Simple Man's Survival Guide

Boundarylessness

2012-02-03T15:07:00.001-06:00

Passport Problems

2011-08-05T08:53:00.004-05:00

This just in: The Philadelphia Eagles have signed the 44th President of the United States of America, Barack Obama.

Why not? They've got everybody else. Realistically, it would probably have the same results as the Denver Broncos drafting Tim Tebow. Yeah, he'll sell a lot of jerseys and be really popular, but if you put him in a close game, he'll buckle under the pressure, hand the ball off to the other team, personally deliver a signed copy of your playbook to the opposing coaches after he gets back to the bench and then he'll sign a deal that guarantees his team will lose.

I don't discriminate when it comes to politics anymore: I hate everyone. At this point I'd be willing to vote for a ticket with Roger Goodell and DeMaurice Smith, because while it may take them some time to solve a problem, it does eventually get done. Perhaps they would force Ben Bernanke to pack his bags and give his spot to Bill Belichick. The Hoodie can squeeze a nickel until the buffalo craps, and I guarantee you that guy will not pump a penny into the economy unless he feels it is absolutely necessary. Defense spending will finally be cut and offensive players will be picked up based on value instead of being grossly overpaid. Maybe that team would stabilize the economy in such a way that I wouldn't have to worry about the stock market sinking 500 points in one day and dropping to its knees faster than a Waffle House waitress when Tiger Woods walks through the door. I bet if that goon squad was running the show, I wouldn't have been denied a passport.

A few months ago my wife booked a cruise that will temporarily take us outside the friendly confines of the U.S. later this year. Because I've never had a passport, I made my way down to the local postal office and spent one hour filling out a five page application that covered everything from where I was born to where I lost my virginity. I submitted the form, paid my money, gave them my official birth certificate and moved along, expecting to get a passport in the mail a few months later.

However, I got an e-mail from the passport office stating that the information I provided was insufficient and they needed to conduct an anal probe, followed up by an interrogation under a heat lamp while wearing a Heretic's Fork, followed by a waterboarding session before they could grant me a passport. I had to fill out another seven pages worth of questions detailing every location I have ever lived, every school I have ever gone to, every place I have ever worked and every building I have ever farted in. Determined not to be rejected, I provided so much information I almost couldn't fit all of the paperwork into the over sized envelope they provided and had to use a small box. I almost took my wife's advice and put a dollop of ketchup and another dollop of mayonnaise on the paperwork, circled each of them and wrote "Blood" beneath the ketchup and "Semen" beneath the mayo. Oh, don't make a noise like I'm the sick one. You know that when you're in a restaurant and you send a steak back for the second time that there's a 90 percent chance some 17 year old is going to do something the Devil himself would not approve of to it. Well, the same rule swings into effect when you request more information from someone who has already done everything but supply a stool sample and walk into a private room with a dirty DVD and a cup to make you happy. If I knew that I would get to see the look on the prick's face who opened that letter, I would have done it, but as it was, I already had enough questions surrounding my allegiance to this country. And after everything I've gone through, I can say with a high level of certainty that if people from outside of this country knew how hard it would be to get back out, Canada would have a higher population.

On second thought, that's a waste of quality ketchup and mayo that will be better served on a hamburger while I'm busy watching the St. Louis Rams get railroaded yet again, waiting for my passport to come in the mail.

[Editorial Note: This column is part of a series on current events for the United Tech Guys. Stop by and check them out.]

Netflix Hate, Google+ Love

2011-07-14T07:50:00.016-05:00

Instead of Netflix's trademark red envelopes, customers of the company received a big red middle finger via e-mail this week.

My wife and I currently have the plan where we get two DVDs at any time and access to Watch Instantly content, which is essentially the worst B movies from the last 30 years. There are at least 30 movies like Timecop, Under Siege 2 and The Toxic Avenger for every one Pulp Fiction, and after you get past the handful of quality films, it's like an all-you-can-watch Pauly Shore and Steven Seagal movie buffet, which sounds like something you torture people with rather than ask them to pay for. I can already hear customer customer service reps saying, "Oh, you didn't pay this month. Well, all you can watch is Steven Seagal: Lawman and Bio-Dome until you do. Thanks!"

To express my displeasure, I'm considering stuffing steaming cat turds inside a couple of Thank You cards, placing those cards in the iconic red envelopes containing our most recent round of movies and sending them back. Yes I'm that mad, yes I'm that childish, and yes we have cats. So if there's a funk about your house that arrived the same day you got discs 4 and 5 from the third season of True Blood, your dog doesn't have a problem with his diet; it's definitely the discs.

All that being said, we are downgrading to Watch Instantly because we're the type of people who get a Netflix DVD in the mail and instantly lock it away in a secret compartment we didn't even know we had for a year until we flip the house upside down looking for it. We've had Netflix for about three years and we've probably exchanged 15 DVDs, five of which were season 3 of True Blood over the last week and a half. We can live with the Watch Instantly content because our daughter likes watching VeggieTales, and if we cancel Netflix entirely, the first coherent words out of her mouth may be, "Mommy. Daddy. VeggieTales, now -- motherf#@kers." Aside from that, my wife likes the workout videos, and I'm trying to watch Bachelor Party in the Bungalow of the Damned 100 times so I can submit that to Guinness and see if they'll credit me with some kind of world record. Everyone needs a dream, and I figure if there's room for the world's fastest knitter (118 stitches in 1 minute) and the world's fastest person to husk a coconut with his teeth (28 seconds), there's room for me and my ability to tolerate an exceptionally bad movie an insufferable number of times.

After setting a Guinness record for the world's largest technology company to make the most social media applications ignored by the general population, it looks like Google finally got it right with Google+, which is essentially Facebook without all of the stuff you don't like (eg, being notified every four seconds that someone wants to sell you moldy zucchini bread in CafeWorld) and more of the stuff you actually want (eg, the ability to act like your friends with someone but then put them in a circle where you can safely ignore them -- just like in real life). But I haven't figured out if this is how it will always be, or if it's just this way until Zynga finds a way to plant it's crappy seeds in the Google ecosystem. I can't help but feel like it's only a matter of time before some prick I don't actually like, who I know can't cook, is asking me to buy fake space cakes from some other jerk off I don't even know so he can afford to feed his cattle in FarmVille so they don't die so he can trade those cattle for guns in Mafia Wars so he can amass a pretend fortune that he will gamble away playing Zynga Poker. Right now, Google+ looks like Alcoholics Anonymous for Facebook game addicts. I can already envision a guy in a Google+ hangout room clinging to a token saying, "Hi. My name is Will, and I haven't spammed anyone for 1 year asking them to buy my crappy pretend cookies."

