Once Again, Seinfeld Proves Prophetic

In hard economic times, it's easy to forget that there are people out there who have troubles worse than your own. Today, I was reminded of a group of people who suffer quietly, a group who lives with unnecessary shame and degradation because of a society that puts too much pressure on looks. Even worse, this affliction affects only men, a group who is traditionally branded as "having it easy" because with age comes a supposed dashing maturity. Unfortunately, for millions, it's not so easy.

I am referring, of course, to Flappy Old Hootie syndrome, or FOH.

Once thought to be contained to areas of Florida and Southern California, it is now known that FOH strikes one out of every three men over 50*. These men have to hide their shame beneath baggy sweatshirts or multicolored sweaters, always fearing the discovery of their droopping moobs. Fortunately, the tireless work of the paparazzi has now made it public knowledge that even the manliest of men are likely to succumb to FOH.



So why is FOH such a difficult thing for men to deal with? Well, the fact is that while much attention is paid to the effects of media on the way women view themselves, little is said about the same thing with men. The truth is that men are faced with the same barrage of images that women face. Young, fit men lounging on beaches (including the American President), musclebound wrestlers oiled up and flexing, action stars tearing their shirts open, revealing their bulging, perfectly formed chests all put unrealistic expectations on our aging male population**.

Fortunately, some celebrities have stepped forward to aid in the cause. Even Ricardo Montalban, prior to his recent passing, confessed regret in agreeing to wear the prosthetic chest as Kahn in the second Star Trek film. He acknowledged the fact that it put unfair pressure on the already self-conscious nerd crowd to hide their FOH, an affliction Montalban himself lived with***.



Fortunately, there is hope. Huge advances have been made in the field of pectoral implants. Also, some cultures have begun to accept men's needs, and are now showing the support required. What's really needed, though, is public acknowledgment that FOH is a natural part of aging, and nothing to be ashamed of. Our older generation needs to be empowered to throw off their jerseys and flannel and proudly declare, "I am a man with flappy, old hooties, and I will not be ashamed anymore!".

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go do a %#$@load of push ups.


*Facts quoted here are completely made up, and should be taken at least as seriously as any you might hear from, say, a talk radio pundit.

**Did that come off as a little gay? It did, didn't it?

***These statements are also false, and meant in jest. We here at DLOG have the utmost respect for Montalban, and hope that these statements are taken for the humor intended and will lead to neither lawsuits from his family or an ass kicking from William Shatner.

If You Read This In The Next Twenty Minutes, You Can Read It Again Totally For Free

As someone who doesn't watch a ton of television, I get to avoid a lot of commercials. Nevertheless, I am of course familiar with Billy Mays, the huckster of such products as Orange Glo and OxiClean, the latter of which has saved countless outfits that my offspring has attempted to destroy. Billy, with his endless enthusiasm and clean cut look, has come to be someone I listen to, someone who I will almost trust when he's pushing a product.

Just look how happy he is, and this is over an OxiClean Ball thing. I don't get that excited for my birthday, and I %#$@ing love my birthday.

There is, however, a new act in town, and I think he may be on to something. I refer to one Vince Offer, the man who initially pushed the ShamWow, and now can be seen shilling the SlapChop. Vince brings something new to the game. He talks fast. He moves around too much. He acts like you're a shmoe for having not ordered yet. I listen for about five seconds before I know you can't trust him.

But I still listen.

Have a look at the man selling the SlapChop. It's such a load. All of your troubles will melt away now that you can...I don't know. Cut stuff I guess.

I love the contrast between these two guys. Mays is the sort of person you can count on. You would call him for advice. He would help you move or install a toilet. He's someone you could ask about taxes or the best car to buy. You would trust your kids with him.

If I needed to call someone from jail, however, I'm guessing that Offer is the guy who would have the necessary knowledge.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to cast aspersions on the guys character necessarily. I'm just thinking he'd be more fun to go to the bar with. He knows where you can get a good burger at two thirty in the morning. He's the guy you want running co-op in Halo. He's funnier. I mean come on, the guy worked the phrase, "You're gonna love my nuts." into a nationally run commercial, and don't tell me it was an accident. That was art.

Anyway, I look forward to seeing if his brand of hucksterism will catch on. His act is so ridiculously transparent that one has to assume that it's intentional. I wonder at what point he and Billy will be competing for sponsors.

What I really wonder, though, is who would Ron Popeil pass his torch (or Showtime Rotisserie) to.

You Should See What I Do With the Viagra Spam

I recently received yet another one of those lists of questions meant to be forwarded to everyone you know. Ordinarily, I disregard these things, but this one had the benefit of coming right when I could not take another moment of my current task at work, so I filled it out. I now present the results for all of you, updated as I thought of more specific answers.

The Survey
1. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE?
Dad's friend from college. Last I knew, he was divorced and drank a lot. It's a lot to live up to, but I'll do what I can.

2. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED?
Two days ago, listening to the song where Evita dies, but in a manly way.

3. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING?
I type for a living. This wasn't really a choice.

4. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT?
Veggie Bologna.

5. DO YOU HAVE KIDS?
One boy, one girl, and a developmentally challenged inner child.

6. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU?
Yes. We would be BFFs, dress alike and do each other's hair right up until I hit on my lovely wife, and then I would be forced to whip my own ass.

7. DO YOU USE SARCASM A LOT?
Oh no, I would never use sarcasm. (Actually, not as much as you might think.)

8.. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS?
Yes. I also have the tonsils of several other people, as well as a spleen and a three inch section of a colon. It's all on eBay.

9. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP?
Afraid of heights.

10. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL?
Captain Crunch, but only because I hate the skin on the roof of my mouth and feel the need to remove it occasionally.

11. DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF?
Nope.

12. DO YOU THINK YOU ARE STRONG?
Not strong enough.

13. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM?
Tofutti Vanilla Almond Bark.

14. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE?
Sense of humor or lack thereof.

15. RED OR PINK?
Depends on the type of wound.

16. WHAT IS THE LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF?
I occasionally don't take things seriously when I probably should.

17. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST?
Squirrels - they're small, quick and frequently fit between the tires.

18. DO YOU WANT EVERYONE TO SEND THIS BACK TO YOU?
If they're still speaking to me, sure.

19. WHAT COLOR SHOES ARE YOU WEARING?
Brown.

20. WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU ATE?
Donut.

21. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW?
Jonathan Coulton.

22. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE?
Indian red - it's slightly offensive to some, but unique enough to want to keep around.

23. FAVORITE SMELLS?
Baked goods, tots after bath time, the fear of of my opponents.

24. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE?
My lovely wife.

25. DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU?
My favorite babysitter? You betcha!

26. FAVORITE SPORTS TO WATCH?
Cat juggling.

27. HAIR COLOR?
Dark brown.

28. EYE COLOR?
Brown.

29. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS?
Glasses.

30. FAVORITE FOOD?
Tofurkey.

31. SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS?
Scary movies with happy endings, where the monster gets the girl.

32. LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED?
Parts of a Tinkerbell movie I guess.

33. WHAT COLOR SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING?
Black, brown and gold.

34. SUMMER OR WINTER?
Summer.

35. HUGS OR KISSES?
Depends on the target.

36. FAVORITE DESSERT?
Fruit pie.

37. MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND?
No idea.

38. LEAST LIKELY TO RESPOND?
No idea.

39. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW?
Make Love the Bruce Campell Way.

40. WHAT IS ON YOUR MOUSE PAD?
I'm a trackball user.

41. WHAT DID YOU WATCH ON TV LAST NIGHT?
Five minutes of Racheal Maddow before passing out.

42. FAVORITE SOUND?
Kid giggles.

43. ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES?
Beatles.

44. WHAT IS THE FARTHEST YOU HAVE BEEN FROM HOME???
Idaho.

45. DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL TALENT?
I can disarm a man using nothing but dental floss and a spork. Not as useful as it sounds.

46. WHERE WERE YOU BORN?
Sparrow Hospital, Lansing.

47. WHOSE ANSWERS ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO GETTING BACK?
President Obama. I sent him an email asking if I could be Secretary of Bathroom Humor. Haven't heard back yet.

Also, It's a Spoiler to Tell Someone When You're Cutting Muffins. They'll Figure It Out.

As previously discussed, we tend to watch all of our television after the original airing in our house. It's more convenient, we get less commercials, and frankly, we're busy and forget that we have a show we watch sometimes. Most of the time, this works out really well, but it presents one challenge that has become, well, challenging.

Yeah, I totally forgot that Lost was on last night.

Because everything is on the internet instantly, when I put off a show, that means I begin a dance whereby I try to avoid any information about what happened in said show until I've gotten to see it or myself. This means avoiding my usual news sites, staying out of particular topics on forums, etc., all in the name of avoiding spoilers. As someone who spends way too much time on the net, this can be a tricky thing to do.

The good news is that I've gotten good at it. Oh sure, my habit of not watching movies until they've been out on DVD for a year or so has led to many things being ruined for me (seriously, it was a sled?), but for the most part I know how to spot a troublesome site or story before it gets that far. I'm not sure how long a movie has to be out before it's not technically a spoiler anymore, but I accept that occasionally this will be the way things go.

Anyway, at least for today, and perhaps tomorrow as well depending on how busy I am, I will be selecting my links a little more carefully. I will a bit more wary about where I surf. Hopefully, I can keep from finding out too much about what happened on the show last night. Maybe I'll exclusively hang out on J.J. Abrams site.

After all, the show's been on for almost five years, and he's barely revealed anything about what's going on so far.

My New Workout, or Why the Polka Could Be The New Tai Bo

Last night was a rousing success. Well, it was as much of a success as one can hope for anyway. The kids had fun, and that's all I was shooting for.

