In January of 2004, I made one New Year's Resolution. With no one as my witness, I declared that I was no longer going to over-steam my vegetables into a mushy mess. Crisp vegetables, that was to be the theme for 2004.

In general, I don't do the whole New-Years-Resolution thing. Being a boring and pragmatic bastard, I promptly dismiss any necessary changes in my life as they come up. This removes the need to batch up change requests for some aribitrary Jan 1st deadline.

I guess, however, the prospect of eating mushy vegetables for another year inspired me to make the kind of bold resolution that would normally cause me to snort in derision. I wanted crisp and firm vegetables. I wanted my broccoli and asparagus that snapped with the sort of conviction that said, "I AM A CHANGED MAN!". Call it performance anxiety if you must, but I just can't stand flaccid asparagus.

And so, the great New Years Resolution of 2004 was made.

How did it go, you ask? Eh. It went ok. I still screw up sometimes, but I ate mushy vegetables less often this year. What more can a man ask?

Apparently two more things, because this year, inspired by my incremental improvement in vegetable crispness, I'm making two more resolutions. That's double the challenge. Bring. It. On.

Resolution #1 is to manage my Status better on my Instant Messenger client. The last couple months have been atrocious in this regard. A status of "Available" generally meant that I was out for a run, whereas a status of "Be Right Back" almost always meant that I was sitting in front of the computer.

In 2005 I vow to have accurate statuses 99.9% of the time! My status will not only reflect if I've gone to the bathroom, but it may even let you know the color of my urine! (I'm hoping for a light goldenrod). My coworkers and friends will be confident that if my status is "Available" and I'm not answering their messages, then it's because I suddenly hate them, and not because I'm away from my desk. This will be reassuring for all.

Resolution #2 is to greet my daughter each morning with a big smile, regardless of how exhausted or grumpy I feel. Watch me force a smile on my face... :) See? Easy peasy.

And, while typing this, I just got reminded of another resolution I need to make. Apparently the shock value of all the dick jokes I make is wearing thin. My friends now numbly regard my insertion of cock-related comments, into almost any situation, as commonplace.

So, it's time to up the ante. Resolution #3 is to ensure the continuing presence of easy humor by finding new shocking humor to exploit. Perhaps I'll joke about dear dead relatives or maybe felching. "Oh, you want to have lunch today? Sure, right after I felch your dead grandpa." Yes, that'll do nicely.

Happy Almost New Year

I am thrilled to have the holidays behind me. As it turns out, holidays are a lot of work and I'm kind of a lazy bastard.

Do you remember that boring puzzle game where you slide little squares with numbers on them so that they appear in order? Here's a picture of the game. It feels like I've been playing that game with pieces of my life for the last couple weeks, in both the space and time dimensions.

The space dimension has been the more difficult one. Our house is typically quite messy. My wife prefers the term "cluttered", but it's pretty much filled with crap no matter what semantic veneer you put on it. I submit the following as evidence:

1) We have what could be described as four dining room tables. We have no dining room.

2) Our child weeps at the merest hint of throwing away her old possessions. This, combined with our diagnosis rationalization that she suffers from "fear of loss", makes us reluctant to throw away her old crap. Consequently we have boxes filled with things like her old toothbrushes.

3) We have four computers up and running in the house. Three more are tucked away in nooks and crannies. Various unused keyboards and cables do a poor job of hiding themselves. Hello! I see you, old floppy drive!

You get the idea. So, because I'm a slob, soon after we got a kid, we also acquired the idea of a Crap Room. I mean, the crap ain't gonna hide itself, so you gotta stick it in a Crap Room. Then, you close the door, and voila, 25% less clutter.

Often the guest room, which also doubles as my wife's office, has been the Crap Room. That plans fails, however, when guests arrive. So, a while back we started to use my office, which is the biggest bedroom in the house, as the crap room. That plan then fails when we need to create emergency play-space for visiting children. Our common-area space is limited to a kitchen and a living room, so when kids descend upon the house, either we endure them in the living room, or we make space for them upstairs in my office. So, the crap moves back and forth, as necessary, between the guest room and my office. It's like a really simple version of that sliding puzzle. Just two spaces and one giant pile of crap.

This weekend the unthinkable happened. We had my mother in law staying in the guest room, and my family arriving, with kids in tow. We required both rooms to be free of crap. Now, instead of moving the big pile of crap back and forth, I had to think smaller, and try to move each individual piece of crap into some other magical new place in the house. Looking for places to move things like old computer monitors kind of went like this:

"Oh, there's a bottle cap on my desk. I'll throw that away. Now, if I mush these other things on my desk together, I'll have room for that roll of quarters from my bookshelf. Ok, now if I mush things together on the bookshelf, I'll have room for that stack of CDs from the floor..."

Boom! An hour later, I've got a spot cleared for the monitor. One piece of micro-junk down, 99 to go. It all starts with a bottle cap.

Soon, I ran out of places to hide things. Eventually the garbage cans, recycling bins, closets, and under the beds were full. It was time to start making up places. I found a pile of bows in the living room, and I deftly thrust them into the branches of the Family Holiday tree. Tiny plastic toys? Toilet tank. Bits of crumpled paper? I ate those. I was on a roll.

