Been a while

I have feeling it's going to be a long time. Yes Dexter, it will be a long time. Or will it be along time? Either way it makes some sense, other than nonsense and this is not in the present tense. Is your present tense? If I were a present I would be tense, all that excitement and build-up for the coming holidays!!! The sad part would be when I realized this meant I was going to be torn open by a person screaming at the top of their lungs as they dove in head first and disemboweled me and then discarded me without even stopping to say they were sorry. Then they would have moved onto the poor unlucky sap that came next. That kind of takes the fun out of it. My grandma used to (still does?) make us carefully undo the edge that had the tape on it of the wrapping paper so that she could save it and use it for next year. I have my suspicions that they really did this to collect a repository of the DNA of everyone in the family, that way they can track us down at anytime they so choose. My family is crazy like that.

You ever notice how pirates not only have a parrot on their shoulder, but they're also missing one eye? Real pirates have the parrot on the same side as the eye that's missing. If you don't believe me, just go find a real pirate that is missing an eye and has a pet parrot. If he/she has it on the opposite side, they're either from Hollywood, or they're a stupid pirate and probably has a peg leg and a pet gator they forget to feed. If I were a pirate captain I would make my entire crew wear speedos when we were attacking someone, that way they would either be mesmerized, horrified, or laughing too hard to do anything but give up. Being violent and bloody is highly overrated. Girls they like the kissing as much as we do.

This will be short, I just wanted to let those who were not traumatized or damaged permanently from last years Christmas story, I will be doing another one this year, and I'm pretty excited for it. I have the idea, and just need sometime to put it all together. I will probably do my terrible drawings and make a picture book like I usually do, but I will also probably do a longer story version of it this year, if I can pull it off.

Here's what I've been up to and why I haven't really put up anything for awhile (disclaimer: do not read while driving, taking care of children or operating heavy machinery as doing so may cause injury to oneself or others, intentional or otherwise):

 It's pretty boring to read. 

Making plans to rule the...pink pair of pants

Hot pink has to be the most awesome color ever to have existed. Awesome in the sense that it takes your breath away every time you see it-especially if that time happens to be an old man in a hot pink speedo thong at the beach. They never said awesome was good. Though, if you're that man and/or the wife of that man you probably think it's not that bad. I used to wear speedos. Then I got fatter than I used to be, now I have a hard time wearing underwear. The fact that I'm fatter than I used to be and that I have a hard time wearing underwear really have nothing in common, it just makes the latter sound better if I put it with the former. That's right, robots in disguise.

You ever have one of those super creepy dreams that make you wake up screaming and in a cold sweat? I know, they're usually called nightmares, though I reserve that term for Michael Jackson and Sarah Palin. I had one of those last night (not a nightmare, thankfully, I don't know if I could have handled that and would probably have offed myself if I had) and it was scary...at the time. Pam and I had moved into a new house, and she was in our bedroom watching TV. I came in to find her just sitting there with an odd expression on her face and staring at the little black and white TV we had in there. I asked her what was up. She looked at me and said, "The TV just told me I was going to die."

"You mean, someone on the TV?"

"No, the TV"

Just then, the TV screen shows a bunch of static and mixed in with the static is a very dark and sinister voice which says something along the lines of "We're coming to get you, there's nothing you can do to escape us. You're going to die."

This didn't really scare me much; the TV suddenly starts to show, from the perspective of the person on the TV, two hands moving down a hallway. In one hand is a very large knife. I suddenly realize that's the hallway that leads to our bedroom. That scared me, and I started to freak out, when I woke up. I think I might have actually called out in my sleep. Pam took a benadryl before going to bed last night, so I didn't wake her up. I think the reason why I had this dream was because I had to use the bathroom pretty bad, and just noticed it when I woke up. The only problem with my mind deciding this was the best way to wake me from an otherwise superb slumber was that it took another few minutes for me to convince myself it was okay to leave the safety of my chuck norris covers and venture into the bathroom. While there, I refused to look in the mirror out of fear that I might see something that wasn't really there. I'm a pansy, I know it and don't care-other than at 3:30am when I really have to use the bathroom and am too scared to get out of bed.

I'm not really sure what I dreamed about after that, but it was much more pleasant.

If I ever find a hot pink tuxedo I'm so going to buy it and wear it everywhere.

Teen Gangst

Wow, it's been awhile. Glad to see you again, how have you been? Good to hear. I'm sorry that your cat crawled into the microwave and turned into a hot pocket and your significant other ate it without giving any thought to what it might actually be. I do like cheese, though.

My wife and I have many things in common, most of all we both agree that she's amazing and the most smart, gorgeous and awesome person ever to have lived. We also have somethings not in common. One of these happens to be Twilight. No, I don't love Twilight. We keep the Twilight books (loosely called such) in an appropriate place, the bathroom. While taking care of some business the other day I read the first sentence on the back of the book, which happened to be an excerpt from the book. It went something like this: "Don't be afraid," I said though I was mortally wounded and terrified the other kids at school would make fun of me once they found out who I was sleeping with, "we're meant to be together." About this point I had to throw up. Have I ever mentioned that we have awesome plumbing in out house? It's true, the sink didn't even get plugged. I don't know much about plumbing, other than it used to make my father swear a lot. We were finishing our by ourselves basement while I was growing up, which was kind of like me "helping" my dad fix the car while I was a kid. One of these wonderful experiences that I haven't mentally blocked out to protect myself involves plumbing. We had run some pipe for either the toilet or the bathroom sink-don't get those confused in real life- and were putting up drywall over it so that no one could ever see out marvelous handy work that would never pass inspection. As I stood there with my finger in my nose and drool running down my face my dad proceeded to hammer in the nails (this was in the days before fancy things like "nail guns" and "hired labor"), and then suddenly yelled a word I had never heard before. I knew he didn't hit his finger, I recognized the word to signify that as "dammit" and he wasn't shaking his hand like he'd just burned it; I also knew he didn't put a hole in the drywall-the word to signal for that catastrophe was "shit." 

Did I ever tell you that my dad was a metal fan? Not things like iron, cobalt and praseodymium, but like Iron Maiden, Cannibal Corpses and his favorite Judas Priest; he used to mention Judas Priest all the time, though come to think of it I never did see any of their albums in his collection, just a bunch of disco and the doobie brothers (Jesus is just all right by me too).

This new word was uttered, and kind of like when you burp up a little bit of gastric juices and it leaves this burning/searing sensation down your throat, this word left my ears feeling a bit like that. I forget what the word is, but if I heard it again I think I could recognize it. The bigger issue was not this word though, it was that the word had scared the pipes so much that they began to have an accident and all over the nice new drywall. As I stood there drooling (finger was now out of my nose and almost in my mouth) my father was yelling some incoherent babble at me about finding a magic knob that would stop the water from flowing. I responding in like kind with my own incoherent and babble that sounded something like "Bbbbllakaskdjh, I askjhhjad don't lkajsldksjd know akljdsjlak where laksdlas the alskjdasdo magic wlkjoinasd unicorns woiasnasoidokl and alskdowiue this alkjsdlj fabled alksjdjlj knob alksdjlsa lay alksjda down alsdiouwnc to laskjd eat alkjasdlj cotton asoiwenf candy alksjdladj underwear alksjdasdl at alkjsdjla night alksdjlasjd!!!!" He said a few mores word that made me want to crawl into a black hole and hide ("I love you" was not one of them right then) and started yelling for my mom. 

Parents always tell you not to yell, especially if you really really really want something, but then when it comes to them the rules get thrown out the windows and they get to yell. "But it was an emergency" they say. Yeah, like me wanting a candy bar in target wasn't.

My mom, who can do all kinds of amazing things (she can walk up to random strangers and tell them not only their exact address but also what magazines they have subscriptions too) apparently knows where the unicorns eat cotton candy underpants and turned the water off; she works for the post office, and though she'll deny it, she also has access to a cold fussion bomb. "Teach you to cut mail service on Saturdays...."   BOOOMMMMM!!!!!! As millions of tiny particles go flying through space and ten billion light years from now on another planet scientists will discover us and what happened to us and the postal worker will be the new bogey man that even Chuck Norris would be scared of. I don't like the way that sentence is structured, but I can't think of another way to write it that doesn't make it longer-suggestions are not welcome. 

