden
# I Wanna Be With You - Mandy Moore
# You Sang to Me - Marc Anthony
# Better Off Alone - Alice Deejay
# Dance Tonight - Lucy Pearl
# Where I Wanna Be - Donnell Jones
# I Wish - Carl Thomas
# Lets Get Married - Jagged Edge
# Desert Rose - Sting

I wanted to stab my eyes out, but people are very particular to the music they listen to, so I politely told him that wasn't what we were looking for. He showed us a list like this:

1. Let's Get It Started- Black Eyed Peas
2. The Way You Move- OutKast with Sleepy Brown
3. At Last- Etta James
4. Hey Yeah- OutKast
5. Cha Cha Slide- Mr. C
6. In Da Club- Fifty Cent
7. Crazy In Love- Beyonce
8. Get The Party Started- Pink
9. Milkshake- Kelis
10. YMCA- Village People
11. Yeah- Usher with Lil' Jon and Ludacris
12. Get It Poppin'- Fat Joe & Nelly
13. Twist- Chubby Checker
14. Old Time Rock and Roll- Bob Seger
15. Hot Hot Hot- Buster Poindexter
16. Conga- Miami Sound Machine
17. Electric Slide- Marcia Griffiths
18. Booty Call- Blackstreet
19. What a Wonderful World- Louis Armstrong
20. Come on Eileen- Dexy's Midnight Runners
21. The Way You Look Tonight- Frank Sinatra
22. Brown Eyed Girl- Van Morrison
23. Pon De Replay- Rhianna
24. Night Fever- Bee Gees
25. Hot Stuff- Donna Summer
26. We Are Family- Sister Sledge
27. Twist and Shout- Beatles
28. Unchained Melody- Righteous Brothers
29. Amazed- Lonestar
30. Girls Just Want To Have Fun- Cyndi Lauper
31. Don't Know Why- Nora Jones
32. Hot In Here- Nelly
33. Step In the Name of Love- R. Kelly
34. Baby got Back- Sir Mix-A-Lot
35. Margaritaville- Jimmy Buffet
36. Unforgettable- Nat and Natalie Cole
37. You Shook Me All Night Long- AC/DC
38. Let's Get It On- Marvin Gaye
39. When A Man Loves A Woman- Percy Sledge
40. Locomotion- Kylie Minogue

This list, with a very few notable exceptions, comprises songs that I would be happy to hear never again. I'd prefer to have my delicate bits dipped in honey, deep fried, and then lowered into a cage of bears that haven't eaten for weeks. That would be better than having to hear most of these songs. Fucking YMCA? Are people not tired of that shit yet?

Finally, I suggested to him that we'd like to hear some Jazz* during cocktail hour and dinner, and then have most of the dancing be devoted to Motown and Funk stuff like Marvin Gaye, Al Green, Barry White, Parliament, etc. He was pretty excited about that, and even told me that we were "on the same page now. I LOVE that stuff!" So that was pretty good I guess.

He's priced pretty competetively, and comes very highly recommended, so we're only going to interview one more DJ, and see how that DJ stacks up.

Oh, also, the guy had a porno mustache, and a slight lisp, and I couldn't stop picturing him as a middle-aged, cock-obsessed, leather freak.

*Davis, Coltrane, Brubeck, etc., not Bolton, G, or Tesh.

Oh, I'll make a post alright

2005-10-06T10:47:00.000-05:00

Post by: mokiejovis

But my post won't be about my goddamn oldest brother running over my face with his bike (which he did do), but about my older brother and the sheer punishment I was put through as a child.

Once, when we were very young, we happened to be playing on the floor with change. I don't remember the circumstances, but we had quite a pile of money. I was about old enough to enjoy stacking the coins and making noise with them. ACW, though, a bit older, got a devious idea into his head.

"Open your mouth and close your eyes," said ACW, "and you'll receive a big surprise!"

A big surprise, thought my childish mind, and all I have to do is not look and open my mouth? I can't lose!

So, I stared at the ceiling, closed my eyes, and opened my mouth.

And ACW dropped a penny in it.

My motherfucking brother dropped a penny in my mouth when I was approximately 4 years old to amuse himself!

Because of the angle to which my head was inclined, the penny dropped right to the back of my throat. There was no chance of coughing that sucker up. I struggled with it for a moment, and then -plop- it was in my belly.

