Fanfare from the Common Wombat

Is this thing on?

2007-05-28T10:45:00.000-04:00

When my good friend Karla said that she wouldn't blog again until I posted something, I thought "Sweet. Mission accomplished." In fact, if preventing Karla from ever blogging again was the only good thing I ever did in life, I think that in terms of karma, that would be enough. Preventing her from procreating would probably have been better, but I kind of missed the boat on that one. Besides, given her vast and ever growing number of sexual partners (by which I mean people she drugs and ties up) I'm not really sure how putting a stop to her gene pool is even possible.

I was all ready to celebrate my accomplishment. I had put up pinatas all over my house, commissioned the creation of a Boston creme donut the size of an armchair, and printed up 3 dozen T-shirts reading "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead: RIP Karlababble." Then, in a moment of clarity the likes of which I have not had since God himself came down from heaven on a white donkey to tell me to stop murdering immigrants, I realized something.

Without Karla's blog, this guy would have nothing to do. In fact, I imagine that Karlababble is the only thing that keeps him sitting in his mom's basement, drooling all over his keyboard, and not out there on the streets, killing puppies and molesting old women. As much as I love the thought of silencing Karla forever. I cannot and will not do it at the expense of all the puppies and old women in Dyckerson's home town.

And so, though it pains me to do so, I have given in to Karla's lame little trick and resumed posting again. This will be great news to the 2 of you that read this blog. (As near as I can tell, one of you is Karla, and the other person is an NSA agent assigned to keep tabs on my activities.) I will make it my mission for the remainder of this year to change this blog from "the finest source of shit and fart stories on the net" to "a place where like-minded individuals can come together as one huge virtual community and hate Karla."

We'll see how that goes.

In the meantime, Karla, I have posted. That means it's your turn. Drag that bloated incubator you call a body out of bed, turn off the 36-hour "Gene Simmons Family Values" marathon and get back to writing about how you hate everyone and love pickle juice. Or whatever it is you write about. I wouldn't know. I skip the posts that aren't about me.

The ball's in your court, Miss Babble.

2006 Year In Review

2007-01-10T22:46:00.000-05:00

I made 17 resolutions on New Years Eve. Most of them involved stuffing (or rather, not stuffing) various objects up my ass, but one of them was blog-related. I resolved to blog more often, once a week if possible. As you can see by the fact that it is 2 weeks into January and this is my first post of the new year, I'm already doing a bang-up job.

I promise I'll blog more this year, and I promise that you will continue to wish I hadn't. To get that ball rolling, and to set the tone for the horror that will follow, here is my 2006 Year In Review. Also known as 26 pictures I took of myself shitting in various public restrooms.

Here's to an even more productive 2007!

Muchos Grouchy-Ass!!!

2006-11-22T14:32:00.000-05:00

The first thing I do after I dismount the toilet is to turn around and have a post-grump stool inspection.

I lead with that sentence so that you all (and by "you all" I mean the 6 people that still read this blog) will know without a shadow of a doubt that we are once again careening headlong into the dark recesses of my ass. I'm aware that this surprises none of you. It does, however, surprise me, because about a month ago I was introduced by a fellow Baltimore blogger as "the writer of the best shit and fart stories on the net."

Now I'll take a compliment wherever I can get it, and having no shame at all, I have no problem with being known as the "shit and fart guy," but I decided that I would show you all that I have a little more range than that. "I resolve here and now," I said to myself (not out loud, because that would be crazy,) "that the next 6 blog posts I write will not in any way involve farts, shits or my ass." Then I killed a virgin and made a shrine to the shrimp-god Slippygoop out of her bones, because that's how we seal a deal where I come from.

I had every intention of sticking to this resolution, if for no other reason than you really don't want to incur the wrath of Slippygoop. Not unless you like being gnawed to death by millions of sea monkeys. It's not a good way to go. It kind of tickles, and it takes days. but I meant to stick to my guns on this, and I would have, if not for the fact that I recently had a post-grump stool inspection that turned up something weird. Something that I absolutely had to share with you all.

Before we get to that, though, I feel I should explain the whole post-grump stool inspection.

I don't indulge in an inspection of my stools because I'm obsessed with feces. I mean, I am obsessed with feces, but really only the talking about feces. Looking at feces really does nothing for me. See also: Smelling feces, eating feces, juggling feces. My post-grump stool inspection is simply a quick look in the bowl to see how things are stacking up in there. Are we wet? Are we dry? In clumps or one long tube? Sinkers or floaters? These things can tell you a lot about the health of your butt. Most doctors (and by "most," I mean "the crazy ones") will tell you that it's a good idea to examine your stools before you flush them down.

So the post-grump stool inspection is really just another part of the Wombat Commitment to Quality I wrote about a while back. I mean, if I'm going to spend all this digital real estate writing about my shits, shouldn't I do what I can to ensure that they are the best shits I have to offer? See the lengths I go through for you people?

Anyway, on this particular day in question, the standard inspection yielded something kind of new. And it worried me. "Okay, we have 6-8 sinkers... That's normal... 1-2 inches... Some clumping... Also normal... The usual green color... wait. Green?"

Green poops.

GREEN.

Now, in my 34 years on planet Earth I've seen some crazy shit come out of my ass, but green stools was a completely new one for me. I'm not talking about greenish-brown either. I know that's what you are picturing. (or rather, what you are trying desperately not to picture.) I'm not talking about this:

I'm talking about this:

That's not a color you should ever see in the toilet. I'm not kidding and I'm not exaggerating. Full-on green. Imagine standing up after a hairy grump and seeing this staring back at you from the toilet:

I tell you, I was in fear for my life. I'm pretty sure that Oscar The Grouch Craps are the first sign of a brain tumor in your ass. I think it goes Grouch-craps, then the palpitations and the vapors, then your ass falls right off onto the floor and you die. So I did what anyone would do. I ran around the bathroom in circles screaming. I may have cried a little. I remember thinking that if I died right there in the bathroom, I would never again see Karla face-to-face, and despite this silver lining, I still didn't want to die.

What causes green poops? I mean, other than the brain tumor in your ass? Parasites? Viruses? Herpes contracted in a 30-man all-pirate gang-bang? It could have been anything. I knew I should have made those pirates wash their Jolly Rogers!

After about 30 minutes of weeping I booted up my computer, because nothing feeds a panic like the internet. Turns out that the #1 cause of green poops in people over 1 year old is food coloring. (the #1 cause in people under 1 year old is that babies asses are strange and mysterious places.) A careful examination of the things I had eaten in the past 24 hours yielded only one likely culprit:

These things used to be red. Now they're multi-colored. They're multi-colored little bombs of tasty poop stainer. I never knew about the fact that they cause green poops because I hadn't had them in 10 years or so. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that Cap'n Crunch treated my ass like his own personal garbage can. I mean, the guy's not even a real captain. "Cap'n" is some sort of honorary title at best. He's no more qualified to steer a pirate ship than Dr. pepper is to perform bariatric surgery. (boy did I learn that lesson the hard way.)

Anyway, that's the story of my green poops. There's no real lesson to be learned here unless it's "never trust a dude who wears his eyebrows on his hat." (Seriously! Look at that box again!) But the second this happened I knew I had to blog about it, because, let's face it - My ass is the star of this blog, and when it learns a new trick, I'd be remiss if I didn't put it on display. Besides, you know you're all heading out to the store tonight for some Cap'n Crunch to see if it happens to you.

PS: Karla made the comment to me that because I hadn't posted in so long, my blog had become boring. Well Karla, I hope this serves as proof that it can be boring even when I do post something.

How I spent my fall vacation

2006-11-06T18:40:00.000-05:00

As many of you know, I had the chance this weekend to spend some time with one of my very favorite people on Earth. Instead, I visited Karla and the small group of trained actors she refers to as her "family." I've met Karla before, but that was only for a few hours. This time I actually spent an entire weekend locked up with her, and let me tell you, it was an educational experience. Let me share with you some of the things I learned:

1) Karla does not fit in a toy car.

I don't know why she felt that she needed to get into the toy car in the first place. Karla is very child-like, and by "child-like," I mean "retarded." It's not like she had anywhere to go, as the device strapped to her ankle starts beeping the minute she steps out the front door... (If she makes it as far as the edge of her lawn she is immediately set upon by 3 Dallas SWAT members and a posse of attack dogs. Boy do I wish I'd gotten pictures of that. Go figure that the one time this weekend she decided to violate the terms of her house arrest and make a break for it, I had "accidentally" left my camera phone hidden behind a few carefully placed washcloths in her shower. Damn.)

Anyway, as you can see here, while there are many things that Karla does fit into, (such as a jail cell, the trunk of a '72 Ford LTD and a series of small plastic coolers - Some dissasembly required for that last one...) she does not really fit into a child's toy car. Also, once she was in there she found that she could not get out. She was still wedged in the car when I left. For all I know, she's still in there now, which is bound to make her pilates class interesting.

2) Karla posesses a working uterus.

I haven't actually got any personal knowledge of her uterus, nor do I have any pictures of it, (stop looking so dissapointed!) but I have seen, first-hand, what comes out of it. No, I'm not talking about the bloody discharge, although there certainly was plenty of that smeared all over her house. I'm refering to her son Jake, who I can now confirm is a living breathing person and not an elaborate photoshop-generated ruse.

I have nothing bad to say about Jake. He is sweet, wonderful and adorable. Which makes it all the more bizzare that he should come from Karla, who posesses none of those qualities. I enjoyed Jake so much that several times during my visit I found myself wishing Brian and Karla would just leave so I could enjoy some time with the only articulate and interesting person in the house. Also, Jake poops in his pants, which makes you okay in my book any day.

3) Karla is a master of photoshop.

You've all seen the pictures of her that she spends all day judiciously plastering all over the internet, and you've all had the same thought that I had: "What a pretty girl."

While I can still neither confirm or deny Karla's gender, I can say one thing without a doubt. All of those photos are heavily doctored. Karla (or someone in her employ) must posess an unbelievable degree of mastery in Photoshop, because when I say the pictures are doctored, I don't mean they are touched-up a little bit. I've been working in Photoshop for 10 years and I don't think I could pull off this kind of photo manipulation. Karla looks absolutely nothing like the pictures you have seen on her blog. She must spend hours upon hours working on these photos to make sure that no trace of her real face ever makes it out to the public eye. The effort is, quite frankly, astonishing. Even the picture above, with her in the baby car, turned out doctored. All I can guess is that she stole my camera phone when I wasn't looking and altered the pictures.

What she doesn't know is that I was able to get away with one photo that she didn't know about, and now present to you, the internet public, the only known completely un-doctored picture of Karla in existance. (Kids, look away now!)

Sorry, Internet, but the truth had to be told.

Flying The Slippery Skies

2006-09-14T23:19:00.000-04:00

Early tomorrow morning Sal and I are getting on a plane and heading out for parts unknown. Actually now that I think about it, I hope we are heading to parts known. I hope that I know the parts we are heading to, and I really hope the pilot knows the parts we are heading to. I mean, he's the only one on the plane with a freaking forward-facing window, so I kind of expect him to be the guy who's responsible for getting us where we need to go.

As an aside, one of my greatest pet peeves involves air travel. Whenever I am about to fly somewhere, someone always says "have a safe flight!" Like I get any say at all in whether the fight is safe or not. My hands are tied back in coach. They don't give you a steering wheel back there. Tell it to the guys up front who can actually, you know, fly the plane. When I get on, I like to stick my head into the cockpit and say "My mom said have a safe flight, and I know you boys don't want to let my mom down, so whaddaya say we keep it in the air all the way to Chicago, eh?"

At any rate, being fully aware you can apparently bring down a plane with Gatorade now, I figured I'd better check the TSA's website and familiarize myself with what I will and will not be allowed to bring on the plane. I'm thoughtful like that. I'll do just about anything to avoid a cavity search.

So as we all know, you can no longer board the plane with a bottle of water, hand sanitizer, or lotion. They've pretty much put the kibosh on any liquid or gel. Except those gel inserts for your shoes. If you are gellin' like a felon, You are still welcome on board. But if you sit next to me and insist on tellin' me how gellin' you are, I'll make you eat those fucking insoles.

The list of approved and disapproved items does take a few turns into the bizarre, though. I may not be able to bring a bottle of Aquafina, but I am allowed up to 4 ounces of personal lubricant. I'm not sure exactly what situation may arise on an airplane that would require me to be packing KY, (well, I can think of one, actually. Heh.) but it's good to know that on a long flight, one's throat may be parched, but one's vagina will be damper than an acre of rain forest. I guess the mile high club lobbied hard to get that one included.

I know this will come as a shock to most of you, but you are no longer allowed to bring bug repellent on the aircraft. Looks like passengers will now be utterly defenseless against all the chiggers, gnats and mosquitoes that live in the modern 747. Talk about roughing it... At least you can still wear bells around your ankles to ward off the bears.

You can still bring "toy transformer robots" onto the plane. They went out of their way to mention that specifically for some reason. They also allow toy weapons, as long as they are not "realistic." I'd advise parents to err on the side of caution with this one. If your kid has a toy gun that isn't bright pink and looks wonky like something that fell out of Dr. Seuss' ass, leave it at home. A sure sign that your child's toy weapon was too realistic is your child bleeding out from multiple gunshot wounds on the cold tile of an airport floor.

You can apparently bring drills and other power tools, as long as they are used for the attachment and removal of prosthetic devices. My job occasionally requires me to travel with tools, which I usually pack in the checked luggage, but fuck that! From now on I'm just hiring an amputee to come along and act as cover. "No officer, I need that band saw to take off my buddy's false elbows and prosthetic nipples. It's medical."

Sharp items that are specifically prohibited include: knives (okay), box cutters (I can see the sense in that) , ice axes, meat cleavers and sabres. A serious blow to all of the globe-trotting climbers, butchers and Arabian princes who can no longer practice their trade in flight.

Other prohibited items on the "Damn, I was going to bring one of those" list include: spear guns, cattle prods, starter pistols, nunchakus, throwing stars and hand grenades.

Hand grenades.

I did not need the TSA to tell me that hand grenades are not appropriate on a flight. Well, maybe a long flight with crying babies, but otherwise I was assuming I should leave my hand grenades at home.

Who exactly (with the exception of Steven Segal) is getting on a domestic flight armed for unexpected guerilla combat? Did they get a lot of ninjas in the days before 9/11?

I know 2 things:

1) The world is definitely getting crazier.

2) My carry on tomorrow will hold nothing but my iPod, a book, and possibly some trail mix.

And my allotted 4 ounces of lube.

Thirty-Four Years

2006-09-11T17:50:00.000-04:00

Fuck all this "five years" bullshit that's going on today. The real day of infamy was thirty four years ago when Lil' Wombat was lifted from the belly of his sainted mother and hurled into the world like an obscenity-spewing cannonball. My own personal conspiracy theory is that the terrorists picked my birthday to throw planes at buildings as some sort of warning to me. Because if there's one thing the terrorists hate more than freedom, It's poop stories and fart jokes. Nothing spoils a jihad like bun-music.

I waited all day for Katie Couric to show up and interview me, or for the President to publicly condemn me, but both of them were complete no-shows. I also scoured the newspaper for "where were you when Wombat was born" stories, but I found nothing. The blogosphere was similarly devoid of stories about me. Everyone's busy going on and on about the other horrible thing that happened on 9/11. Let's get some perspective here, people!

Yes, the terrorist attacks 5 years ago were horrible. Truly, utterly horrible. But I'd like to think that this blog is even more horrible. And if you think reading me makes you want to throw yourself from a bridge, just imagine talking to me. And I've been spreading my unique brand of stink around the country for way longer than 5 years. So I ask you: Who, really, is the greater threat to our way of life? Osama Bin laden, or yours truly, the Sphincter of Mass Distruction?

How long have I been trying to get the government to institute a color-coded warning system (shades of brown, of course) based on the flatulence levels in my pants? I mean, I'm thinking of the public safety here. But no one in the White House would return my calls. Now every Tom Dick and Achmed with a dirty bomb or a thermos full of anthrax gets a color-coded warning. What a world. I was unleashing toxic gas on the masses way before it was cool.

What is astonishing to me as I look back over my life this far, is how similar I am now to the Lil' Wombat that entered the world all those years ago. He was a whining crying shit-machine with no hair, a tiny penis, and a strong desire to put nipples in his mouth. Today? Well... I cry a little less. Otherwise, pretty much the same dude. Amazing how I can take so long to make such little progress.

At any rate, enjoy your day of rememberance. Have a moment of silence for those 2973 poor souls who died 5 years ago. But when you're done doing that, take a moment to recall the original "dirty bomb," introduced to a cringing America on this day in 1972.

Poopslinger

2006-07-27T22:47:00.000-04:00

I have terrible aim. This is something that you might as well know about me. Terrible, horrible aim.

It's true when I'm throwing a wad of paper at a trash can, It's true when I'm throwing my skidmarked undies at the hamper, and as Sally will gladly tell you (while kneeling on the bathroom floor and employing a large variety of cleaning products), It's true when I'm aiming my wizzle-stick at the toilet. Lousy, lousy aim. Don't even get me started on my inability to play darts. If I'm holding a dart, the safest place in the world to stand is directly in front of me, because that's the one place that dart ain't ever going.

So fact "a" that you should be keeping in your head, for it is germane to the story I am about to tell you, is that I have lousy aim. Fact "b" for you to hold onto is that I live in a row house, which is an end unit on a corner, and that I have, sticking off the side of the rear of my house, a little tiny useless garage.

"Useless" is probably a bit of an overstatement. It has plenty of uses. It's just that none of those uses includes parking (or for that matter fitting) an actual automobile inside of it. Given that the definition of "garage" is "an outbuilding (or part of a building) for housing automobiles," I'd say that the little room on the back of my house with the cool roll-up door fails utterly to be a garage. Maybe it was built years ago, in a bygone age when cars were, oh... 5 feet wide. If you drove a Mini you could probably get it into my garage, but you certainly couldn't open the doors. You'd have to climb out the windows, "Duke-boy" style, if you ever wanted to actually come inside for an iced tea or something.

We have no idea what possessed one of the previous owners to build a tiny garage. We have no idea if it was at one time functional or if it is some sort of elaborate practical joke. We use it mostly as a junk room, and a place to keep the garbage until garbage day, at which time, I roll up the door and plop the trash cans out on the sidewalk.

Anyway, to recap, the things you should now know are:

a) Lousy aim
b) Tiny, stupid "garbage room" garage

Okay. On with the (by now completely un-thrilling and anticlimactic) story.

This morning around 11, I arrive home from running a few errands. You may imagine that by "errands" I mean eating scones off the naked back of an armless asian woman with some of Baltimore's intelectual elite or possibly arranging a series of diabolical prison breaks that will soon have this city on its knees, begging for mercy. I don't actually mean either of those things, but you may imagine that I do. I pull in behind a very shiny and obviously brand new blue Mustang. It's quite a pretty car, somewhat out of place in my neighborhood, and someone has gone to great lengths to really make it sparkle. It's one of these here:

(Common Wombat in no way is affiliated with, nor does he endorse, the Ford Motor Company. Unless they'd like to send him a free car. Then he'll endorse whatever they want him to, because Common Wombat is a big fat whore.)

I am distracted from my admiration for the pretty, pretty car, by the sight of something lying on the lid of one of my trash cans. I know what it is the second I see it. It's a little plastic sandwich bag filled with shit.

(Common Wombat is also in no way affiliated with, nor does he endorse, little plastic sandwich bags filled with shit.)

I keep my trash cans inside of my little tiny garage. They only sit outside for a few hours twice a week on garbage day, but in that short window of time between when the garbage men empty them, and when I take them back inside, they always manage to acquire a few bags of dog shit. It's irritating to have to house someone else's crap for a few days, but honestly I'm just glad they are actually picking up their turds instead of leaving them scattered around my kitchen door like a fly-encrusted mine-field. That's assuming that the pooch-poo comes in the standard approved package of an intact plastic shopping bag, tied off securely and placed inside my trash can. Double-bagged is even better. If I see you double-bagging, I'll come outside and kiss you.

This wasn't a trash bag, it wasn't tied off, and it wasn't actually in the can. This was a pile of fresh soft steamers in an open sandwich bag, lying on the lid of the can. That's just bad neighborship in my book, and it caused me to make the following face:

I'm a generally loving and kind guy. But there's only so much of dealing with someone else's smelly turd bombs that I can take before I snap a little. Besides, it's been a hard few weeks, you know?

So, full of righteous anger, I went over to the trash can (still making the face) and picked up the bag of shit by one corner. I summoned up all of my intense hatred for the dog walkers of America who don't practice neighborly shit-scooping practices, and with a mighty swipe of my bear-like paw, I flung the offending poo-pouch across the street.

Or at least, that's how it happened in my head. In reality the mighty swipe of my paw was more of a feeble flap of my flipper, and the little turd-sack wound up sailing sort of diagonally about 15 feet away...

...And right smack onto the trunk of the shiny new Mustang, where it promptly unloaded all of its little brown passengers to play all over the back of the car. Immediately my face of righteous rage morphed into my face of "holy shit I'm a gigantic asshole."

What does a good neighbor do after he has plastered the back of your expensive and spit-shined new car with fresh dog shit?

I wouldn't know. I hid in my kitchen.

I'm Back And I'm Black!

2006-07-21T00:55:00.000-04:00

Some of you are thinking, "He's not black... what is he talking about?" This is the internet, people. I'm blogging from behind an iron veil of secrecy and anonymity... You don't know who I really am or what I look like. I could very well be a black man. Hell, I could be a black woman! I could be a female black midget!

Some others of you are thinking, "No... I've met you face to face, and you're a tubby white dude. You sir, are not black. Or a midget, for that matter." Um... crap. So much for my veil of secrecy.

At any rate, the question of my blackness aside, I am, in fact, back. I'm back and I'm white.

Thanks to all of you who commented or sent me emails expressing concern. It's good to know so many of you are caring, loving individuals, in addition to being depraved little fuckers who scour the internet for poop stories. I admit that some life issues had me on the ropes and reeling for a few days there, and at the time, I really wasn't seeing the funny come back in the near future. Hanging there on the ropes does that kind of shit to your perspective. On the ropes, all you see is the mat and the gloves of the guy slugging you.

But then, if you're me, you remember that you're a hell of a lot stronger than the guy hitting you, and you get the fuck off the ropes and start throwing punches again. So that's what I did. And lo and behold the funny came back. Along with the funny also came the need to drive stupid boxing metaphors into the ground, so it seems.

Anyway, things here at Wombat HQ are okay... Nobody died. Well, my grandmother actually did die, (peacefully and surrounded by family, which seems to me to be the best possible way to go...) but that wasn't what had me on the ropes. Sally did not die, (I know some of you were thinking it!) or even lose a limb. Look, here she is with me in Shenandoah National Park this weekend, hale and healthy.

I just realized that you can see none of her limbs in that picture. You'll just have to take my word for it - they're all there and functional. Ain't my wife a cutie though? That, by the way, is the face she makes when I pinch her butt. Or when I drop a KFC-scented trouser bomb. It's the same face for both things.

Hmm... I just noticed that we both have trees growing out of our heads in that picture. In the "cool head trees" battle, sally wins, because hers looks like a badass Ronald McDonald wig. Mine looks like I have an elephant knee jutting out of my skull. Next time I'm paying more attention to where I stand and getting the cool head-tree.

Shenandoah was terribly cool. It may be because my job frequenly requires me to spend a lot of time in the shopping malls of the world, but I had completely forgotten that there were great sections of our country that have yet to be paved over. This is a bad thing if you're looking to park your car or get a pickup basketball game going, but if you're looking to relax and explore, I highly recommend spending some time in the non-paved areas. Sal and I hiked down into the woods to see a 70-foot waterfall hidden back there, and once I was done frantically looking for the jumbotron monitors and trying to order peanuts from every deer in the area, I was really awestruck by the beauty of nature. I don't spend enough time outdoors. Something I shall rectify.

Anyway, as I said before, I'm back. And yes, officially, white. Just in case you were wondering. You can't keep a good wombat down. And I am a very good wombat.

Thanks again for all the support guys.

Nothing is funny anymore...

2006-07-11T08:53:00.000-04:00

...and probably won't be for a long time. No more blogging. Maybe someday. Sorry.

Where the fuck have I been for TWO MONTHS???

2006-06-07T00:59:00.000-04:00

Don't get all excited, this post will not be the gigantic teetering mountain of funny you're hoping it will be. If you were expecting a triumphant return to form with some great and horrifying story of my latest rectal-mishap, prepare to be dissapointed. I don't have any good ass or poop stories, and even if I did, I don't really have the time to tell them right now. But I've been getting some concerned emails from some of you (which is a nice change to the "please for the love of Christ stop blogging" emails I usually get), so I wanted to explain my absence.

You see, a little over a month ago, I was thinking of some ways I could improve the blog, and I began the Common Wombat Commitment to Quality. I solemnly vowed (because I've found that laughingly vowing things just doesn't carry the same weight) that I would only blog the finest, funniest, abso-fucking-lutely best quality stories I could possibly write. And if I couldn't muster up some quality blogging, I would write nothing at all.

Well, we all see where that got me. So fuck the Common Wombat Commitment to Quality. What a crap idea that was.

I now hereby present to you the Common Wombat Commitment to Talentless and Unfunny Blogging.

Phew! What a weight off my shoulders!

Seriously though, I have been (and continue to be) very busy. But fear not, Blog-buddies. I haven't forgotten you. I'll be back very very soon to make you regret ever buying a computer and logging on to the interweb. Just you wait.

In the meantime, you can amuse yourselves by reading this little story, which I posted before I started picking up readers, and many of you may have missed. It's a heartwarming tale of love, honor, and me shitting my pants in a public building.

I'll be back! You'll laugh! You'll cry! You'll retch a little!

But enough about Sally, let's talk about me.

2006-04-20T22:30:00.000-04:00

The worst part of this story, the part that will make all of you once and for all write me off as some kind of degenerate genetic experiment gone wrong, isn't that it exposes me as a monumental klutz, or that it involves me injuring myself while buck-ass naked.

No, those things are just the buttercream icing on the warm chocolate cake of my perpetual slide into full jackassitude. The worst part of the story, as you can probably guess by now, involves my ass.

It was the morning after Christmas, 2001. Sally had already left for work, but I was enjoying a nice lie-in, because I worked for Santa. The great jolly fucker in red may be a slave-driver on Easter and President's day and Yom Kippur, but when Christmas rolls around, you by god get time off, because that is his fucking holiday.

The two things you need to know about the moment that I woke up are as follows:

1) I was buck naked. This is not (as some of you may have thought) because my bedroom was invaded in the middle of the night by a squad of gay Turkish jugglers who stripped me nude and ravaged me with bowling pins and live puppies, but because I sleep in the nude. I've mentioned that fact before, and as then, I will say again now, don't try to picture it. You'll only hurt yourself. The next time you see Sally, just give her a sympathetic hug and whisper in her ear "The horror... the horror..." She'll know what you mean. And probably start crying.

2) I had a desperate need to shit.

That's maybe my least favorite way to wake up. No wait a minute. The thing I wrote earlier? About being ravaged by jugglers? That would be my least favorite way to wake up, followed by "being eaten by a walrus" and "realizing I'm on fire." But the point is that waking up at T-minus 50 seconds 'till the skidmark apocalypse is definitely one of my least favorite ways to wake up. And so, not really wanting to paint the bed, I got up.

So there I was, about 15 seconds into the morning after Christmas, defensively clenching as I waddled down the hallway on still sleep-numb legs, my tiny man-junk utterly failing to dangle between my legs and a crust of half-dried drool on my left cheek.

I'll interrupt the narrative for just a second here to tell you that, when I started this blog a few years ago, I distinctly said to myself "I don't ever want to be one of those bloggers who is constantly trying to make themselves seem cool and impressive..." I'd say mission a-fucking-complished.

At the top of the steps, I made a fateful mistake. Instead of turning left, into the bathroom, I turned right, onto the landing at the top of the stairs. You see, the morning before (Christmas, for those of you who are only skimming this story looking for poop-references and retaining no real information) Sally had given me a book about Legos, and as faithful blog-buddies should know by now, I like to read while I shit. The book in question was still downstairs, under the tree, thus the right-hand turn onto the stairs.

So I went downstairs, got the book, and returned upstairs to the bathroom, where I enjoyed a nice leisurely morning grump while reading about Legos.

Or at least, that was the plan.

The part of the plan that involved going down the stairs went just fine, except that I did it on my ass with my legs sticking straight up in the air, while clawing at the brick wall and making monkey noises. And I did it a lot faster than I had intended too.

And so, there I was, not quite a minute into this new morning, buck naked in a tubby heap at the foot of the stairs, arms and legs splayed about, tiny man-junk still quite tiny, and in quite a lot of pain.

I'm a big guy, and when suddenly not supported by my legs, or, oh, anything else, I come crashing to the ground pretty fucking hard. So as I lay there nude on my living room floor, my first concern was determining if I had broken my legs. I figured I'd need them intact if I was going to crawl to a phone for help, or at least into the TV room so that I could die in front of the television. Much to my relief, the legs were intact and functional. Ironic, considering that they were somewhat less than functional a few seconds before when I had needed them to walk me down the fucking stairs.

Ok. Legs working. Arms working. Good so far. My head hurt because I'm pretty sure it had hit a few stairs on the way down, but as I lay there and took inventory, it seemed the only part of me absolutely screaming in pain was...

Oh go ahead, guess.

Yep. My ass.

My poor ass took a fucking beating, as I was basically sliding unhindered down the stairs on it. My stairs are hardwood. My floor too. This means no rug-burns (yay) but it also means my stairs are hard as hell, and there are some splinters (boo). Still, I'll take a banged up ass over broken legs any day.

At this point, through the buzzy haze of the adrenaline rush, I realize something important:

I still reeeeeeeeally have to shit.

There's a small half-bath on the first floor of my house, so I haul myself off the floor, and limp my throbbing ass over to get the Lego book. Even in the midst of a crisis, it's important to prioritize. After going through all of that, I by God was going to read that fucking book on the toilet.

And so I did.

The end result (pun intended) of my trip down the stairs was a bunch of scrapes and bruises, but nothing broken or otherwise seriously injured. Except my pride, which, since I clearly have none, wasn't much of a loss.

So of course when Sally came home at the end of the day, I told her the whole story of my gravity-assisted nude gymnastics, and showed her my black and blue ass. The she inspected the stairs and called me over, asking "Did you bleed on the steps here?"

I assured her that, while scraped up, I didn't really have any open wounds from my fall, and I seriously doubted that I'd actually bled on anything. I looked where she pointed though, and sure enough there was a small stain on the last step.

A small brown stain.

On the last step, where I had landed after falling down the stairs on my ass while reeeeeeeeeealy needing to shit.

Yeah, you guessed it. It should come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog. I shit on the stairs. Not a big shit, not a log or a nugget, more like a little brown kiss, but still... I shit on the stairs.

Go ahead and say it. I won't argue with you. Utterly unfit for human society.