Somehow, we got it all done. I'm not sure how, and I dare not open the closet doors, lest boxes of camping gear and shards from our glass shard collection rain down on my head. Next time, I'll store those in the toilet tank too.

Note, this blog entry does not end with a perfunctory joke

Last night, on Family Holiday Eve (which I believe is also referred to as Christmas Eve by some religious sects), our kitchen sink exploded.

Maybe "exploded" is too strong of a word. What is it called when pipes under your kitchen sink mysteriously separate and spew water and soon-to-be-rotting food all over the cabinet and kitchen floor? Eh, let's go "exploded".

So, the kitchen sink exploded just as we were about to cook up dinner. Merry Family Holiday Eve! If there's one thing that could make me enjoy the holidays even more, it's got to be combustible plumbing. Alas, only a herculean effort by the toilet bowl to retain structural integrity prevented this from being the finest Family Holiday ever. Mighty porcelain, why must thou mock me?

As my mother-in-law contemplated what it meant to cook dinner without a working sink, my wife hopped onto the Yahoo yellow pages, looking for a nearby plumber who might be willing to sacrifice his Christmas Eve for our Family Holiday Eve. She spoke with a number of plumbers who basically said the equivalent of "no room at the inn", before she stumbled across something amazing.

Apparently one of our neighbors, who lives about 10 houses down, is a plumber. Somehow the Yahoo yellow pages listed a phone number which was in his house because he answered the damn phone at 6:00pm on Christmas Eve. After we explained how we found his number, and why we were calling, he informed us that he refused to help us as a plumber, but would be quite willing to come over and help us as a neighbor. So, not much later, our new friend Jeffrey the plumber neighbor, came over and checked out our sink.

He rigged a surprisingly sturdy solution out of carefully cut plastic bottles and good old fashioned neighborly know-how. He also poked around the faucet and figured out why our water pressure was so low. After these few minutes of handy genius, he departed, refusing to take any money for the visit.

Wow. I owe this guy.

I was, however, a wee bit miffed at having my grinchiness interrupted.

Merry Family Holiday, everyone. For those of you who celebrate Winter Present Tree Day, merry that too. For the rest of you, merry other stuff as well.

The last few days have been a blur of shopping, child-care, and barely restrained grinchiness. Nothing says Happy Holidays like festering rage.

As it turns out, this year we'll be celebrating Family Holiday, a thinly-veiled cover version of Christmas, minus the Christ and the Mas. I had hoped that we'd be celebrating my favorite Christmas-substitute, Winter Present Tree Day (excruciatingly documented here), but the kid has requested that we celebrate Family Holiday again. And so it shall be.

Shopping, as always, has been punishing. Each additional person in line, and every idiot in the parking lot seems to say, "Mike, good job shopping online and beating the crowds!". My kingdom for a sarcasm emoticon.

I went to a brand new grocery store last month that had shopping carts with cup holders in them. That's genius. So many things have been improved by cup holders, including cars and movie theater seats. Now, modern physics brings us the cart cup holder. Sadly, this appears to be a rare beastie. I was especially missing this amenity this week as I did most of my shopping in the morning hours, commonly known as coffee o'clock.

Everything should have cup holders now. We have the technology! I want cup holders in my shower, next to the toilet, and perhaps one surgically attached to my hips. I'd show that puppy off every chance I got. I'd see some thirsty schmuck and swivel my hips, all saucily and thirst-quenchingly. It would be the masculine kind of hip swiveling though.

Despite the missing cup holders, I managed to complete my shopping for everyone in the family except the wifey. In a long-standing tradition, we'll postpone the gift-giving to each other until we get a chance to recover from these holidays. It would appear that my spectacular ability to be on-time does not apply to gift-giving. My friends should also not expect any gifts yet. They know that I love them despite my gruff exterior and lackluster gift-buying performance.

A friend of mine is buying a car for his wife for Christmas. He was wondering if he should try to wrap it or merely put a big novelty bow on it. I suggested that he paper-mache it into a giant crucifix. Alas, that suggestion was rejected and that friendship mildly dented.

On a final note, my child-care time this week went pretty well. I kept my five year-old daughter entertained with a veritable fiesta of plate-spinning, numchuck-chucking, and daughter-tossing. I also let her watch extra TV. Gold parenting star for me.

I had feared that I'd give her nightmares with some inappropriate story, or accidentally teach her how to swear in a different language, but I did reasonably well on both counts. Although I did scare the bejesus out of her when I explained that some people get their tonsils removed (you'd think I'd know at this point to minimize the stories that end in doctors removing parts of her body), I did manage to successfully keep her out of view of our neighbor when he was demonstrating how to swear in sign language. I'm one for two! That easily puts me in the running for the highly-coveted One Of The Best Parents In Our House award. One day....

Well, only about two more days of grinchhood and then I go back to being a curmudgeon. My life is a rainbow of crankiness.

Kisses to all.

The Mother In Law arrives tomorrow. This kind of woe-is-me comedy generally writes itself. Comedians all over the world salivate at the prospect of mining the mother-in-law quarry.

You never know what you're going to get in the Mother In Law sweepstakes. Generally you marry someone regardless of their family, so when it comes to the in-laws, you get what you get. Maybe you reap my-mother-in-law-is-soooo-overbearing comedy or perhaps you get blessed with some my-mother-in-law-kills-and-eats-puppies humor. It's really hard to lose this game.