Let's disregard for the moment the sheer filthiness of money in and of itself, and the numerous toxins that are likely contained inside of each and every penny.

We'll instead focus on one key fact: it never came out in my poop. Christ only knows where in the hell that penny went - all I know is it didn't come out of me. So when I develop ass-cancer in my fifties, we'll all know who to thank.

ACW. Dickface.

Perhaps next time I go into detail about the severe beatings I endured from age seven through sixteen. Or maybe I'll write about that one time that his douchebag friends on the sports team cornered me, held me down, and gave me such a ferocious wedgie that my underpants ripped - while he watched. Yeah, great brothering going on over there. Really batting a thousand.

My hypothesis

2005-10-06T07:44:00.000-05:00

I think my current"funk" is based on the idea that I'm tethered by my anonymity.

1) I need to remain anonymous.
2) But I'd like to be able to share more about who I actually am. (Hence the confessions)
3) So I'm stuck, and I've just got to come to terms with only being able to reveal little bits about myself.

This too, like all things, shall pass.

In the meantime, maybe mokiejovis can tell the story about our older brother riding over mokie's face with a bike. Or the story about how he exposed himself to ACWF.

I'll be out of the office all day, so it'll be up to him to keep you entertained.

Double-u tee eff?

2005-10-05T09:07:00.000-05:00

Ell oh ell.

Not quite back to regular posting yet. For some reason I have a strange desire to confess minor misdeeds and foibles to the internet. Not sure why, but let's see where this crazy gravy train takes us.

When I was a little kid, I never used to wash my legs or my feet. My routine then was pretty much the same as it is now, but now, of course, I wash my southern extremities. I start with my hair, then my face, shoulders, chest, and arms. Then I do my back, my Exit Only area and my yes-please parts. Now I do one leg and one foot at a time, but back then I ignored them completely. I figured the soap from all the other washing I had done would run down onto my legs and clean them off. And I figured that because I was standing in soapy water, my feet would also be clean by default.

I guess I probably started washing myself when I was about 6 or 7 or something. Maybe younger. The embarrassing part is that I didn't stop this lazy habit until I was about 14 or so.

Apologies, and Happiness

2005-10-04T19:47:00.000-05:00

Joe, Kmart, D, and Zenchick- Sorry I missed your IM/Talk/Messenger. I was playing Civilization II, and didn't see the messages until I closed the game. My bad.

Also, L'Shana Tova, and a happy 5766 to those who know what I'm talking about.

I'm at home with that*

2005-10-04T08:20:00.000-05:00

A confession:

I'm a very strong advocate for freedom of speech and expression. I believe that you should be able to say whatever you want, whenever you want, as long as it doesn't cause a situation to become harmful (like yelling "Fire" in a crowded theater). I think it's ridiculous that criticism of the current administration has become synonymous with treason, and find it absolutely befuddling how many extreme-right to right-leaning organizations want to abolish the ACLU. The ACLU has defended atheists and Christians, communists and Klansmen, and even came to the defense of Sean Hannity. The ACLU is here to protect our first amendment rights. I love the ACLU.

But, every time I see a blog that is religiously, or politically different in their opinions than I am in my own, I have a strong desire to click the "FLAG" button.

I never do, but I really, really, REALLY want to. I guess that makes me a hypocrite.

*an expression meaning- "I recognize my foibles and have forgiven myself for them"

Dear Blogger,

2005-10-03T15:04:00.000-05:00

I have a confession to make. When you went to crap to day, I didn't cry. I didn't stamp my feet or throw a hissy-fit. I made a quick joke for later in the form of a slightly altered screencap, and then I went about my day.

Not quite ready to jump into work, I updated my blogroll. (You should all be on there now. Let me know if I missed you.) That done, I did my work. Then I did some stuff for the wedding. Then I did even more work. And I didn't miss blogger the whole time.

I might take a vacation from blogger this week. I'm not sure, but it doesn't feel as compulsive as it used to. Quantity vs. quality and all that.

Oh well.

Later,

ACW

Blogger

2005-10-03T12:46:00.000-05:00

Once again proving that when you use a free service, you get what you pay for.

Ren Fest UPDATED

2005-09-30T14:20:00.000-05:00

Um, uh, lemme know if you wanna go to the Ren Fest with us tomorrow.