At least I don't have to deal with the porn spam bots that are running the show at Twitter. A few days ago I started getting excited because I was attracting a lot of followers. Stupid me. I thought somebody actually cared about the drivel I've been cluttering the Interwebs with. So I started looking through the profiles of my minions and, low and behold, almost every single one of them worked for the equivalent of Paul's Porn Palace. I probably would've kept them around if I weren't afraid that my mother would read some of their profiles that all read something to the effect of, "Hey! My name's Nadia! Visit my site and watch me ____ this ________ in my ____ on a _________ WHILE running through hoops of fire with a midget on my back WHILE playing a _______ with a ____! Act quick and I'll also _______ a donkey while doing all of that! See you soon in Utah!" It's like reading a dirty version of the script for Old Spice's original "The Man Your Man Can Smell Like" commercial. Some of the things these people say is stuff that the horniest little Japanese anime geek couldn't dream up if you gave him Absinthe and acid, then locked him in a padded room for 12 hours with a dull pencil and a notepad and pumped in nothing but Lady Gaga through some speakers. Actually, scratch that. That's probably how The Toxic Avenger came about.

[Editorial Note: This column is part of a series on current events for the United Tech Guys. Stop by and check them out.]

Epic Twitter Fail

2011-07-07T08:05:00.007-05:00

To revise a line from the wise and sage-like Hunter S. Thompson, I feel the same way about Twitter as I do about herpes.

Last week I finally caved in and signed up for a Twitter account. Ever since then I've been glued to my computer monitor, refreshing the screen and waiting for either a gateway to the magical Kingdom of Narnia to open up or message to pop up asking me to resign. I would also like to clear the air right now about my willing/unwilling participation in a real/fake sex scandal that did/sadly didn't happen. Don't cry for former Representative Anthony Weiner; he brought that on himself. The only way it could have been more obvious where that picture was going to go is if the button he clicked to post it said, "Click here to show your d**k to the world." Moron.

I've boycotted Twitter since it started ruining people's lives in 2006, because in case you can't tell, I'm not one for brevity. I can't write about a fart, opening a can of Pringles or brushing my teeth in less than 140 characters, and I was doing just fine without that kind of pressure -- until I started my blog.

There are few things as exciting as starting a blog where you can share all of your world-changing, witty insights. On the flip side, there's equally nothing as depressing as realizing that more people watched and liked the movie Battlefield Earth or would confess in public to thinking Casey Anthony was innocent than read your blog on a weekly basis. So, in an effort to drive traffic to my blog, I decided to follow that little blue bastard bird icon everyone seems to love so much straight down the rabbit hole and into the vortex of weirdness that is Twitter. Charlie Sheen has inhaled more white powder than a guy working on the bagging line at a flour factory and he's got 4.3 million followers. Sure, his Bob Dylan-esque mumbling with the occasional coherent rant about trolls, warlocks and Tiger Blood combined with the when's-he-gonna-OD-and-die factor accounted for most of it, but I can't help but feel like I offer people a little more substance. Not much, but a little.

I know I'm one of the last people in the United States to get a Twitter account because my wife has one. My wife is like some kind of weird Technology Devil. Everything technological she touches wilts and dies. She's in her early 30's, but in tech time she's on par with Andy Rooney, and I'm pretty sure that old buzzard still winds up both his car and his radio, and if you gave him an iPhone he'd probably throw it back at you, yell "Grenade!" and waddle away seeking cover. She finally traded in her mid-90's, bulletproof, Zach Morris-style cell phone for an iPhone 4 a few weeks ago. She's still adjusting to some of the more modern amenities like the lack of an antenna, the relatively light weight, the lack of a bag and physical buttons, and that she doesn't have to chisel the words into the screen like it was a rock tablet and then mail the phone to someone to send a text message.

So I signed up for Twitter, posted the annoying "Follow Me" banner on the side of my blog and waited for the magic to happen. Nothing. I gave it a few hours. Still nothing. I went to bed, woke up the next morning and logged into Twitter, certain the Twitter Fairy would leave me a few followers, only to find nary a digital fart on my page. Depression was setting in. It's one thing to suck in real life but it's something completely different to be told you suck by a pixelated blue bird.

It's been nearly two weeks since I sold my soul to the Twitter Devil, and the little blue bastard bird has yet to pay out. I realize I'm not terribly exciting and I probably need to Tweet more, but I only have a meager three followers, one of whom is a spam bot.

I don't plan on bailing on Twitter anytime soon, but if it continues to give me the cold shoulder I'll just have my wife make a trek through the company's headquarters -- chisel in hand.

[Editorial Note: This column is part of a series on current events for the United Tech Guys. Stop by and check them out.]

Dr Simple Man or: How I Learned to Start Worrying and Hate the Debt Bomb

2011-06-29T22:16:00.009-05:00

If the government insists on dragging out cracking the debt conundrum, we're gonna need to expedite the legalization of pot, because that's the only way I'm gonna be able to focus long enough to learn one of the 14 Chinese languages.

Whenever all of the news about this impending debt bomb that we're on the brink of becomes too much for me, I go to a place in my mind where there's a monkey humping a coconut for a few minutes to clear my thoughts, and then I smile and go on to read about a different subject -- like the mating turtles who shut down the runway at JFK airport.

The political pandering over what to do about our mounting debt makes me sick, but at least I've been making an attempt to learn more about this sad subject, which is more than I can say for Vice President Joe Biden, who fell asleep a few months ago during the president's speech on the crisis. If I were the second man in line to push the red button, I'd be awake. I bet Democrats breathed a sigh of relief when they saw the shot of him snoozing away, because when Joe's awake he has a bad habit of talking. Listening to Biden speak is like reading the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies mashup novel. Remember when he called "jobs" a three-letter word? Remember when he told Senator Chuck Graham from Missouri (who is in a wheelchair) to stand up? And let's not forget when he called Candidate Obama "Barack America." It takes me back to when President George W. Bush waved at Stevie Wonder. You don't remember that? Neither does Stevie Wonder.

And who in the Hell thought President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner were going to reach some kind of decision over a game of golf a few weeks ago? Give me a break. Maybe the yuppies in Martha's Vineyard who spent the whole day wearing sweater vests, racing sailboats and sipping Henri IV Dudognon Heritage cognac were waiting with baited breath, but the other 99.999 percent of us knew it was just a smoke grenade. If they really wanted to reach some kind of resolution, they would have traded in their golf clubs for 4-ounce gloves and gone for three 5-minute rounds in the Octagon. Herb Dean would make them throw punches, and if they both refused, he would choke them both out.

