My Dogs are Dumb.

As if there isn't enough chaos in my life with two little kids, I am also the proud father of two dogs. Now, I love my dogs very much, they are great companions for the kids and for my wife and I, but I am sad to report that they are also some of the dumbest dogs in the world, and for those of who think the phrase "dumbest dogs" is redundant, I agree. Dogs are pretty dumb. Let me give you some examples.

Jasper is a 10 year old brown mutt. Amy got him after she graduated college and while I was still in college so she could have a companion while I was out fiddling around and drinking too much in the South Dakota prairie. Jasper was an orphan found roaming the streets of Duluth as a very young puppy. There were signs that clearly pointed to abuse in his former home. He also had kennel cough and dog pneumonia and he sneezed big green snotballs all over his paws every 5 minutes or so. Naturally Amy felt bad for him and bought him, and spent the next 2 months completely immersed in dog boogers. As we've found out, buying a formerly abused dog means that Jasper is really weird sometimes, which makes him prone to doing really dumb things like,

-Hiding under the bed for 36 straight hours because he got scared because I fell down the stairs, ass first, and yelled loudly because I landed on the hard pokey part of an extension cord.

-Being scared of flies- I think a fly must have bit him on the snout once, because every time he sees a fly he goes and hides under things and squeeks loudly, until I tell him to shut up or I will throw him in the dryer and turn it on.

-Barks ferociously in the pitch-ass dark middle of the night at nothing, which causes me to get worried that there are a pack of zombies surreptitiously sneaking into my house to decapitate me and eat my brains.

-Eats cat turds and then tries to come lovingly lick my face including the inside of my mouth.

-Barks for hours at Box Elder bugs that congregate on the west side of my house. Westside bitches.

-Sneaks away from me and runs aimlessly throughout the neighborhood and almost gets hit by cars in the process.

-Tears apart the garbage and drags it throughout the house including underneath small hidey-holes that are not easily accessible by people.

-Barfs in the corner all over the baseboards.

-Sneezes right in my face while I'm petting his belly.

So, because I'm an idiot who doesn't understand anything, I thought that Jasper would benefit from having a friend in the house to keep him company when we were at work, and that this would help him be more social and less apt to hide under furniture and woof at nothing in particular.

This led us to buy Polo, a big stupid Samoyed. Finding a Samoyed puppy was more difficult than I would have imagined, so we wound up driving out to some tiny town in the middle of Wisconsin to get him. He is a purebred Samoyed, AKC certified and all that good stuff, so theoretically we could show him at dog shows, if I wasn't convinced that he would eat other dogs and possibly smaller judges in the process. We bought him from a sort of Amish lady and her daughter, whose main ambitions in life were, as far as I could tell, being sort of Amish, and breeding Samoyeds. I say sort of Amish, because although they dressed in 1800's garb and talked with strange accents, they also had cell phones and computers and indoor plumbing and Jonas Brothers posters and stuff. Also, I didn't see them ever drink milk straight from a cow's teat, so that was another strike against them.

Polo obviously wasn't big when we got him, he was a tiny puppy, but very soon he grew into this big, puffy, poorly behaved monster dog, which I suppose is our fault for being bad dog trainers, but still...

Polo is very friendly, and I have to keep reminding myself that even though he's big, he still has a puppy brain, which makes him do dumb things.

So now we have two dogs, who are supposed to be best friends and all that, but really their entire relationship can be summarized like this:

1.) Polo runs over to Jasper and bites his face repeatedly
2.) Jasper hides under something and growls
3.) Polo is egged on by this, and tries to get him out, all the while barking a really annoying high pitched bark that we in our family refer to as "squeekbarking" (If you ever come over, you will hear the following command come out of my mouth at least 5 times an hour. "Polo, for Chrissake stop squeekbarking!")
4.) Jasper reluctantly comes out and lays down and growls while Polo chews on his head.
5.) Polo squeekbarks a lot and Jasper starts sneezing, presumably because Polo is chewing on his nose.
6.) I give them both chewies to shut them up for a minute
7.) Polo eats his chewie quickly and then goes back and re-starts the entire process.

After a while of this I get irritated and let Polo outside, where he proceeds to chase cars driving up and down the road and bark ferociously even though he's in a fenced in backyard and can't get within 40 feet of them. Then he gets tired and jumps up on the kids trampoline and falls asleep. ( A dog sound asleep on a trampoline is a sight to behold.) Then he wakes up and barks a lot at the air, or a leaf, or something else totally superfluous, so I let him back in and he tackles the children and steals their toys or underpants, and then sometimes he jumps in the bathtub and just hangs out in there.

Then we go to sleep, with Polo in our bedroom because if we try to kennel him up he shrieks like a thai hooker. At 5:14 am every morning, Polo wakes up, jumps on the bed, and licks somebody until they let him out. He has a very wide tongue that covers most of your face and it's very rough, like a cat's tongue, so it hurts a lot.

This is the routine in our family, and every day, I realize a little bit more that dogs are just dumb, but I'm probably more dumb for thinking having them would still allow for a peaceful utopia.

Brian has a Beef with Macy's.

Why is it that everything I enjoyed in my childhood is slowly being changed, or messed with to make it a shell of it's former self? It seems like people go, "Hey, there's something kids really enjoy, let's fuck with it and make it stupid." You can think of a lot of things like that.

-Merry Go Rounds- Not the ones with horses at the carnival, I'm talking about the ones at a park, where you'd hang on and the strongest kid would spin it around in a circle and then jump on and you'd get all dizzy and feel like barfing afterwards. That was awesome. But now, thanks to the Society of Super Cautious Parents, which I'm certain is a secret cult hell bent on taking all the fun stuff away, those are few and far between. Some dopey kid probably got stuck under one or something, and the SSCP went bonkers. Voila, no more Merry Go Rounds.

-Those things where you can hold on and swing across the park- Again, some idiot probably fell off and cracked his head open, and the SSCP had a field day. Stupid retard kids spoil all the fun.

-Halloween- Remember when you could just go out with your friends and get a little candy, smash a few punkins, and have a little fun. Now kids have this giant cadre of parents who come along, all with flashlights (heaven forbid your child is in the dark), and some of these people even dress up. (Newsflash: Halloween is NOT for you anymore. If you still crave Halloween so much, dress up as fat Brandon Lee from The Crow, and go to an adult Halloween party, get hammered, and ramble about insurance rates, and how big of a wheel you are at your job.) Then, the parents go through the candy with airport metal detectors and ration the amounts kids can eat. Whatever happened to eating candy until you felt sick, and checking for syringes in the goo goo clusters yourself? Kids don't want to eat cyanide either. I was fairly cautious about that, and the proof is that I am still alive today.

The reason I bring this up is because we took the kids to the 8th floor at Macy's to see the little Christmas show that Daytons first started back in the 50's, and has continued to this day, and also to see Santa Claus. The first thing I noticed, way before we even got there, is that Macy's has given up on this tradition. 50 years of happy kids, gone in the blink of a beaurocrat's pen. I know this because they mentioned that they were running the exact same display as last year, this boring nonsense called An Elf's Life. They tried to enthuse the masses by saying the display was "back by popular demand" which is a corporate euphemism for, "we don't give a shit about this long-loved, storied concept, and as a matter of fact we never took down the display from last year, so all we have to do is plug in a few things and now we want you to come see this half-assed knock off so you will pay us to see Santa, and hopefully buy things from our woefully overpriced Christmas store, and then go downstairs and choke to death from the scent of whore perfume we have emanating from all crevices of our space."

Needless to say, I went into our little journey with a slighltly jaded viewpoint. The first thing that bugged me is that no matter how many times I go there, I can never find the escalators. Somehow I always wind up in the underpants section. Then I have to drunkenly stagger around until either I accidentally find the escalators, or until my wife uses her built in homing device to point us in the right direction.

Once I've found the escalator, and done some swearing because it's so hard, I begin to notice that there is nobody there. This pleases me. Usually, the line wraps all the way down to the offices (which are dark and empty now which also pleases me. Eat a dick and go bankrupt, stupid Macy's), but in this case there was no line, so we paraded down the hall, past the elevators, which are not overflowing with angry people and wheelchair-bound kids, past the old retired ladies handing out booklets, and all the way into the display. This is all very pleasing to me. I don't have to wait in line, which is awesome, because I hate lines in the same fashion as I hate hornets, and because it proves that people aren't falling for the Macy's ruse. Stupid Macy's.

Once we get in the display I get annoyed again. An Elf's Life is configured about as stupidly as is possible. It's like Pablo Picasso designed it or something. The displays don't match up with the part you read to your kids. There was some garbled prose about the elves receiving lots of mail, and the display was of them going to elf school. So the message was really convoluted, and then every few yards or so, there was a real person dressed like an elf, that was running security detail or something for that small portion of the display, making sure kids weren't touching the bogus snow and things like that.

We also noticed that some of the "elves" in the display were actually just regular people from displays past that had been sawed off at the knees to make them look little. I swear to you that one of the elves near the end was actually the Godfather from "The Nutcracker" whose legs had been sawed off. You can't fool me, Punk Ass Macy's.

Finally we got through that mess, which was appropriately about half as long as the good displays Daytons used to do, and went to see Santa. Again, there was no line, which ruled, because I didn't have to worry about the kids running amok and bumping into people in front of us, and when we got done visiting Santa (who was criticized by my son for not getting him the right stuff last year, much to my surprise) and getting the hard sell by a 17 year old to buy a large quantity of Santa pictures and frames, we went over to buy Gingerbread Men (which we always do even though I don't like Gingerbread Men that much). At the Gingerbread Man station, we got the hard sell from the Gingerbread Man baker (what is it with the hard sell? Merry Christmas to you too, buttlicker.) who tried to sell us Gingerbread Men in bulk, and remarked what a bad deal we were getting because we only bought 3.

As we sat in an empty stairwell, eating our Gingerbread Men, two words kept running through my head, over and over, like the gears that made the elf/Nutcracker Godfather move. Screw Macys, Screw Macys, Screw Macys........

One post-script: I nailed a lady really hard in her ample buttocks coming out of the bathroom with the bathroom door. She looked at me like it was my fault. Why would you hang out in the indentation leading into the men's bathroom? That's a good way to get nailed in the butt if you ask me.

