Brian at the Zoo.

It's become apparent to me over the past year or so that I go to the zoo way too much. We all have things we do too much, but mine isn't even interesting. I don't masturbate in public too much, I don't poop 12 times a day, and I don't spend too much money on Austrian hookers, but I do go to the zoo too much. Pretty lame.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised at this. After all, I have 2 little kids, and for some reason, as a society we've decided that staring at sleeping wildlife is educational, not to mention the fact that we live 5 miles away from the zoo and have a membership there.

Pretty much without fail, the zoo experience goes like this: We get to the zoo, the kids run ahead, one of them falls and cries and wants a band-aid, we stare at the red-butted monkeys for a while, we go in the Tropics trail, the kids race through the exhibit, we go to the Minnesota Trail, the kids race even faster because it's cold in there and they stare at no animals because all they're interested in is getting to the next animal stamp as quickly as possible, we stare at the dolphins, one of the kids throws a tantrum because we have to leave, and then we leave. That's pretty much status quo for the zoo.

In fact, I bet I can tell you, in chronological order, what we do in the Tropics Trail. It goes like this.

-Enter
-See the large lizard in an exhibit with silhouettes of large, extinct animals.
-Bronze tortoise statue that the kids always feel the need to climb on until one of them falls off and cries
-Mynah bird that never says anything even though mynah birds are notoriously vocal
-Egg scultures that kids manhandle and sometimes lick, much to my chagrin
-2 different colored lemurs that occasionally screech loudly and make everyone think that the zoo animals are staging a riot.
-Black and white monkeys that aren't there anymore, because according to the sign left by the zookeeper, they've been at the "doctor" for 3 months. They're probably dead.
-In the same enclosure are flamingos and ducks. This is a common theme at this portion of the zoo. The kids try to stand on one leg like a flamingo. They fall over. They cry.
-A cave that the kids run in to. Then they pop out the wrong end and for a second they are lost. This frightens us as parents.
-A bird with a gigantic nose. This is a new gigantic nosed bird because I know, since I go to the zoo too much, that the old gigantic nosed bird died. From a stuffy gigantic nose.
-A tree kangaroo that never does anything. I remarked once that it was a statue, and a woman next to me reassured her children by stating, "That man is a liar honey." I felt bad.
-A big fat cow looking thing with a small elephant trunk called a Tapir. The Tapir smells great, if you think a dead old lady who's been laying in a shallow pool of fetid water in the desert for 4 days smells great. In the same exhibit is an animal that looks like a big black house cat (I forget it's name) and smells like popcorn. Another double animal exhibit?? I wonder if the zoo people were carrying the popcorn cat thing and then it started scratching and hissing at them and they dropped in into the Tapir exhibit and were just like "Whatever. It can stay there, it scratched my arm."
-Some tortoises that don't hold anyone's attention for long because the most exciting things they do are turn their heads and chew lettuce. That's pretty boring.
-The upper portion of the coral reef. There's a huge glare coming from the top of the zoo so you can't see anything
-The lower portion of the coral reef. This part is underwater and everyone hangs out there. Sometimes there's a scuba diver with a microphone in there and he feeds fish and answers the same three stupid questions from kids, in slightly different variations:
1.) Do the fishes eat food?
2.) What kind of fish is that big shark?
3.) Are you a swamp monster?
-Some really smelly warthogs. The warthogs never move but you can tell they are alive because they smell like inside buns left on the counter overnight.
-Another double animal exhibit. A red panda who is always sleeping on a tree branch. In the back portion are a few goats seemingly stuck high on tiny ledges on this make believe mountain. I think they act as sherpas if the red panda ever wants to go on an expedition. Or maybe they're just goats.
-Another dark portion. It's under construction, so there's nothing in it except another lemur, and a very large snake that is always curled up in a tiny ball. This is the portion of the zoo that we lost my grandmother in in 1985. We went in, she was with us, we popped out, she was gone. She was lost for like 3 hours too. We almost just gave up and left without her. Lord knows what she doing during that time. Probably sitting in a chair smoking cigarettes and doing crossword puzzles. Since then I've had a profound fear of getting lost in the dark part of zoos. It's not as profound as my fear of big, violent lesbians, but still...
-A section filled with birds that you can't really see because there are too many trees in the way.
-A door made of hanging pieces of bamboo that you have to smash through, so it feels like you're entering a fortune teller's lair. The kids make sure to smash through the bamboo repeatedly until I threaten to beat them about the buttocks if they don't stop.
-Some poison frogs. I know they are poison because they are brightly colored and because they are actually called "Poison Frogs"
-Quadruple animal exhibit alert. A sloth who really might be dead, some more tiny monkeys, a couple of birds, and the infamous red-rumped agouti all share an enclosure. Did the zoo run out of funding or something?
-Finally, another double animal enclosure. An anteater, and some more tiny monkeys share space.

