The summer after I graduated high school, I held down a job working in the radiation exposure monitoring division of a large company. That sounds like the sort of cool, sci-fi job that would entail frequent visits from Iron Man, but it was quite the opposite. You know how when you get x-rays your dentist puts a lead apron over your goodies and then runs out of the room to turn on the Cancer-Tron 5000? When he does that, he’s wearing a badge that measures radiation exposure which he would mail in to us at the end of the month. We’d process it, then either tell him that he was in the clear or that his kids were going to be born with flippers. We were like a Fotomat booth for the medical industry. Continue reading

I went to a local grocery store today to pick myself up something to eat for lunch at my desk. I usually don’t go out to eat during the workday because it’s more expensive, I wind up eating incredibly stupid and unhealthy things, and I tend to wind up sitting next to a table of junior executives spouting buzzword after inane buzzword until I finally reach my boiling point and decapitate one of them with a lunch tray. That’s a misdemeanor in Arizona and the fines can be pricey, so it’s just cheaper and easier to eat at my desk while I surf the web. Continue reading

I’ve got an iPad at home. I absolutely had to have an iPad when they first came out, but the steep price kept me from buying one for quite a while. Finally, I was unable to hold out any longer and I justified its purchase by mentally running down all the things I could do with it: Take effective notes at the office; be able to multi-task at my desk; ummm… I could use it to watch Netflix when the kids are watching Netflix on the TV; uhhh… If my Kindle ever died, I could use the Kindle app to still be able to read on the go… I had all these weak arguments and more, but truth be told, they were all bullshit. If there was an app called iCoaster that allowed you to put your drink down on the iPad with the label always facing North, I would’ve used it as justification. Continue reading

Ok, day two of feeling like a fucking cementhead is coming to an end, and the cumulative effect of so many cold meds is starting to get to me. I use DayQuil to cure my cold and wake me up, and NyQuil to cure my cold and knock me out. It’s getting to be that the only reliable way for me to tell what time of day it is is to look at the color of what I’m drinking. Maybe I’ll just start mixing them together and let them fucking duke it out. If I fall asleep, NyQuil wins. If I sprint laps around the house trailing used Kleenex behind me, DayQuil is the winner. And if my liver fails because I’m the kind of idiot that fucks around with over the counter medicine for giggles, well then the funeral industry wins, I guess. Continue reading

I’ve got a very bad cold. It’s 100 degrees outside, and I’ve got a cold. This is what is known in the medical community as fucking bullshit. Having a cold in summer weather gargles donkey-balls. Everyone else is running around, diving in pools, golfing, and generally acting like they’re in a fucking Mountain Dew commercial, and I’m stuffed up to the gills feeling like shit. Every once in a while I’ll look at someone enjoying themselves in a particularly summer-like way and just tell them, “Fug you butherfugger!” Continue reading

My kids are really big fans of Minecraft. If you don’t know what that is, go have a boy and you’re certain to find out. It’s a computer world-building game, intentionally low-res, and you wouldn’t think it’d be of interest to anyone until you sit down and start playing with it. 90 minutes later, you’ll look up from the mountain hideaway you just finished building and realize with a start that you’ve spent the better part of your evening acting like a four year old. Then you’ll go back and put a battlement on your mountain hideaway because, and let’s be serious now, you simply can’t have a mountain hideaway without a battlement. Continue reading

They say you never forget how to ride a bicycle, and it’s true. I know because I put it to the test. When I was a child, I lived in a rural area of Illinois, and I practically lived on my bike. We had rolling hills to fly down, homemade jumps to launch from, and a series of winding one-way streets that we knew like the backs of our hands. Of course, now I live in blazing-hot Phoenix where for five months out of the year riding a bike is like soaking yourself in gasoline and lying down under a large magnifying glass: It’s going to end with you carrying your roasted nuts home in a thimble. And so, between work, and kids, and the weather, and living in a city where everything is very, very spread out, I soon found myself not having ridden a bicycle in 20 years. Continue reading

I found myself struck by a powerful case of wanderlust the other day. All of a sudden I just felt like hopping in the Jeep and driving through the desert with the top down, my destination… Who knows? And probably irrelevant besides. Sometimes the road is the destination, with the sun painting the sky purple, the wind blowing through your hair, and road-weariness settling in just as lights begin to twinkle on the horizon…

Hey, what the fuck was that? I dunno. Life has been exceedingly weird for me the last few weeks, and sometimes I catch myself actually expressing my thoughts instead of making dick jokes. Sorry. I won’t let that happen again. Anyway, between everything I have going on and getting ready for a big wedding this weekend (as a groomsman, I hasten to add), I have no time for a real post tonight. So instead, here’s Chris Robinson and New Earth Mud performing a song that I always associate with long drives in the middle of nowhere, Eagles on the Highway. (Jesus, I’m starting to sound like Casey Kasem.)

Editor’s Note – I’ve always wanted to write an Editor’s Note. It makes anything you write afterwards positively drip with gravitas. For instance… Editor’s Note – While the Albanians were pummeled with hockey pucks, they were still unwilling to regurgitate the goldfish. Makes no sense, but the words “Editor’s Note” made you read it differently, doesn’t it? Anyway… Editor’s Note – I’ve got way, way too much shit on my plate tonight to write a real post, but instead of posting a goofy video or a smartass email fucking with someone who wants to use my site to advertise chocolate butt-plugs, I’m instead going to re-post something I wrote over 12 years ago on an old, long-forgotten site. So if it sucks, it’s because I was young and hadn’t learned how to suck less yet. Continue reading

I have two brothers, which people find fascinating for some reason. “You mean there’s more than one of you? Good God!” Actually, while I’m the garrulous, outgoing type of person, my younger brother is quiet and more reserved. And then my older brother is from Planet Zoot, and no one knows what the fuck he is thinking. To say that he’s socially maladapted is to assume a borderline level of social awareness, which I can assure you that my older brother does not have. He does or says what he feels like, and if that happens to violate every social more in place since the invention of the plow, well then that’s society’s fucking problem, isn’t it? This is how he came to ruin a Christmas Eve dinner for a bunch of old ladies. Continue reading