It's here!!! (and long)

Annual Christmas story is here, I apologize for the length of the story this year (46 pages in all). Enjoy!

That's it for this year. It's been a good one and thanks to everyone that has taken time out to waste here looking at my insane and often incoherent ramblings. In the words of Tiger, Ta Ta for now!

P.S. if the quality of the pictures is terrible, which it might be, I can't tell on my computer I'm on right now, send me an email and I can fix it, or if you want I can even just send you the pdf file for the whole thing. kneipe2@gmail.com

IT'S COMING!!!!!!

Yes, it's coming. It missed the world last year, but the world will not be spared this time. Bwahahahaha!!!

I'll have a new Christmas story posted in the next couple of weeks (it's longer this year, sorry about that). 

Good posture is bad for your gas mileage

Mileage, one of those strange words that makes you wonder what it was really supposed to mean before it was highjacked and crammed into the meaning it now has. Misogynist is not someone biased against women, rather it is someone who is against marriage. That would make a whole lot of people gay-misogynists. =D

I just got out of the hospital yesterday, and I wish I could tell you it was for something super cool like trying to turn my microwave into a death ray of doom and deconstruction when someone accidentally tried to warm up a cup of soup and I happened to be standing in the path of the deathy-part of my machine fixing something-or-another. That would have been cool. Or I tried to save some baby penguins from being eaten by a giant, ferocious, but cuddly looking, polar bear when I slipped on an iceberg and when tumbling head long into the freezing cold arctic waters where I had to do epic battle with a giant quid and a great white shark, in which I won both battles by the skin of my teeth, and I heroically pulled my freezing corpse from the frigid waters I cut my hand on a rock and needed stitches. That would have been awesome. Oh no, not here, not this time, and definitely not with me. I had chest pains. Not the "Oh $%#*!! I'm having a heart attack!" chest pains, but, "HOLY $%#*!!  $%#*!! IT HURTS TO BREATH!!!!" chest pains. They're not as serious as heart attack chest pains, but they make life a lot more uncomfortable (I'm going off of how pained the other people in the emergency room that were there for chest pains looked vs. my own face. Plus they were all old and were likely there because they were having a heart attack). I'm getting better now, and in the last few days I've had as many different kinds of narcotics and I can say there are some that I like more than others. Not that anyone should really like narcotics, but if someone put a gun to my head and said "Pick a  $%#*!! narcotic that you just love and can't bare to be without!!!" I know which one I would choose. I don't really get how people can take narcotics and somewhat function in a half normal way. But you're writing a blog post right now, you say, to which I respond, "Shut the  $%#*!! up, who named you Jimminy Cricket at the last conscience meeting???" The first time this chest pain thing happened to me I was at Pam's apartment (this was while we were still dating). We had to call an ambulance, and the paramedics seemed fixated on two questions:

1) What sort of illicit drugs were you doing tonight? (directed at me)
2) Have you been hitting, kicking, and/or punching him? (rhetorically directed at Pam).

Now when you go to the hospital they have to ask you if you feel safe at home, or if anyone makes it unsafe for you. Sure, Pam might beat me, but if I like it, does that really make my home unsafe for me? =P

Swamp thing, duna nuna nuna nuna nuna, swamp thing!! I'm sad that didn't become a hit.

While in the hospital one of my nurses said he wanted to be a dentist. I had visions of "I'm a dentist and I'm okay, I pull out teeth, and I eat all day. I numb up mouths, I fill cavities, I go to the lavatory..." all singing and dancing about in tights and modified scrubs. I suggested that once he's a dentist he should dress up as the evil dentist from Little Shop of Horrors for Halloween. He was a really cool nurse, especially once he gave me drugs. Later they transfered me to the cardiac part of the hospital. I apparently had a heart 'sound' (they said it was called a murmur, but it wasn't really a murmur-I feel like my mouth is full of mush when I try and say that word) that mostly doctors only get to hear a recording of, so about every doc from the cariologologoloology department came a listened to my heart. It was kind of like being felt up by every Dick and Jane that came through. The worst part is, I'm definitely the one that's going to be paying for it too. No sir, no freebies for this hooker of medical abnormalities.

