My Keyboard

You ever notice how disgusting your keyboard gets after a while? This is really, really gross. I cleaned my keyboard today and I was shocked at how much crap was in there. I don't have a really scientific method for cleaning my keyboard. I just whack it against my desk really hard until somebody from another part of the office comes over to see what the hell all the racket is about.

Person: Brian, what are you doing?

Me: Whacking my keyboard against the desk.

Person: Why?

Me: I'm cleaning it.

Person: I thought you were loudly killing yourself.

Me: Nope, just cleaning my keyboard.

(Side note: My latest euphemism for masturbating is now "Cleaning my keyboard". My euphemisms haven't evolved much since I was a kid. When I was 12 it was referred to as "Strummin' on the Old Banjo". But I digress.)

Anyhow, I'm pretty much amazed at the amount of stuff that flies out when I clean the keyboard. A general list:

-Old food particles
-Dirt
-Fingernails
-Boogers
-Old skin
-Disgusting items of unknown origin
-Little bits of paper
-Insect Poop
-Lots of eyelashes

The last one really surprises me. How come I don't notice when my eyelashes fall out? You'd think you'd see that. It's right by your eyes! It's kind of unnerving to think how often I am unknowingly shedding eyelashes all o'er the land. And when people come over to my house, are they leaving a big pile of eyelashes behind? Yuck!

Keep your eyelashes to yourselves people. In the meantime, I'm gonna turn on some porno and "clean my keyboard."

Brian goes to Bahamas, Things Are Dirty There

I've been meaning to write about this for a while now but I've held off because I didn't want people to get the impression that I didn't have a good time on my Disney Vacation. The vacation itself was a wonderful time. We spent two days at Disney World, and 5 days on a Disney Cruise. The kids had a great time, we had a great time, and uh... it was great. There were two things that bothered me a little.

1.) Walking around for 13 straight hours is hard on your feet. On the second day I found myself sitting in Epcot Center, in the country of Norway, with my shoes off massaging my own feet, totally oblivious to the stares of disapproval from stupid tourists all around me. It was the best foot massage I've ever gotten. So I was sitting there, eating German Cheesecake (which is nothing more than a bunch of Kool-Whip in a pie tin) and rubbing my own feet, and loudly grunting with pleasure about it. I think that about says it all. Oh, and to the fake breasted woman that was gawking at me, worry about yourself and your expensive cha-cha's, or come rub my feet, or keep walking. Ho.

2.) Nassau, Bahamas is a dirty craphole. I started thinking about this because I have a certain Bahamian friend who is being such a pain in the ass that I want to slap him around with my penis and sew his butthole shut. When we got to Nassau, we were immediately inundated by small women carrying beads who wanted to braid my daughter's hair.

Woman: Hey Dada, you want braids for yo' bebe?

Me: No thanks.

Woman: C'mon Dada, yo' bebe want braids huh?

Me: No, you look like you have Syphilis of the hands. I can get somebody on the ship to do it for cheaper, plus I won't have to worry that my daughter will catch the 7 year creepin' Jesus. Eat your Jonny Cake and leave me be.

After being assaulted by about 50 women like this, I started completely ignoring their catcalls and instead staring at my feet or trying to catch small lizards hanging off trees. This tactic was moderately successful.

Finally, after I'd dissed like 3 generations of hair braiders, we got on this bus and headed for a zoo. The zoo turned out to be a ghetto ass zoo. More on that later.

While driving to the zoo, we noticed that all the dwellings seemed to have no windows or roofs or ceilings, and the entire insides were filled with garbage. I didn't see one inhabitable place on the whole drive. 80% of the population of the Bahamas lives in Nassau. I have no idea where.