Sally, for her part, was very supportive. First, by laughing at me and the skidmarked step for 3 hours, and then by referring to me as "Scrapey Butt" for the next 2 months. She's better than a band aid, I tell you.

More reasons why the woman I married should be locked up.

2006-04-06T18:26:00.000-04:00

Since I've already outed her as an obsessive penny-scrubber, I figured I'd just keep the "Weird Wife" train a-rolling along and give you a few more reasons why Sally, love her as I do, is just plain the strangest woman walking the planet. She's stranger than most of the wheelchair-bound women out there rolling the planet as well.

Here are a few reasons why, in no particular order.

1) She laughs for 40 minutes straight.

You might not think that this is strange at first glance, so let me be more specific. When I say "she laughs" I don't mean "she titters," or "she sniffles," or "she giggles a little." I mean she sends small animals running for cover by making a sound something like a jet engine humping a pack of hyenas to death. (Those of you who have heard Sally laugh know what I'm talking about. She could raise the dead with her laugh. She could shred wallpaper at 100 yards.) If you're picturing a sound (how do you picture a sound?) that is in any way irritating, you're on the wrong track. Despite the fact that it sends your skeleton shooting straight out of your body, people absolutely love Sal's laugh, because it is such an expression of unbridled and unashamed joy. It's a terrible and awesome thing, and may just be one of my very favorite things about her. One of these days I'll capture it and post it here on the internet for you all to experience.

Also, when I say "she laughs for 40 minutes," I mean "she laughs at the same single thing." And it's usually something stupid, like a fart joke. For 40 minutes.

For example, the other night we were watching some show on the Food Network, and they were giving us an in depth look into a crouton factory. (yep, every night is a slow news night at the Food Network.) At one point the announcer made the grave mistake of referring to the croutons as "crusty chunks." Instantly the cats bolted from the room at the sound of a hundred moose being shredded in a wood chipper. Sal squealed and hooted at "crusty chunks" for the remainder of the program. At one point she even commandeered the Tivo remote to back the show up and hear the guy say "crusty chunks" five more times. I can't tell you how often this happens. the worst part is that after a good 20 minutes of honking and squealing, there will be a few minutes of perfect silence and stillness, and you'll think the fit has finally ended. Wrong! She's just lulling you into a false sense of security! Just when you are sure she's settled down, and are about to say something sweet and loving to her, that's when the hooting starts up again. She will squeal on and off again at the very same stupid thing for the rest of the night if you let her.

I happen to love the sound of her laughter. So of course, I let her.

2) She plays with the cats.

Again, it takes some specification to make it clear why this is strange. When I say "plays," I mean "engages in bizarre torture rituals that would make Joseph Mengele proud." One of her favorite games to play with the cats is the "My Little Pony" game. This game consists of Sally suddenly enveloping the entire face of one of our cats in her palm and yelling "My Little Pony!!!" If I had a million years I couldn't explain to you why she does this or what it means. Another thing she likes to do is pick up one of the cats and flip it around on her lap until it is sitting upright with its legs stuck out, like a person would. Then she grabs its paws and pretends it is driving a car. She forces these poor cats to steer, honk the horn, roll down the window (apparently our cats have never heard of power windows) and adjust the mirrors.

She likes to take Einstein, or biggest, fattest, fluffiest cat and dry-mop the kitchen floor with him. She hangs clothespins on Booger, the youngest. She pulls on their whiskers and tails. She likes to grab their back paws and squeal while they try to run away.

In case all this sounds like cruelty, you should know that the cats love it. I swear they do. Purring galore. This is proof that a) my wife is crazy, and b) so are my cats.

3) She is a 12-year-old boy.

Fortunately for me and my ongoing campaign to not go to jail, she is not really a 12-year-old boy. At least, not on the outside. She has the requisite boobies and appropriate genitalia that distinguish her as a fully grown adult woman. (I've checked.) However, if you were to have her conduct an interview over the phone with a psychologist, and you were to disguise her voice like they do on Dateline when they interview convicted rapists, I promise you the psychologist would walk away convinced he or she had been speaking to a 12-year-old boy.

Why, you ask? Well, her sense of humor is (fortunately for me) somewhat unrefined. I remember years ago we watched the very first episode of South Park together. For 12 minutes, she sat there stone-faced, emitting not a single laugh. She turned to me and said "I don't think this show is very funny." Then fire erupted from Cartman's ass and she rolled around the apartment screaming and clutching her belly for the rest of the night.

Biting brilliant satire? Lost on her.

Fire out of the ass? Priceless.

This is the woman who still laughs every time I fart. And since I am, as Karla pointed out, "an anally obsessed fartbag," I fart a lot. Her favorite words are "booger," "turds" and "taint." One time at the supermarket we came across a knife labeled "6 inch boner" and she fell over laughing and was inconsolable for 12 minutes.

Of course, so was I. I mean, "6-inch boner" is pretty fucking funny.

She's perfect for a disgusting guy like me, though... Here's an actual Googletalk conversation we had:

Me: twatfingers
Sally: thickened stump
Me: fudgenuckles
Sally: feces-cano
Me: Mt. St. Fistula
Sally: pus-filled labia
Me: nose pringles
Sally: dong jerky
Me: trouser bubbles
Sally: velcro boogers
Me: uterine drip
Sally: drippy jello squirts
Me: riding the hershey hurricane
Sally: poo-chunk hairball dingles
Me: fork-tender bun-biscuits
Sally: bubbly loaf of yeast infection
Me: WOW. Holy shit you win.

I stand in complete and utter awe of this woman.

And for those of you imagining her as a cursing, feces throwing cavewoman, yes, she's completely capable of behaving normally in polite society. Um... unlike me.

Once again, more about my shitting habits than you ever wanted to know.

2006-03-27T23:16:00.000-05:00

Sometimes the prose flows as if from a hose, or falls like snows on Himalayan floes. Other times I have the no-prose woes. The muse just goes, my frustration grows, my synapses close as I pick my nose and consider leaving the writing to the pros.

All of which is my way of saying "this is my third blog entry in a month??? I suck."

And so, in the interest of not sucking quite so much, I now present you with what passes for a blog entry when the muse departs: A couple of unrelated things from my brain.

Unrelated thing from my brain #1:

Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator will always be a very special book in my life. For those of you who don't know, it is the sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It's a pretty good book if you are in that "smart middle-school kid with no friends and no prospects of dating in the next 7 years" demographic. In fact I'll go as far as to say it's a better book than the one that precedes it. But that's not why it's special to me. Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator will forever be enshrined in the Wombat Hall of Fame because it is (so far) the only book I have ever read cover to cover in one sitting on the toilet.

Ever since I was a wee lad I understood that rule #3 of being a guy is "No shitting shall occur without the presence of reading materials." (For those of you who are curious, Rule #1 is "If you shake it more than twice, you're playing with it," and Rule #2 is "By all means, shake it more than twice. As often as possible.") I know that a few of you out there are speed-shitters. You crap like it's some sort of timed Olympic event. If you take an extra half a second on the wipe or the dismount, it's like you've let your whole country down. You probably spend hours sitting at your desks, obsessing over how sphincter control training could shave seconds off your TEBV (Total Elapsed Bathroom Visit).

I'm exactly the opposite. I approach the bathroom like it's a sunlit clearing in a peaceful forest. I look around, admire the view, find the most ideal spot and set up my tent. Barring a few exceptions (like a last minute grump on a crashing airplane), when I sit on the toilet, I plan on camping out a while. And yes, I always bring a book. I don't mean to imply that it takes me a long time to shit. I imagine that my actual "pushin' one out" time is about as long as anyone's. A couple of minutes (sometimes less) and the actual bathroom work is pretty much over. But the beauty of the bathroom (once you get over the smell) is that by and large you get left alone in there. I grew up with my mother and my sister in a pretty small house, and if one of them wasn't yapping at me about chewing the knees off her Barbies, the other was asking how my day was, or trying to get me to clean my room. (I'll leave it to you to guess which was which.) My room was no escape from them. The walls were thin, and a closed door was no hindrance to either of them. But I learned pretty quickly that if I went to the bathroom and commenced with the grumpitude, suddenly I was left to myself. Nobody wanted any part of that action. The bathroom became my sanctuary, my place unto myself, and (as I got the book bug from my Mom) my reading room.

The amount of time I spent in there as a kid was legendary. It actually was a running joke with my friends and family. One Saturday my buddy Dave called up to see if I wanted to hang out. My Mom answered the phone: (By the way, I swear to the Great Chocolate Monkey that this story is 100% true.)

Dave: Hey Mrs. Baker, is John there?
Mom: Hi Dave. Well, he's here, but he's in the bathroom, and we know what that means.
Dave: Ha ha ha! Okay, I'd better call back in a few hours then. Ha ha ha!
Mom: Ha ha ha! Yeah you'd better do that. Ha ha ha!

Three hours pass. The phone rings again.

Dave: Hey Mrs. Baker, is he out yet? Ha ha ha!
Mom: You know... Um... I don't know if... Um... I haven't seen him in a while. I think he's still in there. Good lord...
Dave: You gotta be kidding me.

What can I say? If the book was a good one, I could really camp out. My legs would actually go numb, and I'd just keep reading. I'd have ring-around the butt that would last for days. I like to think that this is all proof of my intense love of reading, but you all probably just see this as yet another reason I'm utterly unfit for integration into human society. You may be right.

I'm much better now. I don't spend hours in there anymore, but I do still take a book every time, and I will admit that 45 minutes on the grumper isn't unheard of around here. At least I'm well read.

Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, though, is still a feat which has not been duplicated. It's not a huge book though. 176 pages. Also, I was like, 12. I could do better. And if I do, you know you'll hear about it here.

Unrelated thing from my brain #2:

You know how some people (and by "some people" I mean fundamentalists and Mormons... And fundamentalist Mormons. Fundamormons.) like to say "The Lord moves in mysterious ways?" It just now occurred to me that maybe they mean he actually moves weird. Like all the angels and saints just float around Heaven in the normal way, but God sort of hop-shuffles sideways, like an epileptic crab.

No, come to think of it, God lurching about Heaven in a strange manner doesn't really cut it. They don't say he moves in odd ways, they say mysterious. However it is that God is humping all over Paradise, it has to be so weird as to actually qualify as mysterious. New entrants into the kingdom must see God go by, half rolling, half doing jumping jacks, With a fresh donut stuck on each finger and a live lion on his head, all the while making horrible noises through his nostrils like a broken threshing machine. They must see this, and turn to the nearest Seraphim and say "Was that God? Why the fuck does he do that???" And the Seraphim must reply, "No one knows. It is the great holy mystery."

Heaven must be a truly weird place.

Unrelated thing from my brain #3:

Do you think blind people go crazy if they try to read a sheet of bubble wrap? I'm just wondering.

Unrelated thing from my brain #4:

There are several reasons why the woman that I married is absolutely batshit crazy. Here's the latest:

Just now, after writing Thing #3 above, I wandered downstairs to see what my beloved was up to. I found her in the kitchen, cleaning things. And when I say "things" in this case, I mean pennies.

Yes, for some reason, my wonderful wife looked in her wallet and decided that her pennies were just too grungy for everyday use. So she got out the Barkeepers Friend (which, for those of you who don't stay obsessively up-to-date on cleaning supplies, is some crazy powerful shit) and scrubbed all of her pennies to a glowing sheen. I kid you not. Look:

Now you tell me, Blog-Buddies, am I wrong in thinking that cleaning your pennies is a free pass into the nearest padded cell? Do all of you occasionally dip into your pockets, pull out a handful of shoddy loose change, and think "These can be a lot cleaner?"

It's not like they de-value if you let them get dull. That pile in the photo above was worth exactly 17 cents when Sal started scrubbing, and they're worth exactly 17 cents now that she's finished. It boggles the mind.

Look at how happy she is!

What's crazier? That my wife obsessively cleans her coins, or that I probably love her more for doing it? I mean, she's a crazy lady, but she's my crazy lady, ya know?

Okay, that's all I got for tonight. Don't bother writing to ask if she'll clean your money. We ain't running a laundromat here.

Lazy Fucker / Spidey-Sodomy / Bear Cock

2006-03-17T00:53:00.000-05:00

If I had to list four things about myself, three of them would be the fact that I am incredibly lazy. I wouldn't even list the fourth thing. That's how lazy I am.

I am so lazy, in fact, that I can't even be arsed to muster a good excuse as to why I haven't blogged in two whole weeks. I'm sure I could lay out some twisted tale for you about how a sudden and previously unknown rectal malady had me laid up in the New Irving J. Rosenthal Anal-horror Wing of Johns Hopkins Hospital. (I'm sure you'd believe it too, because let's face it, at this point you're probably willing to believe just about anything I say about my butt. If I said my butt was issuing valid Macy's gift cards, you'd all line up to get one.)

Anyway, for those of you keeping score, I wasn't laid up in the hospital, nor was I overseas on some humanitarian mission to sew prosthetic bungholes on the poor assless children of Serbia. I was also not (as some rumors would have you believe) touring Europe with Night Ranger, Hiding out in the witness protection program prior to testifying in a high-stakes rubber-nipple racket trial, or fingering the Pope.

Okay, I fingered the Pope once.

Tell no one.

At any rate, I've heaved myself keyboard-ward this evening because I want you to know, as I stated above, That I am incredibly fucking lazy. Thank god typing in this blog only requires movement from the wrists down. All the parts of me located behind the wrists are actually sleeping right now. Sleeping, snoring and drooling.

...

Those three dots right there? I took a nap. Lazy!

I could continue describing my incredible laziness to you, but it would take too much effort. Instead I think I'll show you my all time favorite picture of Spiderman being anally sodomized. This comes from back when Paul and I both worked at Santa, Inc. together. Often, instead of helping to create wonderful holiday displays to delight the children of the world, we would do this instead:

No, I don't mean we would do the act depicted above... We'd never do that on company time... I mean that we'd spend hours (and I do mean hours) posing our action figures in obscene positions and taking pictures of them.

Man, if there ever was a sentence to get me into the Horrible Nerd Loser Hall Of Fame, it's that last one above. Jesus. Even I want to beat me up and steal my lunch money...

Anyway, I posted that picture partly because I think it's funny (Spidey looks so ashamed!!!), and party because I'm dying to know how many Google searches are going to end up at this blog now that I've typed the phrase "Anal-Rape Spidey" a few times. You just know ACW Google searches that exact phrase on a nightly basis...

Hmmm... Looking at that pic, it seems to me now that it's missing something... Here we go:

Feel free to spread that around the internet.

While I'm waxing nostalgic about my time at Santa, Inc., I'll relate one more brief story. We had a creative director there who I'll call "Mort." Mort was a nice dude, a born-again Christian who (while outspoken) was never ever pushy or preachy with his faith. He was usually upbeat and energetic, and he had a very positive outlook about his job. I liked Mort. He had the tendency that many high-enthusiasm people have to be a little irritating, but I always felt that he was well-intentioned.

One day we were doing a holiday presentation for the Celestial Seasonings Tea Company, and we were brainstorming different concepts for decorating their corporate headquarters. Mort's idea involved large teddy bears in PJs (the Celestial Seasonings packages always have art of teddy bears) hanging from the overhead with giant "tea-related" props. It was an okay idea, I guess, and things were going great until he brought out the drawing of the Honey-dripper bear.

To this day, he refuses to understand why we all fell on the floor laughing.

(waaaaait for it...)

Mort was so insistent that the display was not (let's just call it like we see it) a giant flying bear with a huge dripping dong, that he refused to change it and it went up at Celestial Seasonings just as you see it here. I can only imagine what people thought when they entered that huge atrium and looked around at the display we hung for them. Oh, the joy!!! Oh, the wonder!!!

Because nothing, my friends, nothing says "Merry Christmas" like a giant bear waving his cock at you.

Son of a tassel-humper!

2006-03-02T03:31:00.000-05:00

I love how lately this blog has been bouncing back and forth between tales of disgusting horror and little glimpses into what a huge softie I am. Since the last entry involved a detailed journey into the inner workings of my rectum, it's a safe bet that today I'm going to go all mushy on you again.

Early in the morning on March 1, my good friends Ray and Maria welcomed their first child, Nicolas, into the world. (When I say "first," I don't mean to imply "first of many." I mean, they're my friends and all, but I really have no insider info as to their future procreative plans. Nicolas may be the first of 18, or he could be the first of... um... one. I'm betting against 18 though. That seems like excessive baby-making to me.)

I'm lucky in my life to know many truly good people who are wonderful parents to their kids, (and one or two total whack-jobs who should probably have their wombs confiscated) and Ray and Maria are no exception. I know they're going to be great parents and I just wanted to take a moment to come down firmly on the side of "I wholeheartedly approve of their successful procreation."

Here's an adorable photo of the new mom and her son:

And, since the proud father couldn't be in that picture, here's a nice shot of him humping a giant tassel:

Hmmmm. Well, I'm sure Maria will be a great parent, anyway.

Now, if I'm staying true to form, my next post will be so gross as to actually shrivel you to midget-size. After that... probably pictures of kittens.

Anal Fistula.

2006-02-23T21:22:00.000-05:00

Many of you have observed, repeatedly and vocally, that I seem to be obsessed with my own ass.

I'm not denying it. The ass (and more specifically, my ass) holds a position of great importance in my life. You could say that all philosophy comes from the brain, or that all poetry comes from the heart... I have a feeling that all comedy comes, ultimately, from the ass. And that's a great thing. So, okay, I've become known far and wide as something of an ass expert. An asspert. I'm okay with that.

I have realized, however, that those who live by the ass, die by the ass.

Karma dictates that if I was the sort of person who went around kicking people, then I would be laid up with a foot injury. Or if I used to steal lollipops from little children, I might develop tooth decay. Well I Don't generally kick people, and I never took a lollipop. What I do, is talk about the ass all day long, so of course a few years ago karma reached its long pointy finger down from the heavens and smote me with what the medical profession calls an "Anal Fistula."

Now I'm no doctor (not that I let that stop me from handing out prescriptions on the street corner), so I won't try to go into a lengthy medical description of what an anal fistula is exactly. Let's just call it a "little fucking horrible tunnel in your butthole," and leave it at that.

Here's a nice picture I stole from some fancy "Maladies of the butt" website:

Get the picture?

I know what you people are probably thinking. "He got that fistula from all the sex with monkeys." Well, I assure you that all my sexmonkeys are thoroughly screened for diseases and are 100% clean. My sexmonkeys are the healthiest monkeys on the planet, right up to the point where I shave and de-bone them, and then... Er... Re-bone them.

The fistula is just one of those things that just happen. I did not get it from rough prison sex, and I most definitely did not get it (because I know some of you are dying to rub this one in my face) from failing to wash my hands after peeing. I just got it, okay?

Let me tell you, because I can hear you squirming with intellectual curiosity, just what having a fistula is like. First of all, it's a tear in your body, so it hurts like any tear in your skin would. It stings. Like a paper-cut. On your asshole.

Secondly, take a good look at that little picture above. See the tiny brown drop coming out of the mouth of the fistula? That ain't artistic license, my friends. The fuckers leak. Yep. they dribble. I may be a generally gross human being, but I draw the line at persistent anal leaking. Not acceptable.

Okay, stop shuddering long enough for me to tell you the third, and decidedly worst, thing about having a fistula. When you fart (something I do often) 85% of the fart comes out in the normal fashion. But about 15% of your fart shoots out of that little painful tunnel. And it hurts and kind of itches. It's like having a tiny kazoo installed in your ass that delivers electric shocks when you use it. Un. Fucking. Pleasant.

So anyway, it sucked ass (no pun intended). It took me a few months to get it cleared up, and there were enemas and suppositories and check-ups and all manner of ass-centric horror. It eventually ended with some minor surgery which fixed the damn thing once and for all. In the process of dealing with the fistula, I became so unbelievably familiar with the workings of my own asshole it boggles the mind. You know, in a strange way, I think it brought me and my ass closer together.

But in truth, I didn't actually spring blogward tonight to disgust you with a detailed description of the bloody tunnel in my anus. (Disgusting you was just a nice bonus.) I actually wanted to tell you a related story.

In the process of having the whole fistula thing taken care of, I had to see a colon-rectal specialist. (Who, I discovered, have absolutely no sense of humor if you refer to your rectum as "my heiney-hole" or tell them "it itches when I toot.") One of the symptoms I had was some bleeding (remember how those fuckers leak?) and whenever you have rectal bleeding they automatically check you for cancer.

By "check you for cancer," I mean to say "drive an entire television station up your ass." The technical term is a "flexible sigmoidoscopy," which is a lot like a colonoscopy, for those of you playing along at home. It's a big old camera up your ass. It's uncomfortable, and it made me decide that under no circumstances is anything ever going up there again. If I wasn't firmly "exit-only" before, I am now.

So on the day of the sigmoidoscopy, I show up at the doctor's, and I'm understandably nervous, you know, on account of the huge camera up my ass and all. This nice older black nurse takes me to the exam room, and gives me a gown and takes my vitals, and she's being really sweet and calming, which I appreciate. As we get closer and closer to the "invasion," she suddenly looks me square in the eye and says one of the strangest things anyone has ever said to me.

"Why you have a girl face!!!" This she said in the exact tone of voice a little girl would have if she has just looked into a bird cage and exclaimed "Why what a pretty birdie!!!"

I don't remember my exact words, but they were probably something like "wha???"

"You have a girl face," she continued to joyously proclaim, "You look like a woman!!! Has anyone ever told you that you look female??? It's remarkable!!!" All of this, still in that insanely excited voice...

I am stunned. I am agog. I have no idea how to respond to this woman who is happier than a child on Christmas morning to discover that I apparently look like a girl. I, who am usually very articulate, am reduced to "sputter sputter stammer huh?"

I'm still stammering 3 minutes later when the entire Action 7 News Team drives their big white van up my ass.

A girl face?

I know I'm not the manliest guy in the world, but I ask you in all honesty... Funny lookin', sure, but:

The mind (and the ass) boggles. You'd tell me if I was the spitting image of Jane Seymour, right?

I Heart Sally.

2006-02-14T11:14:00.000-05:00

I just wanted to say that. Not because today is Valentines Day, But because 11 years ago today Sally and I started dating.

Like any relationship, there were times when it was hard, and there were a few times it was very hard, but somehow the sum of all the pieces always adds up to "wonderful." I couldn't ask for a better partner, for a more perfect best friend, and for a funnier, smarter, more beautiful person to share my life with. And I just wanted to say that publicly once more. Because I believe you can never say it enough. I love you Sal. Thank you for these 11 years. I don't deserve you, but I'm so happy that I somehow got you.

Okay everybody, quit your barfing. We'll be back to the poop stories tomorrow, I'm sure.

Calm the fuck down and get the shovels.

2006-02-12T15:00:00.000-05:00

It's just frozen water, folks. Let's get a grip here.

Yes, the eastern seaboard was indeed hit by what the Weather Channel calls a "Nor'easter," and what the rest of us call "snow." And as is par for the course, the sight of a little frozen precipitation is enough to throw the fine citizens of Maryland into an unbridled orgy of jackassitude.

It starts with the local newscasters, who begin 4 days before the actual snowfall by liberally sprinkling the newscast with phrases like "the end of life as we know it," "buried alive beneath tons of ice," and "most likely resort to eating our young to survive." Okay, they may not be using those exact words, but something is causing all my neighbors to beat each other to death over the last roll of TP at the Safeway.

As I've said before, the funny thing about Baltimore, is that we're far enough north that we get a decent amount of snow every year, and we're far enough south that we act like complete jackasses every time it happens.

This may not mean much to those of you who live in places like Texas (where it is generally warmer) or California (where the entire concept of weather is alien and confusing to you) but for my blog-buddies over here on the eastern seaboard I'd like to offer some help. So here we go with Wombat's handy guide to surviving the snowy apocalypse:

Tip #1: Buy your groceries like a normal human being.

Barring the kind of horrible city-burying snowstorm we only see in the movies, I sincerely doubt you will be trapped in your house for a month. Every time there is impending snow, I see people at the grocery store buying 48 gallons of water, 27 loaves of bread and 800 rolls of TP. What kind of endless siege are these people planning for? The Battle of Stalingrad? The longest I've ever been trapped in my house because of snow was a day. How much eating, drinking and shitting are you planning to do? Even if you started crapping the second the snow started falling, and stopped 5 days later, you couldn't possibly use all the TP you've bought. Believe me, I've tried.

By all means, be prepared. Buy one package of TP. Get a loaf of bread. Get some pasta sauce. You people act like the fucking Germans are rolling in with tanks.

Besides, even if it does snow for a year, if there's one thing the movies have taught us, it's that Dennis Quaid will come for you. Have a little faith.

Tip #2: You can drive in this shit.

The minute the first snowflake drops into view, most people I know become convinced that to drive in the snow is to ensure their own untimely demise, stuck waist deep in a snowbank off I-95. Listen to your buddy Wombat. You can drive in the show and not wind up a frozen corpse if you remember one simple rule: Go slower, dickface. The road is icy. I have every confidence that if you don't try to race around like the caffeinated tool you usually are, that even a clearly deficient nutsack like you can make it to work alive. Just use your fucking brain.

This is especially true for the people who fly around in giant SUVs, as if the snow is a personal challenge to their manhood. For those of you who drive big SUVs, my advice remains the same. Slow the fuck down. 4-wheel drive and traction control may make you somewhat safer, but it doesn't make you Mighty Zeus.

Tip #3: Throw a fucking snowball.

If you go outside to shovel your walk or brush off your car, and you don't at least toss one snowball, then I have no use for you. You clearly have no soul. Go inside, put on Dr. Phil and wait for death to claim you. It may take a while, because even the Grim Reaper knows to go play in the fucking snow.

The Church of Chocolate Monkey Love

2006-02-09T13:56:00.000-05:00

Kendra and I started a church, and it is awesome. Go there henceforth and be merry.

Yes, there was significant shrinkage. But I was pretty small to begin with.

2006-02-02T16:04:00.000-05:00

The Polar Plunge was a week ago, and I utterly failed to post about it. This is because I'm a huge jackass. I think you all were sufficiently warned about this. Anyone who has been reading this blog for more than 2 months and hasn't figured out that I'm a huge jackass, please submit yourself for the nearest gang of roving hooligans for a severe beating.

Anyway, some of you donated your hard earned money to the good cause (The Special Olympics of Maryland), and some of you were strapped at the moment, and would have donated if you'd had the cash. You're good people, and I feel like I at least owe you a little re-cap of the event.

Some of you did not dig into your pockets despite having cash to spare. Some of you clearly don't care about the special-needs children, and would probably run over someone in a wheelchair if the opportunity arose. You people are clearly the re-animated dead, having neither hearts or souls. Under no circumstances should you read about the Plunge, since you did not contribute to it. Please go here immediately, and spend 20 minutes reading about how to make valentine decorations from common household items. You've earned it.

Okay, now that we've disposed of the freeloaders... Let me start with some relevant numbers. Thanks you all of you, I raised almost 400 bucks for the Special Olympics. Sal raised Just over 400. In total, the Plunge netted a million bucks. Let me say that again, because I want you all to feel good about donating your cash. We raised a million dollars. That's a lot of dough. So feel good about yourselves.

The crew this year consisted of: (L to R) Kate, Chris, Sal, Me, Jeri (Chris' wife) and Paul.

The Paul in the picture above is not the Paul I mention so often here in the blog. He's a different Paul entirely. I know far too many Pauls. My Paul (and I mean that in an utterly platonic, "no way are we banging each other" way) would never willingly throw himself into freezing water, because he's a huge wuss. He did volunteer to come along and take the photos though, so I have to give him credit for that. Here he is, in a silly hat:

A few thousand people showed up to plunge, and the law of averages assures us that for every few hundred normal people who just want to help out, there will be a handful of total jabbering freaks who take advantage of the event to showcase their bizarre costume fetishes. Like this guy:

I'm so glad he brought his daughter with him. It's probably good that she knows that daddy is a biker ballerina early in her development. More time to plan her escape.

Oh yeah, and apropos of absolutely nothing, look who else showed up:

Yep, thank god the stormtroopers came to the Plunge. I suppose they were there to quash any signs of rebellion against the empire, because I'm sure they didn't actually get in the water dressed like that. I mean, cool outfits and all, but what exactly about the Polar Bear Plunge says "Hey guys, break the nerd costumes out!"

Anyway, there were plenty more loonies like Biker Ballerina and the Trooper Brigade, but did Paul take pictures of them? No, because Paul was too busy taking stealth pictures of all the hairy shirtless men who were not dressed like ballerinas. I won't show you those pictures, but be assured, there were a lot of them. It's a miracle we got any shots of the actual plunge at all.

Here's one good-looking dude though:

Yeah, keep your lunches down. What can I say, Paul points the camera at you and you just feel like you need to bring the sexy, you know?

How many of you did I lose with that pic? Oh, who am I kidding? If you can handle the last lengthy discussion of urine-soaked hands and bathroom germs, you can handle me and my pasty flabby man-boobs. You all are clearly gluttons for punishment.

At this point I should admit that the day of the Plunge was ungodly warm. I feel a little guilty for this, because it certainly detracts from the manly toughness aspect of the plunge. I mean, here on the east coast we're in the middle of what seems to be the warmest winter in the history of the planet. It nearly hit 60 by the time we went into the water. I'd love nothing more than to convince you that I toughed out the blistering winter in nothing but my swim trunks, but it was practically balmy. Nothing I could do about it. I blame God.

Eventually the time came to actually jump into the bay, and this where you really get your money's worth, because even though it was May up on the beach, it was freaking January in the water. Something like 35 degrees. Running straight into water like that doesn't even feel cold. It feels like "holy fucking shit something's gone horribly wrong with my life." You don't even have time to register the cold before your brain just decides you've clearly gone insane and shuts you out of the decision making process entirely. Everybody in my group were troopers though. (Not stormtroopers.) We all decided to not only get in the water, and not only completely submerge, but that it didn't count unless you actually swam. We established that you must adhere to a strict two-stroke minimum before you began your screaming, panicked, wide-eyed flight back out of the water.

That flight back up the beach is really the part of the event where the whole thing falls apart on you. Running in requires only momentum. You just point yourself at the water, step on the gas, and barrel in as far as you can go. No problem. At some point about 3 seconds later though, you become this frightened animal that just wants to get out of the frozen horror that is clearly killing you, and you spin around and suddenly realize that you have a huge problem. This is because what you see when you spin around is 2500 people all running down the beach toward you.

As you can imagine, there is some cursing and swinging of the fists. I may have trampled a 9-year-old.

Here we all are, safely out of the water. Sure, we're smiling, but I promise you, that's the stupid uncomprehending smile you make when your brain has stopped working.

Some of you may notice that in the picture above, we gained an extra person. This was apparently a friend of Chris who showed up at the last second. None of the rest of us knew that, however, and at the time, all of us were thinking "Who the fuck is this dude horning in on our picture?"

See? Check out my face in this one:

I'm going, "Holy Jesus that was cold I can't feel my - Who the hell is that???" Now look at Sally's face in this one:

Priceless. At any rate, he turned out to be a nice dude.