We arrived at music night, where the Princess took the stage and I perused the playlist, a habit hard learned from years of attending the hometown talent shows (if you do a quick count, you know how many more acts you have to live through, thus helping resist the urge to throw yourself on your sword when there are only two more squarely mediocre singing and dancing acts to go, and yes, if you're prepared then you brought your sword). I saw about six songs, figured I could keep the Moose still for that long. I began to assess how many other parents were alone and having to deal with a toddler-type sibling, hoping to maybe get an idea of how I would play it.

Just me, huh? Very well then.

We listened to three classes of first graders sing a callback type song, suprisingly on key, and then we sang back. I overcame my normal discomfort at singing in public and belted the tune back so my little girl would hear me, no small task for one as self-conscious as myself (I honestly don't sing for anyone but the Moose, and only do that because I know he won't judge me, or at least lacks the articulation to do so verbally). Then they announced the rest of the night would be the kids teaching us dances, I looked at the Moose, barely sitting still on my lap, and I knew what I had to do.

The only problem was that yesterday I made a normally good decision that turned out to be a bad decision. I decided that I would workout despite really not wanting to. At lunch, I went down to our little gym at work, and I lifted weights. At no point during that process did I stop to think to myself, "Hey, I wonder if during the Princess's music night I'm going to end up carrying a thirty pound toddler in one arm while prancing about an elementary school cafeteria".

Sometimes, I forget the most obvious questions to ask.

I knew that my little girl's happiness was at stake, and so I forced myself, through shaking arms and at times excruciating pain, to smile and sing and dance about. The Moose acted like the whole thing was for him, so he enjoyed it as well. In the end, I came away with two happy kids. Well, two happy kids, the inability to raise my arms above my waist, and a stitch in my left side that won't seem to go away.

Overall, I would call that a profitable exchange.

I've Never Even Been To St. Ives

Each day, I prep myself and two kids to skip out the door. I've gotten pretty good at it, but I have noticed one troubling trend. We seem to have an increasing number of bags going out the door with us every day.

Personally, I leave the house with three bags on the average day now. I have my briefcase, which contains my important work like my PSP, my iPhone headphones and cables, and the books I'm currently reading. I also have a backpack with gym clothes and a lunch bag. (I'm not telling you what I keep in there because I have to have some secrets, right?)

Okay, so that gets me through the day, but what of my offspring? Well, the Princess has a backpack, and this being Winter, she has to keep her snow pants and a pair of shoes in it. As a result, she has to carry her lunch bag separately. The Moose has a bag that his nebulizer travels in for emergency asthma attacks (which he has not had in a long, long time, thank goodness, but better safe and all that) as well as his own lunch bag.

So, during the long Winter months, that has us carrying out seven bags each day. This is...well, it's a lot. Today, however, we outdid ourselves. See, tonight is the chaos I alluded to yesterday, whereby I will pick up the Princess, pick up the Moose, go directly to dance class, and then promptly follow that with a school event. To facilitate this, I had to add on a dance bag, the diaper bag, and an extra lunch bag with PB&J bagels for the kids to eat for dinner. That puts us at ten bags today, ladies and gentleman. I haven't traveled with this much baggage since I went off Prozac and gave up family disputes.

I suppose at some point this will diminish. In the spring we'll shed some of the gear. Also, I should probably figure out a clever way to combine my two bags without allowing the funk of a workout to infect my electronics and reading materials. So eventually, we'll manage to get this under control.

For now, though, know that at least once each day, I truly have wicked sack.

The Lure of Lazy

My lovely wife is away for a couple of days on business, leaving me the sole parental unit for our two lovely children. This means I'm in charge of all dressing, cooking, cleaning, school events...the whole thing. I'm okay with this, as I am a strict disciplinarian and the kids hang on each word I say as if their little lives depended on it.

At some point today, if you're real quiet, you may actually hear my wife laughing from Illinois.

Anyway, it really isn't a tremendous task. It's just a couple of days and our kids are well behaved, plus the Princess is always willing to step up and assist me when I request it, so long as the occasional bribe is offered. The thing is, I keep thinking of it as difficult for some reason, and that pushes me towards the lazy.

I'll give you an example. Tonight is macaroni and cheese night. Macaroni and cheese is the easiest thing in the world to prepare. Boil noodles. Throw a pat of margarine and a bag of cheese into now boiled noodles. Stir. Serve. Eat. Not exactly a big effort there.

Nonetheless, this morning I have repeatedly caught myself thinking, "Well, it's kind of a pain carrying everything in and cooking with the Moose running around, so maybe I should just order Chinese food for dinner tonight". (Seriously - I start planning things like what how we're going to handle dinner before breakfast is done. My mind is a strange place.) Deep down I know that there is no practical reason for it, but the idea keeps coming up. Maybe it's that tomorrow promises chaos (dance class followed by a school event), so I'm tempted to take the easy way out tonight to expedite a relaxing evening. Maybe I just dig on the egg fu young with brown rice. It's hard to say really.

Either way, I know I'm just being lazy really. That doesn't mean I won't end up ordering out of course. It just means I recognize why I'm doing it, and for me, that enough sometimes. Sadly, that's a long way from the way I used to work, when I never questioned my reasoning for taking any action so long as it was something I felt like doing. Besides, the desire for Chinese food is pretty innocuous as far as desires go.

When I can figure out why I occasionally feel the urge to cry out "Someday, you will all kneel before me" randomly at work, then I'll be making real progress.

I Find Myself Missing George Micheal

If you're not familiar with The Onion, then you've missed an important source of internet amusement. The Onion has proven themselves to be a reliable place to see the world of news, and the world in general, spoofed regularly and with great accuracy. I can not recommend the site enough.

Naturally, when I found that there was to be an Onion movie, I ran out and got it. It was...well, not as good. It was kind of a hodge podge of short bits glued together with a thin story line, and ended up feeling like a weak copy of the much funnier Amazon Women on the Moon or Kentucky Fried Movie. Don't get me wrong - there were things in there that were funny. It just was off balance a bit.

One bit they did that was pretty funny was a Britney Spears parody, where they had segments of these videos of her basically acting like a whore, and then cut to an interview where she explains that she's an innocent, all-American girl, and that people just misunderstand her lyrics. It was funny, but honestly I felt like they took the lyrics a bit too far.

Well, once again, The Onion has proven themselves to be far better at this stuff than I could ever have imagined. Britney has released a song that is so preposterously hussified that parents groups are actually wetting themselves over having such an easy target. The song is called If You Seek Amy. Say it to yourself a few times if you don't know why parents are upset, but not out loud at work. It's...well, frankly it's ridiculous.

I don't mind that she tried, it's that she did such a miserable job of it. This is the actual offensive line of the chorus:

All of the boys and all of the girls are begging to if you seek Amy

Look hon, I know you've caught some flack in the recent past for being bat%#$@ insane, and that there are those who claim that you're not the brightest bulb, but this? This is just lazy. It's not even a damned sentence. These shenanigans only work if there is a legitimate use of the words you put together. If you need the attention so badly, then just come right out and say it.

Well, that or put a sex tape online like everyone else.

Plus Some of Them Slim Down Using Laxatives

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has released their list of contenders for the 2008 Academy Awards. While I normally take interest in the Oscars, somehow this year I find that interest severely lacking. Maybe it's that I just don't watch many movies (I'm thinking I could count them on one hand for 2008, including rentals). Whatever the case, I'm just not caring.

It doesn't help that the show itself has been painful to watch the last few times I've tried. Overblown musical numbers, unfunny banter, weepy acceptance speeches...yikes. If not for the dead reel, I can't really think of anything that would encourage me to tune in this time. I think that's really saying something - the only reason I would consider watching your multi-million dollar extravaganza is to find out who died last year. Not exactly a glowing advertisement.

Maybe my problem (other than my distaste for boring speeches) is that ever since Janet Jackson displayed her Tito on national television, the allure of "live" television has been all but destroyed. We know that whatever is going on is being delayed and censored now, so the whole anything-could-happen aspect of it is gone. It's just going to be boring speeches, and if anything good does happen unexpectedly, we'd have to watch it later on the internet anyway.

You know, I actually think that's it. When I look down deep into my soul (okay, it's not that deep), I realize that all these years I've watched the show on the off chance that someone who gets an upset stomach when they're nervous and may have partaken of one pre-show party cheese puff despite their lactose intolerance might accidentally squeak out a bit of embarrassing flatulence during a nervous laugh, a squeak that is just loud enough to get picked up by the microphone. I wonder, now that I think about it, if they even would bother censoring such a thing. After all, it's not technically obscene or anything, right? So that squeak might be allowed through onto national television, a tiny trumpet between the list of thanks that would make the whole thing worth while.

Huh. Maybe I'll end up watching after all.

As Long As Someone Is Indignant, the System Still Works

Inauguration day was yesterday, and after a day of inspiring speeches, Fox news stepped in and did its job. Unfortunately, that job is going through every word spoken by every person associated with yesterday's events until they could find something to be offended by. Lucky for them, the good Reverend Joseph Lowery put forth the following bit of silliness:

We ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to give back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right.

Fox called him out for the supposed racist overtones, and chastised Obama for...I don't know. Not standing up, slapping him across the face, and declaring "How dare you sir" before stomping off in a huff I guess. Honestly, even if you do take offense at his words (and I'm thinking that's a stretch), I think it's a bit silly calling Obama out on it.

What they probably don't realize is how hard this sort of thing is. Even if you ignore the fact that he borrowed from the "If it's brown flush it down. If it's yellow, let it mellow" (a sentiment I've never been comfortable with, particularly during asparagus season), it's truly difficult to come up with these little rhymes. Fortunately, I managed to get a hold of several versions he decided not to use, just to give you a taste:

We ask you to help us work for that day when ...