I lost this game.

My mother in law is not the fountain of comedic material I had hoped for. She doesn't spew neuroses or incessantly nag us about our hygiene. She's an annoyingly decent person. She's pleasant, helps around the house, and is good company.

Don't expect funny blog posts this week. Blame my mother in law.

Super blogger, Tony Pierce, once wrote an excellent post on How To Blog. His approach is all fine and dandy if you're interested in that whole creative, interesting, introspective thang, but personally I think nothing beats a good formulaic post. You can crank out them babies.

So, without further ado, I lift the veil, uncovering the secret formula of I Am Prepared to Give Up at Any Time....

Semi-controversial/humorous first sentence stating, in a curmudgeonly fashion, how I hate some commonly well-liked noun.

Disjointed segue into a story from years ago. Several sentences explaining a quasi surprising aspect of my life. Mediocre story-telling accented by awkward interjections. Paragraph closes with pithy self-deprecating commentary.

Anecdote continues. Reference to wifey or other member of cozy readership. Sentence, with, too many, com,mas,. Paragraph closes with pithy self-deprecating commentary.

Pretentiously short paragraph.

Story finally tied back to initial semi-controversial/humorous statement. Trite sympathy-inducing statement or perhaps a societal generalization.

Abrupt ending with perfunctory nod towards humor.


And that, my friends, is How To Blog

My daughter's school is closed for the next two weeks for "Winter" break. So, I'll be spending this week with her, and the wifey will be on kid duty next week.

Usually I accidentally corrupt my daughter in stupid ways during these vacation days. Generally this takes the form of some sort of "potty mouth" behavior (because I am the Prince of Potty mouths), but occasionally we'll delve into racketeering or maybe treason. Not this time though! This time I'm on my best behavior. First off, I'm reluctant to repeat past mistakes, and also my mother-in-law will be joining us for a few days later this week. I've been polishing my "good father" mask in preparation. Shiny!

We kicked off Daddy-Daughter week yesterday with one of our patented (note, no actual patent has been issued at this time) trips to the grocery store. The daughter enjoys these trips much more if we shed our everyday personas and turn it into a series of SPY MISSIONS!

Typical missions at the grocery store include:

- Go find the bottled water, BUT DON'T LET ANY ONE SEE YOU!
- See if you can procure 20 brussel sprouts into this bag WITHOUT LETTING ANY OF THEM ESCAPE!
- Go find daddy's favorite beer.

We each have daughter-assigned spy names. They change from time to time, but currently, I'm XO (pronounced ex-oh) and she's Callis. Obviously we cannot use our real names in the grocery store. International havoc would be wreaked. Wreaked, I tell you.

The spy missions break down when we run into acquaintances at the grocery store. This happens surprisingly often, usually when we're both crouched down by the Tampax display, waiting for "the coast to clear." People are either too polite, or too mortified to ask what the hell we're doing. That's probably for the best, as we'd hate to have to kill them. Ok, hate is a strong word.

Yesterday, as we got ready to leave for the store, my daughter found her American flag and said, "Oh! Oh, daddy! How about every time I complete a mission, I'll wave my American flag back and forth and that's how you'll know that I'm done!?"

I was horrified.

Don't get me wrong, I love living in this country. I'm not a big fan of the current administration, but I've got a good life here and I know it. I'm not likely to move to Canada or anywhere else for quite a while, but I'm also not really the type to wave a flag around in the grocery store. I do live in San Francisco, queen of the blue states.

Anyway, I'm going to try and not teach my kid any new naughty words this week, no matter how panicked I get when she expresses unabashed patriotism.

Only-Interesting-To-Me Factoid About Me #314

I'm obsessed with time.

I'm the most on-time guy you'll ever meet/read-about. I'm almost never late. I'm almost never early. I'm pretty much right on time, all the time. It's kind of spooky.

Years ago, I once agreed to meet a friend in St. Louis. We picked a date and a time of 5:00pm. I then drove from San Francisco to St. Louis, a distance of over 2000 miles, over a period of several days. I arrived at her apartment on the given date, at 5:01 and 30 seconds. Those 90 seconds eat at me to this day.

I think this time obsession is also the main motivator behind all this damn running I do. It can't be that I'm particularly interested in being fit or muscley since I can't really be bothered to go to a gym or lift a single weight. Have you tried lifting those things. They're way heavy.

Nor do I run because I enjoy it. I do not care for it in the slightest. If the run is astonishingly beautiful and hilly, then I might enjoy a couple minutes of the downhill part, but as for the other 99.9% of the miles I log, each one is a chore.

I've been compelled to run, though, for about 20 years, off and on. The only possible reason I can think of is because it's one of the purest ways to pit man against time. Run this course as fast as I can? YES! MUST RUN COURSE AS FAST AS I CAN! AAAAAAAH!!! Crikey, that's a sorry reason for a pathetic hobby. It completely possesses me though. Here's what I wrote a couple days before running the Chicago Marathon this year. Maybe I could find other time-restricted ways to inflict pain upon myself. I could see how long it takes to stick 100 splinters under my fingernails, then try to beat that record. Hmmmmm.

