Monday, March 31, 2008

Didn’t See That One Coming

“Gore announces global warming effort”

Um, am I to assume then that we’ve done such a good job of combating global warming, that Gore wants to warm the place up now? Maybe I should read past the headline, ya think?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080331/ap_on_re_us/gore_environment;_ylt=AiLq07.MpC90LozZovmhHYGs0NUE

Trying something new

Is this right?
No, move it a little to the left.
To the left?
That’s right.
You want me to move to the right?
No, the left.
Why did you say to the right?
Can you please just move it to the left?!
Ok, how’s this?
Ohhh, that’s so much better.
Really?
Oh, yes, it really works well just right there.
Great, now just help me pound this in.
Are you sure you want to do that?
Yea, why not?
Well, shouldn’t you look at the diagram?
No, I don’t need to. If I push hard enough it will go in.
I don’t think it’s working.
Yes it is. Just give it a little time.
No, it’s not. I really think you need to look at the diagram.
Look, I’m a guy. I don’t need no stinking diagram to tell me what to do. We just know what to do, it’s like we’re born with it.
I’m telling you it’s not working.
This is a little hard.
See, I told you. Would you please just look at the diagram? At the rate you’re going, we’re both going to get hurt.
Ok, ok, I’ll look at the diagram if it makes you feel better.
Well, it does.
Well, what do you know? I was supposed to put this here, not there.
See, I told you.
You’re always right.
I know. The sooner you learn it, the happier we’ll all be.
Look, it popped right in, just like it was made too. I’ll be dammed.
See, isn’t it so much better now?
Oh, it’s really working well now.
Are you almost done?
Don’t rush me, it’s taken this long to get it right.
It’s not like we have all day, you know.
Just one more tap and I'll be done.
Thank god. I thought you were going to wake the kids.
Well, it’s not like I get to do this that often, you know? And this would go a lot faster if you helped out a little bit. It’s not like I always have to do all the work, you know.
Whatever. Stop your whining. You got what you wanted, didn’t you?
I guess so.
_______________________________________________________________________
And with that, we finished hanging the new plasma TV in the basement.

What? What did you think that was about? Oh, you dirty little pervert. Get your mind out of the gutter. Don’t get me wrong, I like the way you’re thinking, but…..

What's for dinner, my preciousss

Umm, ya, so like I’ve put on a few pounds the last few years. I tell people that I’m not fat, but that I’m storing up precious energy reserves in case I get stranded during the winter. When the machines take over and the food supply dries up, all you skinny people, well, you’ll be the first to go. Not me, I’ll be leading the resistance, still alive, thanks to my pre-planned energy reserves.

Look, when you’re fat, you’ve got options. I mean think about it. I can go days without eating. You skinny folks, you’ll die. If a gale force wind blows up, no problem, I can walk right through it. I’ve got MASS. Skinny folks, well, they’ll just blow away. When it’s really hot and sunny out, I throw off enough cool shade that small children and pets can take a break from the heat. What good are skinny folks when it’s hot out, except for getting me another soda, bitch. If I’m in a plane crash in the Andes, I can let the skinny folks share all of the blankets and huddle like sheep together, ‘cause I brought my own insulation.

I make all of you skinny folks feel better about yourselves when you look at me. Because I know, without your outrageously good looks, well toned bodies, and the ability to wear anything and look like a million dollars, you’re really an empty husk inside. Well, at least that’s my story and I’m sticking with it.
__________________________________________________________________
Ok, so the other day, I heard some random trivia on the radio. I hurried home and promptly told my wife:
“The average American male adds three pounds of weight on a year”
She looked back at me with a blank look on her face. So I continued:
“See, if you take how long we’ve been married, multiply it by three, carry the two, divide by the square root of Pi and add it onto the weight I was when we got married, you come up with my exact weight.”
Not bothering to interrupt whatever mission critical task that she was undertaking at that point, she casually threw back at me “Well, I don’t care how you come up with it, you’re still fat”.
But, but…what about the statistic?
“Well, I guess on average you’re getting as fat as the rest of America. Congratulations, tub-o, you’re an average fattie.” Then she turned to look at me and asked “Let me get this straight, if you live to be 100, that means you’re going to weigh, like, 1,000 lbs., right?”
No mercy.

I'm sorry, but I just have to get this off my chest

I'm sure that no one else in America has wondered this, but it's been bothering me for a while. And, since it's on my mind, it's going down on here.

Do Miley Cyrus's feet smell? I mean, really, almost every time I see picutres of this girl, she's got cowboy boots on. This young tart is on the red carpet in an over priced dress and she's sporting a pair of knee high cowboy boots on. Hey, uh, Miley (like, what kind of name is that any way?), how about mixing in a pair of flats or heels or something else that's going to let those puppies breath a little? Disgusting.