...black packs much back (dropped due to copyright issue with Sir Mix-a-lot)

...yellow shares the Jello (dropped after realizing that not all Chinese bogart Jello, despite the practices of that guy who eats it all at the church pot lucks)

...white makes their butts un-tight (dropped for obvious reasons)

...latino can pass on the Beano (don't ask - there was an incident involving the rectory)

...a women, late, won't feel the need to tailgate (dropped after a terse conversation with his wife)

...strippers won't rely on tippers (dropped for the same reason)

...a heimy gent will share a dime unspent (dropped at Jessie Jackson's suggestion)

You get the idea. There were more, but this is all I could get a hold of (and mark my words, many Bothans dies to get us this information). Putting together little rhymes based on some arbitrary aspect of a persons life is no small task. I guess he did the best he could, and either way, I'm not sure faulting Obama for it is entirely reasonable.

Keep your collective chins up though, Fox News flk...I'm sure Biden will come through for you eventually.

Ooh...Somebody Needs a Nap

I'm really tired again, so forming coherent sentences is not my strong suit right now. In fact, it makes my head hurt. Lucky for me, I don't have in intellectually challenging job that requires clear-headedness. Wait...what is it I do again?

Ugh.

These are the days I wish I had pursued something less mentally challenging (and yes, I realize that in describing my career in these terms, I've just declared myself as being mentally challenged). I could have been lots of things, many of which would have been much easier to do when this tired.

For example, I wanted to write professionally. Now, this woud require the formulation of sentences to be sure, but I wanted to write fiction. I could have used days like today to take advantage of my semi-delusional state. When better to play "what if" games and come up with my latest science fiction/horror/romantic comedy bestseller? (I would actually want to read a combined science fiction, horror, romantic comedy bestseller - something Like When Harry Met Sally, but with ghosts on a space ship. I'll have to work on that.)

I could have stayed on in my career as a winged vigilante. Few people realize the perks of such jobs. You pretty much set your own schedule, and the fact is that super villains are few and far between, so really most of the gig consists of wandering rooftops watching the local 7-11 for ruffians. You can find a nice roof and nap whenever you feel like it. Good times. Unfortunately, lack of a large inheritance brought an end to that. Vigilante work can be fun, but the pay blows egg water.

Finally, my other dream job would have worked out today as well. See, I had this plan to wander my way down to Florida and become a beach bum. Planned well, this is really a reasonable life style. You live near the ocean, so you can bathe regularly, eliminating one of the primary turn-offs of the homeless lifestyle. There's the occasional hurricane, so if you time things well you should be able to scavenge lots of nice stuff. I was even going to get a shopping cart with sand tires. I could be napping on a beach right now.

Unfortunately, the hobo gig doesn't lend itself real well to being a family man, so I chose a different path. This was for the best of course - even when tired I can see that. So I will knuckle down and try my best to write code, hoping that I don't muck it up too badly, propped up the entire time on caffeine.

Remind me to send the good people who make at Pepsi a thank you letter - I'm pretty sure I owe a large part of my career success to them.

In the Can, or Why I Haven't Scored a Lid In a While

Today, I must be brief, both because I'm at home watching two kids, and because I'm working on a keyboard where you have to hit the 'I' key like three times before it works. Infuriating to be sure. Also, there is an odor coming from the next room, and the Moose has a look of satisfaction that I know too well. I'll be right back...

Ah, the joys of parenting.

Anyway, this weekend I took a Christmas gift card, and I bought myself a new electric can opener(thanks, Bob). I already had one of course. It had a knife sharpener and a bottle opener and all, and if it had opened cans without me standing over it swearing repeatedly (the secret to any advanced technology - trust me, I have a degree), I would have kept it. Seriously, if you're going to make a product with features, maybe make sure it can perform its primary objective first.

What's ridiculous is that I didn't realize how much grief it was causing me until I used the new one to open a can of mushrooms. I didn't even need a can of mushrooms - I just had to see it work. It slid through that lid like butter, and with terrific joy that I had not anticipated I removed the old one and placed it firmly into the garbage. I may have done a little dance. I'm not committing to that, but it could have happened.

I guess what's interesting to me is that I realized that this stupid machine had been causing me all of this suffering, but I had learned to live with it. I knew I had to replace it eventually, but when I wasn't using it, it just didn't seem like that big a deal. It makes me wonder what else I have around me that I could fix or replace that would lead to a similar reduction in my overall stress.

I may start with this %#$@ing keyboard.;

Did...Did Your Cheese Just Move?

The following post, I will be discussing something that is absolutely not safe for lunch. Actually, if you have a sensitive stomach of any kind, skip it. Or if you're pregnant, and may suddenly have a sensitive stomach (you know who you are). Or if you're just a big sissy.

So, now that I've eliminated all but the hard core, let's discuss a food product I've just discovered. It's a cheese. I don't generally eat cheese, what with me being the brand of vegetarian that avoids dairy and meat (I will succumb to a cheese pizza, but only if it's really, really free). Well this particular cheese, casa marzu is Italian. It notable for its softness, as well as the fact that it is riddled with live insect larvae.

Still with me? Shocking. I'm a little ashamed of you to be honest.

Anyway, apparently Italy wanted to challenge the Scottish (who have a diet largely based on dares) and come up with something truly putrid to eat. So they take a perfectly nice piece of pecorino, a hard cheese made of sheep's milk, and they put it out where a particular bug referred to as the cheese skipper (apparenly more efficient than the cheese professor or the cheese Mary Ann) can land on it and lay their eggs. The eggs hatch, the larvae (which can launch themselves 15 cm - ick) do their thing until the cheese is soft to the point of being runny, and then people eat it.

Why?

Because people are stupid. Well, there's more to it. Honestly, it's probably because someone thinks it's an aphrodisiac. Seriously. What's even sadder is that it's &#%$ing illegal. People are going out and hunting down bug-riddled cheese on the black &$%#ing market in an effort to get their freak on. This brings us right back to my original point, that being that people are stupid.

It's not like they don't have energy drinks in Italy.

Maybe Tomorrow I'll Pack Gruel

Another morning of insanity today. Dumped cereal bowls, difficult questions, yet another attempt at discussing genetics, evolution, and where the first tree came from on the ride in (there are days I consider taking up religion for no other reason that the simplicity of saying "God did it"). No wonder I need another cup of coffee by the time I get here.

The choice event of the morning, however, was my lovely daughter complaining that her lunches never contain treats. Just so you don't think I'm torturing her, let me spell out the lunch I packed this morning. She has an ice water, yogurt, a banana, and a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich with no crust. For her snacks she has an applesauce cup, an all-fruit fruit peel, and Fig Newtons. So yeah, not exactly a cup of brussel sprouts and a crust of bread.

She was hoping for a treat, and I had considered it (I still have some candy canes to unload), but I thought that there was plenty of sugar already in today's offering. The thing is, she went all pouty on my, giving me the "your a bad father because I don't get candy for lunch" treatment. What do I expect - she's a first grader? It's not like she's honed her debate skills and has prepared a chart showing how her productivity will increase given an increase in snack cake offerings.

What bothered me though was my initial reaction. See, I vowed that this year I would work on not losing my patience with the kids. I tend to have a short fuse, and since the few childhood memories I actually have consist in large part of my mother yelling at me for...well pretty much anything, I really want that to not be me. So when I started to get angry, I tried to rope it in and come up with a logical explanation of why she should not complain.

I pointed out that I didn't get any of that stuff when I was a kid. (Probably true - I don't actually remember lunches before high school, and that was all Zebra Cakes and nachos. God I miss that.) When that failed to get any traction, I suggested that if I stopped packing snacks for a couple of weeks, then she might appreciate what she has, but she just took that as a threat (it wasn't). So we just talked it out, she calmed down, and we rushed through the rest of the morning, having not penciled in 'drama' for our morning routine.

What really bothered me about the whole scene was that my initial reaction was to work the "starving kids in Africa" angle, which immediately filled me with guilt. I mean, all I've got is a kid who's making a play for a piece of candy, and due to years of training, my first reaction is to invoke a group of horribly impoverished people who are genuinely suffering so I can end the conversation quicky. It's like we need a national swear jar, except instead of obscenities, we should all have to put in a dollar whenever we bring up these starving Africans, and then once a month we actually send the money to kids in Africa.

Solving world hunger through lazy parenting - another brilliant idea brought to you by the makers of Dangerously Low On Grog.

In My Defence, the Shiny Blue Vest and Bow Tie Were Forced On Me

I have, in my time, received a fair number of what I consider backhanded compliments. You know...it's like a compliment, but some part of the way it is framed actually prevents it from being complimentary. My memory being what it is, I don't recall most of these, but one from a girl in high school has always stood out in my mind as a crowning achievement in backhanded compliments.

"You're so nice you must be gay."

This was not the first time someone had suggested I was gay in school, and each time it surprised me. I had never expressed any kind of interest in another fella, so I wasn't sure where this was coming from. To be honest, I wasn't even that nice. I think the above statement was more of a way to try and politely test me for gayness (remember kids, this was years before gaydar was perfected).

Oh sure, I was in musicals. I liked to dance. I wore rainbow, tie dyed pants.

Wait, what?

Only recently did I recall this last bit. In high school, I would shop out of this catalog where they sold...unusual clothing. Most of it was reasonably classy, but at some point I got the idea in my head that it was acceptable to buy a pair of white denim pants that had been tie dyed with bright bands of varying colors. I'm talking a full rainbow of trousers. Bright colors too. I'm pretty sure I was visible from space.