Later that night my pain went from, "OUCH, THIS REAALY HURTS TO BREATH!!!" to "AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" It's really difficult to make more than one noise when you have this kind of pain-kind of like having your mother step on your catheter. They gave me 4mg of morphine. Didn't even touch the pain. Then they gave me something called dilaudid, which is a morphine derivative, but much more powerful. With morphine, when they gave me an injection, it would take about 15-30mins for me to really start to feel an effect, and it was usually fairly subtle. With this other guy though, the instant it hit my vein, my whole body felt fuzzy and warm, almost like I had wet the bed, but before it gets cold, then my ears started ringing and the world just sort of melted into the background. This stuff didn't wear off till almost 12 hours later too. A side affect not commonly advertised too, is that it can take whatever is in your stomach, and when you vomit, it will have turned into something looking like chicken soup. It might even come out your nose! There's a real trick for you, how to get bile out of your sinus cavity. I'm just glad my body's not super hyped about getting hooked on opiates/opioids etc. I don't like the way the stronger ones make me feel.

I don't like the drugs, but the drugs like me. We all live in a shallow submarine. You must not weigh more then 75lbs to board this submarine. Stinking hippies.

I hate strawberry fields, even from a purely theory stand point, that song is horrible!!! Then you find out it's about shooting smack and you say, really, you couldn't have at least made this song enjoyable to listen to? The difference between morphine and heroin is (COCH2)2. That's it! If you're a really good synthetic chemist (or street dealer) this isn't that hard of a problem. Did you know meth can help fight off the flu? Not a joke. 

Where's the revolution?

It's on the dance floor with some awesome platform shoes and bell  bottom pants. The only problem is this guy showed up:

Completely threw everything out of whack. Thanks a lot Pennywise (not the band). You still give me nightmares and make me cry myself into oblivion while huddled in the corner wishing I could get you out of my head. I hate clowns.

Speaking of stupid men, today is election day in my home country, and it's the one day I can feel like I have a voice in how our government is run. Here's a list of those I voted for: Barney Fife, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Charles Manson, John Wayne Gacy, Ham Sandwich, John F. Kennedy. It was worth the hour long wait in line. If they only had something like this

that you had to pass through to get to the voting booth then things would go much quicker (the picture is the work of Joshua Hoffine and it's just amazing). Plus if you were taking too long the creepy thing under the stairs would have permission to come after you. I for sure would know who I was voting for before going to the polls. Even with all the write-ins, it didn't take that long for me to vote. The best part is now I can sit and complain about what a terrible job all the politicians are doing for the next however many years they are in office. If they didn't do a good job we should lock them in a basement with the creature under the stairs. That or force them to spend a day with Pennywise. That would be something in politics I would find worth my time to watch.

If Obama wins, I'm leaving the county; if Romney wins, I'm leaving the country. It's not political, I just want to travel. If you listen to Charles Manson long enough he's bound to say something funny.

I recently turned 32 years old. I don't feel much different, and if I did I think I would start to worry. I blame climate change for my recent gain in weight (by recent I mean the 20-40lbs I've gained over the past 2-4 years). What I'm really excited for though (besides the invention of time travel) is the next time I visit my parents I'm going to check on my twinkie. I've had this twinkie since I was a freshman/sophomore in high school. I wanted to see how long it would last before it started to mold or go rotten in some form. Last time I checked on it, four years ago, it was still looking as pristine and golden delicious as when I first stored it away (I don't even know how old it was when I put it aside for safekeeping). I've thought about doing the same thing with peeps, but I keep eating them before I get a chance to actually put them aside for future generations. It's not unhealthy to eat this kind of thing either. In fact, people that do eat that kind of stuff will most likely live longer than those who don't, unless they succumb to some form of cancer which may or may not be related to what is or isn't contained in food items such as twinkies, peeps, etc. I'm not really sure what would go under the etc. category though, twinkies and peeps are kind of in a category of their own.

 Since we're on the horror topic, Evil Dead is being remade and the new trailer looks amazing! If you ever get the chance to see Evil Dead, the Musical, do. There's nothing quite like a finale where the living dead are dancing about with the one live person left, flinging blood and guts and gore about on the audience. It's kind of like the Rocky Horror Picture Show, except without the transvestites and Tim Curry molesting everyone. It's a rocking good time for the whole family. Who says nothing good ever came from Canadia? I love maple syrup too.

As I look back on all the things I've done and could have done over the years, and thus far, I don't have too many regrets.

Hell's bathroom probably looks and smells like the DMV, but with nicer toilet paper

For the most part I am glad that I was a child in the 80's and don't have to pretend I never participated in the atrocities that were promulgated during that era. It's too bad the 80's couldn't be decimated, then again, that would be a lot of spandex to fit into one year. Billy Idol's hair would have poked out a few eyes, and a few too many people would be related to Neil Diamond if the 80's were decimated. There is one thing I do like about the 80's though, other than my wife, and that is the metal bands. Just to clarify, Bon Jovi is not metal, I'm not even sure if he's human; Van Halen doesn't fall into this category either.