Once the water was off we found out that the word wasn't what made the pipe do its duty all over the wall, but rather it was having a nail driven into its bladder that released all the fluid. It's funny now.

The point is that in Twilight it's all about not just whiny teenagers falling in lust with thousand years old undead and the missing link, at the same time, oh no, it goes much deeper than that. It's about the challenges that we all have faced while trying to graduate from high school and figure out what we want to do for the rest of our lives. It's about, do I prefer un-necrophilia or bestiality? Apparently she went for the former of the two. Poor edward, and now his wife can't have kids. What ever will he do???!!!

I know! Eat some children. Long live the queen.

Mi compañera

"Where are you now, mi compañera?" I know where she is.

The best to happen to me, next to Ed McMahon letting me know I'd won a million dollars, all I needed to do was purchase 6 useless magazine subscriptions!, was/is/forever will be my wonderfully amazing and awesome wife. One of the greatest things about our relationship is that she's just as devious as I am, she just doesn't show it. This would come in very handy (and still does) because when we would go to a party or gathering of people, those who knew me better would watch me like a hawk to see what I was up to (still do actually, some people never learn to let things go). While they were busy watching me, Pam would go and do whatever mischief we had planned either before hand or once we had arrived. When they finally discovered what we had done they would know it was me, but couldn't blame me because they'd been watching me the whole time. I would do my part to make sure it seemed like I was trying to act innocent and not be. It's more fun to pretend to be something you are than something you are not.

The best of these instances was the Cookie Incident. In Lincoln, Ne (if you've never been there, watch Children of the Corn and you'll get an idea what it's like to live there, that or Zombie Strippers) I came to have the reputation of making super awesome snicker doodle cookies. There was a potluck dinner we had to make something for, and I decided I would make my special cookies. If you don't know what a potluck is, here's the general idea: it's like going to the UN for a peace accord. You show up with the best thing you can think of bringing, only to find out that everyone else brought nothing but inedible junk. In the end you eat nothing and have to go home and make yourself dinner anyway. They can still be fun, as I'll show. Snicker doodles are rolled in sugar before you cook them, and at first I thought it would be funny to roll them in salt instead, so that it would be just enough that you could taste it but not like eating that horribly misnamed strawberry play-doh, which tastes nothing like strawberries. Now if you were to mix play-doh, dog treats and strawberry flavoring together you might get something that tastes like strawberry flavored triscuts. Then I decided against it. I had mischief on my mind and would not be deterred, and so set my brain about thinking up something wicked and evil to do to these poor innocent leaches that brought things like week-old tuna salad in exchange for my awesome cookies. In a way, you could say I was Iran at this time.

As I sat in the darkness of my attic apartment, with the fires of my oven glowing behind me, my recipe laying in front of me. I could feel the demons of Bacchus, Hermes (not herpes) and Loki dancing about my apartment frolicking in the fumes of my otherworldly misl' as I videel the blank wall in front of me, a small seed of a thought was planted. At the outset I could feel it almost like a grain of sand between my toes that was there calling my attention every so gently like running your finger over the sharp blade of a knife, where the pain doesn't come until later. Slowly as it grew into conscious thought and filled the expanse of my head (which isn't much) I rolled my head back and began to let out a low and wily laugh, that started in the back of my throat, rolling over my tongue and past my teeth till the emanating sound filled my entire apartment. Outside I watched as mothers hurried their children indoors, drug dealers looking over their shoulder with an unnatural paranoia as if the boogie man himself were after them; in the distance the sound of warning sirens and the wails of the damned began to flit through the air as my laughter intermingled with them forming a tapestry where visions of their impending doom were interwoven for all to see and cry out in the agony of their souls as the futility of their position became apparent to their shrieking minds and soon blanketed the sky in blackness, overshadowing the sun and causing all within my realm to despair at my plan and plot for them. This laugh, oddly, reminded me of my high school math teacher. He would laugh like this occasionally during class. We were very well behaved when he would do this.

This wonderfully deciduous and malinki idea far surpassed any previous plans that came before in both brilliance, cunning, craftiness, deviousness and most importantly simplicity (I have yet to come up with one as brilliant or simple). I made up my cookies, making sure to pour in extra wholesome love, tenderness and care into them in the forms of spices and flavorings to make this the best batch of cookies that will have ever been made in the entire existence of the universe. I forbore my darker intentions from this initial mix of cookie dough, wanting only goodness, truth and prosperity to attend to my child that would soon bring destruction upon the unwitting taste buds of those foolish enough to trifle with my appetite.

The first batch of cookies were in fact the greatest achievement of my cooking career, and will likely never be surpassed. As I bit into one of them fresh from the cookie sheet I was transported into another realm of bliss and calm reassurances that nothing but peace and happiness would forever be my constant companions.

The time had come where the fruit was now ripe for the picking, and like death with his scythe I stood forth to hew down both those prepared as those caught unaware. It was then that I unlatched the door to the cage wherein my darkness lay, and unleashed the nightmare of a creature I had raised and tormented, locked behind bars thicker than redwood tree trunks, as nothing else would hold it back. The dark clouds of mischief and diabolical happenings began to swirl and foment from the tips of my fingers in a dazzling array of brilliant awfulness and spectacle that Barnum and Bailey have only dreamed of where emperors of the goons, freaks and geeks met to determine who would be supreme ruler of what we call earth. With the swish of my arms, the swirling of my cape and the taught stretch in my spandex evil-doer outfit my pernicious deeds were soon accomplished and I again unleashed my revelry in a torrent of wicked laughter that caused Charles Manson to weep in horror at the thought of what was coming for him and where such a thing might have come from.

When my now wife showed up at my apartment I was lazily relaxing on the couch as the rest of the batches of cookies cooked in the dark flavors of sin I had subjected them to. When she saw the cookies she got very excited (I told you they were good) and tragedy almost befell my beloved. As she reached for the blackness that lurked within the first batch of tainted cookies, I called out in panic and terror, throwing myself across the entire apartment (luckily I was still wearing my evil-doer outfit) I managed to place myself between her and certain doom (I could here death laughing his wicked laugh as he tried to double deal). The first thing she said to me was, "What on earth are you wearing?" then she wanted to know why she couldn't have a cookie (she gave me the sad puppy dog eyes and face). I then let her know of what had transpired prior to her coming over, and I directed her to the untainted batch of pure love and bliss that could forever unite the hearts and minds of all mankind if only they were allowed to be spread among all people. She ate one of these cookies in joyful rapture and wanted another, I told her we had to have enough to intermingle with the tainted to make the plan work.

She came up with her own addition to my plan. We bought some food coloring and once there we took pitchers of water and filled them, adding several drops of food coloring to make it look like punch. Have you drank what you thought was water, only to find out it's something like sprite? It's a pretty horrible experience, and that was the idea behind this part of the plan. Another friend of ours brought over some double-stuffed oreos and we proceeded to lick out the center of all of them. We were very sick by the end of this phase of our works of destruction. To make sure people were not fooled as to the intention of these now empty-double-stuffed oreos we even took bites out of a few and put teeth marks in almost all of them.

Then came time for the potluck. I quickly changed out of my evil-doer outfit and put on normal clothes (I still had the spandex on though, have you ever worn it? It's super comfy!). The tainted were mixed with the pure so that not even I could tell apart the one from the other. Once we arrived I helped to make the punch, making sure to keep my distance from the cookies, so as not to draw any attention to them.

The 'punch' was quickly discovered and replaced with real punch and regular water. The oreos were surprisingly a smash hit, even with no sugary center and bites taken out of them. I was more than a bit surprised at this.

During dinner I quietly sat and watched, waiting to see who would fall victim first to my malignant test of trust in fellow human beings. After about twenty minutes my patience was rewarded. I watched as at one table one of the occupants lauded the wonderful cookie they were eating. Having been told of the wonderful euphoric qualities the cookies offered, I watched as another at the table eagerly bit into their cookie. The look of utter horror, disgust and shock was priceless and can bring a smile to my face still, even in the darkest of times. The quietly and as nonchalantly as possible spit the bite of cookie out in their napkin. When asked, they quietly agreed with the other person that the cookie was marvelous (you could see them wondering what the other person was smoking). I watched this scenarios play itself out at almost every table, sometimes with someone going back for a second helping only to find that the first cookie was more of a dream than reality. Most people thought that some poor girl, being her first time away from mommy and daddy (it was with a group of college students) had inadvertently mistaken the sugar for salt, thus making these cookies that were not fit for the most vile, bottom of the barrel scum that ever crawled the face of the earth. I reveled in the anonymity provided by the potluck and would have escaped unknown to have defiled future potlucks without the knowledge of others if it hadn't been for the unfortunate encounter of a friend that was pouting because not only did he not get real punch, or real double-stuffed oreos, but he was also deprived from what he thought would be the crowning jewel of his dinner, the snicker doodle. As he pouted I couldn't hold it back anymore and began to laugh my same laugh. He used to be in the army, so this didn't phase him, instead indignation welled up in his chest and I was forced to flee the scene like the scoundrel that I am.