UPDATE: Not that Ren Fest up there in that link, but this Ren Fest here in this link.

*grumble* can't believe I left off one stupid "n" and didn't even check the stupid link *grumble* at least it wasn't porn *grumble*

What in the... ?

2005-09-30T12:22:00.000-05:00

Last night the happy hour was a blast. I think we probably raised a decent amount of money (I haven't checked anyone's blogs yet, so I don't know if there's a total) and I know I had an awesome time. (insert obligatory post-happy hour post here with obligatory link-orgy) Ha ha! It was so funny!

Anyway, last night people were bugging mokie to create a blog because of his oft-times HI-larious comments. He deferred, and said he may post on my site from time to time if I needed him to. This morning I needed him to.

I fell asleep at about 1:30am while watching Mythbusters, but only after consuming a 12oz jar of HOT! salsa and about half a bag of potato chips. ACWF woke me up and I went to bed. I less woke up than became aware of my ability to maintain consciousness when ACWF was getting ready for work at around 7am. I was planning on sleeping in, heading to the DMV, and then going to work.

I had realized my ID was gone the day before, and was planning on going to the DMV during lunch today. But my boss called last night while I was heading to the happy hour and told me I needed to meet with an important client during lunch. I thought I was going to have to wake up early on Saturday to get my ID until I hatched upon a plan to go to the DMV before going to work.

I called my boss in the morning, and she said it was fine if I went to the DMV before I came into work. She just reminded me that she needed 2 proposals by noon.

Shit. I had forgotten about the proposals, so I figured I'd write them at the DMV, type them when I got into the office, and the head straight out to my meeting. But this would leave no time to post for you wonderful souls! What to do? I called mokie (as he was taking a crap as he so delightfully informed me) and asked him to post. After a few minutes navigating the terrifically difficult world of checking his email to affirm his invitation to post on my blog, he was good to go. I dashed out the door to the DMV.

I opened my portfolio at the DMV and fired off the proposals in no time, so I decided to pay some bills I had in my bag as well. I was digging around for a stamp when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. It was a tiny little face staring at me. A familiar face. My face. MY ID!

I was nestled away in the business card pocket of my portfolio from earlier in the week when I went to meet with that crazy company. I had forgotten that I had put it there.

ID now back in my wallet I darted from the hellhole that is the DMV and sped into work. I finished typing the proposals with enough time for my boss to go over them with me and congratulate me on working so hard on them. I had to leave my office for the lunch meeting before she had time to issue any more accolades.

The lunch meeting was a disaster in itself, but not a funny one, so I'll spare you.

Now I'm T-minus 10 minutes from my next meeting, and then hopefully I'll be home free for the day. Fingers crossed, bitches.

Well, this should be interesting.

2005-09-30T08:33:00.000-05:00

Give me a little breathing room - even though you may know me as regular in the comments, this would be my virgin blog post. Extra virgin, cold pressed blogger post. Mmm, good. I guess that means I no longer have a blymen. Did I already cross the line? Dammit.

Anyhow, the give-money-to-poor-people festival was yesterday at Slainte. Since I'm still not sure how to pronounce the name of the place - don't get me wrong, lots of people have tried to explain it - I will heretofore be referring to it as Ireland. Done.

Loads of fun p e o p l e were going to be there, so the ACW gave me a ring and suggested that I and my imported wife come along for the ride. We started off by saying hello to everybody we knew (and mostly tried to ignore the weirdos we didn't) and made our way straight to the bar. Three-proofs-of-purchase was hungry so we got her an absolutely stunning burger. I had some of the Guinness cheese and onion soup, which was equally fantastic. If you haven't gotten food at Ireland before, make it a point to. After eating, we settled in to some drinks - rum and cokes for the wife and mostly beer for me.

After a while, though, $2.95-Plus-Shipping-And-Handling (ew!) decided to dive in to some Sambuca, one of her favorite drinks. As I've commented before, Sambuca is the angry-making liquor. It's 80-proof and it's like drinking liquid black licorice. It's delicious, if you're into that sort of thing.

Anyway, because it's so easy to drink, it's also easy to drink too much of it. Suffice it to say that an evening involving lots of Sambuca typically ends with Wifey getting really pissed off for reasons unexplained, worshipping the god on the porcelain throne, and passing the fuck out. Fortunately for me, she's learned her limits when it comes to drinks like that. Unfortunately for you, because you can't exactly expect her to jump on the bar, tell all those "other motherfuckers they'd better stop looking at me like that," trip, land on the bar, and start snoring. Again.

