So I have been tagged by that meme going around where someone forces you to write "20 Things You Might Not Know About Me," just by saying your name. I hope these things you may not have known about me add 3 units of value to your life!
1. My social security number is 280-21-0090 2. My password is "smallb3rri3s" 3. My mother's maiden name is Hunt 4. The color of my first car was crimson 5. The name of my favorite childhood pet was Squeaky 6. The name of the city where I was born is Summit 7. Every year on our anniversary, my waifu and I spend an overnight at a bed & breakfast. We usually leave the house no later than 4pm the day before, and return no earlier than 2pm the day after our anniversary. 8. I keep a spare key to my house under the end table on the porch. 9. Even so, the window to the bathroom on the first floor, in the back of the house, is pretty easy to jimmy open. 10. My anniversary is on June 12. 11. All the good stuff is in the shoebox on the closet shelf in the kid's room. 12. I cannot fit my own hand in my mouth, but I can fit -your- hand in my mouth. 13. Last year, no man on Earth ate more ham than I did. One woman did, though. The thing is, I don't even like ham that much. I mean, it's OK. 14. No woman has been able to look at me naked without laughing, at least once. 15. I'm the reason they won't serve beer at Chuck E. Cheese any more. 16. I have had to consult a physician after 4 hours. 17. I went to great lengths to cast 60 votes in the November election. 30 for each guy. 18. My fornix carries neural signals from the hippocampus to the mammillary bodies and septal nuclei. 19. I cannot count to 20.
So I had a birthday a couple weeks ago. Up until this one, all the complaining about getting old was lies. It was reasonably possible to think of myself as not in the category of grown-ups. This new number does not allow that any more, and it is not cool. But without consciously doing it, I have accumulated most of the "stuff" grown-ups are supposed to have, so I guess now I'm able to ossify quietly. All I need is a hemorrhoid.
Other than aging, these things have happened:
The babby is nearly walking. It is weird and fascinating to watch a tiny person with no self-preservation instincts whatsoever. His hobbies include putting remote controls in his mouth, poking me in the eyes, and falling over. He shits more than his body weight each day.
The office in which I work is downsizing. There have been firings, resignations and salary cuts. I have been spared from this, fortunately, but the place is starting to resemble The Office from The Office. Which I just started watching recently, thanks to streaming Netflix on demand. It seems this show is actually just about as good as the UK version, right? I guess it makes sense. The British humor that stems from watching people squirm in discomfort from forced politeness doesn't really work in the US, on account of we're flaming assclowns. But in a workplace setting, the notion that people might hold their tongues about something is at least a little plausible. So it works.
Other than that....had a nasty cold over New Years, so I've been watching a lot of the movie:
Transsiberian - Not bad. Burn After Reading - Hrm. Kind of a guilty pleasure. Liked it more than it deserved. The Corndog Man - Also not bad. The Celluloid Closet - Liked it. Boarding Gate - Tedious. Boring. Fuck it. Timber Falls - For no good reason at all, this entertained me. Young people hike in West Virginia. They are unmarried, and have sex in a very small tent that is remarkably well-lit. Berserk hillbillies kidnap them so as to force them to mate and have babies. Complete with a Gimp.
Anyway, hooray for 2009. Because I live in the midwest again, my New Years Resolution is to make it to the end of the year without having to engage in any knife fights with hobos over sweet, sweet squirrel meat. That's pretty much the next bull market out here.
Well, the Clutch show was not as miserable an experience as I'd expected. I'm not rushing out to buy all their CDs and t-shirts, but...they put on a decent show. They're quite an enthusiastic rock and roll combo, these young people. Not that I have any idea what they played. There must have been a few of their top-100-smash hits in there, because now and then the crowd would get agitated and start whooping during the first few notes. Those songs didn't seem any more or less memorable than the others, but who am I to argue with the musical wisdom of a hairy mob. And it was hairy. Literally, not metaphorically.
