Long Power Outages Would Make Me Die

Last week the Minneapolis St Paul Metropolitan Area experienced the most extensive power outage, in terms of number of people affected, ever. I was one of those who lost power, and it was really kind of discouraging to find out how dependent I am on technology. Although we were without power for only a little over 24 hours, during that time my life devolved into a serious of bizarre mishaps attempting to "survive" during the outage including:

• Complaining how hot it was constantly, and consequently trying to figure out a way to live in the refrigerator until my wife told me not to do that anymore.
• Getting lost in the darkness of my own living room (although this merits an explanation. I was sitting playing Candy Crush on the love seat when I felt what appeared to be a large, probably venomous insect crawling on my shoulder, although it might have been a dog hair or something since I couldn't see it. So I got scared, brushed off my shoulder, and hopped over to the couch. Then after a while, I turned off the IPad and started off to bed, except I had forgotten that I had switched furniture. Since it was pitch dark, and since I believed I was on the love seat, which faces the hall towards my bedroom, I figured I'd just go straight and eventually get there. But since I was actually on the couch, which was perpendicular to the love seat, what I wound up doing is walking directly into a wall, penis first. This perplexed me, as I did not remember a wall being on the way to my bedroom, and so I panicked a little, and in panicking a little, I walked into the wall again, penis first. So then I really got scared, and scrambled back to where I was sitting before, possibly stepping on a cat or other medium sized animal in the process. I had to turn my IPad back on and use it as a defacto flashlight to find my bed.)
• Fed the children old candy collected from the Farmington Dew Days Parade + Halloween and Easter for breakfast because we had no milk and no way to cook anything.
• Pushed the garage door opener 300 times before I realized that it wouldn't work without power
• Started searching the house for burlap or any other type of rugged fabric I might use to make clothes in case everything else was dirty at some point.
• Started plotting which pet we'd have to eat first if food ran out.
• Trying to remember what Tom Hanks did to survive on that island, besides having a pet volleyball.
• Pushed the garage door opener several more times again.

Eventually the power came back on and life made sense again, but it led me to the conclusion that if I had lived 200 years ago, I would most likely be dead, and my only employment opportunities would be hopping from town to town as the village idiot, which I don't think had great benefits, even if the ACA had existed back then.

Styrofoam Airplanes and Fist Fights

Over the past couple of months, our childrens' relationship with each other has gotten a little tenuous to say the least. I understand they are growing older, and becoming more independent and whatnot, but really it's a much different time now compared to when my daughter was acting as a translator for my son, who is 16 months younger.

 Then:

Her (announcing to the cashier at the gas station): This is my brother Miles. He says "Ball" and "Hi". C'mon buddy let's go.

Him: Da ba.

Now:

Me: Well, both your teachers said you were doing an excellent job at school!

Him: But I'm doing better. She stinks at math. She doesn't even know what 12000 X 5 is.

Her: No, I'm doing better. He can't even read very good. He's in level E.

Me: Um, you guys are in different grades working on different things. It's not a competition. I'm just saying that I'm proud because both your teachers said you were doing well.

Him: But I'm much better. She's stupid.

(A loud, screaming fistfight ensues)

It's gotten a little ridiculous at times:

Him (after the revelation that Bella needs glasses): Bella is worse because she can't see good. She's blind like an old lady. I see great, so I'm better.

(A loud, screaming fistfight ensues)

So with that in mind, on a beautiful Sunday Father's Day morning, the children came up to give me some presents. All went well until we got to the jug of red flavored Kool-Aid mix for my Sodastream. I had my eyes closed so I couldn't really see the action, but from what I gathered, both of them had staked a claim on giving me the juice mix, and a loud, screaming fistfight ensued when they could not come to an amicable solution and a large jug of Kool-Aid mix got unceremoniously chucked onto my foot, which hurt a lot, because I wasn't expecting anything to get chucked onto my foot.

After a few swear words (by me) and a harsh lecture (by my wife), soon things were back to being somewhat civil. Being idiots, we figured things would remain that way, so we decided to head off to a park to test out another present they got me; one of those big styrofoam airplanes that you can throw, and that will occasionally catch an updraft and fly on top of a building. This was a recipe for problems, but we were too naive to notice.