After we were all dried off and somewhat warm, I made the terrible error of turning to Sal and jokingly saying, "That wasn't so bad... Let's go back in!" I forgot that my wife is a certifiable nutbag. And I mean that in the most loving way possible. She grabbed my hand and said "Let's go!"

Never doubt that I love my wife with all my heart, because I followed her into that freezing death a second time. That's either proof of love or proof of brain damage. Probably both. Anyway, the water hadn't gotten any warmer in the 5 minutes between plunges. I'm pretty sure I have permanent testicle damage now. That's okay though because Sal's womb has got to be like a slushee machine after two dunks in the bay. Two people who don't have the sense to stay out of the freezing water have no business reproducing anyway.

I should wrap this up. The bottom line was that it was a lot of fun, and thanks to you wonderful people, we raised a lot of money for a good cause. I expect all of you to show up for the next one.

I'll leave you with this picture of me and Sal, just because I think she's the cutest thing in the world, despite the obvious brain damage.

A Few Ground Rules...

2006-01-27T00:56:00.000-05:00

When I say "Ground rules" I mean it in the sense of "Basic procedures of conduct," not in the sense of "here are some rules, which I have ground up." Just so we're clear.

Wombat's 3 Rules of comedy:

1: Anything coming out of an ass is funny. This one should be no surprise to anyone who has read this blog before, but it's true. For some reason any object or substance or noise coming from an ass is instantly imbued with an extra dose of funny. The same does not hold true for things going in an ass. Some of those things are funny, but some are not. In the case of ass-entry, it really depends on the object. But ass-exit? Always funny.

2: If they're laughing at you, they're still laughing. I'm a big believer in the idea that the laugh is something you should willingly sacrifice yourself for. Who cares if they're laughing with you because you're so fucking hilarious, or at you because you're so fucking stupid. You're still making them laugh, and that is a service to humanity. Good news for all of you dumb motherfuckers out there.

3: Never insult someone directly unless you're pretty sure they can take it. This may come as a shock to insult comedians everywhere, but I just don't think attacking people is funny. Making fun of people who don't know you're making fun of them is one thing, but I'd never walk up to someone and shred them to their face because I just don't think it's funny to make someone feel bad. If you get off on that then you are a waste of skin. However, if the person in question is a bud, and you know that they get that you are just busting their balls, then have at it. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that people who can take getting shredded and dish it back out are my favorite people in the world.

Note: Some of you who've known me for a while may notice that the monkey rule is gone. Monkeys are cliche. I was wrong about the monkeys. Monkeys are no longer funny. Unless they're coming out of your ass. (see rule #1)

Wombat's Spoon Rule:

There is a strict heirarchy when it comes to the use of spoons. Spoons meant for eating and not for mixing generally come in three sizes: The large "soup" spoon, the small "tea" spoon, and the tiny spoon you sometimes see in fancy restaurants. Pay attention.

- Ice cream should always be eaten with the tea spoon. You do not want to eat ice cream in giant "soup spoon" bites. You want to take your time and enjoy the ice cream. Unless you take so much time that your ice cream melts. If this happens either your spoon is too small or you are retarded. Yogurt? Same rule applies.

- Soup should always be eaten with (no surprise here) the soup spoon. The same applies to cereal. When your job is basically to fish little tiny floating corn flakes out of a sea of milk, you need a wide net. Anyone eating cereal with a teaspoon should have their head examined. And by "examined," I mean "run over by a truck."

- If you find yourself eating with one of those tiny spoons, immediately stick it up your ass. That's the only thing I can think of that the tiny spoon is good for. This would also be one of the instances where something going in your ass is funny. When the spoon comes back out? priceless.

- There is only one food item you are allowed to eat with a mixing spoon: Mashed Potatoes.

Wombat's Straw Rule:

If you are drinking a milkshake, or even better, chocolate milk, (or even better, chocolate malted milk!) You must use a bendy straw. I keep a box of bendy straws around for exactly these occasions. If at all possible, the bendy straw in question should be the kind with the red and blue stripes running up its length. A solid-color bendy straw may be used only if no striped bendy straw is available. Non-bendy straws are out of the question. Why? If you are going to drink a kid's drink, then drink it like a kid, for fuck's sake. And don't give me that crap about your milkshake being too thick to drink through a straw. Quit being a huge pussy and put some effort into it.

Wombat's Movie Food Rule:

Just because the modern movie megaplex now sells nachos and hot dogs and seven-course French meals, it doesn't mean you have to order them. Eat dinner before the film, or eat dinner after the film. Do not subject the people around you to the horrifying stink of your batter-dipped hot dogs or your tub of melted cheese. The movie theater is like a giant elevator: We are all trapped in here together until the ride's over. Smelly food has no place in a theater. The one exception is popcorn, which, while admittedly smelly, has kind of become part of the theater experience. It's tradition. You expect to smell popcorn. You don't expect to smell rib dinner and falafel.

A good rule of thumb is, if your order requires one of those red plastic trays, eat it in the lobby.

Wombat's American Apostrophe Wake-up rule:

Listen up, America: You have exactly one year to learn how to use the apostrophe correctly. That should be enough time for everyone to get the hang of what's a contraction, what's possessive and what's plural. After one year, I am hereby allowed to beat you to death with an 18" green rubber dildo if you write that you are serving "pear's" on your menu.

The single exception to this rule is when using the word "it." I know proper time to apostrophize "it," and you should too, but I'll admit that shit can confuse you. Because it runs (not run's) counter to the usual way of doing a possessive. If you use "it's" incorrectly, you get a pass. No dildo-beating.

Wombat's Washing Your Hands After Peeing Rule:

Here comes the one where I alienate all the women and half of the men. Guys, you do not have to wash your hands after you pee, provided you have not peed on your hands.

I tried to explain to Sal that there is no need for washing if your hands are not actually urine-soaked, and her response was "yeah, but you touched your penis." Ladies, some of you seem to be laboring under the false premise that our penises are these horrid, feces-caked garbage sticks. I'd like to go on record as stating that I wash myself regularly, and that when I wash myself, I wash my penis right along with the rest of me. I then place my penis safely inside some nice clean underwear. The underwear then goes inside of some pants. There my penis spends the large majority of the day, riding around inside layers of cotton and denim, fully separated from the horrors of the outside world. My penis is probably the cleanest part of my body. If anything, when I pee, my penis should be upset that my filthy hands have touched it.

So gentlemen, as long as you don't have terrible aim, or don't understand how to properly use your equipment, you do not need to wash your hands. If you take a dump, then by all means, please wash them, but not when you pee.

Ladies, I have no rule for when you pee, because whatever it is that goes on inside of the ladies bathroom is a divine and unknowable mystery to me. There may be flocks of angels. Maybe they wash your hands. I'm in the dark on this one.

Don't get all excited... This post goes nowhere and takes quite a while doing it.

2006-01-21T00:04:00.000-05:00

"Where," you may be asking yourself if you are a really really lonely person with nothing to do but sit in the dark staring at this blog on your monitor and pressing the "refresh" button over and over again in the hopes that I may have posted while you were picking your nose, "Where could Wombat possibly be all this time?"

Truth is, I was writing that opening sentence. I mean, look at that thing. To call that a "run-on" sentence just doesn't do it justice. That sentence ran on and is still running. It was last Tuesday when I first sat down here at Wombat World HQ and typed the word "Where." By Friday I had gotten to the part about the refresh button. I hit a snag at the "picking your nose" bit, and that laid me up for a couple of days, trying out various other body parts you could have been picking. I had settled on "that gap between your first and second toe" for two whole days before scrapping the idea.

Anyway, here we are nearly two weeks later, and you can see for yourself the fruits of my extraordinarily laborious... um.. labor. That one, big-ass sentence.

Okay, that's a lie. I didn't spend the last two weeks working on that one sentence. And no, I wasn't curing cancer or completing the complex ritual required to bring Julia Child back from the dead. I just didn't have anything to say.

The more astute readers of this blog may now be thinking "But, you never have anything to say... We don't come here for your biting insight, we come here for poop jokes."

Well, blog-buddies, I have no poop jokes for you tonight. In fact, I have no idea what I sprung blog-ward this evening to say. I just know that Miss Kendra demanded a post, and what Kendra wants, my friends, Kendra gets. This girl took on a car crash to save some kittens. No way am I getting her mad at me.

So, back to the two-week absence, All I can say is that I hit a dry patch. It happens to the best of us. Well, not Karla, who apparently posted 17 entries while I was away. Remember the cop in Terminator 2? The one who was a robot from the future made of liquid metal who could not be stopped? No matter what you did, or how fast you ran, he was always 10 feet behind you, running full-tilt and never slowing, never once looking away from his desire to rip the intestines from your still-warm body? Well, Karla is just like that. Only instead of ripping out your intestines, she flings some funny at you.

Then she rips out your intestines.

Anyway, I'm not Karla, and I just ran out of funny for a little while there. Not in my personal life. I was still plenty funny to the people I dealt with on a day-to-day basis. Believe you me, had you been here, in Wombat World HQ, instead of there, in the pile of empty Fritos bags you call your life, you would have been well entertained. The mouth part of me remained as funny, if not funnier, than it was two weeks ago. It's just the fingers part of me that sort of ran out of juice. It's not like I didn't try. I flung them at the keyboard a couple of times, but to no avail. There was not a drop of funny in them. Well, one time they produced a funny diphthong, but that was it. Otherwise, speaking in terms of keyboard-related shenanigans, it's been a quiet few weeks here on my end, at least until Kendra started with the threats.

And now, at last, I have been shaken awake from my long period of unfunny silence. And as you can see, the result is... um... unfunny wordiness.

Oh well. Be careful what you wish for, Kendra.

I will say two things, before I quit for the evening:

1) Thanks to everyone who pledged money to sponsor me in the upcoming Polar Plunge. I have just about hit my goal, all thanks to you excellent and awesome people. I thank you, the Special Olympics thanks you, and Stacy Keach thanks you. (That's a lie. I do not speak for Stacy Keach. Well... not anymore... But that's a story for another time...) It's one week to the plunge, and anyone that still wants to sponsor me can go here and enter my name, John Baker. There will be a big-old recap of the whole event next week, complete with embarrassing pictures of yours truly in a shameless and honestly unnecessary display of near-nudity. Be sure to tune in.

2) Apropos of nothing, I have to confess here in front of God, the blogging public, and okay not God because I believe he may not exist (or may... or may not... whatever...) That I, Wombat, have some form of Saran Wrap dyslexia.

Yes, you read that right. I have seen you people time and time again with your plastic wrap, pulling a long glossy sheet from out of the box. And I have seen you, with one swift movement, tear that sheet cleanly and neatly from the roll, with no ragged edges or clinging back upon itself. And all the while, you are smiling, as if you're having the time of your life, wrapping this, covering that... I have studied you as you have done this, and I have tried, oh how I've tried, to emulate you.

But no. I seem to be the only person in America, nay, the world, for whom Saran Wrap isn't the high-point in helpful domestic invention, but rather a long thin box of evil mocking laughter, spilling forth in the form of clump after clump of useless, balled up clingy plastic.

I just wanted to get that off my chest. Hey, remember when I wasn't posting? Come on, admit it, it was better that way.

I'm about to do something STUPID.

2006-01-09T15:07:00.000-05:00

I did something incredibly stupid this time last year, and I enjoyed it so much that I'm about to do it again.

"What is this stupid thing you did," I can hear all of you (okay, two of you) asking. "Did you get an unfortunate tattoo in a hard to cover spot on your body?" No... "Did you sign a pact with the devil, promising him your first-born child in exchange for rock-hard abs?" Um... no... "Did you ride 500 miles on a bald pony over sharp rocks and broken glass to the disheveled hut of a mad old crone, in the hopes of finding therein a magic potion that could make you a god among men, only to be tricked by the evil witch and left a broken wart-covered shell of a human being?" Jesus, no... What's wrong with you people?

What I did in fact do, was run nearly-nude from the relative safety of a beach into the icy arms of the frozen bay. And I'm doing it again. And so, my friends, are you.

Well, in a manner of speaking.

What I'm talking about is the tenth annual Polar Bear Plunge. This is that thing you all hear about on the news where a few thousand people run into the freezing water to raise money for charity. The charity here in my home state is the Special Olympics Of Maryland. My buddy Chris (amazing nature photographer... check him out) talked me into doing it last year, and it was awesome. Except, replace "awesome" with "kind of horrible and freezing, but afterwards leaving a warm feeling in my heart."

Here, just so none of you think I'm full of shit, is my account of last year's plunge:

Everybody believe me now? Good. Now try to scrub the image of tubby Wombat in his swim trunks from your minds long enough for me to explain the part where you come in.

I don't just do this because I love freezing my balls off, people, I do this to raise some dough for a good cause. I need you fine internet citizens to sponsor me. I'm not asking for a lot of dough here. Just look deep into your heart and ask yourselves "how much would I be willing to pay for even more photographic evidence of Wombat making a complete ass of himself?" 10 dollars? 20 dollars? more? Let me up the ante a bit. This year I have convinced Sally to run into the glacier-water with me. That's twice the bang for your buck!

Um, no, we're not going to actually... um... bang. At least, not while the cameras are snapping away. That was a figure of speech.

Okay, here's the deal. The Plunge is in about three weeks, on Jan 28. If I have moved any of you to get involved, all you have to do is click this link right here. You'll go to the Polar Plunge's website. There, click on the "sponsor plunger" button, and enter my name, (my real name) John Baker. If there's more than one of me, I'm the one from Baltimore, MD. You can sponsor me from the warmth and comfort of your own office chair, using a credit card or paypal. For those of you who would rather support Sal, enter her name, Sally Kervin.

I'm going to thank any of you who decide to donate in advance. It's a really worthy cause. Any of you balti-bloggers should come out to watch the plunge. It's a lot of fun. I'll be posting pictures of the whole thing on here at the end of the month for everyone to enjoy, but suffice it to say that those who donate will be able to enjoy the pics a little more, not having all that crushing guilt to fight through.

Gay Sex While Pooping

2005-12-29T02:22:00.000-05:00

A few posts ago, I made the offhand remark that Sal and Paul and I once had a conversation regarding gay sex while pooping. Wait - I mean that we had a conversation, the topic of which was "gay sex while pooping." I do not mean that, while pooping, we had a conversation about gay sex. Although, if we had been pooping and talking about sex at the same time, I probably would have blogged about that as well. You know me.

Anyway, I figured what better way to ring in the new year than to squeeze in one more story that will probably horrify and nauseate most of you. (Not ACW.)

Now I know some of you are easily grossed out, and I know some of you are incredibly stupid. I also know that it stands to reason that there are a few of you who fall squarely in both of those categories. It is for those people that I now make the following announcement: I am about to tell a story about gay sex and pooping. Just in case you skipped the title of this post and sailed through the first few paragraphs, pretending to read but were instead daydreaming about pink bunnies hopping through a green sunlit field in a world where there is no violence and nothing bad ever happens, let me say it again in no uncertain terms:

Gay sex and pooping. If you are offended by either of those things, or if you are okay with those things separately, but do not like the thought of having them combined, for the love of all that's holy stop reading this blog. In fact, turn off your computer and place a bag over your head. Think of puppies. Hum some comforting tunes.

Okay. For the rest of you, consider yourselves more than warned. I don't want to see a bunch of comments about how I caught you off guard with all the gay sex and pooping. I know how you people operate. Sheesh.

This story is, to the best of my knowledge, 100% true. The hero (so to speak) of the story is someone Paul used to know, and he confided this tale to Paul. I should make it perfectly clear (because I will never hear the end of it if I don't) that I'm not making some sort of cute euphemism to cover the fact that Paul is actually the person in the story. This story is not not not about Paul.

Unless it is.

But it's not. I promise. It's about some other guy.

Unless it isn't.

That sound you hear is steam shooting out of Paul's ears. Okay, really, it isn't Paul.

(heh heh heh...)

Anyway, our hero, we'll call him Friend Of Paul, (FOP) was, at the time of this story, a young gay man living in New York City. FOP was a nice guy, and not unattractive, but not an Abercrombie & Fitch model either. He was what you might call squarely average looking. Or averagely square looking. Either one gets the point across. He wasn't what you'd call "a looker." Which was why he was surprised, one night out on the town, to have caught the attention of a Greek god.

No, not a real Greek God. (calm down, Zeus-o-philes...) I don't even know if the guy was Greek. I just mean he was way out of FOP's league. Picture the supermodel or celebrity you would most like to throw a bang at. It was like that. No way in a million years could a guy like FOP bag a dude like Apollo, and yet, here they were, chatting and dancing and doing whatever else young gay men do whilst clubbing, and it was all going great. This night was shaping up to be the high point in FOP's life.

Eventually, after drinks and laughs and a few kisses, FOP found himself leading Apollo back to his apartment. I'm sure FOP kept expecting Apollo to come to his senses and beg off for the night, but it never happened. Now he had a god in his bedroom, and...

And this is the part of the story where you can imagine all the gay sex you want. I'm not going to describe it for you. Not because I have any kind of a problem with the gay sex but because this ain't no porno blog. (Amazing, I know, since I have no problem littering this blog with any other forms of depravity...) Click over to the Nifty Stories archive if you want to read about some gay sex, and then come back here for the end. I'll wait.

Suffice it to say that it was wonderful and magical and everything FOP had ever hoped sex with a Greek God would be. Right up until the big finish. That was when Apollo suddenly pinned FOP to the bed, sat on top of him and took a giant steaming dump on his chest. While... um... climaxing.

No warning. No mention at any point earlier in the evening that a thick Cleveland Steamer might just be in the works. No sign at all that this was what Apollo had in mind. Just "wham, bam, KER-PLOP."

I suppose you can't blame Apollo. I mean, you can absolutely blame him for the horrible drive-by dumping, but I think I can understand the surprise element. If Naomi Watts were to offer me a night of unbridled passion the likes of which I have not experienced in my lifetime, followed immediately by her grumping all over me, I believe I'd have to turn that offer down. And I like me some Naomi Watts. The grumping however, would be dealbreaker. I'll blog about poop all night long, but I really don't want to ever wear it. I think if you're Apollo, you know the only way you're getting the grumping in there is to throw it in at the last second.

So you can imagine FOP's utter disbelief and horror at his evening suddenly taking a u-turn from "hot-god-sex-fantasy" to "non-consensual shitrape." When FOP expressed his displeasure in what I can only imagine sounded like "WHATTHEFUCKHEYWHATTHEFUCK?!?!?!?!?" Apollo leapt from the bed and bolted. Fop was left lying naked on his bed, covered in Thor-dump, and feeling like he had just been hit by a truck.

If there is a moral to this story, it's probably this: Trust no one. Everyone you know is just waiting to pin you down and shit on you.

Or, I don't know... Maybe the moral is something more upbeat, like: Be grateful for every day that the person in your life doesn't pin you down and shit on you.

Or: Beware Greek gods in loaded shorts.

I don't know. I suck at this "morals" part. Just be careful out there tonight as you all ring in the new year. If you wind up going home with someone you don't know, at the very least wrap your chest in a protective layer of Saran Wrap or something.

Happy New Year, freaks!

Merry Whatever

2005-12-24T10:49:00.000-05:00

Well it's the day of the night before Christmas and/or Hanukkah, and I hope all of you are getting ready to spend some quality time with your family and loved ones. Or, if you hate your family and love no one, go to the library. Read a book. But read a book about happy people for Christmukkah is a happy day.

Each year, when it comes time for the annual holiday card bum-rush, I make a little cartoon of Sal and I to adorn our cards with. Since I find many of you bloggers quite likeable (and a few of you downright fucking creepy) I would love to send each of you a card. (Not you creepy fuckers. You know who you are...) However, fate has dealt me the one-two punch of 1) not knowing your addresses and 2) really being far too lazy to actually write out cards to all of you.

So consider this the next best thing. Here is this year's holiday cartoon, along with my sincere warm wishes to all of you for a wonderful holiday. It's been a pleasure meeting all of you through this blog, and I truly look forward to further disgusting each of you in the new year.

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah and Joyous Whatever the fuck weird holiday you celebrate, from Wombat and Sal.

Why are you people still reading me???

2005-12-21T00:43:00.000-05:00

Since I started this blog, I have used it in many ways for the betterment of humanity and the world at large, but never so much as now, as I have finally introduced the Mouth-barfers to the Nose-pukers.

Boy, the results of my informal little poll were extremely interesting. It seems the world is split about 50/50 between those who barf exclusively with their mouths, and those of us who sometimes experience the absolute horror of nasal bile-ejection. I don't think either of us knew the other group existed. Now we do. You're welcome, world. I imagine there will be a plaque of some sort with my name on it.

So the lessons you should all take away from this are:

1) If you are a mouth-barfer, and a friend of yours seems to hate vomiting a lot more than you do, take a moment and consider that he/she may be a nose-puker. Be appropriately sympathetic.

2) If you are holding your friend's hair back while he/she (okay, probably she) vomits, go the extra distance and jam two fingers up her nostrils. It may seem kind of awkward at the time, but trust me, she'll thank you later.

3) For the love of Christ, stop reading this blog if you are squeamish and/or eating lunch! It seems like every time I post there is at least one comment from somebody who says "Aaaugh! Why do I read this when I'm eating?" My response is "Aaaugh! Why is it taking you so long to figure out I'm disgusting???" You know the expression... Fool you once, shame on me, fool you twice, you're obviously some sort of dumbass.

Apparently, I vomit wrong.

2005-12-18T22:33:00.000-05:00

(Here comes a lovely post for the week before Christmas! Enjoy!)

One evening I was having dinner with Sally and Paul, and somehow (I have no idea how) the subject of vomiting came up. This was strange because when dining with Sal and Paul, the two topics that usually come up are gay sex and pooping. (But, oddly enough, never gay sex while pooping. Wait. That's a lie. That did come up once, but that's a subject for another post!)

Anyway, the topic du jour was vomiting, and I said something like "The thing that I hate about vomiting is the way the barf gets stuck up in your sinuses and all in your nostrils and you can't get it out." At this point, Sally and Paul looked at me like I had just suggested climbing up Queen Victoria and humping her in the ear.

"What," they both said in unison (and there is nothing creepier than when your wife and your platonic gay practically-your-wife speak in unison), "the fuck are you talking about?"

It seems I am alone in this phenomenon of vomit up in the sinuses. I'm looking to those of you who are heavy drinkers (ACW, Karla, Kendra... Snay... Fool... um... fuck. All of you.) to help me clear this up. Is it indeed abnormal for one to get vomit jammed up in the back of his nose? Because, let me tell you, when I vomit, I do it from just about every hole in my face. Mouth, nose, tear ducts... (I still have chunks of chicken in the corners of my eyes from the last time I barfed...) For me there is no simple rinsing of the mouth post-vomit, because there's still a pint of the putrid shit packed up there behind my eyeballs. And it drips back down my throat for the next hour. It's fucking horrible. I mean it. Am I the only one who gets this?

Because it has just now occurred to me that those of you blog reading lushes who like to drink yourselves blind have always seemed oddly comfortable with the "vomiting" aspect of your obvious rampant alcoholism. Is it because all of you simply mouth-barf? I would love to just mouth-barf. If barfing was a mouth-only activity, I'd do it all the time. I'd barf in the morning, I'd barf in the evening, I'd barf out a song of love and justice all over this land.

But no. When I barf it is a full-skull activity. There are eye sockets and ear canals and sinus cavities to be flooded. There are burning tears and bile-boogers and all manner of horror. This is why I make it my goal to not ever vomit.

Am I wrong about this, oh you problem drinkers who seem to enjoy reading my blog? Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me that for you too, vomiting is a horrible auschwitz-esque journey from which you fear you will never return. Tell me that your devil-may-care attitude towards vomiting is not because for you, a barf is like nothing more than a wet hiccup. Tell me that I'm not alone in the world.

And if, I'm not alone, and you all do have horror-show wet-nightmare barfs, then let me ask you this question: What the fuck is wrong with you??? For the love of God, put down that fourteenth beer! Don't you comprehend the forces you are playing with??? Just thinking about it... Well it makes me a little... (burp) queasy. I'd better stop blogging now and lie down.

Sal Update

2005-12-16T19:02:00.000-05:00

I know that some of you (Balti-bloggers mostly) were aware that my beloved Sal went in for surgery on her wrist today. I just wanted to let all of you know that it went perfectly and that she's safely home, sleeping off the effects of the anesthetic. It was fairly minor, as surgeries go, but I didn't want anyone to be worried.

Back to the (debatably) funny stuff later.

This Shit Has Got To Stop.

2005-12-10T22:39:00.000-05:00

Okay kids, Uncle Wombat's in the mood to crap all over your parade, so those of you who cry easily may just want to turn away now. Click on that "Next Blog" button in the upper right corner of the screen and go read someone's entry on "34 recipes that use yam shavings."

Okay. On to the curmudgeonly banning of things. Because, friends, there is some shit out there what needs some serious banning. And I am just the curmudgeon to do it.

Let's start with the word "Meh."

Seriously, all of you out there in blog-o-land knock that stupid shit off. "Meh" is the typing equivalent of shrugging your shoulders. "Today I wanted to go to the mall with Candace, but then she never called me. Meh."

There's 26 letters in the alphabet, plus a whole bunch of symbols and numbers, and they can be strung together in a nearly unlimited series of combinations to express virtually every feeling known to man. You went to all the trouble to learn English, get a computer and set yourself up with a blog all because you had this burning need to shrug at the internet? Come on.

I refuse to believe you can't do a better job of expressing yourself than "meh." Here, I'll give you an example. "Today I wanted to go to the mall with Candace, but then she never called me. Candace is a stupid whore and I hope she gets syphilis. Candace can go fuck herself."

What is the point of taking part in the great civic discourse if you're not actually going to say something? I hereby ban the use of the word "meh." Next person who "mehs" at me is getting socked in the nose. Or nosed in the sock. One of those.

While I'm banning useless and stupid internet idioms, let's also kiss "woot" goodbye. Same goes for ROTFLMAO. I'm going to let LOL slide, because let's face it: that one's a classic. I still think it's lazy writing, but you ban LOL and next you're banning Christmas. Some shit you just gotta live with. LOL stays.

ROTFLMAO (which is short for "rolling on the floor with my hand shoved elbow-deep up my ass" or something similar) is just fucking goofy though. You can't anagram an entire sentence. That way lies madness. Should we just save up on valuable bandwidth by blogging entirely in anagrams now? "December 12: TIWTGTTMWC, BTSNCM. M." Bullshit, I say. From now on, if you found something I said funny, and you want to tell me so, just take the time to actually type that shit out. I promise you won't get carpal tunnel from the strain of it.

Besides. I guarantee you that none of the people who type ROTFLMAO are actually rolling on the floor. Someone should make an anagram for "Sitting at my desk pretending you're funny."

Shit. I ran out of things to ban. That's like, what? 3 things? I was sure when I started I had more stuff to be pissy about. Oh well... I'm sure you commenters can add to the list. No banning me though. I'm hereby banning anyone banning me.

Stating the obvious...

2005-12-08T00:21:00.000-05:00

Someone tangentially related to my extended family died last night... Not someone I was close to, not someone I had even met. More of a "son of an aunt's best friend" kind of thing. I did not know him at all, really, but it was sudden, and he was young. Way too young for a sudden demise. Left behind a wife, kids, mom, friends...

This is completely and totally and unhelpfully stating the obvious, but this sort of thing always causes you sort of lift your eyes up from ground level and makes you notice that very very thin thread everything you have and love is hanging by.

Don't dwell on that thread. Notice it and go back to not thinking about it, because that is how you get on with life, but please, please do what I did today and go up to the one you love and kiss them and make a silent vow to enjoy every second you get with them.

Like I said, stating the obvious. Just do it anyway and do it often. Do it often enough that it doesn't take an untimely death to remind you to do it.

PS: Don't worry about me, I'm fine. Just taking a moment to point this blog in the direction of something useful. Back to poop jokes and scorn for humanity tomorrow, I promise.

My Fingers Stink.

2005-12-04T03:58:00.000-05:00

Life is full of weird, out-of-nowhere revelations.

You may suddenly realize you love someone that you previously considered only a friend. You might suddenly come to the conclusion that you do not, in fact, like tennis. You may realize you are gay. You may realize you orgasm when you shit, or you like to be pissed on, or you just figured out how to cure cancer.

I have just now realized that two of my fingers stink.

The first and second fingers of my left hand smell like garlic and burnt rubber. I point this out because I'm pretty sure they did not smell like this a few hours ago. I can't be 100% sure, because I was having a careless moment and I forgot to make some sort of record of the last time I sniffed the first and second fingers of my left hand. Believe you me, I won't make that mistake twice. From now on, all my finger-sniffs go right into the log.

Here's my problem ( I mean aside from the actual stinky fingers)... If, say, Sal came home one day smelling like she'd just been dragged by hyenas up the long end of a shit-heap, I'd say "Holy jeezus, where the fuck have you been???"

While you can say this sort of thing to your wife, or your cat, you can't really say this to the first and second fingers of your left hand, because, one assumes, they have been attached to the end of your arm the whole time. They don't pop out for some fresh air... They don't run down to the corner store for some milk. Your fingers do not at any point, wander off to get into trouble on their own. If you ask your fingers "Where have you been?" The answer should invariably be "right here on your hand, dipshit. Can't you keep track of your own digits?" (unless you have had your hand amputated. But if that's the case, and you find yourself asking your fingers "Where have you been," chances are you're dealing with a re-animated zombie-hand, come back to seek its revenge on its maker. And that, while harrowing and tricky, is really a subject for a whole other post.)

All of this leads me to the troubling conclusion that at some point in the past few hours, the first and second fingers of my left hand took a little jaunt up the ass of a dead rhinocerous, and I was apparantly there when it happened.

Think Wombat, think... There has to be a logical explaination for the stinky fingers. At any point in the past evening did you shake hands with a rotting zombie?

No, I'm pretty sure I didn't...

Okay, was there any time tonight when you may have been, with or without your consent, finger-fucking an osterich dipped in crankcase oil?

Pretty sure there wasn't....

Hmmmm... Have you in the last three hours, engaged in any of the following activities: Juggling waffles made of toxic sludge, Picking the nose of a gas-bloated boar-corpse, Giving Ernest Borgnine an intestinal scrubbing, punching yourself repeatedly in the ass?

No... no... no... aaaaaaaaand no.

Okay guys, I'm completely stumped here. We may never know the source of the funky kuckles. Although I could call in the local police forensic team to do a detailed analysis of the stench and start running down possible suspects, I think that I shall instead climb into my bed, making sure to hide my left hand well under the pillows so as not to accidentaly kill Sal with the aroma of "Spicy Garlic and Mushroom Skidmark."

I'll keep you all updated on this story as it develops. Because I know you care.

Syphalitic Disease-Ridden Donkey Whore

2005-12-01T11:25:00.000-05:00

Imagine if you will, a man. Now imagine that this man's name is Steve.