Sadly, Congressman Ron Paul may be the smartest one of all. Last night it finally dawned on me why he wants to get his grubby old man hands on the gold in Fort Knox: He wants to make sure there's enough there for the government to buy 1 share of Facebook stock on the secondary market and then sell it into the IPO to help pay down our country's debt. But as fast as the secondary market prices for Facebook are rising, I don't know if $160 billion dollars will cut it. I can already feel some people reading this and thinking, "That's the stupidest idea I've ever heard." I'll concede, his audit of our gold stash is a bit ridiculous, as it would cost $15 million, and even if we sold all of our gold reserves and not just what was in Fort Knox we'd only rake in roughly $390 billion, which still leaves us with just under $14 trillion dollars in debt that will probably grow to $20 trillion by the time someone reads this crappy column. Perhaps Paul should be beat with a rolled-up version of the president's long-form birth certificate by Donald Trump while The Don is screaming, "Look how this worked out for me, you idiot!", but are you going to tell me it's a worse idea than investing in Citigroup or AIG when we did that? Sure, we can feed a family of four off the Dollar Menu at McDonald's with what we made on Citigroup, but at last check I think we're losing money on our investment in AIG, and if you've been watching tech stocks on IPO day lately (ie, Renren, LinkedIn and Pandora), you'd almost be stupid not to buy shares of them in advance if you can get them and if you can stomach it, and you'd be really stupid not to sell them on the pop within the first two hours and take a nice little gain before the bottom drops out.

But what do I know, I'm just a Simple Man -- who needs to brush up on his Mandarin.

[Editorial Note: This is the first column I'm writing as part of a series of columns on current events for http://unitedtechguys.com/. Stop by and check them out. Also, I am not certified in any way to give financial advice, so please don't take this as such. Taking financial advice from a humor columnist can be bad for your bank account.]

Warrior Dash, Tough Mudder and Why I May Not Live Through the Year

2011-06-23T21:54:00.015-05:00

My wife, myself and some of our friends ran the Warrior Dash this past Saturday, and Wednesday was the first day I didn’t limp up the stairwell at work while fighting back tears. I spent the first half of this week walking in such an awkward manner that I was waiting for someone in my department to throw a frozen bag of peas on my desk and ask how my vasectomy went.

If you don't know what Warrior Dash is, good for you. Stop reading this blog post now and send me an e-mail thanking me for saving you about $200, your pride and full use of your legs for one additional week this year. For those of you with a mild disregard for your life, Warrior Dash is a 3.4 mile run through a hilly, muddy cow pasture littered with about 12 obstacles: climbing walls, cargo nets, guys wearing Speedo shorts two sizes too small, fire pits, mud pits and Marky Mark lookalikes walking the course because they forgot that getting oxygen to all those muscles is an obstacle in and of itself. When we finished, we limped over to the beer tent and then went down to watch everyone else who wished they were dead wade through the mud pit and cross the finish line, including a guy dressed like the Dirt Cheap Chicken. In spite of the pain, it was a pretty fun weekend. But being manly men, we have to keep going one step further until we’re up to our eyeballs in quicksand before we think about tapping the brakes.

In the days leading up to the race, my buddies mentioned that if things went well at Warrior Dash we should look into doing Tough Mudder, which is essentially Warrior Dash on speed. For those of you with a total disregard for your life, Tough Mudder is a 12-mile mud course with about 25 obstacles that was supposedly dreamed up by members of the British Special Forces. The obstacles are a bit more intense than Warrior Dash, and the final obstacle is a 20-yard jaunt through dangling electrical wires charged with 10,000 volts. I don't know exactly how to quantify that much electricity going through your body, but I don't think it would tickle, and if you have a pacemaker or a metal plate in your head and Tough Mudder is on your bucket list, I'd make it the last thing you do. Because nothing says "Congratulations, you've almost made it through an already-evil, 12 mile run that you paid to take part in" like making someone sit in an electric chair 10 feet before the finish line. I'm guessing the photos of people convulsing their way across the finish line aren't hot sellers. I could see my wife 20 years from now showing our daughter that picture saying, "...and the doctors think this is one of the contributing factors that led to the development of Daddy Dumb Things' stuttering problem, and why he randomly wets himself every time he uses the letter 'b.'" Were shock collars too expensive? You could have everyone wear one and then draw random numbers to see who gets zapped every couple of minutes. Take it to the next level and give BINGO cards out to spectators. Not only could B3 give someone the diagonal BINGO they were looking for, it could also bring the prick who picked on him in high school crumpling to his knees. Try telling me that's not a wee bit satisfying and wouldn't sell spectator tickets. And I’m sorry, but the only way the Brits had a hand in this is if they were in a bar with a bunch of drunk Americans and told the Americans that this is what their training course looked like in the interest of seeing if they were stupid enough to do it. With hundreds of thousands of people running the Tough Mudder this year, we know who won that one. The highlight videos on the website that are supposed to motivate you to sign up show an unconscious guy being carried off on a stretcher, another guy screaming in pain as his buddies carry him off the course and another guy laying in the fetal position looking like he’s being prepped for a neck brace. If I wanted to ensure I could not have any more children, I’d just have the vasectomy; it’s probably cheaper and I don't have to run 12 miles to make it happen.

And how do you train for something like Tough Mudder? I figure I could attach a remote control leg to the front of a treadmill and program it to kick randomly. Then I'd douse myself in water, hook some jumper cables up to my car and then hook the other end of the jumper cables to my nipples. I'd start running and after a few minutes I'd have my wife start the car. If I live through more than five seconds of that without convulsing on the floor in a pile of my own excrement, I'll have to deal with the random shots to the nuts coming from the robotic leg directly in front of me. I figure after I build myself up to handle about two hours of that at a time, I think I'll be ready for the Tough Mudder.

Because I'm an idiot, I've already committed to doing Tough Mudder in November in Indiana with some friends. Our wives, however, are likely out for the race, but you can probably find them at the finish line with cameras, shirts that say "I'm with stupid" and bags of frozen peas.

[Editor's Note: Don't forget to check out the guest blog this week from Tim Jones, author of View from the Bleachers, in the Guest Blogs link at the top of the page. For the truly lazy, you can just click here.]

Baby Safety Weekend

2011-06-16T12:44:00.009-05:00

Last weekend we babyproofed our house, and now I feel like I have to crack the DaVinci Code just to use my toilet.