Time even comes into play in one of my other hobbies, Scrabble. I'm a decent Scrabble player while sitting around the kitchen table. There are plenty of words that I play because I've memorized them off of a list and I have no idea what they mean. That's a key differentiator between the casual Scrabble player and the club/tournament player. In general, however, most of the other club and tournament Scrabble players have memorized more word lists and are better at spotting words on their rack than I am. Really, my own advantage in a tournament game is the fact that it's timed. Each player has a total of 25 minutes in which to make all their moves, and I'm pretty darn good at spending those minutes wisely. I never run out of time. Consequently, I have a surprisingly good Scrabble rating of over 1400. I can assure you that the vast majority of the other 1400+ players are much more adept at the whole "word" part of the game.

Mostly, it's a sickness.

Really, the only time question I cannot answer is this: How long before my wife divorces me for constantly saying things like, "Hey! You've only got 17 and a half minutes before we have to leave!" ?

Tonight I'm skipping a couple of holiday parties. Both my running club and the company I work for are having holiday parties this evening and I just can't seem to muster up the enthusiasm to attend either one.

The problem with the work party is pretty obvious. Have you ever been to a party filled with computer programmers, IT support folks and technical support engineers? I have. It's less exciting than it sounds. The technical writers are always the most interesting people, but they usually have better things to do than attend these sorts of events. Bastards. Although the folks in my work group are a friendly lot, none of them are attending, so if I went to the party, I'd be spending the evening debating whether to make painful chit-chat with boring acquaintances or just staring at the wall. The wall usually wins.

Of course the entertainment value skyrockets once the dancing starts, but watching this is a perverse kind of pleasure, not unlike viewing a train wreck, assuming that trains in your town move in rhythmless spasms.

The other party tonight is being thrown by my running club. This party at least features lots of fit and attractive people. The problem, however, is that long-distance runners are, in general, really boring people. Now, there are the occasional exceptions, but, by and large, these are all people who have dedicated large chunks of their free time to putting one foot in front of the other, for hours at a time. There's a certain level-headed and overly-even quality that makes someone good at enduring marathons, but bad at being the life of the party.

Astute readers will notice that I am both a computer programmer and a long-distance runner, so therefore I must be king of boringville. I do seem to have worked myself into some sort of trap here. LOOK, A MONKEY!

So, I'm home with the wifey and the kid. It ain't so bad.

Today we'll play a quick game of What's Creepier?

What's creepier, a plumber who shows you pictures of his naked wife or a contractor who tells you about an upcoming medical procedure on his ass?

Let's play our game! Shuffle up and deeeeeeeal!

First up, plumber guy. Creepy numerator points for:
- Pulling out a nekkid picture from his wallet of some woman he claims was his wife
- Instructing me to vote for her on some website
- Mucho plumber crack
- Sweaty

Mitigating denominator points for:
- Having hot wife

Next up, contractor dude. Creepy numerator points for:
- Telling me he won't be working on my house on Friday because he's having a "procedure" ("procedure" said with knowing male emphasis)
- Bringing up the topic again the next day to ensure that I knew this was a colonoscopy
- Telling me that he won't go into any more details, and immediately following that up by noting that the doctors will practically be sending a camera crew up his ass

Mitigating denominator points for:
- Being a nice guy

So, plumber has 4 numerator creepy points and 1 mitigating denominator point, for a creepiness quotient of FOUR!

Meanwhile, contractor has 3 numerator creepy points and 1 mitigating denominator point, for a creepiness quotient of only three.

Plumber wins today's game of What's Creepier?. Congratulations, dude. You'll be receiving a prize of Rice-a-Roni, Turtle Wax, and a firm tsk-tsking.

Some readers may wonder why these men feel compelled to share these disturbing and intimate bits of their lives with me, a virtual stranger to them. I also wonder this. Perhaps I should stop wearing my "Creep me out! Ask me How!" t-shirt.

I would guess that most elementary schools in the United States do some sort of holiday themed show around this time of year. I'm imagining manger scenes and kids dressed up as menorahs and other generic symbols of religious holidays. Maybe that stuff is all verboten these days, but that's what I think of when I think of December shows put on by elementary school kids. Some sort of white-washed, genericized, feel-good, holiday pablum.

Not here in San Francisco though. Nosireeee.

My daughter's school's after school program just put on their December show and it took place in a hipper-than-thou gallery and featured a faux-circus and bon-a-fide performance art? You ever seen elementary school kids, dressed all in black, doing performance art? I have.

It kicked off with a circus-themed performance put on by the kindergartners. The show director, wisely realizing that it's hard to shut my daughter up, made her the circus ringmaster. My daughter did a fantastic job. She spoke with confidence, knew most of her lines, was cute as puppies when she forgot a line (or two or three or four), and even improvised a bit. That gal can play an audience.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but talking is what my kid does best. Her vocabulary and phrasing is well beyond her years. The problem, however, is that she talks ALL THE TIME. Not only does she tell you everything she thinks, she has to tell you that she's going to tell you it. A typical conversation goes something like this:

Daughter: Daddy, I have to something to show you.
Me: Ok, go ahead, sweet pea.
Daughter: Well, I wanted to show you something very exciting.
Me: Alrighty, go for it.
Daughter: And then, after I show you, I'd like you to say, "That's very exciting" and then you clap and then you say, "I didn't know you could do that..."
Me: Okokok! Just show me!
Daughter: And then I'll say, "Yes, I can do that! Did you know I could do that?" and you'll say...
Me: Time's up! Time for bed.

