Notes from the edge of Suburbia, Part 2

I can't find if I copied this over from my 360 page or not. If I have, and you've already read this, sorry. If not, have at it. And yes, all of the basic facts in this are true, and happend last year.

I’m beginning to hate

a lot about Christmas…

Puppies and Christmas Trees – A primer

Now, of course, with a title like that, I’m sure that we could all expect a lot of laughs and giggles at the high jinks happening in our house, right? I mean, really, what could be more fun than a rambunctious puppy, a teetering / tottering Christmas tree and hundreds of family heirlooms hung with care from the branches of a dying evergreen tree? Sounds like some stupid Chevy Chase movie, right? Well, not exactly. All you happy suburbanites, please take note of this following tale of woe.

Last evening we’re all sitting around in the house in the Christmas mood. That is to say, we were all pissed off at each other. What? Like this is any different than your house the week before Christmas.

Our tree is set up in our living room, in front of the big bay windows. We do this to make it easier for the home invaders to figure out which room to break into. We like to think of it as that giving spirit that we’re all supposed to be infused with at this time of the year. We give our money to the stores, the “downtrodden” break into our house to steal gifts to feed their drug problems and the insurance companies give us money back for those gifts we really didn't want in the first place. It's the Christmas Circle of Life, or something like that.

Anyway…

My wife and I are in the family room and she’s reading to me the latest honey dripping, lovey dovey e-mail that women seem to like passing around at this time of the year. I’m on my work laptop, surreptitiously trying to surf for porn. What? You really think your husband's looking up his stocks on a Saturday night? Pa-lease. He's trying to find pictures of Santa's naughty helpers wearing thigh high red fishnet stockings and who are doing things with an oversized candy cane which will certianly land her on the naughty list. Those are the kind of elves we like.

Where was I? Oh, yea, the dog.

All of a sudden, without any warning, the puppy starts yelping and howling and comes bolting out of the living room. He's running so fast I think his ass is in front of his face, like in the cartoons. Before we can get out of the lazy chair, he’s high tailed it down into the basement and is hiding behind a couch down there, shaking and quivering like a leaf in a wind storm.

Being a loving family, we all rush down and crowd around him to try to figure out what’s wrong. There’s no blood, nothing broken, nothing jagged, there is nothing lodged in his paws or in his mouth, so it’s kind of a mystery as to what happened. After a few minutes, I head up to the tree to see that could have happened.

As I’m up there, my youngest daughter and her friend come back into the room to watch TV again. I asked her if she knew what happened, and she replied “no, he was just under the tree”.

I looked under the tree and I don’t see anything. I’m still looking around and she mentions she had just cleaned up one of the bulbs that he had gotten a hold of. You mean one of the ornaments?, I aked.

No, one of the light bulbs, she answers, a little ticked off. I guess I was interrupting whatever critical show was on TV at that point. Well excuse me.

I start looking at the bottom of the tree, when I noticed one of the light sockets was missing a bulb. Actually, on this strand of bulbs, there were five or six sockets that were missing bulbs.

And then I found it. A wet, empty socket on the strand of lights, that had the power on.

The stupid fucking dog almost electrocuted himself right under the Christmas tree. Now that would have been a Christmas that we would all remember!

I promptly announced my findings to the rest of the family, at which point they all started to fuss over our Not-Going-To-Make-It-To-His-First-Birthday-If-He-Keeps-This-Shit-Up puppy.

With the need for my keep powers of observation past, I returned to my lazy-boy, grabbed my beer and returned to surfing the net for porn.

Ahh, who doesn’t love the Christmas season.

Subversion-*

*-At least as subversive as a middle class white guy from the suburbs can get

Recently, I’ve been thinking about all of those electronic signatures I’ve been leaving all over the place, when I’m using my debit/credit card. You know, when you’re checking out and you’re asked to “Sign Here” on that little electronic pad? Then you click “accept” and then the store has permission to pull some outrageous amount out of your checking account for some over-priced doodad that you probably didn’t need in the first place.

I was thinking about how crazy it was that so many of my purchases are being approved with a signature that in no way shape or form matches my real signature. Not that my real signature is any gem to start with, and if I can do it twice in a row the same way, I’m pretty proud of myself. Now these stores are asking for my written approval for purchases on some device that is cramped, placed at screwy angels and the end product looks like it was scratched out on one of those etch-a-sketch’s that I had growing up. Really. I mean, like, this crap is going to be any definitive proof that I actually signed and approved the purchase, right?

So, in my own little rebellion against the man, I’ve stopped writing my name on these devices. I’ve started writing “Hi Mom”, “I didn’t approve this”, “Donkey Kong”, “Obama’s Mama”, and the ever popular “Yea Baby!”. Sometimes, I’m expecting some mall security types to come charging around the corner, a donut in one hand and an oversized Motorola radio in the other, ready to give hot pursuit to the latest miscreant. Other times, I’ll feel a little weird, or, even worse, I’ll start giggling to myself, which leads the typical store clerk to look at me like I am a little weird. Usually, nothing happens and the world moves on.

This weekend, I was in Sephora, with my youngest daughter, finishing up our holiday shopping. After standing in line for 20 minutes, to purchase yet another product for my wife (which I really don’t think that she needs, but, what do I know. At least that’s what she tells me), we were laughing and having a good time, when the next robo clerk asked us to step up to the counter.

