My weekend kicked off with a long run on Saturday morning, as it often does. Anything semi-humorous I have to say on the matter was adequately covered two weeks ago in this post. Seven weeks 'til Boston.

Saturday afternoon's activity speaks poorly of me on a number of levels. Let's review and then count them.

So, every Friday night, we have some friends who come over to watch Survivor with us. This week, however, our TiVo failed to record Survivor. So, instead, we went over to our friends' house on Saturday, with daughter in tow, and watched it there.

Ok, let's count:

1) I watch Survivor. Yes, I admit it. It's a guilty pleasure. Bite me.

2) TiVo is a remarkable device that makes it fairly idiot-proof to record all your favorite programs, and yet, I still managed to screw it up. I out idiot-ed the idiot-proof device. Hmmmm, who's the idiot now?!? Oh....me.

3) I let my daughter watch Survivor. In case the public educational system has failed to instill in my daughter the necessary skills needed to successfully out-whine, out-lie, and out-fumble her way through adversity, we've now got it covered.

Boy, I only count three. Actually, that's not too bad. Hell, I practically beat that on Saturday night.

So, on Saturday night, the family went over to my wife's boss's house for dinner. Dinner with the boss-man can be an intimidating evening, but he's a nice guy with a charming family, so we had little to fear, until....

Apparently the wife and I ate something earlier in the day with amazing gas-producing abilities (I guess that was stupid thing #4). We spent the evening with butt-cheeks firmly clenched. Luckily, after dinner, I managed to grab a seat in the far corner of the room. Although it appeared that I was slightly anti-social, it was really medically justified. I ripped stealthy farts from a safe distance for the next hour.

My wife, however, being more dainty and genteel, just held them until we got into the car at the end of the evening. It was an unpleasant ride home.

Ok, so we didn't let our hosts know about our flatulence. We're good guests, right? Well, pretty good until my daughter proclaimed that her dinner "was disgusting" and "tasted like worms". Oh, ho ho ho, those kids say the darndest things. How cute!

We had a nice chat afterwards about manners. Too late, me thinks.

Today came and went, embarrassment-free. My daughter's aunt took her for an afternoon of fun, so the wife and I did adult activities. Mostly that consisted of getting our taxes together and playing Scrabble. Note, however, that I said "Mostly", because we also did some dishes, sexy sexy dishes.

I'll be in my bunk.

It's been weeks since I complained about my nose. Weeks! Let the silence end.

So, for the last few days my nose has looked like this fine keychain:



(the one on the right)

This has been especially annoying the last few nights. I'll be on the verge of sleepiness when I'll suddenly feel a drop of snot about to leap from my nostril onto the pillow. I'm then forced to get a kleenex and soak up the offending fluids. If I'm feeling particularly snotty, I'll try to blow my nose verrrrry quietly, so as not to wake the wifey. I played this game for hours last night. I lost.

Today I'm still a snot factory, pumping out mucus like it's going out of style (it's not out of style yet, is it?). I understand that this is part of the nose's job, to rid the body of nasty germies, but the whole mechanism seems poorly designed. Why put the germ disposal system right in the middle of my face?

How did this happen? For the religious among you, this must be God's will, right? On the sixth day God created Man and put the feces excretory system in the ass (good good, that's out of the way), the urine excretory system in the penis (also very good, the penis is a convenient place for this), and the mucus excretory system smack dab in the middle of the face (odd, no?). They say that God moves in mysterious ways. This is no mystery, this is a Divine sense of humor that borders on sadistic (no offense, God, mad props on the rest of the work. No need for the smiting.).

For the less religious among you, this must be evolutionary forces at work, right? So, there must have been some creature that didn't squirt mucus from its face and it was marginally successful at surviving on Earth. Then, in a mutation masterstroke, one of these creatures was born with a snot hose on its face, spraying mucus like a fountain. Suddenly that creature was Big Man on Campus, screwing chicks right and left, and beating the crap out of the other creatures whose faces weren't covered in snot.

That doesn't ring true either. No matter how I slice it, I can't figure out how this came to be. Frankly, the only theory that has any credibility (follow the money) is to assume that this has been a phenomenally successful conspiracy orchestrated by the evil geniuses at Kleenex. Bastards!

Regardless, here's my 6-step plan for addressing this human design error:

Step 1) Study anatomy, surgery, robotics, and tubing technology
Step 2) Acquire test subjects
Step 3) Perfect technique of rerouting snot from the nasal passages directly to the bowels
Step 4) Perform operation on self utilizing clever little robots
Step 5) Poop snot
Step 6) Profit!

Genius, no?

I went bowling this weekend. Man, that is a lame sport. That's not to say that I hate bowling, because I don't. I am, however, unable to stop mocking it. So, mock I must.

First, however, faint praise.