Now I'm not saying that this alone would cause someone to question my orientation, but I have to be honest with myself. Today I would no more consider the idea of wearing rainbow pantaloons than I would consider going out in my briefs and chaps and marching in a parade. Frankly, if I saw someone wearing these pants, there is a fine chance that I would promptly make an assumption about their extra-curricular studies, if you catch my meaning.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

So, yeah, given a short pondering of my high school days (an activity I actively avoid to be honest with you all), I realize that maybe I was sending some signals that I had not intended to. Interestingly, only girls ever made this assumption about me, i.e. not one guy ever approached me and asked if I was gay. To this day, I'm not sure whether this is offensive or not.

After all, just because you don't want to go to a party, it's still nice to recieve an invitation.

On the Dangers of Name Etymology

Having recently discovered that I get to be someone's strange uncle (woot!), I find myself once again on those websites that give the etymology and meaning behind names. I love this stuff, because it has almost no real application. Apparently, my surname means we hail from England (someone once claimed to have traced my family to the Mayflower - not sure if I believe that one, but there you go), and it's based on on the word for flame. Hopefully, saying someone was flaming back then meant something different.

Then I looked into the etymology of my first name, and I kind of wish I hadn't. Apparently, Roger means "famous with the spear". If that's not phallic enough for you, according to this site, it was also used as slang for a man's you-know-what from 1650-1870, and then was used to mean getting it on from 1711. I guess now we know why the pirates considered it jolly. Charming.

Anyway, what put me on this path was seeing a headline where a dude running for some Government position has the last name Weiner, which I consider to be one of the more unfortunate last names for obvious reasons. I decided to seek out where the pejorative use of wiener came from, and according to the same site, it's actually a shortened version of wienerwurst, which is a sausage. Due to the sausage shape, it too became a word to refer to a man's junk (just how many names do we need for this thing, anyway). Sure, they switched the 'i' and 'e', but we all read and pronounce it the same, and I'm sorry, but the headline "Weiner Running For Mayor" will always make me giggle no matter how old I get.

I keeps it real like that.

If this is accurate - and it's on the internet, so I have no reason to doubt it - that means that at some point, they were handing out surnames, and when they got to Hans, they said, "Dude, I think we're just going to name you after those sausages you're always eating", and Hans was all, "Whatever. Did you remember to grab some mustard on the way over?". (I don't speak a lot of German, but I understand that to those fluent in the language, they all sound like that.) From that point on, there were a group of people who were inextricably tied to sausages, as well as other, more saucy themes, through their names, and they have bravely gone forward, bringing generation after generation of Weiner into the world. Good for them.

I'd of changed it to Smith myself, but I guess that's what separates me from the Weiners.

Not What I Meant When I Said I Needed To Stay Up

On Friday, I had gone a week without a full night's sleep. It started with New Year's Eve, and just kind of carried on. I'd stay up a little late to hang out with my lovely wife, then I'd get up a little early to deal with snow covered sidewalks or whatever. After a week, I was dragging pretty badly.

Anyway, to get me through the day I picked up a Diet Pepsi Max, which is a Diet Pepsi (my soda pop of choice) with added pep. I drank it. I felt better. I made it through another afternoon without nodding off at my desk. All good, right?

Well, I look at the bottle, and it says "GINSENG + CAFFEINE" (it's all in caps presumably because that's more extreme), and I start to wonder why they put ginseng in it. I'm not an herbalist (not anymore anyway - heh), so I do what I always do and seek out information on Wikipedia. It turns out ginseng causes insomnia, which, when looked at from a "glass half full" standpoint, can be reworded to say "helps you stay awake". Not typically in the quantities they put into energy drinks, but whatever.

In gathering this information, however, I discover that ginseng is also used as an aphrodisiac and as a treatment for sexual dysfunction in men, and I'm thinking to myself that maybe at this point they should be putting a warning on the bottle. I mean, I just wanted to not fall asleep at my desk, but I would still like to reserve the right to stand should I need to without fear of awkwardness with my coworkers. Fortunately, again they don't put much in this stuff, but I can drink a lot of diet soda pop, so believe me when I tell you I'll be aware of it from now on.

The one thing that really cracked me up in all this though was the discussion of the study where they discovered that effect they say that in laboratory animals "both Asian and American forms of ginseng enhance libido and copulatory performance". All I can think of is these scientists feeding a bunch of this stuff to lab rats, and then showing them pictures of other lab rats and asking if they think the other rat is hot. I don't even want to consider how they determine the answer, or for that matter how they gauge "copulatory performance".

Do they even make cigarettes for rats?

One Of the Many Reasons I Don't Carry Cash

Sitting at my desk, staring at a hunk of code for what seemed like way too long, I decided that it would be in my best interest to get up and wander. Even now that my cube has moved to a place where I have a nice window with a view, watching snow on a cornfield can only serve as so much of a distraction. My job, not unlike my heroic deeds and romantic conquests in high school, occurs mostly in my mind, and once in a while the engine needs a chance to cool off.

Now having any reasonable excuse to go and bother one of my cohorts, I decided to participate in one of my favorite office diversions - snack food window shopping. This is where I wander over to the kitchen area and peruse the comestibles being offered in the vending machines. Of course, I'm on a diet of sorts, and I almost never carry cash, so there is no chance I'm actually going to buy anything. Rather, it's more the sport of selecting the item I would be most likely to purchase were I so inclined.

My new digs find me on the other side of the wall from the main eating area here, so it was a short jaunt to the local machine. Unfortunately, it was full of uninspired treats, your standard Fritos being the pick of the crop. Everything else was non-vegetarian (Pop Tarts, Rice Krispy Treats and all Hostess offerings) or, well, kind of yucky (Taco Doritos, while not Quest Dorito bad, are not good either). Not finding anything interesting, I made my way to the next building to see if they were faring better.

Apparently, the vendors like the other building more than us, for the machine there included the sublime Jalapeno Cheddar Cheetos, which are currently my second favorite snack chip (Habenero Doritos surpassing them both in flavor and in burn). So, as usual, the pick of the day was between those and Cheez It crackers, which also rock. Should they decide to start offering Jalapeno Cheez Its, I may actually have to start carrying cash.

What's weird is that I have no idea why I do this, other than as an excuse to get up and walk around a bit. I mean, I don't really need the excuse, right? No one here cares where I'm going or what I'm on about, so long as the code is written on time. Still, I frequently find myself on the other side of the glass, admiring the brightly colored packages offering delectable tidbits promising to satisfy my current cravings, promises that I never give them a chance to fulfill.

In other news, apparently the longer I remain on a diet, the more colorful the anthropomorphism of junk food becomes. Should any of them begin to actually speak to me, I'll be sure to pass that information along to you fine folks, along with what we discussed and the accents affected. I can't be the only person in the world who assumes that the man on the Pringles can speaks with a clipped, British accent, right?

Yeah, maybe I better get back to the code - things are getting a little weird around here, even by my standards.

No Shot at the Money

At long last the true victims of the current recession have come forth, pleading for funding. That's right folks, Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and Girls Gone Wild CEO Joe Francis are currently approaching Washington D.C. about a five billion dollar bailout for the apparently faltering porn industry. Yes, the sales of XXX DVDs are apparently down 22 percent, and dammit, people are hurting out there.

Now far be it from me to mock the financial troubles of others (he said, knowing perfectly well that's what he was about to do), but come on. A porn bailout? I wasn't thrilled with any of the other bailouts provided thus far, but this is truly bold, particularly for Mr. Francis, who so far as I can tell spends most of his budget on cheap alcohol and t-shirts, what with youthful naivete being free. (I'm going by the commercials that run at night here, having never actually felt the need to watch a Girls Gone Wild video.)

So what exactly is the argument here? Does the porn industry actually employ enough people to make a difference in the national economy? Beyond the crew and the stars, who would be benefiting from this? Camera suppliers? Plastic surgeons? Video rental stores? Animal wranglers?

What really strikes me as notable here is that the porn industry was the first real victim of the internet age. This brings up the question of how long before the RIAA requests a bailout, another industry that seems to be too slow to adapt to new business models built around, oh I don't know, people getting their products however the &#%$ they want to. Maybe they know better than to ask, but if anyone thinks that the government is going to cut these two a check they need a serious reality check. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that they're going to have trouble drumming up support on Washington.

Dude, Do You Smell Something?

I have, in the past, discussed my admiration for the art form of bathroom graffiti, but I did not really discuss the more generic graffiti. Frankly, I usually just find it distracting. There are exceptions for those marks that seem truly inspired, such as the works of Banksy, but then there are those acts that are just vandalism, lacking any creativity or artistic merit.

An example of the latter case used to puzzle me frequently at my last job. I used to work in a building in a smallish city, and when you walked directly downtown, as I often did to lunch with my lovely wife, you would be driven past a power box that had scrawled across it a declaration that I would personally not like associated with me. In permanent black marker, someone had scrawled the following message:

"Wayne smells like potty."

Often I would walk by this public announcement of Wayne's particular aroma and wonder things. Does Wayne know this is here? If so, why has he not scribbled it out, or at least defended his honor with a "Do not" or "I'm a veterinarian, what do you expect?"? Mostly, I would wonder what would drive a person to make such a statement, particularly because it was written with a clarity and at such a height as to suggest that this was the work of an adult. Was it anger driven, written by someone who could no longer stand being in Wayne's presence due to the overwhelming stench of ammonia that surrounded him? Was it a prank meant to get a rise out of poor Wayne?

Why the hell would you write that in permanent marker upon a public utility box?

Of course, this will prove to be one of those mysteries that remains unsolved as, unlike Jenny (another person whose fame was probably undesired), no number was included in this particular declaration. Never will I know what fate befell Wayne and his detractor. Hopefully, they worked things out through love, understanding and judicious use of deodorant and laundry detergent.

On a side note, should anyone have an issue with me, I would prefer they take it up with me directly in a less public forum, like the internet.