Of course, who really cares when we have yet another teen-age star that we can over-expose and make money off of, right? We've almost completed the utter destruction of Brittney when the Disney Channel has found yet another offering for the altar of consumerism.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Smells like Victory.....

I spent a lot of time in the garden weeding this weekend. What a complete waste of time. I sprayed everything the night before with Weed-B-gone and then went through and pulled up every speck of green crap that I could find. By the end of the week even more shit will be growing back in the exact same place as before.

That’s why I’ve decided to change my preferred weed control method. From now on, I’ll be using napalm. Sure, it might sound a little drastic at the beginning, might not be the most environmental sensitive solution (like spraying some other unknown chemical that Ortho says I should go through a full decon after using is any better) but hang with me for a second here.

One application of napalm will solve all of my problems. I wouldn’t have to wait for the plant to die and then have to pull it up, oh no, see, after just one application of weed-palm (I’m working on trade marking that, so don’t get any ideas, buster) there’s nothing left but charred ground. Just spread your mulch and move on.

Also, the small mushroom cloud that appears after using weed-palm is very effective in taking out bugs, bees, birds and low flying para-gliders. Are you having problems with rabbits in your garden? Don’t worry, there won’t be anything left for the little buggers to eat. And, if you time your ignition properly, there might be a little roast hare for dinner as well (Weed-palm removes all the nasty fur and perfectly grills the skin, so there’s almost no preparation necessary).

Got problems with your neighbors? Well, I’m sure that you’ll be able to figure out how to utilize Weed-Palm to solve that problem too. And remember, at least according to Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now, the smell of napalm in the morning is the smell of victory. So not only will your garden completely scorched, you’ll feel as if you’ve achieved a lasting victory in the age old battle against Mother Nature.

Disclaimer: Failure to properly use Weed-Palm may result in your neighborhood looking like downtown Bagdad. Not for use around small children, unless of course, they’re from that really annoying family down the street, then “Flame On!”, dude. Use of Weed-Palm may be illegal in your town, city, state, country and generally be banned by the U.N. (like who cares on that one, right?), unless you’re the US Military. But hey, you’re a real man, so don’t let little technicalities hold you back. Available at your local armory.

P.S. – For the guys in the dark suits that are watching and listening to everything we do, this is just a joke. No terrorists here, so don’t get your panties all in a bunch. But, if you think with your connections you can score me a little napalm for my garden, we'll just keep it between us, okey dokey?

Fraternity Stories

I went to college in small town located in the upper part of our state, outside of a somewhat large city. I know this sounds like a porn story in Penthouse, but it’s not. I’m just trying to orient you to time and space. There will be no sex in this story, just young guys, plenty of alcohol, a car and a good time.

It’s a really nice town, and it has a main road that runs North & South through the village. The street is lined with old, late 1800’s buildings, big trees, quaint fences, well kept houses, etc. etc. All that Norman Rockwell shit.

So, one year, while living in the fraternity house, it started to snow. Now, for where we live, it really wasn’t much, say 4 – 5 inches by 10 that night. And I’m pretty sure it was a Sunday night, because it was really quiet outside that night, which becomes really critical to our success that evening.

With it being a Sunday evening, we (the brothers living in the house), were endeavoring to finish off the multiple kegs that we had left over from the party the night before. At that time the only night of the week that we didn’t drink was Tuesday night. Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights all of the bars in town had drink specials and Tuesday’s didn’t. Since we were poor college students (like any of us would even consider getting a job and earning money, right?), drink specials were key. Eventually, we even got one of the bar owners to tailor his specials around us, which we thought was really cool and that he was really cool for doing that. It turns out this guy was connected with the local mob and died of mysterious circumstances a few years later, but that’s another story.

Where was I? Oh yea, we never went to the bars on Saturdays because we always had house parties. The whole goal of our house parties was to charge other people money so we could drink our faces off and they would have the pleasure of drinking with us (well, at least we thought it was a pleasure). It was a good plan that worked really well for several years. Everyone got what they wanted (generally), nobody got hurt (generally and this really depends on your definition of hurt, I might add), we got to drink huge amounts of alcohol (our typical Saturday night we would go through between 10 - 15 kegs of beer) and act like complete morons.

This led to the Sunday evening kill the keg parties. We would all sit around in the garage, playing cards, drinking beer, farting, telling lies about who slept with whom, and just being guys. We never allowed any chicks or outsiders in on these parties, as we wanted to keep it to ourselves, just our core group of guys. Guys’ behavior really changes when women are around, especially when we are drinking. We had come to realize this and had made the decision to not allow any women into the house on Sunday evenings. We just wanted to be together, have a good time without any distractions.

By the way, it was after one of these parties that I was woken up by the campus police, having passed out in the middle of the college campus with my head shaved. That’s a good story, believe you me. But we’ll just save it for later.