Bowling is the only sport I can think of where the object is to create as much disorder as possible. If entropy could endorse a sport, it would pick bowling. Pins are neatly arranged in a charming little pattern and then the player attempts to knock the crap out of them. Players in other sports typically seek to put balls into some sort of hole, like a hoop or pocket, as though the object of that sport were to tidy up. Meanwhile, if bowlers could put explosives into the pins, they would. Steeeeeee-KAPOW-rike!

Bowling is a sport like demolition derby is a sport.

But enough with the praise. I don't want to gush. On to the mocking!

First off, this bowling alley, like many others, smells like an ashtray. This is kind of a remarkable feat because smoking has been banned in places like in California for around a decade. How are there still smoke molecules in the air? Every surface in this joint is either hardwood, plastic or bowlingball-ite, so where is the smoke coming from? It's really a remarkable feat of stink-engineering.

Secondly, a bowling alley is filled with mockable people and many delicious stereotypes. I particularly enjoyed the aging greaser guy with his busty-sweatered gal who adoringly watched every ball he bowled. They were straight out of the 50's. Had he traded in his collared shirt for a white T with a pack of cigs rolled up in the sleeve, they would have been all set.

On the lane next to us we had a group that included a really spazzy seven year-old scrawny kid. This kid would grab his ball and launch himself at the lane at full speed. After a few feet he'd either hurl the ball with all his might towards the lane, or he'd trip and fly across the floor. Both outcomes were equally amusing. My daughter watched this kid carefully and declared that she wanted to bowl that way too. After a short discussion, I convinced her that his bowling form might not be the right model for imitation.

On another lane my wife noticed an entire family standing at the end of the lane, all smiling and looking down towards the pins, as though they were posing for a picture. They stood there for an eternity and we couldn't figure out what they were doing. Finally my wife noticed a bowling ball, most of the way down the lane, literally inching towards the pins. The family member standing in the front? A small two year-old boy.

His ball traveled down the lane at a nearly imperceptable, but steady, pace. It finally reached the pins, tiredly leaned against the nearest one, and stopped there. The pin didn't budge. Monty Burns couldn't have bowled more poorly.

Of course my family sucked at bowling too. We put the kiddie bumper-guards down that prevent gutter balls and my daughter utilized them with every single ball. Had we not used them, she would have scored 0 points 4 games in a row, which is remarkable in itself. Her balls would lazily bounce back and forth across the lane, more like a slow-motion pinball or pachinko game than bowling. She'd watch the balls make their way about halfway down the lane, then get bored and come back to her seat, rating each effort with an unfathomable algorithm, yielding either a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. She seemed to enjoy it though.

I'd mock myself, but easy targets like that are beneath me.

On a final note, the top money earner for this Professional Bowlers tour is this man:



Mock mock mock!

Recently I've been getting a lot of those automated telemarketing calls. These frustrate the crap out of me. Not only is it a big waste of my time, but I can't even play my little telemarketer games with them. I can't pretend to be mentally handicapped, or hard of hearing, or just an asshole (yes, I know the asshole part isn't really pretend).

These automated calls never offer the choices that I'd like to hear, like

"Press 1 to have your number added to our Do Not Call list" or
"Press 2 to send a plague of locusts to this office building" or
"Press 3 to mercifully end your life"

Generally I just hang up and fume. I shake my tiny programmer fist at the phone and wish for the good old days when human telemarketers would suffer my humor/wrath.

Lucky for me, one just called! Sadly, this telemarketer quickly realized this was not going to be a profitable phone call for her, so it ended soon.

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring

Me: Hello?
TM: Hi, how are you doing today, sir?
Me: Um, I'm ok, but I think I'm about to get worse.
TM: Ha, well, my name is Lisa and I'm calling from Embassy Suites in Lake Tahoe about a new...
Me: I was right!!
TM: Oh, well, have a good night sir.
Me: You too, Lisa.

These people are on to me.

I'd have to say that the top three searches that reach this blog are some variants of:

1) cheerleaders no panties
2) "www.suckme.com"
3) "Barrington Hall"

The people doing the first two searches don't stick around long. As it turns out, I am not one of the leading Internet experts on either inappropriately attired cheerleaders or desperate URLs. I do, however, have a few things (at least 4) to say about Barrington Hall. So, here's Part 4 of my year at Barrington Hall. You may wish to read the first, second, and third posts, written last 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. Comedy was primarily supplied by a wacky set of supporting characters and dangerous meals. Today this would be a short-lived series on Fox.

Ok.

Barrington Hall was best known both for its virtually anarchist politics and its parties, with the former leading to the betterment of the latter and the latter resulting in forgetting about the former. It was a defiant place that inspired musicians and enraged neighbors. It was Burning Man before there was a Burning Man.