So anyway...music. I'm woefully out of touch. For a long long while, I've been subsisting on my existing collection, which stopped growing in any significant way when I got out of college. Other than that, it's mostly just listening to some freeform radio stations. I've held out on an ipod because a) to hell with proprietary DRM-crippled formats, and b) iTunes seems to infest your PC almost as badly as RealPlayer. And now I learn that drm-free mp3s are actually easy to get. Thank you Amazon.
And now I'm making up for lost time, and this is where I need to harness the awesome might of YOU, the internet. Give me new music. Some of the stuff I've come across lately that I'm enjoying: The Decemberists. The New Pornographers. Arcade Fire. I have no idea if it's embarrassing to admit in polite company that you listen to this stuff, but that's what I'm enjoying right now. Give me more.
Also, it may be time to break down and get a portable mp3 jukebox. I know everyone just gets an ipod, but as long as it's easy to use, can store a lot of songs, and you can get an adapter to use it in a car, that's what I want. Tell me what I should get.
In the meantime, look at how fucken cute my baby is. Your baby will never be this cute, so probably, you should not have one:
So it seems I haven't updated in over two months. This is mostly because every time I think I should, I have a hard time thinking of anything to write about except the damn baby. And not even I am interested in reading about that anymore.
The whole process just takes over your life. I have spent the last two months going to prenatal appointments, hospital tours, birthing classes, BABY FUGGEN SHOWERS, and middle-of-the-night trips to the emergency room for all the wonderful ailments and malfunctions that pregnant women endure. For example, it seems that a pregnant woman's body becomes a bloated sack of fluids and ill humours. This complicated system of hydraulics can and does manage to displace all sorts of other important parts, which end up displacing other parts....like nerves. Which leads to being awoken in the middle of the night by someone howling in agony from fucked-up nerves, and more visits to the ER.
Also, it's no longer known as Cletus the Fetus. Its new name is "Adam Alexander."
This should not be a surprise to those of you who know me. As a committed free-market conservative, I had to pay homage to my most respected capitalist idols. "Adam," after Adam Smith whose "Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" will be junior's first book. And "Alexander," after (of course) Alexander Haig, Reagan's Secretary of State, who helped keep Ron's more appeasenik instincts under rein, and kept the unrelenting pressure on the Commies.
Also, I finally saw Hot Fuzz and thought the jokes were just swell.
I know what you love to read about, and what you love to read about is the fetus that I spawned inside another woman's uterus. You're in luck.
So, it turns out that this fetus is a boy. Which is good for Jen, so I don't have to go all Henry VIII on her. I had hoped to put up some sweet sweet pre-natal porn showing off how Junior is ALL MAN, but we didn't get any good snapshots from the technician. wtf.
Now we must choose a name. A friend has helpfully suggested CHAINSAW!!!! in all capitals - the exclamation points were my idea - and this one is growing on me. However, picking a title for the tyke seems more appropriate. It would be pretty awesome, for example, to be able to introduce him as "my son, The Millionaire."
I'm also thinking of how I might be able to exploit him for financial gain. Selling his name, maybe? "Verizon Presents Eric Jr." Or maybe tattooing a Nike Swoosh on his forehead. I dunno. It's gonna be at least 3 years before this parasite is useful as cheap labor, so there must be something I can do to extract the most fiscal value out of him in the meantime.
OK, so breeding does make you a bore. And it does change everything. It's pretty much the only thing you think about, once it happens. And it's hard not to be the only thing you talk about either, even though it bores the hell out of everyone else.
This is from about 2 weeks ago:
Above: Cletus the Fetus. Not pictured: What was left of my youth, sense of "humor," and whacky childish misadventures, like that time I got bit by a radioactive spider and turned into a bionic sandwich
For some reason, my choice of Hortense Funbags for a girl's name was not well received. Not that we know the sex yet.
