Dorky Dad

Wife FRIDAY (or, whatever): Politics at 90 degrees

2008-09-05T00:24:00.002-05:00

Hi there. It's no particular day except DD has asked me again to post, and I've accepted the challenge. At least it involves sitting upright.

That's right, I've spent the past couple hours viewing the world at a 90 degree angle - in particular, catching up on the major speeches from the convention via You Tube. (Prime time speeches generally otherwise coinciding with The Boy's bedtime.) I must say it doesn't improve the dignity and gravitas of anyone to be watched sideways.

It also tends to dampen one's enthusiasm, because there's really no good way to cheer someone on when you are completely immobile on your side. Which is probably why all that really stuck with me was trying to figure out if Biden was in fact quoting Chumbawamba, or, if it just happened that when he was knocked down, he got up again, and you are never going to keep him down.

It also makes your spouse look at your funny. Unless he realizes why: my body's own natural defenses again political rhetoric. No, sadly, that's not just a figure of speech. I have a problem with earwax. I'm just a little too good at producing it. If I don't clean my ears out every few months, I frankly can't hear squat. My only guess is that my body is trying to protect me from harsh and damaging sounds, like jet engines, screaming children, buzzsaws, campaign promises, etc.

I won't talk about exactly what this involves, since DD is the official purveyor of gross stuff on this blog (because he's a BOY and they're ICKY). I will say I can't imagine what people do who don't have access to Debrox or similar remedies. Then again, as far as I know, no one else has to do this. Seriously, I've never talked to anyone with the same problem. There's of course the remote possibility it's one of those disgusting, embarrassing things people would rather not talk about. So why am I? Hmm...good question...

In any case, was it just me, or did Michelle Obama quote the theme song to "The Jeffersons"?

Overrun by elephants

2008-09-03T21:22:00.003-05:00

I am up to my eyeballs in Republicans this week.

For those of you who haven't been frozen in ice in a Himalayan cave for the past couple of weeks, it's been convention time in the U.S. for the past couple of weeks, and the GOP just happens to be staging its McCain love-fest a mere half-marathon away from yours truly. And I hate it.

I hate it not because I'm some flaming liberal granola-munching hippie, because in this case I'm a bipartisan convention-hater. I'd hate the convention even if it was held by the Overweight 30-Something Sports-Loving Nerdy Dad Party. It's not the convention itself I hate, even though it ceased being an important part of the presidential selection process back in 1912. It's that the convention is being held in my town, ruining my traffic and jamming up my restaurants. (Of course, I live in a suburb, I haven't experienced any traffic and have yet to be turned away from an eatery this week, but it's the principle of the thing ...)

Still, I can't do anything to avoid it, try, try as I might. I can't open my morning paper without half of it being devoted to convention coverage, fully 90 percent of which is totally worthless drivel like this. Or this. Or this. Or stories with headlines like Sarah Palin acknowledges that she fathered a Martian's love child or McCain's wife's second cousin on her mother's side had a DUI in 1942. Or, on the other side, Republicans say Obama failed fingerpainting in Kindergarten and GOP says Obama doesn't actually exist. "He's just a cyborg," Guiliani says.

Worse, the convention is being held two blocks away from the Children's Museum, which has reduced its hours, meaning my poor kid can't go to the museum all week long! MY LIFE IS HELL!

And when it's over, the Silly Season will already begin (though, just like the Christmas season actually starts months before the day after Thanksgiving, Silly Season started literally last year; it's not even a "season" any longer, more like a Silly Era).

So now I'm trying to devise ways to avoid politics between now and the beginning of November. Here are a few of the ideas I've already developed:

Throw my TV out the window. I can't just vow to not turn it on. I could accidentally hit the power button and be subjected to some mercilessly negative advertisement about Obama's thinness or the fact that McCain looks like a blow-up doll. And as a bonus, I'd get to avoid regular shows like America's Got Talent.

Take a flame-thrower to all campaign yard signs. Yes, I'll still actually end up reading them and there's a good possibility that my expedition would end in prison, but it'd be worth it to spend a few, sweet hours burning all those horrible, horrible campaign signs to a crisp.

Gouge my eyes out. It's the only way I can truly protect myself from reading crap like this. I suppose I could cancel my newspaper, stop my Internet connection and live the rest of my life living like a disconnected, paranoid freak, but I still prefer being a connected paranoid freak, even if it means being a blind one.

Plug my ears, close my eyes and loudly wail songs by the 70s soft-rock band Bread whenever somebody starts talking politics within earshot. I'm totally going to do this. It's too much fun. If a picture paints a thousand words, then why can't I paint you? And yes, you may take this suggestion as an admission that I actually like Bread.

Any other suggestions?

Oooh, I have one: Go vote for me over at humor-blogs.com.

Give me my A-Negative!

2008-09-01T20:49:00.004-05:00

I'm not a big telephone person. After The Wife and I each got our own cell phone four years ago, we got rid of our land lines because we simply didn't get enough phone calls to warrant paying for three family telephones.

Indeed, if you look at my phone, I'm afraid all the phone numbers would fall into two categories:
Category 1: My Wife. It's like our cell phones are glorified, and more expensive, walkie-talkies.

Category 2: Telemarketers.

In fact, some days if it wasn't for telemarketers I'd get no phone calls at all. My coworkers all think I'm an amazingly popular guy because my phone is ringing off the hook with these newfangled automated telemarketers telling me to press 1 to save billions on my credit card bills -- as if the "1" button on my phone was some sort of magical credit-saving button. Fortunately, my credit doesn't need a magic button.

(And in case you're wondering, my phone number is my old land line number, which has been, and still is, on that alleged "do-not-call" list. I'm beginning to think that the "do-not-call" list actually means, "find-a-loophole-in-federal-law-and-call-repeatedly"-list.)

Most of my telemarketing phone calls, however, come from non-profits. And these calls themselves come in two sub-categories:

Category 1: Professional fund-raisers for "Save the State Troopers" or "Rescue All Our Poor Disabled Firemen." These "fund-raisers" take your donation, give about 5 cents of every dollar to "Please Help All Those Down-and-Out Policemen" and then put the rest in their own pockets. Some charity. I might as well throw half my dollar out the window, then find me a disabled firemen to give the other 50 cents to. It'd be a better giving rate, anyway.

Category 2: My nemesis.

My nemesis calls me just about every day. This weekend, I was camping in the woods, far away from civilization and even decent cell-phone coverage. Yet, somehow, whenever by happenstance I stumbled into a few square feet of the park with actual reception, my phone would ring. And I'd recognize the number, ignore it, and put my phone in my pocket.

This is largely my fault. My nemesis is the Red Cross, and while I'd gladly inform most telemarketers my general feelings on their decision to call me on my cell phone in the middle of the day, I actually sympathize with the Red Cross's plight.

Yet lately, I haven't been able to find my way over to a donation center to donate. So they've been calling to remind me that it's time for me to donate. But, because my blood type is apparently rare -- A-negative -- they've been calling me every day, without fail. I've told them not to call, but they still do, and so instead of telling them to remove me from their list, I just screen their numbers and pray that they don't bug me again while vowing to go donate soon so they won't call again for six weeks.

I can't imagine what it'd be like if I had Type-O blood, the universal donor. They'd probably send big beefy guys to my house to collect me personally and drag me to the donation center.