The Schwann's Man: A Tale of Heartbreak

There are a lot of things that really bother me in life, but I hold a special hatred for a chosen few punk ass irritating things like Hornets, Dog the Bounty Hunter, Roundabouts, Jimmy Fallon's monologue, muumuus, crocs, not being able to see your own butt without a house of mirrors, you know stuff like that.

I also reserve a special hatred for the Schwann's guy. Now most of my hatred I've come up with on my own, but the Schwan's owns a special place, for this is an inherited hatred, one I picked up from my Dad, and low and behold, I've found that this animosity is well deserved.

Let me take you back to 1986, when I was a fresh faced youngster, happily naive, with no trace yet of any of the sarcasm and cynicism I would later develop keenly. The Schwans man would come by and although we didn't have a lot of money, sometimes my parents would indulge me with some little circular pizzas, or dreamsicles or something. It was a happy time.

The Schwan's man's name was Brian too, and although it was likely that he was a recovering crackhead with an eye for young boy butts, because we were both Brian's, we had a bond.

Everything changed one dark and stormy night. Brian came over, and was being sort of insistant that we buy some goods from him. We had just gone shopping and we didn't need anything. Come back another time right? Nope, instead Brian fired off this query which altered the course of history.

"Whatsa matter Mr Jensen, can't afford a few treats? Having job problems?"

The nerve of this idiot to pry into other people's personal business. We just didn't want your food. My dad told him, in no uncertain terms, to leave, and I never saw Brian again. I would assume that he drifted into a life of rampant drug use and gay prostitution, but who knows; he could have become a clergyman.

Fast forward to 2005. I am now a grown man (in age, not in maturity) with a wifey, a house, a dog, and a baby girl. The American dream right, except that I don't drive around in a big van solving mysteries. I guess you can't have everything. Anyway, the Schwann's man reappeared into my life. I was a little apprehensive after how badly I'd been burned 19 years earlier, but decided to give it another shot. I was happy. I had my little circular pizzas that always burn the roof of your mouth no matter what again.

But, as it always is with the Schwann's man, the relationship went south faster than a preppy white kid who kills his wife. First he just stopped showing up. This was odd. After about 3 months of no-shows, he finally appears again, like nothing had happened. This is akin to a relationship where a dude disappears on his girlfriend and goes and humps everybody for a while and then comes back and tries to pretend she's the only one for him because he needs money.

I am not fooled. I tell him I'm not interested in his little pizzas anymore. Unbelievably, I get nearly the same response as my Dad had gotten 19 years earlier.

"Whatsa matter Mister Jensen, little short on funds this month?"

What the fuck is up with these people? Is this like, a strategy they teach at the Schwann's Institute?

Rule #1: If a customer refuses to pay you 7 bucks, tease him about his financial situation. It may also be helpful to insinuate that you've seen him at the welfare station

Rule #2: Have sex with his pets when he goes to the bathroom.

Seriously, to all the Schwanns people reading this, the whole issue is customer service. I can buy pizza and popsicles at Cub Foods. If you can't be conciliatory when I turn you down over 7 dollars worth of groceries, then please don't approach me in the first place. Walk back to your freezer with wheels, and go peddle your wares elsewhere. Thanks.

P.S. Don't have sex with my pets either!

I get myself in trouble in the bathroom

Here's something I bet some people have done before. The other day I was in the bathroom at Target, in the stall, just minding my own business, and trying to ensure that nobody accidentally walked in on me or tried to Larry Craig me, when I started thinking about this morbidly obese man I had recently seen. He had a red sweatshirt, red sweatpants, and was wearing a red stocking cap. He looked a lot like the big Kool-Aid mascot guy, the one that used to crash through the wall in commercials.

The more I thought about Kool-Aid man, the funnier it became to me, so eventually I started chortling and eventually laughing out loud, alone, in the stalls of Target.

Now of course there's like 3 people milling about outside the stall at this time, peeing or washing their hands, or doing drugs or whatever, and all the while there's some weirdo in the stall giggling.

When I think of it in those terms, I immediately stop laughing. I am overcome with a completely rational concern. My concern is that the people outside the stall will hear me laughing and think that I am laughing at my own poop. I don't want people to think this, so I start to cough to try and convince all the random people that the laughter they heard was actually just a weird form of coughing. I don't think they are convinced. Now I am embarrassed so I remain perfectly still and I pick my feet up so nobody can see me. I will do this until everybody leaves. But they don't leave quickly enough because some other guy comes into the stall next to me and it sounds like an army is marching out of his butt.

I am faced with a serious dilemma. Do I stay in the stall and listen to the butt symphony going on next to me, or do I leave and risk the people who think I laugh at my own turds seeing my face. I decide to leave. I stand up and realize that one of the people in the bathroom is the really fat Kool-Aid man who I was laughing at in the first place. I decide this is a good omen. Just for the record though, I don't think my poop is all that funny. Maybe mildly amusing, but only if it's an odd color.

My Son is Just Like Me.

Sometimes I wonder how much my kids are going to be influenced by the fact that their father is a semi-insane, ultra competive weirdo with a giant head. At times I think, blissfully, probably not too much, after all, they have their mother who is grounded, maddeningly reasonable, and has a normal sized head.

Other times, however, I can see a lot of me in them, especially my son. To wit, he is 4 years old, yet completely happy with watching an entire football or baseball game with me, all the while peppering me like a caesar salad with questions ranging from totally inane and pointless ("Dad, does the brown football team have 2 shoes?") to concise and well thought out, ("Dad, what happens if the pitcher throws a ball and the guy hits it and it bounces over the fence?")

His favorite question however, is always, "Dad, who are the bad guys?" He's determined to know who the bad guys are in any situation, so he can figure out who to cheer for, and against. This doesn't just apply to regular sporting events either. The other day we were watching an airplane race from Greece or someplace like that and he wanted to know.

Him: Dad, who are the bad guys?
Me: Ummmm, I don't know dude, this is an airplane race. I don't think there are bad guys.
Him: The red?
Me: Seriously, I don't know.
Him: The blue?
Me: Sure, the blue.
Him: No, the red.
Me: Ummm....

He also wants to know the bad guys when we are watching SportsCenter.

Him: Dad, who are the bad guys?
Me: Buddy, this is just a bunch of people talking about football. There aren't any bad guys.
Him: The guy in black?
Me: Miles???

So once he determines who the bad guys are in any situation (Football, Basketball, the VMA's) he begins vociferously rooting against them. This can be pretty funny when we are alone, but in a setting with others, it's a little embarrassing. We were at Farmington High's Homecoming football game, and near the end we were sitting with my wife's parents on the visitor side, because the home side was too packed to find seats. So then the visiting parents and fans got to enjoy a 4 year old obnoxiously, and loudly rooting for the other team.

Him (Really loudly): GO TIGERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That was OK, a little gamesmanship never hurt anybody. But then one of the players on the other team suffered what appeared to be a pretty severe knee injury. Things got a little out of hand after that.

Him (Very loudly again): THE BAD GUY GOT AN OWWIE!!! YAY!!!!!
Us (In hushed tones): Miles, you can't cheer when somebody gets an owwie.
Him: Why not, he's the bad guy. GOOOOO TIGERS!!!!!

People turned around to frown at whoever was cheering a high school kid's injury, and saw my beautiful little boy. He frowned back at all of them, very defiantly. I figure that might be partially my doing. Oops.

Then there's the issue of strategy for winning, which he appears to be coming up with all on his own. I'm not necessarily opposed to this, but it's the type of strategy he's employing that has me a little concerned. I coached his and my daughter's soccer team this fall, and what I noticed was that in between coming up to me and making sure that his team had more goals than the "bad guys" i.e. a bunch of 4 and 5 year olds every 3 minutes or so, that he was also crashing into the other team's players and knocking them over an inordinate amount of times, enough so that it was raising eyebrows with the fans. After the game I said to him,

Me: You were really crashing into the other team a lot. What's the deal?
Him: I was bumping the bad guys so that our team would get the ball and win.
Me: Ummmm....

See, strategy. He was the wrecking ball, opening lanes for his teammates. I applaud the thought he put into that, he's only 4 after all, but I was a little concerned it might be, I don't know, blatant cheating.

Finally, there's this thing he does, around our house we refer to it as a "Gigantic Temper Tantrum", whenever it seems as though he's going to lose at something. I can't help but accept that this is my fault, you're looking at the guy who got kicked out of SS Billiards in Hopkins at the ripe old age of 5 for beating up the "Baby Pac-Man" machine because I thought the joystick wasn't functioning properly. Again, oops. Yesterday we were playing the Wii version of some really lame mini-golf game. My son lost to my daughter. What followed was an epic tantrum, which should really only be reserved for things like the End of the World, that lasted well into dinner, and including loud screaming, and trying to maim his sibling, and the dogs.

I'm not really lamenting about this, he's probably going to be a wonderful athlete, but it's just weird to see the traits your little ones pick up on. I'm resolving to kick garbage cans less this year during baseball season for this reason. Awww, who am I kidding?

Lost & Found

Did you ever stop and think about how much stuff you've lost in your lifetime, and then think in terms of monetary value how much all that stuff would be worth if you had it back? I think about that a lot, and it makes me really mad at myself. How could I have possibly been so careless as to lose all this stuff? Maybe some of it got stolen, but mostly I probably just left the stuff lying somewhere because I'm a careless idiot. Let's break down the list.