It was a place radical enough that in 1974 when the Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapped Patty Hearst in Berkeley and sought a place to hide out, they briefly utilized Barrington Hall. (Although this rumor is unsubstantiated, it was widely acknowledged by many longtime Barringtonians.) It also was a place where heroin usage resulted in overdoses and party-goers frying on acid tried to fly off the roof.

When the fire department inspected the building and declared that, structurally, it bordered on being a fire hazard and could burn to the ground in six minutes, the residents of the building ordered thousands of matchbooks printed with the phrase "6 Minute Burn Time". This was not a community that took authority seriously.

So, what was a party like at Barrington Hall?

A few times a year Barrington would host a Wine Dinner. These were epic parties that would start with a special, yet ultimately forgettable, dinner and would feature music by local bands (Primus played once). The most distinctive aspect of the Wine Dinner, however, was the punch.

"Punch?" you say, "Was it spiked with booze?"

Spiked? Yes. Booze? No.

The Wine Dinner punch was spiked with LSD. This was a well-known fact to 95% of the party-goers and soon became apparent to most of the other thirsty guests. Once the punch kicked in, and people started peaking, the party had officially started. Note that since acid is a drug that typically lasts around eight hours, these parties were more of an ultra-marathon than some wussy sprint. Thus there was plenty of time for festivities like:

1) Stuffing pets down your pants. One Barrington couple kept illegal ferrets in their room. More than once these animals were placed into people's pants. I suppose this is the next logical step after gerbilling.

2) Trying to fly off the roof. This only happened once during my tenure, but apparently the guy survived with only minor injuries. It's a four-story building. From this we are forced to conclude that people who are frying on acid can almost fly. Four stories! Not bad, eh?

3) Seeing primordial darkness. This dude was really tripping.

As it turns out, people on acid are entertaining! This reminds me of a story that a friend once told me about her high school. This gal, Heather, went to a hoity-toity high school in a rich enclave here in the Bay Area called Blackhawk. As part of the graduation requirements, the senior class would take a camping trip together. Part of the trip required spending 24 hours in complete isolation. They'd send each person to a different part of the woods, equipped with minimal food, a journal, and a pen. The idea was to do some serious contemplative introspection and keep a journal of your thoughts. Each person was also given a loud whistle, which was only to be used in the case of a medical emergency.

Heather's friend, Ted, thought that this exercise was going to be a bore, so he brought along a bunch of acid. Well, no one else wanted to take the acid, so Ted popped all 10 hits himself. Shortly into the 24 hours of isolation, his brain was frying and the hallucinogenic thoughts started flowing. Soon Ted, using neuron pathways that had never been explored, discovered the solution to the world's problems. Hunger, poverty, war, they were all going to be ended by his solution. He had discovered it.

Realizing that his mental state prevented him from holding thoughts very long, Ted promptly turned to his journal to document his world-changing discovery, only to discover that his pen didn't work. This was horrible. This incredible breakthrough for humanity was slowly slipping through his drug-addled brain.

So, Ted blew his whistle. He blew it for another pen. He blew it for humankind.

Ted was promptly busted and never did remember what he had "discovered" that day. From then on, he was known as Ten Hit Ted.

Anyway, back to Barrington.

What was I typically doing during the Wine Dinners? Well, the idea of taking a powerful hallucinogenic drug, in a house full of strangers, where every inch of wall was covered with bizarre murals, was a bit intimidating to me. Instead, I usually spent these hours puking. You know that drinking mnemonic, "Beer then liquor, never sicker!" ? Well, I coined my own handy phrase that year. "Booze then pot, throw up a lot!" I'm thinking about getting t-shirts printed.

I mean, it was a Wine Dinner, I had to do something illegal. I think it was a house rule. So, I'd drink some wine coolers (I was fairly new to this drinking thing) and then smoke some pot, and then I'd walk into walls, vomit explosively, pray for death, etc.

During one of the Wine Dinners, I imbibed my usual cocktail o' nausea and then went to hang out in my friend Trisha's room. When I, unsurprisingly, barfed all over her bed, she was none too pleased. I spent the rest of the evening washing her bedding. Now THAT, my friends, is a rockin' party. FREEBIRD!!

I must admit, however, that not every Barrington social occasion was an orgy of drugs and decadence. For example, there is an excellent science museum here in San Francisco called the Exploritorium. One of the exhibits there is the Tactile Dome, which is a set of rooms that you explore in total darkness. You crawl through them, using all your senses except sight to navigate through the various features, such as a room filled with dried beans.

The Barringtonians, being scientists at heart, would plan an annual trip to the Tactile Dome. Of course when they did it, they'd get high on something beforehand, and then crawl through the exhibit completely naked. My suitemate, Kim, reported picking beans out of her various orifices for hours afterwards. It was, I'm sure, an educational experience (at least for the beans).