Oh, and the correct plural for penis is penes.

Tossing my hat into the ring

2005-09-29T13:10:00.000-05:00

YOU SHOULD GO TO SLAINTE TONIGHT.

Alcohol for alleviation.
Booze for a benefit.
Consuming because we care.
Drinking for dollars.
Embalming our livers for empathy.
Fuck Katrina.
Gin for a good deed.
Hoist a pint for the homeless.
Imbibe for the infants.
Jack and coke for the broke.
Kill brain cells for the kids.
Libations for the less fortunate.
Maintain a healthy buzz for the misplaced.
NEW!
ORLEANS!
Pickling your liver to drain the river.
Quaff a lager with a blogger.
Rita is a fucking bitch.
Shots for safety.
Tequila for the poor.
Uzo for a Cajun.
VSOP for the Gulf.
Wallets emptied for the water-logged.
X this is
Y too damn
Z hard

A little help over here

2005-09-29T12:53:00.000-05:00

Can anyone recommend a good photographer for my wedding? The internets have been helpful, but I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed with all the options. A personal recommendation from someone, at this point, would be fabulous.

My night

2005-09-29T09:25:00.000-05:00

Last night after I finished a few chapters of "Dawn Treader", and Sherlock has nestled himself a few inches away from ACWF's delicate bits (instead of mine, for once) I quickly fell asleep.

BEEEP BEEEP BEEEP

I woke up and sat straight up in bed, trying to figure out what time it was and why the fire alarm was going off. I looked around frantically and could smell no smoke, nor see any fire. I was about to jump out of bed when I realized the sound was no longer, um, sounding. I figured it was just a dream because neither Sherlock nor ACWF were awake. So I laid my head back down to sleep.

BEEEP BEEEP BEEEP

What in the hell? I was awake enough at this point to see that it was only 12:30, and that I had only been asleep for about an hour. I tried to figure out where the noise had come from, looking first at the fish tank to see if the fish had been running some sort of escape procedure, and then looking at the now yawning Sherlock, who looked utterly pissed to be awake. I didn't feel bad for him though, because he wakes me up by digging his claws into my beanbag.

BEEEP BEEEP BEEEP

Okay. So the beeping was coming from my phone. Had I missed a call when I had fallen asleep? Who was calling this late? Is this about my grandmother? I wonder if my grandmother is okay?

I picked up the phone, and lifted it open.

YOU HAVE 1 NEW MESSAGE FROM: Jim

Jim? What the hell is Jim calling about this late? Oh yeah, he's in Arizona and it's only 8 there and he thinks it's 8 everywhere.

VIEW MESSAGE FROM JIM?

I push "OK" hoping that everything is as the button says.

Jim had sent me 2 words. Two words that were immediately hilarious, depressing, and at the same time, old news.

DELAY INDICTED

I appreciate that he took the time to spell out the word "Indicted". It's hilarious because he's the only person in the world who would text about something like this. It's depressing that I expect little more than most of our politicians eventually being indicted.

Seriously

2005-09-28T13:36:00.000-05:00

Is it your first day using the internet?

All your base are belong to us

While I'm at it, I should also bring these to your attention:

The Star Wars Kid

More Cowbell

Numa numa

Dancing Baby

Hampsterdance

Homestar Runner

God kills a kitten

Real Ultimate Power

Please. If you're going to use the internet, do it responsibly.

(What did I miss?)

Have I crossed the line yet?

2005-09-28T11:08:00.000-05:00

Because I just think it's funny.

click to enlarge

My grandmother

2005-09-28T09:29:00.000-05:00

The other day my grandmother went to the hospital to have a pacemaker put in. Apparently she had some kind of heart trouble and needed the pacemaker. I'm still not exactly sure what was wrong, or what happened (my family doesn't communicate well), but she's doing okay now.

My grandmother has been having memory problems that resemble Alzheimer's Disease for the past few years, and while it was once quite fun to sit and talk to her, it's now become awkward.

When I talk to her now, I feel like I should treat her as a normal person. When I do that, she seems like a normal person for a few minutes, and then she gets confused again. It makes me feel like I'm being naive.