So now I feel like John Cusack in the best movie ever made, Better Off Dead, as he's running away from the paper boy trying to collect a $2. Only the kid on the bike is a 20-something woman wearing a white lab coat and holding a bundle of plastic tubing while shouting, "give me your blood!"

***

I promise I won't flood you with phone calls if you click on this link here!

Bits and pieces: No more diapers

2008-08-29T08:48:00.004-05:00

I've spent the last 24 hours debating internally with whether to write about reusable grocery store bags or my poor luck with sharp knives. And then I thought, "Why not both?" Here are a few more random thoughts before I head off for the weekend ...

***

I've written before about the ever-expanding and multiplying blob of plastic grocery-store bags that have come to fill my garage and the area under my kitchen sink, which is the main reason why The Wife and I have decided to try out those reusable bags.

So we bought a bunch, "obtained" some others, and stored them in our cars.

Yet we keep forgetting the &^$@! things. Now my car is filled with reusable grocery store bags, and my garage is bursting at the seams with the plastic. Excuse me now while I bang my head against the wall.

***

So when is the right time to show my 4-year-old "Star Wars?" And I mean the original three movies, not the three recent pieces of crap that George Lucas barfed up to make a few extra dollars off of his legion of geek-followers.

I ask this because he is right now on the couch next to me, asking, "Why is Darth Vader a bad guy?" I don't know if I can say, "Well, son, because he succumbed to evil and anger and had all his limbs cut off and had the rest of his body fried like a pronto pup so he has to rely on an evil suit to keep him alive."

On the bright side, at least The Boy should be able to understand George Lucas's juvenile dialogue.

***

I have a world-famous fear of knives. They scare me not because I'm afraid I'll fall on them. I'm afraid because I'm gradually removing all my fingers, one slice at a time.

I've suffered from a spate of cut fingers lately, to the point where The Wife is actively considering locks on our knife drawer, which would eliminate one more kitchen utensil from the list of things I can use. On the bad list: my nemesis, the cheese grater. The Wife told me I can't use those anymore, having grown tired of my dorky "secret ingredient" that gets inadvertently included in her shredded cheese. And I stay away from hand mixers, because I've had my fingers caught in them once.

I'm happy to report, however, that I have yet to involve myself in any accidents with either the blender or the food processor, and despite my best efforts have locked myself in neither the oven or the microwave. So I'm not totally helpless. Yet.

***

I'm going camping this weekend. It'll be the last time I get to go for a long time, given that by this time next year I'll be up to my eyeballs in diapers and have no desire to change diapers in a tent.

Which leads me to this point: I am generally excited about having another child. The first one worked out well, and a second child would provide that needed backup in case the first one doesn't succeed in Major League Baseball. And his birth means I have a ready-made excuse to avoid traveling to my in-laws over the holidays (a reason I'm considering at least 10 more kids, one each holiday season.)

Yet I can't help but dread, in one sense, the oncoming birth, because it means that I'll have to start changing diapers again.

It'll also mean that I'll have to re-start pretending to be asleep when he starts crying at 3 a.m.

***

I promise that I won't start crying if you click on this link here.

Laughing at cannibal grout

2008-08-26T22:00:00.007-05:00

I like the English language. Not because I use it on a daily basis for things like blogging and asking The Wife to locate my favorite pair of underpants, but because the it is so mind-numbingly convoluted that a large percentage of its native speakers can't even grasp a basis comprehension. I think that's hilarious.

Or maybe they do comprehend it, and I'm the one who is misunderstanding their intent. For instance, maybe the customer base of my local Dairy Queen really is made up largely of dessert-loving cannibals:

(See, this is why I need to spend some serious quality time with Photoshop, so I could change that sign to read "Cannibal Queen," which would be nearly as awesome as having an unlimited supply of Peanut Butter Cup Blizzards ...)

Still, you can't be too sure. Common sense says that me not moving doesn't do anything to keep grout from drying. Yet, upon seeing the following sign at my local grocery store, I stood still for 10 minutes until The Wife knocked me in the butt with our cart:

The one thing I don't understand, however, is why someone would laugh out loud at milk:

Maybe it's spoiled and the people doing the laughing are the ones taking customers' $3.25 for each gallon of funny milk.

***

C'mon, click on this link here and give me a thumbs-up. What's the worst that could happen?

A pig-licking tale

2008-08-25T23:05:00.004-05:00

Some time ago, at Famous Dave's national headquarters, a handful of employees were brain-storming ways they could improve on the previous year's performance at their Minnesota State Fair booth.

"What the heck are we gonna do?" the boss said. "Our heart attack count last year was down. Apparently, greasy, slow-cooked pork just isn't the cardiac winner it used to be and we're getting outdone by deep-fried candy bars. If we're going to win the blue ribbon in the coronary category, we've got to think of something that's not only heart attack-inducing, but that will lure people like flies."

Worker No. 1 was worried. "We have to beat deep-fried candy bars?" he said. "How are we gonna do that? It's hopeless! Unless we triple the salt in our pulled pork sandwiches. Mmmm ... salt."

"That won't work," Worker No. 2 said. "I think people would notice and it wouldn't lure more people, anyway."

Worker No. 3 chimed in. "HEY! We could lower our prices so they're below the insane level of the fair! That would bring in LOTS of customers!"

Everybody paused for a moment and looked around. Then the Boss couldn't hold it in any longer and burst out laughing. Everybody joined in and the laughter continued unabated for 14 minutes. "Boy, that joke never fails to kill me," he said, laughing.

And then, standing in the corner, a heretofore unseen guy wearing an orange chefs' hat banged on the wall with a metal spatula. The laughter stopped, and everybody looked in his direction. "Fricking great, it's Phil," Worker No. 3 whispered to Worker No. 2.

"I think," he said, "we should dip bacon in chocolate."

Everybody paused. The Boss thought of the idea. Bacon? In chocolate? Bacon is a breakfast food. Chocolate is dessert. And it's not on a stick. Sounds risky.

"And we could sprinkle it with sea salt. If the combination of bacon and chocolate doesn't get them, the extra salt will," Phil said.

"But will people eat it?" The Boss said. "Who ever heart of dipping bacon in chocolate? It's insane!"

"Whoever heard of dipping a Snickers bar in batter and deep-frying it on a stick?" Phil said. "This is the Minnesota State Fair. People are coming here looking for crazy-sounding food that will kill them."

People still looked at Phil with a skeptical eye.

"We'll call them 'Pig Lickers,'" he retorted.

And then everybody looked at one another and nodded their heads. "Pig Lickers it is!" The Boss said.

Several months later, a slightly rotund, middle-aged man who goes by the name of Dorky Dad handed the woman at the Famous Dave's counter his $5 and took a cone filled with bacon dipped in dark chocolate. He brought it back to his family and ate it right in front of them, remarking on its unusual nature as he went along.

"Bacon! In chocolate!" he said, licking the salty chocolate from his fingers. "And it's good! Wow! What will they think of, next?"

But when he finished, he threw his cone away and walked a half a block to where an ambulance was sitting, waiting for its two EMTs to return with their lunch. He opened the back doors, laid down on the gurney and started pounding on his chest with the defibrillator.