That's all for now. Next stop on the Barrington tour will be "The End".

The wait is over. I have posted a lovely image of myself in my profile. A collective sigh from the blogosphere is heard.

Now, I know that this is just a computer drawing and not a real photograph of me, but it's a pretty good likeness. Darn near spittin' image with the following exceptions:

1) My lips aren't usually that highschool-girl's-lipstick shade of pink, although they are just as kissable (not that I condone the kissing of highschool girls! As a future father of one, I do NOT).

2) My eyes are darker and are less Keane-creepy.

3) I don't always clutch a cup of coffee to my face. Pretty often though. I'm doing it now. Kind of burny.

Aside from that, it does look a lot like me. In real life I really do have my name ominously hovering near my head. It prevents me from pulling some sort of Ed Greer stunt.

In case you're interested, I made this "portrait" here. I'm one of the least artistically inclined people you'll ever meet, so it's safe to say that this is the best likeness of myself that I've ever crafted. I'm kind of a stick-figure type of artist. Not the funny and detailed stick figures though, just the crappy ones.

Now, if I can just rip my lips away from the computer screen, perhaps I'll get some work done today. So....darn.........kissable.....................

When it comes to climbing the corporate ladder, I have no ambition whatsoever. I don't care about titles, getting a promotion, or commanding a division of minions. I believe Darwinism normally weeds out people like me, but sometimes, like the platypus, we sneak through an evolutionary backdoor.

My lack of ambition started at an early age. While my friends had dreams of becoming President, or astronauts, or giant robots, I aspired to being a cab driver. Of course, because I had no ambition, I never really followed through on that plan. Like the failed actors who end up waiting tables, I'm a stereotype. Just another computer programmer, struggling to make ends meet, while his dreams of driving a cab go unachieved.

For those of you who think that this type of ambition-less life is the road to misery, I give you the story of Ed Greer. I read this story in the newspaper nearly 20 years ago and it spoke to me. I clipped it out and saved it for years, but I can no longer find it. So, I shall do my best to document it here from memory because it is one of my favorite stories.

Ed Greer was an electronics engineer at Hughes Aircraft back in the 1970s. He was happily married, enjoyed his job, and was pretty pleased with his life overall. After a few years, however, perhaps due to financial needs, or maybe because of ambition, he accepted a promotion to management. His job changed from being one where he built electronics, to one where he managed people who built electronics.

This promotion sucked all the joy out of his job. He hated being a manager and dreaded going to work each day. He longed for the days of being an engineer but felt trapped in his new role. This was a life he no longer enjoyed.

One day, in 1981, a co-worker spotted Ed at the airport and said hello to him. Ed seemed nervous but said one thing to him. He said, "Don't ever get too good at something you hate. They'll make you do it for the rest of your life."

Ed then walked away and completely disappeared from his life. Poof, like Kaiser Sose, he was gone.

His wife had no idea where he had gone. His co-workers at Hughes never heard from him. His father placed a large reward for any information that would help find Ed, but it was all to no avail. No one heard from Ed again.

Years passed and Ed became a legend at Hughes. Annually, some old co-workers would celebrate Ed Greer Day on the anniversary of his disappearance. They'd photocopy pictures of Ed, make masks out of them, and have cake. They envisioned him on a beach, on some tropical island, everyday celebrating his escape from the drudgery of a career he hated.

As it turns out, they weren't too far off.

Ed had made his way to Florida and started over. He earned money by repairing boats and enjoyed living a very simple life. He relished this new existence and lived like this for a while.

Eventually he yearned to do something a little more technical, so he pretended to own a company and placed an ad in the paper looking to hire electronics engineers. Among the resumes that he received, he saved one. Ed then applied for engineering jobs using the name and identity on that resume. He soon found a job with Exxon and moved to Texas to start anew again.

Ed was an engineer once more. He met a new woman and settled down in Texas. He had managed to recreate his life back the way he wanted it. Ed happily continued like this until one day the IRS noticed that two people, with the same name and the same Social Security number, were getting paid in two different states. This bit of accounting detective work eventually brought Ed's new life to a crashing halt.

Confronted with the evidence of his false identity, Ed was forced to admit who he was. His new girlfriend was stunned. His father was both shocked and relieved. His wife was furious.

Ed had little to say to the media when this story broke. He acknowledged that he had angered some people and he had some apologies to make.

That's all I've know of the sad tale of Ed Greer. I don't know where he ended up or whether he regretted his disappearance. All I know is that when I reflect upon this story, I don't feel so bad about my decision to ignore the corporate ladder.

Work is kind of sucking up my free time this week, so I'll make this snappy.

First off, Valentine's Day sucked the big wazoo. It started off with my daughter in tears and my wife mad at me. But, I turned on the ol' Mike charm and resurrected their love with a flurry of apologies, stammering, and some roses. Me smooooooooooth. The day ended with my wife and I sitting in the living room together, both working on our laptops. It is, as one of my coworkers put it, intimacy in the 21st century.