We got to the park and everyone was all excited about the prospect of a big giant airplane flying around. Being talented, I made the first throw, and the airplane sailed through the air and made a perfect landing about 50 yards away. This instilled false confidence in the children that they could do the same even though I am much taller and much more coordinated. My daughter's first throw went about 2 feet and crashed into the grass. This prompted some mocking from the 7 year old peanut gallery ("HAHA Bella, you stink!"), and a reminder from the big people to say something "positive". (Side note: Since we've been making a big deal about saying positive things, the most positive thing my son has been able to come up with in speaking about his sister is "You're sometimes OK". Quite the compliment there.)

Anyhow, then it was my son's turn, and he threw the airplane and somehow clipped his own head while doing so. This caused the plane to pitch awkwardly left and it came down, snout first, into the ground with such force that the wings popped off. For those of you in the know, having the wings pop off is the most structurally catastrophic thing that can happen to a styrofoam plane, because unlike chipping off the nose or a wing, which can be taped, having the wings pop off slowly makes the wingholes get larger, until finally the wings won't even stick in there anymore and just plop out. It's sort of like a hooker in that respect. Then you have to just give up and get rid of it, also sort of like a hooker.

So after a bunch of grounders and nosedives, my son lost a turn when he tried unsuccessfully to throw the plane back to my wife whose turn it was, and in the process nosedived it and made the wings pop off. This made him pout so he turned around and starting walking away, arms crossed and frowning. My wife made a low throw, and just as my son turned around, the airplane hit him directly in the face. He looked at her incredulously at first, but then he grabbed the plane, full of rage, and sprinted towards her, apparently with the intent of hitting her in the face, and not softly either. But being that he still hadn't figured out how to control the plane, he clipped his own ear and the plane crashed into the ground and the wings popped out. Then he ran away screaming. And then, Airplane Fun Time was over. After we lured him into the van with honey sticks, he and my daughter got into another loud, screaming fist fight about I'm not sure what. And that was that. Happy Father's Day to me!!

Raspberries and Slugs

My grandmother lived next door to me while I was growing up, which meant she was also my babysitter, which meant I was indoctrinated into all the things she liked to do, which meant we picked raspberries off of the bushes in between our two houses, which meant we could have a favorite treat of hers, raspberries and cream, which really meant raspberries and cream and some slugs.

You see, my grandmother was fairly indiscriminate about which berries she chose, and she couldn't see all that well, so consequently along with berries we got raspberry slugs that crawled around on the bushes too. I always made sure to pick off my slugs and throw them back in the patch because, and I can't really emphasize this enough, I didn't want to eat slugs. Not even a little.

My grandmother held no such reservations. I'm not sure it was her intent to eat slugs, but given her laissez-faire attitude towards things like this, I don't believe that even if she could have seen them that she would have bothered to flick them off. Too much work. She always told me, "You have to eat a pound of dirt in your life," so fuck it, why not eat a pound of slugs too?

So we'd go inside, wash our berries (and slugs), pour some half and half on them, and go to town. Raspberries and cream are a pretty tasty treat, but I will always have this disturbing image of sitting by my grandmother and watching her eat. She had this contented look on her face, seemingly at peace with all life around her, with a big toothy grin full of slugs. Specifically I remember staring directly at her mouth and watching slugs getting ground up into a nice raspberry, creamy, sluggy slurry. It never occurred to me to do what would logically be the polite thing to do and go, "Hey uh, you know you're eating a bunch of slugs right?" I don't know why. Didn't want to disturb the balance I guess.

Notes From the Olympics II

So as per usual, we've been watching a lot of the Olympics at our house, only this time around, the children are old enough to appreciate them. And boy have they ever. They are the biggest homers I've ever met running around taunting no one in particular because the USA is leading the medal count, and my son actually chastised me for turning to the Twins game while Women's Gymnastics was on. It's the gayest thing he's done in his 6 years on the planet, and that includes the time when he was 1 and tried repeatedly to yank his own penis off in the bathtub.

Me: (Turns channel)

Him: DAD!!!! Turn it back!!!

Me: You're yelling at me to turn from the Twins back to a commercial in between women's gymnastics??