Now imagine that this man's name is Ichabod, because I've just realized that Ichabod is a way better name than Steve.

Now, while you are imagining things, imagine that Ichabod is walking down a crowded street in New Orleans' French Quarter. Imagine that this is pre-flood, because, you know, bloated corpses and the weeping poor are not where I'm going with this story.

Imagine that Ichabod encounters some prostitutes in a darkened doorway. They are attractive, clean-looking prostitutes... The kind that have regular visits with the doctor and always use protection. Imagine that Icahbod turns away from these somewhat safe ladies of the night and goes instead to an even darker doorway, where a grizzled old woman waits. Imagine that this hairy goat-lady with a face full of erupting boils and a splintered wooden leg can be had for the small price of 3 dollars. Imagine Ichabod going through that doorway, his 3 bucks in hand, and having sweaty humpy unprotected sex with that festering old goat-woman.

Now imagine that Ichabod humps that woman bareback three more times. Imagine later in the evening Ichabod drinks a large glass of toxic waste. Then he licks clean a public bathroom seat. Now imagine he's humping a dead aligator is a fly-infested alley. Now he's shooting used heroin into his toes and eyeballs. Now he's rolling around open-mouthed in a vomit-filled dumpster.

Imagine the state of Ichabod's imune system after such a night. Imagine the kinds of sick disgusting things floating around in his bloodstream.

Now imagine that Ichabod is my computer, or as it is now known around Wombat Central, the Syphalitic Disease-Ridden Donkey Whore.

This is my very long winded (because I only roll one way and that way is looong winded) way of telling you that I'm having some trouble right now with the SDRDW. Fear not though, because I've had a visit from the doctor, and he assures me that we may not have to shoot the SDRDW and put it out of its misery. There may be some surgery involved. There may be blood, people. That's the kind of dire circumstances the SDRDW has gotten itself into with all the whoring around town and the sleeping with the unclean it's been up to. But have faith. I truly believe that the Syphalitic Disease-Ridden Donkey Whore will rise up once again, no longer Syphalitic and Disease Ridden, but still, you know... A Donkey Whore.

In the meantime, to those of you who have been sneaking into my house and fucking my computer (you know who you are...), I'm changing the locks and barring the windows, boys.

It's just a MEAL.

2005-11-24T02:10:00.000-05:00

Well my computer went balls-up on me today in a big way. I'm talking full-on Meg Ryan at the end of City Of Angels (there's two hours I'm never getting back), flattened by a truck, get the toe-tags, balls-up.

But hey, in the spirit of Thanksgiving I'll tell you something I'm thankful for: I'm thankful that my wife has, like, 17 computers in her tiny office. And I'm especially thankful that one of them is a PC, because while I'm Mac-friendly, It's been a long time since I had to use one, and working on a Mac now feels awkward and uncomfortable, like being felt up by your grandma.

Not that I was ever, um... felt up by my... Did I just type that?

Moving on, I wanted to get the thankfulness out of the way right up front, because now I'm going to shit all over your Turkey-Day.

That's probably not fair of me. I enjoy T-day as much as the rest of you. I'm a big fan of pie, I come down firmly on the side of cranberries, and to turkey with gravy I say a hearty "Yes please!" I have nothing against Thanksgiving really, except for one tiny detail.

It's not a holiday.

It's a freaking meal disguised as a holiday.

Seeing as how I attended most if not all of the first grade, I am fully aware that Thanksgiving is meant to be a celebration of our coming to America, and of the great bounty we found here. Put away your cute construction-paper pilgrim hats, I get it. Never mind that the bounty we found here included a brutaly cold winter and a little bit of genocide. My problem is not with the political correctness of the holiday. I leave that to the hippies. (Other things I leave to the hippes: wheat-germ cookies, Cat Stevens, hackysack.) My problem is that calling Thanksgiving a holiday just isn't being honest.

These days those of us no longer in the first grade could give a rat's ass about the pilgrims and/or the indians, and I don't think anyone really spends a long time contemplating all that they should be thankful for. What we really do on this day is eat a big meal, usually with family members, and usually with turkey.

And hey, eating is fine. I myself do it at least once a day. Sometimes as often as thrice a day. (crazy!) For purposes of discussion, let's just say I do it three times a day. That makes 1094 times I'll eat a meal this year and not call it a holiday. Well, I suppose that eating on Christmas counts as a holiday. So, 1093 non-holiday meals.

Okay, there's my birthday as well... That's certainly a holiday to me. (doesn't everybody celebrate National Wombat Day?) 1092. You get my point.

Please don't mis-understand me, I like Thanksgiving. In a few hours I'll be over at my Mom's house, hanging out with my family and eating what I hope will be a very tasty bird. I predict a 93% chance that I will have a good time. I am not not not anti-Thanksgiving. I just won't be calling it a holiday, for I, my friends, am all about the painful honesty.

And so, in the spirit of painful honesty, I hope that all of you have a great time on Thursday, and enjoy your ritualistic large meal in the company of family, most likely involving turkey and, if you are lucky, something with cranberries. And hey, if you do have a good time, get your family together in May or April and do it again. Don't wait for a non-existant holiday to tell you to go enjoy a meal with your folks.

And before you guys start jumping in my shit, Christmas is a holiday. Oh yeah, baby. We do not mess with the man in red.

Consider yourselves thoroughly decorated.

2005-11-21T22:32:00.000-05:00

What can I possibly say to encapsulate the time I just spent in Syracuse? How can I ever break down into simple words the complexity of my experience there? What mundane prose can hope to contain every facet and nuance of the 4 days I spent wrapped in Syracuse's snowy embrace? Could a writer of my meager talent ever rise to the challenge of summing up all that is Syracuse in, say, 3 words? You never know until you try...

Syracuse: Don't go.

Hey look, I did it. Guess that wasn't so hard after all.

And with that, my 6-state-wide homicidal decorating spree has come to a close. I measured malls in Pennsylvania and Florida, decorated malls in Texas, Virginia and (barf in my mouth a little) Syracuse, and I only nearly throttled one horribly impossible monster of a Marketing Director to within an inch of her life. All in all, I call that a successful season.

If you live near Plano Texas, get thee and thy children to Willow Bend Mall, and if you live near Fairfax Virginia, get thee and thy brood to Fair Oaks. The sets we built in those places are tie-ins with the upcoming Narnia movie, and they're quite cool. There's a huge walk-through snow globe, and actual props from the movie... I honestly think your kids will love it.

If you live near Syracuse New York, move as soon as humanly possible. Do not take the time to visit Great Northern Mall. I mean, I did a wonderful job there as well, but seriously dude, move somewhere that doesn't suck the will to live right out of you.

Anyway, the short version is, I'm back. My wife has been smooched, and my home toilet seat has been... well, that's been smooched as well, if you get my drift. All is right with the world. The blogging will begin again in earnest, and I promise to get back to the absolute lack of hilarity that you've come to expect.

I want to give a quick shout-out to my Baltimore-blogger peeps (JT, Snay, Zenchick, Jennetic and Fool...did I forget anybody?) for answering Sal's call and sending me a river of funny pager-mails just when I needed them most. You guys totally kept my head screwed on, and quite possibly saved that marketing monster's life as well. Also a shout-out to Karla for many funny emails when they were very much needed, and to Miss Kendra, for making me feel missed just by leaving a comment saying "Where are you???" Thanks to all you guys for being such good virtual buddies. Consider yourselves shouted. Um... Out. Shouted Out. Or Shout-outed. Not sure what's the proper way of saying that. Also not sure it matters.

You've all been Shout-outeded.

Now fuck off while I think of something funny to blog about. Sheesh.

Toilet Humor, Part One

2005-11-10T09:00:00.000-05:00

To those of you who already think you know where this is going, I'm about to blow your tiny minds. Because I am not here today, my friends, to talk about poop.

Oh, poop may be mentioned... Poop may hanging around the edges of the conversation the way the Dippin' Dots kiosk hangs around the less-traveled hallways of the mall, but it will not be the main subject of our discussion for today. So rest easy, those of you with weak constitutions, and try not to be disappointed, ACW, for today we take a (somewhat) poop (or at least graphic descriptions of poop) -free ride into the American public toilet for a few observations.

1: I'm A Sniffer

As many of you have no doubt figured out by now, I am in no way prudish when it comes to matters of the bathroom. And yet, I recently noticed that I am a chronic shit-sniffer. Now, before you all start dry-heaving, when I use that term I do not mean to imply that I smell shit. I may like talking about it, but I find it as unpleasant smelling as the rest of you. I'm talking about that little thing we all do when our bathroom privacy is impinged upon.

You know how it goes, you are all alone in a public bathroom, situated comfortably in the stall of your choice, when you hear the door swing open. Then come the footsteps on the tile floor and before you even think about it you make some little noise. You quietly grunt. You clear your throat. You shuffle your feet. For my part, I sniffle.

This is your subtle little way of alerting the new bathroom-dweller to your presence. Okay, understood. The thing that bothers me is, why?

What exactly is it that we think this new person, believing the bathroom to be unoccupied, is going to do? I doubt that he or she entered the bathroom fully intending to smear feces on every available surface, only to be utterly stymied by your little noise. "Oh damnit," comes the soft whimper, "I thought I had this place all to myself. Oh well, I suppose I'll just pee like a normal person and be on my way..." (I should note that when I typed that I imagined it in the voice of James Mason for some reason. No, wait. I stand corrected. I should not have noted that. Please ignore this note, and any other notes that may follow.) I doubt it's because we are afraid the intruder might be a psychotic axe-murderer, because let's be honest: The best way of dealing with an axe-murderer is to be silent and not alert them to the presence of a nearby and half-naked victim.

(As a side note about axe-murderers, I have this question: Why on Earth would anyone want to murder an axe? I told you to ignore these notes.)

What I think is really going on, is that we are trying to avoid that moment when Mr. "Just arrived in this bathroom" decides to yank on the door of our stall to see if it is empty. For some reason this is the most terrifying and vulnerable moment in the modern human's life. We can survive plagues, wars, and bombings, but the thought of someone yanking on that little stall door just about paralyzes us. Someone explain that to me. (That's rhetorical. Don't explain it to me. Do not interrupt when I'm ranting. I care nothing for your opinion.)

2: Lock Obsessive

Am I alone in thinking that all "single occupant" public bathrooms should have a slide-lock on them, or at the very least some sort of deadbolt that makes a visceral and satisfying "thunk" when engaged? If I ever go into a "single user" that just has one of those push-button locks in the doorknob, I spend my entire visit doubting that anything really locked, and then getting up over and over again and re-pushing that little button. "Click. Oh god, did that work? Jiggle. Now it's definitely unlocked. Click. Did that do it? Maybe if I click it again. Click. Did that lock it, or unlock it? Click. Oh Christ I've lost track now... Is it locked? Maybe one more click... Click..." And on and on and on. I'll spend five minutes checking and rechecking the lock, and never get around to actually going to the bathroom. All I'm saying is, with a slide lock, you know you're safe, and you can get down to business.

3: Turbine Hand Warmer

Note to public bathroom owners: Those little jet engines that you install so we can dry our hands do not work. You can maybe go from wet to damp with these fucking things, but full-dry is right out of the picture. The only thing air-driers are good for is making you feel like you just stuck your head inside Joe Satriani's amp. The instructions should read 1) Press button. 2) Go completely deaf. 3) Wipe hands on pants.

Get some fucking paper towels you cheap dipshits.

4: Midgets and Cripples

If I go into the bathroom and all the normal "skinny" stalls are taken, I'll use the huge two-car-garage sized handicapped stall. When I do this, I spend the entire time terrified that a wheelchair-bound person will roll in and discover me using his toilet. The guilt I feel is so overwhelming that if one of the regular stalls becomes available while I'm in mid-shit I'll actually consider hopping over to use it rather than face the wrath of some paraplegic with a case of the runs. "Hey man, I swear to God the other stalls were occupied I would never ever steal your holy Christ what happened to your legs?!?!?"

Also, if the bathroom is very crowded and I end up forced to use one of the midget urinals, I feel like I just got picked last for a game of dodgeball. Using the shorty urinal is like getting turned down by every girl in school and having to take your mom to the prom.

5: Bun Music

If you make a funny fart while shitting or peeing, I should be allowed to laugh. I'm just saying.

I have seen the face of evil!!!

2005-11-05T02:49:00.000-05:00

Okay, no I haven't. I haven't seen the face of evil. I did, however see the face of Karla. I also saw the arms of Karla as well as the hands, hair and ears.

Legs. I'm pretty sure there were legs also. They bent. At the knees.

As those of you who actually read this blog (as opposed to you who simply use the find function on your browser to skip to the dirty words) know, my infernal master, St. Nicholas the Oh-so Terrible, sent me to Texas, and I was afforded the rare opportunity to actually meet my all-time, gold-star, peed-myself-laughing, favorite blogger face to face.

"You met Andy Rooney???" I hear you all gasping. No, damnit. Pay attention. I met Karla. Christ. It's like trying to talk to Sea Monkeys...

I know that the popular belief out there is that Karla is not a person at all, but in fact an entire room full of highly trained (and heavily drugged) monkeys with internet access. Some of you believe that she is an elaborate ruse concocted by the creative writing class at the Mt. Pittle's Bluff County Correctional Facility for Insufferably Obtuse Women. Yet others think she is in fact Charro.

I can now confirm without a shred of doubt that none of these things are true. For I have met her in person. I have sat across a table from her and looked her in the eye (she has only one) and I have seen her true form. I learned many things about Karla during that dinner. I learned at least 5 of the 100 things wrong with her that have not yet seen print. But those are her secrets to reveal, and I won't divulge them here. I can tell you one thing about Karla though. One thing that, until now, nobody knew:

Karla is a dude.

You heard it here first folks, Karla's totally this big hairy albino dude with a rusted prosthetic leg who goes on long crying jags after only one beer. And she/he smells like vinegar and suntan lotion. Believe me, no one was more surprised than me. The really crazy thing is that he/she doesn't speak a word of English. Just wheezes and grunts. Karla sounds like a 1972 VW Beetle trying to start on a cold morning. It stands all the hairs on your body straight up. Yeeesh.

Okay, you and I both know that's bullshit... In fact, the only way for me to truly tell you about meeting Karla is to turn the funny off for a minute.

Funny Off.

Karla is awesome. In person she is absolutely as cool and funny as you think she is. Seriously. Quick-witted and warm and just a little bit insane. And what's even better is that she comes complete with a posse of similarly cool people. I met her husband Brian, who is one of those guys who immediately makes you feel liked and at ease. I also met her friend Vanessa, who is hysterical and generous, and her friend Brooks, who is laid back and cool and has a pretty twisted sense of humor.

These Santa Inc. trips I go on are pretty tiring. They involve hard work and long, long hours in the dead of night, and I'm away from my wife and alone in strange places and it can really wear a guy down. For just a few hours I was totally among friends and it really picked me up again. While I have the funny turned off here I just want to say thanks to Karla and her gang, for making me feel so welcome, and for giving me one of the best times I've had in a while. You all rock and I hope it goes without saying that if you're ever in the Baltimore-DC area, you gotta look me up so I can return the favor. We really need to get them to move Dallas and Baltimore closer together.

Okay everybody, deep breath... Funny back on.

I'm totally serious about the prosthetic leg though. It's fucking creepy. And when she tries to dance, it squeaks.

The Jolly St. Nick Parade Of Horrors has begun!

2005-10-30T01:23:00.000-05:00

Well, it's time once again for me to set out across this great nation of ours and ruin the holidays for everyone. Yes, in just a few days you will be standing in your local mall/shopping center/S&M parlor, and you will be horrified to see that they have already hung their stockings with care. Weeks berore Thanksgiving!!! Mere seconds after halloween, and already the Ho-ho-hoing has begun!

And yep, I'm partially to blame. Suck it up, whiners. It's a living.

Anyway, I won't bore you with the details, but the next 3 weeks will find me all over the place, and once again, blogging may be in short supply. But fear not, my friends! You never know what blog-portunities might arise on my travels. I may spring for the maddeningly slow hotel-TV internet, or I may just knock an old woman down and take her laptop. Anything can happen, people... Anything.

In the meantime, they send me out with this crappy little sad blue pager. I'll get a total of like, 3 work emails on it the whole time I'm out there, so I'm going to pass some information on to you. If you promise not to abuse the power, you can email me at 4106401026@airmessage.net.

Why? Cause I like you weirdos (well most of you... some of you creep me out a little. You know who you are!) And any line you feel like dropping me will go a long way towards keeping me sane while I erect giant snow globes and hang huge wreaths. And I promise I'll write back. If only to say "Please come kill me. Ho ho ho."

2 Caveats:

First, I'll be working all night and sleeping in the morning, so no pre-noon emails, please. Feel free to drop me a line in the afternoon or evening. Or if you're up late at night, say hi. I'll be up too. Probably hanging one handed from a boom-lift while my life flashes before my eyes.

Second, Keep any emails fairly short. Like no bigger than one big paragraph or so. The pager chokes on anything above a certian number of characters, and then the pager company tries to charge Santa, Inc, and then I get yelled at. And nothing with an atatchment, obviously. This do-hickey is low-tech.

Can you believe I'm asking you all to do me a favor, and then I'm getting all conditional on you? What kind of dick am I?

Your kind of dick. Admit it.

See you out there!

Who has bigger balls than me?

2005-10-26T22:19:00.000-04:00

Karla, that's who.

I'm man enough to admit when I've been beat, my friends, and been beat I have. Been. Beat. Um...

There was recently an exchange of emails between the lovely and brainiful Mrs. Karlababble and myself that, to be frank, just blew the doors right off of the "Good Taste" Barn. In a good way. Nay my friends, in a great way.

If you're like me (read that as: sick and most likely criminally depraved) you'll get a kick out of this. If you're more faint of heart or light of stomach or not liking of sicko humor, then you may want to look away now. Don't move on to another web page, just look away. No fair clicking blindly with your mouse in the vain hope that you'll hit a link and be transported to some other less offensive blog either. Just you look away and sit there like the Wussy McWimpsalot you are.

So here's the story: Next week one of my "Deck the malls for Santa" trips is going to take me right into Karla's neck of the woods, and I'm going to get a chance to meet this wonderful (frightening and wrongheaded) woman and her long-suffering hubby face to face. Some emails were exchanged to square out the details of this whole meeting, and suddenly I found myself in the midst of what can only be described as a spirited game of "I can out-deprave you." And yeah, Karla gave her OK to share this with all of you sick fuckers.

It began with me, at the end of an email, saying:
"I fly out to Texas on Sunday. This is your last chance to set the mall on fire and spare me a trip."

To which Karla replied:
I hadn't thought of setting the mall on fire. My plan was just to plant several bombs throughout the DFW airport set to go off just after your plane lands. I like that idea better, because that way the mall will still be intact in case I need to buy shoes sometime in the future. And no, that wouldn't spare you the trip, but it would save me a drive to Plano.

Wombat:
Mmmm... "Bombs" and "Airport" in the same email? That pounding on your door is probably the feds.

Karla:
After that, I'm off to kill the president.

Wombat:
Dear NSA Analyst:

My friend Karla is just joking about these things and didn't mean to set off any alarms in your stealthy e-mail reading software. Disregard any mention she makes of the violent overthrow of the government. Please regard any mention of sedition and/or public anarchy as, you know, just fucking around. Any references to Communism, Marxism or Dictator-incited jihad should be taken with a similarly huge grain of salt. Please do not smash down her door and arrest her. She has a small son to take care of and to parade through the liquor store.

No, wait. Disregard any mention of the liquor store. Under no circumstances should you read her blog.

Um, please go back to masturbating over internet porn and think no more of my friend Karla, the harmless, oh-so-completely harmless Texan mother who is in no way plotting to take over this great nation of ours and install herself as "Supreme Pooh-bah."

Thanks.

Karla:
Look, I'd love to sit and read these emails all day, but I've got a meth lab to run here.

Wombat:
How do you find the time do it all? Between the meth lab, running the underage Nicaraguan whores out of your basement, Selling arms to the Dallas street gangs, and selling your own illegitimate children into white slavery, I just don't know how you don't go insane. I'd be a wreck.

Karla:
I'll admit, it makes for a full schedule. But just knowing how much unreported income I'm making gives me a rush that the rest of you tax-paying citizens can't understand. There's nothing quite as thrilling as cheating the IRS out of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

Wombat:
Oh hey, I was cleaning out my hard drive and I found those pictures of you stump-fucking that 11-year-old blind kid at that un-registered Klan rally. Boy that was some good times. Speaking of, did you ever remember where you hid the money from the armored car heist? I know you can stay afloat on the money you make trafficking in stolen organs, but the rest of us need to eat, you know?

Anyway, Uncle Jimmy gets out of the big-house next Tuesday and he wanted me to tell you that he's looking forward to raping a few Mexicans to death with you just like the old days.

When I visit next week I want to see you get your kid strung out on Horse like you did last time. That shit was FUNNY.

Karla:
I don't know about next week--you know Halloween is my busy time. I'll be putting razor blades into apples and stickpins infected with the AIDS virus into mini-candy bars all week. I'm a little behind in the project because I just got back from Louisiana, where I've been doing a little home-and-business looting. (No one would suspect an out-of-towner.)

While you're in town, I may need a little help. Do you know where I can get some Santa suits? I've hired some guys to pose as Santas collecting for the Salvation Army at store entrances all over town. That should bring in some crazy money. I've got the bells for them to ring, I just need more Santa suits. I do have about 100 suits, but I've rented them already for top-dollar to pedophiles so they can hang out at malls and strip malls and let kids sit on their laps reciting their wish lists. If I make a big enough pile of cash this holiday season, I can give up grave robbing, at least during the winter months.

Aaaand we're back to me: At this point I gave up and admitted defeat. I had to. I think if I hadn't it would have ended with one or both of us being hauled off to jail, screaming "I swear, I was just joking about the necro/pedophilia ring!!!"

What does this mean, oh blog-buddy? What moral can you get out of all of this filth and depravity? I think the lesson here is don't get in a fight with someone who has bigger balls than you, because when you get down to it, it's all about ball-size. And Karla is one chick with a big old hairy pair.

Grave robbing... I'm still laughing. If you're not reading her blog, please, for the love of God, do so immediately.

The Plane Truth

2005-10-25T13:23:00.000-04:00

I'll return with the the humorous (or humorless, depending on your perspective) anecdotes soon, but in the meantime, here's a 100% true sketchbook excerpt involving my recent trip back from Long Island:

Travel is a hoot, isn't it?

Bear Magnet

2005-10-18T00:57:00.000-04:00

Chicago was lovely, Jacksonville was sunny, and Long Island was... Well Long Island was fucking bleak and rainy. And yet in each place I happily performed the work I was sent there to do... Doing the bidding of the Big Red Elf, all praise his holy name, all bow before his majestic and rotund stature. We beseech thee, oh Jolly Saint Nick, Guide us in times of worry, shelter us in days of woe beneath thy luxurious white beard and bestow upon us great mountains of loot, which we do not deserve and for which we will utterly fail to send out thank-you notes...

Oop. Sorry. I was zoning there for a second. Still shaking off the elf-conditioning.

I still have some Santa-work yet to come, but my next trip isn't until almost Halloween, and so I find myself home and finally springing blog-ward once again.

Because I need to tell you that I sometimes get hit on.

And I also need to tell you that every time this happens, the person doing the hitting-on is invariably a big burly gay guy.

Everyone has a demographic out there somewhere that they appeal to. It doesn't matter how unattractive you think you are, there is someone out there in the world that will look at you and mutter under their breath, "hubba hubba." Got a huge nose? There's a man out there who wants to lick it. Got a wooden leg? There's a girl out there somewhere with a prosthetics fetish. Been mauled by a pack of ravenous hyenas? There's a - well... how mauled are we talking here? I mean, a couple of sexy scars, or a face like a mashed banana floating in a puddle of marinara sauce?

My point is that every single person (except possibly the hyena-mauled) has some group that they appeal to. The trick is having that group turn out to be someone that you, in turn, are attracted to. My problem is that my demographic is pretty much the bear community. (that's bears as in "big hairy gay men," and not bears as in "Large possum-eating animals." Although I suppose that it's entirely possible that some of the big hairy gay men might be possum-eating animals...) I think the biggest problem is that I myself, look rather like one of the previously-mentioned big hairy gay men. Big round guy? Check. Bald head? Check. Full beard? Yep. Friendly eyes like soft pools you could fall into? You bet. "Right Said Fred" T-shirt? Well, no... can we go back to talking about my eyes?

I once got hit on by a teller at a Barnes and Noble who chatted me up a bit and then very casually lifted his sleeve up so that I could see his bear claw tatoo and gave me a knowing wink.

Once I was at a local eatery that is a very gay-friendly place and a table full of big leather bears all simultaneously scoped me out and then raised their glasses to me.

And once, I had a man run up to me on the street, shout "You're sexy!" and then run off.

That last one may not have been a pick-up, because I'm pretty sure I'm not sexy, and even so, running away is a terrible way to meet someone you like.

A few things to clarify:

1) I'm not trying to say I get hit on all the time, because I certainly do not. I am not what you would probably consider a good-looking guy. I'm just saying that when it does happen, it is always a big dude doing it.

2) I have no problem being hit on by gay men. I love gay men, and I'll take a compliment from whoever wants to throw me one. Thank you, Barnes and Noble teller, for making my day. Gracias, table full of leather-guys, for making me feel good. And for the man who yelled "you're sexy" at me? Well... that was creepy. Seriously, knock that shit off.

It's just odd to realize that you are someone whose demographic skews way off in a direction you never expected, or particularly wanted. The ironic bit is that Paul, who loves the big hairy gay men, is attractive primarily to small cute women. He and I need to hit the clubs one night. I'll snag Grizzly Adams, he'll get Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and then a fistful of roofies, and we'll trade. Sounds like a plan.

Of course, the sappy heart of this story is that I did find one magical girl who seems to think I'm the bee's knees (or the bee's lower mandible joints, or something). And honestly, that's all I need. One Sally is better than an army of naked gay lumberjacks.

Christ what a picture though. Okay, the tiny part of me that is gay is a little turned on by the army of naked lumberjacks. I need to go wake up Sal now and have some "boobie time."

Now I know how you people feel.

2005-10-07T22:18:00.000-04:00

So there I am, on the floor at this gigantic scene shop in Chicago. It's 8 am. I'm surrounded by huge pieces of the Santa set we're building, and I'm eating a granola bar I grabbed off the craft services table. There are about 35 people milling about, a mixture of gruff display-crew guys, arty designers and a few corporate big-wig types. Everyone is kind of still shaking the sleep off their faces, and trying to get up to speed to start our day of work. That's when it happens.

That's when this girl I hardly know totally grosses me right the fuck out.

I know, I know... All of you who are still dry-heaving a little over my last few feco-centric blog entries are probably thinking that karma has finally showed up, several hours late and reeking of alcohol, to give my ass a well-deserved kicking. And you'd be right. I suppose I do deserve a little taste of my own medicine, but here's the sort of "Glass-half-full" sort of dude I am: I'm going to turn this story around and share all the horror and misery with you fine people. Take that, Karma.

So the girl in question works for Santa, Inc, and has been there for maybe a year. I've run into her a few times, but until the big shindig out in Chicago, she and I had never really hung out. Just because it pisses the Big Guy off when I appropriate his reindeer names, let's call this girl Blitzen.

Anyway, Blitzen is the kind of girl who belches in public unashamedly and who has a potty mouth and seems to like putting it to use... in this respect she is kind of like a certain someone who will remain nameless, but who we will call "my beloved wife." In short, Blitzen is something of a kindred spirit, and I was glad for the opportunity to make her aquaintance in Chicago. She and Paul and I (have I ever mentioned here that Paul also works for Santa, Inc?) had a pretty good time hanging out and sort of quietly mocking those people around us who needed mocking.

So perhaps, given that I had recognized Blitzen as something of a fellow vulgarian, I should have been more prepared for what she said to me on the morning in question.

What she came up and said to me as I stood there munching my granola bar, and what I should mention she said completely nonchalantly, as if it was the most boring statement of fact, was this:

"I woke up with a turd in my mouth this morning."

"Um," I cleverly retorted, "uh, you HUH?"

"Yeah," she said, "a garlic-covered turd."

I probably said something back at this point. I probably said something along the lines of "you - what the fuck are you... HUH???" but I honestly can't remember because the waves of nausea completely blanked out my brain. A garlic covered turd. A garlic covered turd... in the mouth. Waking up to a garlic covered turd... in the mouth... A BLEURGHBLEUAH!!!!

(That's me typing the vomit noise, for those of you who are a little slow, or for those of you who are also stuck in a "picturing the garlic-turd" loop from which you, like me, will never ever escape.)

I get that by "I woke up with a garlic covered turd in my mouth," she meant "I had an awful taste in my mouth this morning." I totally get it. But she said it like it was a common expression. Is this something people say??? I know I'm the foulest human being alive and I should be strung up for some of the things I've said out loud, but do we really live in a world where people say this??? Is there a place out there where waking up with a garlic covered turd in your mouth is as common as waking up on the wrong side of the bed? Or raining cats and dogs? Have I been living in a cave? Did I miss the mouth-turd memo?

At any rate, I, the prize winning feco-phile and notorius foul-mouth am utterly and completely beaten. I quit. I'm done. I am a potty mouth no more. At last I have been on the receiving end, and I understand the pain I have caused. I am truly sorry and I promise never again to deliberately gross you fine people out.

Just kidding. I'll never stop. But seriously, Blitzen, nice job.

Off to Jacksonville in a few hours. Might get to blog a bit while I'm there. We shall see...

The goose? Appartantly getting fat.

2005-09-29T00:46:00.000-04:00

I think I alienated some of you with my last two heiney-centric posts, so this time I am giving you a no-ass guarantee. At no time in this post will I mention farts, shitting, or my ass.

I mean after now.

Okay. 100% ass free starting... NOW.

So that jolly bastard Santa has sent yours truly to Chicago today becuae apparantly, he doesn't ever want me to see my wife again. That's just how Santa rolls. He delights in other's misery. It's something that he has managed to keep out of all the carols and TV specials, but he's just a sick dude what likes to split people up.

Anyway, that's life as one of Santa's lil' helpers. I'm here in the windy city (and yes, it's windy) to visit one of our vendors and lear how to build this giant-ass Santa set they built for us. Then I get to wing back home this weekend, kiss my wife, and then head BACK to Chicago to teach the rest of Santa's crew how to build the thing. Then it's Jacksonville, then Long Island, then Texas, Virgina and who knows where else. When the big man points his chubby-ass fingers, you don't sit around humming "The First Noel," you GO.

I suppose this is my long-winded (what else is new?) way of saying that I'm going to be in and out for the next two months, and I'll blog when I can. Because you people? IMPORTANT to me. Mainly because every comment I get serves to prop up my already bloated ego, but still... IMPORTANT.

And let me just tell you while we're on the subject of road-blogging, that this hotel-room-TV internet is for the birds. No, wait. I don't think the birds deserve to have this geriatric internet-esque experience thrust apon them. I mean, aside from crapping all over my car, what did the birds ever do to me?