One of my acquaintances had a slightly less crappy, but slightly more amusing Valentine's Day. Each year, on Valentine's Eve, his wife lays out gifts for him and their kids on the kitchen table. Thus, when they all come down for breakfast, Valentine's Day prezzies sit in front of everyone's chair, except the wife's. It is a conspicuous absence and the cause of annual shame for my friend, who tends to react to Valentine's Day on the day itself, and not in advance.

This year the wife took pity on herself/him and, in an effort to not make her husband look like an insensitive clod in front of his children, placed a teddy bear in front of her own plate. It was a gift he had given her years before. The teddy bear apparently sings some cheesy song about love when a button is pressed ("L is for the way you LOOK at me....O is no ORDINARY blah blah blah").

The family assembled at the table and admired the gifts. My friend's son leaned over and pressed the song button and the bear merely sputtered out the first measure of the song, in a robot-winding-down-voice, a victim of years-old batteries.

My friend couldn't help but laugh out loud. The symbolism was appropriately ignored.

On one final note, I found a new use for my kid. Today, I'm sore all over from doing some strength exercises. I get sore from this kind of crap because I do these exercises so infrequently. It's my body's own personal method of reminding me that I'm a programmer and not a construction worker. Mostly my butt gets sore. That's my body's own personal sense of humor.

Anyway, I was complaining to my daughter about my sore butt, (because all my conversations with her that I document must implicate me as an inappropriate parent,) and my daughter asked me if I'd like her to walk on my butt. You know, it kind of sounded like it might help. So I plopped onto my stomach and she walked around on my ass. And it helped!

This is just the type of career that will not get outsourced to India, so I'm going to encourage her to continue in this endeavor.

You know those moments where the hair stands up on the back of your neck, when you say, "Wow!" and you remember why we were all put on this earth? That's what Google's been doing for me.

First off, have you seen Google Maps? Damn, it is SLICK! The maps are beautiful, and you can scroll around on the map, just by dragging your mouse. It gave me one of those Google Moments. They seem to do things with a browser that no one else does. Afterwards, I felt like doing things with my browser too.

My favorite Google Moment recently was when I used it as a spell checker the other day. Often, when I can't decide how to spell a word, I'll type it in my Google search box, and see if Google corrects my spelling with one of those "Did you mean...?" messages. I was trying to decide if I should spell "dickwad" with a space in it or not. I think we've all been there. I typed "dick wad" into Google and got this reply.

Why, yes, I DID mean dickwad. Google, you've read my mind again.

Google, baby, I know there are a lot of users out there, but...crap, this is hard.

Google, sweetie, will you be my valentine? <3 <3 <3

Here's the conclusion I've come to. If your hobby requires plunging your crotch into ice cold water afterwards, then this is a sign that you have chosen a bad hobby.

As I've mentioned many times before, I seem to have become afflicted with some sort of marathoning disease. There's really no good reason for it. I don't enjoy running, nor do I think that running marathons is really good for the human body. Moderate and rational amounts of cardio exercise are good for the body, but running a marathon is overkill, causing more harm to the joints and other tender bits than good.

Regardless, it's what I do. And the Boston Marathon is 9 weeks away, which means that today was my first long training run. After two-plus joint-pounding hours of running, I was done. What's my reward? Is it ice-cream? A massage? Sweet sweet lovin'? No! It's an ice-bath!

An ice-bath, as you may recall, is where you fill the bathtub with c-c-c-cold water, dump in a big pile of ice, and then submerge the lower half of your body into this delightfully refreshing torture tub. It's a horrible horrible way to spend 15 minutes of your life, but there's really no more effective way to prevent soreness and inflamation.

What other hobby requires an ice bath? I'm hard pressed to think of any others. Ok, maybe strip-club patron. I think it's safe to say that attending a strip club has certain joys that running for 2 hours does not. Like naked breasts in the face, for one.

Anyway, I filled up the tub and my penis immediately shriveled up inside itself in some sort of Escher-inspired self-defense maneuver. As it turns out, the penis doesn't really have a great number of defensive mechanisms at its disposal. I can think of three, tops:

1) The Puffer Fish - This is where the penis inflates itself to its mightiest size, attempting to intimidate foes through sheer volume. Note that this technique only works for some men.

2) The Cannon - This technique involves launching a powerful projectile, composed of roughly one teaspoon of hot salty fluid. Some people fear this fluid, others covet it.

3) The Turtle - You get the idea.

So, after my penis adopted its turtle stance, I then wrestled my lower body into the ice water, and the entire bottom half of my body promptly turned into a giant goose pimple. I was half-man, half-pimple, with no visible penis. If I was forced to pick one word to describe myself at that point, I think I'd choose "sexy". Hmmmm, ladies?