Potty Like a Rock Star

There comes a time in each person's life where they must embark on a quest of personal betterment. Some of these quests are undertaken as part of the growing process, something to assist us in becoming fulfilled individuals. Others are thrust upon us by others, improvements that will not only make our own lives easier, but help those around us live more comfortable lives. It is from this latter category that the work my son has begun has presented itself.

It is time, once again, for potty training.

Potty training is a mixed bag of emotions for me. On the one hand, success will mean no more diapers, wipes, and whatnot (and make no mistake, I am quite ready to be done with whatnot). On the other hand, it further signifies that my baby boy is growing up into a little man. Also, it means I'll be dealing with the cleanup of bodily fluids on a more regular basis, which is not among my favorite things (Likes: Long walks on the beach, country music, pie, and cleaning up when someone drops a deuce in their Fruit of the Looms - nope, not me. Well, I like pie, but not the rest.)

We decided that since the family was off for an extended time over the holidays, we would try something drastic at first. We covered an entire room in industriul plastic sheeting, couch and all, put the Moose in a pair of briefs, put a potty chair in the middle of the room, and then watched. This seemed like a good idea at first, but we quickly ran into a couple of snags. First, apparently a room covered in plastic is way more fun for running and jumping that a regular room, so the tape holding the plastic down quickly gave up its hold. Second, briefs don't contain a lot of action, which meant that the adult in the room was responsible for constantly watching the boy's nether regions for any sign of a breach that he may be put on the potty. Seriously, I spent so much time looking at little boy underwear I felt like I should be putting on one white glove and bidding on the deformed remains of famous circus freaks.

We gave that up and moved on to the more standard plastic coated underwear for the boy, and that worked out a lot better. Now I at least have a chance of recognizing that he's going before we get a full flood. So now we proceed, occasionally ask if he wants to sit on the potty, and other than that we just let him recognize when he's wet or whatever. This is actually a boon for me, because the only thing that keeps him sitting is watching Looney Tunes on my iPhone, so I get to pass that along in the process. The only catch thus far is that he confuses numbers one and two, so he'll say, "I'm poopy" when he's just wet, and then tell me he's wet only for me to discover that he's made a major transaction. Not a pleasant surprise, but all part of the process, so there you go.

The good news is that unlike many quests of personal betterment, this one has a definite end in sight. I'm personally guessing this end will be within months, if not weeks. Eventually he'll get it, we'll buy him some more real underwear (my little man is not growing up in a world of tighty whiteys - do they make boxers for two to three year olds?), and we can move on to spending our money on things other than gigantic packages of Huggies and a case of diaper wipes.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess it'll probably go toward carpet cleaner for a while.

Okay, Maybe the Name Calling Was a Bit Much

Well, having received a tremendous amount of feedback from my last post (if you don't believe me, go ahead and read the two comments left there for yourself), I will proceed with our regularly schedule programming, sans changes of any kind. This means that I will talk about pretty much anything I want. Today I thought I would wrap up a holiday thought that's been rumbling around in my brain for awhile now.

So, we're all familiar with the whole Rudolph legend, right? Freaky reindeer has a glowing nose. Glowing nose naturally leads to ridicule from other reindeer, until global warming causes Christmas Eve to be foggy rather than snowy one year (reindeer have a huge carbon footprint, so it was bound to happen), and the new guy's illuminated proboscis proves more useful than previously considered, and he's a big hero guy. Great.

Here's the thing about that story. A big part of it is the vilifying of "all of the other reindeer", who are less than thrilled with hanging out with Rudolph and his glowing nose. These guys are made out to be the villians in the story, and I understand that poor Rudolph has no control over the situation, but stop and really think about this for a minute.

If I'm hanging out someplace, and a dude walks up with something glowing on his person, once I've established a lack of LEDs up his nose, I'm pretty much getting the hell away from him. Why? Well, lots of research (meaning video games and horror movies) have taught me that if somebody is glowing, there's a pretty good chance that person is radioactive. Playing reindeer games with radioactive folk is generally discouraged as a hobby. I'm pretty sure the surgeon general even put out a statement to that effect.

So yeah, I'm really not blaming the original eight for not wanting to expose themselves to that kind of thing. I'm all for tolerance of those with disabilities, but the risk of testicular cancer should not be included. I'm sure that someday Prancer would like to have little reindeer, not to mention that Santa is notorious for offering crummy health care, so the cost associated would sting a bit. Although I suppose for a reindeer with testicular cancer, the treatment would be under a buck.

Welcome to 2009, folks. Just because the year is new doesn't mean the jokes will be.

Your Turn

Here's the deal folks. All of us here who bring you DLOG on a near daily basis (me) are going on vacation, or at least are taking the next week and a half off. As such, it's going to get pretty quiet around here. I will, however, still receive DLOG email which is linked at the bottom.

Why do you care? Well, there are now a handful of people who read this blog somewhat regularly, and I'm interested in what you're here for. Do you read it for the humor? The rants? The potty jokes? (I know that's why I would come here.) Are you looking for personal insight into my life? Do you just need to kill a minute and a half, and that's how long it takes to read today's post? Let me know. Seriously.

I started this mess almost a year ago, in part to get things out of my head, and in part just as an excuse to write. Both have worked out fairly well, but since I do keep track of whether or not people actually read it, I would like to keep it interesting. If you want to see something else here, let me know. If there is something you'd rather not see here anymore, let me know that too. If there is some topic I've missed, point it out. Heck, if there's something you want to know about, but are too lazy to look up yourself, let me know.

Now, do I expect a big response from this? Probably not. In fact, my comments section has all but gone silent, and to the best of my knowledge, no one has ever used the email link at the bottom of the page. If that's the way this goes, so be it. I will continue rambling on in the way I've come to. Hopefully, some of you will continue reading about it.

Seriously, I Thought a Brazillian Was Some Kind Of Drink

This weekend found me in a position I've been in several times throughout my life - sitting amongst a pile of my newly shorn hair. It was about this time last year I decided I was growing it out again, and with the reluctant approval of my lovely wife...well, I didn't really do anything but stop getting haircuts so often. It's not like growing your hair out takes work.

Anyway, it had gotten long enough to officially be long, and as usual, I was already sick of how I looked. The idea of cutting it short had rumbled around my brain for a few weeks, but I kept pushing it back, if for no other reason that it had been a damned year. Growing it out doesn't take work, but it definitely takes time. So each time I though about cutting it, I'd reconsider and think to myself, "Let's give it another month and see how it looks".

As part of our to-do list, the Moose and I went in for haircuts this weekend. I just got mine trimmed and layered. I have no idea what it means to have your hair layered, but the wife said it needed it, and I passed that along to the lady cutting my hair as if I knew what I was talking about. She took an inch or so off the back, layered it (she could have just been opening and closing the scissors in the air for all I know), and said we were good. My lovely wife told me it looked better, and I was happy.

So I pay for our new quaffs, and having finished paying I go to collect the family from the waiting area. Much to my dismay, I find my wife and daughter going through a book of men's hairstyles discussing what would look good on daddy. I'm not typically one to pick up on hints that aren't stapled to my forehead, but the idea that maybe my new do was somehow less than pleasing to my good lady wife bothered me immensely. As I've probably mentioned before, I pretty much have one person in the world I have to impress as far as looks are concerned, so when I feel like I'm blowing that it doesn't sit right with me.

After some measure of badgering on my part, it was conveyed to me that a shorter cut would have been preferred, and since I had been considering it anyway, I went back the next day to have the job completed. The only catch is that now I have to remember how to style my hair, a task made unnecessary when it was longer. Well, that and my ears are cold. Still, it's all worth it if my lovely wife finds it more attractive, and it additionally fulfills my need to be constantly changing some part of my physical appearance.

I'm just glad she stopped dropping hints about the bikini wax - I am not going through that again.

At Least I Already Have A Bunch Of Their Change

Living in Michigan, I've been paying close attention to the news regarding the rotten state of the automotive industry. I have to. Not only do I know people who will be affected by the shutdown of the big three, but part of me believes that the government will cut its losses and sell Michigan to Canada when it happens, and it drives me a little crazy when people say "aboot".

Well, I'm not politically savvy enough to completely understand all of what's going on here, but last night I made a couple of helpful observations for my friends in the industry. It may be too late for this to help all of you, but those left standing might take note. It's regarding your advertising, which I made the mistake of not muting last night when it interrupted Stephen Colbert.

First, the commercial I was watching made a big thing about some award the car had just won. That's fine. You accomplish something, go on with your bad self and brag it up. What I take issue with was that the award for best resale value 2009. I'm not sure if you think we're stupid, or your claiming to be psycic, but trying to sell your cars by claiming that people from the future have declared it the best car, again, in the future is stretching things a bit far, don't you think. Why not just start bragging about the new flux capacitor design and the car's ability to fly while your at it.

Okay, obviously I'm kidding with that one, since the automotive industry has an odd habit of labeling their cars a year in advance, which frankly has always irritated the hell out of me, but here's the more serious observation. They pinned onto the commercial that there is also a huge deal going on right now where "the price on the tag is the price you pay". So the tag says it's a thirty thousand dollar car, and you pay thirty thousand dollars. Huh.

Now, you'll have to excuse me if I'm slightly underwhelmed with this, but if I understand this correctly, then what you're claiming is that the big special of the week is that for a limited time, your cars will be sold like almost every other product in the known world. Maybe I don't buy enough cars (I'm sure the automotive industry would say so), but can someone explain why this is a big deal? I mean, if I went to buy a head of lettuce or a video game, and there was a big sign saying "Special today - all price tags are accurate", I'm thinking I'd be unimpressed. Unfortunately, same thing applies to cars.