When we got to the zoo, it became very obvious very quickly that it was a ghetto ass zoo. There were hardly any animals except birds, and it appeared as though it hadn't been painted since 1842. The only thing the zoo had was flamingos, who had been taught to run around in circles. A drill sergeant kept yelling at them and then they'd run around in circles. Then they stopped doing that and began trying to bite us. This terrified my daughter, and enthralled my son, especially when a flamingo ran over to me and tried to bite me in my crotch. You ever see somebody slap a flamingo? You should hang out with me more often.

After we left the ghetto ass zoo, we drove through more garbage until we got to a fort that was falling down. Some random townie with a bizarre voice gave a rambling history lesson and then stood really still like a statue and wouldn't answer any questions. Then he abruptly started moving again and kicked us out of the fort. We were led to an open area that was full of little kiosks that usually would have been filled with peddlers and hair braiders and drug dealers and such. But since we were the only ship that day, nobody had bothered to show up, except one guy who got sleepy, and was sleeping on a table, in a kiosk, with one of his shoes resting next to his head. I wanted to throw some stones at him but Amy wouldn't let me.

Then the tour was over. We drove back down through the garbage, stopping to admire a brightly colored billboard reminding us to "Protect Ya Tings" (apparently there is a high incidence of AIDS in the Bahamas. People must be humpin' in the streets or something). As we got back on the boat, the hair braiding ladies came back in full force and I had to beat them away with a conch.

Really though, where do these people live?

The Things I Hate.

A lot of people who read this frequently ask me why I have such a strong hatred for various things. Well, faithful readers, I figured I would explain to you.

1.) Hornets-Hornets suck for so many reasons. First they fly around in your face, which is pretty inconsiderate, all things considered. Maybe in France people think it's great to have little insects flying around your eyeballs all the time, but here in America we have personal boundaries and space. Human beings respect each others personal space, is it so much to ask that hornets could do the same. (Side note: My grandmother used to let hornets walk all over her glasses and eyes. It was horrible. I never understand why so many hornets would flock to her face like that. Maybe her eyes smelled like flowers, I don't know)

Secondly, and more importantly, hornets are JERKS!! Hornets will just fly over and sting you on the arm if they think you're looking at them funny, or hanging out too close to their nest or something. Sometimes I think they sting me just for practice.

Hornet (Looking at me): Look there's a big thing.

Other Hornet: Let's sting the shit out of it.

Hornet: Good thinking Ed.

I know people who have been stung like 2 times in their life. How is this possible? I've been stung like 400 times. And they can just keep stinging indiscriminately forever. I hate them. I watched this show one time where this guy named Billy sprayed a bunch of crud into the cracks of this dilapidated shack, and hornets were falling out everywhere dying. My eyes had an orgasm watching this.

2.) Roundabouts-When did this country turn into England? Everywhere I go nowadays, a stupid roundabout is popping up. The powers that be apparently believe that we are born with an inherent understanding of what to do when faced with a large circle in the middle of flowing traffic. Well people are dumb and treat roundabouts like a very small scale Indy 500, so I am constantly in fear of getting in an accident. I'm also in fear of being trapped inside the roundabout like Clark Griswold, driving in circles for hours. "Look kids, there's Big Ben, Parliament." My children think it's funny and cheer loudly when we approach roundabouts. This angers me. People who need someone else to wipe their butts for them shouldn't be making fun of me. If you want me to stop hating roundabouts, you should send me to roundabout camp for a week, at the taxpayers expense of course.

3.) Heelys-I've mentioned before why I hate these stupid shoes, but let me reiterate. The only kids you see with Heelys are fat, weird looking kids with even fatter parents. The kids skate around shopping centers, and crash into people and don't say "sorry" and then skate off to crash into different people, and their fat ass parents can't keep up with them because they're driving around in those motorized wheelchairs with baskets on them for groceries provided by the store, and they've stopped paying attention to the havoc their ugly children are wreaking because they're too busy yanking preprocessed, cholesterol laden items with their canes off of high shelves in an obvious subconscious attempt to bring around that next coronary sooner rather than later.