The Boston Marathon is on April 18th. On April 19th, I pick a new hobby

I was recently sent a survey on Ethics in Blogging. The survey didn't really seem very applicable to this type of blog, but it did get me thinking about the content that I write and the people that read it. Along those lines,I have a question for you folks at the end of this post.

All my life I've been very conscious of the Mike that I present. Group A gets to see Mike A, and Group B gets to see Mike B. In reality there probably hasn't been that great of an observable difference between Mike A and Mike B, but in my mind there was always an important distinction. These days, now that I'm a husband, father, and marginally respectable member of society, there aren't very many distinct versions of me. They're all kind of rolled up into one big bland Mike casserole now. It's palatable, if you're into casseroles.

This blog, however, is a thing that I'm hesitant to share. I told my wife about it, and I've got a couple of good friends who read it, but that's it. Although I'm careful to not write anything that would cause great distress if it was read by the wrong people (and believe me, there are some people in my life who could fill a month of blog posts), I can't say that I'd be pleased if EVERYONE in my life started to read this. Although I'm loath to classify this blog as a secret, I am NOT interested in advertising its presence to the majority of people in my life.

I've tried a few times in my life to keep a diary. I never wrote more than a few entries without becoming disgusted with it. The entries always seemed so forced and I had a hard time writing something that was 100% just for me. I wrestled with the concept of audience with every sentence I wrote.

Blogging freed me from that fight. The idea of writing for myself AND anonymous strangers was just about perfect. I think I'm more comfortable with comedy, self-analysis, and life-documentation that has an audience, than I am with just writing for myself. All the other writing/entertainment I absorb in my life has an audience, so it just seems more natural to write knowing that someone is probably reading this. Hello!

So, here's my question for all of you out there who also write blogs. Who is your audience? Is your blog truly for yourself? Do you share it with your family? Friends? Coworkers?

I'm curious to know.

Took the day off of work today to look after the kidlet, whose school was inexplicably closed for....Lunar New Year!

What's Lunar New Year you ask? Damn fine question. I asked Google the very same thing and it is apparently another way of saying Chinese New Year. Why is the San Francisco Unified School District closing their schools for Chinese New Year you ask? That is an even better question! When I posed this very question to a SFUSD official, he pointed behind me and said, "LOOK, A ROOSTER!".

Seriously though, the real reason that they were closed on Chinese New Year is somehow related to the 12:08 on alarm clocks. Follow the money.

I ended up spending the majority of the day with the kid at the excellent Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley. I credit this facility with my current career. They taught me so much about computer programming in about 6 weeks of summer school, that I didn't learn another concept from age 14 to age 19. So, I'm delighted to bring my child there. She's a cute little geek and enjoys the various exhibits, especially those with lots of buttons.

The exhibit she was anxious to see, however, was their detective exhibit. In this exhibit the visitors are presented with a mystery and get to use various forensic tools to try and deduce who committed the crime. It's kind of like CSI, except with fewer dead hookers and no video clips of bullets shredding through internal organs. Maybe it's just me, but the absence of dead hookers left the exhibit lacking a certain realism.

Two mysteries were presented: the Missing Toy Boat Mystery (for smaller kids) and the Missing Money Mystery (for older chitlins). We solved the Toy Boat mystery by analyzing fingerprints, examing handwriting, and some pretend suspect-beating. My daughter then begged me to do the more advanced mystery with her. This plotline featured angst-ridden relationships, missing people, and blood-covered surfaces. All this was both baffling and frightening to my daughter. I tried to keep things upbeat though.

"Sweetie, looks like he was drugged AND THEN drowned. Ho ho ho."

We did as good a job of solving that mystery as I did of keeping it light-hearted. Just once I'd like to spend a day off with my daughter where I don't scare the crap out of her. I guess I'm just old-fashioned that way.

The other excellent bit of parenting I did was when I grabbed my wife's lunch out of the fridge instead of my daughter's. My daughter was not amused to bite into a hot Louisiana sausage link instead of her sickly sweet chicken apple sausage. Oh, the fiery burn. Ho ho ho.

I am, still, available for babysitting gigs. Call me.

And so concludes the first great IAPTGUAAT Reader Quiz. It went only slightly better than my first contest, back in June.

Beloved reader Nomax pretty much came to the same conclusion that I came to many years ago. The 12:08 time is the time that displays the most number of LEDs on a digital alarm clock without repeating any numbers. I guess this really shows off the clocks' dazzling abilities to...well...tell time. Perhaps fewer clocks were sold when they displayed a time of 1:11. Those clocks clearly sucked.