Everyone keeps talking about the national deficit, the debt (it sound like 'death' when most people on the news say it) ceiling and all of the problems that come with it. Personally it just makes me want to jump in a mosh pit and get the tar beaten out of me by other people. Mosh pits really aren't that bad, I enjoyed them immensely back when I was slightly more crazy in a different direction than I am now. VECTOR! Committing crime with both direction and magnitude! I loved to go to the Warped tour back before it was infected with screamo bands that complain about how hard high school was for them (i.e. I don't even know any of their names, I despise them that much). It was awesome! Less than $30 for an entire day of rocking out and kicking it with some of the strangest people you'll ever meet. I know in Europe you have week and month long festivals that are truly stupendous, but I'm not a fan of the bands that play at the week long festivals here-mostly country and celine deon style music. The first time I jumped in the pit, the people I was with were trying to talk me out of it, telling me all kinds of horror stories of awful things that they had seen happen. Being the wonderfully responsible person that I am, I threw caution to the wind and jumped into the pit. (updated, since I left this post for awhile and when I came back I didn't have the common sense of decency to finish where I was going, but now I do) I remember my first mosh pit experience as nothing less than grand and the highlight of that summer. What I call my "first" mosh pit experience is an entire days worth of moshing, thrashing and otherwise getting knocked about. My brain now has a slight, very slight, idea of what it's like to live in the head of a boxer. The most memorable pit of that day though was while Lagwagon was playing (an awesome band, if there ever was one) and not just because they're awesome. The stage was in front of not grass, oh no, that would be for the faint of heart and the not-too-serious-concert-goer. This was in front of an asphalt patch of parking lot. While the other stages had nice soft grass and dirt to mosh on and land on when you got knocked down, this one had hard, hot, sticky asphalt. There was this big dude. I remember him to be about the size of a semi. I say this because that's what I recall him as being. He cleared out a nice area for a pit and was the only in it. Being the brilliant person that I am, I said, "Hey, there's no one else in there with him, I'll join him!' and I did. We were having a grand 'ol time moshing in the same pit together, but not actually coming into contact with one another. Then they started playing a more vigorous song, and we both got into it. That's when disaster struck. We ran head first, full on into each other. The last thought that went through my head as I suddenly noticed what was happening was, 'Gee, I'm thirsty.' That's when he hit me. It's kind of like a bug smashing into your car. They don't really collide. The car hits the big. End of story. I went flying about 10-15 feet and landing on that wonderful asphalt. The best part about it, other than I wasn't really hurt, was that he immediately stopped what he was doing and came rushing over to make sure I was okay. That's what it used to be about, and that's what life should be about, making sure we all have a good time but that we're all taken care of as well. Who says the punk scene isn't good for anything? =D

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Little Bled Biting Wood, and one day she went into the forest. There she met an evil wolf who gave her a green card. She lived happily ever after.

When I was a kid, yes I was once young though you wouldn't guess from my grey hair, which is now even more apparent since I've put on weight and let my hair grow out (interestingly enough, my left side seems to grow faster than the right-that or the last barber I went to was cross-eyes), I was confused by the Fabio commercials for fake butter. First, who wants to eat fake butter? The body has a hard enough time processing real butter, what makes you think fake butter is going to work out any better? At least real butter is gluten free. Second, the whole buffed-out-guy-wearing-an-open-shirt/vest-with-a-lady-in-something-skimpy fawning over, not each other, but fake butter, of all things. I kind of understand why that bird flew into his face, not that I condone such behavior. It wasn't until later when the Harlequin romance novel was explained to me did I understand what the commercials were trying to do. I didn't understand Harlequin romance novels, but I understood why they made the commercial the way they did. I always understood why it seemed to only run during the day and seldom later at night.