Back at the Famous Dave's booth, a bell rang. The workers cheered, and the woman behind the counter stamped the wall underneath a sign that said, "Heart Attack Counter."

Hopefully, clicking on this link won't give YOU a heart attack.

The humor value of male body parts

2008-08-21T21:22:00.006-05:00

UPDATE (8-22): Obviously, given the response from some of you, it's clear that I must update the flow chart below to incorporate the admitted female penis laughers. Uh, so I did.

We were at a playground this evening when The Boy slid halfway down a pole. He didn't like it, I guess, given that he walked away holding his crotch. He then exclaimed, "Ow! My PENIS!"

The Wife and I spent the next 30 minutes debating the humor value of that exclamation.

I laughed the entire time, because I think the phrase, "Ow! My PENIS!" is hilarious.

The Wife thought otherwise. Here's a sampling of her side of the debate: "It's not that funny ... What are you, eight? ... MEN!"

At that point I thought of an idea for a flow chart. "It's gonna be short," The Wife said, "'Should I laugh?' 'NO.'"

I'm afraid it's going to be a bit longer than that. The thing is, even though some small part of the darker reaches of my brain cites my age and tells me not to, I can't help but laugh at juvenile humor. So, truthfully, when it comes to my sense of humor, I really am 8. But I don't think I'm alone. Take the flow chart I developed:

See? It's true because I made it into a chart.

Now, click on this link right here and, if you're lucky, you'll eventually find other sick flow charts.

P.S.: This is typically the day I make links, but, well, I didn't. But I will do so this weekend.

Bits and pieces: Big Wheels and smooth butts

2008-08-20T21:47:00.005-05:00

Yes, the "bits and pieces" in the title of this post is a sure sign that I'm tossing out a bunch of junk.

Here you go, enjoy the junk ...

My friend, Bob, sent me the following picture today:

I cannot be the only one who looks at this and thinks, "I NEED that." In fact, my boy's cheap Walmart Big Wheel ripoff is right in front of me, and I'm pondering just how much I need that lawn mower in my garage ...

***

After a weekend without Netflix, I finally got my movies yesterday. I watched "Equilibrium," a Christian Bale science fiction flick.

I'm kind-of sorry Netflix fixed its problems now.

***

If I see the phrase "lightning Bolt" used to describe Usain Bolt one more time, I will personally beat the writer over the head with their computer.

***

The Boy recently passed from one annoying phase straight into another. Not long ago, whenever we took him to the grocery store, the only things you ever heard from our family came from me or The Wife, and usually went something like this:

"Don't touch that. Put that down. Stop that. Don't do that. Come back here. Stop that. No. Absolutely not. Donuts are not footballs. Thanks, Boy, now we have to pay for that. Crap, here come the cops ..."

It's not like that anymore. Now the only thing you hear from our little roving band is this, and it comes from The Boy:

"Can I have that? I want that! Give me that! Ooh, I want that! Now I want that! Can I have that? I want that! Let me have that!"

***

If you haven't heard by now -- and if you haven't then you for some weird reason don't care one iota about Bigfoot -- the guys who claimed to have found the legendary beast were apparently pulling off a ruse. Wow. I'm shocked. <-- Sarcasm

Worse: They used a gorilla suit. A gorilla suit?

Double-worse: Somebody was fooled by that suit, and paid them thousands of dollars.

Um, excuse me. I think I saw the Loch Ness Monster in the Mississippi the other day. Now where did I put my scuba gear and that old gray tarp?

***

Do any of you look at receipts? I just did. It was the receipt from the most recent trip to the grocery store, when I bought smooth almond butter. The receipt called it:

SMOOTH BUTT.

Too bad I didn't get the chunky.

I bet there are some chunky butts over at humor-blogs.com.

Clichés: Not all they're cracked up to be

2008-08-18T22:48:00.005-05:00

I don't know why on God's Green Earth that I keep using clichés and, what's more, that I chuckle every time I do. I hate them. To be honest, most of them are full of hot air. People use them left and right. They get under my skin and drive me nuts.

So it stands to reason that there is no time like the present to fly by the seat of my pants and write a post about clichés in the off-chance that I'll knock some sense into some folks to get them to stop using them. (Or at least to provide my blog with a cheap post.)

"He puts his pants on one leg at a time just like the rest of us." I'm teaching The Boy how to put his pants on both legs at a time, just for the day when somebody tries to throw that cliché into his face after he's won his third straight MVP award and helped the Twins win the 2031 World Series. "No I don't put my pants on one leg at a time," he'll say before turning to me with a satisfied smile. "Thanks Dad. Now you go ahead and take these millions of dollars and retire."

"Learn to crawl before you walk." Seems to make sense, doesn't it? Until you have a kid, and then discover that many babies never actually learn to crawl.

"I can't think of it off the top of my head." I'm guilty of using this cliché all the time, mostly because my brain often can't think of something on demand. But that doesn't mean this one makes any sense. We obviously know why this guy couldn't think off the top of his head -- the top of his head was damaged.

"Good things come to those who wait." Unless you're talking about, oh, high-demand concert tickets or limited-time offers or the morning commute. But maybe I'm just picking on this cliché because, as one of the world's most impatient human beings, I hate this one. No. I don't want to wait. I WANT IT NOW!!

"An apple a day keeps the doctor away." Unless it's off-season. Off-season apples suck. I'd rather see the doctor.

"It's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick." Except if you're a sadomasochist. Then it probably isn't.

"The more the merrier." Really? Ever been in a crowded elevator before? Traffic? The DMV? Alone with your spouse after a long day surrounded by screaming kids?

"A watched pot never boils." True. I've tried it. I've waited entire minutes for a boiling pot to start boiling and then it never does. So I turn around and half-a-second later there the water is, rolling and mocking me. Stupid water.

"The shoe's on the other foot." And it's probably uncomfortable, too.

"When the going gets tough, the tough gets going." So where are "the tough" going to, anyway? Shouldn't they stick around and try to get through whatever this "going" is? Even if this wasn't a cliché, my high-school English teacher would fail me twice for writing a sentence like that. After she woke me up, that is.

"Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger." That is, assuming it doesn't paralyze you from the neck down, or result in the loss of multiple limbs or leaves you with a weakened immune system or ...

"Raining cats and dogs." Some cliché writers clearly took too many drugs. And if it was raining cats, that would be horrific. I wouldn't like the dogs much, either, but those cats have sharp claws and a penchant for sticking them outward while falling. I know. I have cats. And I don't want them raining on me, let alone a bunch of strange alien sky-falling cats. No sir.

"Giving 110 percent." I don't think poor math skills should qualify something for cliché status.

"More fun than a barrel of monkeys." I've used this one, too, but the more I think of it, the more I realize that this is one of the stupidest clichés of all, and for this reason: a barrel of monkeys is one of the all-time lamest toys ever invented. YAY! I can connect these two monkeys! Wowee, look at me, kids, I'm holding a chain of monkeys! Stop me, please, I can't handle all of this sheer excitement! I'm going to explode! POOF!

"Finders keepers, losers weepers." Isn't this technically illegal? So this cliché is actively encouraging illegal activity.

"Time heals all wounds." Unless you have vascular problems. Then you should really have that wound treated.

"Neither a borrower, nor a lender be." OK, given the current economic climate this might be appropriate, but has anybody considered this cliche's economic ramifications?