-99% of all pens I've ever owned
-60% of all CD's I've ever owned
-1 IPod
-20 pairs of sunglasses
-1 pair of shoes (Side note: When I was 12 and on vacation in San Francisco, my shoes mysteriously vanished, and to this day I have no idea what happened to them. I had only brought one pair also, so I had to wear bread bags on my feet to the airport. I felt like an orphan.)
-A plastic bag containing over 1000 dollars. (Side Note: I found this while floating down a river in Mexico, and I was so geeked about finding it that I forgot to put it in a safe place and it floated right out of my pocket)
-3 cement dildos
-The cassette tape that I drunkenly rapped at Funkytown Studios on
- 2 Wallets
-A trapeze
- A $25 Mystic Lake Casino Chip
-40 Pairs of underpants (Boxers and briefs, but not my snakeskin ballhuggers, thank goodness!!)
- 342 homework assignments (Grades 7-12)
-4 Turtles
-A Sword of Damocles
-404 Wiffle Balls
-2 Girlfriends
-1 cage to keep girlfriends in.
-1 cell phone
-1 baseball uniform (J Botten)
-A really rare Playboy with a nude pictorial featuring Martina Navratilova frenching Ellen DeGeneres.
-74 VHS videos, including 3 Caddyshacks.
-41 DVD's, including 3 Caddyshacks.
- A pair of Jeans that I really liked.
-My "Bad Ass" t-shirt that I made myself and wore to the bar once
-A Charleston Chew that Goose gave me
-A large vat of Meth
-Horse Testicles that I won at the Dakota County Fair
-A Rocket Ship
-The infamous "Will Watson Alaska Anchorage Basketball"
-The 1958 Cleveland Browns
-The Soundtrack to "Peter and the Wolf" hummed loudly by Elton John
-4 million buttons
- A bag of cat poop that we had planned on putting on an old lady's doorstep and then setting it on fire and then ringing the doorbell and when she ran out to stomp on the bag we would run in and lock the door, essentially stealing a house. A foolproof plan conjured up by 11 year olds, foiled because the cat poop bag went missing.
-4 gas caps
-A machine that could turn a normal person into an angry transvestite.
-A large hole in the earth (That's right, I lost a hole. Deal with it.)
-A foam rubber phallus, very handy for smashing people on the head with.
-One of those big foam hands, formed in the shape of "The Shocker"
-A fish hook that actively tried to hook itself into your fingers
and
-All of my baby teeth

That's a pretty long list of very valuable things. But while I was getting all angry, and pouting and swearing, and contemplating going gang raping alone, I realized that I have an equally large pile of things that I have no idea where they came from. I may have inherited them from the earth, like Johnny Appleseed, but more likely it's just mostly stuff my people left behind, and I was too lousy of a friend to ever tell them. This list includes

-74 Tapes and CD's
-42 shirts
- One fleece that did not fit, but I wore it anyway to justify having it.
- One of those bowling glove/carpal tunnel syndrome fixer hand things
-A beach towel previously owned by a professional hockey player
- A statue of Marge Schott
-Some strange medicine from China that makes you poop, pee, and hallucinate about large kittens all at the same time.
-One Moose
-A bunch of hamburger patties that wound up in my freezer.
-Skim cat milk.
-A false Declaration of Independence
-A rogue Tylenol PM that lived on my dorm room floor for months. We even vacuumed around it.
-A bunch of pubes (In a textbook I had in 9th grade)
-2 folding chairs
-A broken camera
-2 pairs of rusty nipple clamps
-A Garden Weasel
-Noseplugs
-A half used tube of Diaper Rash Ointment
-Kevin McHale
-Penis tweezers
-A bunch of useless self help books (Example: How to be Clinically Depressed and Still get the Morning Paper)
-3 different cement dildos
-22,000 rubber bands
-Everybody Poops on Audio book
-A Fernando Valenzuela rookie card, not autographed by me in a blatant attempt to fleece a childhood friend out of money
-Doyle Brunson's front teeth
-A large vial of Crack (or shaved peanuts)
-A small vial of liquid mercury
-The Zapruder Film
-A term paper that proves conclusively the amount of wood a woodchuck would chuck had he been willing and able to chuck the aforementioned wood.
-A zipper
-A bottle of Salmon flavored Whiskey
-A deck of naked lady playing cards that is all jokers and instruction cards
and
-A bottle of sunshine.

I figure I came out about even in this whole thing, so that made me feel a lot better.

Brian is Eco-Friendly Sort-Of

You know what I can't figure out? How come there's all these shoes on the highway? Why is it that people seem compelled to huck their shoes out the window? And why are the shoes never in pairs? Is there a roving gang of newly peg-legged pirates roaming the countryside littering their now obsolete peg leg shoes? I find this suspicious

I swear, just drive along any thoroughfare for 10 minutes, and you'll see at least one shoe. See, I reserve my special "highway garbage" passes for large things, like urine soaked couches and the large cage I kept that 11 year old in for five years once. Shoes just go in the garbage, people.

Here's another thing I bet only I wish I could do. I would really like to comb the highway for random items, trace them back to the people who they belonged to, and return them. Not because I'm "green" or really all that environmentally conscious, just because it would probably make them unconfortable. The weirder the item, the better too:

Me: Are you Darwin K. Morris?

Guy: Uh yeah.

Me: We traced these 50 bottles of urine back to you. We found them along highways all over the place.

Guy: Um... these aren't..

Me: Sir, let me implore you to be cautious with your bottled urine. Apparently these little buggers have a mind of their own when they're on the road.

How about this for fun. Turn the tables on these litterbugs. Stand on the side of the highway and throw garbage at cars driving by. Fun! The bigger the item the better. Extra credit if it's alive and has pointy talons or a poisonous bite. Then crap in an orange safety cone (the small end) and run off giggling.

I'd just like to mention that I plan on doing all these things before 2010, so look out South Metro near 169....

Kid Cartoon Reviews

Recently the kids have been home with the H1N1, or some derivative of it, so we've spent a lot of time laying around watching kid stuff on TV. What follows is a review of some of our current favorites:

Scooby Doo-First off, the plot is the exact same every time. A monster pops out and cackles. Then the gang is driving around aimlessly, apparently looking for mysteries. They find a mystery to solve. They split up to look for clues. Shaggy and Scooby get scared and also eat things. Fred and Daphne go in the corner and hump. Velma's glasses fall off. They accidentally catch the monster and reveal that he is Mr Carruthers, the janitor. They unravel the flimsy evil plan for the benefit of the police. There is usually dry ice involved. Scooby and Shaggy eat more things. The end.

In newer episodes, however, the ghosts have become real, instead of Mr Carruthers, the janitor, which sort of ruins the "everything can be explained by a greedy jerk" thesis the old show had going for it. Heck, I even saw a 20 foot tall glowing red Chupacabra, when in actuality they are supposed to look like a hairless coyote. Then we watched "A pup named Scooby Doo" where the plot was totally implausable, even for a cartoon, which is saying a lot. An example: Burglars were chasing the gang, who are all kids now for some reason, so they jerry-rigged a Home Alone type device to foil the burglars. So a burglar ran in and a tennis racket hit him in the face. Normally, you'd go "Ow" and maybe have a bloody nose. In this case however, the burglar flew backwards, out the door, over the trees, and into a whole other country where he landed on the beach and made a giant hole, which he then climbed out of, stole a rowboat, rowed back to the correct country, and ran back to the house, all in a span of 5 seconds or so. Even the kids were skeptical of this scenario.

The Jetsons- Possibly the most sexist cartoon ever. I guess it was made in the 60's, so that was acceptable then, but I found myself almost being offended, and I'm me. Women drivers are feared, Jane spends all day shopping (How do you spend all day shopping, every day?). Mr Spacely is a jerky midget, George's job consists of pushing one button and then sleeping, and this bank robber named Knuckles Nuclear seems to appear in every episode. Also, your food is all in pill form, which sucks.

MVP-Most Valuable Primate- Almost as implausable as the plots from "A pup named Scooby Doo". A monkey, who lives at a college with an old man and a retarded dude and is really smart, runs away when the old man dies because the jerkface dean is going to sell him to a research lab. The retarded guy puts him on a train and tells him to get off at "Simian Village" or something like that. Here's where it really gets tough to believe. He's leaving from LA. The stops on the train are San Francisco, Simian Village, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, and Bumblefuck, BC. Let's see, 4 giant metropolises, a monkey village, and a frozen noplace. Right. The monkey, of course, winds up in Bumblefuck, BC, where he is befriended by a deaf girl and becomes the star of the hockey team. What strikes me is that somebody actually had to look at this plot and say, "Yes, I think this will serve our viewers well. Go with the 'Runaway Monkey Hockey Star' movie". Funniest part of the movie bar none: The deaf girl is talking like deaf people talk. Bella says to me, "This girl talks worse than Miles." She is 5. He is 3. I am dying laughing.

Higglytown Heroes- Obviously thought up by someone on meth. Everyone in the show are Russian Nesting Dolls, and when the smaller ones get frightened, they hop inside the bigger ones, regardless if the bigger ones like it or not. This could, theoretically, lead to a situation, like the Apocalypse, where the biggest person in the world could be hopped into by the rest of the 6.791 billion people, which would surely cause some gastrointestinal discomfort. Also, the squirrel is voiced by the secretary from Ferris Bueller's Day Off with a weird Fargo accent. Just makes the show more bizarre.

Handy Manny- Wilmer Valderrama's attempt to become the most sensible kids show since Mr Rogers, which it is, but even with the anthropomorphic tools, it's really boring. The antithesis to the "A Pup Named Scooby Doo" plots, these center around Handy Manny being hard working and resourceful, while his tools bicker about stuff. Remember when your mom used to put Mr Rogers on to make you settle down, because it took him 10 minutes to change shoes and put on a gay sweater? This is Handy Manny.

Mickey Mouse Clubhouse- Finally, a show that would make Walt Disney mad enough to break out of the cryogenic chamber he's stored in along with Ted Williams' head, John Henry Williams' testicles, and Austin Powers' mojo. Mickey and friends are all CG now (take that Steamboat Willie) and are focusing on problem solving, instead of general hijinks. Pete, from the Beagle Boys, has been reduced to an oppotunistic antagonist, and Donald Duck thinks things out, instead of having the giant spazzes he's known for.

Guess it shows me that I'm getting old, because I'm finding fault in cartoons, but screw you, ours were better...

Skotes' Wedding Reception

So since I've been requested to write about Skotes' wedding reception, I figured I might as well break it down by the minute, as I remember it. If you remember something differently, chances are you were drunk.

7:30 PM: I leave my house. I ask Amy to read the directions to the Gale Mansion on the invite. She looks at the invite. There is a small, rudimentary map drawn on it in colored pencil. It says, "For complete directions, look on the internet." This angers me.

7:47 PM: Driving aimlessly around South Minneapolis, hoping to avoid gang wars and crack dealers. The invite says that the Gale Mansion is in the "Mansion District". I didn't know there was a mansion district. I am lost.