I decided that if this is what girls wanted, then it was what I was going to give them. I started to grow my hair out, walk around in open shirts and vest, and started eating fake butter (the last part wasn't easy). The part that no one ever tells you is that unlike Sampson, regardless of how long we mere mortals grow out our hair, without exercise and a personal trainer, our body will not fall into line and be a good soldier, whipping itself into that manly and masculine form. After a while I had to cut my hair and start eating real butter again. That doesn't help with your masculine figure either. Later in my childhood I took up swimming. Much like running, this will not rip you out and give you man-sized muscles. Oh no, it will make you look emaciated and like you just arrived from a third world country. Unknowing doctors will try to test you for malnutrition and have you placed under special care while social services looks into your parents/guardians for mistreatment and abuse. This is also not a good sport if you want to grow your hair out. At least once a year the entire team gets together, men with men and women with women, put on their extremely tight fitting swim suits (I have a size 0 speedo I used for competition swimming, this also didn't help with the ladies, seeing my emaciated body in all of its glory) and shave off any and all hair that is showing. Usually the women don't shave their head. Usually. The final result is a bunch of alien looking emaciated people walking around in very little clothing. It's kind of like a bad dream. Come to think of it, it was a bad dream.

I'm just glad we didn't have to swim in cream until it turned into butter and we could climb out of the pool. I wouldn't have drowned, I would just hate cream and butter even more than I already do for not giving me a Fabio body, but without the accent. 

Peninsula of Doom

If I ever own my own island I will name it the Peninsula of Doom, and it will be a happier place to be than Disneyland (plus it will have fewer pedophiles)!

My wife just bought me a donkey, and by donkey I mean banjo, and by bought me I mean she let me buy. The one thing the donkey and the banjo have in common (other than they both make horrendously awful noises that most all but country folk seem to think sounds good) is that I have no idea how to handle either one of them. Sure, you could put a bridle on a donkey and lead it around, but I can also hold a banjo and make noise with it. That doesn't mean I'm going to leap onto the back of said donkey and start riding it around as it bucks, bites and farts (yes, they do that when they buck and run; fart is not a cuss word, according to my sagely grandmother that I loving refer to as the most gansta g-ma this world has ever seen), and have a grand 'ol time as I have my head nearly tore from off the stump of flesh and bone I like to call my neck. A vampire might like that though, less work for them to do. They should have put some vampires in the Final Destination movies, that way all that gore would have gone to waist. =D

A night at the opera would be the perfect date, if I wasn't in love with my car. Queen was genius.

Halloween is coming!!! Forget Christmas, I want my holidays bloody, scary and just plain awesome. Besides the idea of a several hundred year old man keeping tabs on me all year (yes, I did stuff that dead rat in the dryer hose) and then sneaking into my house while I'm sleeping, kind of creeps me out. Not only that, but his name is an anagram of Satan, Lord of all that is unholy, wicked and evil (I probably should have capitalized all that since it's technically part of his title, but that's just me being naughty, oh yeah, who's gettin' coal this year? Not the republicans! And it's not because they haven't been naughty either, they just have gone above and beyond the normal rank-and-file naughty person so much so that they will be getting live alligators in their stalkings by this crazy old man). The only old man that should be sneaking around my house in the middle of the night for no real good reason, is me. I guess if Pam wants to she could too, but she's not an old man and thus doesn't fit into the same category. I know, I'm being sexist by not letting her participate in this farcical aquatic ceremony, but let's face it, how many women want to be compared to men? Seriously. Men are in general stinky, sweaty, smelly, gross and just plain nasty. I can say that because I am a man (or at least, I like to tell myself I am) and to prove it, I'm going to go fix something....with MY FACE!!! To be a true man you have to fix things, uncommon things, with your face. Nails need to be pounded into a board, forget the hammer, I've got my face! Axel on the car needs to be bent back so it's straight, use my face why don't you?! The neighbor's house is on fire? No problem, I'll put it out WITH MY FACE!!! The list goes on and on. I'm sure there are plenty of people reading this and rolling their eyes, to them I say, you're obviously not a real man, and open a tall one with my face.

See, women aren't the only ones obsessed with their faces, though it's for entirely different reasons. It's a miracle more men don't look like Quasimodo with all the things we can fix with our faces. I changed a faucet to our washer this last weekend, yes, it was with my face, and I'm happy to say I did not break any pipes nor have any leaks. That's another thing men do with their faces (mostly their mouths) let you know how bad they messed something up. While growing up, I think I've talked a little about this before, but I could be wrong, I 'helped' my dad with various projects around the house. One of them involved plumbing and hanging dry wall. The plumbing usually goes behind the dry wall, though I'm sure someone has done it the other way just to prove a point (go men!). While hanging up a piece of dry wall after doing the plumbing, he was pounding in a nail, there was a sudden "sploosh" sound, followed by, I'm paraphrasing here, "Raggin'! Darg mag ackfin hockle flaggin plargen fratkern mirkten hurgle!" My family is religious and all, but this was definitely not the gift of tongues. Needless to say, a good piece of dry wall was ruined, the water to the house was shut off for the next few hours, and eventually it was turned on without being followed by "SHIT!!! TURN IT OFF, TURN IT OFF!!!!!!!" Shit is also not a cuss word, according to my aquatic grandmother, just don't say it around the other grandkids.