So yeah, if any of you are left standing in 2009, and I really hope you are (I actually drive an American car, and I like the idea of being able to get parts for it and whatnot), maybe this information will be useful. I'm sorry I can't offer more advice, but let's be honest. These are tough times, and we all need to watch our own backs, and bank accounts, for the moment.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go read up on parliamentary government and start practicing my moose calls, eh.

Dude, I Don't Know How To Say This, But You Smell Delicious

I'm a man who has reached the point in my life where I no longer feel the need to wear cologne. In my youth, I would regularly douse myself in various manly scents in an effort to attract the opposite sex. Having snared myself a wonderful bride, I have lapsed in this, deciding instead to go with the ever popular "clean". It's worked so far as I can tell.

Anyway, having left the scene, I don't pay a lot of attention to new colognes. I've ignored the whole Axe Effect. I disregard celebrity colognes, only pausing to note that Antonio Banderas came out with a cologne and all I could do was wonder if it smelled like Melanie Griffith. Basically, I don't care.

Then the advertisers of the world proved that everyone can be made curious with this. This is a delicious combination of fascinating and creepy, and it's apparently centered around a new scent for men (I think). Someone has finally wedded the American fascination with vanity with the American fascination with food.

If I'm reading this right, someone has made a cologne that smells like a Whopper.

Why a cologne though? I know they say that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, but do women get turned on by the aroma of grilling meat? I'm guessing not, but maybe I'm wrong. Either way, it seems like a perfume would have been a better choice.

Forgetting the gender bias for a moment though, is there really a crowd of people in the world who are sitting around thinking, "Gee, my life would feel so much more complete if I could smell like meat of some kind". If so, I suppose this product would give them a healthy alternative to hanging around with cannibals. So, you know, it's got that going for it I guess.

My point here is that once in a while the world throws a product out there that makes me sit back and realize that maybe I don't know people as well as I think I do. I mean, I never would have dreamed that such a thing would make it past the realm of humor, but there you go. So yeah, while I'm not running out to buy myself any of this (I'm thinking that my lovely wife, being a vegetarian, would be less than thrilled at the prospect of me smelling like a burger), it's interesting to me that there are those out there who will undoubtedly not only purchase, but actually wear such a thing.

To them, may I recommend avoiding the kennels.

If Part Of It Is Removed, Do You Call It a Semicolon?

Let's start today by pointing out that yesterday, I said I wanted enough snow to make it look Christmassy. One day later, we have exactly enough snow to make it look Christmassy, and no more. Conclusion: I may have super powers. I'll keep you posted on that.

Anyway, a couple of interesting news tidbits today regarding my musical companion, the colon. First, it has been discovered that colonoscopy's are not as effective as once thought. Basically, the view is limited to mostly the left side of the colon, resulting in things being missed on the right.

Now, as you may or may not recall, I actually went through that recently. It wasn't the worst thing in the world (that would be eating Quest Doritos), but I wouldn't exactly jump at the chance to go through it again. So the idea that something may have been missed based on alignment is a wee bit unnerving.

Anyway, the other news item, and the one I enjoy more, is that new research shows that smoking increases the risk of colon cancer. Aside from the obvious question (Are the smokers doing it wrong?), I'm once again forced to wonder why smoking continues to even be legal. I mean, we continue to outlaw marijuana, which has proved to have genuine medical benefits, but tobacco, which accomplished nothing but addiction and various flavors of cancer runs free. Bizarre.

On the bright side, now crack dealers can point out that there is more than one addictive substance that can be associated with your butt, helping sales in a struggling economy.

Ah, If I Could Only Grow Mutton Chops

Well, it's just over one week to Christmas, and the snow is gone. As someone who has a love/hate relationship with snow, I just don't know how to feel about this. Normally, any lack of snow is a good thing in my book, but I'm a traditionalist, and thanks to a lifetime of Michigan weather (not to mention an affinity for Bing Crosby), I've come to expect snow on two days of the year - Christmas and it's eve.

Most of the time, I see snow, along with most of winter, as a nuisance. I was most prepared to abandon my current location at one point, even eyeballing Arizona. Somehow, though, I always remain here in a place that's known for things like skiing. Dude, strapping two pieces of thin wood to your feet and then seeing how fast you can go down a mountain. No thankee, sai.

As far as I'm concerned, winter and snow serve one purpose - look pretty. Snow is lovely so long as it can be used as an excuse for sitting inside on a Sunday afternoon, sipping cocoa and watching movies. Once you expect me to actually venture out into it, then we have an issue. I don't like being cold even a little bit, and the only detrimental effect of not maintaining my butterball figure is that I no longer have the protective layers of fatty tissue to harden me against the cruel winters. (Seriously, I used to walk to class in an unbuttoned jacket when it was around zero degree Fahrenheit, arrive to class sweating, and still convince myself that I wasn't that out of shape. Ah, denial is a powerful thing.)

As we edge closer to Christmas, though, I'm a little distraught at the lack of snowy goodness in my yard. Over on this side of the state (towards the thumb), it was raining yesterday. As a result, our yard is officially snow free today. It's sunny outside, so I don't see that changing today anyway.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not willing another blizzard like last year into existence (although if I could, I would will it to appear in Texas, just because it's funny reading about wide spread chaos being caused over a half inch of snow). I just want enough to cover the ground so I can continue towards my goal of the perfect picturesque Christmas scene. Fireplace burning. Hot coffee spiked with egg nog. My loving family surrounding me, children excitedly asking me if it's time to open their gifts in their adorable British accents.

What? I can't be the only person whose Christmas ideal has been shaped from years of A Christmas Carol.

This Must Have Developed Since I Gave Up Winged Vigilantism

Today, we get to have an educational moment here at DLOG, for today we get to learn a new word. Today's word is acrophobia. Acrophobia, according to Wikipedia (for people too lazy to click a link) "is an extreme or irrational fear of heights". Why are we discussing it here?

'Cause I got it.

Oh I haven't been to a doctor for diagnosis or anything, standing firm on my policy of only seeing doctors for ailments that are visible from across the street, but I've got it. I know because this weekend I had to do a simple task that took way longer than it should have. We had some rotted wood replace on a second floor window, but didn't have it painted yet. Well, it had been a few weeks, and we were having a cookie decorating party for the Princess, so my lovely wife asked me to take care if of it. I'm not handy, but I know my way around a paintbrush, so I stepped up.

Well, sort of. While everyone else went to gymnastics, I dragged the 20 foot ladder outside and tried to get it against the house in an appropriate manner. Succeeding at that, I got myself an old peanut butter jar full of paint, a brush, stuffed both in my pockets, and climbed up the ladder. About half way up, I just stopped, hung out for a minute, and then climbed back down.

I made the pretense of checking that it was sturdy enough, adjusting the ladder a bit. Then I started climbing again. This time I made it to the top of the porch roof, a whopping ten feet in the air maybe, before I froze up. Now, it's hard to explain how strange this was for me. I knew I wasn't very far off of the ground. I looked down, and it didn't even look that far off the ground. Nonetheless, I literally couldn't make myself go further. So, once again I backed down, and went inside for a minute to gather myself.

Keep in mind, dear reader, that my glorified sense of importance makes this all the worse, as the whole time I'm doing this I'm imagining the neighbors looking out the windows, trying to figure out why I keep climbing the ladder and then coming back down. So far I'm okay, as the first one was poor ladder setup, and the second trip would probably be viewed as forgetting some needed item. This time, though, I had to make it, lest they quietly begin snickering to themselves.

So, out I go. I climb the ladder, and this time make it to my goal. Well, almost anyway. See, I got high enough on the ladder to reach the top of the area to be painted, so we were all good there. The only issue was that I couldn't make myself get the paint out. I'm literally standing at the top of this ladder (again, maybe a whole 15-17 feet of the ground now), and I'm saying to myself, "Dude, just reach into your coat pocket, pull the jar of paint out, and go". My hands chose to soundly ignore this request and instead chose to cling tenaciously to the rungs.

This would be bad, but soon I discovered that was the least of my problems. See, having apparently avoided heights with an efficiency previously unimagined, I discovered that not only were my hands being uncooperative, now my feet had joined the revolution. So now I'm standing at the top of the ladder, not painting, and unable to make myself climb down. My limbs had decided that I was not the one calling the shots anymore, and that they were in charge now. Thank goodness my colon remained loyal.

Anyway, I managed to get down, and almost a full hour (and a lot of pacing and talking to myself) later, I managed to get back up the ladder and start painting. What was odd was that as long as I was painting I was fine, but the second I stopped I could feel myself freezing up again. I've not experienced such a loss of physical control over my body in my life, and frankly it was as disturbing an experience as I've ever had. I'm sure I'll get over it in time, but I'm not in any hurry to try it again.

Ah, To Be Chewbacca. What a Wookie.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about how lucky I am. I've got a great family. I have a job that does not seem to be under any kind of immediate threat. I'm pretty. I've got a lot of things going for me. Some of it is through hard work, some because I have an excellent support system, but some, some is pure, random luck. In this last category I put the following item.

I've got a full head of hair.

I'm not saying this to make my follically challenged fellows feel bad about the gleam upon their pate. Rather, I'm saying it because I dodged a genetic bullet on this one. This is an instance of tremendous luck on my part.

When I was a young man growing up, I had always heard the same thing. If you want to know if you'll be bald, look at the uncles on your mother's side of the family. Well, I had two biological uncles. (Mom was adopted, so I also had a drunk of other uncles, which for those of you who didn't know, is the proper term for more than one uncle - a "drunk" of uncles. Well, it was in my family anyway.) These two were nice and all, but they had less hair on their combined heads than Keanu Reeves has emotional outbursts ("Whoa...I'm so upset. Dude, what were we talking about again?"). So yeah, I was looking forward to a life spent scouring haberdashers in the hopes of hiding my striking resemblance to Friar Tuck.