"He's sleeping like a baby." So he's waking up screaming every couple of hours because his pants are full of crap?

"Make like a baby, and head out." I think it's time that I follow this cliche's advice. But I'm going to go over to humor-blogs.com next.

I've got a big-ol' head

2008-08-17T21:44:00.003-05:00

Note from Dorky Dad: I've decided that it's looooong past due for The Wife to write a guest post, in part because I'm feeling extra lazy after wrestling with my garden hose -- and losing. So here she is, after a long hiatus, The Wife.

Thanks to DD for doing the dishes, to ensure I had adequate time to try to be funny. Particularly since it was chicken-wing night, and that's a lot of scrubbing the baking sheet, etc.

It was suggested I write about my head - specifically, its rather large size. So I guess that's funny. Hey everyone, laugh at my ginormous head! I'll try not to block out the sun, or sit in front of you while watching TV! For the record, I also do have little arms, per the movie reference up above, though I flatter myself that this is not an exact resemblance...

I can actually remember the moment when I realized that my head might be plus sized: high school graduation, 1990. Everyone was ordering caps and gowns, because nothing says "proud achievement" to teenagers like wearing a long black nightgown and a goofy looking hat in public in front of all their friends. Anyway, I found out that I needed the very largest hat size - and indeed, I had basically the same size (or at least circumference) head as hulking guys a foot taller than me.

I've since realized that the world is not ready for a head the size of mine, particularly on a female. You can buy large sized shoes and plus sized clothes, but hats for women tend to come in one size - known to me as "too small." Sunglasses tend to run in "too narrow" as well.

And there's not much you can do about your cranium size. Most body dimensions can be altered in some way. Even your feet can be crammed into too-small shoes -- not a good idea, of course, but you can do it if you scrunch up your toes. But with resizing your head, there's not much you can do which is not, well, fatal. Or at very least, permanently disfiguring and generally a very bad idea.

Not that having a big head is the most terrible fate. I mean, modern U.S. culture doesn't require hats in most circumstances, graduation being a rather rare exception. And I can always wear a standard, unisex, adjustable baseball cap -- then again, so could a watermelon. But I would like to get a nice sunhat sometime, and it's just not easy to find.

Such is life.

Reader brownnosing: stalking some butts

2008-08-14T23:33:00.004-05:00

As some of you reminded me recently, I'm on a butt streak. And I'm not about to end that streak now, even though this is my second-ever shout-out post. The world, fortunately or unfortunately, is filled with derriere drama.

Take, for instance, this story here about a person known as the Butt Bandit. Why is he called the Butt Bandit? In the midst of a robbery, he apparently needed one hand to cover his face, another to hold the gun. He wore loose-fitting pants, but he didn't wear a belt.

***

Meg says she sucks at stalking. But you only get better at stalking with practice. Lots and lots of practice.

***

Thank God BookBeth is back. And Thank God I'm not the only one who ignores his to-do list.

***

Sigh. Citizen's kids have started school again. How terribly depressing. Not that I don't want her kids to learn and get themselves an education and blah blah blah, but I hate the start of school even though it's been decades, now, since I've gone. I hate it because it means summer is on its way out. And around here, winter really sucks.

***

Apparently I'm going to have to spend the weekend staring at a blank TV screen. Fricking Netflix.

***

This is interesting. Charlotta's social security number is 123-45-6789! How'd she get that?!

***

Apparently, Canada's idea of carding somebody before they get into a movie is to simply ask the customer if they're old enough – at least based on this funny post from Maureen. It makes me kick myself for not spending more time there in my youth. Or ANY time there.

***

FuriousBall is obviously talented at Web design. I'm just not so sure about his Photoshop skills.

***

This is just a really good post from Xbox.

***

I'm just going to leave you with one more butt story. And, in case you need it -- and you will -- here's the YouTube video.

Best part of the story was the quote from the chief academic officer, who said that the video is "not out of character" for the professor. Awesome.

I feel like mooning people over at humor-blogs.com.

My bathroom made me crack

2008-08-13T22:59:00.004-05:00

I was helping The Boy get into the car in the parking lot of a busy Minneapolis restaurant this evening when I felt The Wife come up from behind me and give me a wedgie.

That's funny, I thought, The Wife never gives wedgies. Ever. I could beg all day and promise The Wife a lifetime supply of hedgehogs and roasted almonds if she'd give me a wedgie -- presuming I wanted one -- and she wouldn't do it. So what gives? Why now?

"Hey, what are you doing with my pants?" I said.

"They needed to be pulled up," she said, "badly."

Yes, boys and girls, The Wife was diagnosing me with a case of P.C. -- Plumbers' Crack. I hadn't felt any wind back there, but The Wife assured me that she performed a necessary duty, not just for me but for the hapless souls in my butt's viewing area. "It's my job as your wife," she said.

It's not much of a surprise, however, that I've been walking around all day looking like a plumber, because I've spent so much time working on the plumbing in my bathroom that I might as well call myself a plumber by now. I wouldn't call myself a good plumber, but a plumber I am, nevertheless.

I've been trying to connect my double-bowl bathroom vanity for what seems like centuries. I had two problems conspiring against me:

1. My house was built by a farmer whose idea of plumbing was to throw together pipes at random and then pray like hell that they don't leak.

2. I'm a total, absent-minded idiot when it comes to household projects.

The result has been, as it usually is with these things, a lesson in futility. I'd come home after a long day at work, spend a couple of hours trying to figure out the plumbing, realize that I needed something at Home Depot and put it off until the next evening.

The next day, after a trip to Home Depot to get the one object that would give me a completed sink and bring happiness into our household once again, I spend a couple more hours wrestling with the plumbing, only to realize that I got the wrong thing. I go to Home Depot again, then wrestle with it some more before saying, "To hell with this," and going downstairs to watch Bottle Rocket.

And so on. By now, every time I go to Home Depot, even the self-service checkout counter asks me what the heck I'm doing back there again.

So when I finished the sink this evening -- after spending about five hours checking and rechecking everything for leaks to assuage my paranoia -- I felt like I just completed the Ironman Triathlon, assuming that the triathlon kept getting longer as I went along and that I was competing with only one leg and a nasty habit of taking long, long breaks.

So rest assured, various Twin Cities residents, my plumbing days are over. You can take off the eye patches now.

Plenty of crack over at humor-blogs.com.

Rubbing butts in a Chinese restaurant

2008-08-11T21:57:00.004-05:00

When I started this blog, I vowed that I would not fill it with cute stories about my kid. And I repeated that vow publicly last week. So when The Boy did something kinda funny this weekend, I insisted to myself that I would absolutely, positively NOT blog about it.

And then a devil appeared on my shoulder. He was eating Nutter Butters. And he thought I should write about it -- not the Nutter Butters. The Boy.

Devil: Go ahead, write about it ... you don't have anything else worthy, anyway, and it's kinda funny. By the way, you should also eat some Nutter Butters. They're fantastic.

I pondered his comments when a carrot-munching angel appeared on my other shoulder. And the debate began.

Angel: Here, have a carrot. And don't write that story. You said you wouldn't, and your blog's three, non-family readers are counting on you to keep that vow. If you relayed this story, you might lose them. Or one of them might burst into flames. You don't want that on your conscience.

