My kids woke up the other day in “a mood”, by which I mean they were hyperactive beyond description. My youngest son is five and still has occasional issues dressing himself, so in order to ensure that we get out the door before the current presidential administration leaves office, I help him get dressed. But when he’s in “a mood”, it’s like trying to dress a hummingbird on fucking speed. Flit! Flit! Flit! He’s all over the room, and the only way that I can get him to settle down is to offer him sugar-water from a plastic red flower. Continue reading

Oh, those crazy, violent, drunken Micks.

I, like most people I know, noted the passing of Nelson Mandela with sadness. Here was a man of great fortitude, willing to sacrifice the best years of his life in protest of an unjust regime so that the day might soon arrive when all South Africans were treated equally. So it was sad to see the passing of such a great man, but by no means was it a surprise. He was, after all, 95 years old which is crazy fucking old. The rule of thumb is that you aren’t truly old until you can shit on a cafeteria tray at the metropolitan museum of art and everyone just accepts it because of your age. You can get away with that shit when you’re 95, but if you try it when you’re, say, 28, you know what would happen? You’d be fined $1,700 and ordered to perform 120 hours community service, that’s what would happen. Not that I would know. (Editor’s Note: He knows.) Continue reading

I’ve got a full evening tonight: I’ve got my 5 year old son’s Christmas show to attend, which is always funny because it’s through the day care that he goes to. For every intelligent, precocious, and well spoken child up on stage, there are at least three who are in the act of shitting themselves when the curtain goes up, and you can pick them out by the horror in their eyes. Good stuff. Continue reading

I got a massage the other day because my right hip was hurting me. I’d gone to the doctor, and he told me that pain was my hip’s way of telling me that something was wrong. “Oh really, that’s how it works?” I asked him. “We communicate through pain?” So I punched him in the face and told him that I wasn’t going to pay the bill. Listen up, medical professionals: Insurance sucks, our bodies are essentially leaky bags of meat, and we’re likely to die of old age in the waiting room. We don’t need to add condescending doctors to the list of shitty things associated with health care. Just tell me that you don’t know what the problem is and give me a prescription for some gnarly painkillers already. Don’t make me go all Drugstore Cowboy on your ass. Continue reading

I bought a new car recently. Those of you who are long-time readers but have somehow managed to retain cognitive function may remember that I used to drive a Jeep Wrangler, which has all the aerodynamics of a small mountain range with only slightly worse fuel economy. You know how new cars list the city and highway mileage? My Jeep Wrangler needed a third number to represent the gallons of gas it consumed just sitting there in my garage. Once I realized that they were naming deep-water drilling rigs after my Jeep, I realized that it was time to trade it in. Continue reading

I had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend and over the course of it I discovered many things to be thankful for, the most important being my children. I had a wonderful time with them, and even though my days were incredibly busy, I got to relax each night, surfing the web as they slept soundly, dreaming of damaging major appliances before they’re fully paid for. Surfing the web, incidentally, is even more enjoyable now that I classify it as “job-related research” for tax purposes. Getting a $7 million tax refund may not be common, or even legal, but it’s certainly a hell of a lot more fun than being law-abiding. Continue reading

(facepalm)

I was recently reading a book about the safety of our nuclear arsenal because… Well, honestly, it’s because in a lot of ways, I haven’t really gotten past the stage in my life in which explosions = awesome. I still have a hard time showing restraint when it comes to lighting birthday cakes and campfires, and just forget about asking me to ignite a charcoal grill using anything less than 3 gallons of napalm. Naturally, I live in the hottest and driest state in the country, so it’s just a matter of time before a mishap ensures that this blog is written entirely via prison notes smuggled out in someone’s anal cavity. But until that happens I’m free to do as I please, even if that involves testing out home made incendiary devices next to an orphanage. Continue reading

I’ve always been a big fan of the Beatles, but one thing that drives me nuts about them is the controversy surrounding their breakup. Everyone is always so quick to blame Yoko Ono for the split. On the one hand, people will hail John Lennon as a genius, but then they’ll turn right around and say that he was effectively retarded when it came to women, and couldn’t see that Yoko Ono was just tearing the Beatles apart. It never seems to occur to these people that John, Paul, George, and Ringo had just grown apart, and that there wasn’t any one reason for the split. To blame Yoko Ono is unfair. It’s unfair to Yoko Ono, it’s unfair to John Lennon, and it’s unfair to the Beatles.

Then I see this and I think, “You know what? Fuck her. Let’s blame everything on Yoko Ono. The Beatles breaking up, our economic slump, global warming, everything. ‘What’s that, officer? What happened? Well, I was driving down the road, minding my own business, when all of a sudden Yoko Ono was standing there, shrieking like a goddamn lunatic, and so I swerved to avoid her. That’s how I wound up driving into this day care. Yes, I know I’m going to be ticketed for Failure to Run Over Yoko Ono. I understand.'”

Note: Bonus points to anyone who watched that without thinking, “I bet that’s what she sounds like in bed.”