Come to think of it, fuck those birds. You should see the job they did to my poor car. Okay, they DO deserve this limp internet thing.

Typing on this thing is like dictating to an 85 year old stroke victim who is writing with a pencil taped to her forehead. Everything I type takes 5 minutes to show up on the screen. See how I suffer for you people? This is definately not worth the 49.95 they're charging me.

Did you hear that? That was the sound of Sally having a stroke. I'm just kidding about the 49.95! Sally has this pulsatng bulge in her forhead that is directly linked to our credit card ballance. It's flat-out creepy.

It's funny sometimes how writing this blog takes me in strange directions. I sat down tonight with the full intention of telling you about the worst restaurant in the entire world, which used to be in Baltimore, and which I was pretty sure was some sort of mob front. That was what I had wanted to write about, but look where we wound up. You got another 19 paragraphs of me bitching instead.

But hey, not one word about my ass! I'm all about customer satisfaction!

As a side note to the Baltimore-blogger community, I'm not going to make it to the Katrina-relief happy hour on account of my affore-mentioned secret mission for the dude in the red suit. I've instructed Sally to spend twice as much money to make up for my absence. Someone please be a dear and carry her home, will you?

Beached Wail

2005-09-22T15:04:00.000-04:00

Things were going so well here at Wombat Beach HQ, right up until this morning.

That's when my cell phone started leaping up and down and screaming at me. It was screaming to the tune of the Star Wars cantina song, because... well, because it seemed like a funny thing at the time to have my ringtone be the Star Wars cantina song. I'm re-thinking that whole "funny ring" idea now. Stop laughing at me.

That wise old voice in my head said "Answer not the ringing cell phone. No good can come of it... Leave that fucker be." Sound advice. But I have never once heeded sound advice, because I, my friends, am a complete dumbass. Answer that phone I did, and thus began the past 4 hours of work-related calls, work related stress and work related scheduling of business trips that keep me away from my beloved Sal.

They also keep me away from my beloved home toilet. You know what I'm talking about. Nothing soothes the weary butt like a familiar seat.

Look, blog-pals, I totally get that for me to come down here to Wombat beach HQ and bob around in the ocean, and then start bitching about my stress levels is... well, it's bad form. Most of you are currently bobbing around in cubicles and soaking in the halogen, so I understand if my current predicament sort of pisses you off. What can I say? Please refer to my above comment about my dumbassery.

Now back to me.

The long and the short of it is that I'm very stressed out right now, because I have to fit 4 weeks of work into the next two weeks, all while winging all over the eastern US measuring malls for that big red asshole, Santa.

"So why," you are probably wondering, "do you feel the need to dump your stress on us, you beach-lounging, whiny asshole?"

Actually I didn't get bloggy today to dump my stress on you. I got bloggy today to make myself feel better in the usual manner: by publicly embarassing myself.

And to that end, I present the following absolutely true story.

About (you guessed it!) my ass.

--------------

One night about 5 years ago I was awakened in the middle of the night by what I can only describe as an irritatingly persistent itch in my asscrack. In understanding what I did to relieve the itch, you must first understand two things about me.

One: I sleep in the nude. I have done so for years now. Don't try to picture it, you'll only hurt yourself.

Two: I am incredibly lazy.

No way was I going to get out of my warm toasty bed, and no way was I going to stick my fingers in my butt and scratch. I'm disgusting, but I'm not that disgusting. (well, actually I'm pretty disgusting, as you'll see.) So instead I did what anyone would do (if by "anyone" you mean "untrained monkeys")... I grabbed a handful of the covers, shoved them in my asscrack and scratched the itch through the covers. Then, having a) eliminated the itch, and b) proven that I am utterly unfit for integration into human society, I went back to sleep.

Sally was not amused the following morning when we woke up to discover a 6 inch long skidmark on the inside of the sheets. Oops. I really had thought I was... you know... clean, when I scratched.

Oooooooops.

Well, Sally and I moved past that little incident and now she only gives me a hard time about it, oh... once a day. Let me offer some sage advice to all of my male readers out there. Fellas, skidmark the bed just once, and you lose any leverage you will ever have in any argument for the rest of your life. Just imagine it:

YOU: "Baby, I'm just saying that I'm not sure painting the bedroom peach with cream stripes really... you know... works for me..."
HER: Oh really? Well which one of us shit the bed?"
YOU: "Peaches and cream it is, then."

See how that works? Wear underpants, or if you can't do that, at least duct tape your crack closed before bed.

---------------

Well now I feel much better. Or at least, now I feel huimiliated and ashamed, which has taken my mind off my stress. Thanks, Blog-o-buddies!!!

PS: I do realize that at the end of my last post I promised you something high-brow. To that end, I offer the following sentence:

"When Richard realized he had mistakenly chosen the 9-iron, I was thunderstruck and nearly dropped my Long Island Iced tea onto the green!"

Happy now?

Nobody wants to hear about my ass.

2005-09-18T13:34:00.000-04:00

It was a crazy insane busy week leading up to this, but now I am blogging to you from Wombat Secret HQ somewhere on the Jersey Shore. Let me tell you that Wombat Beach HQ is a place of intense relaxation, and I, my blog-buddies, am loving it like a road-tripping businessman loves a 20 buck blowjob.

Hmm... The relaxation seems to have affected my ability to craft a decent metaphor. Let's move on.

At any rate, I'm here with the oft-mentioned-in-this-blog Paul, and his boyfriend Ferdinand. (okay, that's a fake name. It's far too late to protect Paul's identity on this blog, but I may as well give Ferd a little anonymity...) Sal unfortunately couldn't make it this week, so she's holding the fort down at home. I have to say in regards to Paul and Ferdinand, that for a pair of gay men, they are not very... well... gay. Neither of them seems to have gotten the memo about the prancing and clubbing and singing of show-tunes. Neither Paul nor Ferd remotely fits into the typical stereotype of "gay man," well except for the part about fucking guys. They both come down firmly on the side of "yes" to fucking guys, but "no" to the Pet Shop Boys. It's uncanny.

Anyway, the thing that sent me keyboard-ward this morning is that derspite the fact that Paul and Ferdinand are terrible at being mincing queens, they are both, much to my dismay, not at all interested in hearing about my farts.

The minute I mention my farts, or turds, or anything else that comes out of my butt (um... what else comes out of my butt?) they both look at me like I just shit in their tea. And if you've ever had your tea shit in, you know what I'm talking about.

And so, with Sally hours away, and the world's worst queers in no mood to hear about my anal troubles, who does that leave?

You got it, blog-buddies.

And so all of that was juat a very loooooong way of getting to where I can tell you that this morning when I woke up, I farted, and it smelled like a KFC had had sweaty sex with a three-day-old cheese sandwich. It was one of those lingering morning stinkers that sends you leaping from the bed, teary eyed. I wasn't even ready to wake up, but the brown cloud chewing the wallpaper in my bedroom sort of forced the issue. I couldn't imagine what I had eaten the previous night that would account for such a monsterous odor, so I can only conclude that while I was sleeping, and entire garbage truck somehow drove up my rectum. Hey, it could happen. Anyway, I'm now hiding in the living room and waiting for the horrible, horrible thing that escaped my butthole to come out from the bedroom and kill us all.

Man, I feel much better now that I've gotten that off my chest. Sometimes for people like myself, who are unfit for integration into human society, talking about the fart is more relieving than actually letting the fart out. Aaaaaaaaaaaahhh.

Okay, raise your hand if you are never reading my blog again... Hmmm, that many huh? I see ACW is still with me... How did I know? Well for those of you that stick around, I promise that the next dispatch from Wombat Beach HQ will be something more high-brow.

It would have to be, wouldn't it?

I have the weirdest fucking job.

2005-09-13T02:13:00.000-04:00

Hey gang. I've been meaning to spring blog-ward for days now. So many very funny things to share with you all. Things that will make you ache from laughing. Things that will make you pee your pants. Things that will make you bleed from the eyes.

Jesus. Okay, not the bleeding from the eyes. Somebody should take my keyboard away when I get rolling like that.

Anyway, I promise hilarity in the near future, but not just right this second because I have to go do a very important job for Santa.

See, before I was a globe-trotting freelance illustrator-about-town, I did art for this company that is... how to say this? In the Santa biz. They are the leader in designing Christmas decor for shopping malls, casinos, etc... I don't mean wreaths and banners - well, yes, I do mean wreaths and banners, but also the large theatrical environments that Santa hangs out in. It is occasionally very interesting, artistic and challenging work. I swear to god.

It's also fucking weird though, because it means that in the middle of July, you are busting your ass designing and drawing the north pole, and the elves, and the sleighs, and so on, and so on. My professional life for the last decade has been positively filled with candy canes and shiny red ornaments.

Anyway, this company, which was once my employer, has remained my biggest client. And please don't get me wrong... I love them for it, and they are the reason I can still put food on my wife and dress my plates up in the finest clothes. But they are also the reason that I now saddle up and head to Pennsylvania. See, in addition to doing a metric ton of artwork for Santa Inc, (not the real name) I also help out with some of the more nuts-and-bolts aspects of filling these malls with decor.

So I'm off to measure a few malls in PA to make sure that Santa and all his crap will fit in them.

It's more complicated that that, actually, but why bore you with the details?

Okay, okay... Why continue to bore you with the details?

All of this has just been my pointlessly wordy way of saying "Got a business trip, and I'll blog ya later." Hey, maybe something really funny will happen in Pennsylvania and I can tell you all about it when I get back!

I'm just kidding. Nothing funny happens in Pennsylvania. Except maybe for those hats the Amish dudes wear.

You had me at "Braaaaaaaaap."

2005-09-06T01:05:00.000-04:00

First of all, despite being generally lauded as a good idea, My whole "Sketches for the Gulf Coast" thing went over like a puppy on fire. Which is to say it ran around for a few minutes, made a lot of noise, and then collapsed in a smoldering heap. Only not so much with the running around and the noise. Picture the smoldering heap part and you're pretty much there. While you're at it, picture the smell of burning puppy. I'm not sure how you picture a smell, but give it the old college try. Got the image? That was my "Sketches" idea. Oh well... You live and learn. To the one person who did request a drawing, I promise to do something cool and get it up on here soon.

Okay, on to bigger and more upbeat things:

I just celebrated year 7 of wedded bliss with the wonderful and oft-mentioned-in-this-blog Sally. For you cynics out there, no not every second of it was actually bliss, and yes, some bits were really fucking hard, but you know what? (Strap on the barf bags!) I get to spend every day with my best friend on earth. She's smart, she's wonderful, she's funny and she has the most joyfully terrifying laugh on the planet. Certain Balti-bloggers can back me up here. Sally's laugh could peel paint. In a good way. Bottom line? Oh boy oh boy do I love my wife, and not a day goes by that I don't thank... um... whoever an agnostic thanks... that I get to hang out with her.

Anyway, I thought a nice way to subject all of you to a tiny slice of my joy would be to share the story of the moment (the exact moment!) that I fell in love with Sally.

In the year nineteen ninety cough cough mumble, I was entering my junior year at St. Dinky's Tiny College for Dumbasses. (Name changed to protect... um.. oh hell, Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA. Happy?) As a junior in the art program, I was entitled to my very own closet-sized art studio, which I was going to share with my good friend DogButt. (I've mentioned her before, and I'll just say once again that she writes a lovely and frequently touching blog here.)

Dogbutt called me up as classes were starting to inform me that an old friend of hers had just transferred into our school, and needed some studio space. She asked if her friend could cram into our tiny little closet, and I uttered the fateful words, "Any friend of yours, DogButt, I will probably wind up falling in love with and marrying."

Okay, I didn't say that, but I did agree to allowing this new person to cram in with us. And that night at dinner, I met my new studio-mate, Sally.

Upon first impression, I have to say that while she was cute and funny, I wasn't immediately smitten or anything like that. I was glad she seemed like an entertaining person, and that she didn't appear to be psychotic, given that I would be spending countless late nights in a crowded studio with her. I liked her, I just didn't liiiiiiike her, if you know what I mean. Besides, I had a girlfriend of 3 years at that point, and Sal had a boyfriend who was enrolled in a different school. Neither of us was, at that time, really looking for a mate.

But as far as a studio-partner and potential friend, I was quite pleased with her.

And so it was that the very next night I found myself alone with Sal in our previously mentioned tiny, tiny studio. I was sitting at my drawing table with my back to her, and she was there behind me working at her own small table. We had some music on, and were pretty much engrossed in our work.

The tape we were listening to must have run out, because there was a long moment of silence in the room and it was at that exact moment that she let out what is commonly known as a "Buffalo Bark."

She ripped one. A huge one. The kind where you could actually picture her butt cheeks rippling as it came out. A wallpaper-shredder. An ass-quake. A 100 dollar beef trumpet.

Now, I was sure at the time (and have since had it confirmed) that she had not intended for that fart to be, shall we say, public. Sal had been sitting there in the quiet studio, feeling the pressure in her hind-quarters growing, and had thought to let it out silently, so as not to offend the strange man sitting behind her. But you know how some farts have a mind of their own.

So now we were sitting there, post-ass-concerto, and the sound was still echoing. I tensed up, waiting to see what she would do, because as I have mentioned here before, I hate it when people don't fess up to farts that were obviously theirs. I especially hate it when girls pretend that the hole in their butt is non-functional. This was truly where the rubber met the road in terms of my forming an opinion of this cute girl I was going to be spending a lot of time with. I was okay with the fart, but would she be???

And then my friends, then in the lingering silence she says:

"Well, I'm glad we got that out of the way."

Looking back, I can tell you that it was at that exact moment that she won me over. Any cute girl that can beef like a truck driver and then confidently own up to it was okay in my book. No, better than okay. She was a diamond in the rough.

I know you're thinking that I'm playing this up, or just trying to be gross, but I'm being dead serious. Everybody has their own criteria for what it takes for a person to earn their respect and admiration, and she won mine right there. Not fake? Good sense of humor? I'm sold.

Also, she had cute ta-tas. I gotta be honest about that.

We became good friends, then best friends, and then about 2 years later, when the respective significant others were gone, we became boyfriend and girlfriend. That was over a decade ago. And I'm a far better man for knowing her.

So, there you have it boys and girls. Dreams do come true. And one day, if you're very lucky, you too may hear the brassy trumpet of love and feel that certain warm breeze on your face and know in your heart the joy that I have. And if he or she ate barbecue for dinner that day, you'll smell the joy as well.

Sketches for the Gulf Coast

2005-09-02T14:04:00.000-04:00

Okay, I'm not going to use this blog as a platform to get political about what's going on in New Orleans... Lots of other people are doing a great job of expressing my rage and sadness and horror. Besides, I wanted "Fanfare" to be a place of entertainment, not of politics.

That being said, every time I turn on CNN I see something new that just fucking breaks my heart. I'm giving a chunk of my money to relief orginizations, but I'd like to do something to give some of your money away as well. So here's the deal:

I'm going to draw you a personalized sketch/cartoon in exchange for a donation to gulf relief.

Here's the rules:

Comment below, or send me an email here.

Tell me what you'd like me to draw for you. (it can be anything... funny or serious, specific or something left up to my interperetation...) If you wnat to see how I draw, look at my website, here.

Tell me your email address so I can contact you to get your money and send the drawing

Tell me how much you'd like to pledge. Ten bucks is the minimum. There is no maximum. I can take your check, or we can do a paypal transaction.

I will send 100% of what I raise to either the Red Cross or the Salvation Army. I haven't decided yet. If you'd like to suggest some other organization that's helping out down there, feel free. I want to pick the place that will use the money best. If you don't trust me, talk to Zenchick, or ACW, or Fool, or Snay. They have met me in person and can hopefully tell you that I'm not full of shit. I'm not keeping one red cent of what I raise here. Trust me.

I'm hoping to hear from a lot of you, so I'll have to keep the drawings smallish and black and white only. Otherwise, I'll let each request dictate the specifics.

I'll post every drawing I do here on the blog, along with your name and what you requested. Donations will be kept anonymous. (unless you post it in the comments section.)

I'll mail you the original drawing later on, along with a note of thanks.

Okay, that's it. If you dig this idea, please pass this URL around. I'd love to be able to raise a nice sized donation.

Seen In Canton #3

2005-09-01T20:14:00.000-04:00

Continuing with my series of drawings of real actual people I've spotted in my neighborhood, we have this dude. Don't even ask me to explain the hat. I just draw 'em as I see 'em, folks.

Man Shoulders

2005-08-30T19:25:00.000-04:00

Paul and I now live in mortal fear of being beaten to death by a giant transsexual in the parking lot of Starbucks.

For years now, Paul and I have been making a certain Starbucks a part of our Wendsday night nerdly-to-all-hell comic book run. One of the things we love about this particular Starbucks (aside from the fact that they have clearly slipped some sort of highly addictive opiate in our Frapps) is that it consistantly collects the weirdest assortment of people we have ever seen.

Every Starbucks always has that little contingent that hangs out at the tables outside where the smoking is allowed. And yeah, every Starbucks has weirdos aplenty. The thing that makes ours so unique is that the clumps of people who hang out at our 'Bucks just plain make no sense at all.

Hmm... Let's see who we have tonight:

Table one consists of two tatooed college girls, a 70-year old man in a blue blazer, and what appears to be Charro.

At table two we have a 50 year-old mid-life crisis Parrothead, an obese shirtless hippie with dreads and the bastard love child of Ronald McDonald and Marilyn Manson.

At table three, it looks like 2 suburban soccer moms, an albino with no lower jaw, and three 10 year-old girls in Catholic school uniforms playing with a shaven cat on a leash.

Think I'm exaggerating? Okay, Charro wasn't there. Otherwise, I've painted a pretty accurate picture of the kinds of people we see at the Starbucks daily freak-clump exhibition. It's not just the people, but the groups of people who clearly have absolutely nothing in common. If you were to attempt playing the "one of these things does not belong" game, you'd be there all day.

So, how exactly does this bring us to the threat of tranny-inflicted violence? We're getting there.

Two weeks ago, as we pull up to the 'Bucks, we notice this amazon woman sitting outside. (Most likely with a dwarf and a guy in full Nazi regalia... I can't actually recall...) She's eye-catching in that "Hey that woman could kick the snot out of me" kind of way, but upon first glance, fairly feminine.

As Paul and I are inside ordering, she comes in to use the rest room, and as she walks past, I get a look at her from behind. Huge man-shoulders.

I should take a moment here and say, so that I don't come across as a complete asshole, that I have absolutely no problem with transexuals. In fact, I can only imagine the horror of feeling like you were born the wrong sex. If they can get to a place where they are happier with themselves, then more power to them. I treat trannys the same way I treat anyone else, which is to say I will mock them from a distance, just like I do the elderly, children, dog owners and my own sister. (Hi Kelly! Nice shoes!)

So anyway, Man-shoulders. One bummer for male-to-female transexuals is that there are just some changes testosterone does to you that you just don't get to take back. I think it's much easier for a female to become a convincing male than vice versa. You can take all the estrogen you want, you will have man-shoulders until you die. Or at least until you get old and stooped and have uni-sex skeleton-shoulders.

Paul and I were discussing all this as we drove away from Starbucks, which is probably why Miss Man-shoulders stuck in my mind. The following week, as we were pulling in to the parking lot, I spotted her sitting at the same table, and said to Paul, "Hey, there's Man-shoulders!" Paul replied, "Quiet, she'll hear you," to which I responded "She can't hear me. Man-shoulders, man-shoulders man-shoulders!"

At which point, Paul pointed out to me that:

a) I'm a dick.

b) My voice carries.

c) My window was wide open.

Shit. Shitshitshitshitshit. Always check the window before you make a complete ass-clown out of yourself. Yep. Sure enough, Man-shoulders is GLARING at us as we park. Fuck. Me. Not only is Man-shoulders glaring at us, but so is her companion du jour, who appears to be an escaped felon who now makes money breaking rocks with his head. Fuckedy fuck fuck FUCK.

I need at this moment to point out that while I will make fun of you from a distance, I will not, generally speaking, make fun of you to your face. At least not unless I'm pretty sure you can take it. Because, despite how it may seem sometimes to you blog-readers, I'm not a cruel man. I take no pleasure in making people feel bad.

And so I felt awful that Man-shoulders had heard me. I felt absolutely horrible that I may have hurt her feelings, and I felt especially badly that she and her giant companion were probably going to beat me to death with my own leg.

They were probably going to beat Paul to death as well, but fuck that, he runs a lot faster than me. At least he had a fighting chance.

I considered just driving away, but I felt like at that point, leaving the scene would be an even more dickish thing to do. You can't just do a drive-by mocking like that, you have to be a man and take your lumps. So we walked in, and got our drinks, and walked out, and the whole way we were being glared at, and the whole way I am hanging my head in shame. They did not, I have to admit, beat the ever-loving shit out of us, but I figured that if they had, we would have deserved it.

Well, I would have. Paul was an innocent. Not that Paul's innocence would have stopped me from screaming "It was him, for the love of god, kill him!!!!"

See point "a" above.

Anyway, Man-shoulders and her mongoloid friend decide to spare us an ass-beating and whip us only with their scorn. I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to Man-shoulders for any pain I may have caused her, for I have truly learned my lesson. She is a human being, with a heart as easily broken as yours or mine.

And because she could kick the motherfucking shit out of me. Did I mention her huge shoulders?

Jiggling It.

2005-08-27T15:08:00.000-04:00

Back before I became self-employed (and no, I don't mean that as a cute euphemism for unemployed) I worked for this company here in Baltimore, and this company had a security guy. I'm just talking about one dude here, one dude in a uniform whose job it was to patrol the building, walk the ladies to their cars and lock the joint up at night.

"A fine idea," I can hear many of you saying, "I like this security guy idea. Sign me up for one of those." And you are right. It is a fine idea.

Or rather, it would have been a fine idea if they hadn't hired Dan*.

(*Name changed to protect the not even remotely innocent. In fact, strike that and replace it with: Name changed to protect the axe murderer.)

Dan was a guy who took his job as lone security dude waaaaaaay too seriously. Dan was also a guy who probably liked to rape small animals. Dan had that look in his eyes that made you back slowly away, reaching for the nearest blunt object with which to defend yourself. Dan actually frightened the women he was supposed to be protecting. Dan was an insecurity guy.

When I say Dan frightened the women (and, let's be brutally honest, the men as well) I don't mean that he actively frightened them. He made no lude comments, he made no threats, he certainly didn't ever, to my knowledge, hurt anyone... He was just, you know... The kind of guy who has bodies buried in his back yard.

Let us now jump this story to a certain night, and imagine if you will, myself and two of my co-workers sitting in our shared office, burning the midnight oil.

That's an expression meaning "to work late," for those of you who are insufferably dense and are actually picturing me burning oil.

Dan's routine was to wander the building after hours, most likely stopping in each empty office and imagining how he would most like to murder that office's owner, and then at the end of the night, he would do a sweep of the place before arming the alarm and leaving. It was during this final sweep of the night, that he came upon myself and my buddies.

Again, for you extra-dense readers, "came upon," in this instance means he encountered us, not jizzed on us. Although I wouldn't put it past him.

Being "encountered" by Dan late at night in a deserted office building was not something that filled us with a sense of well-being. In fact, I would describe the sensation I had when he came in as being more of the "Oh god I don't want to be anally raped and left for dead" sort of thing. A glance around at my buddies told me I was not alone in this feeling. Have you ever heard the sound of three assholes clenching in panic simultaneously?

Dan was overly excited this evening because he had just gotten a brand new night-stick. Someone high-up in the company had wisely refused his request to come to work armed with a handgun, and so the night-stick was his weapon of choice. He brandished it and showed it to us, or at least showed it to us as best as one can when the three other people in the room are desperately trying to avoid eye contact with you.

The really exciting thing about this new night-stick, from Dan's point of view, was its handle. Imagine if you will, the night-stick as a meter long fiberglass rod. This one had a short handle about a third of the way up its length. You've seen the sort of thing I'm talking about in martial arts movies. This particular night-stick had at the end of its handle, a sort of mushroom-cap protrusion on it, making the handle look sort of like a stubby penis.

This comparison was made crystal clear to us when Dan pointed to the mushroom-cap and said "You know what they call this? Huh? Huh? The call it the head. Heh heh heh... The head..."

Never in my life have I wanted more to throw myself out of the nearest window. I was absolutely convinced that the anal rape was moments away from beginning. I wasn't the only one, either. Have you ever heard the sound of three assholes slamming shut in terror?

At this point the room is utterly silent. My co-workers and I are trying to pretend like we didn't hear what he said, and aren't aware that he's standing there grinning and stroking the head... I'm thinking "Look at your monitor... Don't turn around... Maybe he'll go after one of the other guys first..."

Then we hear him mutter to himself, the way somebody (somebody insane) might whisper to a girl in a centerfold, "Cause if anybody fucks with me, I'm going to stick this thing here straight up their ass.."

Have you ever heard the sound of three assholes positively inverting in abject horror?

But then, my friends, then, after a slight pause, he added: "...and jiggle it."

Soon afterwards he left the room, and no anal rapes were handed out on that night. Everybody breathe a big sigh of relief that my virgin ass is still intact. Go ahead, I'll wait.

...

My friends and I discussed the incident afterwards, and we all came to the conclusion that "I'm going to stick this straight up their ass..." may have been a terrifying thing to hear a psychotic muttering behind you, but it was "...and jiggle it" that was truly the cherry on top of our sundae of crippling horror. To this very day, whenever any one of us tells a dirty joke or a foul little anecdote, and then crosses over the line, (for example suddenly inserting a man drinking dead blended fetuses through a straw into an otherwise tame joke) we will agree that that person has "jiggled it."

As you may imagine, my friends, I get blamed for jiggling it quite a lot.

Anyway, the next time you're at the water cooler and a co-worker is telling you about their weekend, and begins graphically describing their sex life, or last bowel movement to you, just say "Dude, you just totally jiggled it."

This will catch on, I know it.

Wet Floor

2005-08-25T14:46:00.000-04:00

At the place I used to work, there was this older Russian guy who handled all the cleaning. He took out the garbage, vaccumed, dusted, you name it. I have to say that he was a really great guy, and he had an amazingly positive attitude considering all he did all day long was clean up after us pigs.

Anyway, his name was pronounced SIM-EE-ON, like the word "Simian." The spelling of his name, however, was a different matter: "Semen." Yep. Like, you know... jizz. My co-workers and I would giggle uncontrollably every time an email came around with his name on it.

I once tried to politely ask this nice, nice man about the spelling of his name, and he said "When I come to this country, my boss, he say "Semen, the name... is no good..." I know... I know. But is my name, you know?"

I figured, if he was cool with the name, who was I to judge? So my co-workers and I put the matter to rest and stopped giggling over his name. Like I said, he was maybe the nicest man on earth, and we all really loved him. So no more with the giggling.

Until he put up the sign.

One day, Semen had to mop and wax the hardwood floor in the office of the VP. Being a thoughtful sort of dude, he put up a notice to warn anyone entering the office, and then, I suppose so they'd know it was for real, he signed it.

Here it comes... Get ready...

It was several years ago now, but I'm pretty sure I physically collapsed when I saw the sign. And then of course, I regained my composure and took a picture.

Dookies!!!

2005-08-24T15:12:00.000-04:00

As my best friend Paul likes to point out (repeatedly and at great length), I have a bit of an obsession with poop. I can't deny it. I don't mean "obsession" in the "rolling around in it" sense. Let's please be very clear about that. My enjoyment of poop does not extend in any way to wearing it, smelling it, touching it or (shudder) eating it. I do quite like to talk about it though... Furthermore, I seem to have this uncanny ability to steer any conversation I'm involved in, regardless of topic or context, inexorably poop-ward.

I would like very much to think that this is because I recognize the unique comic properties of poop... It is a social taboo, yet it's something that all of us share and experience... We are embarrased by it, yet we all do it daily (or nearly daily, for you clenchers out there)... It's also an extremely cheap and easy laugh. Especially if you're Sally. Those of you who have met my wife know what I mean.

Paul has another theory, one based on a story from my childhood. As much as I hate to admit it, his theory isn't entirely far fetched. I'd like to offer up this story (and Paul's theory) to you, my Blog-Buddies, and ask you to weigh in.

The year was... Well, it was a while ago, and I was just a toddler. Maybe 2 years old. The day was hot and sticky, and my mother was beside herself with excitement. The reason for this excitement was that my mother, for the first time in her life, was about to enter the posh Baltimore Country Club. My grandparnets, her in-laws, were members, and they had decided to allow my mom (and her beautiful baby boy) to use their membership and spend a day by the pool, hob-nobbing among the Baltimore elite. (Is there such a thing as an elite in this town?)

This was a big deal for my mom. I think she probably felt in many ways like she had finally arrived, so to speak. And so there she was at last, by the pool. Waiters were carrying drinks to the sunbathing mothers... The whole place, I'm sure, smelled like suntan lotion and money... My mother squeezed my chubby arms into a pair of floaties (remember floaties?) and plopped me into the wading pool. Then she picked out a nice lounge chair in a sunny spot and commenced with the well-heeled relaxing.

This lasted all of, I don't know, 3 minutes or so, before there was a huge commotion over in the wading pool. Some older kids (older than me... like 4?) were screaming "Dookies, dookies!!!" All the mothers came rushing over, and there I was, sitting in the middle of the pool, surrounded my 4 or 5 little floating turds. Yup. I grumped in the Baltimore Country Club's wading pool. Moms began snatching their children out of the now contaminated pool... My poor mother was, at this point, splashing around trying to scoop up the offending nuggests... I, of course, was just floating there, happy as a jaybird... And the whole thing was going down to that chorus of "Dookies, dookies!!!"

A scant 2 minutes later and there I was in my baby seat with my mortified mother screaming at me as we tore out of the gates of the Baltimore Country Club.

To this very day, my friends, she has never gone back. Although, to be fair, I'm pretty sure she's forgiven me by now.

Okay there's the story. It's cute, and a little funny... But now we get to Paul's theory. He insists that this is the exact moment in my young formative life where I equated poop with attention.

When he told me this, I opened my mouth to tell him to go fuck himself, but then fell silent. Shit. Shit, he's got a point.

Anybody want to ring in on this one? Am I comedicaly enlightened, or am I the turd-centric version of Pavlov's dogs?

As an aside, I want to say that I thoroughly enjoyed meeting many of my fellow Balti-bloggers at the happy hour last night. You is my dawgs now. ACW however, is the dawg that I'm keeping chained up in the back yard, because frankly that fucker has a scary brain.

Stamos

2005-08-19T16:24:00.000-04:00

I would like to take this opportunity to formally apologize to John Stamos. Because, you know, I'm sure that Stamos reads this blog.

About 12 years ago, I was in Manhattan on a college trip and I was tooling around the city with my good friend Dogbutt. (Yes, that's a nickname. No, it's not an insult. You'll have to take my word for it. Dogbutt, by the way, writes a lovely and frequently touching blog here.) Anyway, Dogbutt and I were wandering around NYC, going to galleries, digging the artwork and doing all the stuff two art students do when they're in NYC. At the beginning of the day, we had decided that, come hell or high water, we were going to see a celebrity. We had no specific requirements for the type of celebrity we wanted to see... Anybody cool would do.

