I have no idea why I used the phrase “cup of tea” when it is so antiquated, feminine and I could have used so, so, so many other phrases in its place. I could have said, “wasn’t everyone’s idea of a good time.” I could have said, “was more haha-lame than haha-funny in the eyes of some.” But no, I said cup of tea.

But you know what? I’m not going to apologize. I’m going to bring back “cup of tea” into the mainstream. I’ve just decided this. And while I’m at it, I’m bringing back “cat’s meow” and “bee’s knees.” Cat’s meow and bee’s knees are making a comeback, people. And this time, they’re going to be masculine phrases. How masculine? Guys in biker gangs will use them in day-to-day conversations.

“Spike,” one biker will say to another biker.

“That skull and crossbones tattoo of yours is the bee’s knees.”

“Thanks,” Spike will reply.

And then they will go burn down someone’s house.

Yep, that’s what will happen. Who says so? Kev says so. Kev, the master of witty phrases and all things cool and hip (and masculine).

Where was I? Oh yes, my misdirection in the last blog post. Alright, since I like all of you people, I’ll follow through and share some of the best things I’ve written in the past four years. Of course, since I have SO much amazing material, I’ll have to split this “best of” idea into several different posts. First, I’ll split up my favorite funny posts. Later, I’ll post some of my favorite “deep” blog posts.

What’s that? You don’t think I’m capable of deep thought? Did you just not read my clever usage of bee’s knees? Clean your bifocals, people.

I present to you all some things I wrote from May 2005 to May 2007 — my first two years blogging. I call these, “My Best Kinda Sorta Funny Posts Most of You Haven’t Read Before, But if You Have Just Humor Me and Read Them Again: Years 1 and 2.” You’re welcome.

May 29, 2005

A forgotten part of the moving process is you have to clean your old place. And right now, my old place looks like a garbage can exploded inside of it. Why is my brother such a slob? Why do I keep everything ever given to me? An hour ago, I came across a November 2002 memo from (my former employer). Why did I hold onto it? Did it strike me as funny at the time? Did I keep it in case I ever wanted to spit out some gum? Was it a magic memo that promised to grant me three wishes? And if the latter, where are my millions of dollars, my Ivy-league educated supermodel girlfriend, and my ability to turn invisible?

July 10, 2005

God is funny. My freshman year in college, I dated a girl against the advice of friends and adults who had known her longer. These were people I trusted, but for whatever reason, in this case, I thought they were crazy. They turned out to be right, she turned out to have more issues than a magazine rack, and my poor judgment ultimately led me to move hours away back home to finish college. Tonight, I found out this girl now lives in the area. More specifically, she lives minutes away from me.

In short, I have to move again. Good one, God. You got me.

August 16, 2005

I came across some old pictures the other day, one of them being a picture from my high school prom. This immediately brought back the memory of my friend, Luke, who decided to do a “strip tease” dance on his table during the middle of the prom. Everyone was sitting at their tables in their formal wear listening to two singers sing some silly prom-themed song. Next thing you know my friend was standing on his table dancing while taking off his jacket. The school suspended him three days for that little stunt.

This friend is also responsible for two of the strangest exchanges I’ve had in my lifetime…

When planning for the aforementioned prom, my friend told me, “you know…I think I might get an orange tux like Jim Carey wore in the movie Dumb & Dumber.” Figuring he was joking, I responded, “why don’t you get a blue one like Jeff Daniels wore in the movie?” My friend responded, “no way…I don’t want to look stupid.”

On our senior class trip, we went skiing. After we reached areas where there was snow, my friend asked the bus driver, our teacher, “Mrs. Wilcox…where does snow come from?” After a few seconds and several dozen chuckles from those around us, I responded, “you see, Luke, when a daddy snow and a mommy snow really love each other…”

Last I heard, my friend was going to school to be a doctor. Be afraid, people. Be very, very afraid.

August 20, 2005

Someday, FoodTV “personalities” Rachael Ray and Emeril Lagasse are going to fall in love and have a child. And that child will one day destroy the world.

Ironically, however, the child will not be able to cook.

August 24, 2005

I have been without my cell phone for 8 days and counting. Possibly because it heard me bad mouth all phones one time too many, my phone apparently took its own life.

I do not mourn its death. For one thing, I hated it. Plus, in the later stages of its life, my phone had obtained a massive ego. This was probably due to the fact I took it with me wherever I went. Only my wallet and my keys could make similar claims. However, the inflated ego was merely a defense mechanism. Beneath its black and gray exterior was a scared lil’ thing in need of constant reassurance and attention. Unfortunately for it, I did not give it the attention it needed. This was mainly due to the fact I hated it so very, very much.

Someday soon, I will get me a new cell phone. Maybe I won’t hate this one. I probably will, though.

September 23, 2005

Do you ever envy deaf people? I just got home from a two-hour bus ride filled with teenage girls “singing” every annoying radio song from the past five years. And when I say singing, I mean screaming. And by screaming, I mean they verbally assaulted my ear drums in a manner so horrific I actually prayed for the sweet release of death at one point.

I’ll never make fun of Billy Corgan (tone deaf lead singer of the rock band Smashing Pumpkins) ever again. I would listen to ten straight hours of him singing covers of Backstreet Boys’ songs in a southern accent and a lisp before I would endure a repeat of tonight’s hell on earth. Compared to them, Billy Corgan’s voice is angelic. And by angelic, I mean slightly better.

October 15, 2005

When at a singles gathering, it is very important to keep track of the fake names, professions, general details, etc. you give to the people you meet. You don’t want to call yourself “Brad” around a girl you’d met earlier and who thought your name was “Jake.” You’ve got to have a system in place.

For example, to brunettes, you are Ross, a three-time divorced anthropologist. To blonds, you are Joey, an actor who is very fond of sandwiches. And to red heads, you are Chandler, a sarcastic guy with an eating disorder no one acknowledges and a job no one can remember. I call this one the Friends System. I also like the Seinfeld System, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer System, and the Spongebob Squarepants System. The Spongebob one should only be used when there is an unusually large number of blonds.

Now, if you find a girl who figures out your game and calls you on it, thank your lucky stars. It means you’ve found a keeper. A keeper who watches lots of tv.

January 23, 2006

I propose a new “celeb reality” tv show. Anyone who has ever appeared on a reality television show or has played a hand in the creation of a reality television show will be placed on a deserted island. Then a nuclear bomb will be dropped on the island.

Possible names for the show are, “Exploding with the Stars”; “But Can They Dodge a Nuclear Bomb?”; and “Today is the Day Your Dreams Come True, Kevin.”

Edit: It’s been brought to my attention that if this proposal of mine were picked up, technically, I would then have played a hand in the creation of a reality tv show and would therefore be required to set up residence on said deserted island. A valid point, but allow me to retort: Shut up.

February 7, 2006

I’ve researched the topic thoroughly, and apparently the best method for young males to prove to the world they are cool is doing something completely asinine while driving a vehicle.

According to my research, “gunning” a vehicle when exiting a parking lot is the epitome of coolness. It does not matter if you are driving a black Ford Mustang GT or your mom’s pink Volkswagon Beatle, if you gun your vehicle when exiting a parking lot all the girls will swoon over you.

Honking your horn or yelling out your vehicle’s window are other tried-and-true tactics. Girls will admire your boldness if you honk at them. That or they will be impressed by your ability to drive and push down on the horn at the same time.

What’s the next big thing for the male looking to make an impression? That’s easy: Running into female pedestrians/drivers with your vehicle. The exchanging of insurance info or the ambulance ride to the hospital will be great opportunities to let her get to know you. Plus, getting her attention is half the battle. And nothing will get a girl’s attention quite like chasing her down a sidewalk in your mom’s Beatle.

July 7, 2006

Granted, I haven’t seen it yet, but I think Superman Returns would have been better with some creative casting. Morgan Freeman is solid in every movie he’s ever been in. Why not cast him as the man of steel? Don’t give me any of that “he’s too old…he’s black…are you insane” nonsense. The movie would be cinematic gold.

August 25, 2006

Tyler and Cody Chung received failing grades during the recent “show and tell” in Mrs. Timberland’s fourth grade class, according to insiders who eat lunch with the brothers.

Both boys, age 10, presented photos taken during a recent Atlanta Braves game the pair had attended. Their presentation was going smoothly until Cody declared the Braves to be the best team in the world.

“That is an outright lie and you know it,” Mrs. Timberland, a disillusioned Braves season-ticket holder, reportedly remarked. “How dare you pollute my classroom with your deceitful tongues,” Timberland continued.

Unfazed, the duo continued their presentation by displaying a photo they had taken with outfielder Jeff Franceour, who they described as “an awesome player.”

“You have got to be kidding me,” an exasperated Mrs. Timberland bellowed. “That strikeout machine swings at everything!”

After a few more photos, the last one being of pitcher Tim “one of the best pitchers in baseball” Hudson, Timberland instructed Tyler and Cody to go to the restroom so that they could wash their mouths out with soap.

“You can’t coddle these kids,” remarked Mrs. Timberland when asked for comment at her home. “When they say something ignorant, I call them on it. That’s how I am. That’s how I roll.”

Both Tyler and Cody were unavailable for comment because, according to their parents, they were coming to terms with Mrs. Timberland’s announcement to the class that the boys were adopted and the Tooth Fairy did not exist.

January 16, 2007

The DMV truly is a magical place. And by magical, I mean mind-numbingly horrific. I look around at the people (my ex-girlfriend) is in line with and I’m terrified by the thought that these people are about to be behind the wheels of thousand pound vehicles.

One man, who was wearing — I kid you not — a shower cap on his head, had to have the DMV worker explain to him three times that he could not get his license reinstated until he had paid his seven — count ‘em — seven tickets.

Another man, who was wearing overalls and hair down to shoulders, went to counter #5 when he had been told to go to counter #1. Upon being told of his mistake, I overheard the man say, “I always get them two mixed up.”

Allow that to soak in for a moment.

The next time you’re driving, make sure to periodically glance in your rear view mirror to see who’s behind you. If you see a man with a shower cap on his head or a guy with long hair and a “Lynard Skynard is #5″ sticker on his bumper, drive as fast as you can.

January 18, 2007

The Olive Garden is to Italian Food as (the movie) 10 Things I Hate About You is to William Shakespeare.

March 4, 2007

A little while ago, (my ex-girlfriend) called me saying she had seen a guy on a bus wearing the exact same Kenneth Cole sandals I own. She hates these sandals like a fat kid hates broccoli. Considering she also hates my black Kenneth Cole boots and my dark blue Levis jeans, I have come to the following inevitable conclusion: (She) is jealous of my fashion greatness.

I feel sorry for her. It must not be easy being in the shadow of someone with such a flawless sense of fashion. When I wore the aforementioned sandals with tan shorts, no socks, sunglasses and a t-shirt, I know it was the jealously talking when she said I looked like a “40-year-old blind man.” And when I wore a turtleneck sweater in July, I know her “have you lost your mind?” rant stemmed from an insecure sense of self. And when I decided to pay homage to Britney Spears circa the 2001 Superbowl by wearing socks on my hands, I know her “get away from me before people think I know you” remark was made because she knew she could never pull off such a look.

Lord, why did you make me so stylish?

March 5, 2007

“Look at that guy.”

“Poor, pathetic, shell of a man.”

“Mommy, that man is holding a purse.”

These are phrases uttered at malls, grocery stores and Wal-Marts all over the nation. You’re just a guy minding his own business when your girlfriend, wife, female acquaintance or confused cousin Steve hands you a purse.

It’s not a pretty sight. And yet, day after day men everywhere are asked to hold the bag of shame.

No more.

The time has come for us men to rise up. We must throw down the lacey, feminine shackles that bind us. When we are handed a purse to carry, we must stand strong.

If you are handed a purse, give the purse giver something heavy to hold. If she questions, tell her you are just supporting women’s equality.

If you are shopping for clothes, take off your baseball cap and give it to the purse giver saying, “hold this for me while I go try this on.” And then take a nap inside the changing room while she waits outside, cap in hand.

The time for battle is at hand.

We must not acquiesce. We must fight the good fight. We must shout for all the world to hear:

“Nay woman (or cousin Steve), I will not hold your purse. For I am a man!”

March 16, 2007

“If the odds of Carrot Top winning an Academy Award for acting are better than the odds of an apparent scam not being a scam, it’s a scam.”

- The Carrot Top Rule (From my unpublished, unwritten book, “How to Make Stupid Work for You”)

April 10, 2007

(W)hat is it about babies that makes us smile whenever we see them?

Answer: Birthday Cake.

Everyone loves birthday cake. Even diabetics love birthday cake. And when we see a baby, we think of birthday cake. On that baby’s first birthday, there will be cake. On its 10th birthday, there will be cake. Assuming the baby lives to be 100, there will have been 100 birthday cakes created and eaten in his/her lifetime to celebrate the passing of each year.

Why do we smile?

Because we think maybe, just maybe, we’ll get to eat some of that cake.

April 15, 2007

If Al Gore was alive to see what has become of his precious invention, the Internet, I believe he would weep. Well, he wouldn’t actually cry (robots cannot cry), but he’d be sad. Why? Because MySpace is using the Internet to destroy civilization as we know it.

May 7, 2007

In a move experts predict will once and for all prove His existence, God used the Los Angeles legal system to sentence socialite/moron Paris Hilton to 45 days in jail for violating her probation in an alcohol-related reckless driving case.

The sentencing has been met by unanimous approval by every person in the entire world, and has sparked a religious revival not seen since the release of Mel Gibson’s film, The Passion of the Christ.

Churches across the world have been packed since the sentencing was announced.

“People have been coming in droves since the announcement,” said James O’Keefe, pastor of First Baptist Church in Decatur, Georgia.

“I was so certain God didn’t exist, but this has completely altered my outlook,” remarked atheist Dan Ryder of Omaha, Nebraska.

“God is real. And He is awesome.”

Hilton, who helped promote the “Vote or Die” campaign during the 2004 Presidential Election despite the fact she was not registered to vote, has called her sentencing cruel and unwarranted.

“I feel that I was treated unfairly and that the sentence is both cruel and unwarranted,” said Hilton as she left for a shopping trip with her mother.

“I don’t deserve this.”

Experts disagreed.

“This has been a long time coming,” noted karma expert and God enthusiast Kevin Dugan. “This [air quotes] woman [end air quotes] has been a thorn in the side of common sense for far too long. Monica Lewinsky had the decency to go away after her embarrassing scandal. Paris Hilton? She gets her own TV show and records an album.”

“Frankly, I’m surprised God didn’t smite her years ago.”

May 25, 2007

I saw you on aisle twelve at the grocery store. “Orville Redenbacher’s Gourmet Popping Corn” was written on you in big, cursive letters. You lured me in with your smiling, awkward picture and promises of 30-calorie servings. I put you into my grocery cart and dreamed of the “94% Fat Free Butter” snacking I would soon enjoy.

If only I had known the tragedy that would follow.

I took you to work with me and gave you a featured spot on the top of my desk. “Hands off,” the sticky note I put on you warned. “This delicious and healthy Orville Redenbacher popcorn belongs to me.”

Fierce were the stares I gave all co-workers who glanced in your general direction. Unnerving were the verbal assaults I hurled at anyone who stopped to read the extra-large sticky note I put on you. The stapler thrown at the head of the individual who touched you while reaching for a pencil served notice to all of the obvious:

You were mine.

Like a pirate opening a treasure chest filled with gold coins or Rosie O’Donnell opening a bag of McDonald’s hamburgers, I eagerly took one of the ten packs of popcorn you held inside.

“How is it that William Shakespeare never wrote a sonnet about you,” I asked out loud while throwing a pen at the aforementioned individual who was returning my pencil (and stapler). His screams of “my eye, my eye” could not drown the sound of the singing angels as I held you up high.

Into the microwave you went as I followed the cooking directions and pressed START. As I left to use the restroom, I could hear the “pop, pop” music you were belting for all to hear. As I washed my hands, I could hear the faint sound of an ambulance or firetruck.

“Oh no,” I thought to myself. “My popcorn!”

I rushed out of the restroom. You were in pain, I could feel it. My path to you was blocked by paramedics attending to the individual who stole my stapler, pencil and pen.

“Thank goodness,” I thought to myself as I pushed my way through the pile of people. “That must have been the noise I heard. My popcorn is safe.”

And then I smelled it.

I ran to you and opened the microwave door. You were gone. The magnificent, pure thing I had known just minutes earlier had been replaced by a burnt bag of crap. A tear fell down my cheek as I held you close, but not too close. You did smell rather bad, after all.

You left this world before your time. I knew then why blues music was invented — to document somber moments just like this one. You lived your life like a candle in the wind, never knowing who to cling to when the rain set in. And now, you’re gone.

I blame the one-eyed stapler thief…

Were these not the cat’s meow? Weren’t they the bee’s knees? Weren’t they all that and a bag of chips (yes, I’m claiming that phrase for straight men also)?

If there is an adequate demand for it, later in the week I’ll share some of the “deep” posts I wrote way back in the day.

As you were.

What’s that? I wrote a depressing blog post just the other day? Psssh. I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about. Silly people. You make me laugh with the silly things you say.

This past May marked the four-year anniversary of when I first started blogging. Granted, SKOS didn’t come around until a couple years later, but I still have a sizable backlog of material now.

In four years, you tend to have a lot of ups and downs in your life. And the good thing about a blog is you can document what you’re feeling during those ups and downs and read them years later.

Of course, this is assuming you actually use your blog for serious, deep thoughts instead of the random silliness for which I use mine.

Thankfully, on my old blog, I wrote about serious stuff. Well, most of the time I wrote about serious stuff. This was during the period of my life where I was finishing my career as a teacher, finishing graduate school, was looking for a new job, and had my first long-term relationship.

In other words, I packed a lot of stuff into that old blog.

Reading what “Kev of four years ago” was going through is an interesting experience. Those issues he, I mean I, dealt with seem like they happened lifetimes ago. Still, many of them are relatable to what I’m dealing with today in the here and now.

Anyhoo, I have ALMOST got the swimming pool at my new place ready and…

What’s that? You thought I was going to share a few of the things I wrote on my old blog? Silly people. There you go being silly again.

Before I moved in, this pool hadn’t been used in two years. It was left uncovered for dirt and leaves and frogs and (for all I know) mafia victims. It was a mess.

As part of the terms of my lease, my landlord was supposed to get the pool ready for me. Once it was ready, I would take over the duties of maintaining it. My landlord has been, to put it kindly, failing in his duties. So, naturally, I’ve had to kick butt and take names. Three weeks later, the pool is almost ready.

The timing is great because I am in the process of making major changes in my life. To start things off, I’m going to get into mad-crazy shape. I want to be able to wear outfits I wore in high school. Granted, I no longer own any of the clothes I had in high school. So, another goal of mine is to create a time machine. That way I can travel back in time, throat punch my 18-year-old self, and steal some of his/my clothes.

Of course, rather than throating punching and running, it would probably be a good idea to sit down with myself and have a long chat. After all, I’d have a decade plus worth of wisdom I could impart to my younger self. I could give all sorts of pearls of wisdom.

For example, in 2002, do NOT buy that Jeep Wrangler you see in the dealer parking lot. The roof leaks and you won’t be able to go faster than 60 MPH without the vehicle shaking. Also, I’m pretty sure it was haunted.

Oooh, at age 19, don’t date a girl named Rachel. In fact, just in case I’m misremembering her name, don’t date anyone with a name starting with R. Trust me on this one.

Don’t order the pasta from the Olive Garden in Macon, GA. In fact, don’t even step foot inside the restaurant. You can get food poisoning anywhere, so save yourself the gas money.

It’s okay to watch the first X-Files movie, but avoid the sequel that comes out a decade later like the plague. It’s awful. It’s beyond awful. I can’t believe Keanu Reeves didn’t star in it — that’s how awful it is.

Actually, I can already tell I’m not going to have the patience to explain all this stuff to my 18-year-old self. That guy was a know-it-all. He’d buy the Jeep, use it to pick up a girl named Rachel, take her to see that X-Files movie, and then go eat at Olive Garden. All so he could prove me wrong.

Best to just punch, take the clothes and run.

Thus endeth a very bipolar blog post.

“Funny,” I think to myself.

On the ticket are all of my favorite numbers. It’s as if someone made a lottery ticket using my bank’s PIN, my jersey number from baseball in high school, and the number of movies I wish Keanu Reeves had made (i.e. zero).

With my cell phone, I check to see if, by chance, the ticket had won any money. To my disbelief, it had. In fact, it had won a lot. A whole, whole lot. In my hand was a ticket worth millions.

I was rich. In that winning ticket I saw a big house with a giant swimming pool. I saw fast cars. I saw vacations all over the world. I saw an assistant who would do nothing all day except walk around with shoes on his hands killing bugs that had the misfortune of entering my domain.

But before I knew it, a gust of wind had snatched the ticket from my hand.

I run after it, but it gets farther and farther away. Out of breath, I bend over and put my hands on my hips as I watch the ticket slip off into the distance.

If my hands had been stronger, the wind would have never been able to pry it from my fingers. If I had worn running shoes that day, I would have caught it. If I had been in better shape and a little faster, I would have been able to chase it down.

If…if…if…

I should be asleep right now. It’s 5:30 on a Monday morning and I have a job which doesn’t require me to be awake and lucid for several more hours.

But I can’t sleep. The lost lottery ticket is weighing too heavily on my mind.

Hopefully, it’s obvious to everyone the ticket is a metaphor. I didn’t REALLY have a winning lottery ticket in my hands and lose it. Of course, the week is young. Who knows what God has in store for me this afternoon.

But no, I didn’t really lose a winning ticket.

It just feels like it.

Have you ever sat across the table from someone and realized, with total clarity, that certain someone possessed everything you always knew you wanted and, to paraphrase Matthew Perry’s line in the movie Fools Rush In, everything you never knew you always wanted? I’m talking about the kind of someone who is truly one of a kind. The kind of someone who doesn’t grow on trees.