7:58 PM: Accidentally find the correct mansion. There is no place to park nearby. Amy suggests we use valet. I am convinced the Valet drivers will steal my truck and go joyriding, a la Ferris Bueller's Day Off. We drive around the block.

8:01 PM: We are on the next block. There is a small insane asylum on this block. Insane people are milling around the front of it, most likely doing very insane things. There are parking spots by the insane people. We do not park there. KT does and apparently lives to tell about it.

8:04: We park a few blocks away by a park. We begin to walk to the mansion. I get paranoid that my lights are malfunctioning and will not turn off and my battery will die and the insane people will boil Amy and I alive in a large cauldron as we are leaving. I stand and stare at my truck for 3 minutes until the lights go off.

8:07: We enter the mansion. The first thing I notice is that I am the most casually dressed person in there. I mention this revelation to Amy. She tells me I am ALWAYS the most casually dressed person anywhere. I am somewhat hurt by her candor.

8:08: We run into Little Ras. I told him beforehand that I was wearing a yellow shirt and khakis and that he should do the same because then we'd look like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito in Twins. Obviously he has not taken my advice because he is dressed more nicely than me.

8:11: I learn that we are not being served dinner. I am hungry and angry about this. A waiter carrying a tray of meatballs walks by. I grab many meatballs and eat them quickly. They are spicier than I had assumed. I say, "That's one spicy Meat-za-ball!!" to no one in particular. The waiter and Ras laugh at me. I notice that the waiter is actually a waitress with boy hair. This confuses my loins.

8:17: Goose is looking bald and dapper. He's telling a story about how a kid he coached at Hamline is doing well in Rookie Ball. I tell him the kid is in "A" ball. He says something snotty along the lines of, "I think I know my own players." I tell him he is an idiot and we bet two dollars. He text messages the kid. "A" ball. I now only owe Goose 48 dollars which he may or may not ever receive.

8:19: Matty G calls someone and says he'll be there in 10 minutes. "10 minutes" is a Matty G euphemism for "A really long time from now." We all will be surprised if he makes it by 9.

8:25: I spill a bunch of water on the floor and then blame the pitcher it came in. I also eat some item containing seafood solely because it came by on a tray carried by the boy/girl waiter/waitress.

8:30: Amy and Jane are sitting on a couch talking about uninteresting things. I tell them they are sitting on a fainting couch. They tell me I am wrong. Screw them. Like they know much about fainting couches. It was a fainting couch, deal with it.

8:31: Deets arrives and apologizes for being late. We tell him he beat Matty G. He takes absolutely no solace in this fact.

8:40: Still haven't met Skotes' new bride. We begin to openly question whether or not there is a bride, or whether Skotes just gave up and married Matt B.

9:02: Matty G arrives with much fanfare, looking very satisfied with himself.

9:10: Matt B and the maid of honor give speeches. Apparently there are numerous people in the crowd who got married on Sept 11, including Matt B which lends further credence to the now oft repeated rumor that Matt B and Skotes are married to each other. I am trapped behind many women and a glass door so I can't see anything. I try to duck down and stand up on my tiptoes so I can see the two people giving speeches by staring underneath a lady's armpit or over her head. I notice that another woman is doing this as well. We notice each other. I laugh and remark that it's like we're on a teeter-totter together. She either does not understand, or she thinks I'm creepy. She moves away from me.

9:15: The lobby is crowded. Someone mentions that there is a porch upstairs. We decide to form a clique of old baseball players and their wives and girlfriends and head up there. I load up on appy's first along with Little Ras. The appy's consist of millions of different kinds of cheese, crackers, and little racks of lamb. I grab a pound of cheese and crackers, and 2 little lambs. I shove Little Ras forward when he gets distracted by something shiny because I don't want to walk up the stairs alone with that much cheese and crackers.

9:16: The porch we heard about is filled with many people laughing obnoxiously. I sit down in the lobby in a fainting chair (Screw you, that's what it is) and begin shoveling cheese and crackers into my mouth. Amy comes over and steals one of my baby lambs. I look at her with utter contempt but continue eating cheese and crackers. One of the cheeses smells exactly like feet. I eat it anyway. It's not bad. Goose begins channeling his inner bartender (or inner bitch) and fetching drinks for any and all who request them.

9:40: We move to a different upstairs room, painted pink and with many frilly, lace valances topping the windows. Half the team turns gay.

9:45: Food begins telling an outrageous story that nearly justifies becoming a level 3 sex offender in his mind, about a young-ish girl who stripped naked and asked him to "fuck her brains." We are all perplexed at this. "Did she say 'out'?" I ask in horror. Laughter ensues, but I am thinking that doing anything to anyone's brains is at best gross and at worst criminal. The picture in my mind frightens me all night.

9:50: Goose is on his 3rd beer and mentions how drunk he is getting. We roll our eyes at him. He then begins to tell many stories, some funny, but most only partially relevant. I learn that he hit a guy in the leg with a golf ball and didn't even have the decency to yell "fore" or "look out" beforehand. He also mentions he wants to have a party where everybody hangs out and gets really drunk. No one pays attention to him.

9:55: I go looking for a place to pee, preferably a bathroom. I find one but Goose is outside banging on the door and the pee zips back up into my kidneys. I tell him to stop, but once he's had 3 beers, apparently it's a waste of time. I finally pee and leave. He goes in and stays in there for a while. Nobody knows what he is doing.

10:00: Someone keeps trying to open the door behind the wives and girlfriends. This scares them.

10:05: A cameraman comes in and starts taking many pictures. People are annoyed by him for some reason but he is oblivious to this. Hoping to distract them, I take a circular cracker from the large plate of cheese and crackers, say "Body of Christ", and place the entire thing in my mouth, like communion. It barely fits and my mouth gets all dry from chewing it up. People are confused by my behavior, especially Jess, who begins questioning my sanity.

10:15: I go to get more baby lambs since Amy ate 50% of my lambs before. To my horror, the lambs have been replaced with cake. I look all around for more lambs, even under the table. I find none. I am sad to the point of crying. We bring up a lot of cake.

10:16: We couldn't find any forks. Food goes away for a while, and returns with many forks. He is hailed as a hero/sexual deviant.

10:20: Matt B comes into the pink room and continues an argument that has been going on since Skotes bachelor party that Skotes throws harder than Matty G, but with less command. This argument has gotten tiresome. We still have not met the bride so it stands to reason that Matt B. is sticking up for Skotes in this argument because they are married.

10:40: We finally meet the bride. She is very pretty and seems to genuinely like Skotes. Myth, busted.

10:45: 3 conversations about fantasy football break out simultaneously. The girls start yawning. Goose is near a coma. The end is near.

11:00: Everyone abruptly gets up and leaves including Natron (who hasn't been mentioned yet), and his girlfriend (who is cool because she went to USD, like me.)

11:01: I give the photographer a friendly pat on the butt as I walk out. I'm not sure why.

11:05: We say our goodbyes and walk to our cars. I tell KT and Jess to scream loudly if they are attacked by a roving gang of lunatics on the way to their car. I hear nothing so I assume they're OK.

Congrats Skotes. It was a fun and entertaining night.

Brian goes to Victoria's Secret

I've figured out over the years that I'm not that much of a fashionista. I'm usually the most casually dressed guy at a wedding, I'm not sure where my dress socks are, and I wear a t-shirt and shorts to work every day (unless it's really cold, then I wear jeans and a hoodie), and one time I forgot to wear shoes. I'll probably be called a sexual predator before I'm called a metrosexual.

Sometimes I go to Victoria's Secret though, to pick out clothes and stuff for my wife, and when I say "stuff" I mean underwear that shows your whole butt (but not your butthole). You'd think this would be a recipe for disaster, and that I'd come home with stuff 8 sizes too big, and garments that were just plain goofy looking, but you'd be wrong.

For some reason, and I haven't quite figured it out yet, Victoria's Secret employees love me, like straight, done-a-bunch-of-ecstacy love. Perhaps it's all about the sale, and these employees are nothing more than clothed prostitutes selling things other than space in their various orifices, but I tend to believe I'm actually really likable because of how naive I act in the presence of hot chicks and skimpy butt huggers.

I've developed a foolproof method for getting help picking out items at Victoria's Secret. It goes like this.

1.) Wander into the store looking overwhelmed, but excited, like you just tripped and fell into a pile of naked ladies.

2.) Grab a pair of underpants and hold them up to a light, like you're trying to see through them. This will let people know that you're serious about being in the store, and you aren't just here to ogle the mannequins.

3.) Look around for an employee that is approximately the same size as my wife. I can't for the life of me ever remember her measurements, the only thing that comes to mind is 4T, and I'm pretty sure that's for my son, and I had a really awkward encounter about 5 years ago at Sears with a chunky sales girl.

Me: I need a blue shirt for a girl.
Chunky Sales Girl: Like a sweater?
Me: No, with buttons and stuff, you know, like a button shirt or whatever...
CSG: Ohhhh Kay. Um, what size is she?
Me: I don't know, is little a size?
CSG: Not really. Is she like me?
Me: Not really. I said little. (This qualifies as one of "those things" that accidentally slips out of my mouth periodically)
CSG: Well, look over there. (Points ambiguously to a large section of the store and angrily stampedes off)

That's why I look for somebody the same size.

4.) When you find her, begin stalking around her looking at items, even if she's in the socks section. Eventually she will ask you if you need help finding something.

5.) I usually reply to this by saying something like, "I need some underpants. For my wife. She's a girl. Like you."

6.) She'll bring me over to the underpants area and ask what size she is. This is one of the only times, outside of the strib club, where it's perfectly acceptable to stare at her goods for a long time, before you reply, "about your size."

7.) Victoria's Secret employees really like this. The girl will then go out of her way to describe various articles of clothing, and why they are or are not sexy. This is fun for everyone. She might even bring other girls over for their opinions. This is the closest I will ever get to one of those "naked slumber parties" with pillow fights and serious girl-on-girl action that I see on Cinemax periodically, so I will milk it for all it's worth.

One note of warning here. Occasionally there is a guy working at Victoria's Secret. If a guy ever comes over and tries to help you, punch him in the crotch as hard as you can and then quickly, and covertly, leave the entire mall. For security purposes, it may be a good idea to never return.

Again, this method is foolproof, if you do it correctly. If it doesn't work for you, you are obviously a gross pervert and you should go directly to jail.