So, it’s snowing, we’ve been drinking, and I’ve got the only working car in the fraternity. It was a silver, diesel VW rabbit with a hand crank sun roof that just ran and ran. So, one of the guys (we’ll call him Frank, to protect the innocent) comes in from taking a piss and says that we should go skitching. Being a pampered white kid from the suburbs, I had to ask what skitching is. As it was explained to me, you crouch behind and hang onto the rear bumper of a car when it goes down the road and try to stay on your feet. It’s like you’re road surfing behind a moving car.

Frank says that with all of the snow, it will be perfect conditions to go skitching. We grab a bunch of beer and go warm up the Rabbit. Five of us pile in and pulled out onto the road, where Frank started skitching.

After a little while, we realized we needed a look-out, in case the skitcher fell off the car (which happened). So we opened up the sun roof and one guy would stand backwards on the passenger seat, half way out of the sun roof and watch for people falling off (since it was below freezing, this was a really good way to keep his beer cold, we found out). Some of the other guys got inpatient for their turn so we started doing two and three skitchers at a time. We would drive back to the fraternity house, fill up our cups of beer and head back out again.

Once we realized that there was no one out on the road, we started going up and down Main Street. This was really the optimal skitching ground, we all agreed, because there wasn’t any turns (very difficult to handle when you’re half in the bag, being dragged behind a car going 20 miles an hour), the road was wider (nothing to hit when you fell off and tumbled away) and there seemed to be a lot less manholes, which proved to be a problem on the side streets.

So here’s the final picture. Main Street USA at night. The snow is gently falling and it’s completely dark out except for where the street lights cast their muted glow. Everything is covered in a deep blanket of white snow and it’s completely quiet. Then comes along a diesel VW rabbit, music thundering, three guys hanging off the back, one guy standing up backwards out of the sun roof, the driver hunched over the wheel, sipping a beer and trying to see where he is going.

Good times, baby, good times.

Monday, March 24, 2008

Lord, I love you, but can we talk?

So, we went to church yesterday for our niece’s baptism. Now, this isn’t the regular, run of the mill catholic church. It’s a local church that was started by a priest that was ex-communicated by Rome. I mean, you’re really got to piss them off to get ex-communicated. This priest is, well, let’s just say, very liberal and the Roman Catholic Church had enough of his shenanigans and gave him his walking papers. Try explaining that to your kids.

Anyway, so this church has this rocking choir that’s backed with electric guitars, drums, pianos and a whole bunch of other stuff. I mean, they really rock. I would pay to see this choir at almost any other time, but at 9:30 in the morning, it was way, way too much. I mean, the last thing I want at 9:30 on a Sunday morning is to be sitting in front of a sonic wall. It was just so loud it was almost painful. But then again, it was church, which is generally painful and un-enjoyable, so I guess it fit right in.

The other issue was what some of the girls in the choir were wearing. I mean really, do you need to wear the skin tight wife beater tee shirts, when you’re standing in front of the whole church? I really loved the one girl that had on the super tight shirt covering her huge rack and sporting camouflage pants standing in the front row. How the fuck am I supposed to pray for redemption of all my sins when I’m staring at that for 1 ½ hours? Hello? I’m here asking for forgiveness for all of the dirty thoughts I’ve had all week and you’ve got to dance and jiggle and hop all around in front of me? It’s like having booze at an AA meeting.

Ok, let me try to get back to what I wanted to talk about. Apparently, yesterday was Earth Day and this church had a “special” guest to talk about how the gospel and Earth Day go together. So this enlightened tart gives a meandering, 20 minute talk attempting to tie together the gospel reading, Earth Day and some absolutely meaningless, obscure references to her personal life. Look honey, I’m worried about saving my eternal soul and really wouldn’t give a wooden nickel (which, I really wouldn’t give up for anything, because aren’t wooden nickels really rare and worth something?) about your story of standing by the pond and singing to the moon.

She’s telling this story about how she was standing by this pond at night (as a side note, I think she is a single mother, and I couldn’t help wondering what her kids were doing at home, all alone, while she’s out soul searching at this pond at night) signing a song to the moon. It was a song that she had learned from someone that “honors” the moon. So there I am, stuck in this hot, oppressive church, wedged in between several of my children, thinking, who the fuck knows songs that honor the moon? Who bothers to memorize shit like that? Where ever this lady has been hanging out, it’s certainly in the wrong places with the wrong people who really have way too much time on their hands and need to get real jobs.

And I’ve got to put up with this crap for twenty minutes so we can watch some farcical, ex-communicated priest pour some tap water over my 8 month old nieces’ head and proclaim that all of a sudden her soul has been cleansed? WTF!

Please Lord, just take me now.