4.) Dog the Bounty Hunter- I hate him because he has a gay mullet. I hate him because he has a dumb voice. I hate him because he has a 5th grade vocabulary. I hate him because his wife looks like a cross between a super high class prostitute and Grimace from McDonalds. I hate him because he makes idiots believe it's really possible to aggressively chase after criminals without a gun for years and never get shot. Really though, just look at him. How could you not hate somebody like that? Even if he was really nice and all he did was save puppies and babies from buildings on fire all day long I'd still hate him.

I think everything else I have a real hatred for I've covered in earlier posts. For more information, refer back to those.

My Dog is Crazier Than Me

Let me preface this by saying that I love my dog Jasper. He is a sweet, friendly animal, very good with the children, and I'm happy he's mine. He's also, on occasion, a raving lunatic.

I suppose you can trace most of this behavior back to when he was a puppy. He was apparently abused at a very young age, and then set free in Duluth in the winter, ostensibly left to freeze to death. Instead, Homeward Bound got a hold of him, and while I was still in college my wife adopted him. He had really severe kennel cough, and dog pneumonia, and he sneezed big green boogers all over his feet every 30 seconds or so. My wife spent a good majority of her day cleaning snot out of his paws.

Jasper has never really been able to let go of his upsetting childhood, and since I'm not paying for a dog whisperer to come in and help him express his feelings, or his anal glands, or whatever a dog whisperer does, he has a tendency to act really strangely at times. Throughout his life he has done the following

-Ran upstairs and hid under the bed for 2 days after I fell down the stairs and landed on him early in the morning while still half asleep going to let him out.

-Escaped from us at a park where the snow was 4 feet deep but he didn't sink since he was too little, and proceeded to chase a flock of canada geese, that were flying 500 feet above him in a "V", for about a mile, including across a busy road where he almost got hit by like 8 cars, but was totally oblivious to this fact because he was staring at the sky and barking the whole time.

-Chewed off and ate his long plumage of tail fur along with a considerable amount of stuffing from his kennel mat (which he then chewed to pieces) and then loudly vomited it all up in the night on our new carpet because he was angst ridden since I had started a new job and screwed up his daily routine. This caused a fairly uncomfortable Q&A with my mom since when I returned home from work I couldn't figure out what happened to my doggie's tail.

Me: Uh mom?

Mom: Yes?

Me: Did you do something to Jasper?

Mom: What?

Me: Ummmm, did you uh, come over and cut off all his tail fur for some reason?

Mom: What? No. Why would I do that?

Me: I don't know, to make a bed for a small animal you found?

-Ferociously barked at invisible ninjas for an hour at 3 in the morning until I had to get up and threaten him with euthanasia. He's done this repeatedly.

-Got bitten on the snout by a fly which causes him to be either really scared of flies, or really aggressive towards them depending on the day. When he's really aggressive towards them he runs around barking and snarling at them and tries to leap up and bite them to death. I don't believe he has ever been successful in this. When he's really scared of them, he repeatedly slithers around the house squeaking like a big pussy and tries to wedge himself under furniture and furnace crawlspaces that he has no business trying to fit into. This usually causes chaos and broken furniture.... and threats of immediate euthanasia

-Stands and barks at a random wall for long periods of time, until I come snap him out of his trance by threatening complete and utter euthanasia. (Side note: We learned from our vet that this may be a sign of early onset dog dementia. I don't know how a being with no concept of time can have dementia, but whatever.)

-Pees on people at the dog park. I never apologize for this, instead I choose to say clever things like, "Gee your pants must smell bad" or "I guess that leg belongs to him now". People always appreciate humor when they are being urinated on.

-Lets our other much larger and bouncier dog chew on him until his head is soaking wet from slobber, and sneezes numerous times while playing. We call this phenomenon "Sneezefighting."

