Tuesday, August 25, 2009

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!!

Monday, August 10, 2009

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...

Friday, August 7, 2009

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.

Friday, July 31, 2009

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.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

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.

Monday, July 13, 2009

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.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

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