About one month after our daughter was born, my wife started banging the babyproofing drum, acting like our daughter, whose resume highlights at the time included filling diapers, keeping us awake all night and refusing to eat, was going to wake up one morning and say, "Man, I can't wait to drink out of the toilet, run up and down the stairs and throw a cat in the dryer today." Eventually my wife realized that Tootie wasn't going to wake up one morning and suddenly start acting like me, and that we didn't need to babyproof right away. (I've been told by my mother that at a young age I put our family cat in the freezer because the cat "looked hot." Yes, by the grace of God, the cat survived.)

When our daughter turned 4 months old, my wife started casually bring up that we needed to start thinking about babyproofing the house. Over the course of the next month it escalated to her threatening to empty the diaper pail on my face in the middle of the night if I didn't get on board with babyproofing. If you've ever been within a three-mile radius of a diaper pail that's open, you know you'd rather pick up roadkill for a week with your teeth than have even one of those pails dumped on your head. So, on one of our meccas to Babies R' Us my wife went rogue and cleaned out the Safety section because the Internet and Dr Sears had whipped her into an absolute panic that something would happen to our daughter, who to that point had shown more interest in attempting to de-fur the cats than learning to walk. Every time my wife initiates the "Do you wanna have another baby?" conversation I revisit the fact that I've never seen anyone in Babies R' Us smiling and everyone in that store is beating their children, which gives me the total confidence I need to say "I'd rather gauge my eyes out with olive forks."

I didn't look at anything my wife threw into the cart at the Babies R' Us, partly because it looked like it was going to cost a fortune and partly because my objection would have been overruled and I would have been given the "You mean you don't love you daughter enough to buy padded bumpers for the crib" lecture. All I could think was that this is only the beginning. Right now I'm installing locks on the toilets to prevent her from drinking toilet water, tomorrow we'll be burning down our house and living in a teepee because BabyCenter.com has an article claiming that brown plastic siding on a house stunts a child's growth. What you don't know at that moment is that in one week your wife will find something wrong with those padded bumpers and you'll have to get breathable bumpers. Two weeks later, your wife will wake up in a panic in the middle of the night worried the breathable bumpers, as part of some sick conspiracy, aren't actually breathable, and of course you'll have to remove those, putting you back at square one with $70 less in your wallet and two sets of bumpers you haven't got room to store.

I was able to put the bulk of the process off for a few more months until this past weekend. A month ago I caved in and installed the cabinet locks. Now whenever I yank open a cabinet without disengaging the cabinet lock, my arm almost gets jerked out of its socket because the cabinet door only opens about a half an inch before stopping abruptly; I can live with that. My wife put the little foam covers on the edges of the coffee table; I can live with those as well. The trouble started when I installed the baby gate at the top of the stairwell. After two hours and re-drilling three sets of screw holes for the gate in an effort to get everything lined up perfectly otherwise a flea fart would knock it over, my wife walked through the gate a few times and deemed the gate unsafe because she thought she would trip over the bar along the bottom of the gate and go flying down the steps with the baby. The next morning she took the gate down and said we'd only put the gate up in certain situations. I doubt I'll ever be reimbursed for that little two hour adventure. Next, she wanted me to put a toilet seat lock on top of my toilet seat. If I ever find the jerk wad who invented toilet locks, I'm going to beat him unconscious. Sure you can unlock the device with one hand, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. The part of the lock that sticks to the tank is so large that you have to keep one leg pressed against the seat lid while you're going to the bathroom so it doesn't fall down, causing you to pee all over yourself and the bathroom. After a trial run that nearly resulted in the worst case scenario, I deemed the lock in my bathroom a risk to our marriage and removed it from the toilet and put it safely in the garbage, where it will never put another man at risk of peeing all over himself in my bathroom again. While I was working to avoid wetting myself, my wife installed the lock on the dryer and put a plastic cover on the downstairs door handle. The dryer lock is a pain in the butt, but I can live with it. The plastic ball on the door handle, however, is the crudest use of two ounces of plastic I have ever seen. It's a mental and physical endurance test on par with trying to solve that stupid little triangle game with the wooden pegs at Cracker Barrel while going through a basic training course. I caught myself sweating like I'd been running for half an hour after just five minutes of trying to open the door. When I got done, I had a healthy respect for Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill and Tantalus reaching for the fruit. I'm going to give it a few months and file that plastic door handle cover near my old toilet seat lock when my wife's not looking.

I've concluded that this battle won't end until our daughter is wrapped in a 4-inch thick layer of bubble wrap and donning a ThudGuard. I don't care if you're a boy or a girl, if you're under the age of 4, nothing screams "Walk up and hit me in the face" quite like a ThudGuard. You're probably thinking it's a miracle I haven't offed myself by now because I have a house full of stuff that I can only look but can't use. Believe me, I would have, but there are child-safety locks on the oven.

World's Worst First Vehicle

2011-06-08T00:03:00.012-05:00

I get a little teary eyed thinking about my first vehicle. Not because it was a classic car or a hot rod or anything like that, but because I start thinking about the smoke seeping into the cab caused by the oil burning off the transmission after the transmission blew up while I was driving down the road.

The vehicle was a 1977 Chevy Scottsdale truck, and I eventually pulled over to the side of the road, eyes burning and lungs filling with filth; both myself, and sadly the truck, survived. The truck had one gas tank on each side, ensuring that no matter which side someone hit me on, I would be reduced to a pork rind while the truck rolled on. The Scottsdale was like a touchy grenade with a clip at each end. It didn't help that the beast got what felt like 5 miles per gallon and almost went through one tank on the way to school and the other one on the way back, ensuring that I never had any money, even with gas costing about $1.30 in 1997. The gaping hole in the floorboard where I could see straight through to the road wasn't really a feature I appreciated, and there was really no good way to cover it up. If it was snowing outside the truck it would seem like it was snowing inside the truck, and turning on the heater or air conditioner often did nothing more than fog up the windows, giving me just one more obstacle to get past.