His latest, most confounding problem though, is that when he runs out of water he goes absolutely bonkers, but only when nobody is home to correct his behavior/threaten euthanasia. I forgot to give him water yesterday before I left for work. Let me correct myself. Never in the 10 years since I got a dog has it crossed my mind that the dog may need water at some point. I have some sort of mental block.

So my wife forgot to give him water. When I got home, the entire downstairs was in shambles. The rug was all askew, there were pretzels all over the floor, a glass candle holder had been broken, there were magazines and newspapers bitten into tiny pieces, the clothes hamper was laying on it's side, the cable box was in an odd position, there was a plate on the floor, a chair was leaning precariously against the entertainment center, and somebody had eaten a large piece of styrofoam. My first thought was really rowdy burglars. After I went and got a baseball bat and secured the house, I walked in the bathroom and noticed that there was no water in the water dishes. Uh oh. I checked the bathtub. It was full of dirty paw prints because when he gets desperate Jasper hops in the tub to try to drink residual bath water. So I got him some water and proceeded to tidy up the downstairs, sweep up the glass, and throw away the rest of the styrofoam, all the while loudly cursing the heavens for my bad fortune.

I'll say this. Having a crazy dog makes me a lot more empathetic towards the plight of my wife, who has to put up with a crazy human everyday. But still, she should remember to get the dog some water...

Weird People and the Batmobile

People are weird, I tell ya. Some people are ridiculously fat. Some people are anorexically skinny. Some people look like their spouses. Some look like their pets. Some look like other people's pets. Some people look like combinations of famous people (i.e. Colin Cowherd looks like a combination of Alice Cooper and a guy who stuck his penis in an electrical socket). Some people look like they're dead and don't know it.

Mostly though, people are weird because they say weird things. I count myself as one of these people in this not particularly prestigious group. But it seems as though everywhere I go, I have a certain knack for accidentally avoiding the normal people, and only dealing with the really weird ones. I'm sort of a magnet like that. Today was no different.

I decide to break down and go get an oil change, even though I enjoy getting an oil change in the same fashion that I enjoy french kissing hornets on their stingers after I inject them with meth and Red Bull.

So I go to the oil change place. There are 3 people working there. All 3 look at me. I look back. Then two of them walk back into the office and one begins motioning me in. The two that walked away were normal. The one left over was a full blown wackaloon. The law of averages never applies to me in situations like this.

I can tell that this fellow is most likely crazy because he looks like my brother-in-law Josh, if Josh's mom and dad were also brother and sister who smoked tainted crack during the pregnancy. To be quite honest, this guy looked like a combination of Josh, and one of those people that turns into a Super Villain/Monstrous Freak after he falls into a vat of toxic sewage. He is also chewing on his bandana, which is still attached to his head somehow.

So either he steers me poorly, or I drive poorly, because he begins to gesticulate wildly with his hands, trying to get my car back to the proper position within the little oil change area. Then he puts both hands out really hard, signaling stop, and also stomps his foot like a 7 year old having a tantrum.

I stop. He comes over.

Him: Dude, what are you trying to do? Drive into fuckin' the hole?

Me (Flustered): Dude, you were waving your arms around like a man on fire. Settle down a little.

Him: Trust me, fuckin' you don't want to drive into the hole. That would suck for everyone.

I notice that he is using the "F" word at odd times in his sentences. Further confirms my suspicions that I am dealing with a crazy person.

So I tell him I need an oil change, and the normal people go down into the little basement under my car and begin changing the oil. Then he comes over to my car.

Him: This will take a bit. You can go wait in the lobby.

I get out and begin walking over there. He gets right in my way and smiles at me.

Him: Or you can just stand over here.

I'm not sure what to do. There's only a tiny path in between the front of my car and the garage door, which is now shut. He is standing in the tiny path, smiling at me. I feel like I may get raped. I stand there.

Him: You fuckin' gotta house?

Me: Uh, yeah.

Him: Does it have a pole barn?

Me: No, it just has a garage.