Him (Sheepishly): Um, well, the 'lympics is on...

Actually it's a lot of fun watching it with two little people with lots of questions, like "What's Judo?", "Where's London?" and "Why does Rebecca Soni look like my butt if it had eyes?"

So since we've been watching a lot, I have again come up with some observations from this year's games. For the 2008 observations, click here:
www.jenseninthahouse.blogspot.com/2008/08/notes-from-olympics.html

1.) Michael Phelps doesn't care anymore- He said as much, and it's showed in his performance, as he only captured 4 more medals for a record 20 to date, while screwing around and smoking dank in Olympic Village, boning North Korean Soccer Players for sport, and signing autographs with his big flipper feet. Go out in style, young man.

2.) Ryan Lochte has to be a douchebag- I don't know him personally so I can't be certain, but he has all the qualifying characteristics of a douchebag.
a.) He's really pretty
b.) His interviews border somewhere between dumb and Koko the Gorilla signing opinions about her dead kitten
c.) He won a big race to begin the Olympics and since then has continuously crapped his pants in subsequent races
d.) I heard he had sex with a dead deer one time to impress his frat buddies (OK, maybe I made that up)

3.) I think Misty May is getting fat- While Kerri Walsh appears to never get winded or even break a sweat, Misty May is out there panting like a housewife on a treadmill. Hasn't seemed to affect her performance, and she could probably spike a volleyball directly into my crotch at Mach 4, so I think I'll just shut up now.

4.) Indoor Volleyball Players must hate Beach Volleyball players-"In their slutty little bikini uniforms, sauntering around without the same skill level or technique, and they're the ones who are always on TV. Why don't they just install a stripper pole in the middle of the sand, and cut through the nonsense of playing the game? Nobody knows the score anyway." - Anonymous "Regular" Volleyball Player

5.) I don't know what the Coxswain does- I think they might shout orders or something, and in theory they are supposed to steer the boat, but I saw the coxswain of the US team and she was this little tiny person. She couldn't steer an empty boat, let alone a boat full of big rowers. It would be like me trying to push over an elephant. So, essentially she got a gold medal for shouting at people. This gives me hope that one day I too may get a gold medal, because I'm pretty good at shouting at people.

6.) Badminton scandals are fun- Some Badminton teams got kicked out of the Olympics for throwing matches to get favorable seeds in the medal round. This would have been the perfect time for one of the coaches to tell the IOC to "Suck My Shuttlecock" but as far as I can tell, nobody did this. I consider it a wasted opportunity.

The Prostitute Post

The other day I was browsing this website that shows all the prostitutes and prostitute customers caught for the last 3 months or something. This is a helpful tool because it allows me to openly mock people from the comfort of my own computer, and also to look for family members.

What has become readily apparent to me is that there are no real hookers that look like Julia Roberts from Pretty Woman. More often than not they look more like Richard Gere, if Richard Gere was an obese black woman with no teeth and a gerbil stuck up his butt. Good lordy, I can't believe someone would actually pay to have sex with these people. I wouldn't let them scrub my bathroom, let alone place my weiner in their innards.

I'll take it one step further. I would rather masturbate with fire than pay for one of these prostitutes. In fact, they should be paying me for having to look at their mugshot. Ish.

Anyway, all these prostitutes seem to congregate in the Frogtown neighborhood of St Paul, which seems stupid, because even the most casual pervert knows that's where they are, and so do the cops. So when the cops run out of things to do, like setting up speed traps, and putting on their sirens to go through red lights to get to Wendy's faster, they probably just say, "Hey Bruce, let's go over to Frogtown and arrest some ugly prostitutes!"

I also heard that the police shot a bear wandering around in Frogtown the other day. The cops were probably there arresting prostitutes at the time.

Cop 1: You're under arrest for being an ugly, 240 lb prostitute. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law, and we might taser you for sport.

Cop 2: Holy shit Harry, is that a bear?

Cop 1: Nah, it's probably just a hairy prostitute.

Cop 2: Can we shoot it?

Cop 1: The bear or the prostitute?

So they went over and shot the bear before he could scare away all the prostitutes, thus solving two problems at once.