Devil: Don't listen to that Vitamin A-lovin freak of nature, Nutter Butters are tasty and enjoyable and delicious. Your readers, on the other hand, don't have such high expectations for your blog, so put the story in!

At this point I began wondering why they were arguing about food when I wasn't even hungry. And then the angel noted that "a man of honor would not in his life continue to fill a blog with mindless stories about his kid when he said he wouldn't. Besides, your wife wouldn't like it. You're in enough trouble already and you'll probably sleep on the couch."

Devil: But it's about your wife's butt!

Convinced, I flicked the angel off my shoulder, reached for the package of Nutter Butters that suddenly appeared before me, and sat down to my laptop to tell you this story:

***

Every now and then these days I'm reminded exactly why it's a good idea to avoid doing certain things with The Wife while an impressionable young boy is nearby. This weekend was one of them. We went to a restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, and The Boy as usual carpeted the floor with a layer of noodles.

As I cleaned up top, The Wife got down on her knees and picked some up off the floor. At that moment, The Boy began rubbing her butt.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

The Boy answered, but without controlling his volume. I might add that the restaurant was packed. "I'M RUBBING YOUR BUTT!!"

"No, you don't do that to mommies," she said.

"BUT IT MAKES THE BABY FEEL BETTER!"

At that we left the restaurant, and my personal wrestling match began.

And I'm glad we have a comfortable couch.

I'm also glad to be listed on this Web site here. And if you click on that link from the post, I'll give you a big, fat hug.

A conversation with a teenager

2008-08-10T20:59:00.002-05:00

My boy is 4. That means I have nine glorious, comparatively pain-free years until he morphs and devolves into a hormone-drooling creature known as a teenager.

Teenagers scare me. I was a teenager once, and even I scared me back then. God knows what weirdness came out of my mouth on a regular basis, not to mention some of my other orifices. And I am frightened of the day The Boy turns into one of those.

Which is why I am getting some practice with teenagers now. I have nieces and nephews, three of whom just graduated from those teenage years, two of whom are entering that state as we speak. One of those teenagers, my niece, spent the weekend with us, as she does periodically.

But you know what I've learned? For the most part, teenagers are harmless. In fact, you'd barely know they're even there if it weren't for the smell of strangely perfumed products and the constant tapping of keys. And, when you talk to them, it's like conversing with a wall -- well, a stinky wall that periodically pipes up with a surly comment.

Here, for instance, is a dramatic recreation of one such conversation with my niece:

Me: Hey, there, niece! How are you doing? You look good and we're looking forward to a fantastic weekend! We've got a lot of events planned, like a visit to the Irish Fair and a big bonfire and we're hoping you'll babysit for some extra cash! I know you want that iPod Touch!

Niece: tippity-tap tap tap tap Grunt tap tap tippity-tap tap

Me: Um, OK. How has your summer gone? Did you do anything fun? I understand you went to the Wisconsin Dells recently. Boy, hope you didn't have to sell valuables during your trip, I've heard it's expensive, ha ha ha!

Niece: Grunt tap tap tippity-tap tap tap tap tippity-tap

Me: (Waves hand in front of teenager's face)

Niece: (Gives uncle an evil glance, turns away) tap tap tap tippity-tap tap tap

Me: Any type of food you'd like to have around this weekend? I thought we'd get a pizza sometime. Perhaps we'll make some chicken wings or I can grill something out. And we can make sundaes! I don't know about you, but summer isn't complete unless I have about 6,537 sundaes! Ha ha ha!

Niece: Yup. tap tap tippity-tap Grunt tap tap tap tippity-tap tap

Me: (Looks around) Incidentally, I found that I have a terminal illness. It's called Weirdman's Syndrome. Apparently, you spend years devolving into an increasingly bizarre and strange state, eventually losing your entire brain capacity and winding up on life support. I'm not sure how long I have, but it'll be a long, sad, terrible and tragic ending. I'm sure glad I get to spend this time with you now because I don't know how long my mental state will last.

Niece: tap tap Grunt tippity-tap Grunt tap tap tap tap tippity-tap tap

Me: (Sniff, sniff) Is something burning? Is the house on fire? Or is that noxious odor coming from our old asbestos-lined water heater? I've always heard stories of those heaters giving off poisonous gasses but I blew those warnings off as complete silliness. We'd better all get out of the house, quick, or there will be no "us" to evacuate!

Niece: tap tap tap tippity-tap tap tap tippity-tap tap tap

Me: Grunt

Niece: Grunt tap tap tippity-tap tap tap tippity-tap tap tap

Me: Grunt grunt grunt

Niece: SHUT UP

Me: HA! I KNEW I'd get you to talk.

Niece: tap tap tap tippity-tap tap tap tap tippity-tap

Me: By the way, I've joined the local clown club. We're coming to your school the first week of September. I plan on carrying a big, giant sign saying that I'M YOUR UNCLE!!!

Niece: YOU ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT! I'm not going to school that day.

Me: I won't tell you when I'm going

Niece: tap tap tippity-tap tap tap tap

Time to tap-tap tippity-tap my way over to this site here.

It's time that I do more brownnosing

2008-08-07T23:13:00.004-05:00

I used to devote a post now and then to shouting out at some other blogs. Then I apparently fell on my head, which damaged my brain and thus caused me to stop the practice. (Really, that's the only reason I can think of ...)

But then I realized that shouting to a bunch of blogs -- or, in this and in future cases, blog posts -- gets me out of having to think of an actual post. Brilliant! (Maybe my brain is recovering.) So thank you, fellow bloggers, for filling my blog. Now, here we go:

***

Mamma finally admits it.

***

Jocelyn is showing off her "garden," if you know what I mean. (Seriously, she's just showing off her garden, one that makes me really jealous.) But she should also watch out for bears.

***

This blogger has returned with new hair and a new fiancee. Said blogger, Sheila, holds a special place in this blog's heart, as she was the first person brave enough to acknowledge publicly that she actually read it. So go to her blog and give her marital advice.

***

HEE HEE HEE HA HA HA HA HA HA! And I thought that posting a picture of me in a bra was bad. (OK, maybe it still is, but this is great.)

***

Watch out for that rhino!

***

Muskrat in this post tells us how Chuck E. Cheese scarred a young boy for life. And apparently the process involves more than just being a giant rat walking through a restaurant with a creepy grin. Seriously, who looked at a rat, which is known for spreading bubonic plague and chewing through just about everything and says, "I'll make that the lead character for my child-oriented restaurant." I don't want to see a rat in a restaurant. Ever. Especially one with a smile. Because a smiling rat in a restaurant is a full rat in a restaurant.

***

Some time ago, Jazz gave me an award and loserboy here never thanked her. Consider it done, Jazz. And neither did I thank Olga the Great for doing the same thing. What's wrong with me? Anyway, if you don't read both of those blogs regularly, you should have your head examined. They are both fantastic.

***

While I'm at it, I'll steal one of Jazz's recent links, because these guys are hilarious -- and right on! I've always thought that those so-called "astronauts" who went on their "rocket ships" and took pictures of our "round Earth" were little more than a ridiculous government hoax. And while we're at it, I say we form an Earth-is-the-Center-of-the-Universe Society and a Spontaneous Generation Truth Association.