All in all, if that truck was a racehorse, it would have been put down long before it got to me. It started out with my grandfather who lived on a farm and used it as a work truck. When grandpa passed away, the truck wound up with my mom and dad on our farm. My dad, ever the innovator, ripped the traditional truck bed off and put a flatbed on it. He went on to put a giant water tank on the flatbed that was connected to two 6-foot booms (extensions with spray nozzles hooked up) so he could load the water tank up with random chemicals and apply those chemicals to fields. I'm not so sure that the nozzles didn't leak, which may have resulted in us dripping contagion and killing everything wherever we went. To control and monitor all of the spray equipment, he wired up the cab of the truck so it looked like the inside of an airplane cockpit or the Bat mobile. As a 7 year old, I was impressed, and it wasn't uncommon for me to spend a Saturday afternoon with dad in the spray truck, happily inhaling whatever poison we were spreading for hours on end. I'm fairly certain there were times when I got out and walked in an area where we'd sprayed and the bottoms of my shoes would start to sizzle. If the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services had gotten wind of this, I'm pretty sure my parents would still be in jail.

Eventually, the truck was decommissioned and parked in one of the barns, seemingly never to be heard from again. As time wore on I razzed my parents about getting me a vehicle. They warned me, "You're getting the spray truck," but I didn't believe them. I figured I'd finagle some kind of deal and weasel my way into something a little more comfortable than the rolling gas chamber they were offering. However, my parents stuck to their guns and not long after I turned 16 my dad and I walked out to the truck to see if we could get it running.

The entire truck was covered in dirt, the seats were severely cracked and the residue from the chemical cocktail that had been stewing in the truck for the better part of seven years had left the inside of the cab stained a pee-colored yellow. There were bird nests and cobwebs, and at some point probably squirrels and racoons among a whole slew of bugs that even Rainforest scientists would stare in disbelief at. I would say that it looked like a homeless person had been living there, but I'm fairly certain that if you pulled someone straight off of Skid Row and offered him a night's stay in that truck in that condition, he would pee one of the tires, throw a Jack Daniels bottle through the window, laugh at you and walk away. After dad replaced some of the primary components that were in questionable shape, he put the key in the ignition and fired it up -- literally. After a few minutes where it literally sounded like rocks were being rattled around in a tin can and an explosion that nearly ripped the hood right off the beast, the truck started running with some form of consistency. It sounded more like we were at a Civil War re-enactment than starting a vehicle, partially because not all of the cylinders were hitting and partially because dad had taken the liberty of installing a muffler system that made it sound like a Howitzer was being fired from the back of the truck every 10 seconds. Needless to say, I never recall being tailgated. I suspect that was because any prospective tailgaters either choked on the fumes and ran into the ditch, or were frightened by the Howitzer shots and ran into the ditch. For good measure, dad gave the accelerator a healthy push and there was a squeak just before a mouse nest was launched from the exhaust pipe. In retrospect the mice were probably the lucky ones, as we moved them away from the chemicals.

Outside of my initial shock and disappointment, the 1977 Scottsdale and I had a good run. It shuttled me to and from school, various practices and other randomness for the next year, and absorbed punishment like no vehicle I would own after it without showing a scratch. After a year, I upgraded to a more comfortable used vehicle that didn't smell like Roundup. In retrospect, it's a wonder I made it to where I am in life after sniffing stale farm chemicals for 40 minutes per day going to and from school during that time. The good thing is that the truck is still alive, and I'm armed with an answer for my daughter when she asks what type of vehicle she's getting when she turns 16: "You're getting the spray truck."

Why I Smell Funny

2011-05-31T23:19:00.003-05:00

"Maggie crapped on your pillow."

There are about 10,000 other things I'd rather have heard from my wife while I was out of town for work, like: "We're gonna need to save for a new vacuum cleaner," "The little monster across the street is using your brand new car as a backstop for his baseball," or "I'm leaving you for the local Walmart greeter."

You never want to hear that one of your three cats has gone rogue and deposited something that looks like six Lincoln Logs wrapped together on anything you own, let alone where you rest your head at night. Because I'm a nice guy, I gave Maggie the benefit of the doubt, even though there are two distinct ways to tell if she is the culprit: 1) if it looks like an elephant broke into your house and crapped on the floor, or 2) when you come home and Maggie isn't in her typical spot on the living room couch or in the bedroom, but rather hiding under the center of the bed -- perfectly out of reach. But Maggie didn't get a chance to run that time, because my wife saw the bushy bandit committing the crime, which pretty much sealed the deal.

I then asked my wife if she punished Maggie, her little bundle of joy, after she caught her. Normally my wife is all about capital punishment. She's not a gambler, but if the state of Missouri sold raffle tickets to see who got to flip the switch at an electrocution, she'd probably buy a few. She said she tried to punish Maggie, but she couldn't help laughing about the matter the entire time she was doing it. I can only imagine that the beating hardly amounted to more than a rigorous petting between fits of laughter, and probably ended with her laughing so hard that she wet herself.

But my wife must have done something, because since that dark day Maggie has not used my pillow as her own personal dumping ground; however, she will randomly refuse to poop in the litterbox and she has peed on everything I own at least three times. Obviously, Maggie did not want me moving in with her protector, and she can usually be caught displaying her discontent with the current living situation by urinating on any of my clothes laying unattended on my bathroom floor between 6 p.m. and 6:30 a.m., and on those very special days, she pees in my office.

One night I placed some clean clothes on my office couch. A few hours later I grabbed a pair of shorts out of the pile and wore them around that evening. While my wife and I were downstairs watching a movie, I couldn't help but notice the smell of cat urine had been lingering. I asked my wife if she smelled it. She said no. I made a few laps around the basement and smell was everywhere. Usually the smell just rests in one place, but the entire downstairs was rank. I went back over to my wife and declared that somehow, over the course of the last half an hour, one of the cats managed to pee on every nook, every corner, and on every thread of carpet in the basement. She started sniffing, and then declared, "I think it's your shorts." Sure enough, they were slightly damp, and in the hour that I left my previously clean shorts unattended, Maggie had taken it upon herself to urinate all over them.

We have tried every remedy that PetSmart has to offer, every Internet solution I can find, and every brand of Febreze at Schnucks -- I have even tried being nice to the lousy creature -- but nothing seems to work. I've done everything short of calling Cesar Millan to see if he has any suggestions for cat owners.

So until we get this problem fixed, I'll be the guy walking around and smelling like cat pee. And with my luck Maggie will probably outlive me -- and pee on my grave when I die.

***Author's Note: I published this article elsewhere on the Web last year but retained the rights to it. I've got a lot of stuff going on this week and thought it would be a good time to move this post onto my personal Web space.