When I acknowledge her disease, it makes me feel like I'm ignoring the person, my grandmother, that made my childhood alternately wonderful and frustrating.

I don't know what to do. When I talk to her like my old grandmother I get disappointed, and when I talk to her like someone who has Alzheimer's, I feel like I'm betraying her.

When we were growing up, my grandmother loved to make my brothers and me do Math problems. The newspaper would publish a Math problem for its readers, and she would give it to us to do. We had only a vague knowledge of what multiplication might mean as we struggled with addition and subtraction. We had no idea what division was. We knew fractions only as how to divide food three ways.

She'd bear down on us to, "Just think about it! Think! Look at the numbers and think about it!" until we were reduced to tears. It's not like we wanted to watch television instead, we just wanted to go outside and play.

The problems were unrelenting. She was always giving us problems that were years ahead of our ability. She was giving us Algebra problems when we only knew basic arithmatic, Trigonometry problems when we only knew basic Algebra, Calculus problems when I was failing Trigonometry. For some reason she just thought it was a matter of "getting it" and not a matter of her square peg of Math being pounded into my round hole of Writing.

Once I was in college, and had finished the one and only math class I would take there, I knew I was free of her restraints. She couldn't impose Math on me anymore. I'd make her give me the Jumble instead. The jumble always frustrated her. She could never get the final answer to the riddle if she even managed to make it though all the other words she had to unscramble first. I didn't even gloat the first time I finished the jumble without even writing anything down before she had solved the first word. I think she just acknowledged that the jumble was my realm, and that math was her realam, and those paths would never cross again.

My grandmother wasn't all discipline and education though. She also loved to feed us. We'd show up at her house and wander in the front door and head straight back to the kitchen. She'd toast us up some bread to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but she'd butter the bread first. That's not how my mom made them, but they were delicious even if the idea of butter on my PB&J repulsed my delicate 7 year old stomach.

She'd serve the sandwich to us with a glass of skim milk, always cold, always skim, and we'd sit with our backs to the wall on the long bench that always trapped a child in the middle, munching on our sandwiches and listening to my parents talk to my grandparents. As we grew older, the sandwich selection grew as well. Suddenly we were offered turkey on rye with mustard; ham on white with mayo, lettuce, and tomato; or, as always, the peanut butter and jelly on buttered toast.

One Thanksgiving we were all sitting around talking, the whole family was, in a rare occurence, gathered in two adjoining rooms. Aunts, and uncles, and cousins, and parents, and grandparents, and children, and grandchildren were all happily settling into a post-feast food-coma as my brothers and I were settling into some after dinner drinks. My cousin Ryan, who was about 3 at the time, was being a spaz, and his parents couldn't get him to settle down. At one point he ran from one room to the other and crashed into my legs, leaving a wake of adults in his path who had tried to tell him to stop, but had instead clamped up and pulled their empty hands in toward their chests once he made it past them. The room was nearly silent as I looked down at him and said, "You'd better behave or Grandmom is going to make you do math problems."

The room exploded. Apparently we weren't the only three who had to endure my grandmother's request to solve math problems, we were just the most recent to be able to look back on the situation fondly and laugh.

Alas

2005-09-27T12:58:00.000-05:00

My fame was not meant to be. I have yet to get a SINGLE hit from the article in the Sun. Why?

Because my blog address was entered like this:

anonymous coworker.blogspot.com

When you enter that into your address bar, you get a "URL is not valid" message.

Enter it into a Google search.

Yahoo? There's luck, but who uses Yahoo!?

MSN
Hmm? What the hell is wrong with Google?

Regardless, no hits. Boo to that! I guess I'll just go back to arguing for YOUR right to forcibly fuck a corpse.

UPDATE: Hey, all. Don't hate on Troy, the author of the article, about the space in my blog address. He's put in a request for it to be fixed, and he has a blog himself! Check it out!

My busy day

2005-09-27T09:11:00.000-05:00

Yesterday my company paid a visit to another company in the area that we've been collaborating with for some time. It was sort of an informal get together.

They're a technology and research company, and they're working on some pretty cool biometric stuff right now. For example, they have an iris reader that has an algorithm that measures the way an eyeball, retina, and iris typically move, so you couldn't just hold up a picture of an iris, or tear out someone's eyeball and use that.