Big Mother and an even Bigot Father (nothing to do with my real parents)

I've come to the conclusion that Lowe's is Serbian for "big-fat-freaking-liar-whose-pants-are-perpetually-on-fire-and-will-never-be-put-out." It's amazing the way some words translate from one language to another. For example, mince meat (as in mince meat pie) in spanish is "relleno a base de fruta escarchada, frutos secos, especias, zumo de limon y grasa animal" roughly, it translates into "strange mixtures of fruit mixed with animal fat." Who doesn't like a little whipped lard to top their pie? It sounds about as unterrestrial as senselessly slaughtering large cow herds and anal probing people you abduct (nod's in the CIA's direction). I was going to look up mince meat in my German and Russian dictionaries but thought they might not play nicely and decided against it. Words have feelings too.

If you ever decide to try and resurface/fix/seal your asphalt driveway on your own you can google how to do it. As can be seen from here, it looks so easy:



A child could do this from the looks of this video. As with anything like this, backed by a corporation, a lot of the real details are missing.

1500-2000lbs of asphalt patch/repair, 75 gallons of sealer, and a month later we finally finished patching and resealing our driveway. Until we sealed it though our driveway looked like it had been patched by a one-legged pirate who had only one eye that was quickly fading and a hook for one hand (Captain Hook must always remember never to pick his nose). Luckily we were able to cover up my lovely patch work with sealer.

To put the sealer on, Pam graciously took a break from her wonderful law school homework which she was so enthralled with and couldn't put it down ever, except this one time (she's watching videos on her computer next to me right now) to help pour and spread this wonderful goo. One of us would pore and get the next area ready to be spread and poured, the other spreading the goo about the driveway in a half hazard manner that would have made Michael J Fox look good at this job. Pam decided she wanted to pour and I could spread. While only having five gallons of goo in each of the buckets of sealer, they weigh between 50 and 6.02*10^24lbs, which for someone that wrestles horses most everyday you wouldn't think would be too much of a problem. She ended up coating her foot in goo (hey, her foot's now water proof, no more fungus!! Not that she ever had foot fungus...) and I couldn't help but laugh. She had on sandals so she literally coated her foot in goo. Petroleum products are good for you, right? I mean, there's not fat, sugar, added calories or hormones and I'm pretty sure they didn't use any pesticides or fertilizers on it (It's organic too! Bad joke, but I know the chemists got it.), therefore it must be good for you! She wouldn't let me pore it on me though, I was very sad. We switched at that point, and I found out that the goo is actually really hard to pour. After several hours we finally finished. Exhausted an worn out we stripped naked in the yard and sprayed each other off with the hose (September in Michigan is REALLY cold when water from the hose is being sprayed on you). We were arrested for indescent exposure and our only defense was that we were reenacting Milton's reenactments of the Garden of Eden (Iron Butterfly forever!!) which took place in Puritan strained England in his orchard with his wife. The neighbors feigned to complain about it, but we all know they were secretly watching and waiting for the day when they would get to see him play Eve. Willem Dafoe as a woman is beyond ugly, but hilarious.

After we got out of prison (I don't care what snopes says, sagging your pants in prison is a bad idea, unless you're trying to make some extra money) I noticed that Pam still had tar all over her foot (and arm, and some on her face and hands) and jokingly I asked her if I could call her my tar baby, in humble homage to the wonderfully racist and bigoted (that looks like big toed, which is unfair to those with extra large feet) Disney movie, Song of the South, which they have locked away in their chamber of secrets. No one at Disney actually knows where this chamber exists, though it is rumored that once the true heir of Walt Disney returns he/she/it will open the chamber once again to release upon the world all of their works, including those dark pieces the current Disney franchise wishes to keep hidden and deny they ever existed. (If there's a big blank spot that follows it's because Google is being Evil, which is expressly against their working policy, just google Walt vs. Elian robot chicken and you'll find the video):



and last but not least, just because it's awesome, a new take on a beloved classic:

Mrs. Doubtfire (Recut) from Peter Javidpour on Vimeo.

The driveway is done, I'll never hire a nanny, and my feelings about W. Disney have not changed. All-in-all it's been a good week.