My weekend started with me sitting across a table from such a someone.

My weekend ended with me losing such a someone. The wind wasn’t responsible for snatching her away, but she got away just the same.

The sad part of the story, for those of you who are wondering “Isn’t this supposed be a humor blog?!”, is that I have no one to blame except myself for my current plight.

I have baggage — much of it literal — from my last relationship. Even though it ended more than two years ago, there are still remains. And the fact of the matter is I have not worked as diligently as I should have to fully get over the few remaining issues. I have been complacent for too long.

Because this certain someone is observant, she spotted it. Because she is honest, she told me what most never would. And because she is someone who deserves the very best, she is unwilling to settle. In short, she told me I needed to get over it, get my house in order and fulfill my potential.

It was the kind of brutal honesty you normally only hear on the TV show House, but (thankfully) it was spoken with thought and kindness. These are issues I need to address not just so I can someday try again to win this individual (or someone like her), but issues I need to address for my own well being.

I get all that. I do. I realize today and the two days preceding today will be looked back on as turning points in my life. I have no doubt, truly, I will look back on these days fondly.

But right now, today, their memory makes me ache.

These feelings will, hopefully very soon, end. To coin a phrase I am almost certain has never before been uttered in history, my heart will go on. I’m tough and resilient. But more than that, I’m a guy who craves challenges. And this is most definitely a challenge. Best of all, it’s a challenge that will have, regardless of where life takes me, lots of rewards once I meet it.

So, I will put on my running shoes. I will become faster. I will make my hands stronger. And if another lottery ticket comes along in six months, I’ll be ready to catch it and hold onto it this time.

And if I’m blessed, maybe it will be the same ticket as before.

You know, apropos of nothing, but Mark tells the scariest camping stories. The other day, he told this one story about this young, handsome guy who thought he was hiking the Appalachian Trail with the governor of some southern state when he was REALLY hiking with a deranged serial killer. I don’t know how the story ends — there was an emergency at work so I had run back home — but I’m sure it was spine tingling.

What’s that? Mark wasn’t hiking the Appalachian Trail the past few days? He was in Argentina??

Huh.

Anyway, the other reason I haven’t blogged lately is I’ve had a lot of things on my mind.

Wonderful, exciting, beautiful things.

Is that reason too teasingly vague? My bad.

Do not despair, my dear reader. (Yes, I said “reader.” I’m assuming, after all this time, there is only one of you left.) I’m here now. And I shall entertain you with a blog post that has absolutely nothing to do with anything. Ready? Okay, here we go.

“Boxer Briefs” is more than simply an answer to a question no one in the universe has ever wondered about yours truly. Lately, it is is also a topic that is bringing out the former, superstitious baseball player in me. (All baseball players are superstitious, you see.)

What do I mean?

Two weeks ago, I wore one particular pair of boxer briefs. They are blue, in case you were wondering. That evening, I became ill and had to call in sick to work the following morning.

This past Thursday evening, after having showered after the gym, I put on the same blue boxer briefs. I went to bed, only to wake up a few hours later deathly ill. It was awful. Once again, I had to call in sick to work.

Since I was sick and not going anywhere that day (and also because I had showered the night before), I sported those boxer briefs all day Friday. It wasn’t until Saturday morning, when I showered, did they leave my presence. Evidently, the fact I wore them at all Saturday meant that day would be doomed for me as well. That afternoon, I went to get my haircut. I’ve been getting haircuts all my life without incident. But not that day.

The lady, spawn of Lucifer, whomever or whatever it was cutting my hair mistook my saying “I want to keep my sideburns, but trim them” to mean “cut off my sideburns completely and, if possible, salt the earth so the hair can never grow back.”

That’s right. I am writing this blog post sans sideburns. It is not a good look for me. I look like someone who has watched Forrest Gump way, way, way too many times.

Clearly, these blue boxer briefs are cursed.

I’d burn them, but somehow my house would end up on fire I’m sure.

I’d bury them, but then the curse would get into the soil of the earth and spread like wildfire.

I’d sell them, but I don’t want anyone crazy or weird enough to buy used underwear (!) to know my name or mailing address.

So, in my dresser they will remain.

They will stay there until I gather the courage to tempt fate once again. Or until I run out of boxer briefs. Whichever comes first.

“How did that happen,” you will think to yourself.

For a moment, you’ll retrace your steps in your mind to see if you can figure out how the scratch came about, but inevitably you’ll give up and brush it off as no big deal.

Silly people.

It IS a big deal.

Would you be so quick to dismiss $5 disappearing from your wallet every so often? Would you be so “meh” to figure out why your co-workers kept asking if you liked the coffee and then walked away giggling? Would you shrug your shoulders at the mystery as to why you woke up every so often to find one of your organs removed?

Scratches without known origins are ciphers, wrapped in enigmas, smothered in a wide variety of secret sauces. They demand to be solved. And just so none of you think I’m all talk, allow me to walk the walk.

To the left is poor-quality photo of a scratch I noticed on my thumb when I sat down at my desk at work this morning. No, it didn’t hurt. I’m a tough, manly man. But thanks for asking.

How did this happen? Let’s retrace my steps:

Maybe I got it while getting out of bed in the morning. The good Lord knows getting out of bed is an arduous task for me, so perhaps in the fight to get my butt in gear I picked up a battle scar?

No, that couldn’t be it. Arduous task or not, the scratch wouldn’t have still been bleeding when I noticed it at work if I had gotten it two hours earlier. I have awesome blood-clotting skills, just so you know.

For that same reason, I can rule out the possibility of getting the scratch while at the gym. Besides, I would have noticed if one of those awkward body-building guys or scantily-clad “ladies” walked up to me and scratched my thumb. And I know my precious elliptical machine would never scratch me.

Could I have gotten the scratch while showering? I do love my Old Spice “Game Day” Body Wash, so I suppose it’s possible I got carried away and scrubbed too hard. But if that’s the case, wouldn’t I have multiple scars on various body parts?

Maybe I got it while preparing my morning cup of coffee. Could the scratch be a byproduct of opening up one too many packets of Splenda? Could pouring in a little “half and half” have caused a drop of piping-hot coffee to splatter onto my thumb and eat away at my precious (though manly) skin?

Since I know the scratch didn’t happen while grasping my barbed-wire steering wheel during my drive to work, I am left when only one possible conclusion:

Aliens, or possibly Obama, are stealing samples of my DNA and leaving behind scratches in the process. I can only assume the aliens, or Obama, are trying to clone a race of super-awesome humans. Yes, that must be it. It’s so obvious.

I just hope a race of cloned aliens (or cloned Obama — oooh, scary thought) don’t someday try to steal DNA samples from my clones. As the Michael Keaton movie Multiplicity clearly proved, a clone of a clone is not as sharp as…well…the original.

So, in the end, I picked House C.

What’s that, you say? There wasn’t a “C” option when I talked about the possible rentals I was considering last time?

You know, you’re right. I decided to pass on both houses I told you all about in my last blog post. I just wasn’t feeling it with either one of them. House A had carpet in the kitchen, a “master bath” barely big enough for an infant, and noisy neighbors. House B had landlords I liked, but I just wasn’t enamored with the place. The kitchen was small and the layout was odd.

So, I decided to keep looking.

And I did.

And then I found it.

House C. Also known as the house with the pool. Also known as the house with the “naked baby wallpaper.” I’ll get to that in a moment.

This place is in a great location for me. I have a short commute to work, I’m very close to my gym, and I’m very close to my family. The rent is the same as the other two homes I was considering. It’s larger than the other homes. It’s nicer than the other homes. It has a front porch and a screened-in porch — something neither of the other homes possessed. It has a bigger and nicer yard than the other homes. It has room for both my pool table and my dining table. It has hardwood floors in half the house.

And it has a pool.

I’ve never owned a pool and I’m going to have to learn how to maintain one, but I plan on using this thing quite a bit. Swimming is excellent exercise. Plus, Lord knows I could use a little sun. If I had fangs, I’m fairly certain people would mistake me for a vampire if I was walking around at night in a graveyard (as I often do).

There were only two tangible downsides. One, there are some stains on the bedroom carpets. Two, there is the aforementioned naked baby wallpaper. It’s located in the guest bathroom in the main hallway. The first time I saw the house, I somehow didn’t notice it. I looked at the flooring. I looked at the sink. I looked in the closet. I looked at the tub. I even looked at the ceiling. But somehow I overlooked the walls.

On my second viewing, I noticed the wallpaper. My reaction was obvious and twofold:

“How on earth did I miss this before? Was I blind? I think I’d remember if I was blind. Oh no, maybe I have amnesia!”

“What kind of sick person puts up wallpaper of naked babies?”

As inexplicable as the wallpaper was/is, it’s not enough for me to pass on the house.

So, I got it. I signed the lease. Half my stuff is already moved in.

The tricky part now is what to do about the wallpaper. If I owned this place, getting rid of it would be a no brainer. But I’m renting. I’m not a fan of putting money into a rental — except for things I can easily take with me when I move. So, the question is, “can I live with the naked baby wallpaper?”

On the one hand, it IS in the guest bathroom. I never have to look at it if I don’t want to.

Also, for my guests, the wallpaper would make an excellent conversation piece:

Guest: “Um, Kevin? Are those naked babies on your bathroom wall?”

Me: “Why yes. Yes it is. You should see the guest bedroom with the wallpaper of senior citizens. It’s very classy.”

Of course, on the other hand, keeping the place female friendly was a goal of mine when looking for a new place. I even wrote a blog post asking all of you for tips. I could be mistaken, but I don’t recall any of you suggesting I get a home with naked baby wallpaper in the bathroom.

So, what would a female guest think of it?

What say you, my dear readers?

Finding a place is harder than HGTV makes it look.

I’m looking to rent, not buy, which should (in theory) make the process easier on me. I’m not looking for a place to live for 15+ years. I’m looking for a place to live for six or twelve months, and then I’ll see where I’m at and go from there.

My wish list? Oh, nothing extreme. I just want an awesome place in an awesome location for an insanely low, awesome price.

(Coincidentally, I would name the place “Fort Awesome.”)

Should be easy, right?

Well, it’s not.

There are two homes I’m considering. I don’t have photos of either to show all of you, but I’ll do you one better. I’ll paint mental pictures for you with my words. Doesn’t that sound like fun? No? Well, aren’t you the joykill.

House A and House B are located less than a minute from each other. Both are close to where I work (less than 7 minutes away) and ridiculously close to my gym. When it comes to location, House A and B are equals.

House A has hardwood floors in parts of the house. This is good.

House A also has carpet, inexplicably, in the kitchen. This is bad.

House B has tile in the kitchen. This is good. It has no hardwood floors, but the carpet is fairly nice. Carpet isn’t ideal, but I can live with it.

House A, in the rooms where it doesn’t have hardwood floors (including the kitchen!), has shabby, ugly carpet. This is bad.

House A has one full bath and one half bath. However, the half bath (off the master bedroom) is barely big enough for an infant child to fit inside. This is bad.

House B also has one full bath and one half bath. Its half bath is actually human size. This is good.

House B has a garage for my car. I have never had a garage. This is good.

House B’s garage is detached. This isn’t the end of the world, but on days where it’s raining really hard, I’m not going to like it.

House A doesn’t have a garage, but it has a carport. And said carport is attached to the home. That means I can get from house to car and car to house without getting wet on rainy days.

House A has an ideal, perfectly-sized dining room with hardwood floors for my antique table. This is good.

House B has two places where I could put my antique table, but I do not consider either of them ideal.

House B has an ideal place for the pool table given to me five Christmases ago as a gift. This is a good thing.

House A has no room for my pool table. It would have to remain in storage (i.e. in my parent’s bonus room), which is where it’s been the past five years.

(Oh, did I not mention that the mental picture I’m painting you with words was going to be random and unorganized? Hopefully you guys have been jotting down notes so you can keep track of which house has what.)

There’s more, but you guys get the idea. Each house has pros and cons.

I guess the real questions I should ask are these:

If I’m not 100% pleased with either house, should I pass on both and wait for something better to come along? Will something better come along? Given the emphasis I seem to be placing on location, it’s possible nothing better will come along in the near future.

Decisions, decisions.

I guess I should just relax and daydream about Fort Awesome some more. Did you notice how it has a mote to keep the riffraff away?

That’s my favorite part.

Enjoy your Memorial Weekends, everyone.

As a single guy, I don’t need much. Do I have a place to park my car? Is there a place to put my television? Does it have a bathroom?

In short, guys are pretty easy.

(For the purpose of this blog post, we will pretend I am your garden-variety, single guy. In other words, there will be no mention of how I need a dining room big enough for the antique table I bought three years ago. Or how I would like a kitchen with lots of storage and counter space because I have awesome culinary skills. Or how it would be nice if I could find a place with a deck, balcony or porch so I could sit outside in the shade and watch the squirrels run around and the birds sing their bird-y songs. Ah, little bluebird, your voice lifts my soul…)

Of course, as a single (manly) guy who does not wish to remain a single guy until the end of time, I have to consider the female perspective.

What would a lady I am entertaining think of the place?

(So that no one gets the wrong idea, I mean “entertaining” in the most wholesome way possible. For example, we might watch a movie together on my couch. Or we’ll have dinner together while sitting on the antique table I bought three years ago. Or we’ll sit outside on my deck and watch it rain while anxiously waiting for Captain Jack Bluebird to make an appearance and treat us to a song. Or I’ll show her the Nobel Prize I won.)

A guy can look at a place and think, “Hey, this isn’t so bad.” A woman can look at the same place and think, “What circle of Hades is this!?”

I’m not an expert on women, but methinks it’s a bad sign if the lady you are trying to woo thinks of Dante’s Inferno when she walks through your front door.

Of course, it’s one thing to know your place needs to be female friendly. It’s quite another thing to know what exactly makes a place female friendly.

So, beyond “needs actual toilet instead of men’s urinal” and “no signs that say ‘no girls allowed’”, I don’t have the foggiest clue what makes a home or apartment friendly to females.

That’s why I need all of your (my readers) help. An overwhelming majority of you are female. Therefore, it stands to reason you should have at least a tiny inkling what would make a place female friendly.

Share this information with me perhaps you will?

If you have some helpful advice (or even unhelpful advice for comedic purposes), feel free to share it by leaving a comment or two or ten below. Any crazy girl who agrees to go out with me one day will be most thankful for your input!

Men used to be tough. Now they aren’t.

What happened?

It used to be reasonably easy for a girl to find a “nice guy” who was still a guy. Now an overwhelming majority of the “nice guys” are so weak they practically wet themselves if a female raises her voice to them.

Now, I’m sure some women like spineless men. Clearly, such men aren’t having much trouble finding women. Go to any store that sells women’s clothing and you’ll see numerous guys holding purses while their wives or girlfriends are picking out and trying on clothes.

You can easily spot these guys.

Well, one, they’re holding purses (duh). That’s a little hard to miss. But you can also spot them by the dead look in their eyes. They look like they’ve been sucked dry of their joy.

Occasionally, I will walk up to one of these guys and try to free them.

“You don’t have to live this way,” I will tell them. “Drop that purse. Let’s go look at the plasma televisions. There is a football game on!”

“Ssssssshhhhhh,” they will whisper.

“She’ll hear you.”

“I don’t care if she hears me,” I will shout.

“Look at you! Look at what you’ve become. You make me sick to my stomach.”

“I know,” the guy will sigh. “But…”

“But nothing,” I will interrupt. “Are you wearing a sweater vest? Is that a pink shirt? Did she dress you?!”

Eventually, the wife or girlfriend will make an appearance. I stand back and watch the spineless master at work.

“Did you find anything you liked, dear,” the guy will ask.

“Do you want to watch Beaches when we get home, dear?”

How did this happen?

How did we reach the point where 48% of the men in this country are jerks, 48% are “nice guys” who let people walk all over them, and only 2% are genuinely nice guys who would have no qualms about punching a bully in the face if they tried to take his lunch money?

Allow me to present a few theories:

#1: Everyone Deserves a Trophy (or Why Should He Have to Fight His Own Battles?)

Somewhere along the way, parents decided that EVERY child deserved an award regardless of whether or not they did anything to earn one. This is merely one example of how boys of today are babied while growing up.

In sports, the last place team got a trophy just like the first place team did. Heck, these days, when the kids are young, they don’t even keep scores of the games.

“Who’s winning,” someone will ask.

“Oh, we don’t keep score,” a parent will explain. “We don’t want to damage anyone’s self esteem.”

This might be okay if the children weren’t still handled with baby gloves when they got older. Instead, “mercy rules” are put into place so players on losing teams don’t lose too badly. Some leagues will let every team make the playoffs so no players feel left out. Some leagues choose not to participate in “all-star tournaments” because they don’t want children who aren’t good enough to make the all-star team to feel like failures. And, as I mentioned earlier, every player gets a trophy.

This mentality isn’t limited only to sports either. Look at academics these days.

Parents and school administrators practically bend over backwards to make sure Little Timmy and Little Suzie get good grades. Teachers are forced to give numerous makeup assignments and extra credit. If a student fails, Little Timmy and Suzie rarely have to shoulder any of the blame.

“It was the school’s fault. They shouldn’t make you take Algebra if you aren’t good at math.”

“It was the teacher’s fault. Your teacher didn’t do a good job teaching you.”

“It was your father’s fault. The dog kept eating your homework, and your father kept forgetting to put him in the backyard at night.”

“It was my fault. I was so preoccupied cutting your food for you and changing your diaper, I didn’t have time to write your research paper on World War II for you.”

And so on.

And so on.

And so on.

For boys, this mentality leads them to grow up into “men” who rarely had to face failure and hardly ever had to be accountable.

Losing sucks. It does. But you know what? Losing is also an excellent motivator. It makes you tougher. It makes you try harder.

The boy who never had to face losing or had adults constantly making excuses for his shortcomings inevitably becomes an adult with the mental toughness of a boy who never had to face losing or had adults who constantly made excuses for his shortcomings.

#2: Everybody Loves Raymond-itis

Now, I enjoyed — and still do enjoy — the television show Everybody Loves Raymond. One, it was a funny show. And two, I realize it’s fiction and for entertainment purposes only. The show’s content does not alter my outlook on life.

I am that way with all television shows and movies.

I can watch a movie with profanity in it (even though I don’t like it) and not have my own vocabulary become littered with the sporadic use of four-letter words.

I can watch a television show that features an unmarried couple living together and not think to myself, “If I had a girlfriend it would be totally okay to have her live with me.”

And I can watch Everybody Loves Raymond and not think all husbands are bumbling fools married to women who wear the pants in the relationship.

However, many guys cannot.

Raymond is just one example of an assembly line of television shows and movies in the past decade or two where a weak and/or inexplicably stupid man is dating or married to a strong and/or inexplicably intelligent woman.

It’s little wonder why I see men in clothing stores holding purses and men in video stores carrying some random chick flick.

To them, fiction (TV and movies) is reality.

#3: We are Living in a Metrosexual World and I am a Metrosexual Girl. Err, I Mean Boy

Believe it or not, just a decade ago (give or take a few years) there weren’t personal care products tailored to guys.

Back in the day, we didn’t have shampoos made specifically for men. We could use Head & Shoulders, Pert Plus, or we could use one of the hundreds of women’s shampoos that smelled like fruits and flowers.

Today, there are shampoos and conditioners specifically made for guys.

Back in the day, there was no such thing as men’s moisturizer. We had after shave, which either came in liquid form (i.e. the kind packed with alcohol that set your face on fire) or lotion (i.e. the “cooling” kind that still set your face on fire). The notion of a men’s moisturizer product that improved the quality of a guy’s skin and helped prevent or treat wrinkles was insane.

Today, there are all sorts of men’s moisturizers for every skin type. Want SPF protection in your moisturizer? They have it. Want something to help with dark circles under your eyes? It exists. Want one type of moisturizer in the mornings and another type in the evening before going to bed? Then it’s a great time to be a guy, my friend.

And then you’ve got body washes. And body sprays. And body powder made specifically for men. And two hundred brands of razors to help us achieve the perfect shave.

And so on.

And so on.

And so on.

I’m not saying these things are bad. I’m just saying they are a recently-new development.

Personally, I like having a shampoo and conditioner that doesn’t smell like tropical gardens. I like using body wash instead of unscented Ivory bar soap or bars of Irish Spring. I like having an after-shave moisturizer with SPF protection in it so my face doesn’t look 60 when it’s 40.

I like all that.

But the problem is way, way, WAY too many guys don’t know where to draw the line.

They get pedicures and manicures.

They spend $60 or more to get their hair cut.

They wear body lotion.

(Guys should never wear body lotion. They just shouldn’t. Those who do are just one step away from shaving their legs. And unless you’re an Olympic swimmer, there’s never a good reason for a guy to ever do such a thing.)

Anyway, I guess I’m saying that while some of these things are okay, for the most part it’s gotten out of hand. Guys of today find themselves living in a world where there is an implied expectation to primp themselves much the same way women do.

Show me a man who gets pedicures and I’ll show you a man who is one medical procedure or blujean-zipper accident away from being 100% woman.

These are just a few of my theories. What do all of you think? Is Eastwood right? What happened to men? Do any of you ladies in the audience actually prefer one of these spineless or metrosexual types? If yes, I’d love to hear why.

As always, feel free to leave a comment or two or ten. Oh, and for those curious as to my current body wash of choice (you know you are), here it is. It smells like baseball, but without the beer.

I assume — much like the women I work with, the women at the grocery store and the female drivers I see in traffic — that you are here to be near me.

Now, now, don’t be shy. Wait, what am I saying? You?? Shy? I forgot who I was talking to for a moment. You ladies are about as shy as Robin Williams in Patch Adams or Jim Carrey in…well, Jim Carrey in anything.

That’s actually the reason for this ol’ letter here. You girls need to tone it down a bit. Strike that. You need to tone it down a lot.

Let’s go over a few ground rules, shall we? Consider this new gym policy. Yes, I realize I don’t technically own the gym. What’s your point?