***

Dude , you're spilling all the Cheetos ... oh, MAN!

***

And last but not least, there's humor-blogs.com. But you knew that link was coming, didn't you? I hope your clicking finger is still operable.

Survival tip: don't ask if she's pregnant

2008-08-06T21:51:00.006-05:00

We went to a neighborhood party this week, where we hung out with people who live nearby, most of whom we don't see all that often. The Wife walked around the back yard of our neighbor's home and talked to several people. A few of them asked, without prompting, "So, when is the baby due?"

Are you kidding? Those people are much braver than I am.

OK, The Wife is about 4.5 months pregnant and her belly does indeed protrude outward quite a bit. Her typically loose T-shirts are now tight, making it almost impossible to hide the fact that she is pregnant. In fact, I'd consider it obvious.

But that does not mean that I would even consider asking a woman if she was pregnant before I heard the phrase "I'M HAVING A BABY SOON" coming from her lips. (And no, it cannot be, "I'm pregnant," because "pregnant" sounds too much like "eggplant." She could be smuggling vegetables, for all I know.) I don't care if she's 9 months pregnant. I don't care if the baby is actually emerging from her uterus in a room surrounded by doctors. Unless she tells me she's pregnant, I make no assumptions.

I'd just as soon chew my arm off and dip the bloody stump into a big pile of salt before I'd ask a woman if she was pregnant without first having that knowledge -- and that would probably be the healthier option. Indeed, my fear of this is a simple matter of survival and a strong desire not to feel really, really awful.

Once, some time ago (OK, maybe twice), I came across a woman I thought looked pregnant. And I was about to open my mouth and ask when she was due, when the portion of my brain that controls common sense dusted off the cobwebs, jumped and tackled the part of my brain that controls speech before I could utter a word. Turned out to be a good thing -- she wasn't pregnant.

In my youth, and perhaps my early adulthood, I would have gone on to ask that question, common sense be damned. And my mouth frequently did beat my common-sense gene, a fact that led to many a black eye. Fortunately, I never found myself presented with a pregnant looking female who wasn't pregnant. Otherwise, I wouldn't be sitting here writing, unless it was through the use of some mouth-controlled word-processing program.

Which brings me to The Wife's response to our neighbors. In each case, she said, "he's due around Christmas." Dammit.

I've been begging her, since the moment an extra line appeared on that little popsicle stick, to feign offense whenever she got that question, but my wife -- who once got upset with me for hurting an ant, as in the six-legged variety -- wouldn't even consider such a thing. But what's the fun of being pregnant if you can't make people sweat for a few seconds every day for personal enjoyment?

This is probably why men don't get pregnant. Or at least why I don't get pregnant.

No pregnant dudes over at humor-blogs.com. But there are some weirdos.

My brain is leaking out of my ears

2008-08-05T22:19:00.002-05:00

I've had, shockingly enough, an issue with Blogger, one that goes back more than a year. Come to think of it, I've had lots of issues with Blogger that go back years. For instance, despite my repeated efforts to inform them otherwise by changing my account's language settings, Blogger continues to insist that I speak Polish. Whenever I get to my Blogger login page, I see a bunch of "words" that look like little more than random groupings of letters. I only know it's Polish because the little language bar tells me it's "Polski."

But I have other problems and I won't bore you with them. I will say that finding decent help from Blogger is a wee bit difficult. I've spent my evening searching the Internet deep and wide. I've dug deep into the furthest depths of my brain to decipher the complex riddles that will provide valuable clues as to the whereabouts of the solution to my problem. And when I completed those challenges that I crossed deep canyons on invisible bridges, escaped from the clutches of angry tribes of rogue Google employees, swam across an alligator-infested moat, climbed a steep, icy cliff and beat Death in a series of Cribbage games, all to find any sense of help whatsoever.

Having found my Holy Grail, which opened to me on my computer screen to a bright white light accompanied by sweet-voiced angels singing polka tunes, I'm tired. My brain no longer feels like operating properly.

So no post. Well, except this one. So I'm just going to go read some blogs. And the sheer mental effort of reading posts about Elvis poop on And the Pursuit of Happiness will probably cause me to pass out. But first, I'll click this link here.

My high school reunion scares me

2008-08-04T21:46:00.004-05:00

So I recently received a Kinkos-made notice in my mailbox, inviting me to my 20th high-school reunion.

CRAP.

TWENTY YEARS?! It's been two full decades since I last graced the halls of a secondary educational institution with an armful of books and a body filled with hormones? People have been born, finished high school and became highly successful Internet entrepreneurs in that time. How did that happen?

As soon as I recovered from my state of shock, I walked back into the house and placed the notice exactly where I intended: in the portion of my kitchen counter reserved for junk mail I fully intend to ignore.

Unfortunately, The Wife found it. "Are you planning to go?" she asked.

Hell no.

And I have plenty of reasons why I have no intention of attending my 20-year reunion, all of which I plan to list here ...

I don't want to get mugged by hair-obsessed bald guys. Look, I'm sure that at some point down the line I'll get a nice bald patch at the top of my mug, but for now I've got hair to spare and statistics say that at least a third of my former classmates will have chrome domes by now.

I won't be able to remember anybody's &%$@! name. I only wish I were joking, too. Roughly three years after graduation, in college, a friend of mine told me he ran into two of my high-school classmates who said they knew me, and to say hello. He told me their names. I looked at him blankly. I have no idea who the heck you're talking about, I said. My memory hasn't improved, either. I've looked at all those names on Classmates.com and I have no idea who any of those people are. I'd spend the entire time reminiscing about people whose names I can't place at all. Let this be a lesson to you, kids. Don't spend your middle-school years sniffing markers.

I won't be able to recognize my home town without the stench of dead cow. I grew up in a town known for its stockyards. They were recently closed, meaning that the lovely aroma that greeted me every morning on my walk to school is no longer there.

I'm deathly allergic to name tags. Seriously, they give me hives. I hate name tags. It doesn't matter if I'm working at McDonald's -- where I put fake names on my name tags -- or attending an important work conference, where I usually, uh "forget" to put my name tag on in the morning. And I don't like reading name tags, either, especially on women who wear their tags conveniently on their breasts. No, uh, I'm not ogling your boobs I'm trying to see who the heck you are.

Must I relive the 80s? The 80s were bad enough when they were actually happening. And the world still hasn't recovered, either -- it's my theory that much of global warming is due to the overuse of hairspray during the decade. That and farting cows.

It's a really long drive. It's at least a 30-minute drive to my old suburb. Gas is $3.50 a gallon. In my Civic that round trip would cost me 10 bucks. That would come directly from my convenience store budget and I wouldn't be able to get my daily supply of scratch-off lottery tickets and microwave burritos.

I really don't want to hear the following phrase: "Twenty years later, still a total dork."

But I really do want to hear this phrase: "I went to Humor-blogs.com by clicking this link!

Bits and pieces: Big fish and Denny's

2008-08-03T15:20:00.003-05:00

Because I'm too lazy to think of a full post, here are a few little mini-posts, all cobbled together in the same single post. Woohoo! I used the word "post" three times in a single sentence!

***

If you catch a giant fish and let him go, but there's only a totally unreliable witness in the form of a 4-year-old boy to watch it, did you still catch that fish?