On a side note, shouldn’t the last place that a store asks you if you found everything, be at the checkout counter? Shouldn’t you have helped me out prior to this point, so I’d be spending more of my hard earned cash in your store? And, if I didn’t find everything I wanted, and your service was so poor that it didn’t help me until up to this point, do you really think I’m interested in jumping out of line, tying to find something all over again, and getting back in line? Maybe you should ask that questions before I’ve decided to leave your store? Eh, what do I know.

Anyway…

So, this overly attractive and perfectly made-up young lady proceeded to process our order, and it came time to sign in the box. Feeling a little full of myself, I wrote “I’m the Man!” and clicked accept. I put my card away and looked up to see her staring at her screen, and starting to laugh. In a panic, I asked “Did you see that?”

She replied “Yes, and it was pretty funny. Come to think of it, I don’t think there is anything I could do about it if I wanted to, so have yourself a good afternoon”.

It’s a great day when you can stick it to the man, and have a good laugh about it.

Jennifer Aniston is hot.

2008 Performance Review

It's that time of year again, yes, it's performance review time. So, when my boss sent down this form, which he's supposed to fill out, for me to complete, well, I thought I'd have a little fun.

So what do you think?

What are the Employee’s Strengths? 1 Ask the bitches. They'll tell ya! 2 If you have to ask, you're not man enough to understand. 3 To give you an idea, Lionel Richie wrote that "All Night Long" song about me. 4 Rollin wid my homies and poppin caps in yo ass! What are the Areas of Improvement? 1 Can only satisfy four (4) bitches at one time. 2 Sometimes I have to call the cops, when my crew starts rollin hard. 3 You think you can improve on this? Word! 4 I'll try not to leave YO MAMA at the curb tonight when I'm done wit her! Proposed and Agreed Action Plan to Improve Weaknesses 1 Stop being selfish and let some of my crew in on the action wid all dez Ho's! 2 Fizzle my nizzle. Fo shizzle 3 Nuf said! Out! 4 Word.

My wife nagged and nagged at me to put up the Christmas lights.

Well, I finally got them up and NOW she won't talk to me!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Car Czar? Why not, that whole drug czar worked out so well...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081209/ap_on_go_co/congress_autos

“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she supports the concept of a federal overseer of any rescue plan, saying she lacked confidence the heads of the car companies could solve the problem if "left to their own devices."

I’m sorry, I have a real problem with someone, who’s a leader of an institution with a 9% approval rating, calling other people poor managers. It is so galling that this lady, who, for the last year has basically blamed all of the country’s ills on the Bush administration, and yet hasn’t done anything substantive to correct any of these issues, calls to issue the management ability of auto industry leaders.

Let’s just cut all the bullshit out for a second. For the last 30 or so years, the big three have done exactly what businesses are supposed to do. They figured out what their market(s) wanted (big, fat, fuel inefficient vehicles) and made those products by the boat load so their companies did well, and people bought their stock. And, during the process, they basically supported a mini welfare state (the UAW / unions), that perpetuated an inefficient economic model (cost structure significantly higher than the competition) that eventually put them in a position where they were unable to compete on a global stage.

Making feel good, “green” hybrid cars is not going to address the root problems that Detroit is facing. Breaking and crushing the unions, devaluing automotive wages by 30% and dropping all medical care support for non-productive retirees is what has to happen to fix their problems. Everyone knows it, but is anyone going to do that?

Car czar my ass. Just another governmental agency, that isn’t going to go away after this crises is over, and then this “czar” will have the power to force the auto makers all sorts of crazy, liberal green shit in the future.

If I was the head of GM, I’d say, thanks, but no thanks. I’d take the company into bankruptcy, break the union, throw all of those over paid, blue collar democrats on the street, and then call up Pelosi and say “How do you like me now?”

Old jokes and embarrassing my son.

On Saturday, I was driving home from the high school hockey game, with my son and two young girls (16+) in the car. My son had been interested in one of the girls, but my wife and I felt that she was just using him until something better came along. Due to this, my feelings towards these two girls were somewhat ambivalent. You know, I wasn’t trying to put on the “good parent” show so I wouldn’t ruin my son’s chances with these two. I was just being me, a smart ass.

As a side note, once they got out of the car, and we continued to drive home, my son confided in me that he thought that he was being used as well, and that he felt like a tool. When I asked him what he was going to do about it, he told me that the next time Jennifer asked for a ride, he was going to reply that he couldn’t because “the tool shop is closed now”. Nice. Both my wife and I laughed at this. A good come back.

So anyway, as we’re driving home, we were in a discussion about why my son just didn’t drive himself. I said that I wasn’t sure if he knew how to get the rink downtown and how to get back from it, so I decided to come along.

One of the girls said “we could have figured it out, I have mapquest in my pocket”

I must have waited a full 10 to 15 seconds, which seemed like an eternity, to see if anyone else picked up on that comment. When no one did, I slowly said

“Is that a mapquest in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”

Pandemonium broke out in the car. The girls were laughing, my son was shocked (shocked!) that I would have said something like and I was laughing so hard I almost had to pull over.

Later during the weekend, my wife was looking at all of the ads in the paper, and pointed out some good deals on GPS units. I told her that we really didn’t need one. When she asked why, I looked at her with a sly look on my face and said “Here, let me show you the mapquest in my pocket….”.