This is why scientists don't know what the fuck they're doing. Fucken scientists.
"Researchers used a verbal joke test developed in 1983 and used in other humor studies. Mak added a new element, though, by showing participants cartoons from the Ferd'nand comic strip, and asking them to choose between four panels to locate the funny ending. Three of the choices for each cartoon were the wrong ones, created by an artist for the study.
Participants had to respond to jokes like this one:
A businessman is riding the subway after a hard day at the office. A young man sits down next to him and says, "Call me a doctor ... call me a doctor."
The businessman asks, "What's the matter, are you sick?"
Participants then had to choose the right ending. For this one, the correct answer was "I just graduated from medical school."
Wrong choices were straightforward answers or conclusions that did not follow from the premise. Among the wrong answers: "Yes, I feel a little weak. Please help me."
"This wasn't a study about what people find funny. It was a study about whether they get what's supposed to be funny," Carpenter said."
The wrong answer makes for a much better comic. Although an even better punch line would be, "Yes, I am starving. Starving - to - death."
So it seems that I broke down and paid good American money to watch "300."
It was...spiffy. I mean, it looked just swell. Very pretty. The cinematographer should be commended. Everyone else involved should be shot into the sun.
Since the cool new thing all the kids are doing these days is posting about your medical conditions and house purchases, here are my medical conditions and house purchases:
Medical conditions: Old and obnoxious and prone to heart disease, and I could really stand to lose a few pounds. House purchase: This one, on Thursday:
I just get no end of amusement from how very...sickeningly quaint it is. A combed lawn and white picket fence in the midwest. Ha ha, what the hell, how did this happen. I can guarantee it won't be as tasteful on the inside when I'm through with it though.
What's also great is because I live in the fuggen arctic circle, this place cost me what it costs you east coast hipsters to feed your hipster siamese cats for 2 weeks. I dunno who wins that one, maybe it's a tie.
There are more pictures here. The housing market being what it is, the seller is leaving closing $18k in the hole, and I'm walking away with a check. Ha ha. I feed off of the misery and misfortune of others.
I put over 1200 miles on my car the last 5 days. This is the drawback to living in a large state where the pockets of population are not like...near each other.
Down to seminar near Detroit on Tuesday. Back from seminar on Wednesday, a lot slower because it's snowing like a mofuk and you can't go faster than 35 on a 70mph road, because you can't, you know...see the road, and you have to rely on your GPS to figure out where to turn, because it tells you where the road is supposed to be, even though you can't see it. Down to special vet school in Lansing on Thursday because your dog can't breathe and they can only do special vet-school things to him at the place 3 hours away. Back home Thursday night, minus one dog.* Down to lady friend's home on Friday because her father died. Back home on Sunday.
...repeat tomorrow and the day after for funeral.
Fortunately, alcohol has this effect on human brains which makes the entire bizarre ordeal less miserable.
Oh, and on the plus side of living in an economically-blighted wasteland, you can buy a 4 bedroom, 3 bath, 2900 sq. ft. house for $200k. So maybe that's how the karma is evening out.
* not dead. Just staying there for a week to get over pneumonia and have surgery. And ring up several thousand dollars in vet bills. fugger.
As difficult as this will be for all of you to believe.... "Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney" for the Nintendo DS is in fact a really, really bad simulation of being a lawyer. They couldn't have gotten it more wrong if they tried.
Especially the part where your hot, 36DD 27 year old boss is bludgeoned to death. That almost -never- happens to me.
This is the third Xmas season for my little be-hatted icon. Because I'm full of holiday fucken cheer all year round, the santa hat has stayed on the Meat Tower of Babel since 2004, ALL YEAR. While the rest of you chumps are trying to MSpaint little strings of lights on your kitten icons, or your dancing anime figures, or whatever the hell it is you use to look interesting, my use of this bold icon strategy has saved me at least 4 minutes of artistic work over the last 3 years.
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