We just returned from a weekend camping trip. This morning I took The Boy fishing. The first time I put my line in the water I got a nibble. It wasn't too far in front of me, and then it jumped out of the water. I swear that thing was huge!

So huge he snapped my line (and therefore I didn't technically "catch" the fish). The only person to see this was The Boy. Did you see the fish? I asked.

"No," he said.

Did you see it?

"Yes," he said.

How big was it?

"Six inches."

No, Boy. You were right the first time. You didn't see the fish.

***

Some of you might have noted that I quit labeling links to other blogs on this site as either "dorks" or "non-dorks." I only called people "dorks" if they volunteered to be called that -- out of fear of anti-dork reprisals. Now I realize that anybody who is willing to be linked on a site called "Dorky Dad" automatically qualifies for dork status.

***

Not long ago, I was standing in an entirely-too-long portapotty line with The Boy. I was carrying him, until I realized that he was listening to every word that a pair of loud-mouthed drunks were using right behind us. Every third word was of the four-letter, begins-with-'F' variety. Look, I think cuss words are hilarious, but does it really add anything to a sentence to use the F-bomb to describe every noun and verb you use?

So I put him down, then did my level best to cover The Boy's ears. And here's what I got for my efforts: A boy looking up at me, feeling my stomach, then shouting -- loudly -- "DADDY?! WHY DO YOU HAVE A GREAT, BIG, ROUND TUMMY?!"

Leave me alone, kid, and let me eat my giant ice cream sundae.

***

Crap. I just included two cute-kid-quote stories in a single blog post. I should be shot. And if I had any honor, I'd do it myself.

Thank God I don't have any honor.

***

I'm writing this post just before I take The Boy to see "Kung Fu Panda." According to one review, the only danger in having a kid see this movie is the resulting kung fu moves kids put on afterward.

As my boy is currently in the punching-Dad-in-the-stomach-and-laughing phase, I don't think that'll be a problem.

***

On the way home from camping we ate lunch at Denny's. I don't know why I didn't realize this before, but they include both sausage AND bacon with most of their breakfast entrees. They should also include a bottle of Lipitor or heart surgery, while they're at it.

And I should include an ending at the end of this post, because if it goes on longer, YOU will need heart surgery.

And I'll need a trip over to humor-blogs.com.

Inside my college kitchen

2008-07-30T21:49:00.008-05:00

After abandoning dorm life my freshman year of college I moved into a house with four other guys. This house had an actual, working kitchen with an operable stove and a refrigerator better than most rentals I've lived in. And, contrary to popular belief, the five of us actually used this kitchen to prepare actual, cooked meals.

For instance, once we made Rice Krispies treats. Then someone (me) had the brilliant idea to add chocolate chips to the mix during the cooking process. They were tasty, assuming you managed to eat a rock-hard bar without shattering all of your teeth.

On another time we made Hamburger Helper. One of my roommates decided to add pepper. And add pepper he did -- we were all sniffling for a week after that meal. But the pepper was necessary because the hamburger was venison and had been frozen for most of my lifetime until that point and thus tasted, well ... awful.

Cooking required appliances, however, and we had plenty. Yet their official use didn't necessarily jive with the directions on the box. Here are a few of the items we had in our college kitchen and what we actually used them for. (WARNING: You may want to turn away if you are a professional chef or spend an inordinate amount of time watching the Food Network.)

The Fry Daddy

Directed use: Provide users with cholesterol-laden foods they heretofore could only get at a fast-food joint!

Undirected use: Hide the smell of stale beer. Gosh this thing stunk. I got it for Christmas one year and rejoiced at the prospect of homemade French fries and cheese curds. Yet you could clean it until Lassie came home and it still stunk like old, used grease. On top of that, the genius designers gave it a plastic lid, which in the hands of genius college kids became part of the oil when one of us placed it on the Fry Daddy without turning said Fry Daddy off.

The electric knife

Directed use: Cut through large cuts of meat with ease!

Undirected use: Keep drunk partiers in line. Just get a big-ass extension cord and nobody, I mean nobody, will barf on your floor.

The gas grill

Directed use: Cook all sorts of things -- burgers, hot dogs, fish, pizza, shrimp -- without spending 10 years waiting for the *&#^ charcoal to heat up.

Undirected use: Frying off the arm hair of each one of my roommates. A house filled with America's future demonstrated that future by forgetting, on numerous occasions, to open the lid when they started the gas and stuck a match into the little hole to light the grill. BOOM! Some dude mercifully stole it from our back yard one day, which probably saved our house.

The countertop electric grill

Directed use: Grill just about anything (so long as it's really small) in your underpants from the comfort of your home.

Undirected use: Sat in the cupboard gathering dust. One of my roommates brought this home one day, but the ^%$@! thing took about five days to cook through a burger. I had better luck cooking one on a hot sidewalk.

KitchenAid Stand Mixer

Directed use: Do just about everything except knit sweaters. Knead bread, mix pancake mix, cake mix, pie dough. A must for any chef!

Undirected use: HAHAHA! Do you really think that the kitchen gods would allow our house to have one of these things? And that's assuming one of us even knew these mixers existed outside of Julia Child's house. God knows what monstrosity we'd construct using a stand mixer. Of course, now that I'm a responsible adult with the full use of my limbs, it's perfectly OK to make monstrosities with our stand mixer.

God knows what odd appliances you'll find over at humor-blogs.com.

Our weekend in hades

2008-07-29T22:59:00.006-05:00

It's HOT!!!

OK, maybe to some people the weather we've been having up here these past couple of days -- 90-plus degrees and humid -- wouldn't be considered warm enough to complain about. In South Carolina, where the weather typically makes a sauna feel cool, this would be "normal." And indeed, on a trip back here to Minnesota a couple of years ago before I returned permanently, I laughed heartily at my relatives, who were complaining about a measly 89-degree day.

But Minnesota treats its population to conditions more fit for a giant meat freezer for three-quarters of the year. So anything above 80 is considered "hot." Today's temperatures were downright "oppressive."

Still, this is nothing.

Two years ago, in our first summer back to the state and shortly after we bought our current house, our air conditioning decided to stop working.

This event coincided with the worst heat wave to hit the state in at least a decade. Temperatures reached the triple-digits every day.

We discovered this late on a Friday, and was told that a repair guy couldn't come to the house until the following Monday. Fine, I thought. My air conditioner is old, and I have a home warranty. They'll just replace the thing and I'll have myself some a new A/C for free. All I needed to do is survive the weekend.

We explored a few options:

* Move into the refrigerator. All we had to do was eat all the food, remove the shelves, then shut ourselves inside every now and then for as long as the air lasts. Unfortunately, we had a side-by-side fridge at the time, so we wouldn't have been able to fit without losing a heckuva lot of weight first.

* Stay in a hotel. This idea made so much sense we didn't do it.

* Hire midgets to follow us around the house, carrying large fans. I was all ready to do this when The Wife saw the grocery bill and freaked out.

* Spend our entire weekend looking for a gas fireplace.

Clearly, we chose the last one, because I can't think of a better thing to do on an ultra-hot weekend with no air conditioning than to spend it looking for something to make our house hot. At least the fireplace store we visited had working A/C. And bonus, it also had free cookies! So we just "took our time" in the fireplace store, subsisting on free cookies and water from the drinking fountain while keeping The Boy occupied in the tiny playroom the store had -- hey, it had a chalkboard!