(Really sure he's crazy by now. As I do whenever I get into situations like this, I begin plotting my escape route. He is talking. I am plotting.)

Him: Hey, pay fuckin' attention. Would you build a pole barn?

Me: What? Where?

Him: Behind your garage of course.

Me: I don't know. I guess so, if I had some wood or something.

(This conversation has devolved and gotten me nervous, and when I'm nervous I start saying stupid things, like that I would build a pole barn behind my garage if I had some wood.)

Him: Yeah, I need to get some land.

Me: You ain't no kind of man if you ain't got land.

(I'm quoting movies without realizing it now)

Him: When I get me some land, I'mma build a house, a garage, detached fuckin' of course, and a pole barn.

Me: That's ambitious.

Him: Huh?

Me: I said "Good Thinking"

Him: Yup. Then I'mma go out in my pole barn and build fuckin' the Batmobile.

(I want to run away)

Him: But not fuckin' that Batmobile from the 90's. That thing was shitty. I checked the specs on it, and it could only go 35. 40 tops.

(How did he check the specs on a car from a movie from 20 years ago?)

Him: Naw, I'mma build that one from Dark Knight, that shit can can go zero to 60 in 5 flat. And it can shoot rockets at shit. All that shit was fuckin' fully functional.

(He's getting really excited talking about this bizarre dream of his)

Me: That'd be awesome. I'd drive that.

Him: Shit yeah. And my girl would come looking for me and I'd be like, "Don't bother me, I'm in the pole barn working on the Batmobile, and she'd bring me beer and shit."

After another 10 minutes or so of listening to him ramble on about Batmobile specs, and pole barns, and land and such, the normal people finished changing the oil, and so I paid and left. As I'm driving out, totally bewildered the last half hour of my life, the dude runs up next to the car and shouts, "FUCKIN' BATMOBILLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEE!!!!" I drive away.

This is my life...

My Troubles with Earwax.

This morning I was on a call with a client, chatting away about annual maximums and other very important things, when all of a sudden I could feel something happening inside my ear. This obviously distracted me from my phone call, and I became even more distracted when a large chunk of earwax fell out of my ear and stuck to my shoulder.

Client: So anyway, how about we move the maximum to $1250, reduce the deductible, and then...

Me: You need to stop talking for a minute. A giant waxball just fell out of my ear!

Client: Um, well...

Me: Now it's on my shoulder. It's pretty gross, I wish you could see it.

Client: Ummm...

So I got the waxball off my shoulder and finished the conversation, but it also made me realize that this was not the first time some earwax fell out of my ear while I was in the midst of something fairly important

One time, when I was about 19, I was on a date with somebody, and we were sitting there at an Applebees or whatever, talking about football, or ballerinas, or the Kama Sutra. Actually, I have no idea what we were talking about...

So we're sitting there talking, and all of a sudden a huge, Andre the Giant sized blob of earwax dislodged itself from my ear canal, fell out our my earhole, bounced off my shoulder, and landed on the table between us. We both stared at the earwax for a while, no one daring to say a word. I was kind of mortified since I was trying to make a good impression, because I figured it was going to be harder to hook up later if she thought I was the type of guy who carelessly flung earwax around at the dinner table. I surmised that it wasn't as bad as having a turd roll out the bottom of my pantleg, but that it ranked somewhere in between having a turd roll out the bottom of my pantleg, and accidentally sneezing a bunch of snot and boogers into my hand on the grossness scale.

So, I did the only thing I could think of. I blamed the ceiling of the restaurant.

Me: Ugh, this restaurant has earwax falling from the ceiling.

Her: Um yeah, the ceiling.

Me: I mean, you'd think they'd clean the ceiling every once in a while, get the earwax off it and stuff.

Her: Mm hmm.

My ruse apparently did not work as the date ended quickly and uneventfully. That sucked. I began carrying Q-Tip's around with me for a while and cleaning my ears so vigorously that I think I went a little deaf, but I gave up on that. Screw it. To quote Popeye, "I yam what I yam," and sometimes what I yam is a dude that has earwax falling out of his head, and that's OK.

