One of the advantages of having a web site that’s been up and running for over a year is the fact that you start getting a steady stream of random emails from people who want something from you. Some of them want you to place their links on your site, some of them want money, and others want those photos you took of them getting romantic with a washing machine. I love these people. They allow me to get my freak on. Observe: Continue reading

I work close to a fairly rare thing in the Phoenix metro area. A fairly rare thing in the United States, actually. It’s a roundabout. For those of you unfamiliar with a roundabout, it’s a circular road. They like to use them in Europe instead of stop lights. The idea is that you drive up to the roundabout, make sure that you’re not cutting anyone off, and you drive into it. Then you drive in a circle until you find the road that you’d like to exit onto. Pretty simple, no? They even put Yield signs at each entrance so you know that the laws of civilized society haven’t been suspended and you won’t be allowed to ram other people’s cars. Drive up, pause, drive in, drive off. How hard is that? Continue reading

When The Sims first came out, many years ago, I was intrigued by a promise on the box: “Control every aspect of your Sim’s life!” And so I shelled out the money, installed the software, and immediately created the unhappiest Sim in the history of the universe. He had no job, lived in a shithole (literally, it had no toilet), and I wouldn’t allow him to eat, bathe, or do anything even remotely healthy. It was like college in a lot of respects. But I had also set his characteristics to the worst settings I could imagine, and as a result he spent 95% of his time weeping on the floor. This delighted me because I am a horrible person. Continue reading

For a guy who likes to talk about the various chemicals and solvents I used to put in my body in prodigious quantities, I’m actually pretty healthy. I hiked over twelve miles in the Superstition Wilderness today, spending about seven hours grinding my knees into pulp. I used to play soccer at a very competitive level, and let me tell you something: When a knee, or anything else, acts up when you’re in your teens or early twenties, the full weight of medical science is brought to bear on the problem: CT-Scans, MRI’s, orthopedic surgeons, and micro-fracture surgeries are involved. And when they are, the goal is to get you back to the way you were before the injury, which is to say maximum kick-ass mode because when you’re that young, you are at your fucking peak. Fast-forward twenty years, however, and a complaint regarding knee pain is met with a brief “Meh”, and the suggestion that you stop doing whatever caused you pain in the first place. This is why I never pay medical bills. Continue reading

You know what I love? Exposition. Not an exposition, you know, like the World’s Exposition, which is nothing but a pretentious fair. No, the exposition that I love is the explanatory text that is inserted into, say, a sitcom so that your average knuckle-dragging moron can keep up with what’s going on. Some guy will answer the phone, “Well, hello Margaret, my older sister who lives in Seattle! How are you?” and you will know without having to actually think that this asshole has an older sister named Margaret that lives in Seattle. I love that shit. Continue reading

My two youngest kids, both of them boys, are six and four years old. Naturally, I spend a lot of time telling them what to do because if you didn’t tell kids this age what to do, Child Protective Services would take them away from you. “Take a bath”, “Eat something other than candy”, and “Don’t put knitting needles into your eye sockets” are things that you would think would go without saying, but with kids this age they’re not. I’ve got a twelve year old daughter and she’s not much better, to tell you the truth, the only difference being that she wouldn’t put knitting needles in her eye sockets unless her friends did it first. Continue reading

Apparently, if you’re deaf, jerking it is a horrible sin. The more you know!

A few weeks ago, I made fun of Kenny Loggins, the Urkel of Rock and Roll. He richly deserved this, of course, as anyone who actually sat through “Whenever I Call You Friend” can attest. In fact, he won an accompanying poll which pitted him against eight (count ’em, eight!) of the lamest acts imaginable. It says something about you when you out-lame Boz Skaggs, or at least it should. Not that I want anything bad to happen to Kenny Loggins, but when he passes on his headstone should read “Kenny Loggins, lamer than Boz Skaggs” and it should dispense coupons to visitors for 1% off of their next meal at Sizzler. Continue reading