By the end the kids are practically sprinting to get to God knows where, but they always want to stop at that stupid coin thing, where you put a coin in and then in rolls around in a circle for a while before falling into a hole. That stupid thing is like crack to kids. We never have change so they always wind up having a big fit as we're leaving Tropics Trail.

See, I go to the zoo too much. But just to prove to you what a moron I am, we're going on a Disney Cruise in April, and what is the shore excursion we signed up for in the Bahamas? That's right, the zoo. I'm dumb.

A Day in the Life...

Sometimes people categorize me as strange or odd. Some even think I might just be crazy. But, I'm not any different from the next guy. How, pray tell, do I know this? Well, I've decided to enlighten you with a glimpse of a typical day for me, which should erase any doubts you may have. This was what I did yesterday.

Wake up
Pee for 48 seconds, wonder how many glasses I could fill up with that much pee
Get dressed to go work out
Sit down and watch a show about white street gangs while I wait for the car to warm up
Fall asleep
Wake up and realize I have no time for the gym
Go to let the dog inside and realize he's standing next to me
Drag him into his kennel while he's shreiking in anguish and biting my hand
Curse him loudly and kick his kennel
Leave
Turn around, forgot cell phone
Leave
Turn around, forgot wallet
Scream in anger
Leave
Get gas
Get accosted at the gas station by a worker because I am kicking off my klinkers from the bottom of my car into his parking lot (Side note: Klinkers are those icy, snow chunks that hang off your car, by your wheels)
Yell back at him, buy beef jerky
Drive in miserable, snowy rush hour
Scream at slowness of commute
Play "Bitches Ain't Shit" by Dr. Dre seven consecutive times
Shout "Blizzards Ain't Shit" more than seven consecutive times
Honk at everyone in anger
Get to work
Work a little, and also watch Super Bowl commercials
Develop a crush on Danica Patrick
Work some more
Play online Scrabble
Cook soup in microwave, spraying chunks everywhere
Eat Chunky Soup, Extreme Chicken Alfredo flavor
Decide it's not "extreme" or even "tasty"
Work more
Play "Bitches Ain't Shit" on Youtube
Notice that my jeans have a large hole in them that I could theoretically let my penis dangle out of
Contemplate doing this for the rest of the day
Decide against it because I'm not sure if snow on the penis would be even a little OK
Turn down a walk-in salesperson who wants to sell me a reservation to play paint ball on his farm in Carver.
Buy a spooky, noisemaking flashlight from him instead (Side note: What kind of a weird combo sales package is this? The flashlight makes 8 spooky noises like a witch cackling and a door squeaking. Odd.)
Leave in a blizzard
Decide I need food
Stop at Subway, chatting with sandwich artist about the fact that she has a tattoo of a mermaid on her serving hand.
Frighten her
Leave with food
Eat it quickly spilling lots of lettuce in my car
Swear about this loudly
Think about Danica Patrick while throwing lettuce out the window
Play "Bitches Ain't Shit" several more times
Honk at someone angrily for having Packers decals on his car.
Have a long argument with myself about the merits of knowing how to play the fife
Lose the argument
Watch a guy nearly drive off an embankment because he needed to cut in front of a car to save 20 seconds
Condemn his foolishness and short sighted nature
Get very angry with a man shoveling his driveway because he's home am I'm not
Finally get home.
Yell at the air in frustration
Shovel snow like a crazy person, flinging it everywhere like a monkey flinging poo
Get nervous because the dog is out in the yard unleashed, and looks as though he wants to run and bite every car that comes by
Calmly tell him, "Polo, you idiot, cars are not food."
Notice that the neighbor, (the professor's wife), is stuck in her own driveway
Laugh at her, then mosey over to help
Get there just as she gets unstuck
Tell her, "Oh, you're unstuck, I was just revving up my loins to help push."
Watch her back away in fear and confusion
Advise my daughter NOT to build a snow fort by the place that Polo just took a big dookie while gearing up for the next approaching vehicle.
Become dismayed when she picks the poop up with a little red shovel and prances around with it.
Walk inside and get ordered by my son to play MarioKart
Whoop him severely and talk trash about it
Get whooped by him and pout and kick the couch
Decide that I am probably not teaching him great sportsmanship
Pout and kick the couch over this realization
Get presented a gift of Exotic Sea Salt by my wife as an 1st date anniversary/fake 1st date anniversary/Valentines Day present
Panic because I have nothing thoughtful to give back to her
Pout and kick the couch because of this
Eat dinner and sprinkle exotic sea salt on all my food
Text my sister as to the condition of her sprained ankle that has a walking boot on it
Make up a new word, "Booterus-A uterus with a boot on it"
Play more MarioKart with my son to satisfy his addiction
Sit on the couch fiddling around on the internet while my son, daughter, and wife fall into a coma watching Food Network next to me
Hum "Bitches Ain't Shit" while pooping
Get mad at online Scrabble because words like "Whiteboy" "Buttfish" and "Ballhair" are not recognized Scrabble words.
Kick the couch a little more
Drink a Purple Mountain Dew. Realize that I have no idea what "Voltage" is supposed to taste like.
Watch out the window and root for people to slip down the hill and get stuck in their cars
Cheer loudly and wake up the family when one does
Boo loudly when he escapes
Carry the entire family up to their respective beds
Poke myself in the eye taking out my contacts
Lay down in bed and realize I am laying on a tiny stuffed dog
Cast dog into closet
Toss and turn for a while thinking about Danica Patrick
Fall asleep and dream of Dragons