A Letter to My Daughter

2011-05-24T23:32:00.014-05:00

Dear Tootie,

That's what I decided to call you when you were about 3 days old -- Tootie McWhistlebottom. Sadly for you, it looks like it's going to stick -- like I've learned baby poop does to pretty much anything, including cats. I'll occasionally throw in a Scooty McBooty or call you by your middle name just to keep you on your toes, but as it stands today you're nearly 7 months old, and there's no indication you have any idea what your real name is. For all we know you will think you're name is Kiwi (one of the cats), which is probably fine because she doesn't know her name either as a result of me constantly calling her anything other than the name I gave her. If you ever get mad about the nickname Tootie as you get older, I'll simply regale you with tales of how you used to make your mother and I feel like we'd been beaten mercilessly by Republican Guard torture experts for days on end after trying to feed you your bottle -- every four hours. Your mother may never recover, and what little hair and pride I had left now below to the Gerber Gods.

Thank you for making fart noises cool again. Without you I would just be a creepy 29 year old with an obsession for making random fart noises. However, as long as I'm making fart sounds in the vicinity of you, I'm just being a dad. I will probably flash back to all of these hour-long conversations we are having in Fartese someday when you're 16 and telling me how big of an a-hole I am because I won't let you go on a date with some 21-year-old prick who goes by the name Bones. Embarrassing moment: There was a time when you were sitting in your playpen grabbing your toes when suddenly you unloaded a Luvs killer worthy of its own license plate and blew yourself flat onto your back and then started laughing hysterically and making fart noises. If I'd captured that moment on camera, we'd be living on America's Funniest Home Videos money right now.

You are a binky snob. You will only take a green Soothie binkie. If we try and give you any other binky you look at us like we robbed all of the premium beer from your fridge and replaced it with Stag. I don't know what it is about a green Soothie binky, but I know that if you get in a mood and it ever takes us more than five minutes to find one, this house is gonna look like a scene straight out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The smack addicts on Intervention complain less when they can't get a hit.

You are a master manipulator. We have been trying to put you to bed around 7PM for the last couple of months, but you won't have any of it. You warm up with a gentle "Wah, wah, wah" and over the course of 10 minutes it escalates to a full-on, face-quivering revolt. Your mother and I will be sitting in the living room, listening on the monitor, pretending not to hear and patiently playing some kind of unspoken, morbid game of Russian Roulette where we wait to see who cracks first and will end up getting you. And the minute we open the door, you stop screaming, smile and reach out your arms, because you know you've got us -- hook, line and stinker. I didn't write the book Go the F*ck to Sleep, but after spending numerous late nights holding a half-asleep baby and watching every episode of Intervention on my iPhone via Netflix twice, I have a healthy respect for whoever wrote it.

You are keeping the cats thin. The critters were just fine with you before you learned how to form a grip. They had taken you in as one of their own, just without fur. Ever since The Great Hair Ripping Incident of 2011 where you got a hold of Maggie and she ran away but you came up with a massive clump of black hair, they've been earning their Fancy Feast.

You have zero desire to crawl. Whenever we put you on the floor, you lay calmly for a minute with a look on your face that implies that maybe if you play dead we'll just give up, pick you up and return you to your upright position. After it sets in that we aren't going to budge, you start flailing your limbs and scream in such a way it sounds as though you are being waterboarded. I can only imagine what the neighbors think. You cause such a ruckus that your mother is convinced Nosey Neighbor to our right (I'll explain to you what sets apart Nosey Neighbor to our right, Dumb Neighbor directly across the street, Old Neighbor to the right of Dumb Neighbor, and Weird Neighbor to our left when you get older) is going too call the Department of Children and Family Services because it sounds so painful.

But, you are awful cute, and we couldn't have asked for a sweeter baby. I guess we'll keep you, I just hope you forgive me for calling you Tootie.

Love,

Daddy

The Worst Marriage Proposal Ever

2011-05-18T17:42:00.015-05:00

My wife and I have vacillated between Happy and If you say one more word I'll *&$%#@! punch you in the throat for just over two years. I once heard a guy say, "Sometimes you hug each other to show affection and sometimes you hug each other as a way to get a better grip so you can take a better swing." That's us in a nutshell. It's a functional marriage, and from what I can tell, we're not terribly different from everyone else. However, the process leading up to marriage was quite the circus.

I asked my wife out on our first date to a Chinese restaurant that was promptly shut down a few months later for violating health codes and employing about 20 illegal immigrants via text message. I know what you're thinking: "You stay classy, Travis." I don't remember much of the conversation, but she likes to recount how about 10 minutes into it I started doing some kind of stupid trick where I wave my hands in front of my face. My 6-month-old daughter is not amused with that trick now and her mother wasn't amused with it then. If you were watching it happen on a reality dating show, you would have winced and said, "He isn't going to... Oh God...oooooo" and then promptly turned off the television because you couldn't deal with the pain of watching.

But the drinks took hold and, because of my restaurant choice and the poor magic trick, the date had nowhere to go but up and the relationship lasted a few more weeks. Eventually, because I didn't feel comfortable dating a woman six years older than me, I sent her an e-mail breaking up with her because she was "too old" and I was also interested in someone closer to my age. Yes, I broke up with my wife via e-mail, and yes, I told her she was too old. Again, I know what you're thinking: "You stay classy, Travis." If I can contribute one thing to the "Man's Guide to Relationships," it's this: If you think there's a cold chance in Hell that you will ever ask a woman out again, run into her in a dark alley or find yourself alone in an elevator with her, I strongly advise against ending a relationship on those grounds via e-mail. Tell her anything else. Tell her you're bipolar, being transferred to China, have Typhoid or all three. I figured the worst-case scenario was that we had a few more classes together, a few awkward conversations and that would be the end of it. In retrospect, we got along really well, much better than the ex-boyfriend she literally tried to run over in her driveway.

I wound up getting a job in St. Louis. Tori wrote a fantastic blog about her dating life that I continued to read and comment on, because it was so damned funny. The best story is when she got roped into a date with a midget, but that's neither here nor there. She would occasionally note how she hated her job. I suggested that I was working for a great company in the St. Louis area and that she should apply for one of the open positions. She applied, got the job and started working a brisk two-minute walk from my desk.

Not long after she started working we started hanging out, which grew into a relationship. Eventually, things were going well enough that I threw caution to the wind and bought a ring. The day after getting the ring, I pulled one of her work friends out to the car and had her take a look at it to see what she thought. She squeaked with glee and started twitching like a weasel on speed. I said, "Erin, this is very important. You can't tell Tori. Whatever you do, you can't tell Tori." I added emphasis on the second "You can't tell Tori" to hammer the point home with Shakes McGillicutty. She asked when I planned on proposing and I told her I was working on that, but it would be some time around Valentine's Day. I threw the ring box back in the trunk of my car, we walked back into the building and Erin skipped her way back to her desk, right next to Tori's, brimming with excitement.