No one ever blamed Pam, nor our friend Jeff, for the oreos or punch, but they all remembered that I had tainted their cookies (after the first batch I conveniently added an extra cup of salt to the cookie dough).

To this day, I am blamed for all the ungood that comes from our mischievous escapades while those doing the finger pointing say that I have tainted Pam, if they think she has anything to do with it at all. It is a most convenient arrangement.

On another note, I'm awesome, but Pam's more awesomer and with our powers combined we are CAPTAIN PANERA!!!

What kind of fish are you?

I fill a sea ship theme going for the next few posts (by few posts I mean this one and the previous one).

For those who don't know, or don't care to remember, I'm a graduate student. It's not as exciting as some people seem to think it is. True, when all is said and done I will be a doctor, though not the kind of doctor you'll want around in case you need life saving support/skills. True, I was a boy scout (technically still am, but I don't tell many people that) so I know that if you get stung by a jelly fish I get to pee on you. That's the one thing boy scouts are really good at, peeing on things. That and blowing things up. Did you know you can make a can of campbells wholesome-goodness-soup into a full fledge campbells can of fiery-flying-death in less than five minutes? (I'm assuming someone, not a boy scout, already has a fire going) Batteries also don't mix well with fire and sometimes can be heard from over a mile away when they explode. Firecrackers and a slingshot seem like a good idea, but they're not. I think we can all safely say that the boy scouts are the second most reckless group of people on the planet. The first most being the US government (especially the military advisers) in all its glory. But yes, I will be a doctor, and I'll only have had to go to 14 years of college (not an exaggeration in my case-I was kind of stupid in some regards so it took me longer), plus once I'm done it'll be about another 3-5 years before I can apply for a position at a university. What's that you say, I'll be 40 and finally staring my profession of choice. That is true, which is why I have to be super-spectacularly-awesome by the time I get to that point. I still won't be awesome enough to save you if you're dieing, unless peeing on you or blowing up a can of soup will do the trick.

Beware the dread sea lice.

That'll scare your kids straight.

Child: "I don't want to take a bath!!!"

Parent: "Don't make me give the dreaded sea lice a call, I hear there's a lag in the work available near Somalia right now..."

Child: "Noooooo!!! I'll take a bath, see I'm even taking off my clothes right here in the street, so all you have to do is carry me inside kicking and screaming for all the neighbors to see, and I'll happily take a bath."

Too bad children learn you're lying to them before they're teenagers, you could definitely have some fun (at their expense). Captain Crunch is made from cardboard and tire irons, that's why it hurts to eat.

Yesterday I had a test in a class that is crucial for my research. It didn't go very well. I was given a blank copy of the test after and told to take it honestly at home. It took me five hours to finish. The really sad part is that someone finished, and did well, in 50 minutes. I told you graduate school was overrated.

I'm sad though, I appear to be losing my overseas friends somewhat by pointing them out. I think that's a sign I should stop. I've never been terribly great at picking up on signs. For example, did you know that getting hit by a car going about 30-40mph really isn't that bad?

A number of years ago at my undergraduate university, between classes I decided to go visit a friend who lived not far away. At the end of my visit I realized I was going to be late for my class, and so I took off. The traffic light where I would have to cross had changed red for me to cross before I was there. I probably could have just waited for it to change again and been fine, but in my mind I needed to get across the busy four lane street as fast as possible. I decided to wait until traffic stopped back where I was and then I would just run across the road. It was a brilliant idea and would have worked perfectly if it hadn't been for the left-turn lane in the center.

As I ran out between the two lanes of stopped cars I looked and barreling toward was a white chrysler le baron, okay I don't know what kind of car it was, other than it was a car with death on its mind. Two things went through my mind: 1) @#$(@#!!! 2) Jump. I did the second, instead of the first. I was thrown about 15 feet through the air, and almost made it to the crosswalk. The driver of the car was probably worried he was going to get sued for hitting a pedestrian, and got out frantically asking me if I was okay. In all of my brilliance I replied, "Sure, are you?" I was also trying to find my sandals that had been knocked off in the process of being hit and thrown through the air. I was not worried about possibly having a broken hip/leg (that's where the car actually made contact) which really hurt at this point, but rather I was trying to get out of there as fast as I could because I didn't want to get a jaywalking ticket. I've never claimed to be all that smart. Once I found my sandals I hobbled my way out of there as fast as I could.

I can't hobble very fast, especially in sandals where one is broken. Walking normally in broken sandals is a hard chore in and of itself. Doing it with an extremely sore leg is even harder. I was late for class, and it was more than a little hard to hide my limp.

Needless to say I never visited that friend again while he lived at that same place. Late we became roommates and would have wrestling matches in out living room. After the first wrestling match we learned to remove the furniture first.

If I were a fish I would be a land shark (not loan, but land).

The chef always goes down with the ship

All right Spain!!! I'm a fan of Spain. I've never been there, but I would like to go, I would even consider living there but Pam isn't sure they don't eat horses, and she doesn't want her babies to be eaten. I, on the other hand, am a fan of Cronus and his wonderful paternal instincts.

No fancy computer graphics (notice how he's awesomely naked and genderless). I do enough with computers all day, I need some good 'ol fashioned organic drawing. I'm not really sure graphite can be classified as organic though... hmmm. People eat weird things. I'm not talking about the glue, paper, rubber, gasoline, lead paint, cat litter, or any other of the many assorted goodies kids will eat for one reason or another-can you blame them, they have you for a role model? I'm talking about grown adult people that are supposed to know better. One thing that always strikes me as funny is people complaining that their food has been pesticized, furtilimized or, heaven forbid, originating in a lab. This is what they would like you to think that "organic" food (no pesticide, fertilizer or other man made thingums have 'tainted' it) looks like:

and what they would like you to think that an apple that has been fertilized, pesticized and other wise manipulated by man looks like:

If you were the hamburgler would you break into a house that had up razor wire and guard dogs, or the house that's unprotected? Me too. Hooray for all natural products!!! Besides, why do you think we're living so much longer? Preservatives! They're in everything including your toothpaste and designer underwear. This is also part of the reason they've had to invent cialis and viagra. Lesson: don't swallow the toothpaste; and you thought it was just an old wives tale. 

The first man to invent toothpaste used a mixture of mud, sand and cow dung. Needless to say he was drawn and quartered shortly after his product hit the medieval market. The prince was a bit upset over having cowdung-mud-sand breath when he went to kiss the princess (his cousin, with whom he was madly in love) instead of normal rotting dead flesh, death and all things doom breath he had been known for. Speaking of all things dead and rotting, did you know radiohead put out a new album? Even better, Oasis is still around (and recording music) and criticizing radiohead for not being original. I'm sad we left England to start our own boy-band-land. Imagine Alice Cooper with a british accent, or Ted Nugent swinging on a vine in a loin clothe (note the old-english spelling) while sipping a cup of tea. Even better, Neil Diamond with an english accent, or even speaking proper english. If I could be uprooted from the here and now and planted into that world it would be a laugh a minute, and the best part would be that no one would know what I was laughing at or why. Jokes seem to be more funny when other people look at you like you're crazy. Kind of like this one: Sabes por que la parte final de pan se llama la suegra? Porque nadie la quiere. Absolutely hilarious!! Unless of course you're a mother-in-law (and speak spanish). I learned another joke in russian that I still don't really understand (at all) but it seems to make russians laugh all the time. Anything that can make a russian laugh must be pretty good right? 

Back to Spain. They invented the toilet. That has to be worth something. 