So, annointing her ring master, the person who introduces the acts and runs the show, was the logical thing to do.

After the circus, the older kids prepped themselves for their beatnik-themed performance art by wearing their most pretentious outfits. Some wrapped themselves in the traditional bohemian style, complete with black turtleneck, while others improvised the black and white look with black soccer shorts and a white logo'ed T-shirt. Then they did this bizarre running-back-and-forth and posing and skipping, essentially using their bodies in motion as art. At some random point they stopped and one kid stepped forward and said, "My name is Mark Nickleby." Another kid immediately followed that up by stepping forward and saying, "My name is Margaret Blotnik." The pace of kids stepping forward and saying their names picked up and soon it was an unintelligible mass of voices, each announcing their identity.

And that's what kids learn in San Francisco schools.

Quick weekend summary, because if I don't write about my weekend, then who will? Hmmmm?

I made chocolate chip cookies on Saturday afternoon (which reminded me of my hatred for the cookies whose name must not be spoken). I never do any baking because I'm a disaster in the kitchen, but I spied a Ghirardelli chocolate chip cookie mix in the grocery store and it looked easy to make. Merely add eggs and butter to the mix. A recipe so easy, even I could make my very favoritest food, right? What could I possibly screw up when there are only three ingredients?

First off, I can't add real eggs and real butter to the recipe because my daughter is allergic to both those things. So, unless I wish to wield these cookies as a dietary weapon, I have to subsitute Egg Replacer for the egg, and a non-dairy margarine for the butter. No tragedy though. Me big boy.

So, I add my "egg" and my "butter" to the mix and I stir it all up by hand. Technically, the instructions say to use a mixer, but, inexplicably, I fear our mixer. I'd try to explain my rationale, but the word "inexplicably" above releases me from that burden. Master linguist, I am.

Anyway, I mixed up the dough and it didn't quite seem doughy enough. I haven't made chocolate chip cookies in about a decade, but the dough seemed too dry. So, relying upon my vast cooking knowledge, I spooned in a bit of canola oil. Oil equals not dry! Genius. If there's one thing that'll improve a three-ingredient recipe, it's a fourth ingredient. More equals better! Two legs bad!

Considering, that I screwed with the recipe at exactly every step, the cookies came out pretty good. By chocolate chip cookie standards, they suck ass, but by non chocolate chip cookie standards, they unsuck ass. I also have a tasty crab melt recipe that I can share.

Dang, I'm running out of time here. I actually have to leave the house to work today. Hold me.

Also went to see a concert this weekend. Dan Zanes does great music that is good for kids and adults. If you've never heard a Jamaican rapper join a rocking folk band featuring someone playing the saw and the spoons for a medley including Old MacDonald, then you've never seen Dan Zanes. MacDonald may be old, but he can still rock.

Finally, had some friends over to see the finale of Survivor. This was a wretched season featuring unpleasant and unfunny contestants. I had no one to root for in the final four. Do you know who won? I did, because I don't have to watch that damn show any more. They forced me!

Ok, must...go....leave....house.....now.............

An Open Letter To Oatmeal Raisin Cookies


Dear Oatmeal Raisin Cookies,

I am on to you, you sick little bastards.

First off, consider yourselves very very lucky that I'm still wrestling with how to swear in this blog. You and I both know that when we're alone, I am unmerciful in my choice of words. Here, however, a modicum of restraint and decorum is required. Underage packets may be present.

Before I go any further, perhaps it's best to address you, oatmeal. Oatmeal, I hope you realize that my bitterness is not directed at you. Although I do not welcome you into my cookies, I do not completely reject you either. I recognize your intrinsic nutritional value, and your oatmeally flavor is not completely without merit. However, although I am not a trained lawyer, we all know that guilt by association is 90% of the law. You have no one to blame but yourself for your involvement in this.

Let's see, we covered the oatmeal part, where does that leave us? Hmmm... oh, might it be THE GODFORSAKEN RAISIN?!

Raisin, we've danced our dance too many times before. I spy you from across the room, delicately nestled in a plate of cookies, luring me in, drawing me to you. You know what I want and I'm unable to resist you. As always, I am completely oblivious to your treachery. I bring you into my arms and raise you to my lips without even thinking. My mouth waters with anticipation until finally, desperately, we meet. I bite into you, eagerly awaiting...RAISINS?!

YOU FOOL ME EVERY TIME! YOU DELIBERATELY DISGUISE YOURSELF AS A CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE, A HEAVENLY AND SATISFYING CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE, AND YOU'RE JUST A FREAKIN' OATMEAL RAISIN COOKIE! Make no mistake about it, if there is a hell for cookies, you are going there.

So, it's come to this. I do hereby demand that you cease and desist from passing yourselves off as chocolate chip cookies (delicious and gooey chocolate chip cookies). The court established years ago, in Brown v. Snickerdoodle, that the chocolate chip cookie was the king of cookies. It is disingenous of you to attract eaters under the false pretense of being scrumptious.

From this day forth, all oatmeal raisin cookies may not resemble chocolate chip cookies (addictive, delectable, chocolate chip cookies). You must dye yourselves mauve, or chartreuse, or some other non-chocolate-chip-cookie color.

IF YOU CONTINUE TO DEFY ME, THERE WILL BE HELL TO PAY! I know people who know people who can crush you.