Paul Returns

I used to have this little "friend" at the gym. His name was Paul, and he liked to follow me around and talk to me about things he'd done over the weekend, like go to a bar and ogle girls butts, and drink red bull vodkas and be loud and obnoxious, and all the other usual stuff guys talk to each other about.

He was a little guy, maybe 5'6", and he usually wore T-Shirts with beer logos on them, or the names of obscure restaurants that I'd never heard of or been to before (Shakey's Fish Lodge, home of the $7.99 tuna melt). He looked somewhat similar to Sven Sungaard, and he smelled like lotion and hair gel.

He was a fairly pleasant, upbeat person, but I just wasn't really interested in listening to him prattle on about stuff I didn't really care about, so I began actively avoiding him, and ignoring him when he pranced on by, and even hiding in the handicapped toilet for 45 minutes (much to the chagrin of the paraplegic guy who had to take a massive dump) until he left the locker room. Eventually, he got the hint and I stopped seeing so much of him, which was refreshing, because then I could spend my time doing the things I enjoyed, like lifting weights, and sitting there trying to look marginally cool.

About a month ago, I started noticing him around a lot again however. He was just as cheerful as ever, but I could see he'd added about 25 pounds directly to his stomach which was now poking out from under his beer t-shirt like a girl in her 2nd trimester of pregnancy. The thought of Paul being pregnant amused me, but I assumed that even little Peter Pan guys aren't capable of that so it had to be one of two things. Either he got a desk job for the first time ever (Side Note: I have no idea what his occupation was before, I just assumed "greeter" at Wal-Mart), or he met a girl. I found out because he found me.

Paul: Dude what's going on??
Me (acting distracted): Hey, what's happening?
Paul: Haven't talked to you in for EVER!
Me: (staring at the drinking fountain): Yeah, what happened, did you die?
Paul: Yeah, and went to heaven. I met my fiancee!!

Bingo! Aaaaaaand you're gay for saying you died and went to heaven when you met a girl. This is not a movie from the 40's. Guys shouldn't say stuff like that to other guys, especially since he had worked so hard in the past to cultivate his image as a cool party guy to me. Not that I was buying it anyway, but still...

Paul: Hey, you wanna meet her? Rach, come here babes.

This was not part of the deal. I look around for a fire alarm to yank. I am stuck. Now, had you asked me to picture the type of girl that would date Paul, I would have said petite and perky and chipper, kind of like him. I figured the two of them would skitter around and pollenate flowers and sprinkle pixie dust on people or something, I don't know.

I don't know how to describe the girl that came over. Instead of a happy pixie, she looked more like the ass end of a chupacabra. She was very tall, and very pale, almost to the point of being gray, and she had one of those noses that bends out and down, so it looked like it might eventually grow right into her mouth, which would at least make for a conversation starter. She looked like she was having a dreadful time at the gym. I started to wonder about the dynamic of that relationship. Cheerful, bouncy Paul and sad, chupacabra assed face Rachel whose nose is slowly growing into her mouth. The strange thing is, they'll probably get married and live happily ever after. Who can predict relationships?

Stop Saying It!!

Sometimes I find myself using the adjective "Gay" a lot to describe most everything happening around me. It really is kind of an apt description for any person, place, or situation that I deem less than acceptable. Some examples:

-Mushrooms are gay!
-Hornets stingers' are gay!
-Running up a hill is gay!
-Your face is really gay looking.
-This pasty smells gay.
-Your giant scab is way gay.
-I got a ticket for urinating in public. How gay.
-This manta ray feels really gay.

And on and on and on, ad nauseum. Every so often, somebody, usually a girl somebody, will come up to me and say one of two things. She either says:

1.) "Brian, calling everything gay is disrespectful to gay people"- I usually reply, "You're gay for saying that." I disagree with this assumption for a few reasons. First, I am in no way biased towards homosexuals. I think they should share the same rights as everyone, and if they want to get married or whatever, go ahead. Not my business.

Secondly, why would gay people feel disrespected by me calling my friend gay because he trips and falls down a hill and lands in a big pile of mud and cigarette butts? Clumsily falling down a hill, and being attracted to someone of the same sex aren't even close to the same thing, so how could anyone draw enough of a parallel to be offended? That's right, if you think gay people are offended by the adjective gay, you are insulting their intelligence, and that's just racist!

or

2.) Sometimes people say to me, "You should spell it "Ghey" so it can be differentiated. This is perplexing to me. Do I have word bubbles coming out my mouth like a comic book character and just not know it? Plus, I don't want to spell it "Ghey" because people won't know what I'm talking about. They might think I mean Curds and Ghey or something, and who wants to eat Curds and Ghey. Not me!

Besides, changing the spelling of a word doesn't change the word. If I go around emailing girls and referring to them as "Kuntz" I think the impact will still be the same. It's the intent and the person behind the word that determines whether it's offensive or not. Always has been, always will be, and since I have now proven to be of quality character I'd like to leave with this final thought.

It's gay when your bones itch!

Why I love Amy

Sometimes I take for granted how lucky I am to have found a nice girl who puts up with the strange things that periodically force their way out of my mouth. We just got back from a vacation to Michigan, and there were numerous things I said that would make the average person run away screaming. A small sample:

- Me: Did you ever wonder how close you've been to being eaten by a bear in your lifetime?
Her: No. Not really.
Me: Why not? You should.
Her: How would you measure something like that anyway?
Me: Ummmmm, probably in feet.
Her: Hmmm...

- Me (Talking about a poop I did): Ugh, you should have heard it. There were so many different noises. It was like I had a butt harmonica or something.
Her: Hmmm.

-Me: I think from now on I'm going to name all my boogers.
Her: Um... OK.
Me: Yeah, and I'm going to do it in alphabetical order, like hurricanes. Booger Arnold is fast approaching.
Her: Hmmm.

Pretty much she always just says "Hmmm" at the end. I think she might be compiling a list.

Me (after a long time driving): You know what would be a crappy name for a boy? Muriel.
Her: Hmmm.

Me: Check that out. Is that a bridge?
Her: There's no bridge.
Me: I see this. Must have been a mirage.
Her: You can't see a bridge mirage!
Me: Yuh-huh. I just did. Oh, and I think the kids are asleep.
Her: No they aren't.

Me (Driving thru Gay, Michigan): HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Her: Let's get out of here.

Me: I WANT A PASTY!!!!!!!!!! (Yelling this while honking the horn) (Side note: I have no idea what a pasty is, but I wanted one. BAD! All the pasty stores were closed Sunday and Monday which was confounding and angering me.)

Me: See that guy walking over there. I'm pretty sure he's dead.

Yep, that was me. And she still loves me. Which is nice. I love you back. Thanks for listening to this nonsensical prattle for 12 years. By the way, I bought a chinchilla. SURPRISE!!

Mr Gray comes to town

One time, when I was about 12, I took a gray shit. I don't what in the world I had been eating the past few days, but I assume I wasn't gnawing on sheetrock or anything. Anyhow, I got done poopin', looked in the toilet, and my poop was totally devoid of color (except gray).

So naturally, I was thrilled. We had this camcorder we had borrowed and I was going to tape my gray poop, but the camcorder wouldn't turn on. This was possibly because I had accidentally whacked it against the front door super hard when I was sprinting outside to tape a squirrel or something the day before.

In retrospect, I probably should have been concerned about my gray poop, because as far as I can tell from the internet, only baby poop is supposed to be gray. But whatever, I was 12.

The reason this story even comes up is because I was talking to this guy this morning, and he was talking about how the insulation from his attic leaked out the other.

Guy: Yeah, so I went upstairs and there was this gray shit all over the floor.
Me: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Guy: What's funny about that?

This is why I get funny looks a lot of times...

I Suck at Projects

There's a lot of stuff I don't like all that much about being a grownup. Responsibility, achy breaky body parts, and extra backfat are just a few of them. But one thing I really enjoy about being a grownup is that I don't have to do projects ever again. I sucked at projects for two reasons.

1.) I never did them until the last minute-The teacher would say, "Your grade will hinge completely on this 15 page paper due in 4 months." Then I'd do absolutely nothing, until one day I would awaken to panic because the stupid paper was due in 7 hours. So I'd cobble something together using huge font, and making a bunch of stuff up because this was before the internet wrote your papers for you (i.e. It's a well known fact that Abraham Lincoln invented the steam powered locomotive.) Then I'd barely get it done, print it out, run to class, and forget my disk in the hard drive. I forgot my disk in the hard drive like 46 times in college. I hated that.

2.) Projects were dumb- It's hard to get enthusiastic about dumb things. It's a simple matter of choice. Let's say you were 11, and your choices were either write a paper about the Pilgrims, or..... play tackle football at the park all day with your friends, and then go egg Old Man Fran's house, what would you choose?

With that in mind, here's a small sampling of dumb projects I had to do throughout my life:

-Kindergarten- Make Smokey the Bear out of a brown paper sack. I couldn't cut with scissors yet, so this complicated things, plus I glued the Smokey head on the wrong part of the sack. So instead of being proud, I crumpled up my Smokey the Bear, shoved him in my backpack, and cried on the bus. (Side note: The only two times I cried in school were both on the same day in Kindergarten. The first time was because I rammed my shins really hard into some cubbies.)

-2nd Grade- Draw a picture of the USSR- The USSR, in case you didn't know, is the hardest fricking thing to draw in the world and I could barely draw a concentric circle at the time. So my USSR wound up looking like a giant booger. I hated the USSR after that. I was glad when Communism fell for different reasons than most.

-5th Grade-Write a story about a leaf- This was supposed to help us think abstractly or something. Instead, I wrote an extremely pointless story about this leaf floating around. To make matters worse, I got in trouble because I named the leaf "Senor Dildo" because I thought this would make the story better. I didn't even know what a dildo was, I just thought it was a synonym for "jerk".

7th Grade- Make a Solar Collector that would cook a weiner- This was in Shop Class, and everything I did in that class was a giant failure. I spent forever trying to get this thing to look like everybody else's, and then the weiner didn't cook. I was so mad! The only consolation was that there's a picture in the 7th grade yearbook of me pointing at my weiner.