They also have a fingerprint scanner and geometric hand scanner that measures blood pressure and pulse rate in order to ensure you're not using someone else's stolen appendage.

They even have a program that scans your face while you're at the computer so if you get up from your computer it immediately locks the computer until the camera can see your face again. They even spent 10 grand to get a mock-up made of one of the designer's faces in silicone. This thing was freaky. It looked just like him. However, when he held it up in front of the scanner, it wouldn't recognize him. Though he admitted that even if a mask, or full 3D model didn't work, a decapitated head probably would.

They were really obsessed with people not being able to chop you up and use your body parts to do stuff all over town.

The only thing that was scary was the Big Brother nature of all of it. They could sell their technology to a bank, and a bank could collect an image of your iris for their new "secure" ATM, and they'd do it in exchange for a football phone. So now you've got your football phone, but you've voluntarily participated in the creation of a registry system that could be purchased by, um, let's say, the government. And the government can use it however they want to since you voluntarily participated. They could cross reference your iris scan with the smack you talked on your blog in November 2004 and list you as a potential flight threat. All because you wanted that football phone you selfish bastard.

At the end of the day we had chicken wings and cake, though. So it's all good.

Something must be wrong

2005-09-26T16:22:00.000-05:00

The Baltimore Sun ran an article on blogs today, and by some stroke of something or other, they listed my blog.

It figures it's on the same day I'm out of the office on, as they call it 'round here, "bidness". D'oh!

First, I'd like to invite all Baltimoreans to the next Blogger Happy Hour & Katrina/Rita Fundraiser.

The Baltimore Blogger Community is coming together for a Happy Hour whose proceeds will benefit the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Where: Sláinte, 1700 Thames St, Baltimore, MD 21231

When: Thursday, 29 September 2005 5:00-9:00 PM

Why: Portion of the Proceeds to Benefit the American Red Cross

Many thanks to our intrepid organizers, Jennetic and Zenchick. Bring your friends, family, fellow bloggers and non-bloggers alike. Let's get together and raise many cups of cheer, simultaneously assaulting our livers and supporting a charitable cause!*

I was going to post this morning before I left for work, but it would have been at 6 am, and I don't think the internet gets up that early, 'cause you know the internet is up at 4 am partying in Switzerland and doing lines of blow off of a stripper's back and when you're like, "Hey internet, stop doing lines of blow off that stripper. People are going to need you in the morning," the internet is always like, "Quit harshing my mellow, facist."

(Now that I've mentioned strippers and cocaine, I should probably warn the 2 new readers that this blog can sometimes be explicit. I curse (hell damn fart) and talk about necrophilia, and generally embarass the rest of the blogging community. Also, new readers should probably know that the word "blog" is a shortened version of "weblog", but in my blog's case it's short for "bloated hog".)

At first I was gonna post something about my day, but now I'm wondering if my grandmother is reading this and wondering how fast she can strike me from her will. New stuff tomorrow, I guess.

*Stolen, once again, from Jason J. Thomas, where, incidentally, my little brother first saw mention of my impending 15-seconds of fame and called my cell phone.

Do you ever have the urge to...

2005-09-23T10:42:00.000-05:00

Do you ever have the urge to write something really funny, but you can't think of anything to say, so you just fill your posts with weird analogies to Star Wars, create metaphors about bowell movements, similies about necrophilia, and use words like "ballsack"?

Do you ever have the urge to floor the accelerator and weave in and out through traffic as your car gets faster and faster just to see how fast you could possibly go, and for how long before you got caught?

Do you ever have the urge to throw something as hard as you can just to see how it will break, and the damage that it will do, even though it would be a huge hassle to replace that item?

Do you ever have the urge to strike up a conversation with a stranger and find out what's going on with them?

Do you ever have the urge to drive to the airport and buy a plane ticket to wherever and then max out your credit cards?

Do you ever have the urge to buy people expensive presents when it's not their birthday, or a holiday?

Do you ever have the urge to grab your significant other and just start making out with them in public because they're damn hot and you don't care what anyone thinks?

Do you ever have the urge to dig a hole just to see how deep you can get?

Because I do. Does that make me crazy?