See, that's entirely normal.

My Brushes with Mortality

You ever almost die? I almost died the other day. It was last friday and I was driving to a friend's house to play poker. Before I went I stopped at a gas station and bought a Cherry Crush. I was really excited because I'd never seen a Cherry Crush before and, as everybody knows, any kind of Cherry flavored soda is really awesome and sweet.

So I was driving on a county road, happily swilling my cherry flavored beverage, and loving life when all of a sudden I got a really bad ear itch. It was something that needed scratching immediately. So I started itching my ear. To do this I had to transfer the cherry pop to my left hand. I was now steering the car and clinging to my pop with one hand. Then the pop started to slip out of my hand. Being that it was a terrific, new, potentially rare kind of pop that I may never have the opportunity to drink again, I instinctively clasped my legs together so that I could catch my soda between my knees before it fell on the dirty interior of the car and spilled all over the place.

Unbeknownst to me however, my left leg was resting directly against the underside of the steering wheel, so slamming my legs together caused my knee to turn the wheel left very violently, aiming the car right towards the concrete divider in the center of the road. Now, because I was lucky I managed to catch my pop, grab it with my ear-itching hand, and then grab the steering wheel with my other hand and correct my direction back towards the middle of the road all in the same motion. I came about a millimeter from the divider and I spilled a little pop on my crotch, but other than that I was fine. But it could have been way worse. I could have whacked the divider going 55 and then overcorrected trying to get back on the road and flipped my SUV and crushed my neck and died face down in the snow, and nobody would have ever known what the hell I was doing.

It got me to thinking about how many times I've almost died based on pure stupidity or weird luck. I thought of about three different examples.

1.) Age: 9
Nearly died from: Hanging/ or serious head trauma

I had just finished playing a rec league basketball game at my elementary school and, along with some friends, was getting ready to watch the game after us. It featured 3rd graders from my own school, so it held a certain level of interest to me. We would sit on the stage facing the game and cheer or boo, or whatever. While the teams were warming up we spent most of our time screwing around on the stage. There was a big port-a-pit back there for reasons unknown, and it was always fun to launch yourself onto the port-a-pit because it felt really comfy to land on. So during one of my forays onto the pit, I got a really big running start and dove, but because I had such a head of steam, I dove a little far and hit the corner. Landing on the corner made the port-a-pit shoot me off at a weird angle, backwards, and towards the edge of the stage. Realizing that I was in trouble, I tried to flip my body around in mid-flight to see where I was going. Just as I did that, I got caught by my neck in the rope that was used to pull open the stage curtains. I was officially hanging myself. Just as I started to die my neck dislodged itself from the rope and I landed on my butt, about two inches from the edge of the stage. Now the weird thing is, if I hadn't almost hung myself, I would have flown off the stage backwards and probably cracked my head open. (Side note: My mom was always warning me about cracking my head open, usually wide open. Until I was 24 I believed that you could actually hit your head and it would crack wide open like an egg, and your brain would just fall out with a loud "PLOP" . I'm glad I never saw that. Ick!) Anyway, I only hung myself a little bit, and I didn't fall off the stage and crack my head wide open so my brain plopped out. Instead I ran back and jumped on the port-a-pit a little bit more.