Rule #1

Unless you are a 12 year old or are the size of a 12 year old, you should not wear clothes small enough to fit a 12 year old.

Rule #2

A woman’s perfume is a wonderful thing — except when worn at the gym. You want to smell nice? Go anywhere else. In the magical place known as “elsewhere”, your pleasant-smelling scent will be welcomed and appreciated. But at the gym, you and your perfume are mingling with an assortment of smells that, when added together, cause me to be envious of those who suffer from anosmia.

Rule #3

Do not wear shorts or pants with words written on the butt. If I wanted to read while working out on my elliptical machine, I’d reach for a magazine.

Seriously, I’m not a prude, but you might as well be wearing a shirt with the words “Look at My Butt” in bold letters and a giant arrow pointing downward.

Rule #4

Stretch at home before coming to the gym. If you must stretch at the gym, could you possibly not do it directly in front of me? Seriously, there are numerous places in the back where you can do that stuff.

Between you stretching in front of me to my left and the girl wearing shorts that read “hot stuff” on the treadmill in front of me to my right, I either have to close my eyes or look upwards towards the ceiling. And either way I look silly.

Rule #5

Put down the cell phone. Seriously, just put it down. If you are going to use the machine to my immediate left or right even though there are several others available, you cannot proceed to blab away on your phone while working out.

I don’t care that Katie’s boyfriend is a jerk. I don’t care where Kyle is going on vacation. I don’t care that there are “barely any cute guys” at the gym (a comment I can only interpret as either an insult to me or the lamest line in the history of lines considering the fact you know I’m on the machine next to you and can hear you).

Either put your cell phone away, or I’m taking it from you and giving it to the guy on steroids who is bench pressing a small village. I’ll tell him it’s a protein bar or something.

I know these rules might seem unfair, but it’s the way it has to be.

Of course, in the off chance you wear the things you wear and do the things you do to catch the eye of a guy who is not me, keep doing what you’re doing. You’ll end up with a superficial jerk who is only interested in one thing, but at least you wouldn’t have to buy new workout clothes.

To the rest of you, I’m going to help you by making every effort to not be so gosh darn awesome and appealing.

You’re welcome, ladies.

Sincerely,

Kev

Except for the parts I meant, everything I wrote above was a joke. How about all of you? Are you appalled at the things people wear, say and do at the gym (or anywhere else, for that matter)? Let’s vent together, shall we?

Which Sounds Better, Blalking or Wogging?

I’ve been told in the past that blogging comes as naturally to me as walking. I assume this was a compliment, although if this individual was thinking about a time I tripped or something it’d have to be categorized as an insult.

Still, compliment or kick to the shin, I have to agree with the statement. Blogging IS like walking to me. And no, it’s not because I walk funny. Although, I once had a freshman student of mine tell me I walked like a pimp. I’m assuming this was a compliment, too. Pimps are cool, right?

No, blogging is like walking to me because I blog and walk at my own pace. Others might be running around airports and malls like chickens with their heads cut off, but not me. I walk at a nice, comfortable pace. And no amount of masked gunmen and sales at the Gap is going to make me walk faster.

The same holds true with my blogging. Do others blog more frequently than I do? Sure. Do I wish blogged more? Of course. But this is my pace. If I blogged faster, I might pull a hamstring.

Wait a second…

My bad. It wasn’t walking. The person said blogging came as naturally to me as BREATHING. Okay, forget everything I wrote above.

I have to agree with that statement. Blogging IS like breathing to me. And no, it’s not because I breathe funny. Although…

There’s a Kick to the Baby Maker

I’m not sure what’s more embarrassing about the 50-game suspension for substance abuse by baseball player Manny Ramirez of the Dodgers.

Is it the fact he’s been caught and suspended for taking a substance typically used by steroid abusers? Or is it the fact the entire world now knows that, thanks to steroids, he won’t be having any Manny Ramirez Juniors anytime soon?

Personally, I think his hair is the most embarrassing thing. Thanks to this story, there are thousands of articles written about the man. And most every story includes a photo with his inexplicable hair.

That’s got to be embarrassing.

Why Buy the Cow…

You know what’s not awesome?

Turning on HGTV and seeing yet another episode of House Hunters featuring an unmarried couple shopping for a home. Let me paint a picture for you.

I’ll turn to the show when it’s already been on for a few minutes. I’ll see a man and a woman, and their realtor, looking for a new house. Immediately, my brain thinks, “Here is a married couple. I think they should pick house #2.”

Fast forward to the end of the show. They’ve selected their house, and now we get to see how they are doing six months or so later. This is how it usually goes down:

Woman: “We love our new house.”

Man: “One of the first things we did when we moved in was paint the kitchen.”

Woman: “We finally have a fenced-in backyard for our dog. And if that wasn’t wonderful enough, (name of man) proposed to me two weeks ago.”

Call me old fashioned if you must, but when did the whole “living together before marriage” thing become commonplace?

I don’t mean to offend or pick on anyone’s life choices. It just frustrates me that this has become the norm because it means people like my younger sisters grow up seeing (and possibly believing) it’s the norm. And if it IS the norm now, count me among the prudes who believe it shouldn’t be.

“How can we know we’re compatible if we don’t live together first,” some would argue.

“You don’t buy shoes without trying them on first, right?”

No, no I don’t.

But I also don’t take shoes from the store home with me and sleep with them for a year or two before deciding to buy them.

I’m classy like that.

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced Thursday it will would stop using the term “swine flu” to avoid confusion over the danger posed by pigs. The policy shift came a day after Egypt began slaughtering thousands of pigs in a misguided effort to prevent swine flu.

“Rather than calling this swine flu … we’re going to stick with the technical scientific name H1N1 influenza A,” (WHO spokesman Dick) Thompson said.

That’s right.

Despite the fact anyone who has read more than a few sentences of information on swine flu knows that pigs do not have the virus and humans cannot catch it by eating pork, Egypt began slaughtering roughly 300,000 pigs on Wednesday in an attempt at preventing swine flu.

This is arguably the stupidest thing Egypt has done since Pharaoh repeatedly refused to let God’s people go.

On behalf of guys everywhere named Kevin, I’m glad they didn’t name the virus “Kev flu.” I do sort of wish they had named the thing “Pauly Shore flu” or “Lindsay Lohan flu.” Wait, is that too mean? Sorry.

I hope there is no one out there with the name “H1N1 influenza A”, though. With the weird names parents give kids these days, it’s at least a possibility. I hope not, though, because — if so — that kid is screwed.

Of course, Egypt is not alone in its stupidity.

China, Russia, Ukraine and several other nations have banned pork exports from Mexico and parts of the United States. Why? Because they think they’ll catch swine flu from the pork.

Even world-renowned genius Paris Hilton is confused. When asked if she was concerned about the swine flu virus, Paris explained she was not due to the fact, “I don’t eat that.”

My head is starting to throb…

Your honor, I rest my case.

“When is Kev going to tell us what to do,” you’ve likely all been wondering. Your patience will be rewarded, my friends. Much like I did when the SARS pandemic hit a few years ago, I am going shed some light on the situation.

What’s that? I never blogged about SARS?

Oh.

Well, in that case I’m just going to write some random thoughts I’ve had lately about the pig flu.

If these are insightful and helpful, it’s totally by accident.

…

As child, I never understood why Charlotte in Charlotte’s Web died. But now I know. Wilbur gave her pig flu.

Those weren’t tears of sadness Wilbur was shedding.

They were tears of guilt!

…

Obama recently announced that people should not be alarmed by the pig flu pandemic. Looking beyond the fact I become alarmed whenever anything comes out of Obama’s mouth, hasn’t the man learned that every time he speaks on a topic, people dissect his words and overreact?

Heck, every time the man comments on the stock market, positively or negatively, people panic and the market goes down. If I somehow knew ahead of time when he was going to comment on the economy to reporters, I could make a fortune.

Anyway, by him saying there is no reason to be alarmed, a good chunk of the country is now alarmed. That’s just how it works.

Way to go, Obama. Maybe next time you can give a quote telling small children there is no reason to be alarmed by the monsters living under their beds.

If there is no reason to be alarmed, just shut up about it!

…

Even though you can’t get the pig flu by eating pork, I bet somewhere in the world there is a Jewish boy around the age of 12 who is sweating bullets because of the BLT sandwich he ate last weekend at his friend Johnny’s house.

…

I have no scientific basis for this theory, but if I come down with the pig flu I am going to rub kosher salt all over my skin.

…

I don’t understand why all of these U.S. citizens are visiting Mexico in the first place. Don’t they realize we have a New Mexico right here in the good ol’ USA?

I bet these are the same people who keep going to the old mall in town even after a new one opens.

…

I’m glad karma isn’t real. Otherwise, I so would be getting pig flu because of this blog post.

Are any of you worried about this pig flu pandemic? Do you think it will be contained pretty soon, or that the worst is yet to come?

In other words, you get sadness.

Still, I want to write something for the handful of you out there to read. Below are two posts I wrote at my old blog back in the day. They’ve never been published on SKOS, so they are going to be brand new to most of you.

The first one is a shorty but (hopefully) goody about a strange guy I met at the gym. After that is one of the very few surveys/memes I’ve taken in my lifetime. When you see my silly answers, you’ll understand why I rarely bother.

This first post was written on June 15, 2005.

I’ve heard it argued that Wal-Mart is the place to go to watch how people act, if you’re so inclined (if you go at 2 am you will supposedly get quite a show in the absurd). Personally, I always thought the mall was the place to go for such a thing. It struck me today that the gym is a good place, too.

Watching how people choose to dress while at the gym is a form of
entertainment in itself. At what age are men required to start wearing their socks high with shorts? Why do some men tuck in their shirts at the gym? Just seems odd.

The conversations are interesting, too. Today, a guy who had been running on the treadmill for almost an hour began recruiting those of us around him to go drinking tonight. For one thing, who goes out drinking on a Wednesday? Secondly, who asks complete strangers — both male and female — to go out drinking?

Coincidentally, this guy was also responsible for the most oddly amusing conversation I heard today. On one of the televisions, a Kylie Minogue music video was playing (he thought it was Mariah Carey, but I guess that doesn’t really matter). The guy went on, and on, and on, and on about how much he liked the video. I should point out his admiration had absolutely nothing to do with the music. When another music video with a female of note appeared on the tv, the guy would start up again. Keep in mind, he was not talking to anyone specifically. He was just talking for the sake of
talking.

In some bar tonight, there is a drunk guy sitting alone and talking to no one in particular about Mariah Carey. I can only assume he’ll go to Wal-Mart afterward.

And here is a survey I did back on August 9, 2006. If any of you are bored, feel free to leave your own answers in the comment section.

1. Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 18, and find line 4.

“And that, dear readers, is why I shaved my beard and left ZZ Top.” It is from a book I am writing called “My Life: Fact or Fiction?”

2. Stretch your left arm out as far as you can. What can you touch?

My collection of 32 oz. Subway cups on my desk. To date, I have 22 of them.

3. What is the last thing you watched on TV?

That would be the Atlanta Braves game last night against the Phillies. They had mercy on me and won, 3-1.

4. Without looking, guess what time it is.

2:21 PM.

5. Now look at the clock. What is the actual time?

10:23 AM. Boy, that is embarrassing.

6. With the exception of the computer, what can you hear?

Only the voices in my head. No, wait…that’s just Rich, the co-worker who shares my office. Silly Rich, stop telling me to burn the building down.

7. When did you last step outside? What were you doing?

This morning. I was stepping out of my car to enter the building where I work.

8. Before you started this survey, what did you look at?

The photo of the Smoltz Bobblehead I keep on my desk.

9. What are you wearing?

The same thing I always wear to work: swim trunks, turtleneck sweater, black socks, flip flops and a smile.

10. Did you dream last night?

I’m not much for dreams.

11. When did you last laugh?

That would be last evening during game night. While playing poker, my friend Emily said something to the effect of “I don’t sound like a horse, do I?” I responded, “no, you don’t *sound* like a horse.” Five seconds later she caught on to what I said, at which point I laughed. Hey, they can’t all be winners, folks.

12. What is on the walls of the room you are in?

I’m in my office. I’m a guy. My walls are completely bare except for the Monty Python poster in the corner.

13. Seen anything weird lately?

I saw a spider on the ceiling of my bedroom. I didn’t have anything to kill him with, so I tried spraying him with objects in my bathroom. In my research, I found that Hugo Boss cologne works much better than Axe Body Spray at making spiders smell nice. However, neither is very good at killing them.

(For whatever reason, I skipped #14. Maybe I forgot? Or maybe I was at war with the number 14 back in the day?)

15. What is the last film you saw?

In theatres, Lady in the Water. On DVD, Munich. If you are looking for a good comedy, I recommend neither.

16. If you became a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy?

Truck needs fixin’.

17. Tell me something about you that I don’t know.

Three of my friends are former students of mine. My mom affectionately refers to two of them as my “stalkers.”

18. If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt or
politics, what would you do?

Every day would be Casual Friday.

19. Do you like to dance?

I have two left feet. Two large, deformed, uncoordinated left feet.

20. George W Bush:

Former owner of the Texas Rangers.

21. Imagine your first child is a girl, what do you call her?

LaQuisha.

22. Imagine your first child is a boy, what do you call him?

Superfly.

23. Would you ever consider living abroad?

Depends on how long. One week on a vacation? Sure. Otherwise, probably no.

24. What do you want God to say to you when you reach the pearly gate?

“There he is. High five!”

25. Four or Five people who must also do this quiz in THEIR journal?

All who read my blog…

That’s all for now, folks. If you’ve missed me, let me know by leaving a comment or two or ten.

That was 18 months and some odd days ago.

A lot can happen in that length of time, right?

In 18 months and some odd days, a little boy with bad hand-eye coordination can learn how to play catch with his dad without the ball hitting him square in the eye.

In 18 months and some odd days, Axl Rose of Guns ‘n’ Roses could write and record almost two entire songs.

In 18 months and some odd days, Barack Obama can go from a senator with a questionable background and no experience to a legitimate presidential candidate with a questionable background and no experience.

In 18 months and some odd days, Samuel L. Jackson can appear in 10 or 11 movies.

In 18 months and some odd days, Paris Hilton can go from an inexplicably-popular tramp with no redeemable qualities to an inexplicably-popular tramp with no redeemable qualities in prison. Then to an inexplicably-popular tramp with no redeemable qualities who is also an ex-con. Then to an inexplicably-popular tramp with no redeemable qualities who is also an ex-con and who has a reality TV show where people compete to be her “best friend forever.”

Like I said, a lot can happen in 18 months and some odd days.

So why is it the bad drivers of the world haven’t gotten ANY better at parking?!?

As I left the gym and walked to my car in the parking lot this morning, my eyes immediately noticed the car next to me.

“Boy, he looks like he’s pretty close to me,” I thought to myself.

When I got to my car I saw the work of what is likely the worst driver ever to park beside me.

My car was perfectly square between my two lines. My car is pointed straight ahead. To give you a visual, the nose of my car is at twelve o’clock and the rear of my car is at six o’clock.

The nose of the sedan to the left of me was at about 10:30. The rear of his car was at 4:30. His right, rear tire was 100% in my parking space a mere six inches from my rear, left tire.

It was the most ridiculous parking job I’d ever witnessed. How he managed not to hit my car is a miracle.

And what made it doubly ridiculous is the parking lot was practically empty. The guy could have parked anywhere. But he chose that space. The one right beside me. And he did it blindfolded, apparently.

With unemployment high, I propose new police officers be hired in every town and city in the country. These officers will have one mission: to write tickets to people who cannot properly park.

Their job would be simple. If they come across a parked vehicle that is touching one of the parking lines, they give the driver a $50 ticket.

If they come across a parked vehicle that’s crossed one of the parking lines, they give the driver a $100 fine.

Once a person gets three parking tickets, their vehicle will be auctioned off for charity and they will lose their driver’s license — permanently.

It’s brilliant, don’t you think?

It will give jobs to people who currently do not have jobs.

It will stimulate the economy since the parking fines will be given to business owners (the ones who will be taxed to death by Obama).

It will help charities.

And best of all, it will get these freaks who don’t know how to park off the roads.

It’s a win-win-win-win situation.

Who’s with me?!?

“Could Kev possibly be more vague,” you are all likely thinking.

Yes, I probably could.

But since reader comments lately at SKOS have been about as rare as pro-America quotes from Obama while he’s been touring the world, I’ll drop the vagueness.

This morning, I woke up 90 minutes earlier than usual. I put in my contacts. I stretched. And then I went to the gym and hung out with my favorite elliptical machine. Then I came home, showered, dressed and went about my work day as usual.

(In short, I went to the gym before work this morning.)

Now, I am NOT a morning person. Getting out of bed to exercise before work isn’t easy for me. On my difficulty scale, I would rank it just above “not going to the restroom after drinking four cups of coffee while watching it rain outside my window” and just behind “making time stand still with my mind.”

But like many people have said before, the hardest about going to the gym is getting up and going to the gym. Once you get past that hurdle, everything is golden.

I always feel better after exercising. No matter how out of shape I might be, I feel good while working out and I have more energy afterward. Plus, getting up at the butt crack of dawn to exercise makes it very easy to avoid food temptations during the day. For example, take the following conversation I had this morning:

“Would you like a doughnut,” a co-worker asked me. “I bought three dozen for the office to share.”

“No thanks,” I responded.

“Are you sure,” my co-worker shot back. “Do you like glazed or chocolate?”

“Thanks, but I’m trying to eat healthy,” I insisted.

“Healthy? Come on, one doughnut won’t hurt,” my co-worker, who clearly is a demon sent by Satan to tempt me, responded.

How did I respond?

Well, I’ll give you three potential choices. One of them is correct:

“Want to see me make this pencil disappear?”

“I am ignoring you now.”

“Do you get a bonus if you give me diabetes or something?”

That’s right. Don’t mess with me, evil co-worker. My tongue is as sharp as a very sharp object of some kind.

Anyway…

The only negative about all of this is I have to do it all again tomorrow.

Lord give me strength.

Do I sing along with the music as loud as I can? No, thankfully for my passenger, that’s not it.

Do I fall asleep at the wheel? I’m sure I would be an excellent driver even in Sleepy Town, but no…that’s not it either.

So what is it I do?

I supply a running commentary on every other driver on the road and the (usually) inexplicable things they are doing behind the wheels of their vehicles.

For example, here are some of the things my sister heard yesterday while she rode with me to church:

“Look at this idiot. Hey buddy, it’s raining. Turn on your lights.”

“There’s someone who just got her learner’s permit. I bet she’s on her way to the dentist to have her braces removed.”

“I’m not sure where this person is from, but in their country ‘green’ must mean ‘look for something in your purse until the guy behind you honks his horn.’”

“There’s another genius with his lights off. Is there a moron convention in town? Is that where they all are going?”

“Either this guy forgot to turn off his turn signal, or his car is winking at me.”

“I could be mistaken, but I think the guy in the car in front of us is blind.”

“That car makes me sad.”

“I know I say this often, but every other driver on the road right now is a part of a mass conspiracy to drive me insane.”

I wish I was joking. I actually say these things while driving.

In all honesty, I am a nice person. I have a laid-back personality. Things really don’t rattle me. But there’s just something about being behind the wheel of a car that brings out the Mr. Cranky Pants in me.

Maybe it’s because I’m such a directionally-challenged individual — it requires me to be extra aware of my surroundings, and as a result I observe all of the stupid things people are doing around me.

Maybe it’s because, when I first began learning to drive as a teenager, I was really bad at it. I didn’t drive fast, but it’s hard to fathom how anyone could be a worse driver than I was at age 17.

Maybe that is why I’m always critiquing the bad drivers of the world. I see a little part of me when I see them. I see the careless teenager who didn’t pay attention to what he was doing, much less what anyone else on the road was doing.

Yes, maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s why I critique them.

Or maybe it’s because they’re all morons.

“why is satan allways drawen so stupid”

A big thanks to Google for referring this reader to me.

Dear Reader,

I’m much too nice of a guy to openly mock your spelling and grammar. Someone less nice would point out the multiple misspellings in your Google search, but not me. Nope, that’s not my game.

What I will say is your…um, interesting choice of letter usage has caused me to be unsure of precisely what you were asking. Are you asking why Satan is always drawn stupid, or why Satan is always drawing stupid?

If it’s the former, I assume you are a Satan worshiper who doesn’t appreciate the way people depict your evil master in drawings. My comic strip of a cartoon Satan and Obama on a date would be a good example.

If it’s the latter, I assume you are an art critic who has seen some of Satan’s drawings.

Assuming the former, have you taken a good look at your evil master lately?

Come on, man. The guy is red and has horns coming out of his head! Do you know how hard it is to draw something red with horns and NOT have it look stupid? It’s pretty darn difficult.

And what’s with the pitchfork he’s always carrying around with him? Do you expect us artists to simply OMIT it when we depict him in a drawing? Not happening, buddy.

And don’t get me started on his goatee. We get it. You’re evil. Blah, blah, blah. Goatees might look cool in real life, but it’s hard to draw one and not have it look stupid.

Look, we don’t tell you how to kiss Satan’s a** do we? And we don’t tell him how to be all dark and evil, right? We don’t tell you how to do your job, so you don’t tell us how to do our job.

Got it?

Good.

Now, assuming it’s the latter, I couldn’t agree with you more. Satan’s an artistic hack who most definitely shouldn’t quit his day job.

Why we let him design our mascot for the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta is beyond me.

God is awesome,

kev

What sort of advice would YOU have given our friend/enemy here? As always, leave lots of and lots of comments — one or two or ten, preferrably.

As such, I’m sure most of you regulars are expecting me to do something big and over the top. After all, it was on last April Fool’s Day that I wrote four works of satire for a personal finance blog of all things. “Surely Kev has something ridiculous in store for today,” you’re probably thinking.

Here’s the thing.

It’s more or less April Fool’s every day of the year here at SKOS. Seriously, just think back to some of the stuff I’ve written in the past year.