8th Grade- Long report on Dogs- I don't remember how this became the subject I had to report on, but I know I cut out a bunch of pictures of various dog breeds from one of those old Encyclopedia Brittanica sets from the 50's. This set was old enough so that it mentioned that the Korean War was an "ongoing conflict", and there was a large section in it on "The American Negroe". Anyhow, after I cut a bunch of dog pictures out of this old encyclopedia, I realized that all we had in my house was double sided tape. But being that the report was due that morning, I had to use it. So of course all the pages stuck together. It was like a Hustler magazine, except the gratuitous beaver shots were replaced with German Shephards. It was so bad that I even had a teacher who didn't even teach the same subject come up to me later that week and say, "I saw that dog report you did. Jesus, that was terrible."

9th Grade-SLUDGE- Everybody from St Louis Park remembers this because it was mandatory, and gayer than Kevin Spacey. I believe the object of this project was to take a big beaker of crud, and determine what it was made of. This took many weeks to complete, and at no time did I have any idea what I was doing. I was fortunate to have had a partner who had a little bit of aptitude in this area, so he dragged me along like a fat girl stuck in a bus door. At the end, I turned in this long drawn out report that I did not understand. The teacher came by and shook my hand. "Congratulations Brian, you've completed SLUDGE." I wanted to punch him in the balls and make him drink the SLUDGE for this comment.

College-Create a fictional shoe company-This was in the last business school class of my college career. It was a class called Business Policy and Strategy, and basically the success of the shoe company determined your class grade. The problem was that there was no discernable "strategy" in the whole exercise. You made your shoes either crappy and inexpensive, or nice and pricey, or somewhere in the middle. Then you put your specs into a computer and it spit out your results. The first two times we went cheap and did terrible. So then we switched to expensive shoes..... and did terrible. Finally, for fun, we made shitty shoes at a really expensive price. Jackpot. Made tons of fictional money. This was supposed to be a Business School student's most important college class, the one that tied the rest together, like The Dude's rug. This is why I don't go around bragging about my degree.

So yes, being a grownup is sometimes not so fun, but at least there's no more projects. Whenever you feel like killing yourself, just recite that mantra.

This one guy

Sometimes I get phone calls in the middle of the night. They are sort of prank calls I guess, but also really weird too. I've been getting them since I was about 19. I think there's some guy out there that really enjoys pranking me, but he only enjoys it every once in a great while. It's a little disturbing. The first time this guy called me I was in college.

Me (Totally asleep): Um... Hello?

Guy: Hello. Your arms aren't long enough to touch God.

Me: What?

Guy: Your arms aren't long enough to touch God.

Me: OK.

Guy: OK, bye.

What was that all about?

So then periodically he calls and says strange things which leave me confused. One time he called and said "Jackrabbits" over and over. One time he called and farted into the phone. One time he left me a message and the only thing I could hear was "The Magnificent Seven" in the background.

Anyhow, I want to catch this guy and interrogate him. I'm pretty sure that one day he is going to try and kill me and I want to be ready. I'm also sure it's the same guy who breaks into my furnace room at night and makes weird groaning noises that scare me. I'm going to get him.

Helpful Dating Tips

As a man who has successfully navigated the shark-infested dating waters and come out with an intelligent, beautiful wife, I feel it incumbent upon me to pass along my foolproof dating tips that will help out even the most hopeless dork. One caveat: If these tips somehow do not work well for you, it is definitely your fault. The tips are flawless.

1.) Go for looks over brains- I know this runs contrary to other advice, which says someday you're going to be old and funny looking and you want somebody you can talk to, but if you really need somebody to talk to that badly, just get another friend. If you're so desperate that you're willing to make "personality" a viable criterion then you should probably just give up and work on being the best masturbater you can possibly be.

2.) The First Date- Drive around forever, then take her someplace really stupid, like a Pizza Hut 40 miles away in a bad neighborhood. If she is still impressed with you, you're in.

3.) Other Girlfriends- Never talk about them, and if you do, do NOT refer to them by their real names. Instead, devise a complicated code of letters and numbers so you can talk about them without her knowing.

X5J14 = Susie
Y9?12 = Megan
????? = That one girl

4.) Meeting her parents- Meeting her parents is a symbolic, if not special occasion. It proves that she likes you enough to show you to somebody who matters, not just somebody who would be impressed with the tattoo of the marijuana leaf on your neck. When you meet her parents, act exactly like Eddie Haskell from Leave it to Beaver except with a 2000's flare to it. You should try to say things like:

"Damn, Mrs Jones, you look smokin' today in them elastic waistband jeans. Can someone say 'Cougar?'" or

"Can I help you put out those bitch ass plates Mrs Jones?"

Don't try to say anything to the Dad, because chances are he's plotting your death.

5.) If she starts talking about getting married and you aren't ready, immediately bring up Brock Lesnar, and/or Mixed Martial Arts. This will at least make her pause for serious consideration. If you start talking about getting married and she isn't ready, she is NOT your girlfriend, and you just don't know it.

6.) If you feel like the relationship just isn't working out, you might want to say something like,

"Um, I'll probably call you tomorrow or um....nrnnririerih (trail off)"
"I have a really contagious STD"

If those don't work, then try.

"I'm gonna eat my own poop later. Wanna help?"

With these 6 flawless tips, you should be able to attract the most classy, intelligent, attractive women that are out there. If you don't, it's because you are dumb.

The Correct Way to Handle Other Families Issues

Here's a situation that I never quite know how to react to. Maybe you can help.

Last weekend I took my kids hiking, and then on a picnic. There were a lot of other little kids there. When it comes to interacting with other families, I'm never quite sure where you draw the line.

For instance, I was watching this little kid playing by my kids at the park. He was kind of fat, and he had on a tiny hat. He looked a little bit like "Spanky" from The Little Rascals. Suddenly, Spanky decided he had done just about enough playing and so he left and began walking towards what I assume were his parents. I watched him go because I was making fun of his hat silently to myself. ("Fat Guy in Little Hat" "Is that a Twins yarmulke?") etc. As I was making fun of him, he abruptly stopped walking, dug his hand into his pants, and began furiously picking his butt. I wanted to tell somebody but there was nobody within earshot, so I just kind of told myself, "That kid sure is picking his butt!" So he picked his butt for a good 90 seconds. Then he ran over to his mom and dug a giant handful of fritos out of the bag with his butt-picking hand. Then he started chomping the handful, not even bothering to extract the fritos one by one. Finally, he shoved the fritos in his mom's face and she started eating them.

I wondered to myself, should I tell this lady she is eating poopy fritos with kid saliva all over them? I thought that if anybody ever told me that, I would be thankful, and I would discontinue eating the fritos. Ultimately I chose not to tell anyone, because I had to pee, and by the time I got done peeing I had forgotten about the whole ordeal, and I didn't remember it again until we were driving home.

Maybe I should have told her, or maybe that would have been invading that families' space, I'm not sure. I know that one time I saw this lady and she had 3 hornets crawling around on her thigh. I said, "YOU HAVE 3 HORNETS CRAWLING ON YOUR THIGH!!" So, I don't always sit idly by and watch bad things happen to people. But I'm also really scared of hornets so that might have had something to do with it.

I guess in situations like that, you just have to decide on a case-by-case basis whether or not to mention something. Most of the time I would say don't interfere with the show though, especially if the person probably won't be any worse off because of the situation. Or if somebody is waving an uzi and/or machete around.

Brian takes his Family to a Ghetto Ass Zoo

If you scout around a little like I do, it's really easy to find small zoos all over the place. Most people don't know this, but there are like 400 small zoos in Minnesota, or possibly less. So, last friday, I decided to take my family to this hiking area down in Southeastern Minnesota, that also had a little zoo.

When we got there, the first thing we noticed was that this was definitely a ghetto ass zoo filled with mainly retarded animals, which was a bonus. I mean retarded, retarded, like real retarded animals. It was sweet. Here are some things you might see at a ghetto ass zoo with real retarded animals:

- A retarded wolf that looked like it was having a constant heart attack. It's tongue was too big and it's eyes were all swelled up. It was nightmare inducing

- A badger whose cage was a large bin of sand with chunks of concrete sticking out. He dug a big hole and popped out every once in a while to look menacing. In this case his enclosure was retarded.

- A cougar who, in plain view of everyone, slurped his balls for at least an hour straight. This prompted many people to remark, "Awww, the big kitty is taking a bath." Why is it whenever people see an animal slurping his balls they always think he's bathing? He's not taking a bath. His elbows and paws and head are very dirty. He is slurping his balls. Every so often I'd peek over at his cage and there he was, with his foot up in the air, still slurping his balls.

- A deer that pooped every 30 seconds. He was like a pez dispenser.

- A bunch of rusted out, empty cages. Whenever you're in a ghetto ass zoo filled with real retarded animals and you see a bunch of rusted out, empty cages, it means the retarded animals are dying quickly. A bird had flown in one of the empty cages. Doesn't that make you uncomfortable? You know, like maybe you're looking at the buffalo habitat, but there's also a duck in there. It makes me feel like the duck is some kind of a burglar, burgling space in other animals habitats. I always yell, "Jerkface Duck, go back to where you came from!!" People stare at me when I yell this.

-Ghetto people. Either skinny, hyper people with track marks up and down their arms and 10 little kids each running around and screaming at nothing, or huge fat people with bib overalls and floral print pants and mesh NASCAR hats with 12 kids running around and screaming at nothing. And smoking. Who smokes at the zoo?

- A Raptor Center- All ghetto ass zoos have a raptor center. Somehow between Jurassic Park and now, raptor went from meaning "dinosaur" to "bird of prey with bad wing injury". All the birds there still look like they could rip a bunny to shreds, but they'd all have to run after the bunny to do it. There was an eagle with no wings there. He couldn't even imitate the back of a quarter

-An Interactive Learning Building- Another staple of the ghetto ass zoo. This is a building that has snakes in it. It might have some bones and fossils too, but mostly just snakes. You're supposed to learn from the snakes I guess. Some of the snake cages were empty. This is probably because the snakes are retarded and/or dead.

-A naturalist who looks like a carnie and smells like she sleeps next to the retarded wolf- Only one though because the Ghetto Ass Zoo relies solely on donations and meth heads and morbidly obese people generally would rather steal the donation box than contribute to it.

