Have you heard of Uncanny Valley? Uncanny Valley is the name of a phenomena (doo-doooo-doo-doo-doo) in robotics when a robot looks and acts like a human being, but slight, hard to finger imperfections cause revulsion in people. What was intended to be beautiful is now perceived as horrifying because it just doesn’t quite look natural. It’s why Tori Spelling is so off-putting. Continue reading

When I was five, I had a neighbor that owned an Irish Setter, a breed of dog known for being dumb as a bucket of dicks. One day, as I watched from my bedroom window, the dog, Duffy, became irritated by the shadow of some trees waving in the wind. He pulled, and yanked, and pulled some more until the rope that he was tied to gave way, and then he spent five minutes furiously attacking the ground. If you had taken that dog’s brains out and replaced them with a pound of shit, only then would the dog have had a chance to look up and think to himself, “Wait a minute, what I’m doing makes no sense.” Stupid fucking dog. Continue reading

When I imagine most people going about their business, I picture them doing so quietly with a sense of purpose, a determined look on their face. This is not how I do things when I am alone. I’m loud, and totally random, and if anyone happened to be eavesdropping on me, I’m sure they’d assume that I’d gone off some pretty powerful psychotropic drugs. I’ll give you an example from the other day involving the Beatles and my dog Mojo. Continue reading

I just got done dealing with tax stuff, and although taxes are a wonderful exercise in absurdism, they’re not really conducive to structured thinking. I suppose I could try to weave some coherent narrative through the foul ramblings I’m about to unleash on the rest of the world, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. So you get semi-digested bits of weirdness from my brain. Sorry. You want plot, go watch Law & Order or something. Continue reading

Although I grew up in the Chicagoland area, my parents both hail from Canada, our Great White Neighbor to the North. This explains my love of hockey, a trait that seems to have been passed down to me genetically along with a tendency to wear flannel shirts, funny hats, and a love of beer so profound that it causes a severe speech impediment, which other people call “speaking French”. Continue reading

Usually, I can come up with a subject for any given post. Sure, I may then go off on a ridiculous tangent that involves drunken college depravity, stories about how my kids have managed to almost kill themselves this week, and musings on what kind of tampons Kenny Loggins uses, but I eventually circle back and… Wait, what was I talking about again? Gahh, stupid… thinking thing… Make me not think the… thing… Dammit! Be thinker! Continue reading

After lunch today, as I often do when the weather cooperates, I took a walk to stretch my legs, clear my head, and think up horribly offensive shit to post on this site. Because I work next door to a luxury resort, this walk is incredibly enjoyable: The grounds are always immaculately maintained, the property is surrounded by orange trees (which are currently in bloom), and more often than not the sun is gently beaming down on a perfect Arizona day. It was 80 degrees out, and I was rather enjoying myself when I walked into a spider web. Nothing will make you look like an escaped mental patient faster than walking into a spider web. Continue reading

I hate when technology fucks me up. I realize that everyone hates that, but I really hate it. This is because I’m in IT (aka a computer guy, propeller-head, dork, etc.) There’s not a problem that can come up that I don’t think I can solve because of my awesome technical skillset. A live nuclear weapon could drop in my front yard with a digital timer counting backwards from 0:10, and while everyone else was hugging their loved ones before they turned to vapor, I’d be all, “Ok, relax. This weapon’s motherboard is probably running on a custom UNIX kernel, and if I can find a way to get myself into a sudo-enabled command prompt…” and that would be the last thought in my brain before it was blasted beyond Pluto’s orbit, because skillset or not, I’m a fucking idiot, but I think I can solve anything. Continue reading

Out of sheer boredom, or perhaps a sign of deepening insanity, I spent a bunch of time thinking about the old television show Fantasy Island today. For those of you too young to have seen it in prime time and too smart to have watched it in syndication, the show centered around a mysterious Latino man and his gay lover/dwarf who lived on an island that granted wishes to random assholes who flew to the island every Saturday night at 9:00. It should come as no surprise to learn that Fantasy Island went on the air in the 70’s. Continue reading

My kids are enjoying Spring Break this week, which is great for me too because I don’t have to nag them to get their homework done, or get out of bed so they won’t miss their bus, or practice lines for their play about how important teeth are, or any of the other million things I have to nag them about that makes school more exhausting for me now than when I actually went to school myself. Seriously, my parents never had to do any of this shit. I did all my homework in school because I was bored out of my mind and had nothing better to do, at least until I discovered the joys of mentally undressing classmates. Continue reading