It ends here.

Cheers,
Mike
ogblay at gmail dot com

I haven't written about Barrington Hall in a while so here's Part 3 of my year at Barrington Hall. You may wish to read the first and second posts, written earlier this year. If you prefer, here's the management summary:

I lived in the Barrington Hall Cooperative in Berkeley, California during my sophomore year of college. It was an exaggerated stereotype of life in "hippie" Berkeley, replete with copious drugs, psychedelic murals, and entrenched filth. I was a squeaky clean boy from the suburbs. Fish out of water hilarity ensued. Although I had a good friend as a roommate, we shared a suite with two nudists, a violent and brilliant stripper, 7 adorable kittens, and an extraodinarily flatulent mother cat. Today this would be a short-lived series on Fox.

Now we're all caught up. Let's talk about Barrington grub.

Barrington, like all the Co-op houses, was student run. Students did the cooking and cleaning. They ordered the food and served the meals. In short, we did everything required to run the building. Consequently, the place was kind of... well, what's the opposite of a well-oiled machine? A dump. Yeah, it was a dump.

I always enjoyed how my fellow Barringtonians reacted to the various unsanitary conditions. Let's say there were no clean glasses and someone wanted some milk from our industrial-sized milk dispenser. Would they wash a glass? Would they forgo hygiene entirely and use a dirty glass? No! Often the answer was to use some other vessel. I often saw beverages consumed out of ladles, giant serving bowls, and my personal favorite, plates. I LOVED watching people try to drink off of a plate. Some residents were experts at it, while eithers just forlornly watched the beverage dribble down their clothes onto the floor, where it happily mingled with the other floor filth.

Dinner was the most exciting meal at Barrington. It was a group meal and vaguely resembled one of the challenges on Survivor. Not only was it physically difficult to get at your meal, but once you had it cornered on your plate, you really weren't always sure if it was something you should ingest.

Typically, the hungry unwashed masses would gather in the dining room at dinner time, and would anxiously await that evening's feast. If dinner was a bit late, the crowd would often spontaneously break out into a drumming cacophony. Silverware, plates, ladles, bongs, hacky sacks, whatever, were used to create some pre-dinner music. To this day I cannot hear the opening to The Who's "Magic Bus" without feeling both nostalgic and vaguely nauseated.

When dinner was finally ready, it would get served by that evening's cooking crew. Although this sounds like a simple task, it was a suprisingly dangerous assignment. There was rarely enough food to eat at dinner and this was a well-known fact. Consequently, the servers would bring out large bowls of whatever to each table and would then attempt to extricate themselves from the feeding frenzy that immediately pounced upon the food.

The mad rush to get food from the serving bowl onto your own plate/pan/teacup/tongue was a nightly occurrance. There were many nights when I wasn't quick enough or strong enough to get any dinner. Those hippies were suprisingly wiry. Other times, I just couldn't bear to eat the food after it had been pawed at. I recall one evening they served some chicken in a savory and dingy grey sauce. Right before I could plop some onto my plate, the woman next to me ran her fingers through the serving bowl and scooped up a handful of chicken and sauce, which was promptly delivered to her mouth. I hadn't gotten there fast enough to see if this was her first or second iteration through the bowl. I passed on dinner that evening.

Another night they were serving some sort of baked chicken breast thing. Inexplicably, the servers decided to bring out the chicken breasts using the trays that they had been baked on. These trays were HOT and the servers ran through the dining room, rushing to get their limb-scorching trays to the tables. One server, in his haste to avoid 3rd degree burns, tripped, and the chicken flew off the trays and slid across the grime-encrusted floor. Nobody missed a beat. While I hesitated, the other Barringtonians pounced and devoured the now filth-spiced chicken. Mmmmmmm, floor chicken.

And that's the story of how I ate at Blondies Pizza about 3 times a week for one year of my life. You could get a big slice of pizza and a Coke for about $1.50. Although it was also prepared by hippies, you didn't have to be particularly fast or strong to acquire the food. You just had to have $1.50.

More Barrington Hall stories another day.

Over the last several days I've noticed that there are a bunch of entries in the site log from MIT. Hello MIT people (or perhaps hello single schizophrenic MIT person)! This blog post is just for you. The rest of you, please cover your eyes, and say "Lalalalalala" over and over until this entry is complete.

Once upon a time, over 450 Msecs ago (see, I'm one of you!), I graduated from college. Now, it wasn't one of them fancy schools with an MIT (for example) in the name, but it wasn't College for Dummies either. I had me a brand spanking new degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Although my grades weren't top-notch (3.1 GPA), I had a couple summers of internship at Hewlett Packard on my resume, and I was ready to take on the electrical engineering world in all its chippy glory.

I figured I'd do pretty well interviewing for a job. Back then I wasn't the hermetic troll that I am now, and most of the other EECS graduates at my school were social introverts. I figured I'd do about average on the technical portion of the interviews and then wow the potential employers with my deft conversational skills.

I lined up nearly 30 interviews with companies of all shapes and sizes. I went into each interview, in my ill-fitting navy blue suit, bursting with positive attitude and good humor. I was a lock.