Ah yes, I love the Ghetto Ass Zoo, so look around, chances are there's one within walking distance of your house

Brian and Family Attempt Ladder Golf

So for Father's Day, the kids all got jobs so they could make some money to be able to buy me a gift. My daughter got a job as a mattress tester, which meant for about two hours a night she tested her mattress, and for the next 8 hours, she tested mine, and drooled all over my pillow, and shoved her doll's pointy feet into my vertebrae. My son got a job as a Carpet Tester, which meant that he ran around the house spilling things on the carpet to see how well it would absorb those things. The dogs even got internships as urine distributors, but we'll talk about that later...

Anyhow, they got me this nice gift called Ladder Golf, which goes by a whole host of other names which generally denegrates the Polish. It's this game with two golf balls attached together by a thin rope, and the object of the game is to fling the golf balls/string thing and get it to wind around one of the ladders. (Side note: If you're a severe idiot about putting things together like me, and I mean like one step above being-in-a-coma type of idiot, putting together the ladders can be so frustrating that you just want to throw the whole thing in the fire while running around screaming and raping strangers.) But eventually I got it OK. I'm grown.

So we get everything set up, and are ready to play. Me and my son, versus my wife and my daughter. Let me interject for a second here and say that as the game began I was still a little on edge and tense and also feeling very competitive since I had actually won the fight with the stupid ladder thing and not started screaming or raping anybody nearby in the process.

The kids are all excited. I'm excited too, yelling things like, "We're gonna whup your asses!!" and "Boys rule, girls drool," and other such taunts which were sure to inspire my 5 and 3 year olds to play their best and have fun all the while respecting the idea of good sportsmanship.

My daughter steps up to throw. She has never played this game before. This is the first ladder golf throw in her entire life. She throws.... and being 5 she greatly overestimates the "oomph" you need to put on golf balls and rope to get them to go 15 feet in the air. Greatly overstimates this. The ball/rope thing flies over the ladder. The ball/rope thing flies over the backyard fence. The ball/rope thing lands on the neighbor's roof. The ball/rope thing rolls down the neighbor's roof and sticks in the neighbor's gutter. I stare at the gutter. My daughter and wife stare at the gutter. My son stares at the gutter. There is silence. Finally my son says,

Son: The balls are stuck.

Everyone looks worried about this. I try to ease the tension.

Me: What the crap kind of a throw was that???

The game of ladder golf has taken on a completely different meaning. My wife gets the real ladder and begins to walk over to the neighbor's house to retrieve the balls. I sit in the grass and pout, and swear softly, and rip grass from in between my legs.

Finally after 20 minutes, we get the balls down (notice how I say we, like I had much to do with it.) My daughter is extremely gentle after that. Her next few throws go like this.

Really short
Really far left
Really really far left
10 minute stoppage in play because balls are all tangled up. I get mad because I have no patience for knots either, so instead of carefully untangling rope, I yank fiercely at the balls in all angles, and stomp around when they won't come undone out of fear.
Really short again
Backwards

My son, on the other hand, doesn't even pay any attention to the ladder, instead choosing to fling the balls as hard as he possibly can. His first few throws go like this.

40 feet left, rolls under the big pine tree
50 feet right, rolls right up by the back door
10 feet right and way too far, smashes high chair we have left outside for no good reason
Way too high and far, smashes into outside of porch
Way far left, smashes dog in lungs. Dog makes a "Buhhhhh" noise, then goes and hides under the trampoline and whines

So, sufficed to say, our first attempt at ladder golf did not go according to plans. We're probably playing again tonight. Watch out for your lungs, Burnsville.

Bikers, Locker Rooms, and Perverts

Every once in a while the stars align, the planets revolve in perfectly concentric circles, and the child predator's internet connections go bad all at the same time. When this happens, you can really see some entertaining things. It happened the other day when I was at the gym.

I was walking in, when I noticed that they had switched the locker rooms around. The Men's Locker room had become the Women's Locker room, and vice versa. I immediately had this thought.

"Hmm, it would be really hilarious to me if some idiot walked into the wrong locker room."

No sooner had I thought that when a big surly biker guy walked up and started shuffling into the women's locker room. Now, the two ladies folding towels nearby saw him too, but they only saw his back, and he had a big, long, braided ponytail hanging off his head. So, from the back, it was difficult to tell if he was a big, surly biker guy, or just a big, fat, stinky girl.

The two towel folders were looking at each other, in an obvious state of concern. I couldn't take it any more so I said:

Me: A dude just walked in there.
Towel Folder: Good LORD!!!

About one second later there was a bunch of screaming. It was like one of those old cartoons where a mouse walks into a circus tent full of elephants. I am jumping up and down in place and pointing at the locker room hole by now. What a great show!!

About two seconds after that the biker guy sprints out covering his eyes. He runs right into the large bin of towels that is on wheels. The towel bin falls over and makes a loud noise. The entire gym stops doing anything. The guy is almost crying, he's so upset.

Biker Guy: There are.... WOMEN in the men's locker room!

I start to cry, poop, and pee my pants simultaneously because I am laughing so hard. Then, a gym manager type guy quickly walks up to the biker guy. He looks angry.

Gym Guy (Incredulously): Why did you go in the women's locker room?
Biker Guy (Nearly Hysterical): The Men's room....there were women!!
Gym Guy: This is the Women's Locker room. You can't go in there ever again! OK?

The biker guy takes off. He just runs out the door and leaves. I am really happy to have seen all this.

Here's the kicker. As the smoke starts to clear, I find myself walking back next to the gym manager guy.

Me: Geez, poor guy. He must have been really embarrassed.
Gym Guy: Shit dude, that's the third time he's done that this week.

Let me reiterate. So happy I saw all this!

News you never Hear

Doesn't it get tiring to hear about some guy that gets fed up and goes on a shooting rampage? It's just tedious. You know why? It's because it's always one of two people.

1.) Some guy who just got fired or dumped by his girlfriend runs into his or her work and kills everybody.

2.) Delusional nerds who never talk to anybody except online where they spew violent rhetoric with a screen name like "ZombieSpockBallhairs13" and then one day they run into their school and kill everybody.

Always the same. You know what I want to see? The star player on the basketball team walking around shooting dorks just because he gets peeved at how unbelievably unobservant they are. Didn't you ever want to do that.

Maybe not shoot them, but, didn't you ever see some kid that was always getting picked on, and want to just go over to him and give him a good hard shaking, and say, "Why are you such a freaking dork? You walk around in the same halls I do, you see the kind of stuff that's going to get you picked on, why do you insist on still doing it?? Look at your dandruff! Your shoulders are completely white. Get a better shampoo!! Your breath smells like inside buns left out in the sun. Brush your teeth!! Not that hard."

How about a Janitor that pops out of broom closets and rapes the lunch ladies. That would be interesting huh? How about a guy with multiple personalities raping himself. Now that would be newsworthy. There's all sorts of things like that that you never hear about that would make really great news

-A tornado that touches down in a valley and can't get out so it bounces around in the valley like a pinball forever.
-A talking sheep
-A man who is addicted to slamming his penis in a door
-Joe Mauer gets busted smoking crack at the bus station
-Catholicism and Satanism are basically the same thing.
-Every single person in Rhode Island has at least one testicle.
-A man gets arrested for pooping off the Empire State Building Observation Deck
-Listening to classical music in utero makes your baby 10 times more likely to hate you as a teenager.
- 95% of wizard sightings are actually just women in Burqas.
-People's buttholes start spontaneously and mysteriously growing over.

That would all make great news. Someone needs to make sure all of these things happen. Not me though.

Brian and All his Visitors

I must live in a huckster's paradise for a neighborhood, because there are always people walking around door to door trying to get me to do something. Usually they fall into one of 4 categories:

1.) People trying to get me to worship their god.

Usually the exchange goes something like this.

(When Mormons come)
Mormon: Hello Sir, how are you today?
Me: AAAAAGH!! Mormons! (Slams door and hides in basement for half hour)

(When Jehovah's Witnesses come)
Jehovah's Witness: Hello sir, would you like a copy of the Watchtower?
Me: AAAAAGH!! Jehovah's Witnesses! (Slams door and hides in basement for entire hour)

(When I am fooled)
Person: Hi Sir. Say, that's a nice truck you've got.
Me (Suspiciously): Yeah.....thanks. (Slowly reaches for baseball bat to crush skull of certain home invader)
Person: You look like you have most everything you could want.
Me (Thinking): Is this guy coming on to me?
Me: Well, I'd like a pool table...
Person: But do you really have everything?
Me: No, I want a pool table, remember?
Person: Do you have Jesus Christ in your heart?
Me: Yes! (Always answer "yes" to this question, even if you worship the devil)
Person: God bless you. By the way, I'm a 7th day adventist. I go to church on saturdays. Neat huh?
Me: I still want a pool table.

2.) People selling windows:

First off, windows are really expensive, like 25 thousand dollars expensive. Do door to door salesman think people are just going to give that up on a whim? This is Burnsville, not Neverland. Plus they use really faulty logic that I feel the need to correct them on.

Sales guy: So, with the Energy Tax credit, and the money you'll save on your heating bills, they practically pay for themselves.
Me: Yes, if I live here for the next hundred years.
Sales Guy: No, that's not right.
Me: Yes, if I pay $25,000 for windows, take off the $1500 tax credit, and apply the savings I'll get on my monthly energy bill, and then take the future value of money that I would have received had I merely invested this money, it will take me a good 114 years for these windows to pay for themselves.
Sales Guy: I said "practically" pay for themselves. Pay attention. Now buy the windows. I need my commission check to buy meth.

3.) Fat, unenthusiastic high schoolers selling things for various activities:

"Hi, My name is Jasmine and we're raising funds for our cheerleading trip to Ballsack, MO. Would you care to purchase something from this catalog? While you look at this amalgam of overpriced items, I'm going to fiddle with my Ipod and swear in front of your kids."

I remember when we did fundraisers for Little League. Good old Park South. We sold candy bars. For a dollar. One had nuts, the other did not. For a dollar. Let me repeat that for posterity. One dollar! It's all about the Washington's baby.