Did you know there are over 642 different kinds of people living in your basement, and they all want to do bad things to you. We have a scary basement, and I figure that if it's true for us it must be true for everyone. I lost all my steam. I'm quitting, but will be back later. The People Under the Stairs looked like it was going to be an awesomely scary movie and the first part of it was pretty intense and suspenseful. Then you meet the people under the stairs and I was laughing pretty good. I love it when people try to make political statements and they know it's not going to go all that well, so they go all out and it's that much better. Here's to the people under the stairs. 

The next time you're bored you can call up a veterinary clinic and act concerned, but not panicked, and make up a story about your favorite pet and how something might be wrong but you're not really sure. Make sure that it's something completely ridiculous too. For example, this was my favorite I've done so far:

(Thick Utah Hick accent)

"Hey, uhm yea, my uh dog, he well, we were playin' fetch an' I was throwin' this ball fur 'im an', well it was like a golf ball size ball but not a golf ball, you know what I mean? Well, we was havin' all kinds uh fun an' then I throw it fur 'im and he come runnin' back an' I went tuh get the ball from 'is mouth an' it wasn' there or nuthin', and then he just like collapsed on me. Like, I'm not sure if he's gonna be okay or not, but at the sametime, I'm not really sure if I uh need to be, ya know, worried or somethin' about 'im." 

Make sure you're not panicked, act like it's normal and probably is nothing, but you're calling just to cover your bases. The sad/funny part is that they will believe you. Not because that's their job, but rather because they actually get calls like that. Try it, and make sure to pick something outlandish and odd and see what happens. The down side to this is the children's story of the boy who cried wolf. Don't get eaten. 

I've been working on this post sporadically over the last week or so. 

A good friend of mine is considering moving to Dragonville, England. Yes, Dragonville!!!! Nearby, he will have access to the mystical Ramside Golf Club, where he can slay evil fire-breathing dragons at his leisure while he plays a round of 18 holes. That would be a golf game I would want to watch. 

"He's four under par and if he can sink this putt that will put him right where he needs to be to take the cup...AND WHOA!!! Someone must have clapped a little too loudly because here comes the dragon from hole 13 and does she ever look pissed!! He's managed to mark the spot where his ball was and put his putter back in the protective custody of his caddy, while retrieving his double sided ax of doom, which he has lovingly nick named little Peety."

"Well, Harve, this looks to be a very eventful hole for him for more reasons than one. The main challenge he faces right now is getting his shirt off without being burnt to a crisp."

"You're right, Merv, this is what our lady audience lives for, seeing those wieldy golfers showing off their rippling pectoral muscles while they strike out for justice and slay the doom bringers."

From there it would turn into every other epically awesome man dragon battle complete with close and not-so-close brushes with death for both man and dragon. Forget an angry wife smashing out the back window of your car, you've got a dragon coming after you!!! It would be awesome to live there. 

I just scrolled back up to see what I was writing about before and I saw a picture of a rotten apple and the word naked in caps (it turned out to be a note to myself about the drawing of Cronus which I took out, but this comment is still relevant), realized it really didn't matter and have decided to end this post. 

Until next time, "If I can't out smart you, I will at least out dress you." -JJL

Whoever invented the wheel should be shot, hanged and then repeated seven times to make sure they're really dead

That's a long title, but I felt it was appropriate. I don't seem to be garnering the attention of Canadia. People in Russia and Slovenia look at my blog occasionally, but not Canadia. Maybe I need to talk about frogs to get their attention? Speaking of Canadia, there's a town called Hamilton somewhere up there where numerous people worked for the Bell telephone company, which was in a nearby town. What were these people called? Hamiltonian operators that commute! If you didn't think that was funny, go ask one of your friends that has taken  a quantum mechanics course. They're response, upon you telling them this joke will be to first shake their head with a smile and then tell you it's really not that funny, and definitely not worth your time to understand. Just take my word for it, it's funny. It could also come in handy if you ever get stuck in an elevator with a bunch of physics/chemistry people. If they're organic chemists though, they won't have a clue as to what you're talking about (it would be like explaining romantic love to a kindergartener, they'd wine and complain that it's stupid and they don't need it, and eventually would either try to pull your hair or kick you in the crotch to make you stop). I'll stop.

The title, oh yes, the title, and this one has nothing to do with ownership of your car, though it does have to do with cars in general. I think cars were sent here as one of the seven plagues before the apocalypse (that's a fun word, for more reasons than one), and it's such a horrible plague that it's not even mentioned by Nostradamus himself. Foreign cars are even worse, and I'm not a Xenophobe either (they call me Ford Prefect).

I know I promised pictures too, but I don't think it's going to happen this time. I'm a terrible artist and most other pictures I can find don't adequately describe the mayhem and panic I envision.

My dad, grandfather and great-grandfather were all mechanics at one time or another (two of them now work on keeping worms running smoothly). As such, when I was growing up when there was a problem with one of the cars my dad was usually the one that initially tried to fix it. Sometimes bad things happened, words were said, pieces were lost at 11pm in those stupid cracks in the pavement that go down just far enough that any small object that enters them now belongs to the Dark Under Lord, and the hammer was usually brought out. This meant the next day the car was taken to a shop where they fixed it. Okay, the last part never really happened, it just meant the next day we had to go pickup more parts and start over. The first time I was told to go help my dad work on one of our vehicles I was super excited! Kind of like the kid on A Christmas Story when he's told to go help his dad change the tire. I quickly learned that this was a way for my mom to not feel guilty about having my dad outside working in the dead of winter on out car late at night in a carport; we had no garage. I also learned that this was possibly the worst thing for a kid to do. I was too young to really do anything other than stand there and hold the nuts and bolts and other assorted pieces that were summarily tossed from the engine, and when put back together we almost always had leftovers, which like Thanksgiving dinner were put in a giant jar with all the previous leftovers and then forgot about until next time. Mmmm, composting in the kitchen fridge. From an early age I learned to hate working on cars. I also learned why mechanics swear a lot, they have good reason to. I met a care engineer once. He's still alive, but only because he swore he just designed the body and exterior parts of the car.

Anyone who's ever worked on a car knows what I mean. They have bolts and screws and other thingums in the most awkward, hard-to-get-to and awful places you can think of. Things are piled on top of each other in an effort to save space. The problem is that the things that break down the most are usually at the bottom of these piles. So if you work on your own car you become very familiar with those pieces that you're not really sure they do anything, but you keep putting them back because you don't really want to find out if they're necessary or not. I have a feeling that if car engineers were required to spend two years working as a mechanic doing repairs on whatever part of the car it is they design, cars would be much friendly objects, and removed from the list of plagues to visit the earth before the end-of-days.

My real hatred of working cars comes from my older sister. Mainly it was one incident that still lives in infamy in my heart and soul, though I'm sure the rest of the family has forgotten it. Did you know that you have to put oil and antifreeze in a car? Well, you do. My older sister, in spite of being incredibly smart, so much so that she was paid to go to college, didn't know this. I can mock her because at that time I didn't have the privilege of driving the car all that often and so I learned from her mistakes and forever after knew you had to check the oil and antifreeze. The engine, for the most part, is made to withstand even cockroaches. The head (the part on top of the engine, once you unpile all the other pieces on top of it, that look like hoses but any competent mechanic will tell you they're not hoses, oh no, they're "who'sy what'sits and thingama-jig-ums that are really expensive to replace") couldn't withstand a two-year-old armed with a purple crayon. With out enough oil and antifreeze the head warps, which causes an even bigger problem because now you're antifreeze leaks into the area where the oil goes, and so you have even less antifreeze. I don't think catalytic converters can do much with antifreeze either. I hear cats  really like it though.

I just realized why this entry was sucking so much. No theme song to go with it...okay we're good now.

My wife, Pam, makes this awesome homemade bread that I'm eating right now too. If I could I would electronically share the bread with you. Unfortunately, until it becomes something gamers are interested in the computer manufacturers won't pursue it that much. Mmm, multigrain goodness.

Long and the short of the ruined head in the car, my dad and I replaced it in the winter months in Northern Utah-it took us about two to three months-and got the car up and running! Once. After it fired up initially it wouldn't start a second time. We ended up taking it to a mechanic where they had to replace the whole block. It ran after that though. I learned that working on cars is the second most painful thing in this world. Going on a family trip and being forced to listen to Celine Dion, Barbara Streisand, Musicals and such is only slightly more painful. We did listen to Three Dog Night, The Doobie Brothers and the Doors as well, so it wasn't always pain-riddled. There used to be this crazy lady on TV that had a 'magic' mirror that allowed her to see the children at home watching (kind of like how santa knows what you want for Christmas) and she called good little boys and girls her doobies. My mom and aunts swear to this. She was probably secretly a hippie.