I got shot down by every single company. Although a couple of them brought me back for round 2 of humiliation, not a single one gave me an offer. The electrical engineering world rejected me with glee-like unanimity. I eventually took my fallback job at the Hewlett Packard office where I had my internship. It was a CS job and not the EE job that I had been hoping for, but beggars....

In the end, that job worked out well for me, but that's not the point. The point here is, congratulations on making it to MIT! Republican congress*, I'm super impressed! I don't know what you're doing reading this blog though. I sure as hell can't help you with your homework.

OK, THE REST OF YOU! YOU CAN STOP SAYING "LALALALALALA" AND UNCOVER YOUR EYES NOW.

*little joke from last post.

I need a new way to swear in this blog. In the non-typing world, I swear with something approaching a sense of entitlement. I spray non-FCC-approved words around like an enraged monkey hurling feces, relying heavily on F--- and S---. My choice of curse words doesn't win me any points for creativity, but sometimes you have to stick with the classics. In this blog, however, I'm surprisingly reluctant to use those same words. I don't know why, but we have much psychoanalysis to do later, so let's move along.

In writing I'm inclined to use expressions like "Christ!", "Jesus!", or "Holy crap!" to express surprise or horror, but that really makes no sense for an agnostic. Frankly, the entire concept of holy crap is a bit beyond me. So, I need something new, some way to swear without invoking religion or the naughty naughty words. In this post, I'll try out a few ones (in italics, for easy spotting).

Why do I need curse words today? How else can I describe the abysmal and humorless day that I had yesterday?

Giant elephant nuts! Trying to go a whole day without joking was REALLY HARD! First off, I failed. By my count, I made about 4 jokes yesterday. One on instant messenger and three others with the family. The rest of the day was filled with answers like:

"Yes, that sounds nice."
"Agreed, that would be an unpleasant thing to insert in my anus."
"GRRRR...I HAVE A FUNNY RETORT, BUT I CANNOT MAKE IT!"

Secondly, I'm just not an interesting guy without the thin veneer of humor that coats much of my communication. What do non-smart-asses talk about all day? The weather? Ripping duct tape off a hairy ass, that's boring.

Finally, I found the day to be very depressing. I felt more and more listless and demoralized as the day went on. By the end of my work day, I was in some sort of seriousness coma (note, not an actual medical condition).

So, what did I learn from my day?

1) Approximately 52% of my self esteem is tied up in my ability to craft humor.
2) Approximately 75% of the thoughts that spew from me, are tainted by Outgoing Humor Filter.
3) Dead babies, yesterday sucked.

And what did I learn from today's experiment at trying to come up with new ways to express surprise and anger? I learned it wasn't funny! Should have done this yesterday

Last night, after doing my usual slapstick schtick with my daughter, my wife and daughter asked me if I could go a whole day without making a joke. So, today, I have embarked upon that endeavor.

My Instant Messenger discussions, normally bursting with artfully crafted dick jokes, have been stripped bare of their humor. My emails have been lacking their perfunctory opening witticisms. Now, we must see what one of my blog posts looks like, without any attempts to crack wise.

Without further ado, here is what I have to tell the blogosphere:

Last night, after the kid was snug in her bedsy-wedsy, the wife and I hosted our monthly poker game. We had our biggest turnout, 11 people, featuring:

- One woman who had never played poker before
- Another woman who brings her notebook each time, listing the order of hands
- Me, working on little sleep, mostly thanks the to the previous night's scream-fest

Several interesting things happened. In no particular order:

1) The woman who had never played poker before won our Texas Hold 'Em No Limit tournament.

2) I'm now, finally, a good enough player to note the mistakes I'm making, mere seconds after I make them. I am, however, totally unable to stop making them. Ignorance was bliss.

3) We had 7 men and 4 women at the table during the tournament. All 7 men fell out of the tournament before a single woman did. Since the men were, on average, slightly more experienced at Texas Hold 'Em than the women, I'm forced to conclude that either the women were taking advantage of their womanly wiles, or perhaps they just easily saw through our bluffing attempts. Or maybe we spent too much time staring at their breasts. Anyway, it seemed statistically anomalous. The odds of this happening were about 1 in 330.*

4) I came in 10th out of 11 people. Wooo! Top ten!

We got to bed about 5 hours before my daughter woke up the next morning. I went downstairs with her, all bleary-eyed, and promptly taught her how to play poker. Now, some people would say that I should not be teaching a five year-old how to gamble. Frankly, I'm inclined to agree. With my atrocious poker skills, she could use a much better teacher. In my defense, however, we played 5 hands and she won all 5. She even bluffed me out of one hand. I really suck.

So, the moral of the story is: Those who suck at Texas Hold 'Em can only hope for redemption through their kindergartner children.

* Assuming that all players have equal skill and equal luck. Also assuming that my statistics are better than my poker playing

My daughter has never been much of a sleeper, but these days she sleeps through the night the vast majority of the time. She'll wake us up about once a week due to a bad dream or some such issue. We've got a pretty good routine down for this. She'll open her bedroom door, sprint into our room, and either myself or my wife will take her back to her bed for some reassuring snuggles. It's generally a trauma-free experience.

Until last night.

So, last night, around 3:30am, my daughter wakes up, perhaps due to a bad dream, or maybe she heard a noise, or it's possible that the bogeyman finally popped out of her closet. Who knows. This time, however, as she left her room, she let out a shriek that set off an unfortunate sequence of events.