A fine goal, but one that, six hours later, was completely and utterly unfulfilled. We had gone from Central Park down to Soho, and along the way had spotted absolutely no one good.

Man eating his own boogers? Check.

Crazy hobo speaking in tongues? Check.

Anybody we even vaguely recognized from stage or screen? Nada.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a total dork-tourist. I've spent plenty of time in New York and I'm not particularly that into celebs. It's just that, on this particular day, we had a freaking goal, you know? We had a mission.

Now we were walking down a side street in Soho, and our feet hurt, and we were tired, and we were depressed that we had seen not one famous person, and to add insult to injury, we had just found out that a bunch of our friends had seen (and actually talked to) Eric Idle at the MOMA.

Eric. Freakin. Idle.

I'd kill to meet Eric Idle! As a pal of mine used to say, I'd knock my mother down to meet Eric Idle. God hated me on that day, my friends. Everybody else got Idle, and Dogbutt and I got zippo.

And that's when it happened. We were trudging past this little pub when Dogbutt sort of half-heartedly points to the window of the bar and in this utterly dejected voice goes "there's John Stamos."

I looked, and sure enough there in the window having drinks with some buddies was John Stamos. We both stopped and stared at him in this totally let-down "this is all we get?" sort of way, and he looked up and saw us standing there staring at him. Staring at him like he was the celebrity sighting consolation prize, which in a way I guess he was. "Thanks for playing, sorry you didn't meet Eric Idle... Here, take a Stamos on your way out..."

It must have been several seconds that he stared at us, staring at him with that sad look on our faces, and then he waved. And without returning the gesture in any way, we both just turned and trudged off.

I'm sure that John Stamos has had plenty of worse moments than that. I'm sure he went back to his beer and his friends and didn't give the pair of us a second thought. But I have to admit, I've always felt a little rotten for dogging Stamos like that.

And so, Stamos, I'd like to apologize for acting like a douche. You're a fine actor and hell, you're Uncle Jessie, for crying out loud. You deserved better. If I ever see you again, I promise I'll run up to you, screaming your name and crying in joy, and I'll plead with you to sign my hairy man-breast or something.

9 People Who Honk Me Off Just A Little Bit:

2005-08-17T02:02:00.000-04:00

Look out! I'm feeling snarky tonight!

1) People who say "ice-cold beverage." Ice-cold is frozen. That beverage is simply low-temperature. Well, the ice cubes in it are ice-cold. Perhaps you could offer me a low-temp beverage with chunks of ice-cold water.

2) People who call that thing in their basement the "Hot Water Heater." There is no need to heat hot water. That device is heating room-temperature water.

3) People who have speakerphones but still hold them up in front of their faces. If you're going to go through the trouble of engaging your arm, why not go the extra 4 inches, put that fucker up to your ear, and spare me from having to listen to your inane conversation.

4) People who stare at the menu and then go, "What do I want to eat?" How should I know what the fuck you want to eat? I'm too busy being me over here, I really don't have the time to be you as well. You are a lot closer to your stomach than I am. You figure out what it wants.

5) People who call you on the phone and ask "What'cha doing?" I'm talking on the phone. To you, genius. Do you mean what was I doing before you interupted me?

6) People who fart and then act like they didn't do it. Nice poker face. Dude, there's 2 of us in the room, and I know I didn't do it. What exactly is to be gained by pretending you didn't just rip one? It's not like up till now, I assumed you didn't fart. Farting actually comes with the ass, buddy. Got an ass? Got farts. I've made my peace with it. You should too.

7) People with those ribbon shaped magnets on the back of their cars. I'm all for supporting the troops, you know? But all that magnet is doing is supporting the dude who makes the magnets.

8) People who slow down when there's a cop on the side of the road giving some other schmuck a ticket. Don't slow down, speed up! This is the one time you know without a doubt that the police are otherwise occupied! Floor it!

9) People who say "Self-help book." If it's self help, you don't need the book. That's a book-help book.

Next time, I promise I'll write something that reflects a deep abiding faith in humanity.

Blong?

2005-08-15T00:16:00.000-04:00

I was just reading Karla's blong.

Okay, I meant to type "Karla's blog," but I'm going to leave that typo intact. What Karla writes is so much better than a blog, it deserves that extra letter. Please, if you aren't already doing it, read Karla's blong here.

Anyway, what I was saying before I so rudely interrupted myself, was that Karla was talking (typing) about when she lived with 4 guys in college. This inspired me to tell you of the time I lived with 4 guys in college.

Um... 5 guys. I mean I was a guy. I mean I am a guy. I mean, I'm a dude, and I lived with 4 other dudes. In college. But not in a gay way.

Karla was recounting the horrors of living with 4 smelly, frat-boy types who lived in squalor. My story is different because I lived with 4 clean-cut, intelligent, scholar types who took their work very seriously, studied a lot, and lived in squalor.

These were: a genius physicist, a global economics major, a future doctor, and a guy who was triple majoring in math, economics and finance. You're picturing revenge of the nerds. Admit it. But they weren't nerds. They were good looking guys, smart guys posessing that nerd-killing one-two punch of girlfriends and social skills. If anything, I was the nerd.

Oh my god. I was the nerd. I'm going to stop typing for a second here and sob uncontrollably.

----sob!-----

Okay, I'm back. I didn't really sob uncontrollably. The giveaway is that people who are sobbing uncontrollably don't take the time to type "----sob!-----." Sheesh.

So these guys, these future MD's and PHD's who could balance the global budget, harness the power of the sun to cure cancer and all that? Apparantly you can only force all that info into your brain if you sacrifice little things like "doing dishes," and "how the ice tray works," and "how to put the fucking lid back on the mayonaise jar instead of leaving it on the counter for a week to see what kind of nasty mold you get."

I don't mind a little mess. Sally will tell you, if you ask her, (and tell you repeatedly if you keep buying her beers) that I am not what you would call "fastidiously neat." You probably couldn't even get away with calling me "tidy." Don't misunderstand me, I don't roll around in my own filth or shit the bed on a regular basis (notice I added "on a regular basis..." Heh heh...) but do I mind a little tiny bit of squalor? No sir and/or madam, no I do not.

I do however, mind the fact that living with these 4 guys changed me. It changed me into something that no self-respecting man would ever want to be. What did it change me into? Well, somewhere between chasing my housemates around with the vaccum cleaner and lecturing them on how exactly to fill a fucking ice cube tray, it hit me: It changed me into my mother.

Un-for-fucking-givable!!! Let me say right here and now that I love my mother, and that she's a wonderful woman to whom I owe a great many things, but loving her doesn't mean I wanted to be her. I wanted to be a slobby lazy 20-year-old. And yet... Take 4 less-than-sanitary braniacs, add a horrible, creeping, nausiating smell eminating from one corner of the kitchen, and what do you get? Me, lecturing my buddies at every turn on how if they would just, for 5 minutes, make the smallest effort, we could all live in a happier and healthier environment. "Would it kill you to wash a dish?" "That trash isn't going to take itself out!" "I'm not your personal maid, you know..." Then I would grumble as I cleaned their dirty dishes, stacked them neatly on the shelf, and thought "One day they'll apreciate all I do for them..."

When did I become the clean one??? Sometimes at night, lying in bed, I pick my nose. And sometimes, if there's no kleenex around, I just flick whatever I find out into the darkness of the bedroom. Does that sound like the guy that would become the "take out the garbage" Nazi???

(perhaps I should have kept that nose-picking story to myself... Sally reads this blog. Oh well...)

At any rate, after a semester and a half of this, one of my housemates started dating this girl... She was really sweet and pretty and I believe she had actually been "Miss Nicaragua" at some point. Suddenly whenever I came home I would find her vaccuming our house, or doing our dishes. It seemed like she was constantly cleaning the place. I felt lousy about it because I was afraid that my housemate, who was not exactly the most enlightened guy when it came to women, was making her do it. Every time I saw her cleaning I would tell her she really really didn't have to do it, but she would just smile and say she wanted to.

I am going to hell for many, many reasons, but one of those reasons has got to be that I let Miss Nicaragua clean my house. But god-damn if that place didn't shine once she came along.

Yep. Going to hell.

Going to hell, and to add insult to injury, I was the nerd. You learn the craziest shit about yourself writing these blongs.

Next time, class, I'll continue to beat the English language into the ground, and we'll discuss my obsessive over-use of commas, elipses... (and parenthetical statements.) Also italics.

More proof that I should sell my keyboard and take up knitting:

2005-08-10T01:41:00.001-04:00

This morning, in the midst of a deadline, my main CRT monitor goes kablooey on me.

Well, okay... It didn't go "kablooey," it actually didn't go anything at all, which was sort of the problem, because one of the many things it didn't go was "on."

I've known for some time that the damn thing was on its last leg. It's been coughing its death wheezes for like, six months. But you know how it is: when the end comes, it comes hard and fast and there's no time to carve a plaque.

Why do you give a shit about my monitor woes? Well you probably don't, so I'll re-phrase.

Why am I pretending you give a shit about my monitor woes? Because I went out this morning and spent money I absolutely do not have in the name of keeping ship shape for my illustration business, and am now the proud owner of shiny dual side-by-side 19" flat screens. Working on dual flat screens (shiny ones!) is the artist equivalent of being one of those dudes in the John Woo movies who jump around shooting twin nickel-plated pistols.

I, my friends, am a fucking gunslinger.

And in debt up to my eyeballs. No, beyond my eyeballs. Up to my... Shit, there's not much above my eyeballs... Forehead? Hairline? Crap. I shouldn't have given up on the eyeballs. I have officially screwed this metaphor.

Anyway, huge soul-crushing debt. But loving the monitors. Okay, I can hear you yawning. Fine you insensitive bastards, here is why I really sprung blog-ward tonight...

The supermarket nearest my house has a line of sugar free candies on display. These things are called "Go-lightly." Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't "Go-lightly" the stuff you drink before surgery that makes you shit like it's going out of style?

(Fear not, by the way. I stay on top of this stuff, and shitting will never go out of style.)

And while I'm on the subject of America's favorite pre-surgery poop-inducer, why call it "Go-lightly?" That just seems cruel to the person using it. It sounds so pastoral, so benign... One would expect that drinking "Go-lightly" might lead to 15 minutes or so of gentle and pleasant deficating, the kind where you never once have to bear down... The kind where you never look up from your copy of Reader's Digest at all.

Imagine your horror as you instead spend the next hour clutching the sides of the bowl just to stay on as everything you have ever ingested stampedes out of your ass? Instead of "Go-lightly," they should call it "Go-to-hell, cause this is going to suck."

Damnit, here goes another blog entry, spinning down the toilet bowl. Anyone who wants to start counting how many of my writings devolve into poop jokes... Well, anyone who wants to do that needs to get out of the house more often, but you get my drift.

Ask Me About My Narcissim!!!

2005-08-06T16:49:00.000-04:00

So, Karla, whose brain quite frankly terrifies me, is doing this whole "5 questions" shebang, and I just had to be a part of it. Because, you know, I'm a narcissist. Here are the 5 questions she came up with for me, and (as you probably guessed) my answers. Because just printing the questions would be stupid. Grab hold of your... um... shift key, 'cause here we go!

1. You're in a plane with all your friends and family, on your way to Paraguay for the big Mixed Nut Festival, when your plane crashes in a remote mountain location. You're stranded so long that eventually you're starving to death. Who do you eat first, and why?

Hmmmm. I do love the Mixed Nut Festival... It's not the nuts that make it special, so much as the mixing... But I digress. This whole question reminds me of the time my then 8-year old nephew announced that there should be a game show called "Let's See Who's Edible." Smart kid.

But again with the digression. Okay, on with the people-eating!

I can't eat my wife, although, she probably would taste pretty good. She was raised in Pennsylvania Dutch country, and everything the Dutchies touch just tastes better. But I kind of like having her around, so she's out. Same goes for my best friend Paul. He'd be perfect, because he's got just a little fat on him, not a lot, just enough to keep him from being tough and wiry. Just enough in fact, to make a nice gravy from... Mmmmmm, gravy... NO! Must... Stop... Picturing... Eating... Paul...

Mom and Dad are too old (sorry guys!), My sister is too... my sister. Eating your sister is probably like kissing your sister... Did I just write "eating your sister?" Moving on...

I'm going to have to go with my pal Skip. Skip one of those athletic guys who has gotten a little bit pudgier as he's aged, so I think there's gotta be a good ratio of nourishing meat to tasty fat on him. Also, he's a politician. So we can finally test the theory of "Does a politician do more good in government, or in your tummy?" Sorry Skip! If it makes you feel better, I can promise you we'll marinate you in something nice, and serve you encrusted in the mixed nuts we packed for the trip.

2. Name one thing you've said in your life that you wish you could take back.

One thing??? We could make better progress if I instead found the one thing I said that I didn't want to immediately pull back into my mouth and swallow. Most of those who know me can tell you that I was born without the internal censor that most of you normal folk have. Another way to put this is that the distance between my brain and my mouth is very short, and any thought that appears in the former, will most likely jump out the latter before I can stop it.

Let's assume that there's about 3 million things I wish I could take back, and I will instead tell you the story of the one thing that actually got me punched in the face for saying.

I used to be good friends with this girl, Annie. We had one of those antagonistic relationships where you really care about the other person, but show it primarily through abuse... We were just funny like that, And no, I don't mean that I just picked on her, she gave me hell too. at any rate, there was one summer in high school where I was doing my best to show her how much I cared by making fun of the size of her ass at every opportunity. I should point out that she did not, in fact, have a big ass. She had a normal ass. I just thought ass-jokes would be a funny way to get under her skin. So that whole summer it was ass-jokes at every turn. (See what a great guy I used to be? What a fucking dumbass.)

Then one night, a bunch of us were hanging out, and I made a big-butt joke and she stormed off, and a friend of ours pulled me aside and said "Look, it really hurts her feelings when you make fun of her butt like that." I was floored. This is going to sound SOOOOOO stupid, but I really didn't mean to hurt her feelings. I was just, you know, busting her balls, so to speak. (again, Dumbass.) So I went and found her and I sincerely wanted to apologize, because I truly felt like an asshole. So I go to her, and she's crying, and I put my hands on her shoulders and look in her eyes, and I say "Annie, listen, I am really, really sorry about all the butt cracks."

Butt cracks!!!!! The minute it came out of my mouth I could feel the corners of my mouth turning up in a smile!!! Butt cracks!!! I couldn't have said something funnier if I was trying! Now I was straining to hold back the grin that was spreading across my face! The grin that was threatening to turn into a full fledged guffaw! The look on her face was one of utter horror. I blustered "No! (chuckle) I didn't mean (snort) I really am... (snicker)" And here comes her fist.

She actually loosened a few of my teeth.

3. You cat gets a shot of the wrong medicine by a negligent vet (who is later revealed to have been high on crack at the time), and attacks you in your sleep, mangling your face horribly. Your life can go two ways: In one scenario, you become incredibly rich from the ensuing lawsuit, as well as incredibly famous from all the publicity. You do a round of daytime talk shows and news interviews, and are so loved by the public that you eventually get a string of acting gigs, and become a household name. Or, in the second scenario, you use most of the settlement money to restore your face to its former glory. You go unnoticed by the press and continue to live the happy life you have now. Which scenario would you wish for? (Your cat is fine in either case, by the way.)

I think I'll take the fame and fortune. If I was the type who didn't want attention, I probably wouldn't be posting stories about shitting myself on the internet for the whole world to see. Huge attention whore here. You dig?

4. Why did you choose the name Common Wombat?

Boy do I wish this was an interesting story. I knew a kid in college who was obsessed with stamp collecting. (Are you forming a vivid picture of the type of people I hung around in college? I swear to god I knew some cool people... Well, a cool person... Well, he was a nerd but he had an air conditioner... Oh god, just shoot me now.) Anyway, one day my friend got a letter from someone in Australia, and the stamp was a picture of a wombat with the title "Common Wombat."

We got to joking around about exactly what it would take to be an uncommon wombat, and how much we'd like to see that wombat, but the whole time I'm just rolling the words around in my head... common wombat... common wombat... I've always been someone who enjoys the shapes and sounds of words, and common wombat just had a way of rolling through your mouth. I just love the way it feels to say it. I vowed right then and there (I did a lot of vowing in those days) to use that name one day when I started a business. Lo and behold, 13 years later, and I have an illustration business called Common Wombat Studio. (www.commonwombat.com... ahem.)

So there you have it. 100% true and 100% boring.

Ah! I nearly forgot! I discovered another meaning for the word wombat, one that is kind of funny taken in terms of my creative business... Some hold that WOMBAT is an acronym for Waste Of Money, Brains, And Talent. I'll have to let my clients be the judge...

5. Tell me about the time you spent in that Turkish Prison.

All I'll say is that a) I had no idea you could fit that many midgets into an elephant scrotum, and b) I would have made it over the border if I hadn't had to go back for my priceless collection of cervical collars.

------------

Want to play?
The Official Interview Game Rules:
1. If you want to participate, leave a comment below asking to be interviewed.
2. I will respond by asking you five questions - each person's will be different.
3. You will update your journal/blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview others in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

BST PLTZ EVR.

2005-08-05T15:01:00.000-04:00

I spring blog-ward this steamy afternoon to share with you the two best license plates I have ever seen in this, our fair city.

The first was spotted in the parking lot of the Cockeysville Target a few years back. Hanging from the back of a big bulky sedan was the plate "ROTN 2AT." My friends and I puzzled over this one for a while. Clearly it's meant to be read as "Rotten to a T," but I insist to this day that the proper interpretation is "Rotten Twat."

The second one has been spotted around Mt. Vernon on several occasions. The car sports several religious bumper stickers, so the plate, which reads "J IS LORD" is obviously intended to mean "J(esus) is Lord." Unfortunately, there was apparantly no room on the plate for spaces, so it actually appears as "JISLORD." That's right, my friends, "Jizzlord."

What would Jesus do? Probably not insist that his friends call him Jizzlord.

2005-08-04T00:08:00.000-04:00

I HAD to draw this... Home Of Dismay (www.homeofdismay.blogspot.com) posted this exchange, and I could not rest until I had illustrated it!!! The original post: Overheard in Hampden:

Two women are fighting, screaming loudly, on the street.

Woman #1 (visibly pregnant, attended by hapless fat friend): If I wasn't pregnant I'd rock your world!
Woman #2 (skinny and wearing winter clothes in 100 degree heat): You're just a fucking whore!
Woman #1: I'm twice the whore that you are! I made more money being a whore than you ever will!

2005-08-03T16:15:00.000-04:00

Here's another entry in my sketchbook series of people I've seen around Canton... It was a REALLY hot day when I saw this dude, so I guess I can't fault him for the lack of clothing, but there was something about the huge naked gut combined with the cowboy hat just stuck in my mind...

Four Unrelated Things:

2005-08-02T01:23:00.000-04:00

First Thing:

From CNN's story about repairing the shuttle: "NASA will send an astronaut on an unprecedented in-flight shuttle repair mission to remove two protruding gap fillers that could cause uneven heating during re-entry, a NASA official said Monday evening."

God help me, the first thing I thought when I read that was "You don't want uneven heating, you want those astronauts to cook evenly as they re-enter, resulting in an all-over golden brown."

Also, I'm not sure but I think I may actually have "protruding gap fillers." Next time I'm getting undressed for bed, I'll have Sally look.

Second Thing:

Tonight we had one of those evenings that just make me happy that I live where we do. Sal and I walked down to the Canton Dog Park because if there's 3 things Sal loves, 2 of them are dogs frolicking. (the other would have to be potty humor.) From there we decided to mosey over to the waterfront park to enjoy the beautiful evening. While we were sitting there the Water Taxi pulled up and on a whim, I said, "Let's go over to Fells Point and have dinner." So we had a lovely ride around the harbor as the sun was setting, ate dinner outside at a Fells Point pub, and hopped the Water Taxi back home. The trip back was especialy nice, as I've always felt that Baltimore looks best when all its lights are reflected on the water. Just a wonderful, unplanned, on-a-whim, waterfront evening.

I bring this up just to say that sometimes I really get down on this, the city of my birth, and sometimes I can get to grousing about all of this town's limitations and flaws. (And as we all know, there are plenty of those.) And then, every now and then, I have a night like tonight and think "God I'm lucky to live here."

Some days, Baltimore, you is my bitch, but tonight, you is my bro.

Third Thing:

Michael Penn's 5th album (Titled Mr. Hollywood Jr, 1947) is out today. I've been a fan since No Myth hit the radio back in the late 80's, and for my money, he's the best male singer/songwriter out there right now. Already heard an advance copy and it's really good. Just a PSA folks... Doing my part for the cause.

Fourth Thing:

One of my cats has all of a sudden decided that the little mat by the kitchen door is a litter pan. I have no idea what brought this notion on, but the mat is kind of dark, and I'll be damned if her grumps don't blend right in. It's only a matter of time before Sal or I walk in the kitchen door and find ourselves knee-deep in cat-grump. For now, I'm trying to be extremely mindful every time I go near that entrance. Tomorrow I will throw away the mat, but I have this sneaking fear that she'll just grump away on the exposed floor.

It's always something around this place, and 9 times out of 10, it's something involving poops.

2005-07-31T01:26:00.000-04:00

Something I'll try to do more often is publish bits of my sketchbooks here. This is a guy I saw walking down the street here in Canton, and I just couldn't get the image out of my mind. He just looked so... I don't know... Baltimore? Anyway, I went home and drew this.

I'm trying to blog more often, which means you get more pointless stories like this one:

2005-07-31T00:12:00.000-04:00

The year is nineteen seventy something or other... All I know is we had a yellow naugahyde chair in the living room and my dad owned a leisure suit or two. Wore them in public and everything... I have pictures. (Are you reading this Dad? I have pictures. Leisure suit! Big honking sideburns too! Feel free to send cash to me, care of the please don't ever post those pictures online fund.)

Anyway, the year is somewhere firmly in the seventies, and we are living in a nice little townhouse community north of Baltimore. (for all you Balti-bloggers who know your way around, I grew up in Rodgers Forge. My mom still lives there, actually.) My sister is about 5, and is playing in the back yard of a neighbor. My dad is on our back porch, fixing the porch light, which was... well... I don't know what was wrong with it, but it clearly needed fixing.

Back in those days, there were a few rowdy teens who would tear down the alley behind our house in their bitchin' Trans-Ams, so my sister, being young and not great at looking out for herself, was expressly forbidden from setting foot in the alley without a parent. She was okay as long as she was playing in a neighbor's yard, but stepping out onto the concrete to risk becoming huggy-bear's new hood ornament was absolutely verboten. (As an aside, all the kids had dipshit nicknames back then. It was just the times. One kid down the alley was known as "Bloody-bear," and a girl who lived behind us was named Karen, but went by "Coola." Don't ask me to explain the sad state of hooliganism in the 70s.)

Anyway, to cut to the chase, my sister does exactly what she's not supposed to do, and steps into the alley, and my dad, fixing the porch light, sees her do this. He yells out her full name (You know how parents do that - The middle name gets tossed in there and you know you're really in for it...) and adds something like "You get your tiny heiney over here right this second!!!"

My sister knows exactly what she did and she knows she's in the shit, as they say. Her eyes well up with tears. She begins the slow march back to our yard, and down the walkway, and up the steps to the porch, all the while no doubt imagining the major punishment she's about to receive. My father continues to fix the porch light while she's doing the mini-death-march, waiting until she has arrived, trembling behind him before he turns around.

As I've mentioned several times, he's fixing the porch light. I keep mentioning it because now it becomes important to the story: As he turns to face my terrified sister she looks at him with wide horrified eyes and immediately sees the screwdriver he has forgotten he is holding in his hand.

And this is where my little sister yells - nay, screams - to the entire neighborhood:

NO DADDY, PLEASE DON'T SCREW ME!!!

Only in the 70s, folks, could this happen without Child Services knocking down our door a half-hour later. These days, the folks that live around you would probably just saddle up a lynch mob. I think of this story every time I read in the news about some poor couple hauled off to jail for taking naked pictures of their baby. I know those laws protect the children, and it's probably better to err on the side of caution, but thank god no one who heard that had my dad hauled off in chains.

As it was, he had to cover his face with a handkerchief so that my sister (who was still supposed to be in trouble, you understand) couldn't see him cracking up. What a world.

On a completely unrelated note, I am getting closer every day to convincing Sally to start blogging. We even have the prefect name picked out for her blog. (Not that I'm going to tell you what it is...) If you know Sal, feel free to apply gentle peer pressure to get her to leave the world of the lurkers and join those of us who fill the internet with our useless crap. She will cave soon, I can feel it!

Let Go Of Your Pickle.

2005-07-27T21:42:00.000-04:00

Boy it's nice to be meeting all these fine bloggers through the wonderful Blogtimore community.

The internet: It's not just for masturbating anymore!

2005-07-27T13:50:00.000-04:00

Recalcitrant Blogger!

Yes, it's been nearly 2 months since I last blogged. The fact is that I've been layed up in the hospital recovering from injuries I sustained while rescuing a child from a burning building.

Well... Either that or I've been really really lazy. I'll let you be the judge and we'll speak no more of it.

At any rate, Sally went to a happy hour with all her Baltimore Blogger buddies, you know, the ones who actually write in their blogs on a regular basis? This got me feeling a little bit guilty for not updating Fanfare, so I figured I'd put fingers to keys for a few minutes and try to not be a lazy ass for once.

Then again, sitting here in my big comfy chair eating a Berger cookie and typing probably doesn't exactly disqualify me as a "lazy ass," does it? The best I can realisticaly hope for here is "slightly less lazy ass." But hey, being a lazy ass, I'll take it!

So, my lazi-tude firmly established, let me say hello to the fine Balti-bloggers who are keeping my criminaly lurky wife in stitches. Particularly to Snay & eXtraheavy (who lives somewhere around here apparantly). Thanks for entertaining Sally. I'm trying to get her to start a blog too. I also have to say hello to WebmasterMama, who just started reading Fanfare out of the blue and who has been extremely kind and supportive considering all I really do here is sling poop jokes around.

Speaking of poop jokes, Paul just sent me this link, which may be the best unintentionaly filthy headline I've ever seen. I'm still laughing over it.

Mull that over a while, and I'll get back to you.

2005-06-03T00:25:00.000-04:00

Okay, so this ONE time, I shit myself...

Those that know me fairly well know the story of THE COLUMBUS CENTER INCIDENT.

Hmmm. Probably a fairer way to present that would be to say -Nearly everyone that has ever met me in a social situation wishes they did not know the story of THE COLUMBUS CENTER INCIDENT. In fact, a few of my better friends - those who hang out with me far too much, have probably heard me tell the story 12 or 15 or 230 times by now. Sally and Paul in particular would need steel wool to scrub the story out of their minds, they've been subjected to it so much. I think that I use this story as a sort of icebreaker. See, I'm not a particularly couth or tactful man, and I am known far and wide as somewhat of a vulgarian. Also I think that anything that comes out of your ass is comedy gold. The CCI (as the story has been known since.. well... now) is kind of a way to get all that out in the open right away. It's kind of me throwing down a gauntlet and saying "If you like this story, then you'll like hanging out with me. If you hate this story, then let's just part ways now."

Ironicaly, Paul HATES this story, and he's my best friend. So... so much for that theory.

It is (IMO) a pretty good story though (despite my having given away the punchline in the title above... Yes, it does involve me shitting myself!) and I figured that perhaps it was time to commit it to text; both preserving it for the ages and also preventing me from having to tell it in the company of my friends yet again. Now when I meet new people I can just direct them to my blog, and the tale can be read (or not) at their leisure.

Not would actually be my reccomendation.

At this point, I have to warn all of you who haven't noticed my tendency to ramble that this is going to go on a bit. If you have somewhere you need to be in 5 minutes, don't start reading. Okay you already started reading, but for the love of God, don't keep reading. Come back later when you have some time. And get a comfy chair.

Okay? Okay... so here we go! Allow me, before we begin, to paint for you a pair of pictures.

1) I am, at the time of this story (summer of '96), working at The Columbus Center, a marine biotech center on the Baltimore Harborfront. I'm involved in the exhibit design department of a children's science museum that the Columbus Center was getting ready to open. The museum was cool but horribly mis-managed, and it wound up failing miserably about 4 months after it was opened. I was long gone by the point that happened. Anyway, those of you that live in Baltimore may know the building. It's right on the waterfront, behind the Power Plant, and it has a huge tented canopy on one side. It kind of looks like a giant alien landing craft. Cool building. Anyway, I was working there.

2)I am wearing white pants. Remember this fact, because it will become important later on.

So it is a beautiful summer evening, and a Friday to boot. One of my co-workers has a serious jones on for Mexican food, so a few of us decide to head over to Nacho Mama's in Canton for dinner. I give Sal a call and tell her to come downtown and join us.

So now we're all at Nacho Mama's, eating burritos and tacos and nachos and crap like that, and just shooting the shit. We're all having a great time and nobody wants to leave, so we just keep ordering drinks and food and sitting around and laughing. I'm having a great time. So great, in fact that I begin to ignore the little messages from my ass saying "We are going to need to shit soon, bro."

The bathroom at Nacho Mama's is a tiny grungy affair, and on a Friday night, that joint gets pretty fucking crowded. I'm thinking to myself "Self, do you really want to make everybody get up so you can slide out of this booth and force your way through that crowd, only to wait in line while a series of drunk assholes piss all over the toilet seat?" And the voice that replies says "Naaaah. Fuck that noise. I'm sure we're going to leave soon. We'll wait."

Actually, that was one of the voices that replied. The other one was the faint cry of my ass, saying "Dude, wait if you want to, but I'm not going to be held responsible for what happens."

I have since learned to listen to the voice of my ass, and to heed it well, for my ass is wise beyond its years (and surprisingly muscular too). But on that particular night do I listen to the veritable Yoda in my heiney? No sir, I do not.

So there I sit, with something like a dozen tacos all making a beeline for the back door of my colon, and I'm still thinking "We're going to leave any second." I continue thinking that for another two hours. Yes, I certainly could have bitten the bullet and gotten up and used the scary bathroom. Yes, I also could have simply gathered Sally and said good night. All I can say is that I am a dumbass and I did neither of those things. It's not like the bathroom at Nacho Mama's is a Turkish prison either. I'm just a huge shit-wimp.

So finally the dinner ends, and everyone gets up to leave and by now my ass has abandoned gentle pleading and gone right into frantic screaming and banging his head against the wall: "Look bro, I'm doing the best I can down here, but I'm only so strong and this is a mexi-shit, know what I mean? It is spicy and it is liquid. Let's get a move on here!!!" And Mr. Shit-wimp here? Still not listening. Told you I was a dumbass. At this point my ass is quivering in the exact same manner that Olympic weightlifters do when they're holding 7 million pounds in the air.