Now I know what you're all saying right now. "You're so charming and smart and funny, why would you concern yourself with looks?" I get that a lot. Nonetheless, I must confess that I, shamefully, am a proud man. That, and I have a tenancy to grow my hair out long. Guys who can wear the bald look are lucky, but I have yet to see the successful pulling off of the balding hippy look. It always comes off so...I don't know. Balding hippy I guess.

So there you have it. Amongst the things that I am grateful for in my life, I simply must count the fact that I've got a full head of hair. I know it shouldn't matter, but even with the whole "beauty comes from the inside", I'm still grateful.

After all, as a man, I have yet to have something come from inside of me that would fall into any category other than "Gah...get it away! Kill it! Kill it with fire!".

Do Scotsmen Dream of Electric Sheep?

I have a question, and it's one that is now really eating at me. We have all this technology, right, and we use it to build all of this ridiculous %#@$ that no one really needs, right? So, for those of us who tend to watch such innovation, you see certain trends, and one glaring absence.

Why isn't anyone trying to build android men?

This topic is being discussed today thanks to my lovely wife. She sent me the link to the latest attempt to build a robot bride. This yahoo (sorry for my international readers, but I do not know the proper, Japanese transaction for "yahoo"), for reasons I do not comprehend, has taken two years and several thousand dollars and dedicated himself to building himself a girl. This is a variety of creepy that even I, at my most nerdcore, find disturbing.

She includes many "features" too. She reads the day's headlines to him over breakfast. She gives directions while they drive (heh - the world's first genuine GPS nagigator). She'll slap a dude who gets out of line. The guys was kind enough to point out that their relationship remains, shall we say, platonic, although he has pondered the upgrades that would be required to make them man and droid (and in that instance, I'm using "man" in the loosest possible sense).

The thing is, this isn't the first I've heard of men attempting to create robot wives/girlfriends. Ignoring the obvious Stepford comments, all sorts of attempts have been made to allow guys with enough money to simply sidestep the whole "actually go out and meet a girl" scene. Take real dolls for example (link is Wikipedia, so it's safe and informative, in a really creepy kind of way, but I don't recommend following any links after that if you be at work today).

So, while all of that is creepy and whatnot, it naturally leads to the question at hand: where the hell are all of the male doll makers? I mean, why are men so desperate to avoid women, but women seem to lack this desperation? Are we really that easily replaced? I suppose it's not that difficult to take out your own garbage, so as long as a woman can open jars, our usefulness is greatly diminished. But still, it would seem like there would be some market for an artificial fella, right?

Personally, I would like to think that it would take more than one of these and a "neck massager" to replace me, and if anyone thinks otherwise, I would appreciate them keeping that opinion to themselves.

Of Course, If You Guys Wanted to Start a Collection, I Wouldn't Say No

For those of you not watching the news now that the election is over (and who could blame you), you might be missing one of the most delightful scandals in recent times. It seems that the Governor of Illinois tried to sell the now vacant Senate seat previously belonging to Barack Obama. He had the decency not to do it on eBay or anything, but he tried nonetheless.

You may be asking why this scandal is different from the myriad abuses that we face each day from those in power. My response would be that, at least from the outward appearances, this one differs in the brashness of the accused. He's caught on wiretaps saying things like "you don't just give it away for nothing". He's been accused of holding up legislation until he got campaign donations, trying to get journalists who criticized him fired through state business deals and threatening to pull state funds from a children's hospital unless part of the funds came back as campaign contributions. There's no word yet if they guy tried to use his position to take candy from babies, but I wouldn't count it out.

So, faced with arrest, and multiple accusations, how does the good Governor Blagojevich respond? Does he publicly apologize for all of it, or (more likely), deny the hell out of it? Well, not exactly.

He posted bail and went back to work.

His spokesman commented on that. "The day-to-day operation doesn't change nor is it affected. There are still critical state issues that he wants to address - things like dealing with the current financial crisis, looking at ways to keep people in their homes and finding ways to create jobs - and will continue to do so as governor." Included in these critical state issues is presumably the aforementioned Senate seat assignment.

Of course everyone want his out now. Cries have gone up for his resignation, and there is a movement to hold some variety of special election to select the new Senator, but no word from Blagojevich (which is really hard to type, by the way). Nope, he's all business as usual. So here's to you, Guvnor. Way to stick to the work, disregarding all of this corruption brouhaha that's going on around you. And pay no heed to the naysayers who mocked you for attending court in a lowly pair of sweatpants.

After all, I'm not sure where you'll find dress pants that could contain the hundred pound, solid brass cojones you're clearly sporting.

All New Holiday Traditions, Brought to You By Burma Shave

So lets talk about something that's...unusual today. Today, I would like to address an odd side effect of a huge part of American life, something that has occurred, and that a lot of us appreciate, without anyone really bothering to put it into words that often. Today, I sing the praises of a certain unsung group of heroes.

Advertisers.

Okay, now I know what you're thinking. Normally, the denizens of Madison Avenenue are spoken of in the same breath as lawyers, politicians and oompa loompas (%@$#ing oompa loompas), and for good reason. Their job is to take some thing that we probably don't need, and convince us that we do. It's manipulative. It's disturbing. Overall, not a great mission in life.

There are those, however, who take that mission and create something wonderful out of it. Then they transcend their positions from mere marketers to artists. Sometimes, they even create something so impressive that it becomes part of our culture. I'm not talking about that red haired freak who pushes burgers on the unsuspecting masses. No, I'm talking about something bigger, something that has become a tremendous part of many of our lives.

I'm talking about Santa Claus.

Now don't get me wrong. I understand that everyone's favorite demigod has origins that trace back to Saint Nicholas of Myra. (At least I'm assuming he's a demigod - he has super powers and all that.) I also know that the current, accepted version of the man came in large part from "A Visit From St. Nicholas" a.k.a. "The Night Before Christmas", dating back to 1823. It was the Coca-Cola company, however, that put the fat man in the red suit all over the map. Oh he was gaining popularity, but it was the soda pop people who pushed him into icon status.

For that matter, what about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer? This was purely a concoction of advertising, originating in 1939 as part of a Montomery Ward coloring book to be given away at Christmas time. Now, there isn't a kid who is unaware of the crimson-schnozzed caribou round these parts. It's simply part of the culture.

So there you have it. While many of us may look down our nose at our advertising counterparts, let us not sell short their contribution to our culture as Americans. Who knows what today's marketing geniuses will produce that our children will accept as part of our culture at large.

Heh - imagine people warning their children of the dreaded Axe effect, and how it leads to venereal disease.

I'm Not Fat! I'm Festively Plump.

Okay, I'm now feeling properly Christmassy. I set up a tree (just lights so far, because it takes a bloody long time to wind four strings of lights into a fake tree so you can't see the cords, thank you very much). We've almost finished shopping. The local grocer carries Silk egg nog (which goes extremely well with whiskey). I'm all on the Christmas station on the iPhone. Dude, I'm totally jolly and %#$@.

Mostly I'm feeling it though because the kids were out for the weekend, giving us the opportunity to set up the big gifts this year. So we took an entire afternoon to put together this and this. This rocks because now, on Christmas, the only assembly required will be putting batteries in stuff, which hopefully will be kept to a minimum. This a lot more fun that the kids watching daddy quietly cursing out an Allen wrench for five hours.

It's funny, because being a big kid myself, part of my looking forward to Christmas has always been the loot. Even now, we as parental units really don't spend money on ourselves often, so Christmas is one of the few times I replenish my game supply, or maybe get a book or CD I've wanted. Ordinarily my money is slated for more important things like education or broken things around the house.

Don't get me wrong - I'm still all about the loot. I have my little Amazon wish list (which despite reports I cannot see whether or not things have been purchased from - they hide that the entire month of December). It's just not the focus for me. These days, I'm more excited to see the kids open their stuff and play. Oh sure, part of that excitement is that I'll get to "help" the Princess figure out how to use a remote control Wall-E to chase the cat around, but still.

So yeah, I'm now ready for the upcoming festivities. So long as we can keep the snow at it's current levels (enough to look festive, but not so much that I have to go snow blowing each morn), I think I'm good. We just need to bust out the rest of the holiday decorations, crack open a fruitcake, put on Der Bingle, and proceed with the holiday goodness.

On second thought, why don't we hold off on that fruticake for now.

It's Truly a Marvel

I rely heavily on my Playstation Portable to get my through my workouts, and I've once again scored a terrific game to keep me distracted while I sit on the accursed exercise bike - Marvel Ultimate Alliance. You put together a team of four superheroes from the Marvel universe, and they have to fight through a series of challenges. It's nerdcore awesomeness.

It does remind me, though, that I am far from a comic book geek. I read whatever they have at the library, and I'm a fan of some of it. I think the Sandman series by Niel Gaiman, for example, while starting out kid of rough, ended up being something that really stuck with me, and as previously reviewed, I quite enjoyed Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. I'm far from what you'd call a fan though, always preferring the more text-based storytelling of novels.

Marvel, however, has proven itself an entertainment juggernaut, and having loved the first two X Men movies as well as last summer's Iron Man, I know enough about the characters to be interested. The problem is that, well, sometimes it feels silly. I mean, at least in Marvel's case, the X Men came along to give an excuse for why all these people were showing up with super powers, but some of the story lines just put to much pressure on my suspension of disbelief if you follow them too far.

Take Spiderman for example. A spider gets all radioactive, and somehow doesn't die. Then that spider bites a dude. As we all know, he's suddenly super strong and can climb walls and stuff, which is awesome. (I'm enough of a geek to deny the movies allowing him to sling web, which the comics always did with a gadget he invented, but only because I still don't like the idea of some guy leaving bodily fluids all over New York. Well, okay, another guy.) In real life, the guy would get an slightly less awesome welt, along with some form of necrosis. Don't Google it - trust me that it's something some spiders give people, and it's icky.