My wife, who had been sleeping soundly, was woken by her baby girl shrieking, and promptly screamed in response. My daughter, hearing her mother scream in terror, realized that there really was something to be frightened of, and shrieked again, louder this time. The wife, not one to be outdone, screamed again.

Meanwhile, I'm in bed, listening to my wife and daughter's call-and-response routine, muttering, "It's ok.... everything's ok", which is, apparently, what I ALWAYS say when I'm woken up in the middle of the night. I could actually be on fire, and I'd still stammer out a couple "It's ok"s. My wife, long used to my meaningless reassurances, was not reassured.

We eventually got everyone calmed down, but it took me a while to get back to sleep after all that screaming. Sleeping is hard, as it turns out.

The moral of the story is that the phrase "Sleeping like a baby" is a cruel cruel joke. Actually, that's probably not the moral of this story, but it's definitely the moral of one of my stories. Maybe one day I'll do a post where we match up my stories with the morals.

At what point does this blog become a laundry list of things better left unsaid? Today. Today is that day.

So, I went down to the kitchen yesterday to scrounge up some lunchy. Sadly, there were no left-overs for me to reheat, so I browsed the cabinets looking for something sufficiently tasty and easy to make. There it was, tuna! I was going to make me a yummy little tuna melt.

Then, right next to the tuna, I spied with my adult-sized eyes a can of crab meat. Mmmmm, I love crab! I've never piled it on a piece of bread and wolfed it down, but it's crab, right? Mmmmmm, I said.

I opened that puppy up and was disappointed to find that it didn't contain lovely large chunks of crab, but rather some sort of pre-masticated crab meat, little tiny crab bitlets. Being the gourmand that I am, I said, "whatever" and piled it onto some bread, topped it off with some sharp cheddar and toasted it up. I made two of these babies.

Midway through the first piece, I started to feel vaguely nauseated. It was, as it turns out, a pretty nasty lunch. I couldn't tell if the nastiness resulted from the crab bitlets being spoiled or merely inedible. Either way, no good reason to continue eating it, right?

I considered throwing it away, but then the garbage would have smelled like rotting seafood until the next garbage day, which was 5 days away. I considered putting it down the garbage disposal in the sink, but then the kitchen would stink of rotting crab (unless I did something Einsteinian-smart like follow it up with baking powder).

There I sat with my 1.5 pieces of uneaten crab melt, dismayed that I had constructed a lunch so toxic that I was unable to conceive of a plan to dispose of it. This was a lunch too disgusting to even throw away. Utilizing all the power of my brain, I deduced that the only place secure enough to contain the crab melt was in my stomach. So... I... ate... the... sandwich... that... was... too... gross... to... put... in... the... trash.

No, I am not proud.

Yes, I am thinking of putting out a cookbook. Care for one for Winter Present Tree Day?

So, did I disprove Darwin's "survival of the fittest" theory by being stupid enough to eat garbage and survive? Or, did I prove the theory by demonstrating my stomach of steel? If you pick the latter, I can send you my Stomachs Of Steel in 8 Minutes video.

Wow, my last post was my 100th post. Somebody, bake me a cake (seriously, I really like cake).

Anyway, I just got reminded of this story. It's a perfect example of how quickly social skills deteriorate when you work at home for years.

A couple years ago I was working on a very intense project. The deadlines were unrealistic and immoveable, and since I'm completely anal retentive about time and schedules, I was feeling very stressed.

I was barfing out some code one day when I got confused about a coworker's code. He was a clever little bastard and I often had no idea what his code was doing. I was reluctant to call him about it because I was under tremendous time pressure and he tended to give very detailed descriptions, with lots of seemingly unnecessary background information. I was stuck, however, so I dialed him up. We had this conversation:

Me: Hey there. I was wondering if you could explain ... (actual conversation edited to prevent your eyeballs from seizing up in boredeom-induced spasms) ...to me
Coworker: Sure, but before I get to the part you asked about, there's some history here. You don't need to know this, but I'm going to go over it anyway.

For the umpteenth time this guy was going to spend valuable minutes telling me something, that in his own words, I did not need to know! Utilizing my finely-honed passive-aggressive conflict resolution skills, I promptly hit the "Mute" button on my phone and let out a hugely satisfying primal scream.

As soon as I finished my scream therapy, I noticed that my coworker had stopped speaking. There was an awkward several-second pause where I double and triple-checked that I had indeed successfully pressed the "Mute" button. My coworker then eked out a nervous laugh and said, "...uh...ok..." and he continued on with his speech.

Aaaaah! Had he heard my scream? Could it possibly be coincidence that he had paused exactly during my scream? I decided the best thing to do at this juncture was to completely ignore what had just transpired. I fear confrontation.

The next day, when I had slightly recovered from my embarrassment, I asked a friend to conduct a test with me. I called her up and asked if she could hear me scream while I pressed the "Mute" button. As it turns out, it was quite audible. It's not a "Mute" button, it's more like a "Muffle" button. I'm not quite sure why I need a "Muffle" button, but that apparently is what I've got on my crappy-ass Plantronics headset thingee.

I worked with that coworker for another year and a half and we never ever discussed that phone call.

Hombre, if you're reading this (and I'm pretty sure you're not), I'm sorry. If you want to tell me the history of that code again, I'll totally listen this time.