(I actually spent a few minutes just now, perusing through an online Bible lookup, to see if any Bible book had a 12:08 passage that was relevant to alarm clocks. The best I could come up with was from the book of Ezekiel. Passage 12:08 says:

In the morning the word of the LORD came to me:

Sort of an incomplete thought, but it does have the word "morning" in it. That's kind of alarm clock related. I must admit that I only skimmed the rest of Ezekiel, but it seemed to be about banning gay marriage and private Social Security accounts. Who knew?)

Nomax, it should be known, is excellent at thinking through these types of puzzles. During our last poker night, which he regularly attends, someone made up a new poker game and named it "Rusty Trombone". This phrase, along with Dirty Sanchez and Cleveland Steamer, are all references to sexual acts that I have never performed. Were it not for Jon Stewart's predilection for bandying these terms about, I probably would have happily never heard of these things.

So, that evening, those poker game attendees who do not scrupulously google every phrase that comes out of Jon Stewart's mouth were left wondering what a Rusty Trombone was. Nomax, however, thought about it for several seconds and correctly deduced what this sexual act entails.

His brain is a twisted one.

Speaking of twisted brains, one final thought for the evening. The last couple of days I've had to drive into the office for various meetings. This always annoys the hell out of me, because I hate people. Not you guys, but real people. These meetings featured a couple of high-level executives speaking, and it was important to put butts in the seats. As it turns out, executives hate lecturing to butt-less seats.

I escaped the first meeting without actually having to speak to anyone, but the second meeting was a bit more of a social affair. At one point I found myself actually trying to make small talk with one of our vice presidents. All my internal filters were running at full-speed, trying to prevent me from saying anything stupid. This particular executive is an attractive woman who recently got married to someone who is exceedingly well-trained in the art of killing. My brain racked itself searching for a humorous, yet inoffensive, way to express something along the lines of "So, I guess I won't be hitting on you anymore." Wisely, I stood there mutely instead.

Afterwards, I was chatting with one of my co-workers who told me that he went through the exact same internal struggle and also ended up saying nothing. He summed up things rather succinctly when he said, "I just wish I could have told her that I'm not normally a quiet person. I just only have rude things to say."

Amen.

Back around 20 years ago, my friend, Clint Stewart, noticed that whenever he saw an advertisement for a digital alarm clock, it almost always showed the time 12:08. We'd see this in catalogs, newspaper advertisements and often on the clocks themselves. I recall buying a digital alarm clock in college and having to peel off the "12:08" sticker that had been applied to it, presumably so that the customer would understand that the clock was indeed capable of displaying some sort of time.

This was quite a mystery for us. Why 12:08? Was it a biblical reference? A warning? An effort by the powerful alarm-clock lobby to cause confusion across the land?

These days 12:08 seems to have fallen out of fashion. A quick perusal on the web shows all sorts of times, mostly in the 12:3x family (12:34 and 12:38 are popular choices). Although the Sony's and the Casio's of the world have forgotten about 12:08, I have not.

So, I ask you all, why 12:08? Why did this time so completely dominate the digital clock advertising landscape 20 years ago? I have my theory, but I'd like to hear yours, oh dear reader(s).

I vividly recall from when I was a child, that the best thing about school was the absence of it. Recess was a slice of heaven, weekends were a much larger helping of heaven, and summer vacation was a really huge, metaphor-busting, serving of heaven. That was when I was a kid. Now that I'm a parent, with a job, and my kid is the one with summer vacation, it kind of sucks the ol' ass, as they say.

This coming June, ready or not, the San Francisco Unified School District school year will end. Many thousands of kids across this fine city will be in need of life-enriching-activities/beatings. As the parent of a kindergartner who can't seem to break into the elite sweatshop cliques, there really aren't very many options. I believe our realistic choices are:

1) Have me or my wife quit our job for the summer. This is what we in Bay Area refer to as grocery-limiting.
2) TVpalooza 2005! Whooooo!
3) Have my wife take her to her dot-com office. My daughter could spend her days playing foosball in the breakroom, or perhaps creating new relevancy algorithms for web page searches. We know she sucks at the former, but the latter is unproven territory.
4) Camp.

I never went to camp as a kid, but I'm pretty sure it was all filled with dopey activities, song-singing, and squalid accomodations. Obviously I'm not an expert on the subject, but I think the various snippets of Meatballs that I've seen lend me some credibility here. I ooze ethos.

These days, at least here in San Francisco, kids camps are somewhat different. This morning, the wife, kid, and I visited a Camp Fair, designed to educate us about all our camp options this summer. They are many and varied. Each camp set up a table with some combination of brochures, candy, bunnies (both of the rabbit and booth variety), and TV. There were the day camps, which often specialized in a particular field like Shakespearean drama, and the more traditional 2-weeks-in-the-boonies camps, which featured rustic accomodations and activities including swimming, archery, and virginity-losing. We also saw booths advertising insanely expensive camps where you could send your kid to the Caribbean for weeks of scuba-diving, swimming with dolphins, and, presumably, burning $100 bills.