Recently our car had been acting funny. We'd be driving along and it would start talking to me. Pam says she never heard it, but I know it was talking and it kind of freaked me out. One time it didn't like what I was doing and told me I better watch it, it knew where I slept. At this point I realized it was kind of pointless for me to be using my seatbelt. Thankfully Ralph Nader got the car companies to make steering columns that wouldn't impale the driver. We're still waiting for him to do something else useful ....waiting ....waiting ....waiting...it kind of reminds me of waiting up to see the tooth fairy take your tooth and put the quarter under your pillow. You never saw it, but people kept telling you that because the quarter was there the tooth fairy had done it, and you believed them for a while. One of my nieces believes in the booger fairy. I'd love to see her pillowcase on laundry day. One of my old roommates called them nose-trolls. Euphemisms are fun, and not just because it's a strange word that makes me think of rivers in which thousands were sacrificed to pagan gods. Thank you Michael Keen.

Could you imagine if they made a car modeled after Pauly Shore? It would keep telling it's out of gas, and then when you pulled up to the gas station it would explode. Keanu Reeves? It would try to out race muscle cars, out off-road SUVs and out comfort luxury cars, all while doing the exact same things, which is nothing. Martin Short? We'll keep this moderately clean and so won't mention what you're car would do. Paris Hilton?   It'd carry a small dog around in its gas tank and wonder why it kept dieing.

Our car also was making funny noises that it shouldn't. I thought the ball joints just needed to be lubed up, but kept putting it off because I really didn't want to have to take off the wheels and get my hands dirty. That's the honest truth. I finally broke down and screamed at my inner-girly-side until it was crying in the corner like a little girl (I had to tell it it was fat), and took the tires off the front of the car to check it out. Lo and behold, there was a slightly bigger problem. There's this little piece called a stabilizer connecting rod that one of the bolts had come off of, which explained why our car felt like it was leaning to the drivers side. It was. I wasn't too thrilled about it (earlier last year my dad and I had changed out the CV axles, while it didn't take as long as replacing the head, I would much rather do that again than replace CV axles) but we hopped over to the neighborhood auto part store on Abbey Road, asked Sgt. Pepper for directions and had some pickles and cheese on a yellow submarine. After this we made it to the service counter where I had to try and explain the part I needed (I didn't know what it was called at this point; car parts don't come with names on them). He pulled up a picture and asked me if that was what I needed. It looked like it, so I said sure, and after paying slightly less than it costs to smuggle rabbit fur into Finland, we were on our way home.

UPDATE: This picture was given to me by a good friend and is a pretty good at describing what I envisioned (if you haven't looked at his blog you should)

Once home, Pam quickly went inside. She's a very wise woman, other than marrying me, but I'm not complaining. Surprisingly, it was very easy to take out the old one and put in the new one, and I only had grease on my hands and little on my upper arms. I changed the oil in my youngest sisters car once (stupid Chevy) and ended up with both arms up to my shoulders completely covered in grease. The oil filter is positioned at the back of the engine where the only way to get to it is by reaching in from either the top or the bottom, snaking your arms around various immovable pieces and putting all contortionists to shame. This invariably means you will be covered in grease. I also, foolishly, mistook an easy to reach filter as her oil filter and found out that transmission fluid does not taste like burnt sugar like used antifreeze does.

The moral of the story: invent a time machine, find the person that invented the wheel and beat them. No wheel = no car = no oil crisis = no Bush family dynasty = no 911 = no emergency services = more deaths = no food shortage = no starvation = everyone, not just Americans being fat = Jenny Craig is a worldwide hit = ... it's a win-win situation for all involved. 

Roseta Stump

I've been trying some things lately-different things than I normally try, and these ones I don't have to worry about mistaking them for amanitas-and thus far the results are far from inconvulsive. Oddly enough some of the funnier things I have written (isn't that a fun word??!) have been while I have been jamming out in my head to good 'ol Trent Reznor. I have based this off of nothing more than a smattering of the comments I have (and have not) received on different posts. Speaking of that, my blog has had 279 views. 158 of those are from me (I know because the most used browser that looks at my blog is Chrome-guess what I use and you don't most likely?) waiting to see what someone has said. I've even changed my setting so that you can post comments anonymously (that's for you gangsta g-ma Betty, yo!). Wow, that wasn't interesting at all. Hang on, let me put on some screaming, wailing and otherwise brashness that is Trenty-boy. Okay, now that he's screaming in my ears AND I CAN'T EVEN HEAR YOU NO MATTER HOW LOUD I TYPE!!! Since that's in caps and has exclamation points you should now be mentally deaf from reading it.

Someone told me today I could be Trent Reznor's doppelganger. That was mildly flattering, though considering it came from a student I teach it could have been meant as an insult. He did just win an oscar, and this time it wasn't for singing dirty little ditties about the naughty bits of life. It was for the score of The Social Network. It's not too bad actually-I gave it a listen after being told I looked like him a little, except I'm a bit fatter, shorter and not quite as pasty white. That and I wear glasses, have some grey hair and do not hate god. Other than that, and I don't own the house the Tate murders occurred in, we're pretty much the same person. I'm also a lot less rich than he is and don't make music, unless its mexican night at our house.

I could never be a real chemist. Yes, I am getting an advanced degree in chemistry, but it's not real chemistry. I work on a computer all day, write programs and the closest thing I do to chemistry while at work is wash my hands in the restroom and heat something up in the microwave. Technically the last of those two is physics and not chemistry, otherwise the food wouldn't taste very good anymore, assuming microwavable food tasted good before you microwaved it. How do we know if microwavable food is really palatable or not? You heat it up, and it either turns to mush because some water got into the package or you're so starved that you can't wait for it to cool down and cram it in your mouth, searing off all of your taste buds in one fell swoop; you could be eating a magoty shoe for all you know at that point and it would taste the same. Try eating a magoty shoe the next time you burn off all your taste buds.

I'm at a very unsatisfied point right now. I just reread everything I have already written (there's that word again that makes me giggle for some unknown reason) and frankly I feel like it sounds like everyone else's blog that's out there. There's sixteen trillion of us, and we're all trying to be funny, though few of us ever really can pull it off. I miss the days when I didn't know I sounded like everyone else. Curse you Al Gore and your stupid invention of the internet!!!! Can we make up an anti-nobel prize? If we can, I think he should receive the first one, and it comes with a cash prize of -(recipients-net-worth), that fluctuates with the recipient. You can pay in one lump sum, or you can do it in installments. Maybe that's how hell works. You show up, they tell you you've been naughty by reading off all the horrible things you've done when you thought no one was watching (sneaking cookie dough while the wife was asleep) and even those that people saw you do (beating the neighbor kid for trying to teach your dog to pee on your back door). Then they take you from the room-of-shame (everyone gets to hear about all your naughtiness in the room of shame, it's a public spectacle) into the room of eternal-damnation-customer-service-center. Even though you can see the workers on the other side of a big window, they make you call them and you have to navigate an automated system that makes the IRS seem warm and comforting, like your first blankey you had when you were a kid. If you are able to navigate the automated system (pressing 0 will only get one of satan's helpers to come and poke you with a pitchfork) without ripping your pay phone, which you have to keep feeding quarters, from the wall you then get to talk to a customer-service agent.

In high school and junior high, do you remember those girls that were like you-know, and they always had like those one like things that were like totally nuh-uh, and they would completely out of who-knows-where be all like up in your like you know business? I'm convinced that no one really acts or talks like that of their own free will, but instead they have unwittingly become subjected to evil-demon-infestation-disease. Those same evil demons that are responsible for this tragic tragic behavior are the same demons that work in the customer-service department (they're being punished as well, even satan hates it when people talk that way). Now you have to give to them your new ID number that has been conveniently tattooed on the underside of your thigh, for convenient reading, and they don't give you those nice tear-away pants in hell either. They also like can't really like understand you very like you-know well because like they have this really really like bogusly bad connection because you know like it's hell and like Verizon is too chicken to cover there, and AT&T just can't cover anything (Sprints thinks they're too high and mighty, but heaven doesn't want them, so they've settled for purgatory, which means your cell phone won't work once you leave). As time marches on you begin to feel your brain start to turn into mush, and you imagine your brain oozing out of your ear, through the phone and behind that wall of glass separating them from you, oozing out of their receiver and into their head, where it easily bludgeons they're mediocre brain to death and then takes over, much like dicrocoelium dendriticum. That doesn't help you much in the long run, but it makes you feel better for the moment.