At least I'm not constantly bleeding from both eyes...

Brian Needs to Shut Up More

Sometimes I forget as a father, and authority figure, that my children pick up on anything and everything that I say, even stuff I say that I don't realize I'm saying. They're like sponges; loud, screaming, crying, crazy sponges who don't enjoy eating food.

This all came to a head last week when my 6 year old daughter decided it was a good time to question me on every partially offensive remark that came out of my mouth. I should have known something was different that day, as she started out by saying, "I have a hypothesis" about the TV or something, and then mentioning something about a constellation. I was perplexed.

Me: Holy crap! How do you know what a hypothesis is?

Her: I learned it. What does "Holy Crap" mean?

Me: Ummmm.... nothing, eat your granola bar. And how do you know what a constellation is?

Her: I learned it, Brrrrrrrian (That's what she calls me when she's feeling superior). Now answer the question. What does "Holy Crap" mean?

Me: Ummmm, it means gee whiz.

My son: Did you just say "Whiz"? HAHA, Whiz.

Me: Agghhh!! Go back to bed you two!

Her: No way Brrrrrrrrrian...

And so on. I should have taken this obvious sign from the heavens that my children were bound and determined to make me a bad father that day (or as I'm referred to by other kid's mom's, "That Man") and just went to the gym and stared at chick's butts all afternoon. Instead I went on with my day, doing things, and saying things that only my diseased brain could think of, at least according to my wife. My daughter was quick to catch any verbal misstep I had.

Me (After almost getting crushed by a speeding buttlicker on my street): Watch out, you stupid son-of-a-bitch!

Her: Dad, what's a son of a bitch?

Me: Uh, it's a bad person, honey.

(Side Note: One time when I was about 7 and riding the bus home, someone had written "DAM FAGOT" in magic marker on the bus seat in front of me. I was really interested in that term because I figured it must have been really important for someone to risk getting in trouble by the bus driver to write it on a seat. So I went home and politely asked my mom to define the term "DAM FAGOT" for me. Her response? "Uh, it's a bad person, honey." In that vein, I also grew up thinking "Dildo" and "Bimbo" were similar synonyms for a "bad person". Thanks Mom.)

Later that day, I was sitting on a hill at dusk (don't ask) when I saw my son being chased by a girl and really enjoying it. I was kind of grooving on this because up until now my son's only interaction with kids (outside of his sister) was knocking them over during sporting events if they were "the bad guys". So I'm happily sitting on a hill at dusk watching my son play with a girl, when a friend come comes over and gets in their way. Without thinking, I yell:

Me: Hey, quit cockblocking Miles!

Her: Cockblocking?? What does that mean Dad?

Instantly everybody else on the hill is staring daggers at me, and I think a mom threw up in her purse in horror. I tried to think of a harmless word that sounded like cockblocking, but the only thing I could think of was "knobslobbing" and I figured that might actually be worse, so I just stared at my shoes for a long time and hoped people would forget about me.

Then like 5 minutes later, I was rambling on about something with Amy, and she told me I was foolish, and so I remarked that pretty soon I was going to find me a new stripper wife. These things that come out of my mouth are not my fault, I swear to you. They just happen...

Me: Oh yeah, well I'm fixin' to go get me a new stripper wife, and she's gonna be all strippery and hookery and stuff...

Her: A stripper wife? Haha Dad, you're weird. You're already married to Mom.

Me: Bella, stop listening to me!! Go roll down the hill!!

Her: No way Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrian.

I think I should probably just shut up forever. I heard that Pythagoras imposed a vow of silence on all his disciples. I wish Pythagoras was still alive and formulating theorems, as I could have been a disciple and avoided all this nonsense. Damn you Pythagoras!! A^2 + B^2 +C^2 my ass!