It was a bit overwhelming, but my wife bravely went from booth to booth, gamely gathering brochures, information, and hope for a tragedy-free summer. My daughter and I hunkered down in front of the table with bunnies (rabbit kind) and entertained ourselves there. She managed to surprise the bunnies by being more timid than them. Meanwhile, I chatted up some nearby mother. Working at home, and being all married and crap, doesn't give me many opportunities to date, so I took this rare opportunity to dazzle this female stranger with my conversational skills. Her son was there and was also smitten with the bunnies (rabbit kind). Naturally, conversation turned to the kids.

Lady: So, where does your daughter go to school?
Me: She goes to *name of decent San Francisco public school*. Where does your son go?
Lady: He goes to Nuevo in Hillsborough

Hillsborough is an absurdly affluent city here in the Bay Area. Nuevo is a very well-known and super nice school for gifted kids. I gave the woman a quick look up and down and it seemed like she might be well-off.

Me: Oh, I hear that place is a dump. (staring her down)
Lady: (meeting my stare and holding it for one second longer than was comfortable for me) Yes, yes it is.

Well, well, well, score one for the rich lady! She was totally unflustered by my comment. Conversation segued to the camps we had seen at the fair.

Me: I don't think my daughter is ready for one of these overnight camps.
Lady: My son isn't either. We saw a good performing arts day camp here though.
Me: Oh, the Shakespeare one?
Lady: No, that's for older kids. I think the kid has to be 7.
Me: Of course. Besides, we're much more interested in Chaucer camp.
Lady: Really?! (turning towards me, eyes wildly wondering if she's been out-snobbed)
Me: No! There's no Chaucer camp.
Lady: (nervous laughter). Oh, haha, we'll be right back.

She grabbed her kid and hustled away. Good bye, rich lady. I'll have to modify my approach if I'm going to land a sugar mistress. Next time, maybe less mocking and more groveling. Chicks dig the grovel.

But, camp! We found a few. My daughter can only hope for TVPalooza 2006

Five year-olds ask weird questions. One day it's, "Daddy, can I have a bra?" and the next day it's, "Daddy, what's it like in jail?" I don't know which one spooks me more, the fact that she wants to wear a bra already, or the fact that she's really REALLY curious about jail.

My daughter asked me a barrage of questions last night about jail. How big are the cells? How much do you get to eat? What EXACTLY is a cell furnished with?

The number and detail of her questions was a bit disconcerting. Was she worried that she'll be in jail soon? Or did she fear that I was destined for the slammer? (little chance of that, it's mostly unproveable stuff). Things became slightly clearer when I explained that kids don't usually get sent to jail, even when they break the law. Typically kids get sent to Juvenile Hall. Now THIS intrigued her even more. Sadly/thankfully I know even less about Juvenile Hall than I do about real jail. I think that's because there are fewer flicks about chained women in Juvie heat.

Keep in my mind that my daughter cries and howls with regret when she breaks the smallest of rules. I didn't really want her thinking that she'd be put in the hoosegow the next time she forgot to flush the toilet. So, I walked a careful line, mindful of scaring her too much, yet trying to impress her that some offenses require bigger punishments than losing TV privileges.

I managed to end the conversation by promising to take her on a tour of Alcatraz. You know how kids are. They love the prisons

During my 15 years of car ownership I never once felt compelled to put a bumper sticker on my car. It's not that I'm above the concept of affixing pithy stickers to my vehicle, it's just that I don't have much faith that what strikes me as amusing right now, will still strike me as amusing years from now. Maybe a "My Nose is Blogging this!" bumper sticker will tickle my funnybone today, but next year I'll probably look at it and realize that I am a dork.

This is the same logic that prohibits me from getting a tattoo. I like the concept of using your body for art, but I'll bet that the 80 year-old Mike won't appreciate the humor of looking at his penis and seeing "http://www.suckme.com" on it. The 36-year old Mike thinks that's a freakin' riot though.

Note that this fear of evolving tastes is an odd attribute in a man who hasn't changed his hairstyle since he learned to grasp a comb.

But if you absolutely made me put a bumper sticker on my car, if you put a gun to my head, or threatened to make me use dial-up again, I think I'd choose the bumper sticker that I occasionally seen on an old 1970's era Chevy pickup truck here in my neighborhood. On a plain white background, in green letters, it clearly informs:



That's it. That's my favorite one. I'd be so damn amused to drive around in my faux-yuppie sedan, filled with sippy cups and child seats, sporting a bumper sticker that so plainly declared my requirements for picking up hitchhikers.

I believe that would complete the rich tapestry of inappropriateness that I have been weaving with the days of my life.