April

I wrote about how the Atlanta Braves were going to be facing a pitcher who was also a brain-eating zombie.

May

I talked about how I am able to get over concussions and the bird flu simply by thinking awesome thoughts.

June

I wrote a letter asking parents to stop expecting me to teach their children how to properly act in society.

July

I wrote a news story about how the artist currently and formerly known as Prince was brutally attacked by an assailant that just happens to look a lot like me.

August

I gave some tips to teachers that included, among other things, shooting rubber bands at the heads of students and telling them you once shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.

September

I wrote about how leather chaps will always and forever be in style.

October

I compared SKOS to the movie The Ring and told readers they would die if they didn’t tell other people about the site.

November

I wrote about how a Freddie Prinze Jr. movie is responsible for the plague that is the Obama presidency.

December

I gave dating advice and offered the following gold nugget of relationship wisdom: “People respect people who do not respect people’s boundaries.”

January

I gave advice to a mom who didn’t like the loser her daughter was dating. My advice? Kill the boyfriend, go to prison, and let me date her daughter.

February

I revealed a number of tidbits about myself, including the one about how the future homecoming queen at my high school drove me to our junior prom because I did not yet have my driver’s license. No one seems to believe this actually happened.

March

I created a series of comic strips. One of them depicted Satan and Obama having dinner together and being on the verge of making out.

See what I mean?

April Fool’s Day to a site like mine is like Halloween to a vampire or Columbus Day to Christopher Columbus.

It’s boring.

It’s crass.

It’s laaaaaaaame.

(In short, I totally would have participated this year, but I just couldn’t think of anything funny.)

Oh, sure, I could have faked it. I could have rambled incoherently about this or that, but that would have been a disservice to all of you. There is a certain level of awesomeness expected when I blog. Am I right?

I almost did write something late yesterday, though. My dad relayed to me something that happened when he was at an airport last week. It was hilarious, but after giving it more than two seconds of thought I decided there was no way I was going to blog about it. This is a family-friendly blog, and what happened at the airport, while funny, was most definitely not family friendly!

I’m all about the keeping it clean and the not shattering of innocence.

You’re welcome, people.

11:16 AM

I saw the new James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, over the weekend. It was surprisingly good.

I say surprisingly because the plot made about as much sense as the title. Seriously, I have no idea what “quantum of solace” means and I’d be hard pressed to explain the plot of the movie to anyone. There was a lot of action and fight scenes…um, there were explosions…oh, and it had pretty girls in it. Bond flies a plane in the movie. And I think he was a vigilante at one point.

Honestly, I don’t know what was going on.

I equate watching it with having an attractive, female Spanish or Latin professor in college. At the end of class you don’t know what the heck was said or what happened, but you don’t really care.

Of course, if there is going to be a test later, I’m so going to fail.

1:19 PM

I can think of absolutely nothing interesting to write. I’m tempted to turn myself into bait and go hang out in the break room. That young co-worker of mine will inevitably stop by, and then I’ll have something interesting to relay to all of you.

Will she spill hot coffee on me? Will she trip and twist her ankle? Will she attempt to make small talk by complimenting my nose and ears? Inquiring minds want to know.

1:46 PM

Hmmm. She was a no show. Does she still work here? I haven’t seen her since last week. Perhaps she thought someone in upper management was me from behind, and she caused him to scald himself with hot coffee? I hope that’s not the case. I’d feel partly responsible…

3:00 PM

Are online chatrooms still around? Beats the heck out of me. I remember being 19 and visiting them fairly regularly in my AOL (America Online) days.

I’d people watch. I’d see the horrific spelling. I’d see the incredibly lame attempts by guys to pick up girls. It’s a chatroom, guys. I’d say there is a 50% chance the “girl” you are talking to is really a dude.

One memory I have of my chatroom days is when I’d go to a particular chatroom and find it practically empty. There’d be one lonely soul inside it. Lord knows what he was doing in there. Waiting for the party to arrive perhaps? Beats me. I just remember thinking a person had to be pretty sad and pathetic to sit alone in a chatroom.

Where am I going with this?

Live blogging when no one is reading what you write or leaving you comments is very similar to sitting in a chatroom by yourself.

It’s time for me to sign off.

6:41 PM

Okay, so immediately after “signing off” earlier, I left work and went home. I was/am not feeling well, and I just wanted to fall into bed and sleep.

I entered my bedroom to find a chunk of my ceiling in the floor.

“That’s odd,” I thought to myself.

My brain wasn’t functioning properly, so I did not process the possible reasons WHY a five-yard by one-yard chunk of my previously pristine ceiling was now in my formerly pristine floor. So, I cleaned up the mess, took out my contact lenses, and collapsed into bed.

When I awoke ten minutes ago, I hear a drip-drip sound. Blind as a bat, I gingerly made my way out of bed and into the bathroom to put in my contacts. After doing so I see a fairly-large puddle of water in my floor underneath the hole in my ceiling.

I also see my small heater plugged into the electrical outlet, turned on, and standing at the edge of the puddle. I quickly leap to unplug it — thankful to God that I had not yet been electrocuted.

After splashing water on my face to better wake myself up, I walk out of the bathroom and notice my heater STILL turned on. Apparently, I had unplugged the wrong chord.

So, I yet again leap to unplug the heater before becoming electrocuted.

In short, I’ve had a craptacular day.

I’m cursed.

And that is never a good thing.

What does this mean?

Well, it means that at certain times during the week, teenagers under 18 cannot go inside these malls without a parental escort. Stonecrest, a Douglas County mall in Georgia, is enacting such a policy today. Teens without escorts will no longer be able to enter the mall after 4:00 PM on Saturdays and Sundays.

I, for one, am outraged.

Oh, sure, these malls will now be more pleasant places for grownups to shop. People will be able to go there without having their eyeballs assaulted by 14-year-old boys dressed like gangstas and 13-year-old girls dressed like street walkers.

And, sure, the malls will be quieter now that there aren’t dozens/hundreds of teens talking loudly on the cell phones as they loiter around the mall.

And, yes, the lines will be shorter. And there won’t be clumps of teens blocking walkways. And the malls will smell better since Lord knows too many teenagers still haven’t learned about proper hygeine.

I get it.

I also get that there are millions more positives that I haven’t even mentioned.

But here’s the thing, people.

I don’t go to malls.

Even when I dated someone who loved to shop, I went to a mall maybe three times in a span of a year. Usually, I only visit the mall once a year — and that’s if I haven’t finished my Christmas shopping, which I usually always do.

In other words, there is no upside for me in having teens kicked out of our malls.

There is only downside.

You’re probably wondering, “How can there be downside, Kev?”

I’ll tell you how.

Before, these teenagers were in one central location. If I wanted to avoid them, I just avoided the mall. But now they’re going to be scattered everywhere. Now they’ll be out there in the world.

I am out there in the world.

I’m sure banning teens is great news for the store owners and employees at malls. I’m sure they just LOVE the idea of banning the people who loiter around the mall and never buy anything. That’s awesome for them. I’m sure prison guards would just LOVE it if all the criminals were banned from prisons, too. It’d certainly make their lives more peaceful, right? Never mind the fact those criminals would now be out there in the world causing havoc, at least the PRISON GUARDS would have things a little bit easier!!

Teens belong at malls just like criminals belong in prisons. Mall employees and prison guards just have to take one for the team here. They have to suffer so the rest of us can live in peace.

Am I right?

Who’s with me??

11:21 AM

Not that I think the world revolves around me or anything, but I wonder why it’s raining outside when God knows I do not have my umbrella with me?

11:53 AM

In my break room at work, there are two coffee machines. One makes regular coffee. The other makes decaffeinated.

I can’t place my finger on why exactly, but the decaf one offends me.

12:25 PM

So what am I having for lunch today?

Why, I’m glad you asked.

I’ll be having a deluxe pizza from Lean Cuisine, like you see in the photo to the left. I’ve had it before and it’s quite tasty.

Of course, there is a problem. (Isn’t there always?)

When using the microwaves in our break room, we’re supposed to cover our food. They have signs all over the room ordering people to cover their food or risk the wrath of…I guess whomever it is that put up all those signs.

Usually, covering your food is simple. You just leave the lid on your Tupperware. If you’re microwaving a bowl of soup, just put a paper towel over the bowl.

But what am I supposed to do with a pizza? If I put a paper towel over it, it’s going to stick to the cheese. It will be a gooey mess.

I know…

If that female co-worker is in the break room, I’ll ask her to microwave it for me (sans paper towel, of course). When people complain later, she can take the fall.

It’s genius.

1:19 PM

I just LOVE it when it turns out I have to redo everything I’ve been working on for the past two days because someone else missed something during testing last week.

I don’t want to alarm any of you, but I have a short fuse when it comes to things like this. I expect people to do what they’re supposed to do. And if they fail, laid-back Kev turns into wrath-of-God Kev.

3:12 PM

I seriously need a vacation. I need a long, long vacation. I don’t know where I want to go or what I want to do (as of this writing, lying in bed for several days sounds heavenly), but I know I want a break.

4:04 PM

I might hurt someone before this day is through.

It turns out that, as I mentioned at 1:19, someone did indeed miss something in testing last week. And, like I also mentioned, everything I’ve worked on the past two days has errors in it. However, it turns out I did not need to redo my work because what I’m working on will need to be updated in a week anyway.

Of course, this helpful tidbit of information was not relayed to me until AFTER I had deleted my work and began redoing it. I’m far enough into it now that I HAVE to finish. My entire day is being spent correcting someone else’s mistake even though I apparently didn’t HAVE to correct their mistake.

You shouldn’t make me angry.

You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.

More to come throughout the day…

Intrigued, I clicked on the link and read the article.

Are you kidding me?

Jim Carrey as Curly?

Sean Penn as Larry?

Benicio del Toro as Moe?

Carrey, I suppose, could be a good Curly. It’s an entirely uninspired casting decision, but he’ll probably be fine.

Penn is a good actor, but there is nothing I like about him as a human being. His politics are to the far, far, FAR left of mine. When he was younger, he routinely assaulted paparazzi who had the audacity to try to take his photograph. Just last year, he visited Cuba and interviewed Fidel Castro. And perhaps worst of all, he used to be married to Madonna. When I see him in a movie I think, “There is that punk, Sean Penn.” He would completely ruin a Three Stooges movie for me. I’d keep hoping “Larry” would somehow die, and that’s so not what a person should be thinking while watching The Three Stooges.

And then there is Benicio del Toro. I realize “Moe” was more or less the straight man in the Stooges, but come on. Benicio del Toro? My cat has coughed up things that are funnier than Benicio del Toro.

(On a related note, my cat has also coughed up things that are better looking than Sean Penn. I’m just sayin’.)

So, there you go. I’m not a fan of two of these casting choices, and I’m lukewarm (at best) for the third.

Who would you cast in the movie? I’m going to give it some thought and give you my suggestions later.

I’m sure you all are waiting with bated breath.

10:52 AM

Okay, new theory. The young co-worker who inadvertently keeps startling me while I’m pouring coffee lives in our building’s break room.

I went to get my morning cup of coffee a few minutes ago and what do I discover? Said co-worker, along with two other (older) ladies, talking in front of the coffee machine.

I had to smile and politely say “excuse me” so I could get to the machine.

If she’s still in there when I go back to the break room later, it will be official.

12:07 PM

As most of you know from reading my Ramen Noodles with Hot Dogs recipe last year, I am an awesome cook.

For lunch today, I will be having a leftover hamburger from dinner last night. These weren’t just any hamburgers, though. They were one of my Awesomeburgers (copyright pending).

I take equal parts ground hamburger meat and ground chicken. This reduces the fat and calories. I add the meat mixture to a large bowl and add one egg. Then I add some garlic salt and black pepper. Then I add a little olive oil. Then I had a good helping of fresh Parmesan cheese. And then I add a little bit of diced green peppers (you could also use onions or a combination of the two).

Why green peppers and/or onions? Well, one, they’re tasty. But two, they help keep the hamburgers moist. Because the meat is half ground chicken, it’s not as moist as usual. Having diced peppers or onions in the meat brings back the moisture.

(BTW: Isn’t “moist” a funny-sounding word?)

And there you have it. You just thoroughly mix the ingredients, shape your hamburger patties, and cook them in whatever method you prefer.

Don’t be jealous, people. It’s not easy being a culinary mastermind.

12:11 PM

I just went to the break room to warm up my hamburger in the microwave.

Guess who was already in there warming up her lunch?

Yep.

1:15 PM

A meeting is about to begin in fifteen minutes, but thankfully I do not have to attend. You see, I am much “too busy” to attend. Or at least that’s what I’m telling everyone.

Bwahahaha.

2:32 PM

The possibility that the aforementioned co-worker is going (running?) to the break room every time I’m on my way there made me think back to the lamest pick-up line or flirtation maneuver I’ve received. Granted, guys don’t get these nearly (NEARLY!) as often as girls do, but we do get them on occasion.

I can’t decide which of the following was more lame.

The first candidate was the time some girl (at least I hope it was a girl) left me a note on the windshield of my Mustang. It said something along the lines of “nice car … give me a call sometime” and there was a phone number at the bottom. Now, I suppose it’s POSSIBLE this person had seen me leaving my car and knew what I looked like. But given the information I had on hand, this girl gave me her number based solely on the car I drove. Sorry, gold digger, but no thanks.

The second candidate came from a girl I eventually did date. I was sitting on a couch, and the person who was sitting next to me got up. There was a blanket thrown on the back of the couch, and this girl — who was sitting in the floor about ten feet away at the time — asked me a question I still remember all these years later. “What is that blanket made out of?” When I told her I didn’t know, she got up, walked over to the couch, sat down beside me, and inspected the blanket. “It feels like cotton,” she told me. And then she transitioned right into a conversation with me.

Actually, I guess since I did eventually date her, this cannot count as lame. Funny, yes. Lame, no.

How about the rest of you? What’s the lamest line or maneuver you’ve had to endure?

3:31 PM

I successfully went to the break room without seeing my female co-worker who I was starting to believe lived in the break room.

I’d celebrate, but I’m worried she might now be hiding somewhere in my office.

7:32 PM

Boy, this was a long day. Where are all the comments, people? Have all of you died? Are you ill?

If you’re ill, go to the doctor. While there, ask the doctor if she would visit SKOS and leave me a comment or two. Okay? Thanks.

I just opened the jar of peanut butter I bought at the grocery store on Sunday. A spoon of peanut butter is a great snack. If you like peanut butter, of course. Which I do.

To my dismay, I noticed there is no seal on the jar.

And then I noticed that the peanut butter is…liquid.

How liquid?

It’s almost as liquid as the Coke Zero I’m drinking right now.

A normal person would simply be disgusted. I’m ticked I paid good money for liquid peanut butter.

When I relayed my plight to my mom later, she told me “all natural” peanut butter (which is what this was) is like that because all the oil rises to the top. After not being able to think of a witty response, I quickly changed the subject.

And then this morning Angi left me the following comment:

You know, REAL peanut butter COMES that way, and you’re supposed to stir it, then refrigerate it. Because peanut butter is, like, 90% oil, 10% peanuts (hence “peanut oil”.)

So, if you send it to me, that’s what I’ll do. And then I’ll eat it, and gloat to you about how it’s the best peanut butter ever.

Sigh.

I am clearly a bafoon when it comes to different varieties of peanut butter. I’ve been a “Smooth Peter Pan Peanut Butter” guy my entire life. I am also frugal. So, to save a couple bucks, I grabbed the grocery store’s own brand of smooth peanut butter when I was shopping on Sunday since I’d heard it was almost as good as Peter Pan’s.

That is, I THOUGHT I grabbed the smooth peanut butter. It said “all natural” on the jar, but I just assumed that was some kind of advertising jargon to bring in the “green” hippie folk.

So, in short, I had a blond moment. It happens. What I thought was bad, liquid peanut butter was just “real” peanut butter. Looked pretty disgusting if you ask me. I’m just sayin’.

What about the “no seal on the jar” situation, though?

“Real” peanut butter or no, shouldn’t the jar have had a seal on it? What’s to have kept some maniac from putting poison in the jar while it sat on the grocery store shelves?

I need input from the “real” peanut butter aficionados out there. Should this jar have had a seal on it? I don’t want to be poisoned. Truly, I don’t.

11:33 AM

Why are napkins available in so many different colors?

In my desk, I have unused napkins saved from lunches going back probably two years. Why do I keep them? Well, I look at is as insurance — in paper form. I might never need 400 napkins, but if the time ever comes when I do I’ll be hecka glad I have them.

But anyway, what’s with all the colors? I have napkins in three different shades of yellow, three different shades of brown and, of course, the standard white.

Do restaurants believe napkin color influences us consumers?

“Yeah, their food is tasty and you can’t beat their service or low prices, but those boring napkins of theirs are inexcusable.”

I guess my point is this: Why have any color of napkin other than the cheapest one to manufacture (which I assume is white)?

Anyone? Thoughts?

12:04 PM

As I mentioned yesterday in my “Why is Fergie’s Big Girls Don’t Cry still being played” rant, I haven’t listened to the radio in quite a while. And if Fergie’s song caught me by surprise yesterday, the song I heard this morning positively floored me.

Gavin Rossdale is back?

Gavin Rossdale?!?

For those who don’t know him, Rossdale was (is?) the lead singer for 90’s rock band Bush.

I haven’t heard a peep from him or the band in probably 8 years.

Frankly, I assumed ol’ Gavin had hung up his music shoes in favor of a life babysitting Gwen Stefani’s kids while she toured the world. But no, he now has a solo career. And I heard the song to prove it.

If I turn on the radio tomorrow and find a new song from Silverchair, Limp Bizkit or Hole (aka Courtney Love’s band), I might never again turn on my radio.

12:35 PM

Back in the day, there was an episode of Seinfeld where Elaine had a co-worker who, in Elaine’s words, “comes out of nowhere and he’s right next to you!” The guy is then referred to as a “sidler” due to the fact he just sidles right up next to people.

Anyway, to combat this, Elaine tells the co-worker he has bad breath and needs to carry a pack of tic tacs with him wherever he goes.

The purpose of this, of course, is so that the guy would make noise when he walked. With the pack of tic tacs bouncing around and making noise in his pocket, the “sidler” would never again be able to sidle Elaine without her knowing it.

“What the heck does this have to do with anything,” you might be thinking/screaming.

Well, I need to do something with that young, female co-worker of mine. She surprised me, yet again, when I was getting coffee this morning.

I need to be able to hear her coming. But what can I do? Can I trick her into wearing a bell around her neck? Maybe I can trick her into swallowing a tracking device, and then I’ll be able to monitor her movements at all times?

I need ideas, people.

12:54 PM

Wonderful. I have a meeting to go to in six minutes.

Time to go die a little inside.

3:30 PM

“A meeting that lasts 2 hours and 15 minutes is one that is 2 hours and 14 minutes too long.”

That is what I would have written had I not lost my sanity 2 hours, 14 minutes and 1 second ago.

Instead, all I feel like writing is,”Hjljojojljlkjsjoigohhoikns ghoisoingw hohosgs.”

(That is crazy talk for “I loathe long meetings.”)

5:03 PM

Question: Is it proper work etiquette to take off your shoes while sitting at your desk?

Is it okay for just girls or for guys, too?

Is it okay for guys so long as they weren’t wearing the same pair of socks yesterday?

Is it okay for guys so long as said socks have no more than two holes in them?

Thoughts?

5:52 PM

I’m hard pressed to think of the last good movie I watched. This past weekend, I watched Transporter 3. I’m not your typical “action movies rule!” guy, but I liked the first Transporter movie. The second one, though unrealistic in parts, was entertaining, too. The third one sucked, though.

Overall, it just wasn’t a very good movie. However, what made it flat-out suck was the female co-star.

Said co-star, some Russian redhead named Natalya Rudakova, had never acted before according to her IMDB.com page. In fact, she hasn’t been cast in a movie or television show since Transporter 3 either.

There’s a reason for this. She’s a sucky actress.

There hasn’t been a more annoying character in a movie since Jar Jar Binks in the Star Wars prequels. I kept waiting for Jason Statham, “The Transporter Guy” as I call him, to roundhouse kick her in the face.

I’m serious. It was awful.

Michael Moore, dressed in drag, would have been less annoying than this girl.

Great. I just put a very unfortunate mental image inside my head.

More to come throughout the day…

(BTW: If it appears non-centered on the page, hit F5 on your keyboard once or twice to refresh. It should then snap into place. These crazy comic strips — always wanting to do their own thing. Sheesh.)

I wanted to make sure people, regular readers and new readers alike, knew about the gift package Angi is organizing for a Marine friend (and his friends) in Iraq. “People should know about this,” I thought to myself. “And if they want to participate by writing a letter, sending a postcard or whatnot, I should make sure they know what to do and who to contact.”

And what better way to make sure people are up to speed than a comic strip where I threaten to shoot a kitten if they don’t participate?

I think I have an advertising career ahead of me.

11:34 AM

I usually don’t listen to the radio on my commute to work in the morning, but I did today. In fact, it’d probably been six or seven months since I last did it. And what do my ears hear on the radio this morning? Fergie’s Big Girls Don’t Cry.

Are you kidding me? This song is still being played?

I don’t want to Fergie-bash. Granted, her face has an alien quality to it. And granted, she’s not very talented. All that said, this particular song of hers isn’t so bad. It’s quite melodic, in fact. However, it bugs me.

Why?

Because of the line in the chorus, “I’m gonna miss you like a child misses their blanket.”

Are you kidding me?

It’s not like “blanket” is used to rhyme with another word either. It’s a standalone line that doesn’t rhyme with anything. Apparently, Fergie and/or whoever really wrote the lyrics to the song thought it sounded really deep or something.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but if a girl told me she was going to miss me like a child misses their blanket, I’d have to fight the urge to laugh and respond, “And I’m going to miss you like a confused little boy misses his Rainbow Brite doll.”