It's like that over and over. Dare Devil goes blind when exposed to a radioactive substance, and all of his other senses go through the roof instead of him getting the normal heightened sense of smell. (Plus he's supposedly a hero and a lawyer. Please. Like that could ever happen.) Bruce Banner is exposed to a ton of gamma radiation, and he turns into a super strong behemoth, which is much more exciting that the more realistic cancer. I think you see where I'm going with this.

Of course, most of the time I try not to think so much about all of this. I mean, some of these characters were created over fifty years ago. It's not like they could hop on Wikipedia and look up gamma rays like I can. So, not unlike my complaints about Swiper, I should probably learn to just accept that it's silly and enjoy it, or not bother with it at all. Knowing me, I'm going the silly route.

After all, it seems like the people there are always having more fun.

Maybe I Do Believe In Santa Claus

So, today I was all primed to discuss one of my random topics when someone shared a link so lovely, so special, that it pre-empted my thoughts and forced me to address it. See, for each generation, there is a set of icons - those figures that someone become something more than their fellows. For some reason when I was a kid, one of those icons for me was actually four guys, dressed in coveralls, being everything a young, impressionistic man could ever want to be - funny, suave and heroic.

I speak, of course, of the Ghostbusters.

Ghostbusters was somehow a perfect blend of action and humor. We got Harold Ramis as the extremely intelligent scientist. We got Ernie Hudson as a perfect, straight talking, in-it-for-a-check working man. We got Dan Akroyd at his best, bumbling simpleton led by his friends. And we got Bill Murray, the brilliant, sublime Bill Murray, as the opportunistic smart aleck along for the ride.

Ghostbusters, and for me anyway, Ghostbusters 2, were nearly perfect movies. They were silly enough for laughs, serious enough for suspense, and overall completely engrossing. I'm not exaggerating when I say that this movie really shaped me a little. If nothing else, I remember taking cues from Bill Murray on the proper dispensing of humor to diffuse tense situations.

A few months ago, in wondering why they never went for a trilogy, I did a little Googling and discovered that there was some feud between Bill Murray and Harold Ramis as a result of Groundhog Day (another classic), and that they had declared that they would never work together again. My heart broke a little at the thought that, without the four of them, a third movie would be somehow lacking. It would be like a lead singer of a great band declaring that he's reforming the band without any of the other original members and then taking ten years to release an album that is widely criticized as mediocre at best. Why would anyone bother?

Today, however, finds me filled with hope. You see, through the healing power of video games, we now have the upcoming Ghostbusters video game, and the linked trailer seems to be filled with promise. Presumable taking advantage of the fact that voice work does not require the actors to be together, they have brought back the original four Ghostbusters in game form. It's all of them...and..and it's a game. I didn't actually wet myself with excitement, but it was a near thing. Another cup of coffee, and I probably would have embarrassed myself.

So there you have it. Once again, video games have stepped up to create something magical for me. Even better - there's talk that if the game renews enough interest, they may actually try and bust out a third movie after all. My childhood heroes, reunited. I'm...I'm just so happy now.

You'll have to excuse me...I seem to have something in my eye.

Call Me When We Get To Fuchsia Tuesday

So, being a combination of anti-social and not a big fan of shopping, you might imagine that I avoid the whole "Black Friday" scene like Star Trek fans avoid red shirts. If so, you would be correct. Coming off of a relaxing Thanksgiving with my family, I'd frankly rather eat my feet than stand in line trying to score a deal on some doodad that I can probably order on the internet (or even better, just buy at Meijer with groceries) for not much more money.

Beyond my laziness, however, is the fact that I get mallstrophobic. When I go into the mall, or any other store this time of year, if there are too many people there I start to panic a little. I'm not sure why, but my stress levels go through the roof, and within seconds I'm prepared to start throwing elbows if it will get me and my family back into the comparatively calm sanity of the parking lot.

This panic isn't entirely unfounded. As I'm sure you've all heard, this year led to an actual Black Friday death at a Wal Mart in New York. The highlight of that particular story, by the way, is at the end. When people were asked to leave because, you know, somebody died, some of the shoppers had the nerve to complain that they had been waiting in line since the day before. Apparently getting to watch Nascar on their new 50-inch screen television trumped that whole be-kind-to-others, spirit of Christmas thing.

But there you go. Maybe this is the spirit of Christmas now. Maybe this is why so far, I'm not feeling it this year. It got a little better when we bought the kids presents (on a relatively safe and sane Sunday at Toys R Us), but I'm still just kind of blah about the whole thing. Hopefully putting up a tree will alleviate this.

Either way, the concept of waiting in crazy long lines for material goods just isn't something I can ever see myself doing. The whole thing feels like a scam to me anyway - we'll put a couple of cameras on a crazy clearance, people will fight over them, and then they'll buy other stuff while they're here. No thanks. I'll stick with Amazon. They bring the stuff I order right to the door.

You find another way for me to do my shopping without bothering with niceties like, I don't know, putting pants on, and maybe we can talk.

Dora. Pawnshop. Crackhouse. Again!

Since I spend most of my time with one or more kid, I get to see lots of educational television. I don't mean the good stuff like Mythbusters or The History of Sex on the history channel (which I actually saw a lot of - the ancient Egyptians put out enough hieroglyphic porn to fuel two Internets). No, I get the crowd from Sesame Street, library lions, and a little Hispanic girl, which is where I noticed an interesting thing.

Most episodes of Dora the Explorer involve Swiper. Swiper is a fox who shows up to...well, swipe. If Dora and her entourage manage to say "Swiper, no swiping" three times, Swiper is forced to run off. One would guess he suffers from the same psychological impediment as Mustafa from Austin Powers.

Anyway, if they don't manage to say it three times, Swiper takes whatever they have at the moment, but he doesn't run off with it as you might expect from a criminal. No, he just throws it into the distance, laughs and declares "You'll never find it now" before vanishing from the scene. This is exactly where they lose me. He doesn't actually steal anything, he just takes it and makes it hard for Dora and friends to get it back. Just once, instead of Dora asking for help finding the lost loot, I want her to call him out on it.

Swiper throws (object of day).
Swiper: Heh-heh-heh. You'll never find it now.
Dora: Wait, so you're just going to throw it away?
Swiper: Yeah, and you'll never find it.
Dora: So you didn't need it or anything?
Swiper: Uh...no, I guess not.
Dora: You're not, like, starving, and need to sell it for food?
Swiper: Well...I...no. No, I just felt like slowing you guys down I guess. And you'll never...
Dora: (Interrupting) Yeah, we'll never find it now. Got that, thanks. So, you just showed up here to take the stuff that we need and hide it, even though you clearly didn't need it yourself, and seem to gain nothing from the experience other than %#^$ing up our day. Do I have that about right?
Swiper: (Clearly uncomfortable now) Well I didn't mean to ruin your day or...I just thought it would be fun, like a game. You know, hide and seek or something.
Dora: Yeah, we're kind of in the middle of something right now, which I think you knew, didn't you?
Swiper: (Hands behind back fidgeting with his tail while looking down at his feet) Yeah, I suppose I did.
Dora: And you just show up, take our stuff, and then toss it in a tree. For no reason. Do I have that right?
Swiper: (Quietly, starting to cry a little) Yes.
Dora: I SAID DO I HAVE THAT RIGHT!
Swiper: (Sobbing loudly) Yes, yes.
Dora: Good. I'm glad we've gotten that out of the way. Swiper?
Swiper: What?
Dora: You're an %#$hole.

Now I know, it's a kids show. I'm over thinking the whole thing. In my defense though, you can only watch it so many times before you start to wonder just what Swiper's %#$@ing problem is. If you're going to steal, at least pawn it off, maybe buy a pair of pants to match your Zorro mask and little gloves. Is it too much to ask that the character have some motivation?

Maybe a crack problem?

At Least I'm Still the Only One Who Can Open Any Jar in the House

I had a short list of things to get done this weekend, and I failed miserably. Oh well - I'm over it. Unfortunately, this weekend once again threw into my face one thing that I am not over, one thing that continues to haunt me and bother me.

I am not a handy man.

Seriously, no part of my upbringing involved learning how to repair or build anything. While other young men were standing behind their parental units watching car repairs or learning the proper way to hang siding on a house, I was receiving such useful wisdom as "Never give them the money first". Not really as useful as one might think.

So now, as a man in his thirties and a first time homeowner, I can't fix a #%@$ing thing, instead doing the one thing I learned well from my parents growing up - I pay other people to do things I cannot. Now, I'm at least smarter about it (they had a habit of hiring people they knew, which can lead to awkward situations when a job is not done to your standards), but still, it's degrading in a way. As an American man, I've been led to believe that I should be able to step out into the garage and magically know how the cars work, or the proper way to maintain a lawn mower, or whatever. I expected that I would awake one day, and in a shining moment of clarity, all the requisite information would just be downloaded, Matrix-like, into my noggin. Instead, I can write code, bake cookies, and occasionally fix your computer (although my current success rate at that even is faltering).

I know I shouldn't let it bother me. I mean, I have skills, just not those skills. It's hard though. It doesn't help that the men in my wife's family all seem to be of the type that can go out into the woods and, in a week, have a small cabin with cable and indoor plumbing built. I mean, good for them and all, but it tends to cast the occasional shadow that makes it hard to see when I'm writing the handyman's check.

Well, like I said, I'll get over it. I always do with things like this. It bothers me though that this is another area where my kids will have to look to others to learn what I never did. I'm not too worried about the Princess, but I feel some guilt over the Moose. I mean, between this and not knowing how football is played, I'm going to have to outsource a lot of standard "man" knowledge.

Thank goodness I'm still a master at rude noises and dirty jokes.