After an eternity of this, you finally get to the part you were hoping they would forget about. Payment. No HMO, no copay, no Medicaid, no Medicare and definitely no socialist government backed insurance to help with this type of payment. They ask you in a voice so cheery you would expect flowers to start blooming everywhere it was heard, if it weren't for the fact that they work for the dark underlord of evilness, doom and pop-music. Though, if I ever go to hell I'm sure they will have a nice large space put aside for me where there will be bright cheery meadows of a-little-too-pastel flowers, and the sky is the kind of powder blue you would expect a doctor's office to look like. There amongst all this that is amiss they would play over and over and over again certain scenes from The Sound of Puking, aka The Sound of Music. There where hope and sunshine spring eternal, so will my utter agony and discomfiture skip on the scratched part of the dvd to ever repeat and never end. Then I could see flowers blossoming where their voices roamed, but no where else.

The Payment. I imagine that this part is much like buying a house-I just went through that for the first (and sadly not the last) time in August. In all actuality, it started back in March or so. The first realtor we contacted wanted us to buy a house out of our price range (they get commission even if you foreclose a year later), and the banker they recommended we work with reminded me of the people I used to sail vacuums door-to-door with (I've even sold garbage service door-to-door, you hear all kinds of fun things BFI should stand for). They were anything but trustworthy and I wouldn't trust them with the people I hate the most and despise in this world. They were good at their jobs though and given the chance they could probably sell Osama Bin Laden a christian bible. I never met the guy, but I pictured him with jet black hair greased back (a hair net on in the morning to help keep it in place after lathering on the Dapper Dan), cheap yellow gold looking watch, necklace, rings and nose ring. In my mind he had a toothpick in his mouth he was constantly playing with and he sore a wife beater underneath his suit jacket. On casual fridays he would wear his ambercrombie and fitch shorts with his quicksilver t-shirt. Needless to say, I don't think he watched the news much. Then after switching to a new realtor (which is another ball of wax) and lots of very uninteresting details that made me hate loath and otherwise despise US Bank and the spineless realtor that represented them, we finally sat down to sign the final paperwork, hand over the final check and tell them "thank you for being so pleasant to work with..." The final paperwork went something like this:

Them: You don't have to read all of this as we go through, your realtor and banker
           have looked it over all ready and it is fine (big scary smile that's supposed to put
           me at ease but only conjures up images of them biting my head off and eating it
           whole)

Me: Uhm, can you stop smiling, my soul is trying not to die right now.

Them: (Still smiling) Okay then, let's get started! This page just says that you will be
          our monkey-slave for all eternity should you decide to stop paying and that we
          have assessed the house to worth exactly what you're paying for it.

Me: Isn't that statistically impossible? I mean, I'm no mathematician, but my
       father-in-law is and I could ask him...

Them: (Still smiling, but with a hint of unkind fire in the eyes) We just need you to
          initial here and here and date this page here. Oh here's a pen (handing me
          the same pen used to punish Harry Potter) don't worry if it hurts a little, it's
          only temporary.

Me: OUCH!!

Them: (Burning lustful fire of hate seeing their prey might try and escape burns in
          their eyes and the voice from Poltergeist emanating from  her throat) SIGN
          THE PAPER INFIDEL CRETIN!!!

Me: I think your hair's on fire (as I sign the first page)

Them: Shit! Well that just ruined the mood (The room kind of stinks now and
           we all know it)

This went on for about 600 pages. After that we took a bathroom break (I was escorted by an armed guard to and from the bathroom) and began again. Soon the cement floor began to bow under the weight of all the paper work, and I thought we were going to be done-for, when I heard those words you want to hear, but at the same time dread, "Congratulations, it's a boy!" Wait, sorry, wrong story. "Congratulations, you now own your very own first house!" The only thing really running through my head at that point was "I think I'm going to faint from blood loss..."

Later we found out that US Bank is a bunch of bigger idiots than we initially thought. They left out about 10 pages of very important documents. The only reason they bothered us with it though was because without those pages they couldn't get paid. Hahahahaha! Stupid !@#!@(*@!#!@(#*$!*@#)!@_~!!@)#!@$)@*$!@)$*!@#*)@)!#(!@)#(!@$!@#$!@$%!%!@*!%)&@%)(*^&@($%*()&$)$(&)^%(*%^(*%^)(**)*#@$#%_@(_$@#*#$^_^*#!!!!!! I love bunnies and squirrels. In fact I have even trained a small army of them to track down and torment employees of US Bank for all of their lives. See, with a little bit of effort we can all make this a little piece of hell on earth for someone else.

I like owning a house though, and by own I mean paying another bank each month for the next 30 years (25 of which we won't be here any longer) so we have some place to live and hide from other squirrels.

Who wears short shorts? 

Indecisively unaccurate

I now understand why people get obsessed over their stats and how many people view their blog and where they're from and which OS they're using and which browser they're using to view it. I had no idea they logged all that information, and now that I know it I've been ensnared in its evil jaws and I have to check it out to see what countries are checking me out. I really hope someone from Finland will look at it soon.

"I didn't know newspapers could do that!" If you want to know the rest of the story to that quote you'll have to ask my sister (the strange older one). Finland anyone?

I wanted to write about some amazing countries that I have never visited, and one I didn't even know existed until someone from that country looked at my blog (that or they've been trying to hack my blog. I'll make it easier, here's my password ***********). A friend of mine tried to make that his password once (all the little asterisks) and unfortunately he was using windows. Apparently this is one of the cardinal sins (ha! stupid birds born into a life of sin and doomed to eternal damnation), and Microsoft suddenly revoked not only his license but also the license of anyone in the building at that time, which was a lot of people. He had to call up billy gates himself and apologize. Apparently this is the master password for Microsoft's mainframe powerhouse computing center (they have forty duocore processors that can run all of Microsoft's office programs at the same time and make you an espresso, they've got engineers working on the pop-tart half of this problem-just don't try use any of the programs or the whole system will crash).

The Soviet block was a nice place. No one ever complained (publicly) so it cant have been that bad. In Moscow, or St. Pete's I forget which one, they actually have this park with a building for each country that was part of the CCCP, with the largest representing Russia. We found this girl with a donkey nearby that we took some picture of us sitting on it. It must have been Moscow. Don't take pictures of the cops if you're ever there. Slovenia used to be part of the CCCP but they are now gloriously on their own. Now they have to have just a passport to go visit lake Baikal instead of permission from people they've had to bribe to go see the deepest lake in the entire universe!! (it's so deep aliens make crop circles on it) Make sure to yell 'universe' when you read that last sentence, if you didn't, read it again making sure to yell 'universe' at the end, do it in public, or on a crowded subway. Slovenia is one of those highly underrated countries that deserves more credit for its major accomplishments and contributions to our wonderful world. Did you know they invented genocide, or was it gonorrhea? I always get those two mixed up. Einstein visited there once just before he came up with his magical theory of general relativity, Sic, he owes it to the Slovenians for this amazing theory that would have let us travel through time if it hadn't been for stephen hawking, who quashed that idea like a dirty roach made of fiber glass and used underwear.