Seriously, I'm just kidding

2005-09-23T08:27:00.000-05:00

The woman who works at the front desk in our office (I guess you could call her an administrative assistant, but she's really just a secretary (because women have no place in the workaday world (because they should be at home barefoot and pregnant and making me a sandwich (preferably smoked turkey on rye bread with spicy deli mustard and some fresh slices of tomato (which shouldn't be kept in the refrigerator because it destroys the "flavor molecules" (that's a scientific term (look it up))))))) just came up to me and said, "What's Paypal?"

Having just received a SPAM/SCAM email about my "Paypal account" I told her that it was a scam, and that she could just delete the email.

"How do I delete it?"

"Just click on the email and then click the delete button."

"Yeah, but how do I delete my Paypal account?"

"What?"

"I don't want my Paypal account."

"Do you have a Paypal account?"

"I guess I must have one if the email says I do."

sigh...

So I spend the next 10 minutes explaining what Paypal is and what it does and SPAM and phishing.

"So I don't have a Paypal account?"

"No. Just delete the email."

"Should I tell the people that sent the email that I don't have a Paypal account?"

sigh... It's so cute when women try to use technology. You can almost see their cute little brains trying to figure it all out, but they can't get a grasp on the whole thing because there's no place to hold their make-up caddy.

Pretty much ripping off Jason J. Thomas for charity

2005-09-22T15:47:00.000-05:00

Next week, come partake in adult beverages and assault your liver and
brain cells for a good cause. The Baltimore Blogger Community is
coming together for a Happy Hour whose proceeds will benefit the
victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Where: Sláinte, 1700 Thames St, Baltimore, MD 21231

When: Thursday, 29 September 2005 5:00-9:00 PM

Why: Portion of the Proceeds to Benefit the American Red Cross

Many thanks to our intrepid organizers, Jennetic and Zenchick.
Bring your friends, family, fellow bloggers and non-bloggers
alike. Let's get together and raise many cups of cheer,
simultaneously assaulting our livers and supporting a charitable
cause!

A pirate's life for me

2005-09-22T11:56:00.000-05:00

My birthday was last Wednesday, and it was a fairly crap birthday. After work I went home and painted a wall, mowed the lawn, put a second coat of paint on the wall, had a slice of ice-cream cake and got a cool shirt from ACWF's mom, put up our headboard, and then went to bed.

This past Monday my brother made up for all of that.

He had his present planned for me for about a month. He switched the date around a few times, but in the end he settled on the 19th to take me on a pirate cruise (scroll down) around Baltimore. On Talk Like a Pirate Day, no less.

When I met them down at the harbor they gave me a puffy pirate shirt, a pirate sword, an eyepatch, a pirate hat, a belt, a satchel full of booty, and a pistol.

We boarded and went straight for the bar. Being a pirate is much more fun when you've got booze in you.

Then a swarm of "pirates" boarded the ship. In reality it was one group that regularly sails with the ship, and the other group were Ren Fest nerds in for the evening (it being Talk Like a Pirate Day). The two groups didn't seem to have done any type of rehearsal, but once we were out in the harbor, they settled down and mingled. We spent a good portion of the voyage sharing jokes with a few of the Ren Fest pirates. All in all, it was a good time, and it awesomely made up for the mowing, and the painting, and the general non-celebration on my actual birthday.

Now what you've been waiting for. A picture of me dressed as a pirate.

clickificate to bigificate

Who knew His holiness was a one armed bandit?

2005-09-22T11:05:00.000-05:00

Some would say that faith in a deity is like gambling. Those people have never been more correct.

clickificate to bigificate

Spotted at Value City in Anne Arundel County, Maryland.

Another image (that we didn't take) can be found here.

Where is the Flying Spaghetti Monster's slot machine?

In high school, my friends hated me because of my penis

2005-09-22T08:39:00.000-05:00

When I was in high school, actually, when I was a senior in high school, I frequently took the liberty of excusing myself from classes and wandered the halls of the school looking for something to pass the time.

One of those days I walked past a nearly empty classroom and noticed my friend Travis. Travis, not being the type of person who can regulate his behavior in a way that allows him to fit in with the rest of society, called out the door, "Dude! C'mere." Feeling my oats, and ready with a good excuse as to why I was wandering the hallways (um, because I, uh, have to go to my next class?) I ventured into the classroom and sat down in the desk next to Travis'.

"Mr. [myreallastname]! Always a pleasure to see you."