12:11 PM

Having learned from my “skipping lunch” mistakes the previous two weeks, I’ve brought my lunch with me to work yesterday and today. It’s nothing fancy, just four pieces of wheat bread, some turkey slices, two slices of Swiss cheese, some light mayo and some spicy brown mustard.

Oh, and lots of tiny green pieces of awesome — pickles.

Pickles have the power to turn a boring sandwich into one capable of captivating my attention for hours on end.

I almost don’t want to eat it.

It’s just so darn good lookin’.

1:09 PM

I’m shocked. There appears to be another employee my age here. This one doesn’t work in my building, but she works in the building next door (same company, two different buildings).

This other building has their own security entry, which of course I do not have any way to bypass. So, when I needed to get over there a little while ago, I had to knock on the door and wait for someone to let me inside.

The girl who let me in had a look on her face that indicated she was thinking the exact same thing I was thinking: “Wow, here’s someone my age!”

I didn’t realize until later that my employee badge wasn’t in a place she could see it. So, for all she knew, she was granting a homicidal maniac access to her building.

I guess I have an honest face — my homicidal smirk notwithstanding.

2:48 PM

Believe it or not, the adorable kitten wasn’t my only choice for a victim in the comic strip you see at the top of the SKOS. I had a few other ideas.

Steve Urkel was one. You remember Urkel, right? From the 90’s TV show Family Matters? Well, whether you do or not, he was a candidate.

In the end, I opted against Steve Urkel on the grounds some of you might actually want him dead. I mean…the guy WAS annoying. Those pants of his were hiked up inexplicably high. And that voice…ugh, that winy, nasally voice was awful. And that “cool” alter ego of his…Stefan Urquelle. Ugh, Lord help me.

You know what? I’m shooting him anyway.

4:04 PM

I have a bit of a headache, so I asked a co-worker if he had any Ibuprofen. “Check the supply closet,” he suggests. Apparently, in addition to pens and pencils and post-it notes and whatnot, the supply closet also has Ibuprofen and aspirin.

So, I headed down the hall, took a left and went to the supply closet. The room is only about five yards wide, but it’s ten yards deep. They pack a heck of a lot of stuff in there.

While looking, in vain, for the Ibuprofen, the door opened. In walked the new, young, female co-worker who had startled me twice with her booming “good morning” greetings.

I prepared my ears for a screeching “OH MY GOSH YOU STARTLED ME” scream, but thankfully she spared me. Instead I received an, “Oh good…can you help me find the printer paper” question.

I obliged and then briefly showed her where the other main items were in the supply closet. In the process, I discovered the Ibuprofen (right next to the pens — pretty sneaky, Ibuprofen!).

As we said our thanks and goodbyes and began to leave (at the same time), a thought popped into my head. What if someone sees us leaving the supply closet together? That’s how rumors get started, you know.

So, I pretended to “forget” something else I needed to grab from the supply closet as she walked out the door alone.

Whewwww.

Potential crisis averted.

It’s a good thing I’m a quick thinker. Even headaches can’t slow me down.

Now where did I set that Ibuprofen…

6:26 PM

I just opened the jar of peanut butter I bought at the grocery store on Sunday. A spoon of peanut butter is a great snack. If you like peanut butter, of course. Which I do.

To my dismay, I noticed there is no seal on the jar.

And then I noticed that the peanut butter is…liquid.

How liquid?

It’s almost as liquid as the Coke Zero I’m drinking right now.

A normal person would simply be disgusted. I’m ticked I paid good money for liquid peanut butter.

Anyone want it? If yes, I could do another one of those blog giveaway things.

Click here to read about Jesse, a U.S. Marine and old friend of Angi’s who has just been sent to Iraq. Jesse had to leave behind his 3-year-old daughter and is currently in need of support and encouragement.

To quote Angi: “I don’t care how you feel about the war, those men and women are over there fighting on our behalf, sacrificing their friends, sacrificing their families, sacrificing the comforts of home, and sometimes sacrificing their lives, just to make this world a better place for everyone here, and everyone over there.”

A huge, huge amen.

Head on over to WSFD and read about Jesse and see what you can do to support him and his friends.

8:01 AM

What compelled Obama to go on The Tonight Show and speak to Jay Leno without his precious teleprompter to tell him what to say is beyond me. Of course, what do you want to bet his “special olympics” remark is quickly forgotten? If Bush had said it he’d have been tarred and feathered.

10:59 AM

Some of the following is true. Some of it’s made up for comedic effect. Can you tell which is which? Let’s see.

For the first time in close to six months, I got a haircut over the weekend. Yes, my hair was quite long. Whether or not this was a good look on me depends on whom you ask. And by that I mean if you asked my youngest sister, she’d tell you it was awesome. If you asked anyone else, they would have agreed to help you shave my head in my sleep. But I digress.

When I walked inside the hair place, I recognized the employee who greeted me and wrote down my information. I used to work with her. I remember this because, despite the fact she’s two decades my senior and married, she once hit on me at a homecoming football game. I’m not sure if she recognized me or not. But, again, I digress.

Despite the fact four people appeared to be ahead of me in line, a girl walks up and says, “You don’t have to bother sitting down. I can take you now.”

Said girl looked to be in her mid-twenties. She had dark, dark brown hair and was very tanned. She had a pierced nose with a tiny diamond you could barely see, and a tattoo on her wrist. I’d categorize her as cute.

She asks me what kind of haircut I wanted. I replied that I wanted all of this — as I pointed to my inexplicably-long hair — to go away. She laughed and I gave her a bit more specific instructions. I wanted the length completely gone. I wanted it cleaned up around my ears, but that I didn’t mind if hair touched my ears. And so on and so on.

She got to work and the smalltalk commenced. She asked me why I was cutting off all my hair. I made some reference to the hot weather. She asked me what I did for a living. I told her and then added a sarcastic, “It’s not nearly as exciting as it sounds.”

A little later, I asked about her tattoo. I couldn’t tell if it was a bird, a dragon or a half-bird-half dragon. It turned out just to be a bird. She asked me if I had any tattoos. I jokingly told her that she would know the answer in a minute after she’d cut off all my hair and could clearly see my neck (implying I had a tattoo on the back of my neck).

This was probably an unwise thing to do considering the girl had scissors in her hands and could either butcher my hair or — worse — maim me. Thankfully, she saw the humor in it and — after seeing nothing was on my neck — replied with a laugh and a, “So I guess this means the answer is no, you don’t have any tattoos.”

Soon thereafter my haircut was over, I gave the girl a nice tip, and I was on my way.

What?

Did you expect a non-anticlimactic ending?

11:55 AM

I apologize in advance for these. I’m going to think of the most ridiculous things Obama could have said in the interview and turn them into comics. If you have a good one, just leave me a comment and I’ll bring it to life!

12:23 PM

And a very big apology for this one…

1:21 PM

You knew it was only a matter of time before I did a Kenya-Obama comic…

2:17 PM

At last, the real reason Barack never bothered campaigning in Alaska is revealed.

3:31 PM

The stock market is up 400 points today (as of this writing) due to Timothy Geithner’s latest (or is this the same pig as before, but with more lipstick?) to help out the banks. As usual, this bump in the Dow proves investors are extremely fickle — and probably stupid.

So, Timmy, the government — i.e. we taxpayers — we’ll be flipping the bill for all this, eh? Instead of the banks having these bad debts, the taxpayers will have them??

Color me unimpressed, Timmy. If I see you on the playground later, you’re getting a mega-wedgie.

Boy, this has been a long week. It’s been a blur of company meetings, people dressed in green (I’m assuming because of St. Patty’s Day), pink eye and caffeine headaches. But none of that matters now because it’s Friday.

If I could marry Friday, I think I would. We’d go on a cruise of some sort for our honeymoon. I’d relax and see the sites, and Friday would…do whatever it is Fridays do. It would be bliss.

Of course, the problem with this idea is it would only be a matter of time before I’d have eyes for Saturday. Call me a cheating jerk if you must, but there’s just something about Saturday that makes Friday look like Tuesday.

Heck, I’m calling the whole thing off.

Sorry, Friday.

I never meant to hurt you.

11:02 AM

When historians sit down to rewrite history books, I hope they remember to include this little gold nugget.

11:59 AM

The new co-worker who is my age snuck up behind me in the break room and tried to give me a heart attack.

I was getting a cup of coffee when all of a sudden I hear a loud “Good Morning!” directly behind me. I avoided the urge to scream and/or flow (fling or throw — take your pick) my coffee into the face of the loud, mysterious lurker. Instead I turned around, noticed who it was, smiled, and replied with a “good morning” of my own.

This is now the second time she has greeted me, and both times she’s spoken very loudly. Either she is hard of hearing or she thinks I am. Or perhaps she just wants to be memorable.

“If I speak so loudly it hurts his ears, and if I sneak up behind him and scare him while he’s pouring hot coffee, he’s sure to remember me.”

If that’s what she is doing, it’s a genius plan.

12:26 PM

This one makes sense if you’re familiar with Dennis Miller. Otherwise, much like his funny, elaborate metaphors involving allusions to obscure people, places, and things; this comic strip will likely make you scratch your head and reach for the Advil.

1:24 PM

We all wept for joy on the day the following happened.

Right.

Come on, now. I couldn’t have been the ONLY person to throw a “Paris Hilton is in Prison!” party on this blessed day.

1:57 PM

Dear God. Thank you for everything You have given me. Thank you for my friends and family. Thank you for my good health and my job. You have truly blessed me.

That said, please make it so that Angi makes a typo in an upcoming blog post on her site. Let it be a really, really embarrassing typo. And please give me the vision and awareness to notice said typo before she does.

Thank you for giving me a friend like Angi who proofreads my blogs and points out the silly typos I seem to make on a frequent basis. She’s tops.

Amen.

(evil laugh)

2:22 PM

Would any of us be surprised if this is how their initial meeting really went down?

3:40 PM

I realize quite a few of these comic strips make me come across as female-obsessed, and for that I apologize. With that said, here is one more.

4:16 PM

If you’re like me, the computer monitor at your work is covered in post-it notes. At this moment, I’m looking at a yellow sea of sticky paper.

But the thing is…I’m pretty sure most of these have long outlived their usefulness. For example, here is one about time charging for August 2008.

Here is one with just a series of numbers. Is that an address? Did some girl give her phone number and I, for whatever reason, just stuck the thing to my monitor?

And here’s one, in someone else’s handwriting, that says: “AH-02 STANS Detail tabs disappear shipment suspense tabs ok.” What the heck does THAT all mean?

The only one I can make heads or tails of is this one that simply says, “Get more post-its from the supply closet.”

5:50 PM

I think a radio station should hire me to select their playlists.

My taste in music is amazing.

At least, I don’t have pink eye yet.

As I’ve previous written, my sister came home from college over the weekend and was immediately struck down with the cursed pink eye. Yesterday, my mom fell victim to it.

To date, I’ve remained immune to this pink killer of eye joy. This is probably due to my wicked awesome immune system, which I’m sure you guys love to hear me talk about over and over.

Still, even my immune system has its limitations. It’s possible pink eye will eventually best me, too. And if that happens, I will wear sunglasses. I will wear sunglasses all day long.

Why?

Because real men don’t wear pink.

11:17 AM

Have you ever watched a baby, having just recently learned to walk, excitedly take a few steps towards their mom or dad? Their little faces light up with each step tiny step as they advance towards their destination. And just when they’re only a few yards away, they fall.

Have you ever then taunted said baby for not making it all the way?

Yeah, um…me neither.

12:21 PM

Yep. I said it.

1:40 PM

I don’t know why my company insists on having meetings. I have another one scheduled at 2:30.

This one, knock on wood, should be fairly short. Of course, I’ve had my heart broken before.

Do the rest of you have to deal with periodic meetings at your job? Or am I the only lucky one?

2:09 PM

You thought (hoped) the LOST comic strips were over. But alas, you were mistaken.

3:44 PM

I’m not sure what it is, but there’s something about a long meeting at work finally ending that makes me want to run through the streets singing God’s praises.

4:03 PM

I’m trying to make these LOST comic strips plot free as much as possible so that you don’t have to actually know the show to enjoy them. Since I have at least one non-LOST fan in the audience (what’s up with that, Erin?), this seemed like the fair thing to do.

5:18 PM

Okay, so I guess you guys deserve a break from all the LOST comics.

On that note, I present to you all the debut of a new comic series: Great Moments in History.

(And to the historians out there…I know, I know. It’s meant to be funny.)

More to come throughout the day…

My hunch is some of you out there hope I keep publishing comic strips, and some of you who hope I die a horrible, horrible death (i.e. you are sick of the comic strips). I wish there was some happy compromise, but as my ex liked to say, “compromise is for %$@#&.”

Okay, she didn’t really say that. But I’m sure she thought it.

11:31 AM

Those of you know of my disdain for Keanu Reeves (or those of you who have just noticed his mug in the banner at the top of the page) just knew I wasn’t going to not immortalize him in a comic strip, right?

11:57 AM

Back in the day, during a two-day journey that saw me drive from Minnesota to Georgia, I remember noticing how NO ONE seemed to care about driving with their headlights on. It rained nonstop and was dark and overcast that entire trip, but it seemed as though half the cars on the road were oblivious. Needless to say, my impression of the drivers in these foreign (to me) states was not a good one.

Recently, apparently, whatever illness (I’m assuming it’s an illness — stupidity is an illness, right?) plagued the drivers in those other states is now plaguing the drivers in Georgia. This past weekend, it rained nonstop. On Sunday, I had to drop my sister off at college. To my shock and horror, about one out of every five cars I saw were driving with their headlights off.

When your consider the fact newer cars take the whole “remembering to turn on your lights” thing out of the driver’s hands by turning the lights on automatically, this 1-in-5 ratio is ridiculously sad.

How can these nimrods not understand that if it’s raining hard enough for your vision to be impaired while driving, you need to turn on your headlights? It doesn’t matter if YOU can see just fine — it’s so the other cars can see you!

Is it like this everywhere? My theory is the same people who never, ever, ever use their turn signals are the same people who don’t bother (or forget) to turn on their headlights when it’s difficult to see while driving.

I also have a theory that these are the same people who leave their shopping cart in the middle of the grocery store parking lot so that they can roll away at the first mild breeze and hit other cars in the parking lot.

But I digress.

12:49 PM

Sigh. I have a meeting at 1:00. Since my live blog is getting such little activity today, I leave you with the following deep thought.

See you all on the flip side.

2:50 PM

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: meetings are where joy goes to die!

3:47 PM

One of the downsides to live blogging (or for creating comic strips, for that matter) is coming up with semi-interesting things to talk about.

For example, I just got out of a two-hour meeting. The thing was so boring that I actually wished one of my epic sneezes would come along just so I would have something to do.

And yet, now that I’m out of the meeting and can talk about whatever the heck I want to talk about, I’ve got nothing. Zip. My mind is blank.

I tried to write a quick tidbit of comedic genius. Nothing.

I try to think of a quick comic strip idea. Not happenin’.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. I did come up with this idea during the meeting:

Funny? Sure.

My best work? Hardly.

I need ideas, people. Ideas!

Help me out here.

4:40 PM

Okay, for better or worse, I thought of an idea.

5:23 PM

Okay, I’m fairly certain today’s is the most disjointed blog post I’ve written in some time. I guess it’s to be expected. I woke up not wanting to get out of bed, and then I had a two-hour meeting of pure and utter boredom right smack in the middle of my work day. Plus, once again, I skipped lunch. For the past three hours, my stomach has tried eating itself.

Oh well.

At least I got to spoof ol’ Keanu in a comic. And I’ve wanted to unleash my wrath on those people who drive in rain without their lights on for quite some time. And in doing so I got to use the word “nimrod”, which just doesn’t get used enough these days, if you ask me.

Maybe I’ll find inspiration once I get home and inhale an entire jar of peanut butter?

6:34 PM

Within ten seconds of leaving the office, inspiration found me.

Although, I guess it isn’t really inspiration as much as my mom texted me saying she had caught my sister’s pink eye.

I was around my sister this weekend just as much as my mom was, so the fact I haven’t caught the pink eye is just more proof of my wicked awesome immune system.

Go Kev. I rock.

Sucks about my mom, though.

More to come throughout the day…

What did everyone think of the comic strips yesterday?

Granted, a few of them were very Angi-centric, but hopefully there was something in each of them you guys could relate to and find humorous. And if there wasn’t, well…sucks to be you!

I’m sorry. That was mean. I guess I’m just cranky because I haven’t had any caffeine yet and I’m suffering through a comic strip hangover. I’ve never had tequila, but I can’t imagine its aftermath compares to how you feel after looking at comic strip characters for 2 1/2 straight days.

If you had a favorite comic, do feel free to share it in a comment below. Hopefully the one where Barack decapitates the cartoon version of me isn’t the most beloved one. That would kind of give me a complex, people.

11:41 AM

The “St. Patrick’s Day Pot Luck” (emphasis theirs) lunch at my work is going on as we speak.

(You are talking to me through your computer screen right now, right?)

Our entire building smells like…well, I can’t even describe it. It smells like an odd combination of cabbage, vegetable beef soup and tacos. I assume (hope?) this means cabbage, vegetable beef soup and tacos are among the food items on today’s menu.

I didn’t bring a $5 donation and I didn’t bring any food with me, so technically I shouldn’t participate in the lunch.

Of course, I do have packets of soy sauce, Chinese hot mustard and light mayo in my desk drawer I could bring…

12:40 PM

Okay, so I kind of have a confession to make. There are more comic strips I created over this past weekend than the ones I published yesterday. You guys had been beaten over the head enough with cartoons, I thought I’d give you a break.

Well, break is over! Here is one of the previously unpublished comics. Bwahahaha.

1:32 PM

As luck would have it, they had so much food for the pot luck that they began recruiting those of us who hadn’t eaten to come eat some of it.

To recap:

• I did not give a $5 donation.
• I did not bring any food dishes of my own.
• I got to eat anyway.

And to think…some people actually scoff at my frugality.

2:35 PM

This one goes out to the LOST fans in the audience.

3:02 PM

I can’t help but notice the obscenely low number of comments I’m getting today. And it’s not like people are reading this live blog of mine and choosing not to comment — according to my traffic software hardly anyone is even reading it.

Did all of you forget to wear green today for St. Patrick’s Day? Are you having to fend off people trying to pinch you every ten seconds?

If so, do what I do: Say “It looks like you brought a pinch to a slap fight” and then knock the living stew of the person with your hand.

Believe me, it works.

3:35 PM

Here’s another one for the LOST fans in the crowd. What’s funny about this one is it’s precisely how things would go down.

4:08 PM

This has been an eerily quiet day. One of my co-workers left the company and moved to Florida last week. One of my other co-workers is out sick today. My immediate boss left around noon because he was sick. His boss is out all week for vacation.

If not for Mr. Scott Weiland and my iPod, it’d be so quiet around here that I would be able to hear myself slowly dying.

What does it sound like? It sounds like a tiny voice screaming “heeeeelp.”

I’d mock myself for having such a weak-sounding voice, but I like myself.

4:34 PM

This is the last LOST comic strip for today. I promise.

5:13 PM

Okay, I’m calling it. I’m pulling the plug on this live blog.

Time to put it out of its misery. I’m going to grab my shotgun and take it behind the shed. It’ll be a quick death…unless I miss my target. Gosh, that would be bad. My live blog would be yelling in agony for several moments until I could get off another shot. Lord help me if I miss the second time, too. I’d be out of bullets and would be forced to beat my live blog with the butt of the shotgun.

But what if the shotgun breaks? What would I do then?? Gosh, I didn’t think this through at all. What to do, what to do…

Oh! I know.

All I have to do is stop typing.

When I wasn’t driving a family member with pink eye back to her college dorm because she couldn’t wear contacts and hadn’t remembered to bring her glasses when visiting this weekend, I was at home suffering from a fairly bad earache.

But on the bright side, it’s now Monday, it’s raining cats and dogs, I’m tired and I don’t want to be here! Wait, my bad. That’s not an upside. That’s me complaining. I always get those two mixed up.

Anyway, for today’s live blog I’m going to do things a bit differently. In addition to my usual witty, hilarious thoughts on life (*cough*), I’m going to show all of you what I worked on this weekend in between my periodic screams of agony over the aforementioned earache.

My bad. There I go upsiding again.

10:52 AM

11:09 AM

For the handful of you still reading and wondering, “Did I just see a cartoon version of Barack Obama decapitate a cartoon version of Kev,” yes. Yes you did.

However, please take comfort in the knowledge none of the other comic strips feature scenes of decapitation. This is a classy blog, after all.

You’re welcome, America.

11:22 AM

11:49 AM

See? That was a nice, family-friendly comic strip, right?

Though I’ve never met her, I feel like I personally know the co-worker portrayed in the above cartoon after hearing Angi talk about her so much. If Angi didn’t have the patience of a saint, I’m fairly certain she would have murdered this individual by now. Heck, I live on the other side of the country and don’t have to deal with her, and it’s still taken all the patience I can muster not to hire a hitman.

But anyway, there will be more comics of this annoying co-worker throughout the day. Anyone care to place a wager on whether or not she’ll be eating in at least one of them?

12:10 PM

You can’t have a series of comic strips dedicated to and inspired by Angi without including politics, and I’ve created a few of them for your viewing pleasure.

My apologies to our non-conservative friends out there. Hopefully you won’t be offended. Of course, if this next one offends you, the other ones I’ll post later in the day will really offend you.

12:52 PM

Satan makes his first appearance in the following comic strip. And yes, I really do think that’s what his apartment looks like.

Minus the fire and brimstone, of course.

1:23 PM

The following comic strip references a remark I made in Thursday’s live blog at 11:31 AM. You don’t have to have read it to understand what’s going on in the following cartoon, but it wouldn’t hurt.

If you can read the following comic strip without Aerosmith’s “Dude Looks Like a Lady” playing in your head, then mister you’re a better man than I.

2:09 PM

The following cartoon portrays a real-life fear of mine. Angi, if you ever accidentally spill food on your clothes while at work, run. Run like the wind.