Our goodbyes having been said, Sal and I get into her beat-up Toyota Tercel and I look lovingly into her eyes from the passenger seat, and whisper "That was a lot of fun and I love you and I need to get to a toilet right fucking now."

One of the many reasons that I love Sally with all my heart is that she is a trooper. I mean some girls you can say that shit to and they'll just wrinkle up their nose and give you that "you're disgusting" look. Not my Sal, though. She's got just enough little boy in her that when you say "I need a toilet right fucking now," she dons her game face and puts the pedal to the metal. And so there we are, weaving in and out of traffic... She's doing her best speed racer impression and I'm holding my trembling ass up off the car seat because I know if it touches vinyl it will explode. At this point my ass is like nitroglycerine. Do not shake it, do not tap it, do not roll it down the stairs. Do not disturb the shitroglycerine, or you will surely be picking chunks of semi-digested taco out of your hair.

Sally, god bless her, totally gets this, so she's avoiding the potholes as we bolt back to my office at the Columbus Center, which we've determined is the nearest restroom that I can unload this fecal A-bomb in. It's after hours, it's deserted... And it's only a few blocks away. Of course, those few blocks are starting to feel like 50 miles and I've got my fingers dug 5 inches into the armrest and my legs are starting to cramp from holding myself off the seat and I can hear this pounding from below like the mongol hourdes have just arrived at the gates and they want out, motherfucker, like now!!!

Sal brings the car to a screaming halt at the closest available parking spot and as I pull myself out of the car, taking oh-so-much care not to jostle the shitroglycerine, I realize that we are all the way on the opposite side of the building from the entrance. Now Sally, myself, and my ticking A-bomb begin the death march around the perimeter of the Columbus Center.

It's not a small building. It's not the Pentagon, but when you've got 35 metric tons of fecal matter leaning on a trap door made of balsa wood, it's fucking-A big enough. And this, my dear patient blog-readers, is where the waves begin.

You know the waves. Anyone who has ever held back a shit knows the waves. First that urgent need to vacate your bowels recedes and you think "I just may make this after all!" So you- well, you can't run (you've still got the 35 metric tons of feces), but you can sure as hell waddle fast. You get about 15 feet when the wave comes back in, and it's like Mama Cass herself is in there, leaning on that mountain of shit poking out your back door. You stop the waddle entirely. You grip the side of the building. Sally gets that look in her eyes that says "Holy shit, he's gonna blow!" You dig into the side of that building and now it's your sphincter vs. Mama Cass and the entire 1985 Bears defensive line in a battle for the future of your pants.

Let me tell you, at this point, I am putting so much effort into not shitting that I'm not even breathing. I can't think about anything other than not please god not shitting my pants. I don't know who I am. I don't know where I am. I don't know who this cringing lady I'm with is. All I know is that I am the dam and I have Niagra inside of me.

And the the wave passes. And I almost collapse on the concrete right there. But no, miles to go and all that... 15 more feet. Another wave. 15 more feet. Another wave. Each time I am sure this is the one where I lose it. Each time I squeak by unsoiled. The front door to the Columbus Center is getting closer and closer. Al... (wave) most... (wave) there...

And I'm in the lobby! And there is a pen in my hand and I'm signing in and showing my ID and trying to appear to the guard like a normal guy and not like 300 pounds of shit in a 5 pound bag.

From the front desk is an arching stairway that swings up around a corner and right at the top of those stairs is a bathroom. A nice, clean, after-hours-abandoned bathroom. Salvation is something like 20 yards away. I'm going to make it. I look at Sally and smile. A kind of sweaty, strained smile, but a smile nonetheless. I'm letting her know it's going to be okay. We start up the stair case. I'm holding her hand as we go up and around the corner. I can see the bathroom door now. Thank you sweet Jesus. I start to tell her to wait in my office and I'll come get her in a few minutes -

And right at that moment, my friends, right there halfway up the stairs, just around the corner from the front desk and 10 feet from the bathroom door, my ass just fucking gives up the fight.

It's not that I took a shit there on the steps. It's more that I suddenly realized that I was already shitting. My poor tired sphincter, who (let's be honest) had already gone way way way beyond the call of duty, was out for the count and there was shit just pouring out of me.

I want to make a couple of things clear:

First, I was trying not to shit. Just because my ass gave up didn't mean I had. My brain was sending all the signals - "Oh my god stop holy shit stop please for the love of all that's holy stop shitting!!!" It's just that there was no juice left in the engine, if you know what I mean.

Second, I don't know if she heard it, or smelled it or just sensed it, but Sal immediately knew what was happening. I can vividly recall the way her eyes widened and I knew what she was thinking. She was thinking "Oh my god he's actually shitting himself," and "I'm going to marry this clown???"

Third, You need to know that in the boxers vs. briefs debate, I come down firmly on the side of briefs. And the fact that I was wearing briefs was the only reason I wasn't painting my shoes brown. Or the steps for that matter. Behold the power of elastic bands.

So after what feels like a half hour of standing there shitting, the tap kind of turns off for a second, and I can move again. I whimper "Wait in my office," to Sal and bolt for the bathroom door.

The bottom line, once I was finished doing my business in there?

The pants (the white pants)? A mess, but salvagable. I washed them out in the sink and put them back on. Luckily I was wearing a button-down over a T-shirt, so I was able to remove the button-down and tie it around my waist, covering up most of the stain.

The underpants? Despite having given their all and saving the stairway from a paint job, they were a total wash. I rinsed them out as best I could and actually threw them in the trash.

The toilet was a mess. I was a mess. The cleanup was ungodly. But I'll spare you any more description. Suffice it to say that I learned a valuable lesson that day, my friends. Actually I learned two:

1) If you have a woman in your life that loves you even after seeing you transform into a crap-volcano, keep that woman at all costs. That's a diamond in the rough. Make no mistake.

2) If your ass tells you that you ain't gonna make it? For fuck's sake listen to it.

Next time - something much shorter and no shitting, I promise.

2005-05-22T01:28:00.000-04:00

The Star Wars Thing:

So here I am, just returned from viewing Episode III, and I felt the need to thrust upon you my opinion of the film. I know opinions are like assholes and blah blah blah and can't we all just get along... Let's just say right now that the opinions expressed here are my own and if you disagree blah blah blah. Okay? Here we go:

Dissapointed.

Putting it down in text like that seems to help me come to grips with it. I wanted so badly to love this movie. I wanted so badly to love the first two prequels. I'm not going to go into full "basher" mode and trash those films either. No, they weren't that good. But both of them had moments and scenes that I genuinely liked. So did Episode III. There were a lot of things that Lucas got right. There was some beautiful eye candy. There were some character moments that were spot on. And he did manage to tie up the story in a tidy manner that leads naturaly into Episode IV, the original Star Wars. Lots of good stuff in this movie, and on the whole, 2 steps higher than the previous prequels.

But let's face it: 2 steps up from pretty damn low is still pretty damn low.

I know that better critics that me are going to pick apart (or praise) this movie, so I'm going to cut to the chase of what bothered me. It wasn't the few truly clunky bits of dialogue, and it wasn't the few embarasingly bad moments. They were pretty forehead-slapping bad, but they were outweighed by a lot of well-done bits. The part that really got to me was the pacing.

Episode III is one of the most poorly paced films I have ever seen. Even Episode I, possibly the worst movie Lucas has ever made, had a very logical and straightforward plot progression. You may not have liked it, but the movie had a flow. Most movies have a flow.

Episode III was like riding in a car with someone who is chewing the hell out of the clutch. Start stop start stop spurt spurt BRAKES... It starts out well enough, with the first 20-30 minutes whizzing by quite nicely, and then you hit this huge patch of exposition and the trouble starts. Not only does the film slow down considerably, but Lucas tries to compensate by throwing in these battles and chase scenes within all the tedium. I understand the impulse to bring the speed up a bit, but intstead of giving the pace a little boost, the effect is starts and stops. This movie lurches forward and then slams to a halt so many times that you actually start seeing double.

Before I seem too mean, I have to say that I think Lucas had a huge and unforgiving job ahead of him. He had an awful lot of story to cram into 2 and a half hours in order to get us where we needed to go. I know that's got to be a huge challenge, and as I said, in terms of wrapping up the story, he scored big. I loved the way this film ended. You could absolutely feel how it would just slide logicaly into the original 1977 film, and that's a big achievement. It's just that the ride to get to that place was so damned unpleasant.

I don't know... Star Wars will always occupy a special place in my heart. I grew up with Star Wars. I am the Star Wars Generation. And there are plenty of things to like about the prequels. They may not have been good movies, but they are significant movies. They pushed the envelope of digital technology in film in a major way. I think it is fair to say that they shaped the entire industry. Let's face it, love him or hate him, (and does anyone love him?) without Jar Jar Binks we probably would never have had Gollum.

And the prequels are enjoyable. Despite the fact that they are not good films, I enjoyed watching Episodes I and II. I loved the podrace. I loved Darth Maul. I loved seeing the Jedi get badass in Ep II and I loved seeing Yoda kick some ass. I loved how the clones are the precursors for the Stormtroopers and I loved watching palpatine become the Emperor. I loved a million things in both of those movies and I loved lots of things in this one too. The betrayal of the Jedi? Great. The final battle between Obi-Wan and Anakin? Awesome. The whole last 15 minutes of the film (excluding one horrible horrible someone should break Lucas' legs moment with Vader)? Perfect.

But now that the Star Wars tale is over, and the story is complete, I have to say I just don't feel like the journey was worth it. And after nearly 30 years, that's a terrible thing to feel.

2005-05-09T21:55:00.000-04:00

My Very Own Neologism, And How You Can Help Make It A Reality.

Yeah I should be working right now, and just in case you are a client of mine, I'm going to start working on your job any second now. And it's going to be the best work I've ever done. And you're going to cry. Seriously. It's just going to be that good.

But first, I have something to share with you, my blog-buddies. I'd like to invite you to join me in my campaign to introduce a new word into common usage.

Let me explain:

As loyal readers of Fanfare From The Common Wombat (or FFTCW, as I'm sure it will be referred to one day in historical textbooks) know, I am a sweaty-palmed twitching junkie when it comes to the frothy delight known as the Starbucks Frappucino. It's Paul's fault. He introduced me to my first Frap a few years ago, and I'm pretty sure he did it just so he'd have some company on those frantic late night Frap-runs. (That's running to get the Frap, not the runs the Frap gives you later...) He was all sweet about it, "Here, try this... You'll like it... It's not that good for you..." Then there's a straw in your mouth and something cold and creamy sliding down your throat and wham you are hooked my friend, hooked like a...

Um... well, hooked like someone who likes frozen coffee drinks a little too much. But I think you get my point.

Now, in order for you to get behind the new word I'm introducing, you need to understand the mechanics of the Frap. There's a cup, and that cup is filled with delicious frozen beverage. Then on top of that beverage there is a mound of whipped cream. Usually there is some chocolate sauce drizzled on as well, but for the purposes of this discussion note the whipped cream! The whipped cream creates this little mountain rising above the rim of the cup and so the friendly folks at Starbucks enclose the whole thing in this clear plastic dome sort of thing with a wide straw-hole in the top.

To quote Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, can you picture that? Now imagine that every most of the time, this clear plastic dome is large enough to cover the mound of whipped cream with room to spare. Imagine that usually there is even a small gap between the whipped cream and the top of the dome, where the straw-hole is.

Now, (here comes the important bit...) imagine that every now and then there is too much whipped cream.

Thanks to a particularly zealous or possibly just untrained barista, there is so much whipped cream that it completely fills the clear plastic dome, and a small column of the cream kind of jutts out the hole in top. It looks almost but not quite exactly like a whipped cream breast with a little perky whipped cream nipple.

That, my friends (I smell a new word coming on!!!) is the Whipple.

Now it may seem like I'm getting awfully worked up about this little pip of whipped cream, but you must understand that I've had maybe 150 Fraps in the past few years, and the Whipple only has happened a handful of times. What I noticed was that when is did happen, when I was handed my drink and I saw the stiff little column of cream poking up at me, I felt like I had just won a prize. Not an especially good prize, mind you, but maybe like finding a shiny quarter lying on the sidewalk. Part of you goes "Oh what a lucky boy am I!!!"

Okay, the part of you that says that is a huge nerd and hopeless loser, but let's embrace the moment, shall we? The Whipple is a happy occurrence. The Whipple is just a little but of good luck. The Whipple is a tiny ray of sunshine, or rolling a 7, or putting on your coat for the first time that winter and finding a buck in the pocket.

Help me, my friends. Help me spread the word about the Whipple. With your help, we can kick this word into the vocabulary of John Q. Public. And frankly, that would be just the sort of thing that would give me a thrill. Because...

Well, because I'm the kind of sad, pathetic loser who gets excited over a whipped cream nipple.

2005-04-06T01:23:00.000-04:00

Snooze!

I have this clock radio that wakes me up every day.

Okay... I have this clock radio that wakes me up most days. Not Saturdays. Or Sundays. Or many Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays...

I have this clock radio that occasionally wakes me up.

Or rather, I have this clock radio that fails to wake me up, which is the problem that has caused me to spring blog-ward tonight. See, I'm one of those lowest-rung human waste types that relies heavily on that most blessed invention, the snooze button. For those of you still sleeping on grass mats in caves (and yet managing to operate a computer and surf blogs... How industrious of you!) the snooze button is that little device that tells your screaming alarm clock to piss off for ten more minutes so you can... well... snooze.

I love the psychology behind this thing: You buy a machine for the express purpose of getting you out of bed at a specific time, and then you add a feature that allows you to remain asleep. This may just explain everything that is wrong with our society. Talk about having your cake and eating it too! "I absolutely have to wake up at 8am. It's imperative that I wake up at precisely 8am. I want you to wake me promptly at 8. Unless I change my mind and want to stay asleep. Wake me at 8, and if my eyes don't pop open, let me sleep. In fact, don't actually wake me at all. just come into the room and stare at me for 30 seconds and if I don't sense you there and spring from the bed, just leave me alone and let me sleep until... oh, say... Thursday. Can you do that for me?"

What if we took the idea of the snooze button and applied it to other aspects of life? Say the Supreme Court comes out with a verdict and you could press a magical button and say "I don't know about that one guys... Why don't you mull it over for a little while longer and try me again in an hour?"

Or what if you could give birth, get a good look at the baby, and then say "Doc, I don't really like the look of that one. Can you stick it back in for a few weeks and we'll see how it looks then?"

The only thing dumber than the snooze button? The snooze bar. This little gem is a snooze button that's grown ridiculously large so that you can find it without having to open your eyes at all. Just throw your hand in the general direction of the clock and you will probably hit the snooze bar. Why not get right down to brass tacks and invent a clock that just turns off the minute you start moving at all? In fact, let's just take this whole idea where it's really going and invent a clock that simply doesn't work at all. Isn't that what we all truly want anyway? Every night you can go through the motions of setting it, promising yourself that you will bound out of bed, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and then when morning comes the clock does nothing at all. You wake up at the crack of noon, and a better person for it!

Okay, you may feel that I'm being a little hard on our friend the snooze button. But the fact is, I love the snooze button. I live by the snooze button! The snooze button allows me to be an absolute lazy shit while maintaining the illusion that I'm really trying to get out of bed! And that, my friends, is what America is all about!

Now, as Bill Cosby would say, I told you that story to tell you this one: My trouble is that my clock plays music at me in the morning. I hate hate hate the screeching alarm noise and opt for the slightly more pleasant sounds of the local "adult alternative" radio station. So on those mornings that I do employ my alarm, I am awakened by the music of Coldplay, or Cat Power, or some such.

Or rather, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I fail to be awakened by this music.

What happens instead, what has been happening to me for years now, is that I have recurring dreams in which a radio is playing and won't shut off. Nearly every morning I dream that some radio is going on and on and I can't get it to shut up. Because as I'm sure you understand, the real actual radio is beside my head, on the nightstand, and instead of reaching over and hitting that snooze button, I'm sound asleep. The music invades my dreams and there I am, on a boat to Topeka with Sarah Michelle Gellar and Dan Rather and I'm pulling apart this radio with my bare hands and screaming "Shut up shut up shut up WILL YOU BE SILENT????"

Every.

Freaking.

Morning.

One dream, I actually started trying to eat the radio in an attempt to get it to shut up. Another time I was throwing the radio out a window, only to turn around and find it had reappeared exactly where it had been before. As you can imagine, this is a very frustrating way to greet the day.

Eventually I do wake up. Usually just before I go certifiably insane from the madness of it all. I reach over and hit the snooze button, swearing that the next time I hear Tom Petty's "Freefalling" I'm going nuts right then and there.

What's really crazy, and telling about exactly the sort of person I am, is that I have been putting up with this for years. I'd rather bitch about it in this blog than do anything about it.

Years ago, I was walking along a dirt road with a buddy, when he noticed I was kind of limping. "Are you okay?" he asked. "I'm fine," I said, "I just have a rock in my shoe." "Do you want to stop and get the rock out?" he asked me. "No, I'm fine," I replied.

He just looked at me like I was the dumbest motherfucker in the world.

2005-03-30T15:49:00.000-05:00

Just A Thought

I was just noticing the way that the microwave has the power to turn regular bread into this rubbery, tough, indestructable substance, and it occured to me:

Why don't we start microwaving pitas and making shoes out of them? It's gotta be cheaper than leather, and in a pinch, you can eat them (or at least, gnaw on them).

2005-03-10T01:02:00.000-05:00

Just in case you were wondering...

A friend sent me one of these "getting to know you" emails tonight. These are the email equivilant of having a recurring rash that burns like shit but erupts chocolate syrup. Every time one pops up part of you goes "aw crap a rash," and part of you goes "Yummy! Chocolate!"

Hmm. Okay, the image of licking up chocolate that's erupting out of your own skin turns out to be more disgusting than I anticipated. Let's ignore that unfortunate metaphor and move on, shall we?

Anyway, just for shits and giggles, I'm going to answer my own little chocolate rash here in the blog. This particular questionaire reads like it was written by a 14-year-old with a drug obsession, so I'm going to feel free to omit any questions that make my brain itch.

Warning: This goes on a bit. If you're short on time, well... If you're short on time, what are you doing spending your precious time reading my blog? Get outside! Life is short!!!

Name: John Francis Baker III (odd fact: though my dad, grandad and I all share a name, none of us have ever really gone by John. My grandad was always Jack, my dad goes by Jay, and I pretty much go by Baker. That'll show up on Jeopardy one night, so take note.)

Birthday: September 11, 1972. Feel free to send me a card if you're not busy remembering the day of infamy.

Birthplace: Baltimore, Maryland.

Current Location: Baltimore, Maryland. Ah, shut up. I'll leave one of these days. I just doen't feel like it yet. Yeah, that's the ticket...

At this point, the survey lobs a couple of real hard-hitters concerning my hair color, shoe size and what hand I use to scratch my balls. I'll skip these questions with the absolute confidence that whatever answers you imagine will be more interesting than the truth.

The Shoes You Wore Today: are in terrible shape. I just went out and bought new shoes the other day, in fact. I can't wear these new shoes yet because I'm waiting for the nice little foreign man at the mall to install lifts on the right-hand (or foot) shoes. This is because one little known fact about me is that I came out of the womb asymetrical from the knees down. Nasty, huh?

Your Weaknesses: A love of ice cream in all its many forms and a tendancy to mistake myself for somebody terribly interesting.

Your Fears: That there is absolutely nothing after death and that we simply cease to be.

Your Perfect Pizza: Cut in six equal pieces.

Your Most Overused Phrase On an instant messenger: "You call that exploding-midget porn? Now THIS is exploding-midget porn."

Thoughts First Waking Up: Usually involves weighing my need to pee against my need to stay in bed.

Your Best Physical Feature: My huge gut. My giant nose. My receeding hairline. The hair creeping out of my ass. What a stupid question.

Your Most Missed Memory: How can I miss a memory? If I remember it then it's not missed. The dopey 14-year-old slacker who wrote this gets a slap.

Now we get a solid run of "blah or blah" questions. Pepsi or Coke, Cappucino or Coffee... Yawn. I'm going to replace these with the only questions that really help you learn anything about a person.

Cake or Pie: Most definitely pie.

John or Paul: Paul.

There. That tells you everything you need to know. And yet we continue...

Do you Smoke: Not only do I not smoke, but smoking disgusts me to the very core of my being. I grew up in a house where I was surrounded by it and I feel like I spent my entire childhood trying to flee from the constantly encroaching suffocating smoke. I'd rather put a gun to my head than smoke.

Do you Swear: Go fuck yourself.

Do you Sing: Everybody sings. The question is, do you sing well? The answer is, not half as well as I think I do.

Do you Shower Daily: If I didn't, I wouldn't admit it here.

Have you Been in Love: I am in love. Every day, a little bit more.

Now I'm going to skip a whole raft of questions pertaining to what I want to be when I grow up. I'm not going to assume that I am fully (or even really partially) grown up yet, but most of these questions really don't work if you're not, you know... a 14-year-old dipshit. There's also a whole pointless chunk about my drug experience that we'll move right past. I have none. Nor do I want any.

Do you like Thunderstorms: Now here's a question I like. I like this one because I used to have recurring dreams about being sheltered from a storm. Like, it's a crazy thunderstorm outside, but I'm safe in a warm tent or something. So I'll answer the question about thunderstorms by saying that I like shelter.

Do you play an Instrument: I play the bass guitar. I've been playing for something like 15 years now and I suck.

Next we have a whole bunch of questions that begin with "In the past month have you..." Such as, "in the past month have you gone on a date," or "been to a mall..." I know that none of this survey interests you, but if you think you're bored now, just wait until I describe my past month to you. Snooze-a-rama. I'm going to delete all of those questions, except this one, which caught my eye:

In the past month have you eaten a box of Oreos: This raises an interesting question. What exactly do you call the packaging that Oreos come in? I don't think it's a box. It's really more of a bag, but it's wrapped around this rigid plastic tray. What is that then? Not a bag, not a box... Certainly not a can... Feel free to comment on this one. I can tell that this is one of those big important cosmic questions that humanity needs answered.

How do you want to die: I'd like to die as late as possible.

What country would you most like to visit: My own. There's still so much America I haven't seen...

There's a whole bunch of questions now about what I look for in a boy or a girl. I'll skip them because I'm married to my best friend, and right now all I need is that feeling I get when I see her face and know in my heart that I'm home. (Stop barfing, you insensitive bastards.) There's also another round of questions about my drug experience. I think the 14-year-old needs to cut back on whatever drugs he's into if he can't remember what questions he's already asked.

Number of things in my Past I Regret: I only have one thing I truly regret with all my heart, and it's a doozy. But no way am I telling you clowns.

Hey, that's it! We made it to the end, and you only fell asleep twice. Next entry I'll detail some ways you can get even with me for the two hours of your life I just stole.

2005-02-23T22:46:00.000-05:00

PAT!!!

We went to buy comics today, and the previously mentioned comics-guy was not there. Paul (God bless 'im) managed to slip the question to the teller that was there, and now we know.

Pat!

Dude, if you ever read this blog, I am so sorry it took me a year to learn your name. Did I mention that I'm an ass?

Next time: More examples of my inherent assery!

2005-02-19T17:36:00.000-05:00

Thanks... um... Guy...

Okay, so those of you looking for more proof that I am indeed an ass should listen up.

Paul and I have made a weekly ritual out of going to the comic book store. Every Wednesday we saddle up and head out to our usual establishment, a nice little comics shop called Alternate Worlds. It's not the most forward-thinking of places, but the people in there are as nice as they come, and heck, I've been going there for my comics since I was 12. I'm loyal like that. Anyway, Paul and I make a night of it, buying our comics, having dinner, occasionaly doing other shopping, and ending up at Satrbucks for yet another "frapportunity."

"Hey," You're thinking, "certainly this makes you a big nerd, but when do we get to the part where you're an ass?"

Hang in there.

So there's this guy that works at Alternate Worlds, and he's there most Wednesdays. Over the past year or two I've gotten to know him a little. Not know him in the "bosom buddies" sense, more in the "aquaintance" sense. Our conversations tend to stay mainly in the "Did you read the latest Daredevil issue" arena, but I must admit I genuinely like talking to the guy. He's nice, he's articulate, and he's got a good sense of humor. Besides, I don't get to have comic dork conversations much in my daily life.

So I've come to view this guy from the comic store as sort of a friend. I mean, I see the guy every week, we talk about our mutual interests, we joke around, and if he told me he needed a ride somewhere, or a kidney, I'd give it to him.

Okay not the kidney. That was a lie. But the ride? Absolutely.

Today I bumped into him while I was out and about doing my typical Saturday crap. He was coming out of a movie theater and I was like "Hey! There's my friend from the comic store!" And I said Hi and we chatted for a minute. It was very pleasant.

Ready for the part where I'm an ass?

I have no idea what his name is.

He knows my name, I mean it's on my subscription box at the comic store, and it's on my credit card... When he sees me he goes "Hey John!" And I go "Hey..." And I'm thinking "what is his name for the love of Christ what's his NAME??? Why don't they wear name tags here???"

See, because he got my name from my account info, we never had that moment where we actually exchanged introductions. I suppose that's a risk of the retailer/customer relationship. The crappy part is that there was a point where it probably would have been no big deal to stop the conversation and just go "Hey what's your name by the way?" but I missed that point oh... a year ago. Now it just seems insanely stupid that I've been talking to this dude every week for a year and change and still think of him as "The guy with sideburns."

So you see? I'm an ass. I'm a big fat ass. Now you have proof, as if you didn't already know. Every Wednesday I go into that store and think "I'm an ASS." Well no longer. I'm determined to find out this dude's name. Preferably by some underhanded sneaky method that doesn't out me as Turbo-Ass, but I'll just come out and ask him if I absolutely have to.

God I hope I don't have to.

I'm an ass.

More on this exciting story as it develops.

2005-02-12T20:54:00.000-05:00

Fanfizzle from Da Common Wombizzle...

God help me, but Sal passed on the link to the Snoop Dogg Shizzolator. This site translates other sites into, you know... The shizzle and all that. I was just reading my own blog as translated by this thing, and at the risk of sounding like the whitest white boy on earth, I was nearly peeing myself. Some choice nuggets:

Ooops. Did I just be like something controversial? Yo' ass can't see that shiznit right now, but my undies are showing too.

MAN: "I'm sick today n' shit. Sick as da d-o-g."
WOMAN: "That's a lovely cumberbund n' shit. "

I highly reccomend reading all your favorite blogs this way. At least until the novelty wears off... Say, after about 5 minutes.

Peace yall!

2005-02-10T14:59:00.000-05:00

Crack of Doom!

SO the big news today, other than Prince Charles finally getting to hitched to Camilla Parker-Bowles-Thorne-Smith-Love-Hewitt is that the Virgina House of Delegates has passed a bill making wearing low-riders illegal.

Now, my understanding is that this bill still has to pass the State Senate, so I'm not going to knee-jerk too much here. But I reserve the right to knee-jerk a little.

I know that low-riders are kind of trashy and gross. I get that on 95% of the people out there they look pretty fucking dumb, and I get that generally speaking, folks just don't really want to see your undies, or that classy "Princess" tattoo you got on your ass. I get it. But when did we become a country that actually outlaws bad taste?

I'm pretty sure that part of our freedom of expression is the right to look like an absolute dipshit in public. I'm sure the puritans would debate that, but in terms of counting the freedoms that we love over here, the ones that make the terrorists quiver with outrage? Looking like a moron? Right up there on the list. Right next to listening to crappy music and having questionable piercings. Come on people! You gotta fight for your right and all that!

If you read the article I linked to above, you'll see that there's an aditional racial angle to all this that makes it doubly weird. But from my perspective, it was pretty fucked-up before all that anyway.

As if that weren't enough: There is a University of Colorado professor who may be fired for writing a paper that seems to be pro-terrorist. This is another one of those things that just makes my jaw drop open. You may hate what the guy wrote... I know I don't particularly agree with his point of view, but you can't just fire somebody for expressing a controversial opinion. I don't understand this country sometimes. How can we be sooooo in love with all our freedoms and then persecute people for taking advantage of them? It's like we knocked out the Taliban just so we could become the Taliban.

Ooops. Did I just say something controversial? You can't see it right now, but my undies are showing too.

Next post: 100% less ranting. I promise. I must just be having one of those days.

2005-01-16T18:43:00.000-05:00

Giving the poor sick dog a break.

Allow me to get the obligatory "I'm a bad blogger / What a slacker" paragraph out of the way right up front. Hmm. Okay. Done.

So I'm sick right now. I wouldn't say I'm quite "sick as a dog," I'm just regular sick. No dogs were harmed in the qualifying of this sickness. What dog are we refering to when we say that anyway? In my experience I've actually known fewer sick dogs than I have sick people, and I never got the impression that dogs are known for their tendancy to be extremely sick. (well, eating your own turds is sick, and dogs do that, but that's not the kind of sick I mean.) So why is it that when we are really, really sick we say "sick as a dog?" I propose that we cut dogs everywhere a little slack and amend this phrase to read "sick as the dog who is really, really fucking sick." I further propose that we allow this new phrase to be shortened to "sick as the dog," assuming that we all understand that the dog in question is the one who is really, really fucking sick.

Glad we're all agreed. So, to correct myself, I am currently sick, though not quite "sick as the dog."

It's one of those coughing, stuffed up kinds of sick, as opposed to the barfing, fevery kind of sick. For those of you keeping score.

Ever notice that whenever you are sick, and tell someone about it, they always say "Oh yeah, there's something going around." And they always know two other people that are sick. I've been wondering about this. Do we really think that we always get sick right in the middle of some sweeping epidemic of sickness, or is this a variation of the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" thing? I propose (since I seem to be on a proposal roll in this blog) that whenever you are sick, it is inevitable that whoever you tell will know, in their vast circle of aquaintances, two people who are also sick, or at least "a little under the weather." I think that at any given time enough people are sick out there to create this effect. Therefore I think it's pointless to say "There's something going around" because there is always something going around. Let's take the precious time we save by not uttering this phrase and use it to spread the love instead. For example, you could pay the person a compliment:

MAN: "I'm sick today. Sick as the dog."
WOMAN: "That's a lovely cumberbund."

See how much more pleasant that is?

So. To recap:

a) Sick as the dog
b) Cumberbund

Now honestly, don't you prefer it when I don't write in this thing?

2005-01-05T18:03:00.000-05:00

Greetings from the Sunshine State!

Florida is the Sunshine State, right? If it isn't, then please strike the above title and change it to the less snappy "greetings from Florida."

Hey Blog-o-philes. I'm visiting my dad in sunny and beautiful (stated with no irony! It is sunny! It is Beautiful!) Northern Florida. I could wax lyrical about how great it is down here, how nice it is to hang out with my dad, etc... And perhaps I will at another time, but today I want to take just a second to mourn the passing of Will Eisner.