Not five minutes after Erin got back, Tori asked her a question about work to which Erin promptly responded, "You know Travis doesn't want to get married, right?" Tori's happy face comes with an expiration date, and once you pull the pin on the grenade, her anger has a blast radius that, if it goes off in the center of the contiguous 48 states will rattle the teeth of people in Australia. I don't know how the rest of her work day went or how many people were killed because she didn't say anything to me on her way out the door, but I definitely felt her wrath later.

I was scheduled to look at a house that night and Tori said she would go with me. I pulled up in front of her apartment and she walked out, looking angry as Hell. She usually gave me a chance to talk before she got pissed off, but not this time. No sooner than she got in the car her guns were drawn. She teared up and started talking about how Erin told her that I didn't want to get married and started carrying on about how I was wasting her time. For a proper frame of reference, it's about one week from Valentine's Day and I still have this ring in the back of my car. By the time we get to the house I've made countless wrong turns, each one marked with "YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO GO THAT WAY YOU *^$%#& MORON YOU DON'T WANT TO GET MARRIED ERIN SAID SO I HATE YOU!!!!!" By this time, I've got a thousand different things rolling through my mind: How the *&%$ do I get to this house? Is cyanide traceable and will Erin smell it when I put it in her drink? Is this what marriage is like? And if it is, why don't more men kill themselves? What will happen on Lost tonight? After what felt the same amount of time it took Odysseus to get to Troy or the government to solve the debt problem, we finally got to the house. I opened the car door and sucked in the sweet air of freedom. I decided then and there that I didn't want to listen to this crap for another week, popped open the trunk, grabbed the box, poked my head around the trunk and, with her stomping in my direction, said "Marry me." She shut up and turned white.

For the next hour I enjoyed the soothing tones of our realtor while Tori didn't say a word. We eventually bought the house and got married in Las Vegas and had the world's most beautiful baby. The only downside is that every argument eventually ends in her saying, "Oh yeah, well you dumped me by e-mail," after which point I generally just shut my mouth and walk away. Everything has worked out well, we just took the long way.

Life in a LEED Certified Building

2011-05-16T07:31:00.007-05:00

A few years ago, the company I work for moved us into a building that was certified LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Silver. I'm all about doing everything I can to save the planet. I suspect I'll never get back the sizeable portion of my manhood I traded in when I bought my hybrid; I use the Water Miser setting when I do dishes; and I nearly electrocuted myself installing an energy effient ceiling fan light. If I could afford it I would buy one of those silly Dean Kamen devices that turns Doritos, rocks, mud and basically anything that's not baby poop into drinkable water. It's more manly for me to stick my 6-month-old daughter's little lion squeeky toy out the window and squeek it at someone than to lay on the horn in my hybrid. You get the point.

I don't know the corporate benefits of LEED certification, but I suspect there are some nice tax breaks and it makes for a nice HR press release. We even have a nice LEED logo declaring our high level of environmental friendliness on the front door. But, over the course of a few years, I've noticed a few downsides to working in a LEED building that I think everyone should be aware of.

1) Toilets: Our toilets have two buttons on them: a green button with one drop of water on it, and a silver button (for the rebels among us) with three drops of water on it. The icons on these buttons are life size representations of exactly how much water will be used to flush the waste. You couldn't flush a fly with either of them. If you think low-flow toilets are stupid, these things are a crime against humanity. I'm pretty sure people have missed meetings because they spent an hour in the bathroom hitting the flush button. I think the green icon should be replaced with the text "Play Again" and the silver icon should be replaced with the text "Not Quite."

2) Sink and Soap Sensors: The sink and soap sensors really save the big bucks; they not only regulate the water, they also cut down on the power bill -- because only about half of them work. It's quite the circus in the bathroom in my wing. You literally have to do the Macarena to wash your hands properly, because the faucet sensor works on the left side and the soap sensor works on the right side. You have to literally criss cross your hands or migrate between both of the sinks to wash your hands. And God help you if the towel dispensor is acting up. It's not uncommon to come across a guy who came into the bathroom having a bad day in the first place who had to press the pathetic flush button 58 times and do a triple toe loop to wash his hands, banging his fists against the paper towel machine screaming "Why, God, why!?!" because he ran into trouble on the final leg of his quest. Indiana Jones had an easier obstacle course in Raiders of the Lost Ark. I'm pretty sure some people have taken off the rest of the day after working the circuit in the bathrooms. And to make it worse, every bathroom in the building has a unique situation with regard to what works and what doesn't, but I haven't found one yet where everything is functional. If Michael Douglas had to deal with this in Falling Down, he would have lost it a lot sooner.

3) The Dump: One of the qualifications for LEED Silver certification is that the building be built in an area that meets the qualifications for "Regional Priority." Given that we're 500 yards from the dump, I'm guessing the way to achieve LEED Gold is to actually build a building on top of the dump and replace the water in the little fountain on the first floor with toxic sludge. On a good day the building smells like a gym sock; on a bad day, it smells like you bottled the farts of every athlete who graced a men's high school locker room over the course of 30 years and then released it into our building. I won't be shocked at all if 30 years from now I have some terrible disease that they trace back to breathing in these toxic fumes.

I often envision the guy who sold my company on the LEED certification as having a lot in common with the guy who sold pet rocks: At the end of the day he made a few nickels and 30 years later the idiots who bought the rocks wound up in therapy. Apologies if you owned a pet rock.

Grandpa's False Teeth

2011-05-15T15:24:00.016-05:00

When my parents asked if they could come by the house for the afternoon to see the baby, it was not a big deal. However, what they didn't tell us is that they were bringing grandma and grandpa, and that's a game changer.

God love him, but my grandfather has somehow putzed his way through nearly 90 years of life, and it's only by the grace of God he hasn't, to my knowledge, seriously hurt himself. I've heard stories of the man almost having his head taken off by parts flying from machinery, putting diesel fuel in a vehicle with a gas engine, smacking every one of his fingers at least 40 times with a hammer, almost burning down his house on accident, almost burning down someone else's house on accident, and sawing off a tree limb that he was standing on, among other things. In short, he's like the anti-McGyver; he doesn't intentionally try to build a bomb out of toothpaste, an Etch-a-Sketch and a DVD player, but he does it anyway. Oh, and there's also the time he told me to pee on the electric fence when I was about 5 years old so I would have a proper frame of reference for not doing it again. My dad saw the crime unfolding and rescued me from a fate unbefitting of any crime I may have committed prior to that or would commit after that.