2:42 PM

Okay, so remember earlier when I said if the first political cartoon offended you you’d be really offended with the ones I was going to post later? Yeah, this is the one I mainly had in mind.

Call me crazy, but I suspect this is exactly how it all went down.

3:18 PM

No intro necessary. Of course, if it didn’t need an introduction, why am I typing anything? Seems pretty stupid.

3:30 PM

Satan and Obama are having dinner together again. No, don’t worry, there isn’t any kissing in this comic strip. However, there is a lot of heavy panting and swooning.

4:02 PM

Angi is much too polite to admit such a thing, but methinks this is what goes through her head on those especially aggravating days at work.

5:07 PM

Have you ever watched Obama speak without a teleprompter (or without whatever he’s going to say being scripted and memorized)? It’s highly entertaining stuff. His infamous “Joe the Plumber” conversation is a good example.

The following comic strip is inspired by Barack’s ridiculous dependency on teleprompters to get him through his day. And no, I was not drunk when I created this one.

5:40 PM

Hope everyone enjoyed these. With any luck, they brightened more than a few people’s Mondays.

Did the original creators of that insipid movie franchise pick “Friday the 13th” out of a hat, or has that day actually been notoriously unlucky throughout history?

If anyone knows, please feel free to share. If I have to, I will Google it. I’d just hate to waste precious Google resources on something like this, though.

9:29 AM

I like it when people leave Facebook statuses like, “Jack is going to bed.”

Without that helpful info, I’d be up all night worrying if Jack was ever going to get his beauty sleep. He’s got that big presentation in the morning, you know.

9:36 AM

On the other hand, I hate it when people leave Facebook statuses like, “Frank is having meatloaf for dinner.”

Apparently, Frank doesn’t feel we need to know what he’s having to drink or what side items he’s having with his meatloaf.

Thanks for nothing, Frank.

10:29 AM

If monopolies are supposed to be bad, why isn’t there uproar regarding the monopoly scissors have in the workplace?

Staplers have paperclips to keep them in line and vice versa. As far as writing utensils go, there are pencils, pens of numerous colors and sharpies. My office phone appears to be a commanding presence at first glance, but two feet away sits my cell phone. The tape dispenser has thumbtacks and glue sticks to make sure it behaves. Even post-it notes have “scrap sheets of paper and tape” to worry about.

And then you have scissors.

Scissors have no rival.

I wouldn’t mind if they weren’t so smug about it.

12:02 PM

It would appear “Friday the 13th” came about because a bunch of old dudes a long time ago inexplicably felt the need to combine the unluckiest day (Friday) and the unluckiest number (13) into one “holy crap hide the women and children” day of misery. Old dudes are weird.

But why are Friday and 13 unlucky?

Apparently, Friday is the day Jesus was crucified, the day Eve tempted Adam, and the day Cane killed Abel. I’m not sure how the unnamed Biblical scholars know all this, but I guess it doesn’t matter. I would have sworn all these things happened on a Monday, but I digress.

As for the number 13, just like all bad things, its unluckiness stems from a dinner party gone wrong. According to a Norse myth, 12 “gods” were having a dinner party at their heaven. Suddenly, a joykill named “Loki”, who wasn’t invited, crashed the party without having the decency to bring spinach dip or drinks. After having one too many Coronas, Loki arranged for “Hoder” (the “blind god of darkness”) to shoot “Balder the Beautiful” (the “god of joy and gladness”) with a mistletoe-tipped arrow.

A couple thoughts:

1. If “Hoder” was blind, I hope someone bought him a drink or gave him a high five for successfully shooting “Balder” with an arrow. I mean, murder is wrong, but come on. That was a heck of a shot.

2. Assuming the arrow hit “Balder” in the forehead, were all the female “gods” required to give him a kiss? The arrow was tipped in mistletoe, right? Tradition is tradition after all.

A big thanks to Angi the Awesome for finding the info for me.

1:32 PM

The Last House on the Left, a remake of the Wes Craven original, is being released to theaters today.

Does anyone else find it funny that these movies could have just as easily been titled, “The First House on the Right”?

2:01 PM

According to Yahoo’s homepage, “Shannen Doherty” is today’s top search engine phrase. Since no one in their right mind would ordinary give a crap about her, much less search for her online, I can only assume one of two things has happened:

1. Shannen Doherty has murdered someone.

2. Shannen Doherty has died.

If it’s the former, I’ve got to say I’m not surprised. Though I only watched a couple episodes of Beverly Hills 90210 during its decade-long run and I never watched a single episode of Charmed (despite the fact it starred Alysa Milano), I know enough about Shannen Doherty to know she is certifiably insane and capable of killing someone. Frankly, I’m surprised it took her this long to snap.

If it’s the latter, my condolences to her family. She will be missed.

I know I could clear up this whole thing by searching online, but no way am I Googling her.

2:54 PM

So, it would appear the reason “Shannen Doherty” is today’s top search engine phrase has nothing to do with her dying or her killing someone who looked at her funny. All that’s happened is she has rejoined that stupid (I’m assuming) “90210″ spin-off show on television.

To quote Angi, “Big whoop.”

Still, I have a hard time believing THAT is why she is dominating search engines today. She’s Shannen Doherty. No reasonable person gives a crap about her.

Therefore, here’s what I think happened:

Today, within a few seconds after midnight, Shannen Doherty searched for herself online. Since this was the first search inquiry for the day, “Shannen Doherty” momentarily leaped to the top of Yahoo’s list of top search phrases.

People all over the world then noticed her name on Yahoo’s homepage.

“What’s this,” they thought to themselves.

“No one gives a crap about Shannen Doherty. If she’s the top search phrase, she must have died or killed someone.”

And then, to find out for sure, these people began entering her name into search engines. This kept her name at the top of the rankings.

As the day has gone on, more people discovered her name on Yahoo’s homepage just like I did. And a majority of these people, curious as heck as to what was going on, searched for her online.

Curiosity begot Googling, which begot more curiosity.

I’m afraid we’re in an infinite loop now. Until the end of time, “Shannen Doherty” will be the web’s most searched phrase.

Lord help us.

3:58 PM

Once again, I made the mistake of skipping lunch today. At the time, I wasn’t very hungry. To quote the great Ron Burgundy, “I immediately regret this decision.”

I’ve looked through my desk and cabinet drawers and have discovered the following (possibly) editable edible items:

• One packet of soy sauce
• Three packets of Chinese hot mustard
• Six packets of light mayo from Chick-fil-a
• One packet of honey BBQ sauce
• One unopened, 15-pack box of Trail’s End Popcorn with an expiration date of October 30, 2004

Does anyone think eating the popcorn could kill me?

5:13 PM

Methinks those of you who are suggesting the popcorn is okay for me to eat are just hoping I will become violently ill.

My guess is you guys think food poisoning will give me plenty of live blogging material. I can’t argue with that logic, but I’m still going to have to pass on the popcorn from 2004.

I hear that was a bad year anyway.

11:54 PM

Friday the 13th is almost over. I’ve survived. Oh sure, I was a little worried when that hatchet-wielding guy in a hockey mask showed up at my front door. But I made it through.

To celebrate, I’m going to pour some salt on a black cat while I stand underneath a ladder.

What the heck am I supposed to use as blog titles?!

On Tuesday, I titled it Live Blogging: An Experiment Brought on by Boredom. Yesterday, I titled it AGAIN With the Live Blogging?

I can’t possibly keep up that naming scheme, right? Should today’s title be, “Did You Seriously Do Another Live Blog?” Should Friday’s be, “For Real Now…Quit it With the Live Blogging”? What title will I use a month from now? Three months from now? A year from now?

Seriously, I’m asking all of you. How should I title these darn things?

The show Friends named every episode “The One with ______” or “The One where ______.” They’d fill in the blanks with whatever the heck that particular episode was about. Monk does a similar thing where every episode is titled “Mr. Monk ______.” They fill in the blanks with whatever Monk does that particular episode. It’s a pretty nifty technique.

Of course, I can’t do this because when I title these blog posts in the morning I have no clue what they are going to ultimately discuss. To date, my live blogging topics have ranged from this year’s Oscars to wondering if the inventor of paperclips ever wonders what they taste like.

I need to give this some thought. Your feedback is welcomed and appreciated.

10:53 AM

Mandy Moore married singer Ryan Adams in Georgia yesterday. Silly Mandy. I know you thought having the wedding in my home state would increase the chances that I’d come bolting through the doors when the preacher asked if anyone objected to the marriage, but did you honestly expect me to fall for this ruse?

I wasn’t born yesterday, missy.

11:31 AM

I’m sorry, but I can’t think of Mandy Moore without remembering a story a friend told me one time about a guy she knew. It was one of the most insane stories I’ve ever heard.

Long story short: Said guy met a girl. At least, he THOUGHT she was a girl. It was really a guy. When precisely he discovered “she” was a he is shrouded in mystery, but apparently, at some point, the guy/gal serenaded said guy with a rendition of Mandy Moore’s song Crush.

It was one of the most hilarious, and disgusting, stories I have ever heard. Plus, it had a good life lesson:

If the girl serenading you has big hands, an Adam’s apple and calls herself “Mike”, she’s probably a guy.

12:09 PM

Why is Hayden Panettiere famous?

Of the few episodes of Heroes I’ve seen, she’s displayed an acting prowess the world has not seen since Keanu Reeves starred in his second grade class’s production of “Oliver Twist” back in 1971.

To steal borrow my own material from something I wrote back in 2005 about Allyson Hannigan, allow me to present to you all the full extent of Hayden Panettiere’s acting range:

This is Hayden Panettiere happy.

This is Hayden Panettiere sad.

This is Hayden Panettiere when she’s neither happy nor sad.

And scene.

1:10 PM

I’ve heard it said that a man would climb a mountain just to be with the one he loves.

Perhaps I’m missing the basic point of the message, but why can’t the girl meet the guy half way? That would seem like the logical thing to do.

Plus, unless they were going to live on top of the mountain, the girl would have to hike down eventually anyway, right?

Am I missing something?

1:43 PM

The king of Ponzi schemes, Bernard Madoff, pleaded guilty today and could face up to 150 years in prison for scamming people for billions of dollars.

Among the people he scammed: actor John Malkovich.

Who in their right mind tries to pull one over on Malkovich?! Have you ever looked into the man’s eyes during any of his movies? The man looks insane. I have a feeling his roles in Of Mice and Men, In the Line of Fire and Con Air weren’t “acting” as much as they were “Malkovich being Malkovich.”

Methinks Madoff pleaded guilty because he sought the safety only prison bars can provide.

Silly Madoff.

Malkovich will find you.

2:53 PM

I have also heard it said that a man would swim the ocean just to be with the one he loves.

Perhaps I’m missing the basic point of the message, but why can’t the guy just rent a boat? Is he too poor? How can he expect to raise a family if he can’t even round up enough money to rent a boat?

You’d think the guy could at least sneak onto someone else’s boat and hitch a ride. Of course, the girl he loves would probably just dump him for the guy who had the boat.

3:25 PM

On the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s homepage right now is a feature where you can vote for the “best hot dog in town.”

I like hot dogs. Sounds like a pretty good poll if you ask me. Of course, then I notice the hot dog photo they’re using (pictured). It’s burnt! And it looks like it has pickle wedges (!) on it.

Of all the photos of hot dogs in existence, they chose this one?

“Yes, I’d like one hot dog. Burn it beyond recognition please. Oh, and throw on some pickle wedges. Do you have any monkey brain you could sprinkle on top? How about some candy corn?”

People are sick.

4:41 PM

“I love the South,” proclaimed Kenya citizen and U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama to a group of Atlanta Journal Constitution writers at the White House on Wednesday.

Don’t patronize us, Barack. If you love the South, put Jeff Foxworthy on your cabinet. No questions, just do it.

5:35 PM

I have heard it said that a man would walk 500 miles just to be with the one he loves. I have it on good authority that said man would then walk 500 more.

Someone needs to let this dude borrow a car.

More to come throughout the day…

Plus, as you all know, my thoughts are best when short. Any thought that takes longer than 70 words for me to express and I begin to ramble like an English professor who has had three cups of coffee and was asked “Who the heck is Shakespeare” by a student wearing a “Fergalicious” tank top.

But I digress.

9:04 AM

We have a new female employee in the building who is — gosh — actually my age. In the sea of old timers that is my company’s work force, anyone around the age of 30 sticks out like a sore thumb.

But anyway, as I walked in the door this morning she was turning around a corner. She was carrying hot coffee and I was carrying my precious, sensitive skin. We almost collided, but thankfully did not. I smiled and began to say “good morning”, but she beat me to it with a bigger smile and a “morning” that was drawn for several seconds.

Her greeting drowned out mine, so I’m not sure she heard me. If that’s the case, now she thinks I’m rude. This is bad because, one, she’s actually cute. But two, I’d hate to offend practically the only other person in the building my age.

Last month’s “Employees Under 35″ meeting consisted of me and an ant that was trying to carry a cracker crumb. And I think the ant was lying about his age.

10:27 AM

Not that I needed a reminder of this, but there are some truly evil, disturbed people in the world. At the moment, Yahoo’s homepage features three recent tragedies: the man who shot and killed a pastor while his congregation looked on in horror, the Alabama gunman who gunned down nine people yesterday (including four relatives), and the German teen who killed 15 people in a school shooting this morning.

It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world.

10:44 AM

We’re having a “going away” pizza party for a co-worker today. There’s going to be Domino’s pizza as far as the eye can see.

This is a good thing, right?

Wrong.

I’m trying to eat healthier. Pizza is the exact opposite of what I should be eating. Well, technically, I guess eating entire sticks of butter while drinking heavy cream would be the exact opposite, but pizza isn’t too far behind.

I wouldn’t mind dilemmas so much if they didn’t make me have to choose.

11:21 AM

Did you know Tom Hanks snagged the lead role in Forrest Gump only because John Travolta turned it down? It’s difficult to believe, but according to some entertainment slide show on Yahoo it’s 100% true.

Personally, I’m sad it didn’t happen.

Every time I watch Forrest Gump I have the same thought: “There’s just not enough dancing in this movie.”

12:56 PM

I decided to have two slices — and only two slices — of pizza. I picked one with a lot of veggies and no meat. Calorie wise, it wasn’t a horrible lunch.

Surprisingly, the pizza was good. It’s been, literally, a decade since I’ve had Domino’s. My memory of them, much like Angi’s, was that Domino’s pizza was cardboard with toppings.

Apparently, cardboard has come a long way in the past ten years.

1:10 PM

Do you think, in quiet moments, Diet Coke cries because it knows it can never be as good as Coke Zero?

1:36 PM

I’ve just started season four of LOST. This show is addicting and it always keeps me on my toes. It’s like crack coffee.

To those fans of the show who have not watched any of the “special features” on the DVDs (I know there is at least one of you like this out there), here are two interesting “LOST” tidbits:

1. Michael Keaton, he of Batman and Beetle Juice fame, was the creators’ preferred choice for the role of “Jack.”

2. The character “Jack” was originally going to DIE in the show’s pilot.

Yep, both are true.

Would I lie to you?

2:01 PM

As I bent down to pick up my Nobel Prize from the floor just now, I glanced at my shoes (pictured) and had a memory come flooding back to me.

An ex of mine hated these shoes. Hated hated hated hated hated them. Hated them. Hated each and every square inch of them. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like them. Hated the implied insult to anyone who saw them by their belief that anyone would think they were attractive shoes.

In short, she didn’t like them.

Personally, I never understood the hatred. They are black, Kenneth Cole dress boots. They can go with bluejeans or dress slacks. They’re cool like that.

My ex, though, said they made me look like I had “clown feet.” I didn’t get it. Is there a guy in the history of the world who actually cared if his feet looked big? That’s a girl worry — not a guy worry.

What say you, good SKOS readers? If you click the image you will see a larger photo. Are the boots really that hideous?

2:25 PM

Do you think the guy who invented paperclips ever thinks to himself, “I wonder what these things taste like?”

If he has, I hope it was just a fleeting thought.

3:00 PM

Since Obama is too busy staring into the soulful eyes of a teleprompter all day, I’ve decided to take it upon myself to save the stock market.

How?

By issuing stock of myself.

My ticker symbol will be “KEV” (which, inexplicably, is currently unused). My price to earnings ratio is solid, I pay a nice dividend (in the form of picking up the check at restaurants) and I enjoy nice long walks on the beach and talking about my feelings.

You’re welcome, everyone.

(Note: Only ladies are allowed to buy stock)

3:54 PM

Well, it’s been brought to my attention that issuing stock of myself is essentially prostituting myself. That wasn’t what I meant, so I am hereby withdrawing my “KEV” stock idea.

Why does every good idea I come up with end with “male hooker” accusations being thrown about?

3:55 PM

That last question was a joke.

3:56 PM

Oh dear. I wonder what kind of traffic I’m going to get now that the words “male hooker” have appeared in a blog post?

Google Adense, you best keep it clean with the advertisements. I’m serious now.

4:34 PM

I just received an e-mail announcing a “St. Patrick’s Day Pot Luck” (emphasis theirs) next week at my work. We’re all supposed to either bring food or a $5 donation.

Am I allowed to only bring food that is green? If so, that’s really going to limit my options. Still, I’ve narrowed my choices to the following:

1. Moldy bread and cheese
2. Green Skittles or M&Ms
3. Frog legs
4. Some of those green eggs Dr. Seuss kept harping about

I don’t know about all of you, but my mouth is already watering.

5:21 PM

What does everyone think about this “live blogging” experiment the past two days? Should I keep doing it, or should I stop and never speak of it ever, ever again?

6:01 PM

Why is there a Viagra commercial on television this time of the day? That is ridiculous. Is ED not a taboo topic for children?

I’m glad I don’t have kids.

“Dad, what is erectile dysfunction?”

“This is why I didn’t want them learning how to speak,” I’ll tell my wife.

More to come throughout the day…

Granted, maybe one or two people would have actually followed the darn thing “live”, but at least it would have given me something mildly entertaining to do.

Fast forward to today. I am bored out of my mind with little to do. Seems like a perfect time to try out this “live blogging” thing, don’t you think?

9:07 AM

My head is killing me. My head was killing me all day yesterday and I woke up today with my head still killing me. Apparently, it takes a long time for me to die. I’m tough like that.

9:19 AM

Yesterday, despite it being the Monday after “spring forward”, I chose not to have a single drop of caffeine all day.

I was an idiot.

Today, I am making no such mistake. Coffee is good. Coffee is my friend. Coffee understands me. If I had an ounce of musical ability, I would write a song about coffee.

I’m making googly eyes at my cup of coffee. This isn’t good…

10:11 AM

I don’t believe it. The stock market is actually up right now. Heck, the Dow is up over 200 points. Has Obama finally saved us? (tries to control laughter)

10:49 AM

I actually had a guy leave me a comment earlier this morning. It’s been pointed out to me on a number of occasions that my readers are predominately female. And by “predominately” I mean “Josh and Steve are the only guys who ever leave me comments.”

I wonder why that is? Any thoughts, people? And by “people” I mean “ladies.”

I think I’ll give this topic a blog post of its own one day soon…

11:31 AM

Either someone stole my coffee while my back was turned, or I’ve finished all of the caffeine goodness and need to refill my cup.

I assume it’s the latter, but I’m setting up bear traps all over my office just in case it’s the former.

12:25 PM

I have felt “blah” for several days now. It’s lunch time, but I don’t feel like eating. Yesterday I felt the same way. I’d blame it on having a case of the Mondays, but rumor has it you can get your $%# kicked for saying something like that. Also, it’s not Monday.

Is there such a thing as having a case of the blahs?

12:42 PM

I’ve just noticed that no one has commented on this blog yet. Far as I can tell, no one has even read it. It therefore stands to reason that no one is reading these words I’m writing right now, and yet I am writing them anyway. Does this make me crazy? I’m not crazy, am I? Shhhhh, Kev, you’re not crazy. Okay, good. I was worried there for a second.

It would appear a better use of my time would be playing Pictionary with some blind kids.

1:51 PM

As I’m listening to the musical stylings of Scott Weiland on my iPod, a thought occurred to me: I would be a horrible rock star.

Seriously, touring the world and playing on stage every night for a capacity crowd? No thank you. I’ll travel the world, but I want to see the sights and sip coffee all day long.

Now, if my fans don’t mind keeping quiet and following me around all day, that might work. In between sips of coffee, I might pick up my guitar and sing a few tunes. Of course, after a few minutes of this I would want to get up and go somewhere else. When I get to my next destination, wherever that may be, I might sing a few more songs.

If I feel like it.

And if my fans aren’t cool with this arrangement, I’ll just cancel the darn tour. I’ll go on a vacation. And by “vacation” I mean I’ll tour the world and sip on coffee all day long.

2:20 PM

I don’t know why, but drinking four cups of coffee makes me have to go to the restroom.

I don’t pretend to understand the science behind it, but methinks it has something to do with coffee being super awesome and my having to let out some of the awesome before I explode.

3:01 PM

I think my feet are growing. Is this normal? I’m a grown man — shouldn’t my feet have stopped growing by now?

My size 13 Nike Air running shoes are too small. If I wear them for any reason other than hanging around the house, my feet hurt. And I just noticed that the dress boots I’m wearing right now are a little more snug than they used to be.

I don’t want to buy new shoes. I like my shoes. Plus, I’m frugal and shoes cost money.

I only have one recourse: I’m going to have to lose a few toes.

4:12 PM

Wow, the Dow ended up 379 points today. Too bad these gains will likely be lost tomorrow or Thursday by traders who merely wanted to make a quick buck.

Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe Obama really did save us?

Haha! It gets funnier every time I say it!!

5:09 PM

I can’t believe I haven’t eaten all day. Is this what it feels like to be anorexic? If so, I don’t like it. About an hour ago, after not being hungry all day, I suddenly became famished. But since it’s so close to dinner time I’m trying to overcome the hunger pains.