Now, this catalog that Jasmine the fat cheerleader gave me had all sorts of things in it. Candy, and candles, and wreathes, and incense, and dog toys, and ice cream, and silverware, and sexy negligees, and pooper scoopers, and, my personal favorite, scented wallpaper paste. All of it was way more than a Washington. But since I'm nothing if not helpful to the causes of fat cheerleaders everywhere, I bought a $17 box of Peanut Butter Chocolate Buckeyes. They'd better be the best fucking buckeyes this side of Ohio, that's all I know.

Me: I want these buckeyes.
Jasmine: Those are $17.
Me: Yes. Buckeyes!
Jasmine: Do you want to pay now?
Me: When do I get my buckeyes?
Jasmine: I dunno, June?
Me: I believe I will pay COD for my buckeyes.
Jasmine: Who's that?

4.)People who want me to donate to strange charities:

I will donate to the ones I've heard of and believe are for good causes. But a lot of times the causes are too bizarre to even consider. Here is a list of organizations I will not be donating to:

-The American Association of those Wrestling With their Sexual Identity.
-The Massachusetts Chapter of People born without anuses
-Burn the National Parks
-Ku Klux Kats
-The Center for Abominable Snowman research
-The Make-A-Wish Disruption Foundation
- The Society of Booger Eaters
- A large group of people who wants money for crack
-The Morbidly Obese Gymnastics Troup of Western Dakota County.
- Save the Mosquitos
- The National Association for the Advancement of Horny Pedophiles (NAAHP)
- The MS Masturbate-A-Thon
-Proposition 62-Kill all people named Brian
-The United Federation of Albanians Who Like to Bone Pandas.


I wish normal people would come to the door. Or better yet, no people.

The American Girl Near Debacle.

My daughter has this doll that Santa Claus got her for Christmas. It is an American Girl Doll and I've spoken of the lunacy associated with having an American Girl doll before. But regardless, she loves the doll and drags it around with her everywhere she goes. Let me just illustrate how much she loves the doll.

It's 3:00 in the morning, my daughter has climbed into bed with us hours earlier, and is now proceeding to slowly shove me off the bed so that by 6:00 I will be resting with my head and one of my arms on my nightstand, and my butt and legs will be dangling precariously off the side. This is a nightly occurance and not even a Sleep number can save me.

Anyhow, I'm asleep, when all of a sudden I am awakened by somebody peeling one of my eyelids open with their fingers. I am dazed and confused.

Me: Huh? What's wrong? A fire? A burglar? Somebody pooped their pants? Gay ninjas entering through the porch windows?

Daughter: Daddy, move it! You're laying on Abbigail's arm!

So there you have it. My daughter loves her doll so much that she is perfectly willing to pick my eyeballs open and wake me from my blissful slumber to tell me that I am sleeping on her doll's arm. I tell her, in no uncertain terms, that I am going to throw her doll out the window (and possibly hit some ninjas) if she wakes me up by pulling my eyelids open again.

So the other day we were playing in the backyard: Me, my wife, my daughter, my son, the dogs, and Abby with her dad-layed-on arm, all playing and picking up the occasional rogue dog turd. The next day, we can't find Abby. We look all over, can't find her. My daughter is sad, but leaves to go to daycare without her. I check around more thouroughly, knowing that not finding her will undoubtedly cause a spaz of epic proportions sometime in the near future. After 15 minutes of searching I spot her laying out behind the trampoline. She has been outside all night. And it rained!!

I rush out to get Abby. She is very wet. She smells like rainwater and old leaves. I panic. I call my wife, tell her I have located Abby, and remark that she is soaking wet and smells like a homeless guy from Seattle.

Me: I just tossed her in the dryer. I hope that helps.
Wife: What? What if the dryer melts her head or something?
Me: Um.....

I am worried now. I think to myself that it would be much worse to have a dry doll with a melted head than a wet doll that smells like October. Thinking quickly, I pull up the American Girl website, and send them this email:

"Hello,

My daughter left her doll out in the rain yesterday. Now she is wet and smells like leaves. I was going to put her in the dryer, but then I got scared that her head would melt. Is it OK to put her in the dryer? If not, what can I do?

Brian Jensen

P.S. She smells funny"

I got this response back.

"Dear brian,

We are sorry to hear that your daughter left her Bitty Baby out in the rain. Please do not put her in the dryer. Her plastic parts may melt or become warped. Instead, you can put her in front of a fan that blows cool air and try drying her that way. If all else fails you can send her to the Doll Hospital"

That's how I learned about the Doll Hospital. You can actually send your doll to the special American Girl doll hospital. You have to fill out an admittance form, where you list the doll's issues (i.e. Smells like leaves, missing torso, melted head, etc) and they will fix her up and send her back with a hospital gown and hat, a good health certificate, and a band-aid (although I'm not sure how relevant a band-aid would be if the doll had a missing torso.)

As it turned out, Abby just kind of dried on her own and stopped smelling like old leaves and things went back to normal. But it was a close call. Just another example of what a goofy world we live in. The Doll Hospital. I wonder who works there.

In case you get bored...

Here's something really fun to do that I bet you've never done. Go into the library and grab a book. Then, instead of reading the book quietly and not drawing attention to yourself, do the following:

1.) Scream at the top of your lungs, "OH NO, IT CAN'T BE TRUE?!!"

2.) Throw the book in the air and begin loudly vomiting on everything and everyone you see. (Side note: You'll have to actually vomit for this to be really cool, so prepare for that too.)

3.) Strip naked and sprint around, bumping into bookshelves and knocking them over, all the while lamenting about the lack of card catalogs in the library.

4.) Sprint up to a librarian and ask her a question that makes absolutely no sense, like, "Does Air have wings?" Or make up your own.

5.) Microfiche your butt, and then make people look at it. Mock and ridicule them if they don't know how to use a microfiche.

6.) Calmly put your clothes back on and explain your actions by quoting a secondary character in the book you just threw up in the air and vomited on.

7.) Run, you are going to be arrested.

If you pull it off, you are officially awesome.

Brian Takes a Stand.

Most of the time I like to think I'm pretty passive about things that bug me. If you read this consistantly, you know there are quite a few things that bother me, but for the most part, I try to be understanding. I'm far from perfect, so I try not to let things like common decency, and acting like a human being from this planet cloud my vision. I just assume that most people are mindlessly shuffling around in their own lives and forget about things, like other people, and I'm OK with that.

Occasionally though, I get very irritated at something. Today it was a really fat, ugly woman. She incurred a little wrath from me, and I feel a little bit better. I think I balanced out the world a little. It started when I pulled into the gas station, to get some Dill Pickle sunflower seeds and a Faygo. I got around the gas pumps, so I was in between the store and the pumps, when I was suddenly cut off from the parking spaces by this woman who had decided that it was a good idea to park on a yellow curb right next to the store, even though there was a real parking space 10 feet in front of her.

I am stuck now. I am puzzling over what to do, when she lumbers out. She is morbidly obese, with greasy slicked back hair, a t-shirt that looks as though she cut head and arm holes in a parachute, and, of course, floral print pants where the flowers are stretched and faded because she has an ass the size of a vending machine. She has a permanent sneer on her face, although it may just be that the weight of her cheeks pulling the corners of her mouth down. I am aggravated. It occurs to me that had this been an attractive woman I may not have said anything. I feel conflicted about this realization. I roll down my passenger window and speak anyhow.

Me: Hey, you can't park there. How am I supposed to get through?
Her: I don't care.

Now I am mad. I would have harpooned her on the spot. Thankfully, my harpoon is at home, stored safely under the children's bed. I have to back up and drive around to get to a parking spot. I march into the store looking for revenge. I see her. She is looking at pre-made salads. I think she is trying to confuse me. I am not fooled. I walk up to her. I try to be composed.

Me: You know, it's fairly rude to park illegally and create a bottleneck for others. There was a spot like 10 feet in front of you.
Her: I'll only be a minute.
Me: I think you're missing the point here. You've already caused an inconvenience for me.
Her: I don't care. Go away.

I am about to say many mean things when something weird happens. She begins coughing, and coughing, and coughing....furiously. Then she hocks up a big piece of inside lung, pulls out a purple napkin from her pocket, spits the inside lung into her purple napkin, and puts the purple napkin back in her pocket. The whole ordeal takes about 30 seconds. I realize I am staring at her with no expression whatsoever. She looks at me like "What? So, I got a big chunk of inside lung in my pocket, what's the big deal?"

I get my food and leave. I think it's an appropriate metaphor. Sometimes it's best to just get your food and leave.

In case you didn't know...

I was driving the other day when I smelled what had to be the worst, most disgusting thing I've ever smelled. I have no idea what it was, but I think it may have been 400 rotting elephant corpses or something similar to that. Really, I almost barfed all over the inside of my car, which would have hurt the trade in value.

The actual sentence that came out of my mouth was, "Gaw, it smells like inside buns out there!" The guy that was riding with me said "What's inside buns?" I was incredulous. I figured everybody knew that the grossest thing in the world was inside buns. Apparently it's just my family that knows this.

When I was younger my sister and I used to play this game. One of us would say, "I 1 the (Insert disgusting thing)" then the next person would say, "I 2 the (disgusting thing)" up until somebody would have to say "I 8 the diseased cow butthole" and then we'd laugh because somebody just admitted to eating a diseased cow butthole, which was funny to us, and passed the time well while my dad was getting us lost on some gravel road 10 miles east of nowhere.

So one day we were playing that game, and the disgusting thing du jour happened to be "inside buns" which, as you might imagine was the inside of the butt, which for a 17 year old, and an 8 year old is pretty gross. Then we prefaced "inside buns" with Grandma, and low and behold somebody had to eat "Grandma's Inside Buns" which we immediately realized was by far the most disgusting thing on planet Earth.

It's funny how stuff like that becomes a lasting part of your lexicon. "Inside Buns" will now and forever represent anything gross or funny looking or weird. It's definition has expanded over the years.

(To my sister at Prom)
- "You look like inside buns."

(Commenting on a weird smelling bowl of soup)
- "This soup smells a little inside buns-y."

(Reviewing Coldplay)
-"They sound like inside buns."

(When my son fell out of the van onto his face)
-"Nice going, inside buns."

There was even an offshoot of "inside buns" that I used for a while but then I stopped. "Inside Lungs." As in, "Quit choking on that string bean. You're going to cough out your inside lungs!!"

So anyway, this ought to settle the centuries old debate regarding the grossest thing in the world. It is, was, and always will be inside buns.