Famous people from Slovenia: Alister Crowley (technically he's not from any one 'place'), George Washington (not the one you're thinking of, but the founding father), Hank Williams, Madame Bovary, Lord Dartmoth Kelvin Klein, Prince Chuck (not this chuck), Allison Q McDermot and the list goes on and on. Notice how they all have very Slovenianish sounding names. I'll bet that's something else you didn't know, many of our 'common' names actually come from Slovenia. It's also been posited that Slovenia is the actual cradle of creation, though it's not widely publicized for fear that the world will stop helping African nations and leave them alone to slaughter each other senselessly because some old dude doesn't like some other old dude's mother. Slovenia gave us cracker jacks and those nifty useless toys that come in them too! (yell 'too'; if you roll your Rs in japanese it makes you sound angry. I think the number six is roku in japanese, so if you say rrrrroku!!!! you'd be saying 'SSSSIIIIXXXXXX!!!!!' with a really angry look on your face, try it on a japanese person, it's fun, oh you so big crazy america) Cracker jacks would kill me if I ate them. Not that they don't like me or anything (I swear I've never been to Slovenia) I'm just allergic to peanuts. It's an annoying allergy. When I was a kid, all of my sisters and friends would be having tons of fun loaded up on sugar after halloween eating all their snickers, peanut m&m's, big hunk and reese's candies while I had to try and get a sugar buzz from candy corn. You have to eat your weight in candy corn to get even a slight sugar buzz. I wasn't complaining too much though, I like candy corn. Or maybe that's why I like candy corn. Pixie sticks are awesome too! Those were gone before we got home, usually. Halloween in Utah, where I grew up, was not a very fun experience as far as dressing up like an awesome zombie only to be faced with two equally enjoyableness choices 1) let everyone see your awesome costume and freeze to death, or 2) wear your coat over it and no one sees it, but you stay warm and then get beaten later by your parents for getting makeup on your coat...or was it for using your mom's good makeup? When you courageously chose option 1) you soon realized what it would be like to be a cow. You would keep moving just to get to more food which would help to keep you warm. Sugar is its own food group on the periodic table of the elements, brought to you by Slovenia, not the ATF. I like sugar and azucar. Slovenia probably gave us candy corn, and those nifty coffee mug holders that come installed in most modern computers.

Did you know Juan de Dios Ramirez Heredia was the first Romani (aka gypsy) Member of the European Parliament (he's from Spain, and a socialist). I think all of our foreign ministers should be Romani. People would think a little harder about messing with us then. Having a gypsy curse put on you is worse than being attacked by nuclear fish bombs (or nucular if you like) or even having a jihad put on you. How many scary movies are made with someone putting a jihad on you because you wouldn't help some old lady eviscerate a cute little bunny? Gypsy curses though? All over the place, and the thought of dead peoples hands coming out of the walls (walls are generally safe places to be, until the climatic music stops, then something is going to come out of it or smash through it and get you) and dragging me into an abyss of total nothing and terrorness makes me cry like a little girl in a corner where the walls are lined with tinfoil and super glue. The Slovenian scientists showed back in the 1915's that gypsy curses, the dead, undead and really anything that is evil cannot penetrate tinfoil (even if it is made out of aluminum), much like superman can't see through your lead undies. The government actually thought about making lead suits for people to wear that had to work with radiation. Then someone told them how much lead weighs and they weren't so enthusiastic.

"Your tongue won't stick to the pole if you lick it in winter time."

"I triple dog dare you!"

Aluminum used to be really rare, and Napoleon would bring out the fancy aluminum dinnerware when honored guests showed up. Later, because of tin, the Russians walloped his army. Maybe that's where tinfoil's name comes from? There's also another kind of coke that if you tried to sniff or drink you would be one of the most miserable people on the planet for at least 30 seconds until you died. The moral of the story, wear your lead undies and don't do drugs.

Thank you Slovenia! and tell your friends in Finland to come check me out, at least once.

Angry like a fire

I've been thinking of adding drawings to my stories (I like to think of this as story telling) on here, but then a couple of things occurred to me. One, I'm a horrible artist, which works nicely sometimes (see my christmas story if you don't mind, or if you're really desperate for bad art to pass off as your children's, neices', nephews' etc. just ask and I'll email you a pdf version of it), but most of the time I'm not sure it does; there are somethings I can't draw, even crappily. So for the time being I won't. That doesn't mean I can't try to describe it so you paint your own morbid mental pictures, which do far more damage than my drawings (or Darwin) ever could.

You ever ascribe human feelings to inanimate objects? This world would be so much funkier if inanimate objects weren't inanimate. You slam a door out of anger, and the next thing you know you've been thrown against the wall, which is now throwing you into another wall which in turn will throw you into another wall which in turn...it'd be like human pinball, except you can't tilt the machine to get everything to freeze. Your only real hope would be that the walls would throw you out of a window while it wasn't paying attention and it would throw you so hard that you would be plummeted into outer space. There you could live out your last few seconds of life in peace not being beaten up on by your surrounds, which only days before had been very cold and inhabitable. Though, accord to Total Recall, your eyes pop out of your head when exposed to the vacuum of outer space. That was one of those wonderfully horrible movies from the late eighties, early nineties.

Or if you were out camping, and you decided that you wanted to go to sleep and you knew that you couldn't trust the fire-too mischievous for its own good. So you do the normal thing (we'll pretend you're either a woman or women are with you) and pour your canteen of water on it and then a shovel full of dirt, mixing it all up nicely. Then knowing that you are now safe, you go to sleep. Little do you know (this one is going to be full of strange movie references, hahahaha) there under the wet dirt, aka mud, and doused ashes smolders a small and seemingly insignificant coal of fire. At first it lazily tries to open its eyes, completely disoriented and unaware of what has really happened. It just know that it was blazing away like there was no tomorrow, when all of the sudden its world was turned upside down. As awareness begins to creep into its bones this little, almost nothing of a coal begins to burn brighter and brighter until it is a flaming red hot ball of fiery goodness with evil on its mind. You, meanwhile are snuggled in deep to your sleeping bag (the deeper you snuggle into your sleeping bag, the less bears can smell or detect you, even by sight; it's almost as if burrowing is like those magic elf-capes super-frodo and his sidekick chef-boy-sam wear while on their way to defeat the evil ways of McDonalds in the fires of Mt. Doom) dreaming of your nice queen sized bed at home. The fire, which has now scared off the pack of ravenous wolves that were coming to eat you (snuggling does nothing to protect you from wolves, badgers and high school math teachers) , is coming.

The trees and bushes, sensing danger, begin to whisper and shake, their warning wafting through the air like the scent of lemon meringue pie in the summertime. The first notes of it dance their way down your ear canal and tickle your eary bones. You stir once. But your unconscious defenses kick-in, not wanting to let a bear know you're here, and you lay slumbering in peaceful bliss as your utter annihilation stalks outside your tent. Suddenly you wake up to the fire dousing you with lighter fluid (the fire doesn't care if women are present), laughing maniacally like you would expect a clown to laugh at you if you were tied to a spinning wheel and the clown was throwing knives at you. I hate clowns. It then jumps on you much like the Undertaken would have, except this time its for real. You're now covered in fire, both from the lighter fluid and from the one that's attacking you like a ferocious starving hinayana would attack a poor defenseless baby gazelle, lost and alone in the not so cold summer sun of the outback (not the steak house, though I can imagine many of the men that eat there being about as friendly, but probably smell worse). Then as you run screaming from your tent with the fire doing its best to tear out your entrails-lucky for you fire doesn't have finger nails or thumbs, ha! let's see you eat nachos, stupid fire-the surrounding trees trying to help start slapping you as you run by, covering you in sap, leaves, bugs and other assorted forest goodies. Now you're on fire, sticky and if you were to be fossilized at this moment it would confuse archeologists for centuries to come.

Finally you spot the lake, and you go barreling headlong toward its life saving waters. Just as you reach the edge a blood curdling scream emanates from all around you and if you weren't on fire it might give you pause to wonder where it came from and what sort of depraved torture is someone else enduring this night in the forest. As it is, you just want the fire put out. As you leap from the shore into the air, doing your best to imitate Greg Louganis (as a diver) though it comes out looking like you're receiving shock therapy mid-dive. As you look down to the life saving waters you suddenly realize what made the scream. The lake, upon seeing a fiery monster of death charging at it, became terrified and as you leaped into the air, it safely retreated to the other side of the valley, drowning and entire family of koala bears on vacation and send a family of people careening down the mountain side in fear for their lives (they too ended up covered in sap, though for different reasons). You didn't come out so lucky. You belly flopped onto the hard ground that used to be the muddy lake bottom. The fire merely laughs at you and mock your pain as it burns off all your clothes and body hair. The last thing you remember is it stalking off saying something about how it has your wallet, knows where you live and plans to make this a yearly occurrence. You then wake up to girl scouts taking pictures of the albino bear, and poking you with a stick. You later are turned into a local legend as you are too shamed to return to normal society and live out your days in the mountains.