It’s not easy. On my desk, I have some BBQ sauce leftover from lunch one day at Chick-fil-a. It’s staring at me. Taunting me. I’d help myself to it, but I’m afraid the moment I do a co-worker will come into my office for my chat.

I don’t want to be known as “that guy who was licking a BBQ sauce packet.” As nicknames go, that one sucks.

5:43 PM

To those who are curious as to what I would have said had I actually done a live blog for this year’s Oscars, allow me to give you a few examples:

“Why isn’t Steve Martin hosting? This is inexplicable.”

“What is Sarah Jessica Parker wearing? It’s inexplicable.”

“Why is Jessica Biel on stage? She shouldn’t be allowed to watch the Oscars much less get on stage and talk to the audience? Who’s next — Bill Maher? This is inexplicable.”

In short, I would have said “inexplicable” a lot.

Wasn’t that fun? No? Well, I’m gonna do it again anyway.

Stupid People and the “Reply to All” Button

As I began writing this blog post, I received an e-mail at work about submitting proposals, a project of some sort, and other technical mumbo jumbo. It didn’t appear to apply to me at all, so I just ignored it.

Ten seconds later I received an e-mail from someone that says, “I was sent this e-mail by mistake, please remove me from your distribution list.”

Four seconds later I received another e-mail saying the same thing (with different wording, of course).

Five seconds later I received another e-mail like this.

Then another.

Then another.

In a span of one minute, I received 30+ e-mails from employees at my company who had received the same e-mail as me, and had clicked “Reply to All” to inform the sender he/she had sent his/her e-mail to the wrong people. Of course, by clicking “Reply to All” instead of just “Reply”, these people were sending their “remove me from your list” pleas to EVERYONE.

Within the next minute I received about 20 more such e-mails. My head was beginning to hurt from the stupidity. But then something even stupider began to happen.

People who were getting fed up with the onslaught of “you sent me this by mistake” e-mails in their inbox began to take action.

“Everyone, stop hitting ‘Reply to All!!!’ You’re flooding my inbox,” one person wrote.

“Why are all of you Replying to All?? Don’t you realize you are sending your e-mails to EVERYONE?,” another person wrote.

And then another person sent a similar e-mail.

Then another.

Then another.

Over the next five minutes, 70+ people sent “Stop replying to all!” e-mails.

These geniuses, in an effort to stop people from replying to all when sending their e-mails, were replying to all. They wanted to stop the flooding of everyone’s inboxes, but merely flooded them more.

The first one or two people who did this get a pass. They tried to end the madness and knew they had to tell EVERYONE in order for the madness to stop. But what about the 5th guy? The 10th guy? The 50th guy?

What were these morons smoking?

It’s like a 30-car pileup on the interstate. An accident happens and the cars immediately behind are unable to stop, so they rear end the vehicles in front of them. The cars immediately behind these cars then rear end them. The first 10 or 15 cars involved, depending on the size of the accident, can’t really be blamed. It all happened too fast for them to react.

But what about the 16th car? He sees the wreckage in front of him, has time to slam on the breaks, and yet he inexplicably drives right into the cars in front of him. Ditto the 17th car. And the 18th car. And the 19th.

By the time the 30th and final car rear ends the 29th car, five minutes has gone by since the initial accident. The drivers of these last few cars should be forbidden from ever reproducing. And whatever idiots deemed them worthy of driver’s licenses should be publicly flogged.

I say all this to say that the next person who sends a “reply to all” e-mail for this particular topic should immediately have a vasectomy or their tubes tied.

And then they should be flogged.

Thank God for Friends

The words “spring forward” hurt my head.

While I was able to avoid any mishaps this year thanks to a friend who e-mailed me a reminder on Saturday, long-time readers (or readers who have gone back through my archives) know that Daylight Savings Time is not my friend.

(For those who had no clue, check out 2007’s You’ve Bested Me Again, Daylight Savings Time and 2008’s Take THAT Daylight Savings Time!)

Still, the Monday after “spring forward” is dreadful. And, since the cleaning crew is mopping the kitchen at the moment, I’ve yet to have any coffee.

To quote the great Dave Nelson: “You know, I’m not sure what exactly it is that caffeine does for you, but I’m pretty sure without it your head caves in.”

Hi, Justin. Ready for Your Vasectomy?

Almost an hour after the initial e-mail and a good thirty minutes since anyone else had responded, a man named Justin has sent a “reply to all” requesting to be removed from the mailing list.

Justin, this is gonna hurt…

This brings us to the question on all of your minds:

“What does Kev think about all this?”

I think it’s awesome.

Not to sound too highbrow or anything, but I feel like Rosie O’Donnell at a bacon cheeseburger factory when everything is half price.

Let me back up for a moment.

I have been preparing 2+ years for this moment — the moment where I had my house in order (so to speak) and was ready to dive into the stock market. I eliminated all of my consumer debt. I started participating in my employer’s 401k plan and opened a Roth IRA for myself. I began saving money like it was a bratty cheerleader on Heroes.

And in the Fall of 2008, once I was ready to dive in, the market plummeted.

The timing was uncanny. There I was, with money to invest, and everything was dropping like Meg Ryan’s surgically-altered face if she sneezed too hard.

What was a guy to do?

I’ll tell you what I did. I danced. I went Michael Flatley on my kitchen floor.

You see, there are two ways you can look at this:

1. The United States economy is never going to recover. This recession is merely the beginning of the end. As such, you best stock up on guns, ammo and canned food.

2. The economy will eventually recover. Obama might do his best to screw it up, but it will recover in spite of him. As such, those with money to spend have possibly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity presented to us: We can buy into investments at discount prices.

If the former happens, I’m screwed regardless of whether or not I stocked up on guns, ammo and canned food. Someone with bigger guns and more ammo would inevitably come along and steal my canned food.

But if the latter happens, and I believe it will, this recession is Butch Cassidy to my Mozart. In other words, it’s got my back.

I realize people have it rough these days. As fitting as it would be if only those who were careless and greedy faced financial hardships, there are people who did things the right way who are having a difficult time, too. People who bought houses they could afford are having trouble paying their mortgages just like the greedy neighbors who knowingly got in over their heads. People who worked hard and lived within their means are losing their jobs just like the lazy people with massive credit card debt. If karma is real (it’s not), it’s clearly asleep at the wheel.

But for many of us the only real, tangible way the current recession impacts our lives is via our retirement or investment portfolios. With the exception of that little tidbit, we’ve been blessed. And to those people I say, “turn your frown upside down.”

Unless you are near or in retirement, this downturn is a good thing. It all depends on how you choose to look at it.

The last time my favorite index fund was available at its current price, I was still in high school. My favorite individual stock, one I will be buying in the not-too-distant future, was last available at yesterday’s closing price in 1995.

In 1995, the last thing on my mind was investing (literally). The current recession, sad as it might be, has essentially given me keys to a time machine.

It’s no DeLorean, but I’ll take it.

What is YOUR outlook on what’s going on? Everyone has a different perspective (many much different than mine), so please feel free to share.

It snowed.

In Georgia.

In March.

After a week where it looked as though jacket weather had officially ended, I awoke Sunday morning to find Jack Frost nipping at my nose.

(Actually, that sounds weird. Can we change it to Jane Frost? Yes, that sounds better. I awoke to find Jane Frost nipping at my nose.)

It hasn’t snowed in my my neck of the woods in well over a decade.

And yet, somehow, on March 1st, after it had been warm most of the week, it snowed. It snowed most of Sunday morning and afternoon.

I couldn’t believe it. It was snowing. In Georgia.

However, my joy quickly turned into disappointment. The snow, true to form, had simply found a new way to tease me.

If someone was to ask me “how many inches” of snow we got, I’d have to respond that “inches” was a too grandiose form of measurement. How much snow did we get? A centimeter. Maybe.

The snow would not stick to the ground. It had rained all day Saturday, so on Sunday the snow would hit the ground and immediately melt. It took three or four hours of steady snow before a light, powdered-sugar-esque covering began to form on top of the grass. I went outside in the hopes of crossing “snow angel” off my bucket list, but with every step my foot melted whatever tiny layer of snow had been beneath it. My dreams of making a snow angel were dashed.

So, too, were my hopes of buidling a snow man (and setting him on fire). Also dashed were my hopes of tricking some gullible kid into eating the yellow snow. There was no yellow snow. And any attempt to create yellow snow would have resulted in all snow within a 10-foot radius immediately melting.

No, the only thing I was able to do is walk around in the snow and stick out my tongue. Snowflakes fell on to it. I had long imagined what it would taste like.

Water? No.

Ice? No.

It tasted like disappointment. Icy-wet disappointment.

Plus, all this happened on a SUNDAY. What the heck, snow? You couldn’t have come during a week day?!

Oh well. I guess I can at least take comfort in the knowledge that snow must read my blog, right? How else would it know how to taunt me so?

1. I would like to make a snow angel. Yes, I realize this sounds lame, but as I’ve written about before snow seems to allude me year after year. I want snow. I want to walk around in it. I want to stick out my tongue and have snowflakes fall on it. I want to make a snowman and then set it on fire. I want to trick someone gullible into eating the yellow snow. In short, I want to live the dream.

2. I want to witness the Atlanta Braves winning another World Series. They won one, in 1995, when I was in college. But that was the only championship during their 1991-2005 streak of division titles. This fact makes me incredibly sad.

3. I want to see the Pacific Ocean. Among other things, this would make the Atlantic Ocean jealous.

4. I want to teach my children and my grandchildren (I currently have neither) how to catch, throw and hit a baseball. I also want to make sure they can spit with accuracy. It’s a baseball thing.

5. I want to write the next great American novel. Short of that, I’d just like to be published. Short of that, I’d like to sign the cast of some random kid with a broken arm.

6. I want to learn how to play a musical instrument — preferably either the piano or the guitar. Short of that, I’d like to learn how to play a mean triangle.

7. I want to be able to say, “I voted for the outspoken Christian candidate who had the conservative, Biblical values. You know, the guy who won the presidential election in a landslide.”

8. I want to visit Europe. If nothing else, I’m curious to see how their McDonald’s restaurants compare to ours.

9. I want to visit New York City. My mom has visited it once before and swears to me the streets do not smell like urine, but I need to see for myself.

10. I want to celebrate my 100th birthday.

And there you go. There are more things I want to do before I die, of course, but this is a good starter list. Okay, boys and girls, I challenge each and every one of YOU to write a similar list. Come on…it’ll be fun.

So, anyway, the whole “not blogging” thing, totally not my fault. For starters, my laptop died on me. I spent two solid days trying to bring it back to life. I’m happy to say I was finally able to figure out what was wrong, even though the solution makes no freakin’ sense whatsoever.

(To the Acer laptop owners out there: If your keyboard and cursor inexplicably stop working in normal mode, but work just fine if you boot up your computer in Safe Mode, you have a bad battery in need of a good spanking. Remove the battery from the laptop, plug in your AC adapter and voila. Your problem is solved. You’ll need to buy a new battery, but that’s sure as heck cheaper than a new laptop.)

In addition to my laptop issues at home, work has been really busy lately. This would be a bigger problem if I wasn’t so super awesome at my job, but it has meant I’ve been unable to blog during my lunch breaks.

And that’s it.

What? You thought I was going to write a ridiculously long list of insane reasons I couldn’t update? Please. Does that sound like me?

So, I finally joined the rest of my generation by getting an iPod.

(Sorry, no time for segues. I have a meeting to go to in 35 minutes.)

Someone who I will only refer to as Miss Awesome gave me her iPod Nano after she bought herself a new one. It is, by far, one of the coolest gifts I’ve ever been given.

Not that I don’t have a varied taste in music (ha!), but I have added the following albums to my iPod to listen to while I’m at work:

• Happy in Galoshes (Deluxe) by Scott Weiland (Scott is the lead singer of Stone Temple Pilots)
• Libertad by Velvet Revolver (VR’s lead singer is Scott Weiland)
• Contraband by Velvet Revolver
• Shangri-La Dee Da by Stone Temple Pilots
• Thank You by Stone Temple Pilots (Just the two songs I didn’t already have, thanks)
• No. 4 by Stone Temple Pilots
• Tiny Music… by Stone Temple Pilots
• Purple by Stone Temple Pilots
• Core by Stone Temple Pilots
• Talk Show by Talk Show (An album by the non-Weiland members of STP)
• 12 Bar Blues by Scott Weiland

So, boys and girls, if you want to be cool like your buddy Kev, you now know what I’m listening to while at work.

You’re welcome, boys and girls.

(And thank you, Miss Awesome.)

Yes, I know. This was boring. But what do you want from me? I had to throw something together real quick before my 1:00 meeting. Tell you what. If you guys leave me at least 15 comments, I promise to write a REAL blog post tomorrow. Deal?

Below are the fifteen questions and the correct answers.

1. As a freshman in college, the only decoration I had on my dorm walls was a single Alanis Morrisette poster.

Answer: Sadly, this is true. After graduating high school, someone gave me an Alanis Morriesette poster and I brought it with me to college. One day, after having been in the dorm for weeks, I looked around and noticed how naked my walls were. So, I looked for something I could hang on my walls. The Alanis poster was all I could find. I realize this doesn’t make what I did right, but at least understand why I did it.

2. I once met and had a cup of coffee with one of the girls who sent me a marriage proposal via my blog.

Answer: Nope, this one is false. While I have before met someone who discovered me via my blog, this female had not proposed marriage to me. No, the marriage talk didn’t come for several weeks after our meeting.

3. My next cigarette will be my first cigarette.

Answer: True. I have never smoked a cigarette (or anything else, for that matter) in my life. And no, I don’t think I’m better than anyone who HAS or DOES smoke. I just have better lung capacity, that’s all.

4. During the first two months at my current job, I was hit on by our secretary and our cleaning lady.

Answer: This would be true. The secretary, who was in her 20s, would send me chit-chat emails during the day. At first, I thought she was just being polite. But I knew for certain what was going on when my 40-something-year-old boss came into my office and, in a very high school moment, asked me if I knew our secretary liked me. Apparently, he had heard her saying some stuff about me to people. The cleaning lady, also in her 20s, was a bit more direct. While vacuuming my room one day she asked me if I was single and then gave me a piece of paper with her phone number on it.

5. I had never before been on a plane until the age of 28. On my first flight, I was seated next to two cute girls who had just graduated from Auburn, were on their way to a wedding, and who thought it was “adorable” I had never before flown. One of them asked me to be her date to the wedding. It was the best first flight in the history of first flights.

Answer: True. If I had know flying was so awesome, I’d have done it much sooner.

6. As a teenager, I failed the test for my driver’s license. Three times.

Answer: Believe it or not, this is true. Unlike most teenagers, I had no desire to drive. At 15, I did not get my learner’s permit. At 16, I didn’t attempt to get my driver’s license. No, instead, I waited until I had a date for my junior prom (see #10). At the age of 17, with prom three months away, I quickly got my learner’s permit. I then hurriedly began learning how to drive. I was not a fast learner. And during those three months I failed my driving test three times. The first time was due to several minor things, which wasn’t much a surprise considering I’d only been driving a few weeks. The second time I had a perfect score, but at the last stop sign the tester told me I didn’t come to a complete stop, which is an automatic failure. The third time I failed, despite having a perfect score, because the tester was not buckled. I asked him to buckle, but he told me not to worry about it. Apparently, I was supposed to INSIST he buckle up. The guy tricked me.

7. Of the ten readers currently listed in the Top Commentators (?) This Month section of my sidebar, I have met two of them in person.

Answer: True. I know two of the individuals in my “top commentators” section, and I see them regularly.

8. I had my first beer at the age of 28. My first thought after sipping it was, “Mom was right — it does taste like cow pee.”

Answer: This would be true. I did not have a beer until age 28. My ex-girlfriend and I, along with her parents, brother and sister, visited her grandmother at a lakeside cabin one weekend. The only things they had to drink were water and beer. So, I had a beer. I did not like it. And no, neither me nor my mom know what cow pee tastes like. It’s an expression. I heard it from my mom. She heard it from a friend, who may or may not have ever tasted cow pee.

9. The first rock album I ever listened to was America’s Least Wanted by Ugly Kid Joe.

Answer: Yep, true. As an eight grader my friend, Shazad (I think that’s how he spelled his name), loaned me a cassette tape of Ugly Kid Joe. The album, long forgotten by anyone without a sponge of a brain, featured a cover of Cat Stevens’ Cats in the Cradle. It’s actually a pretty decent song.

10. Since I did not yet have my driver’s license, my date — the future homecoming queen — had to drive us to our junior prom.

Answer: Sadly, this is true. Because I kept failing my driving test, I did not have my license before the prom. So, my date had to drive us. Now, is it kind of cool to be able to say the homecoming queen drove me to our prom? I guess. But that coolness is offset when I inevitably have to explain why she had to drive me!

11. The last movie I went to see in theaters was Lady in the Water in July 2006.

Answer: This is true. One, I don’t go to the theaters very often anyway. I much prefer renting a DVD and watching it at home. But two, watching that movie in theaters was torture. The place was packed with teens and college students who WOULD NOT SHUT UP. They laughed whenever the lead character stuttered. They laughed at serious, emotional scenes. They talked nonstop. It. Was. Torture.

12. I e-mail, chat online and text message the same way I blog or fill out professional paperwork: with proper grammar, punctuation and spelling. Even when I’m text messaging in a hurry.

Answer: Yep, true. Early on, back in my America Online days, I quickly learned there were only two ways to separate yourself from the morons online and actually make yourself appear intelligent: type fast and type well. So, whenever I talk on instant messenger, I used proper spelling and grammar. I do the same in emails. And once I got into text messaging, I did the same with texting. My name is Kevin, and I use proper spelling and grammar.

13. Every time the stock market plummets, I buy some stock.

Answer: This is true, but it was a poorly worded question. I don’t buy stock WHENEVER the market goes down. But whenever it takes a beating and reaches a certain “buy worthy” level, I buy. So, if the Dow goes down 300 points in a single day, it’s a safe bet that I bought some stock at the close of business.

14. The last fight I was in was during eighth grade. A boy nicknamed “Stick” tried to bully me one day. Apparently, “Stick” was unaware his nickname was given to him due to his stick-like physique.

Answer: True. I had glasses at the time and was not yet a varsity athlete, so good ol’ Stick picked a fight with me one day in P.E. class while the teacher was away. In a large group of classmates, he pushed me twice. I then punched him twice in the face. Stick never bothered me again and, to his credit, surmised that he picked on the wrong kid whenever someone teased him about the fight. On the bright side, I never had to deal with bullies after that day.

15. I loathe briefs and despise boxers. However, I think boxer briefs rule.

Answer: 100% true. Boxer briefs are the best. The. Best. To those of you who guessed that I go “commando,” what kind of guy do you think I am??

Yes, for those keeping score, only ONE of the items was false. The rest were true. Now, I did not do this on purpose. When I originally began writing the post, I wanted to have 7 or 8 true ones and 7 or 8 false ones. But once I began writing I forgot all about it. It wasn’t until the next day that it dawned on me all except one of my “facts” were, indeed, factual!

But that doesn’t much matter anymore. What’s done is done. The only thing the matters now is…

WHO WON?!

As announced, the winner will receive fourteen Arby’s coupons that do not expire until the end of the month. The winner will also receive bragging rights, and those never expire.

So, let’s look at the results. The number of correct choices are in parentheses:

Josh (13)
Erin (11)
Corrina (10)
Diana (10)
gianna (10)
Jenny (9)
Kathy (7)
Sarah (7)
Allison (1)

Thank you to everyone who participated!

I would be amiss if I didn’t mention that Angi, since she thought it would be unfair to everyone else, did not participate in the contest. Way to be altruistic, Ang.

I would also be amiss if I didn’t tease Allison for only getting one correct answer. Were you even trying, Allison? Geesh.

I think that since Josh, the winner, knows me in real life, he might have had a slight advantage in the contest. So, with his blessing, I am splitting the coupons between him and Erin.

Okay, boys and girls. That’s all for now. I’ll see what I can get my hands on to give away next.

Perhaps I’ll find a rock on the ground?

Undeniable Proof My Readers are Literate

Aside from the minor issue of me still waiting for all the winners to send me their mailing addresses (*cough* gianna *cough*), the book giveaway was an astounding success. Once I have received the addresses from all the winners (*cough* gianna *cough*), I’ll get the books shipped on out.

Of course, that’s not to say the book giveaway was without controversy. Two regulars, who both happened to come away empty handed, have claimed the giveaway was fixed. Josh went Oliver Stone on me and brought up the “C” word (conspiracy). Steve wondered aloud if I hand picked the winners, who just happen to all be female, so that I could “woo” them.

Pssssh, I say. Pssssh.

One of the five winners, Angie, is married. I have no idea of Gianna’s (*cough* send me your address *cough*) relationship status. Plus, with the exception of Josh and Steve and a small handful of others, most of my readers are female. It’s little wonder all five book giveaway winners were female — the odds are stacked in their favor!

Besides, fixing a book giveaway would be wrong.

I’m Thinkin’ Arby’s

Speaking of giveaways, the Arby’s coupon giveaway is going to end tomorrow at 5:00 PM EST. Yes, I arbitrarily picked this number out of a hat.

Thank you to all who have participated in the giveaway and attempted to decipher fact versus fiction in the Kev trivia game. However, several regularls have yet to participate. What’s up, guys? Too good for Arby’s? Or are you scared you might flunk the quiz?

Yep, I bet that’s it.

I will announce the winner on Thursday, along with the correct answers and how well everyone did.

And yes, whomever comes in last place will be teased. Just a little bit, though.

LOST is addicting, oh yes it is

I realize the rest of the world caught on to the LOST phenomenon several years ago, but I just started watching it last week. I’m watching Season One on DVD and I’m absolutely hooked.

Every episode is suspenseful. Every episode reveals something new and unexpected.

Locke’s dad stole one of his kidneys?

Kate is an outlaw??

Sawyer is farsighted???

I wish I could take off a solid week from work and watch every single episode.

There was no rhyme or reason to this post, but what are all of YOU addicted to lately. Consider this your very own 12-step program. Just leave a comment or two or ten.