These days, grandpa avoids machinery for the most part and doesn't saw the limbs off of trees. In spite of this, the man still manages to transform himself into a human wrecking ball when he visits our house. Every time he comes over, there is inevitably a point where he gets up from wherever he is and walks downstairs to look for a bathroom. There is no bathroom downstairs. Never has been, never will be. There are no hookups and nothing that makes you say to yourself, "There may be a bathroom down here." Sure enough, I'll get up 5 minutes later and find grandpa walking in and out of rooms muttering about a bathroom. One time I even found him in the garage. Because one of the cats also has a tendency to pee in the office, we'll never be able to pin it on grandpa, but Tori's pretty sure that, at one point or another, he has defiled the room. Another time, we caught him trying to walk out with my camera; it's not a great camera, but it's mine. Tori also walked in on him one time eating straight out of the cake pan that people were cutting their cake from and licking the fork. The conversation went something like this:

Tori: Grandpa, are you licking the community cake fork.
Grandpa: (Sets the fork down) Nope.
Tori: Grandpa, I saw you.
Grandpa: (Walks away)

My grandmother is not clumsy, just occasionally cheap. She has always been a big fan of the Goodwill. I'm not knocking Goodwill, but there are some things that should never be placed on a resale rack. For a proper comparison, my grandma is one step above the grandma in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation who wrapped her cat and a jello mold. Almost every Christmas that I can remember, I've received either used Stetson or Brute cologne. For Tori's first Christmas with the family, grandma gave her used hand lotion, and nothing says "Welcome to the family" like used hand lotion.

So out of the car rolled grandma and grandpa. After Tori digested that we would need to batten down the hatches from the impending storm that was grandpa, something else caught her eye. "What the Hell is that?" I couldn't see what she was talking about, so I didn't know. "Is that a toilet training potty chair?" I stil couldn't see what she was talking about, so I still didn't know. Sure enough, there was grandma and grandpa getting out of my parents car carrying a beaten up toilet training potty chair. It was missing parts and covered in dirt and bugs. It looked like something you would see in one of the nuclear ravaged houses in The Hills Have Eyes. It looked like my mom had tried to talk her out of it to no avail, and alas, it made the journey. Immediately after seeing the potty chair's pitiful condition, I immediately knew that Charlie Sheen had a better chance of making a guest appearance on Two and a Half Men than my daughter's bare bottom did of touching that chair. It also didn't help that the missing parts looked like critical components, for example a seat. Needless to say, it found it's way to our recycle stash after everyone left.

After what could be called a successful day for grandpa (he wandered around upstairs instead of downstairs in his neverending quest for the bathroom, didn't drop the baby and only made an attempt to catch one of the cats) he found his time to shine. Somehow the conversation shifted toward teeth and we couldn't remember exactly how many teeth are in a person's mouth. In perhaps the fastest grandpa has ever moved in his life, he popped out his false teeth out and started counting. There was a moment of silence where all you could hear was grandpa rattling off numbers and clicking his fingernail against each tooth before he proclaimed "Thirty-two." It took us roughly two minutes to get the old man to put his teeth back in, during which time he extolled the greatness of his false teeth while holding them in his hands like he was showing off a trophy he'd won at a shuffleboard competition. Now I just have to check the couch and make she he didn't forget them.

A Word of Advice to the Paperboy Who Forgot My Wife's Coupons

2011-05-15T08:47:00.009-05:00

Dear Paperboy,

We all make mistakes. I am sympathetic to your cause and I understand that my wife just signed up for the Sunday edition of the St. Louis Post Dispatch this week. However, she only subscribes to the paper for the coupons that you forgot to drop off today -- Saturday.

I have done about as much as I can do. I hid the knives and any other sharp objects I could think of that are laying around the house. We don't own a gun (lucky you) and I don't think she knows anyone in the area who has one (again, lucky you). I have a friend who is a Navy SEAL, but he charges more than she can afford for mercenary work. In a further effort to protect both myself and you, I am pretending to share my anger at you with her. I will occasionally say things such as, "I bet that little bugger did it on purpose," "You're right, if we lived in Texas we could get this handled the right way," and "I bet he's selling the coupons on the side." I can tell you that if she ever gets a hold of you, you will be taken out Braveheart style, except you probably won't be able to yell "Freedom!" at the end.

You should also realize that I'm not so much doing any of this for you so much as I am me. Ever since TLC introduced Extreme Couponing into our lives, she's been absolutely nuts. The show has caused her to think that having 8,000 tubes of toothpaste, 4,000 things of deodorant and a never-ending supply of Mentos on hand at all times is the key to eternal happiness. I walked into my office yesterday to find that one of my lower shelves is now home to about 150 rolls of toilet paper. I'm pro toilet paper. I think everyone should have 10-15 rolls on hand at all times, but this is outrageous. I bet you're asking yourself, "So why does this idiot want me to bring the coupons if he doesn't want this crap in his house." This is where you have a lot to learn about marriage. It's psychological. If she goes through the coupons right away, I'm screwed. However, if she picks the coupons up and walks away from them, I can quickly sift out the ones that look dangerous and throw them away before she knows they were ever there. Of course I have to leave some of them, but some of them can go.

You should know that she has already chewed out three customer service reps and a manager. I don't know if it was the manager or one of the reps, but I definitely heard someone through the phone crying and yelling something to the effect of, "I'm so sorry! Please don't burn down my home! I still live with my mother!" I hope it wasn't your manager. If it was your manager, he needs to grow a spine and you need to find a different job. You should also know that she referred to you as a "selfish turd" twice and a "witless mudhare."

Also, while I suspect you don't care about any of this, I felt you should be aware that my wife has also uncovered your name and address. Your manager turned you over so my wife could "go and pick up her paper." Again, continuing to work for this gentleman is probably not wise. I would advise that you put the coupon packet at the end of your driveway and that you and your family take up refuge in a hotel for a few days. She is a crafty lock picker. I would recommend throwing out any food upon returning to your house. Because while she may set up shop there and wait for you for a day or two, she can't stay there forever, as she is a stay-at-home mom and I need to go to work at some point. You get the drift. She loves animals, so if you have any pets they may be shaved, but I don't believe any real harm will come to them.

Best of luck to you. I need to get back to cursing your name and pretending to care about this unfortunate situation. Also, you should probably get moving, as she left the house five minutes ago.

All the best,

travis.

Disclaimer: Obviously, this is made up. However, she was really bent out of shape over this incident. I never thought I'd see the day she cared so much about coupons.