Will Eisner died yesterday in Fort Lauderdale, FL. He was 87. You can find out more about him here, but suffice it to say that in the world of comics and graphic novels there is no one more important or influential. Not only did he do more in his life to enhance the art form of comic books than anyone alive, but he also was the first and best to attempt to understand the mechanics of it. His book on sequential graphic art is the definitive textbook for people who do what I do.

Other people are far more qualified than me to extoll his virtues, so I'll just tell a story... It's the only Will Eisner story I have. I never even got to meet the man.

A few years ago, I was doing the artwork for a comics adaptation of The Wind in the Willows which never wound up seeing print. The publisher took some of my pages down to Bethesda to The Small Press Expo and showed them around. He called me a few days later to tell me Will Eisner had seen the pages and liked them. I can't describe what a boost this was for me as an artist. Understand that I'm sure this was no more than Will flipping through the pages for a second and saying something like "These are nice." I mean, it was a passing thing. But such is the power of Will Eisner. Just knowing that a living legend like him, a man whose work I have so admired had actually held some of my art in his hands and had something complimentary to say... I was floating for weeks.

Like I said, I never got to meet him, but in that one fleeting compliment, he did more for my confidence that a lifetime of feedback from other people. Thank you Will, for everything you did for the art form, and for me.

2004-12-21T01:49:00.000-05:00

I'm faking it.

Well, as you may have heard, Christmas is indeed coming, and the goose? Fat. Before I deposit the required penny in the old man's hat, let me admit to you, faithful blog-reader, that I have done something this year that I have never done before.

Washed my hands after using the toilet? Nay! Read on!

In the past I have been something of a purist when it comes to the Christmas tree. Always insisting on a real tree, always adamant about the warm glow of colored lights... I have all these fond memories of going to one of those cut-your-own places when I was a kid. Something about the smell of the fresh-cut tree, the feel of the soft needles, that feeling that you went out and found the perfect tree that was destined to live (or die, I suppose) in your living room... There's a romance about these things. A real tree meant Christmas to me.

Sally on the other hand grew up in a fake tree household. Christmas to her meant going down to the basement and hauling up the old aluminum-frame tree, same one as the past 5 years. I'll admit, it's a lot simpler that way. To her, I believe my insistance on going out and getting the real deal each year amounted to a huge pain in the ass, not to mention in the pocketbook.

So this year I decided it was time I grew up a bit and gave up a little ground. We hit the aisles of Target and came home with a nice little pre-lit metal number. The lights are white (a little cold for my taste) but they shimmer which I have to say is kind of endearing. And darned if the thing doesn't look downright cute with all our strange mess of ornaments on it. We may have replaced our flesh-and-blood tree with a mindless metal fascimile, but I have to come out and say that against my better judgement, Robo-Tree is growing on me.

And so the moral of this latest in a long line of pointless blog entries is this: As I get older I realize more and more that your youth is spent trying to be a particular person. You identify all these qualifying characteristics, and then you attempt to be the person that fits them; I'm the person who hates fake trees. I'm the person who loves accordian music. I'm the person who speaks in a fake british accent... What-have-you. I think reaching the early stages of maturity (because maturity may just be a process that continues right up to death) involves letting go of those qualifiers and realizing that being yourself is not something you attempt. It requires no effort. By that I don't mean "It does not require effort," but rather "It requires you to make no effort." You don't try to be yourself, you simply are yourself.

Letting go of the whole tree issue is, for me, a step towards learing to simply be who I am, and in doing so, maybe beginning the process of maturity. I don't need the tree. I still love Christmas. I still see the magic, and I still get excited like a little kid.

Sheesh, I'm boring myself here. Let's move on, shall we?

Some of you may have recieved a Christmas card from Sal and I this year. And you may have noticed that I misspelled "Einstein" on the back of the card. Of course I only realized this after I had printed and mailed 50 or so of the things. Sigh. Some days you eat the bear, and some days the bear eats you. Know what I mean?

Merry Christmas if I don't talk to you before the 25th, and for my Jewish friends, in the words of my very Baltimore next door neighbor, Happy Heineken!!!

2004-12-07T18:39:00.000-05:00

I'm back!

Try to contain your excitement. I'll keep this one brief.

Three things:

1) So the election... We all know how that one turned out. I'm over it. I'm counting on the Bush administration to keep me sufficiently outraged, and isn't moral indignation a lot more fun that contentedness?

Besides, it's not like Kerry wouldn't have found a couple of ways to piss me off. I haven't actually liked a president since Ike. Now there was a man who knew how to button his trousers.

2) November saw me in Lancatser PA, Atlanta GA, Fort Wayne IN (IN? ID? IND? MA?) and Las Vegas NV. It was Christmas madness from start to finish. We came, we saw, we hung gigantic wreaths. I believe Jon Bon Jovi said it best when he said "I've seen a million faces, and I've decorated them all..." Or something like that.

Anyway, this year, I can honestly say that while being away from Sal for something like 27 out of the last 35 days was kind of rough, all my trips went very well. Every crew I worked with was awesome, and there were no major snags. (well, nothing we couldn't fix...) I rest easy knowing that children all over the USA now have a safe, colorful place to rest on Santa's lap while their cursing, panting, needle-eyed parents choke each other to death over the last bottle of Old Spice. God bless us, every one.

3) Hmmm. There was a "3" when I started writing this. At some point about a paragraph ago, number 3 kind of up and fucked off on me. Huh. I'm sure it was something really funny too. That's what I get for trying to digitize my christmas music while I blogged. Well, if I see number 3 around I'll be sure to trap it and post it for display up here.

Now that I'm back I'll try to update el blogo a little more frequently. I'm sure I'll have lots of funny, interesting things to say once the sedatives wear off.

2004-10-29T11:32:00.000-04:00

Here come the politics.

This will probably be my last post until December. I'm getting ready to head out on a couple of business trips that will have me at home for like, 8 days in the entire month of November. It's going to be exhausing and I'm going to miss my wifey something fierce.

But, before I do that...

I felt like I should wax political for just a moment here, what with the election only 4 days off now. If any of the roughly 2 people who read this have no stomach for polital discussion, You can click here and go watch cartoons instead.

Okay. Everybody with me? I'll keep it brief.

First off, I'm going to come out and say that I'm voting for Kerry come tuesday. I wanted to get that out up front. The purpose of this post isn't going to be to convince anybody to vote for my guy, but trying to write about the election while not divulging my own leanings would just be too much of a pain in the ass. So now you know: I'm voting for Kerry, and I'm not happy about it.

What really honks me off here is that I feel like once again, we've been given two crap choices. I have absolutely no love for the Bush administration, but I can't believe that John Kerry was the best the Dems could offer us as an alternative. What a sucky proposition. My choices, as I see them, are 1) a guy who I believe has done serious harm to our country, and 2) a huckster who talks a great game but from whom I have heard very little actual content. Months of electioneering and propaganda, and I still feel like I have no idea what Kerry would be like in office, except that he won't be Bush. I suppose right now, that's enough to get my vote.

Okay, so given that I am going to vote this year, I still need to raise the question: Why must we vote? I've never really understood all the insane pressure that comes out every year to get everyone to vote. MTV just about orgasms every 4 years over the chance to wheel up the propaganda machine onece more. This year "Rock the Vote" has been supplanted with "Vote or Die." Huh?

I understand that America is a wonderful place in part because we citizens are given a chance to participate in the system, (the level of that participation may be debatable, but believe me, I get the difference between the US and a place like China. I get it.) but I can't get behind this whole line of "You MUST vote or you are betraying the memories of all those who died to give you that right!!!" In my opinion, a choice not to endorse either candidate is participating in the system. You are sending a message that neither candidate has earned your support. What I think betrays the memories of all those who died to give us freedom is the fact that our "freedom" has been turned into a giant months-long advertising campaign loaded with sound-bites and catch-prases and celebrity endorsements. Honestly: probably not what the founding fathers had in mind. I think we were supposed to pick a president based on their individual merits. Now, I can't even find their merits underneath all the fucking advertising. Every year the politicians get all worked up because people aren't voting. Maybe one of these days the message will get through: "We're waiting for you to give us someone worth voting for."

So: Yes, I'm voting for Kerry on Tuesday. But I've chosen not to vote before. I endorsed neither Clinton nor Dole a couple of years back. I guess I'm looking to have a healthy debate. What do you think? Anybody want to ring in on this one? And before you answer, let me add that I've had people tell me "You can go vote and just write in a candidate! Just write in a name and at least that way you're voting!" That crap accomplishes nothing. As far as I can see that's just political masturbation. While I'm in favor of masturbation in general, in this case it's just pointless. Okay. Got that off my chest...

In the meantime, here's a clip from South Park, which nailed this issue better than I ever could have hoped to.

Feel free to write and tell me I'm full of horse-shit.

See you all in a month or so.

2004-10-16T10:19:00.000-04:00

Once a year, in mid-October, I wake up to the sound of people applauding.

I mention this because it happened again today. As I gradually drift upwards out of my slumber, I realize that the bedroom is filled with the sound of cheering and applause. Of course I think "I must be doing something really great to merit all this. I suppose I do sleep pretty well."

Who are these cheering masses in my bedroom, and what exactly is it that I have done that's got them all worked up like this? I mean, I know I'm pretty great, but it's normally a more subtle greatness, the kind that tends to fall below the public radar. But not once a year in mid-October. On this day people actually congregate to cheer my waking up. People actually have come from miles around to celebrate the fact that I got out of bed. Needless to say, on this day, I wake up with a smile on my face, fresh-faced and ready to meet my adoring fans.

Okay, so it's a marathon. The Baltimore Marathon (now in its third year) runs directly down the street that I live on. All the cheering and applause is not, in truth, for me, but rather for the couple of hundred people who not only got out of bed this morning, but decided to run 26 miles.

I've never had one of those mornings. The closest I get to running 26 miles first thing in the morning is walking all the way downstairs for some toast. And yes, I've been going to the gym, and yes, I've lost some weight, but my effective running range is somewhere around 50 yards. That's a bit short of 26 miles.

So I suppose these morning marathoners deserve all the adulation far more than I do. Come to think of it, there are a lot of people in the world who do probably deserve some applause when they get up in the morning. I have a friend who wakes up and tries to cure alzheimer's disease. My dad used to wake up and go fight crime.

Still, for a couple of minutes once a year in mid-October, I think, "I must be doing something right..."

2004-09-27T01:10:00.000-04:00

Cart, Depart.

On friday, around noon, I was working in my studio and heard a very shopping-cart-esque commotion going on outside my window. This peaked my interest because, as loyal blog-readers will know, for a few days now, I have been playing host to an unwanted shopping cart. I craned my neck to catch a view out my side window just in time to spy a young white man making away with a load of metal tubing and bits of fence in my cart.

See? I said my cart. This damn thing had really weaseled its way into my brain. All I wanted was to be rid of it, and the minute it actually leaves, I think "Hey! That guy's got my cart!!!"

So there he went with his pile of stuff in the cart formerly known as mine. I don't know who he was, and I don't know how he came upon my cart or how he got all his metal pipes and fence to my cart without the aid of... you know... another cart. All I know is that life (and the strange rythyms of the city) had washed a shopping cart up on my shore, and then a few days later, the tides came and washed it right back out again. I suppose I could wax even more metaphorical-like about the deep meaning of all this... About how my garage door was just a rest-stop in the greater journey of an inanimate object, but the simple fact of the matter is that I'm glad it's gone.

Yes, I identified it as mine, but ownership doesn't neccisarily mean affection. (see also: "my hip pain," "my brain tumor" and "my aunt Gladys.") It was unwanted, and now I don't have to worry about it anymore. I know that I've devoted more time to thinking about the cart than any normal person should have, and that I've made a much bigger deal about this tiny encounter than it merits. I should have known at the onset that the cart would only be a temporary guest. If I had only paid closer attention I would have realized carts are not barnacles that attatch themselves to you for life. The city drops these things off like kids spending a weekend with dad, and after a brief stay, the city picks them right back up again.

Tired of all this drivel? Want to get back to fart jokes? Stay tuned.

2004-09-23T01:40:00.000-04:00

Shopping Cart Wars II: The Cart Strikes Back

Early today I noticed that the Dreaded Shopping Cart (see previous post) had managed to move itself all the way into the alley behind our house. Before you go thinking that this represents some sort of major progress, I'll point out that the alley in question is 3 feet from Ground Zero. (Ground Zero being our garage door, where the Cart has a tendency to loiter)

Still... It may not have been much, but it was a move away from our door, which was something. I didn't allow myself to hope, though, that the cart would remain where it was. I knew that fate, or perhaps God (in his infinite wisdom) would soon return the cart to its rightful place in the universe, alongside our house. The question was, how long could it resist the pull of the garage door?

About 6 hours, as it turns out.

I returned from a meeting around 2pm and the cart was back in position, against my garage. In fact, this time it was actually facing the fouse, touching the house, as if someone had driven it straight at the door in an attempt to ram it straight through and into the garage itself. Or maybe as if the cart was actually trying to push itself under the door... It was, if I may be perfectly honest, a little bit eerie. Re-read Stehpen King's Christine, and any time he mentions the titular vintage automobile, cross it out and write "Creepy old shopping cart." You'll start to get the picture.

Anyway, I decided to try a little experiment and see what happens whan we stretch the umbilical cord just that much further. Tonight when I took out the garbage, I picked up the cart and moved it across the alley, placing it against my rearward neighbor's house. Will it find its way back? And if so, when? Adding even more intrigue to my (by now painfully obviously) dull life: What will the trash guys do tomorrow when they come and see the cart sitting right where my neighbors and I put out the trash?

Are you holding your breath? I know I am.

2004-09-20T23:06:00.000-04:00

Here's a new and unexpected problematic aspect of home-ownership...

What do you do when your house (without consulting you) takes on a shopping cart?

Ours arrived in the middle of the night. A nice blue number from Wal-Mart. It is clean and un-damaged and parked right outside our garage door. Sal and I discovered it this morning, and were at a loss as to what to do. I can tell you, now that I've had all day to think about it, that there is nothing in the home-owner's handbook that covers how to handle the sudden onset of a shopping cart.

We have no idea how it found our house. The nearest Wal-Mart is a good 7 miles from here at least. I'm not so naive that I don't understand that the cart was probably liberated by a homeless or unfortunate person who used it to ferry around their posessions. I get that. What I'm trying to understand is how that person pushed the aforementioned cart all the way up to our garage door and then said, "That's far enough. This will do nicely." And then what? Unloaded all their stuff, shouldered it and walked away? A cart liberated from a market parking lot is not outside my realm of understanding. It's a perfectly good cart abandoned in an urban, but fairly nice, neighborhood that I have yet to really grasp.

Anyway...

Sal and I were agreed that we wanted to avoid touching it. Or even really looking at it too long. Anything that might imply ownership of said cart to any watching neighbors. If it seems heartless to leave a poor shopping cart out in the cold like that, I should point out that a shopping cart is an unwieldy thing to take on. It's not the sort of thing that you can stick in a closet, and it's not the sort of thing you can drop in a waste basket. The trash guys do not, as a rule, collect shopping carts with the rest of the garbage. I'm fairly sure that the bulk pick-up guys (who come get beds and couches and old water coolers and stuff like that) don't deal in shopping carts either.

Did you ever unwrap something that was sealed in thin cellophane, and had a piece of the cellophane static itself to one of your fingers? You shake your fingers, but it just sticks. You grab it with your other had, but it statics on to that one. You stand there over the trash bin, shaking both your hands like a madman, but that damn piece of cellophane just clings. It's yours now, and there's no getting rid of it.

A shopping cart is exactly like that. Only bigger. And metal. With wheels.

So we don't want to touch it, or acknowledge it, or god forbid, take it into our home. We decided to leave it out there for a day and see if it decided to cling to any passers by.

The cart went untouched for most of the day, until 3 o'clock, when the area schools let out. Then it saw all kinds of action. Kids, for the most part, can't resist something like a shopping cart. It calls to them: "Hey kid, I have wheels. You really should give me a push. Maybe give your buddies a ride..." And push they did, the little bastards. from one end of my house to the other, but never once did the cart leave the perimeter of my house. The kids may have succumbed to the allure of the cart, but their parents were well-versed in the shopping cart's insideous clinging nature. "Put that back, jimmy... Leave that there..."

Damnit.

At some point tonight somebody went to the trouble to knock the cart over. Knocked it right on its side, but did not in any way drag it further from the house. Just up-ended it. See, the neighbors, they know. They look out their windows and see the cart, and they feel sorry for us, the way you would if you saw a man in the store with a tumor growing out of his head. "Look. Those poor people. They have a cart. and they seem so young too... Such a shame. Kids, when you go outside, do not touch that cart. In fact, cross to the other side of the street."

So we've left it out there, like a shiny metal spider web, hoping that a passing fly may inadvertently pull it from our house, But Sal and I, in our hearts, know the truth:

The shopping cart is now grafted to us. Like it or not, this thing sits out there even as I type... Built for movement, but not going anywhere. It is as surely a part of my house as the front door, or the roof. It is only a matter of time before the garage door slides upwards, and I take this new thing into my home. It's either that or let it stay out there, the bulging tumor on my house's head, rusting in the fall, catching rain in the winter, season in, season out, until one day we put an ad in the paper. "Lovely Canton townhome, 3 BR, 1 1/2 Bath, Claw-foot tub, deck, shopping cart. Please call."

2004-09-15T23:11:00.000-04:00

Okay, I'm officially a slacker.

Nearly a month between posts? I know that by now my 3 devoted readers have probably given up on Fanfare From The Common Wombat and moved on to greener blog pastures. But, if I still have your attention, allow me to apologize from the heart of my bottom, as they say.

Now, on to some serious bloggage. Stuff that you need to know about.

1) I had been shaving my oversized noggin, but lately I've taken to just trimming it, so that I constantly have maybe a quarter to a half inch of fuzz up there. It looks better, I think, than the completely bald head, and I just like the way it feels when I rub it. However, I have discovered that I am somewhat deficient at the manly art of trimming your own fuzz. Every time I do it, I miss some conspicuous spot, and Sal always has to alert me (hours later) that I've been walking around looking like a dork with a hunk of longer hair sticking out the side of my head.

Why am I sharing this info? Just in the spirit of brotherhood, my friend. There's no moral to this story, except maybe that if you have someone who can trim your head for you, you'd be well-advised to have them do so. Because no matter how many mirrors you have configured about your bathroom, the back of your head is one big blind spot.

2) One of the reasons for my prolonged absence from the blog is that I suffered a huge computer meltdown a few weeks ago that resulted in me losing all the info on 2 of my 3 hard drives (Lost: all my artwork. Saved: my porn. Go figure.) and my being completely out of commission for about 2 weeks. It sucked.

I will say this about the whole ordeal. I should be fed up and cursing my computer and its faulty hard drives, but after all the mess, I have but one thing on my lips: God bless Dell customer support. I mean it. I've dealt with a lot of crappy tech support, incompetent help, and outsourced indian folk reading off a screen, and I have to tell you that the people at Dell were awesome. I spoke to 3 different tech people over the course of my ordeal, and all 3 of them were intelligent, helpful people who took the time and effort to walk me through all the diagnosis and repair I had to do. Consider this my ringing endorsement: Dude, you're getting a dell.

3) Sally keeps making me look at her poops. Especially when they are impressively long. This disturbs me, but not as much as you might think it would. We're just strange people.

Okay, I'll leave you with that image to keep you up at night. I swear I'll try to write again before another month goes by.

2004-08-18T14:54:00.000-04:00

It's your parade, and I'm just the guy to rain on it.

Geez, it's been a while, hasn't it? Okay, so by now you may have realized I'm not the most consistant blogger in the universe. I pretty much write in here when I think of something to say. Otherwise I spend my valuable time pursuing the more cerebral of pastimes: Reading comic books and masturbating.

But never at the same time, my friends.

Well... never again, anyway...

What was I saying? Oh yeah, irresponsible blogger here.

So what important topic has caused me on this very fine day to put fingers to keys and compose an entry? I just feel the buring need to tell you all that I hate parades. Hate 'em, hate 'em, hate 'em.

I understand that the majority of you may feel differently. I mean, if everyone hated parades, they would probably stop having the fucking things. I'm going to go right ahead and declare myself firmly in the minority when it comes to parade-hatred. Sorry.

I just don't see the point of these things. Stand in one place while a bunch of jackasses you've never met drive past you really slowly and wave. Sometimes they are in old cars, sometimes new cars. Sometimes the cars are cleverly disguised under mountains of paper mache and made to resemble giant horses, giant cakes or giant busts of Abraham Lincoln. But I can tell they're really cars. I'm insightful that way.

Don't give me that "But there's marching bands!!!" crap either... Marching bands (much like floats, "Grand Marshalls" and the ultimate in useless inventions, the baton) wouldn't exist if not for parades. And I'd be okay with that. I like music and all, but I could live without hearing Fleetwood Mac's greatest hits performed by 50 sweaty 8th graders while on the move.

Okay. I'm getting grumpy, aren't I? I should point out that I come down firmly in favor of fairs, carnivals, and most other forms of "Small town" entertainment. Maybe because there's other stuff to do at these events besides standing around watching traffic. You all can keep the parades though. Not for me.

So to sum up this entire blog in two words: Parades Suck.

Or if you prefer: Baker Stupid.

As a postscript for any of you that live in (or are familiar with) the Philladelphia area, I do not include the Mummers in my hatered of parades. The Mummers is not a parade. It is what would happen if American Idol and Starlight Express had a baby, and it is awesome.

2004-08-02T15:52:00.000-04:00

Updates!!!

I was just looking back over some of the old Blog entries, and I realized I may have failed to update you on a few things. Nothing big and important... Little things. So here we go with the first official Fanfare From The Common Wombat Update Entry!!!

Um... Okay...

Update #1) Let's see... First of all It's been a while since I mentioned how it was going working for myself. The answer is, It's going well! And poorly. And well!!!

I'm starting to get used to the idea that a freelance career is sporadic. I mean, I knew this intellectualy, I'm getting used to it deep down. In my guts.

My guts now understand that sometimes the work and money flows like... Well, like work and money, and sometimes... not so much. Case in point, When I started I had a month or so of no work at all. Just building my own website, setting up my studio... "getting ready" type stuff. Then I worked solid for like, almost 2 months. I just came off a month of nearly no work at all. But last week was busy. This week looks busy too.

Why am I boring you with the play-by-play? Just to say that despite the fact that it has been hard at times, and scary at times, I still love working for myself. Love it, love it, love it. I hope I can keep it up because it is rewarding in a way I never experienced working for "The Man." It's not without its serious hurdles, but I wouldn't quit for the world.

Update #2) I mentioned that I thought there was some drug activity going on across the street from me. My suspicions have been confirmed by a few neighbors who basically said "There's some drug activity going on across the street from you." It's nice to know I'm not crazy. So more people than just me are watching this house across the way. And the frustrating thing is the police have been called numerous times and pretty much told my neighbors that there isn't much they can do. One of my neighbors took down licence plate numbers of every car that came by for drugs and documented everything he could and the police unfortunately told him that they weren't going to waste their time on a small-fry operation when they wanted to get the big-guys.

I understand their point, I really do. My dad was a cop in Baltimore City for 33 years. (did I get that right dad? 33 years?) I have a lot of sympathy for cops and how complicated it is to do their jobs. I understand that resources must be spent where they will do the most good, etc... The bummer is, this still leaves me with the question of how to get these drug-dealing wastes of skin out of my neighborhood. I sit here in my studio and watch the deals go down. I want to run out there and get in somebody's face, but at the same time, I don't want to attract their attention. I mean, I'm right across the street. I don't want to compromise Sal's or my safety here.

The whole thing is a pain to think about. The good news is that I've realized that most of my neighbors, salt-of-the-earth though they may be, are really good people who care about the neighborhood as much as (probably more than) I do.

Okay! Now everyone is all updated. Hope you feel as good about that as I do.

2004-07-28T11:34:00.000-04:00

Official Condemnation!!!

So today there was this huge suicide attack in Iraq, and 68 people were killed. (Those of you who smell a political rant coming on, try to un-clench. It won't be as bad as you think.) Now believe me, I get that this is a big deal, and I understand that's a high fucking body count. And I'm sympathetic. And angered. And troubled. And all the stuff I'm supposed to feel when a lot of innocent people get themselves blowed up.

Now, that being said...

Colin Powell... Well, let's quote CNN: "condemned the Baquba attack, calling it "an attempt by murderers to deny the Iraqi people their dream.""

A fine sentiment, I'm sure. But what I want to know is, why is it every time something terrible happens, the politicians and global leaders rush to condemn it? I don't know about you guys, but I was ready to assume that Colin Powell was generally against the blowing up of innocent people. It's not like I was waiting for Colin's response, going "Aw man, Colin loves when they do this! He's gonna come on TV and be all like YEAH DAWG! THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKIN' ABOUT!!! BLOW EM ALL - what? He condemned it? Well damn. I sure didn't see that coming!"

I don;t know if you guys remember, but right after 9/11 all the Democrats and all the Republicans made a big show of coming out and condemning the attack together. I appreciate the show of solidarity gang, I really do. But again, I think condemning the 9/11 attacks was kind of a no-brainer. I doubt they had to take a vote in congress to see who was against the terrorist attacks. "All opposed to terrorism say aye... Okay, What do we got? Everybody but the gentlemen from Alaska and the lady from Kansas..."

Well you get the point. So here's my offer. To save myself a lot of time making public statements every time some shit goes down overseas, I'm giving all of you permission to assume I'm condemning of any public bombing, terrorist attacks, jihad propaganda, and the fact that they no longer make the Chocolate Malt Frap at Starbucks.

Got all that? Thanks. Celebrity marriages are still up for grabs though.

2004-07-19T21:27:00.000-04:00

Farewell, Ray.

My next door neighbor, Ray Johnston, passed away late last night. I'm sure that a blog is a fairly lame place to eulogize someone, but this is the forum I have at my disposal, So here I go:

Ray was a sweet, kind man with a fantastic sense of humor. He had already lost both his legs to Diabetes by the time Sally and I met him. He had suffered a few minor strokes and had congestive heart failure, all of which made him a very sick, and fairly weak man. He had a very hard time moving himself from his bed to his wheelchair and frequently had to rely on other people (usually his wife, Elaine) to move him. Despite all this, 9 times out of 10 he had a smile on his face, and laughter in his heart. This was a guy that, when his wife was going to the store and asked if he needed anything, would reply, "Get me shoes!!!" and then wiggle his stumps at her.

The last few years were hard for ray, in and out of the hospital, more and more unable to take care of himself... I know it frustrated him to heel his independence slipping away like that. My lasting memory of his will be how he endured all of it, keeping his sense of humor intact. I was over there a week ago, and Ray was very weak. Elaine was fitting his oxygen tube on him so he could breathe better. When she was done, I noticed the little tubes that were supposed to deliver his oxygen were sitting outside of his nostrils. I reached over and fixed them. Ray looked up at me, smiled, nodded towards Elaine, and in a soft voice said "She's fired."

I'm really no good at encapsulating a person in words like this. He was a good guy and a good neighbor. He was the first person to welcome us to the neighborhood, and I truly hope that he is at peace now. He deserves it.

I had a dream this morning, after we had heard he passed away. I was standing above a hospital gurney, the kind the EMTs use in ambulances. Ray was lying on it. He opened his eyes and looked at me and, in a voice with no trace of fear, asked me "Where are we going?" I told him, "Don't worry and don't be afraid. Everything's going to be fine. You're going to get your legs back." With that he got a big smile on his face and faded away.

So Ray, wherever you are right now, I hope you're running around. Or dancing. And I hope you know how very much you will be missed.

2004-07-06T13:04:00.000-04:00

I've been living a lie.

I have a confession to make. For years now, my entire existance has been predicated on a sham. I've attemped to be someone I'm not, and it's time for me to come clean.

Ever since I was a little child, when people asked me what my favorite color was, I said "Yellow."

Now, let the awful truth be known:

A) I have no special affinity towards the color yellow.
B) I have no favorite color at all.

I don't know what posessed me to say "Yellow" all these years! Perhaps I felt pressured to come up with an answer, any answer, that would get my inquisitors off my back... Perhaps I liked the way the word "Yellow" looked, or sounded... All I know is that I have never, not once in 31 years, looked at something yellow and thought to myself "Look! There's my FAVORITE color!!!" In fact, I've never thought that while looking at ANYTHING! Because color is not an area where I have formed any favoritism whatsoever!

I will admit to having formed opinions about how 2 colors look together. I'll cop to that. But how well 2 colors play together has no bearing on whether one is the "best color ever..."

And besides... The more disturbing aspect of this confession is this: When faced with the prospect of coming up with a sham answer to the stupid question "what is your favorite color,: my choice was YELLOW??? The school bus color? The color of cheap pencils and buttercups? What was wrong with me? Red would have been a much better choice! Red is racy and daring! Yellow is... margarine!

Oh well... Now I have to live with the consequenses of my lie. At least I feel better, having gotten that off my chest.

2004-07-02T16:21:00.000-04:00

Suspicious activity abounds...

One of two things are happening:

1) My neighbors across the street are running some kind of complicated drug-dealing ring

2) I'm turning into one of those paranoid lunatics who spends all his time peering out his windows, seeing phantom conspiracies.

Or both could be true, I suppose.

I'm seeing a lot of suspicious activity though... Now that I'm working from home, I spend a lot of time upstairs in my studio where I have a view of the street and the houses across the way. I've discovered that during the day, when all the yuppies are away at work, my neighborhood is taken over by creepy, shifty people.

Well, most of them are probably fine upstanding folk. But a few of them? Creepy and shifty.

Some of these aforementioned creepy and shifty dudes have taken standing out on the corner late at night (and during the day, come to think of it), furtively glancing around, like they are keeping an eye out for "the fuzz" or something... Then a car pulls up, they hop in, the car circles the block, comes back and drops them off...

Am I going crazy, or does that sound like a drug deal?

Maybe it's just a couple of okay guys who like taking really short rides with their friends. I dunno. But I'm watching. And I see all...

(insert maniacal laughter here.)

2004-06-28T23:22:00.000-04:00

OH. MY. GOD.

What a pain in the ass. Sorry for the tremendously long gap in the blogging. I admit, I was slacking big time for a while there, and then, just when I was ready to put the nose to the bloggy-grindstone (really, I swear) Earthlink came a long and fucked me right up the ass.

I'll spare you the gory details, but let's just say it starts with them accidentaly deleting our entire DSL account, and ends with me switching to a new ISP. Say hello to the fine, fine folks at verizon.net, who so far have not fucked me up the ass. 2 points for them.

So for those of you keeping score, my new email is thecommonwombat@verizon.net. It may take me a while to get all the profiles I have on variious sites updated, so just remember. No matter what you may read, no matter what anyone tells you, my email address is now on Verizon.

And no, I'm not getting paid 12 bucks every time I use the word Verizon in this blog.

At least I don't think I am...

Just to be safe, Verizon, Verizon, Verizon.

Anyway, allow me to sum up my week:

1) Fuck Earthlink.

2) Hello Verizon.

Everybody got that?

More interesting things to come. Probably.