I used the random number generator to give me five numbers within the range 1 to 36 — the total number of comments left by readers for the contest.

To the left is a print screen of the five winning numbers: 1, 16, 10, 8 and 31. Each number is matched with the corresponding comment from the contest’s blog post to give me the five winning names. Many people left multiple comments, but luckily there were no duplicate winners. It must have been my lucky day.

So, without further adieu, here are the winners and the comments that made their dreams come true:

Comment #1

Angi
February 5th, 2009 at 11:41 am edit:

I am shocked and appalled, Kevin. I don’t write nonsense that often NEVER write nonsense comments!!!

ACTUALLY, I was going to say that if someone was able to write an entire book based on ideas on how to “profit from the coming rapture,” more power to them. If someone had asked me, “Hey, Ang, how do you suppose one could profit from the upcoming rapture?” the only good idea I’d be able to come up with would be, “Well, hopefully all the bank tellers at your bank were taken up so you can just walk in and grab stacks of cash.”

But see, that’s why I’m not a financial advisor or author, and that’s why Steve and Evie Levy are. (I can’t say those names without laughing. Steeeve and Eeeevie Leeeeevy.)

I digress. I wouldn’t want to be accused of leaving nonsense.

Comment #16

gianna
February 5th, 2009 at 9:45 pm edit:

I fear the possible results of this comment, but the topic was waaaaaay too good to pass up.

I don’t think I want/need a copy of the book, but I had to chime in with Angi about the authors’ names. Steve and Evie Levy. I can’t even look at that without singing it out in my head. Poor bums. Think what they must go through on a regular basis. And then, as comic writers? HAHAHA Their peers must LOVE them!

Now onto the subject matter. Having already been left behind, would getting ahead merely place them on at an even level with the people who out-paced them to begin with? Honestly, can I say that this book is a how to return to the status quo guide? Or, seeing the blasphemous and somewhat sinful nature of the guide, perhaps it actually puts them even further behind the remnant.

Thoughts?

Comment #10

Erin
February 5th, 2009 at 3:41 pm edit:

Kevin, I will not only tell them you’re handsome, I will tell them you’re Awesomely Handsome, Extremely Gifted, and anything else you would like me to pass on.

Comment #8

Diana
February 5th, 2009 at 1:49 pm edit:

If Angi sends you a package in the mail, I’d be willing to take one for the team and open it up for you.

Comment #31

Angie
February 7th, 2009 at 1:21 am edit:

Talk about a tuna fish sandwich in top hat and tails! Whoo wee! My aunt could dress up a bologna sandwich into magic just like you… I tell ya… Only thing is, I might have to leave out the celery - no teeth to take care of the crunch. I also love a good tuna casserole, baked with a breading on top that has celery (cooked) and yummy tuna goodness underneath. Man, now I’m hungry.

Congrats, ladies! Tomorrow, I will e-mail each of you and request your names and mailing addresses. Before you know it a fresh, brand-spanking-new copy of How to Profit From the Coming Rapture: Getting Ahead When You’re Left Behind will be in your mailboxes.

Thanks to everyone who participated. You all rock.

What’s that? You’ve never heard of that game? Hmmm. I guess that means you aren’t cool. All the cool kids play this game. Yep. In fact, I heard Johnny Depp, Kristen Bell and that dog from the show Frasier we’re all playing it just the other day.

Now, let’s begin!

1. As a freshman in college, the only decoration I had on my dorm walls was a single Alanis Morrisette poster.

2. I once met and had a cup of coffee with one of the girls who sent me a marriage proposal via my blog.

3. My next cigarette will be my first cigarette.

4. During the first two months at my current job, I was hit on by our secretary and our cleaning lady.

5. I had never before been on a plane until the age of 28. On my first flight, I was seated next to two cute girls who had just graduated from Auburn, were on their way to a wedding, and who thought it was “adorable” I had never before flown. One of them asked me to be her date to the wedding. It was the best first flight in the history of first flights.

6. As a teenager, I failed the test for my driver’s license. Three times.

7. Of the ten readers currently listed in the Top Commentators (?) This Month section of my sidebar, I have met two of them in person.

8. I had my first beer at the age of 28. My first thought after sipping it was, “Mom was right — it does taste like cow pee.”

9. The first rock album I ever listened to was America’s Least Wanted by Ugly Kid Joe.

10. Since I did not yet have my driver’s license, my date — the future homecoming queen — had to drive us to our junior prom.

11. The last movie I went to see in theaters was Lady in the Water in July 2006.

12. I e-mail, chat online and text message the same way I blog or fill out professional paperwork: with proper grammar, punctuation and spelling. Even when I’m text messaging in a hurry.

13. Every time the stock market plummets, I buy some stock.

14. The last fight I was in was during eighth grade. A boy nicknamed “Stick” tried to bully me one day. Apparently, “Stick” was unaware his nickname was given to him due to his stick-like physique.

15. I loathe briefs and despise boxers. However, I think boxer briefs rule.

And there you have it. Wasn’t that fun? I had fun. Did you have fun?

So, think you know which ones are real and which ones are fake? Well then, smarty pants, leave a comment with your answers. I’ll even make it worth your while…

I have in my possession fourteen Arby’s coupons that do not expire until the end of the month. That’s right. I’ll give these bad boys to whoever gets the most correct answers.

You want a toasted sub for $2.99? I got your toasted sub for $2.99 right here. You want a chocolate or vanilla jamocha shake for 99 cents? I’m holding in my lovely (but manly) hands just such a coupon. You want four Arby’s Melts for $5? My friend, this is your lucky day. I’ve got that one and many, many more.

“But Kev, how can your frugal brain allow you to give away so many wicked awesome coupons?”

Let me worry about my brain. You worry about getting the correct answers!

Best of luck, everyone. This contest is tentatively scheduled to end a week from today. To make sure no one tries to cheat, you may comment as many times as you like, but you can only guess once.

Also, don’t forget about the book giveaway. The contest ends tomorrow and I’ll announce the winners on Friday.

I’m such a giver.

Today, I remembered I owed my employer a check for $12.73. On my last day of work before my wonderfully long Christmas vacation, I used my company’s shipping service to mail a Christmas gift. By the time I got back from my extended vacation, I had forgotten all about the owed money.

Why didn’t I just write my company a check the day I shipped the gift (when it was all still fresh in my mind), you ask?

Because I didn’t have my checkbook with me.

I write checks about as often as Angi’s ex-boyfriend changes socks or James Cameron directs movies. There’s just no reason for me to carry around a checkbook at all times.

Besides, I don’t like checks. If someone writes you a check, it can bounce. If you write someone a check, your account number, bank’s routing number, your name, address and signature are all right there on the check for an unscrupulous individual to use. Do you have any idea how easy to is to make counterfeit checks with a fake name and address at the top of the check and someone else’s routing and account numbers at the bottom? It’s too easy, my friend. Way too easy.

In short, I don’t like checks. Still, once every few years, I come across a situation where writing a check is my only option. When those situations arise, I get my checkbook out of my filing cabinet at home and do the evil deed that must be done.

Which brings me to today.

My employer won’t take cash or credit cards. A check is my only option. Thankfully, during my Christmas break, I momentarily remembered about the $12.73 I owed, so I grabbed my checkbook and put it inside my car. Today when I remembered, my checkbook was only about forty yards away.

As I began writing the check, I noticed the last check I had written. It was way back in early 2007. Just like this one, it was a check written to my employer after I had used their shipping service. Unlike this one, it wasn’t a gift I had mailed. No, the last time I wrote a check, way back in 2007, was when I shipped some items to my ex-girlfriend that she wasn’t able to take with her after we broke up and she moved away.

I had forgotten all about that until I saw the copy of the check. I shipped two boxes to her. One, I don’t remember anything about. I remember the second box, though.

It was filled with tiny pillows. These were the same pillows we had numerous conversations about back in the day. I never understood the point of them. During the day, they littered her bed. At night, she’d take them all off and put them in her closet. She wouldn’t sleep with them, which is what I always assumed was the purpose of pillows.

To me, if the entire point was to decorate your bed, why stop with tiny pillows? Why not put some artsy paintings on your bed? Why not go to an antique mall and find some nice knickknacks that could sit on your bed during the day? And if you really wanted to class it up, why not put a portrait of me on the bed?

I always thought my logic was impeccable, but she agreed to disagree.

On that day in 2007, those tiny pillows bewildered me in an entirely new way. It cost over $20 to ship them. How the heck do pillows cost so much to mail? These things are so small and light I could have tied them to the feet of thirty carrier pigeons and let them take the pillows to my ex.

However, since I was only able to corner and capture 15 pigeons, I couldn’t go through with that plan. I ponied up the twenty plus bucks, released the pigeons back into the wild, and cried my frugal self to sleep that night.

Don’t forget about the book giveaway. It ends this Thursday, February 12. The more comments you leave, the better your chances of winning.

As for THIS blog post, leave me lots and lots of comments and I’ll consider mailing you either a tiny pillow or a portrait of yours truly. Your choice, of course.

Yes, yes, I know the pleasure of reading my insanely witty posts is a huge reward in itself. But I can do more. Kathy at The Drunk Drawer gives away prizes to her readers every week. The least I can do is give all of you (well, not ALL of you) a prize once every three years or so.

Consider it my way of saying thanks. “Thanks for letting me enrich your lives with wicked awesome laughter.”

Ah heck, enough with my altruism. Let’s get down to the giveaway.

Thanks to the wonderful Anna Balasi of the Hachette Book Group, I have five copies of How to Profit From the Coming Rapture: Getting Ahead When You’re Left Behind by Steve and Evie Levy.

The hard-hitting guest blog I wrote last April Fool’s Day, Planning for Retirement in a Post-Apocalyptic World, is undoubtedly the reason I was chosen for the book giveaway. I am clearly the one-stop source for all post-apocalyptic financial news.

You can likely decipher whether or not this book is your cup of tea by its product description:

Are the end times near? Is the Rapture really just around the corner? Could Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson possibly be right? About 1 billion people among us believe, yes, absolutely.

And that means one thing: investment opportunities!

Sure, the rivers and seas will run with blood, locusts will swarm, mountains will move all over the place, and famine will strike. But for the five billion of us left behind, the post-Rapture world will be a time of even more unique investment opportunities.

Make no mistake, this book is a satire about the end times. Mimicking a how-to investment guide, it attempts to instruct readers who will be left behind after the Rapture on how to “exploit the inevitable demise of the world in order to make a tidy profit.” In its review, Publishers Weekly commended the book for the way it handled a “highly-charged topic with a surprisingly light touch.”

Of course, whether you will consider the handling a light touch or blasphemy in comedic form is entirely up to you.

Back in October, I wrote a blog that brought up the possiblity of this giveaway. In it I asked:

If done well, this book could be hilarious. However, it could also be extremely blasphemous. It depends on how the writers handled the topic.

Assuming it’s the latter, that it’s blasphemous and I hate it, should I do a giveaway here at SKOS anyway?

The overwhelming majority of you told me I should do the book giveaway anyway, so I will. Methinks a few of you have book burnings planned, but I digress.

By leaving a comment to this blog post, you enter your name into the drawing. The more comments you leave, the more chances you will have to win. However, your comments must be meaningful and actually contribute something. If you type nonsense just to up your chances of winning, I’ll have to disqualify you (this means YOU, Angi).

The drawing will end one week from today on February 12, 2008. I’ll use a random number generator to pick five numbers and the comments that correspond with those numbers will be the lucky winners. I’ll then e-mail the winners so that they can give me their mailing addresses, and then I will ship them their bombs books.

Easy peazy lemon squeezy, right?

Let’s do this thing.

Great game, but is John Madden in love with that guy or something?

I rooted for the Cardinals since Kurt Warner is one of my favorite athletes, but I can’t say I’m too disappointed by last night’s Super Bowl. Yes, the Steelers, the team Obama was rooting for, won. Yes, the halftime show was unwatchable because I was worried Bruce Springsteen was going to break his hip or neck with all his 59-year-old acrobatics on stage. Yes, the Super Bowl commercials were the stupidest, lamest, biggest waste of advertising money I’ve ever seen. And yes, the announcer for the game was John Madden, whose never-ending compliments of Steelers’ Tight End Heath Miller bordered on the homoerotic.

Despite all that, the game was one of the best in recent memory. Both teams fought hard. Warner played a great game. The outcome of the game came down to the very end. And if those weren’t enough to make last night’s festivities a positive experience, I present to you two indisputable facts:

1. A New York or Boston-area team did not play in, or win, last night’s Super Bowl. As someone who loathes the media’s constant praise of all things New York and Boston, this fact comforts me.

2. The hour-long episode of The Office that came on after the game was comedy magic. The first five minutes brought tears to my eyes. That is something even “chopping onions while listening to Messages by Velvet Revolver” cannot do.

Geesh, did anyone bother checking to see if OBAMA has been paying taxes?

On the heels of Timothy Geithner, Obama’s pick for Treasury secretary, not paying $34,000 in Social Security and Medicare taxes from 2001-2004, it appears Obama’s pick for Health and Human Services secretary has similar tax problems.

Tom Daschle says he is “deeply embarrassed” for failing to pay over $120k in taxes. The former Senate Democratic leader, who is set to oversee the new administration’s health initiatives, referred to his multiple oversights as “errors.”

I don’t ask for much.

I did not vote for Obama and I’m well aware that no one he chooses to pick for his Cabinet will be up to snuff in my eyes. That said, is it so freakin’ difficult to find Cabinet members who haven’t been doing things that would put you or me in hot water?!

If your Common Joe wanted to get a job which required “secret” security clearance on any of the numerous air force bases in our country, and a background check revealed he had massive amounts of debt or — oh, I dunno — owed a massive sum in back taxes, said Common Joe would most likely not be able to get said job.

Am I crazy, or should these people be held to HIGHER standards than your Common Joe?

I immediately regret this decision…

As a gesture of goodwill, I agreed this past weekend to do something I have never done in my life. Sometime later this year, I am going to do something that no girlfriend, friend or family member has ever been able to get me to do.

I am going to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Yes, it is true. I have never had one. Ever.

I know it’s difficult to believe because, one, I love peanut butter. I love it, love it, love it. But two, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is a staple food items growing up, right? Everyone brought one to school in their lunch boxes, right?

Well, not me. I was a rebel — a rebel with a turkey sandwich in his A-Team lunch box.

So, yeah, later this year a streak will be broken. It’s possibly the longest such streak on earth.

You’re welcome.

Putting aside the sad fact that it would appear a segment of society presumably voted for Obama under the belief he was going to give them the keys to Fort Knox, this woman is a prime example of the entitlement issues plaguing the world today. This is the year she finally gets to be rich.

I first became aware of this wave of entitlement when I became a teacher a few years ago. Students who did not pay attention in class, misbehaved and didn’t study felt they deserved passing grades. Their parents felt they deserved passing grades, too. More than one parent-teacher meeting was spent discussing what the teacher was going to do to help little Johnny pass instead of what Johnny needed to do. I refused to play this entitlement game, stated so, and soon retired from teaching.

These days it’s impossible to throw a rock out a window and not hit an individual who believes he’s entitled to anything and everything (including everything you own since you just “assaulted” him with a rock). A finance article, of all things, expressed my thoughts perfectly:

(The) relationship between optimism and hard work has been lost in some quarters, thanks in part to the self-esteem movement, which gave everyone a trophy regardless of his or her effort.

The recent season premiere of ‘American Idol’ provided an example. One of the men who auditioned, Randy Madden, dresses like Axl Rose but works as a salesman in a cubicle (calling himself “a rocker in a box”). When he met the judges, he admitted to having no musical training and never playing in a band, and then proceeded to butcher my favorite Guitar Hero song, Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer”. He teared up for the camera, proclaiming, “I just want someone to tell me I’m great.”

Here was a man utterly unprepared to get the thing he wanted — so he simply decided he was entitled to it, demanded it, and set himself up for a rather spectacular fall. He is not unlike those who took out mortgages they couldn’t afford, cashed out and squandered their equity, piled on credit card debt and home equity loans, then teared up, proclaiming, “I just want someone to tell me I’m rich.”

None of us are entitled to anything unless it’s specifically stated in the Bible or U.S. Constitution. And neither the Bible nor Constitution state we are entitled to be rich. Neither states we deserve a trophy just for playing the game. You want to be rich? Work for it. You want a trophy? Practice, get better and earn a trophy.

You want your car not to be repossessed by the bank? Get off your butt and stop expecting riches to fall from the sky and into your lap.

Of course, if Obama really does end up handing these people buckets of cash, boy is my face going to be red.

And with that, I’ve met my quota for “serious” posts in 2009.

My quota? One.

DEAR ABBY KEV:

My daughter, “Alexa,” and her boyfriend, “Ryan,” were on vacation and went gambling. Ryan bet $400 at a craps table, handed Alexa the dice and told her to throw. She threw the whole night for him and won $2,500.

After they finished playing, Ryan put all the proceeds in his pocket. I thought it was unfair. Alexa says it’s no big deal. I understand that the $400 was his, but she won $2,100 for him.

What’s your opinion? Isn’t this a red flag not to invest any more time in this relationship?

- NOT BETTING ON THIS ONE

Dear Betting,

Wow. Your daughter took $400 of her boyfriend’s money and turned it into $2,500 in a single evening?  Is this kind of thing common for your daughter? Has she always been lucky with money? Does it run in your family?

Betting, I think we can help each other.

You see, I am single. I like money and the idea of earning a 625% profit every day intrigues me. Yes, it intrigues me very much.

How this impacts you and your daughter is, unlike her current boyfriend, I am generous. I would gladly pay your daughter a daily commission for her hard work. Plus, she’d get to be my girlfriend, which is something to which it’s impossible to attach a monetary figure.

However, since your daughter seems perfectly content dating this loser, Ryan, we’ll have to get him out of the picture.

Here’s what I had in mind:

You, Betting, accuse Ryan of trying to poison you. In an act of self defense, you bludgeon Ryan with a woman’s purse you bought, using cash, from a flea market the previous weekend. You will tell the authorities that the purse was Ryan’s. That’s right — we’re going to tell people he was a cross dresser.

You may or may not be convicted of manslaughter or murder, but that little tidbit isn’t really pertinent to the plan.

At Ryan’s funeral, Alexa (whose name I will be changing as soon as we start dating) will be there. She’ll be crying. She’ll be crying  because her boyfriend was a cross dresser. She’ll be crying because he’s now dead. She’ll be crying because her mom, who likely will spend her golden years behind bars, was the one to kill him.

And that’s when I show up.

She won’t know who I am, but she’ll be  happy to see a kind, friendly face on this dark day. And that’s when I’ll say:

“Hi, my name is Kevin. You look like you could use some cheering up. Want to go roll some dice?”

And they lived happily ever after.

Let’s do this thing, Betting. E-mail me.

Kev

What sort of advice would YOU give our friend? How would you rate the advice I gave him/her? It was gold, right?

As always, please feel free to leave a comment or two or ten.

It is inexplicable to me that the person who is about to become the new Treasury Secretary, the person who will run the IRS, didn’t pay his taxes from 2001 to 2004. Timothy Geithner, Obama’s nominee for Treasury Secretary, claims he was simply “careless” when he failed to pay $34,000 in Social Security and Medicare taxes.

Despite his gaffe, Geithner is expected to be confirmed anyway.

That’s just wonderful.

Maybe I’m a dreamer, but shouldn’t failing to have paid your own taxes eliminate you from securing any IRS-related job — much less Treasury Secretary?

Seriously.

Could someone who had been arrested for drunk driving get to become president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving?

Could someone with anti-Semites and terrorists as friends be elected President? (Oh, wait…)

Could a convicted bank robber ever get a job as a security guard at Fort Knox?

Could someone who had infected a million people with food poisoning ever be hired as White House chef? (One could only hope…)

Could Joseph “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” Hazelwood ever get another job as captain of an oil tanker?

Could Paul “Pee Wee Herman” Reubens ever get a job as a preschool teacher?

Could Paris Hilton tour high schools around the nation preaching the virtues of abstinence?

This, my friends, is insanity.

Can you think of any more analogies? Leave a comment below and (if it’s good and clean) I’ll add it to the list.

And the List Keeps Growing!

Could someone who refused to hand over basic identification papers of their own be hired as FBI chief? *

Could someone who refused to exercise be hired as a personal trainer? *

Could someone who flunked basic algebra be handed a CPA license? *

Could Rosie O’Donnell be a runway model during Paris fashion week? Or any week for that matter? +

Thanks: Angi*, Audrey+

No, that isn’t the latest “ice breaker” I’ve come up with to chat up the ladies. It’s a real question. My nose feels like it’s been punched repeatedly by someone with powerful, tiny fists.

It’s not a fun feeling. If I take a deep breath, I can feel it. If I put my hands to my face and inadvertently brush against my nose, I feel it. And when I sneeze, I most definitely feel it. What does it feel like? Pain. Absolute pain.

I wish I could put an icepack on my nose, but I can’t type (i.e. do my job) and hold the icepack at the same time. So, that means I’d need to adhere the icepack to my face in some way. I have tape, but that could be painful later today when it comes time to take off the icepack. I could staple the icepack to my face, but that might be even more painful than the tape.

I know, I could cram ice into each of my nostrils — attack the soreness from the inside. Of course, the ice would eventually melt. Then I would have water slowly leaking down my face and on to my pants. People might think I had wet myself. We can’t have that. I’m a grown up.

And what would happen if I had to sneeze while the ice was in my nose? With the unbelievable force of my sneezes lately, the ice would be propelled at such a velocity it could injure someone. What if I maimed or killed someone with my ice sneeze? A jury would never believe my story.

Do you know what they would do to someone like me in prison? No, I’m really asking. Do you?

I need to lock myself in a clean room. I need a room that is completely, 100% sanitized. Maybe then I could stop sneezing. And with the sneezing stopped, the soreness would eventually subside.

Does anyone have a clean room where I could crash for a few days?