My head whipped around and I saw my Algebra 2 instructor from the year prior. This could go one of two ways: Mr. Murphy would go apeshit on me because he's the wrestling coach and I just wandered into his class, or Mr. Murphy would appreciate the humor in a student sneaking IN to a classroom.

I was betting on the latter because of two other things: Mr. Murphy was nicknamed "Head in a box" by my friends because he was sometimes so oblivious to his surroundings that he failed to break up a fight in his classroom, notice students getting up and leaving his classes, or see a stapler thrown from the back of his classroom fly over the heads of his students and strike the front of his desk at the head of the class. The other thing was: Mr. Murphy was not Mr. Working. Mr. Working was the football coach who taught anatomy, and who was famous for imparting the same piece of instruction to all his students, which was, "They call it the 'taint' 'cause it t'ain't quite ass, and it t'ain't quite pussy." He was a real class act.

"I guess you really wanted to take the test we're about to take?" Mr. Murphy asked me.

I replied affirmatively, and then asked what course he was teaching, hoping against all odds that I wasn't in his Algebra 2 class.

"I'm administering a make-up test for Mr. Working's anatomy class. These fellas* here missed the last exam because of the athletic awards ceremony yesterday."

I was screwed. I knew about as much anatomy as I did Algebra. I asked what the particular topic was.

"Reproductive organs!" Mr. Murphy said with a surprising amount of glee in his voice.

I was suddenly very excited to take the test. I had recently misplaced the delicate flower of my youth and blossomed into a man, and in doing so, had done a great deal of "personal research" into the male and female anatomy. I was sure that I knew my stuff.

The test was administered, and I finished the male reproductive organs in a flash. A little seminal vesicle here, a little urethra there, rectum, prostate, testes- I was in the zone. I flipped the test over, and staring at me like photocopied goat skull was the female reproductive system. Previously foreign and abstract, the female reproductive system no longer seemed so strange. I started at the bottom and worked my way up and out. Outer labia, inner labia, clitoris, vagina, cervix, urethra, fallopian tubes... I finished the female anatomy almost as quickly as the male anatomy.

Sure of myself, and still feeling a bit bold from wandering into a classroom and getting away with it, I got up and handed the test in to Mr. Murphy.

He went over the test as I stood above him, his red pen poised in his hand, ready to make a mark at any of my mistakes. He flipped from the male side to the female side without making a mark.

"Let's see how you do on this side," he said as he bore down on the now properly labeled goat skull. His pen hovered, but never found its prey.

"Are you taking Anatomy 2 right now?" he asked me quietly so as not to disturb the other students.
"No."
"But you took Anatomy last year?"
"Nope."
"How do you know this stuff?"
"I don't know. General health classes over the years, I guess. Must've finally sunken in."
"Well, I'm impressed."
"Thanks."

Then Mr. Murphy stood up and said to the class, "If your penis looks as good as [Myreallastname]'s, I'll give you extra credit."

*I went to an all-male Catholic high school.

How do I make it through the day?

2005-09-21T12:49:00.000-05:00

Time-released candy.

Every morning on my way out the door I grab 3 sugar-free Life Savers peppermint candies. (I actually prefer the taste to the sugar-full ones.) I have the first one as I'm walking out the door. It's usually gone about halfway to work, but by that point, it's done its job. I'm on my way to work, and I'm no longer wishing for the sweet comfort of my bed. (Though that comfort has been interrupted of late by a genital slashing kitten.)

The second mint is administered after lunch. I usually forget about it until about now actually. It's like a nice little surprise. I wander the internet, work on different projects for the j-o-b, and have a moment where I'm staring off into space thinking, "I could just stay like this until the end of the day, and that would be fine," when the "jam that individually wrapped piece of sweet candy goodness into your mouth right now" synapse in my brain fires, and I pull the 2nd mint from my left breast pocket (which is where I keep them) and pop it in.

Finally, I eat my last mint on my way home from work. After I climb into my car and navigate it out of the parking lot, I pull the last mint from my pocket and reward myself for fooling everyone into thinking that I'm a rational individual. I usually chomp this mint rather than suck (get your mind out of the gutter) it.

That's right folks. The only thing keeping me going, day in and day out, is the timed reward of a sugarless sweet. I guess that's better than taking a high-powered rifle to the top of a tower, or developing an affinity for the O'Reilly factor.