At the end of the day, the sales guys offered to give us several free fireplaces if we got the heck out of there. So we did, then we went back home, where we stripped down to our underpants, acquired every working fan in town and retreated to our basement, where it was a refreshing 10 degrees cooler than it was upstairs. In other words, a cup of water didn't start boiling for a half an hour, as opposed to the 10 minutes it took upstairs.

And that's where we stayed. By the end of the weekend, we were each sticky and about 14 pounds lighter. When the repair guys showed up, we greeted them as saviors, showering their paths with palm branches and rose petals as we sang merry tunes accompanied by an accordion and a ukulele.

They went to our back yard and began working. About five minutes later they came back. "Well," I said. "Do you need to replace it? Will we be getting a new A/C? When can you get it done, huh?"

"Oh, we're already done," he said. "It was a fuse. Fixed it right up. $50 please."

My jaw dropped. A FUSE?!? I could have fixed a fuse in about 0.3 seconds! Can't you just pretend it's broken? If you can't, just hit my air conditioning with a hammer. Or look that way, QUICK! No? Was our Weekend in Hell all for naught?

Dang. At least we got a new fireplace out of the weekend.

And at least the post caused some of you to go to humor-blogs.com. Hopefully ...

Bad cat day

2008-07-28T21:36:00.002-05:00

I had to take both of my cats to the vet today. One may be too big and too old to be fixed, assuming that a just-in-case round of antibiotics doesn't help. The other, younger cat has diabetes. Dammit.

I'd say I had a bad cat day.

I got both doses of bad news intertwined with one another. It's a little difficult to think about daily glucose monitoring and regular insulin shots for an animal when you're already pondering the likely demise of a cat who has spent the last decade watching movies from the comfort of your chest.

Suffice it to say, I'm not feeling entirely up to a typical post this evening. Sorry about that, but thanks for listening. Now I'm going to go pet my cat.

So I walked into a women's bathroom ...

2008-07-26T10:02:00.004-05:00

The men's bathroom at my workplace is above average, which means that on most days you go in there and it has soap and toilet paper and the smell doesn't immediately send you to the hospital with potentially fatal respiratory problems. Otherwise, it's pretty typical and dull. It has a singular purpose, and if I need to inform you of that purpose well ...

I work for a small company, and on Friday I was the last person in the building, making it my job to make sure all the lights were turned off. Upon walking past the women's restroom, I noticed a light coming from the crack in the door

Hmmmm, I thought. I'm pretty sure nobody is here. Yet I knocked anyway -- I've mistakenly walked into a women's restroom before in my life, and dread the idea of doing so again. After receiving no answer, I went inside.

Wow.

The bathroom was glorious, with pictures on the wall, potpourri hanging from the ceiling between the two sinks, which had designer soaps. The walls were painted some color, but because of my temporary nice-bathroom blindness I forgot what color they were. In the corner a string quartet was playing Mozart and there was a side room with three plush sofas facing a big-screen TV showing Fried Green Tomatoes on a continuous loop.

I'm going to guess that this is not atypical for a women's bathroom, which leads me to this question: how do you dare use such wonderfully decorated rooms to perform regular bodily functions generally considered by the populace at-large to be disgusting? I'd be so afraid of messing up the room's feng shui that I'd drive to the nearest gas station to perform my business.

This now explains a former coworker's rant about the women's bathroom at a place I used to work. Apparently, one of our fellow female coworkers had a tendency to, shall we say, miss the mark, and was about as considerate as a wild animal. In other words, she never cleaned it up. Coworker No. 1 ranted about this, loudly and in public, whenever she got the opportunity.

And that's the difference: a guy would not rant about such things, because we expect nastiness whenever we enter a public facility with a dude on the door. In fact, we're liable to wax poetic whenever we run into a bathroom that doesn't have that problem.

I guarantee that Humor-blogs.com doesn't stink. Well, at least not in an unclean-potty sort-of fashion.

Talua is NOT doing the hula

2008-07-24T19:21:00.004-05:00

The Wife's ever-expanding mid-section serves as a constant reminder of the enormous task awaiting us: picking out a name for the dude growing there.

This is damn hard, especially because it's a boy. It'd be a piece of cake if we had a girl -- heck, we could succeed in naming a girl simply by closing our eyes and pointing to a list of car models, like Sierra. You don't even have to worry about gender -- just co-opt a boy's name that you like, such as Hunter, or Mackenzie, or Jordan! Who cares if boys will never be able to use those names again? And if that doesn't work, just add an 'A' at the end, like Davida!

With boys, however, you have to take special care to make sure that name will not cause him a life of pain and anguish. It cannot be thought of as a girl's name. It can't in any way be associated with a bodily function or, worse, a body part (Any Dicks out there?). The initials can't be used to spell anything vulgar -- say, nobody named Smith should name their boy Andrew Samuel. And for the love of all that's holy it shouldn't be used in a song. It'd frankly be better if the name didn't rhyme with anything whatsoever.

It should be easily to spell, pronounce, and can't be overly dorky. Too bad for me, because I'm Norwegian and that pretty much eliminates any name from the homeland. If you find a Norwegian name you can spell and pronounce it probably sounds like it'd fit better on a Tolkein character than on a 21st century American boy. Should I name my kid Arinbjorn? How about Galmir?

When you think of a few names, incidentally, it's always wise to keep those options from anybody, because people will actually tell you what they think -- I don't want their opinions! We named our first boy Owen. In the weeks preceding his birth we made the mistake of telling some people that we were considering that name, but weren't entirely sure. "WHAT? Are you NUTS? What kind of nutty, goofy, brain-dead name is that?!? You should be strung up by your toenails and spat upon in the public square for doing that to the poor, poor child! PTOO! PTOO!"

Unfortunately, there are some parents whose child naming decisions do, in fact, warrant the Mussolini treatment, and that's why one of humanity's top people is Rob Murfitt.

I don't know Rob Murfitt from from a random schmuck on the street. But I do know he's from New Zealand, and he's a judge, and he should qualify for hero status for his recent decision making a 9-year-old girl there the ward of the court. The reason? So he could give her a decent name, unlike the one her parents stuck her with.

The name: Talua Does the Hula from Hawaii.

No, you didn't read that wrong. I got it off the Internet, so it has to be true.

I'd like to think that the name is simply the result of New Zealand being upside-down and that having affected the reasoning of certain people there, but an unfortunately large number of baby-name weirdos reside here, too.

You know these people, they have last names like Roberts, Johnson and Michael and name their children Robert, John and Michael, respectively.

Or they're the people at a South Carolina hospital who named their kids Lemonjello and Orangello. (That's Lemon Jello and Orange Jello, in case you couldn't tell.)

But that's nothing. One evening, shortly after college when I had to take birth announcements for the local newspaper -- back before privacy laws made such announcements punishable by, I think, death -- the nurse gave me that day's list. It included the following name, and I swear I'm not kidding: Metallica ACDC. I can't remember the last name.

Hmmm ... maybe naming my kid after an Elvish prince wouldn't be so bad, after all.

Want to read about more baby names? Go here!

Oh, wait. That link didn't have anything to do with baby names. How'd that happen?