2.) Age: 16
Nearly Died From: Crushed by a Semi

I was driving to school one spring day. I had just gotten my license about two weeks earlier and I was feeling pretty geeked about my new found autonomy. To drive to school, I had to drive through Highway 7. There was no overpass or anything, so you had to wait for a stop light. I got about 3 blocks from the stop light, when I heard a buzzing coming from behind me. I glanced over my shoulder and I saw, to my horror, that there was a hornet flying around in my back seat. Now, people that know me know that I hate hornets more than just about anything, because they've always loved to sting me. For some reason mosquitos love to bite me because I taste good, and hornets love to sting me because I must feel really good on their stupid hornet butts to sting. I immediately started to freak out, roll down all my windows that I could reach, and pay complete and absolute attention to what the hornet was doing. This meant I was paying no attention to where I was going. Then I heard a bunch of honking, including one big giant horn honking. Screw you people, there's a hornet in my car. I finally looked up to see where I was after the hornet stopped flying around for a minute and was instead crawling around on my back window. I was all the way across Highway 7, I had gone right through the red light, and I had come within about 2 seconds of being smashed by a semi-truck. The cars in the left lane had stopped and honked at me but the semi probably couldn't stop that fast so instead he just honked really loudly. I stopped my car and got out to ponder all this, and also to give the hornet a chance to leave, and then when he finally flew out I stood there a minute, and then shrugged my shoulders and got back in my car and drove to school. Let me just say this for posterity: Hornets are punk ass bitches!

Age: 21
Nearly Died From: Broken Throat.

I was at baseball practice and we were all in lines playing catch before the actual practice started. Next to me was a teammate of mine named Pat. Pat was a young kid, and we loved making fun of him because his name was Pat, so we'd yell stuff at him that the androgynous "Pat" character from Saturday Night Live, played by Julia Sweeney, used to say, such as "I forgot my travel baaaaggg" and "My partner's name is Chris". Hey, baseball practice is pretty boring, it was something to do. In this instance, I threw the baseball to my partner Mitch, and then turned to Pat and said, "PAAAAAATTTTTTT!!!!" He did not appreciate this which made it even more fun. So I was staring and laughing at him, and I forgot that Mitch was throwing the ball back until he hit me directly in the larynx with it. Instantly I forgot about how much fun I was having teasing Pat because I was very concerned with the new reality that I could not breathe. You ever try to breathe and you can't? It's gay! So I bent over, holding my throat, and started to die. After about 10 seconds my throat opened up a little so I could sort of breathe, but still not well enough to not die. In the midst of slowly dying of asphyxiation, I thought to myself, "Hmm, the throat is sort of flexible, I wonder if I could choke it open?" That's what I did. I began choking myself and in doing so I opened up my esophagus more so that I could breathe well enough to not die. After about 5 minutes of sitting on a training table choking myself, my throat opened up enough by itself so that I didn't need to choke myself anymore. I never forgave Pat for that. He almost killed me!

It's kind of weird when you think about it. I bet the graveyards are full of people lying there dead just because they were acting dumb at the wrong time. And here I am. I guess that means there must be a greater plan for me. Either that or it's just a big coincedence. Whatever, I don't care, I'm going to go eat a bagel.

Brian Learns to Chat

You know what's really fun. Going onto chat lines and bothering people. I know it might be a little bit old hat, but screw it, I'd never done it before, and I wanted to get in on the fun. So I found myself a chat line and went about trying to get people to chat with me. Here is a transcript:

-A website-

Me: Hey, anybody want to have sweaty avatar sex???

(No responses)

Me: Hey, I'm buck naked and doing jumping jacks. Let the sex begin.
Person: This is a chat line for the American Girl Dolls. Go away.

A better website:

Me: Hey, my avatar wants some lovin' from all of your easy bake ovens. BOI-OI-OI-OI-OING!!
Person: What's up?
Me: My boner. Let's have some avatar sex.
Person: LOL. OK.
Me: So, like how do we do this. Do I stick my weiner in the disk drive or something??
Person: What???!!
Me: I'm new to this game, like a fresh faced rapper...
Person: You have a disk drive?
Me: Actually, I have an old toaster at my feet. I figure it will work OK for this.
Person: What??? Is wrong with you.
Me: Well, it's not like it's plugged in or anything. I'm following safety standards.
Person: You don't stick your dick in a toaster.
Me: Now that's sound advice. Note to self: No dick in toaster. Thanks!!
Person: How old are you?
Me: 4 and a half.
Person: No you aren't.
Me: OK, you got me.
Me: I named my ding-dong. You know what his name is?
Person: Oh no.
Me: Ed.
Person: Ed. Why Ed?
Me: Well, why not? Why did your parents name you Ginger?
Person: My name isn't Ginger!??
Me: Shut up Ginger.
Me: This is going well, are you ready for some sweaty avatar sex where we don't stick our dicks in the toaster?
Person: I'm a girl.
Me: Whew. So a toaster would be pretty pointless for you then huh? Maybe a milk frother would work better.
Person: What are you talking about? This is stupid.
Me: Wait, guess what I'm wearing?
Person: A sign that says "I'm stupid."
Me: No, cowboy boots, a dickie, and a deer skin.
Person: Really?
Me: Yes, my bear skin is at the dry cleaners.
Person: You are very strange.
Me: I used to be a mountain man. Except that I didn't have a mountain, only my parents basement. Minor detail.
Person: IMHO you are just screwing around.
Me: Don't call me Imho. My name is Big Ernie, and my weiner's name is Ed. Old Ed wouldn't hurt you, would he?
Person: I don't think we'll ever find out.
Me: Are you breaking up with me?
Me: Because if so, I'm sticking my dick in the toaster.
Me: I don't like all your draconian rules.
Me: I just wanted some sweaty, no-strings-attached, dick-in-the-toaster, avatar sex. Is that so much to ask??
Me: Are you blue, like the people in the movie about avatars?
Me: Because being blue is a turn-on for me. That and having more than two nipples. If you had 3 boobs like that girl in Total Recall, I'd marry you.
Me: I also like girls who swear in Polish. C'mon give me a big Yavutski!!
Me: Do you know what a face baby is?
Person: AAAAHH, leave me alone.
Me: You have sexy elbows.
Person: (is offline)
Me: Bye, bye Ginger

That was fun!!

My Neighbor

I have this neighbor. I really like my neighbor. I really like all my neighbors, I mean, that's kind of the point of having neighbors right? But this particular neighbor that I'm speaking of, worries me a little bit.

We call him "The Professor" because I believe he is a teacher, either that or he's unemployed over Christmas and the summer. He's very tall and skinny, with a gray pony tail, and a gray beard. Every conversation I've had with him has been cordial, although he is one of those people who cares nothing about what you have to say, and instead waits patiently, and in many cases not so patiently, to talk about himself.

Being the good neighbor that I try to be, I smile and nod, and acquiesce, and pretend that his drivel is important and meaningful to me, as I do with many people who I come into contact with.

The thing that worries me about this man is that he has perhaps the worst "up front" temper I've ever been privy to. I understand that people, behind the privacy of the walls of their homes, may scream and say some terrible things, but this man seems to leave the privacy walls behind him. And he's LOUD!!

I remember a time this summer when he and his wife were out doing yardwork, she was raking up old, dead grass and shrubs, and he was mowing, and I was out picking up dandelions, which is a large part of my summer work, and it looked as though he deliberately drove the mower directly into a large pile of crud. It was large enough to short the mower, and it made him start jumping around in furious anger. It made me giggle because it looked retarded.

So, I sat there giggling to myself at the idiocy of this man, but then he let loose with a string of profanities that shcoked even me, and it's me.

"WHAT IS THIS FUCKING PILE OF SHIT DOING HERE." He was furious. I realized this and it worried me enough so that I snuck behind my truck to make sure he couldn't see me snickering at him. You ever do that, see somebody lose their cool, and then go pretend you are doing something behind something? Just to make sure they don't run over and quickly kill you. I also planned my excuse too. I bet you don't do that. If he came over I was going to say that I had seen a chipmunk in my garage, and I had gone over to investigate. I had my bases covered.

I've also seen him get mad this winter. Now realize how loud he was yelling here because I was in my house when I heard him. I heard a loud screeching noise, and when I peeked outside I saw him gesticulating wildly with a snow shovel in his hands. So, naturally, I went outside and pretended I was shoveling..... behind my truck. I can't lie to you, he was cursing at the weather. There was nobody else out there and he was yelling things like "I'LL FUCKING TEACH YOU TO BE THIS COLD" and "OH YEAH, PILE IT ON MOTHERFUCKER!!" Then he got in his car and screamed........ for about 30 seconds. I was worried and excited, like when hookers are nice to me in Vegas.

The thing is, I don't think he'll go off and kill the entire neighborhood, but I've been wrong before, and he's still there, even right now as we speak. He's still there, he's still there, he's still there.....

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.