See, I told you it's a good thing inanimate objects are just that. "If hate were people, I'D BE CHINA!" I love everyone.

Experiment while you're young

Lately, I've been hearing a lot of people half-complaining about being old (it's the time when people I went to high school with are turning 30-those who have passed this milestone are gasping in mock disbelief I am sure) and how they never thought they would live to see this day, etc. etc. etc. I had no idea so many people I went to school with were gang-bangers and drug runners, or that a significant portion of them owned bullet bikes. At least, that's the only explanation I can come up with for that kind of response to turning 30. I've been 30 for more than a few months now, and honestly, it feels like it did when I was 29, 28, 27, ... I haven't changed much since I was about 14, other than I have fewer pimples now, and a lot more bills to pay. I still do inappropriate things, laugh at things people say that can be twisted to have another meaning, and I'm definitely not above a good practical joke-I once hid in the corner of a closet for over an hour waiting for the guy to go to bed, and then when he turned the light out I snuck out and yelled "RAAAAAARRRRRRR!!!!!" as I leaped through the air landing on him in his bed, which then slid off its frame trapped him, flailing under his covers, and me against the wall (I was 25 at the time); he probably still checks his closet before going to bed each night. Having said that, there are areas where I have changed, namely I no longer dive headlong down the steep side of a tall mountain. You may say, but there are no mountains where you live, to which I respond, that's not the point. I also no longer try to leap over handrails in one fell swoop (teeth are expensive to replace), and while I no longer traipse about in public in tights, a cape and mask, in private is, well, private.

One thing I know Pam, my wife, wishes I would get over, but probably never will, is my love of terrible jokes. They're not terrible in the sense of it's not something that would make your mother or grandmother blush, but in the sense of...an example will serve my purpose best. Why should you never say the number four? (think about it for a second) What is four backwards? What animal makes that sounds? What is that animal's name backwards? I told that joke in my high school calculus class, and the teach who was a very serious, though kind man, almost fell over he was laughing so hard. I think that just cemented in my mind that the joke really is funny. Not that mathematicians are good people to gauge hilarity of jokes off of. Here's a bad math joke, what is non-orientable and lives in the ocean? Mobius Dick. That one's only mildly funny though. My love of terrible jokes can be blamed mostly on my father, from whom I have gathered a fair number that are in my arsenal. The next two will demonstrate:

What did Tarzan say when he saw the elephants come running? Here come the elephants.

What did Tarzan say when he saw the elephants, wearing sunglasses, come running? Nothing, he didn't recognize them.

The list goes on and on (just so you know I was laughing hysterically as I wrote those). Another interesting side note, hysteria and hysterectomy have the same root. They used to think that the women parts would make women go crazy, which can be argued the same for men but it's not hystorically correct, and so they would take them out. From this springs the word hysterectomy. Ah, those crazy Roman people. They also used to make people wrestle bears naked and all greased up. Tom Waits has a song called In The Colosseum, which is funny because we don't do that anymore. When I was in Russia someone told me a joke, which really is funny, trying to be offensive because they disagreed with my decision to not eat meat (gotta love 19 year olds from BYU-haha, I speak of it as if it were it's own country/island). What do you call a vegetarian with diarrhea? A salad shooter. It took be about a year and half to finally laugh at that one. I'm always amazed, especially at myself, for the stigmas attached to certain things based on the people who introduced us to them, or that we met when we were first introduced to the thing. I also really like the word thing, and all that that entrails.

I think people should experiment while still young. You may take that for whatever you would like it to be. I experimented while I was in college, and look at where I am now, still in college trying to get an advanced degree in chemistry. Maybe experimenting isn't such a good thing. I seriously thought about living out of my car for a semester just so I would know what it was like to be somewhat homeless. My friend, Adam, talked me out of it. It's still an idea that captures my attention from time to time, though now I would get in a lot of trouble for doing it. I would probably fair a little better now owing to the fact that I've a few more layers of fat than I did back then and it's actually warmer in Lansing, MI than northern Utah (my fingers tried to type Italy instead of Utah, and while this may or may not be true, I have no idea why they decided to try and type Italy. Odd fingers, and maybe the pope is secretly controlling my mind using his hat of pointy telepathy focusing awesomeness? I'm scared. Oooh, another joke. What do you call a sleep walking nun? A roamin' catholic).

I was having a familiar conversation with a friend yesterday about how musicians who use drugs make some of the most amazing music while using, and then when they clean up their music more or less sucks. This isn't to say they're not good musicians, they just can't write good music like they used to. I have a theory, which has no real basis other than I've never done drugs, though I received a contact high while at an indoor Primus concert (duh, you're saying-though I didn't know I was high at the time until almost 7 years later when someone described to me what it was like to smoke weed). Using drugs they are able to more easily access the portion of their brain where we go to make wonderful music, stories, etc. etc. etc. While they are able to create some of the most amazing music, art and other things (there was a mathematician that used speed to help him write his proofs, and he was amazing, who finally cleaned up, and in his words he couldn't "see the math anymore" so he went back to using speed) they actually end up cheating themselves in the end. When they come clean they have to learn how to access that area without the use of drugs, which is that much harder after having had such easy access to it before. But that's my non-drug-introduced opinion. That was boring too. I would make a terrible philosopher.

So the point I've been trying to make is that when you get older things happen that you really hate. I found out the other day that I have a condition that is characteristic of (older than 20) people who spend a lot of time sitting on their bums all day. This, while not life threatening, makes certain aspects of the day unsightly and worst of all, brings out the 14 year old who has to try ever so hard to restrain himself from laughing at things that grown-ups don't laugh at. See, just thinking about it right now makes me chuckle. If I ever get put in a nursing home they're going to hate me, because not only will I be laughing at all the bodily functions I do myself, but there will be an entire building of people doing the same things and more for me to laugh at. Growing up is awesome.

Why do I have to come up with one of these?

I think I'm just going to start titling these with numbers. Not in any order, but whatever number tickles my fancy when I happen to write one of these. This would be called one, though not because it's the first one I would write with numbers as the title. The next one will likely be titled 666 (if I wrote it write after this, as I would change my mind by the time I write here again).

The english language is great. There are so many windy windy things that make your head spin. Then you can write right rites while wearing only tights. This will however leave you, and ewe, open to criticisms that are unwarranted, which two too many to like to wear tutus. I think you get the point. Meatings can be fun too, especially when it's work related. If you really want to make it more fun, you can start to mix english with say spanish (spanish is the language I'm most familiar with after english). Then instead of calling someone a pendejo, which is just offensive and naughty, you can say instead to them, "Oye, dejaste tu pluma." which means "hey, you dropped your pen." Think about it, you'll realize how stupid it is in a second, but I still am amused by it. Too many words go unused, neglected and otherwise left out in the cold while other words are severely overused, abused and mistreated. We should start looking for words that are underprivileged and start to bring them into normal daily use. This will help to bring a more diversificationing of our slowly denigrating language and hopefully cause some immolations to bring about awareness of their plight. I thought of another joke I came up with, but it's not appropriate, and I'm trying to be more appropriate in some ways.

I had a small epiphany the other night (not the holiday, though that would have been nice too) and it was most enlightening. I've lost four pounds since then, and I haven't had to change my eating habits. If you really want to lose weight, eat nothing but sugary foods and walk up all the stairs you can find. You'll be amazed by where you can go.

Did you know Dr. Seuss inordinately disliked children? We could have been good friends. Not that I dislike children, they are particularly good with dinner rolls and gravy. Caffeine is also a poison. Not one of those stupid things like, "Anything in excess will kill you." It really is a poison. They also put vegetable oil in Mt. Dew. I say this because I really like Mt. Dew. It's always a good idea to know what it is that you're eating/drinking and where it has been. If it's been over to see your neighbor, the creepy one that watches you take the garbage out through their blinds and probably thinks you are the taliban, you probably should throw it away at work so he doesn't see you doing it.

Some pEople arE obseSsed With caPitalizing on othErs misFortunes. I find this abhorrent. I also find Pop music abhorrent and no one seems to be doing anything about it. Perhaps I should right my politicians and get them working on both of these problems, they don't seem to be doing anything impotent at the moment.

That was fun. I hop you didn't disenjoy it more than I didn't not enjoy it.