To sum up, if you ever see me wandering around Frogtown with a large woman with questionable morals, and a hearty appetite for crack, you will know that I have officially gone blind.

The Christmas Card Tradition

Every year since I was about 7, it has been an annual tradition, usually the day after Thanksgiving, to get together as a family, and go shopping for Christmas trees. Over the years the players have been added and subtracted (my Grandma slipped on some ice and fell, cigarette first, into a tree so she stopped going), but the tradition has withstood the test of time.

A newer tradition that piggybacked off this old tradition, is that now, before we have located our trees, my mother insists that we take a family picture that most likely winds up as the Christmas card picture that she sends out. If anyone balks at this idea my mom sulks, grumbles, and recklessly flings lemons at people until we all relent, smile unconvincingly, and then go back to the business of deciding which tree will constantly poke me and lose all it's needles in the living room in the next month.

The biggest impediment to the whole picture business is that each year we have to find a stranger to take the picture, and each year the stranger is invariably a toothless farmer, hand picked by my mom. I have no idea why she has such an affinity for toothless farmers germing up her camera, but I also have no idea where my dog's tongue goes when he closes his mouth. It's just one of those mysteries.

It's really simple to tell who's going to get picked to take the picture, because generally speaking, there's only about 1 toothless farmer in any given crowd, unless you're at a small town fair, in which case toothless farmers ask you to take their picture. I just run down the line of people.

Me: Hmm, normal, normal, toddler, wheelchair-bound, dog, guy with weird hat, pervert, normal, normal, llama, normal, morbidly obese, Me, Santa Claus, normal, missing arm, normal, missing eyes, normal, normal, ah-hah!!! A toothless farmer!!

Then begins the process of summoning the toothless farmer...

Mom: Saaaayyy???
(Side note: She never says "Hey" or "Excuse Me". It's always "Saaaayyy??". This applies to waiters too.)

Mom: Toothless Farmer? Say, toothless farmer? Will you take our picture you toothless farmer you?

Toothless Farmer: Dadgummit!

So then the toothless farmer, wearing bib overalls, and covered in farmer dirt, shuffles over, and my mom tries to show him which button to push to take the picture, but the toothless farmer shoos her away because he has a media center in his silo, and he knows how to take a dadgum picture, dadgummit!

Then we all squish together and smile, and my mom wants the toothless farmer to take about 8 pictures, just in case one of my kids is picking boogies, or staring at the dirt or something. I think it's rather remarkable, that after all these years, none of the toothless farmers has just shoved the camera down his underpants and walked the other direction. "Zippedy Doo, got me a dadgum camera!" You gonna try to extract a camera from a toothless farmer's underpants? I, for one, am not.

So that's our tradition. I figure, now that it's in the public domain, toothless farmers will flock by the tractor full over to my mom's house. After all, they want their recompense for all the pictures over the years, Dadgummit!!

Brian Picks His Nose

Since being candid and open is one of the things people seem to like about me, let me offer up this: Sometimes I still pick my nose all the time.

Remember in Elementary School there was always one kid who was constantly picking his nose, and then some other kid would catch him doing it and say, "Yuck, he's picking his nose!!" And the nose picking kid would always claim that he was just "itching" the inside of his nose. That kid was me. Occasionally the inside of my nose actually did itch, but not very often.

You know why I picked my nose then and still pick it now? Because there are boogers in there, and they don't belong. They're these little freeloaders, and occasionally they just fall right out of your nose for no good reason, usually when you're doing something important, like interviewing for a job, or trying to trick a girl into letting you hump her. It's much harder to trick a girl into letting you hump her if she thinks rogue boogedies might be randomly ejecting out of you.

My friend Matt taught me the value of having a "booger-pickin'-finger". It's usually your pinkie, so it fits in your nostril, and you let the nail grow a little longer on it for better scooping ability. Just so happens I broke my booger-pickin'-finger in college playing football in study hall (don't ask) and it didn't heal properly, so now it has a little curve to it, which makes it even more effective, a deluxe model if you will.

So if you ever see me driving down the road with my pinkie finger shoved far up my nose, you can take comfort in the fact that I'm engaging in an act of efficient elimination of boogies. And I'm not eating them...