I was discussing an urgent issue on the phone with one of my co-workers, Ralph, earlier this week when we realized we needed some information from Joe, another co-worker.

I instant-messaged Joe and he typed the following back, verrrry slowly, "hurt hand, typing with one hand."

So, we conferenced Joe into our phone call and asked him what happened to his hand.

"Well, I was microwaving a mug of tea, and when I reached in to get the mug, it was incredibly hot. I burned the crap out of my hand," he answered.

I was floored. It was one of those moments where you suddenly realize that you are not alone in the world.

"Oh my god!" I sputtered, "I thought our mugs were the only ones that did that. We used to have a bunch of free mugs from various employers and other freebie giveaways, and one day my wife trashed them all and replaced them with ones she bought from Target, and those Target mugs got SUPERHEATED in the microwave."

"Exactly! They'd get hotter than the water!" Joe agreed

"Hey, our new mugs do the same thing," added Ralph, "It's impossible to get the water hot enough in these things."

"Right. You get tepid water in an unbelievably hot mug. I complained about these mugs to my wife CONSTANTLY. The old mugs worked so well! I still can't believe she replaced them" I said.

"Why did she get rid of the old mugs?" Joe asked.

"Oh, man, that is a great question. One day she just decided they weren't nice enough." I answered, shaking my head in disbelief.

"Not nice enough?" Joe asked, laughing. "They were too 'student' for her? What's next, man? Is she going to make you get rid of your futon?"

"And then my brick and board bookcases! Aaaaaaaah!" I screamed.

We eventually moved on to topics that we actually get paid to discuss, but I'm still stunned by the fact that these unmicrowaveable mugs are apparently commonplace. I mean, I understand that manufacturing is dictated by economic forces, and that my mugs are probably being made by small Chinese children who get fed undersized lead pellets for lunch, but it seems like all mugs should be able to pass some basic tests:

1. They should have handles - CHECK!
2. They should hold liquid without leaking - CHECK!
3. They should be able to undergo a full minute of microwaving without going nuclear - FAILED!

What the hell! How hard is this? Did it really not occur to the manufacturers of these mugs that I might want to heat some liquid in them? Coffee gets cold. Tea needs to be heated. This is pretty common crap.

A pox on crappy mug manufacturers, Target, and all other crappy mug resellers. Pox!

Last month I announced unretirement from marathoning. That announcement was probably a bit more dramatic than it needed to be. I'm kind of a drama king that way.

You see, it's not like I've just been sitting on my ass for my years of retirement. I still maintained my three-times-a-week running schedule and I ran something close to a half marathon practically every Saturday morning. So, even though running the 2nd 13.1 miles of a marathon is a lot harder than running the first 13.1, I was prepared to kick off my unretirement. I was going to start adding some miles to my weekly runs and start doing some cross training on my off days.

I was all set. I've been through this drill before. I was ready to commence Plan Unretirement!

On my marks...

Getting set....

Go!

*crickets chirping*

and... GO!

*sound of one hand clapping*

There was not so much going, as it turned out. As soon as I made my big announcement, then I skipped a run or two due to a rare case of being under the weather. Then, it was really rainy, and although I will run in the rain, it seemed unwise to do while coming off a cold. Then, there were some scheduling conflicts, and another bout with undertheweatherness.

Ugh. Instead of increasing my training, I was running less than usual. It wasn't panic-time, because my marathon isn't until October, but it definitely wasn't time to start hanging out on couch of the bon bons either.

So, last week I vowed to do all 3 runs. I vowed it! And, sure enough, the weather report predicted rain on all three of those days, punishing me for my hubris. I got in a solid run in the rain on Tuesday at lunch, a rainy speed workout on Thursday at lunch, and when I got up on Sunday morning for a 12-miler, it was, of course, dumping rain with howling wind. Fun.

I dragged my sorry ass out to my favorite place to run (Crystal Springs reservoir) and stretched in the rain. As I strode over to the start line, I saw another runner come in and end his run.

"How was it out there?" I asked cautiously, not sure I wanted to hear the answer.

"Well, it's pretty wet, and the wind really kicks up at the two ends of the trail, but it's ok."

Hmmmph. I was unconvinced, but standing in the rain isn't any better than running in the rain, so I launched out for my 12-miler, and it wasn't the worst thing in the world, I guess. It was better than cancer. I squeezed water out of my shirt every mile or so as I ran, and I got chafed nipples, but I made it. I limped back to my car, thoroughly water-logged.

Another runner sat in his car in the next parking spot. He rolled down his window.

"Hey, how was it out there?" he asked, clearly looking for a reason to drive back home.

"Oh, it was wet. Wet and blowy. Not too windy in the middle of the run though."

Ah, the grand circle of dejected acceptance. I got to go home and he got to start his misery.

Training has officially begun. Again.

Pop psychologists will blabber on about how it's important for us to love ourselves. Sadly, this is rarely a masturbatory call to arms, but rather a vague request for us to arbitrarily declare that we are the kind of people that we like.

What does that mean though?

A lot of people think it means liking how you look. I'm supposed to look in the mirror and spout affirmations about how handsome I am, or, better yet, pass right by the mirror, just KNOWING that my ass looks fabulous in this ratty terrycloth bathrobe. However, the people who recite these mantras about positive body image are the same people who would tell us not to judge others by their looks. So, it's superficial and objectifying to admire someone else's boobs but mandatory and enlightening to celebrate the acne on my forehead?

Screw those don't-judge-a-book-by-its-cover people. $10 says they're paralyzed by a complete lack of data each time they enter a library.

So, is it my personality that I'm supposed to gush over instead? Have these self-esteemizoids met me? I'm kind of a dick. I'm not Dick Cheney dickish, but I'm pretty sure my personality is not the kind that you'd do cartwheels over.

After much contemplation, I think I've determined what it is that we need to make peace with. It's not our body, personality, religion, financial status, or moral code. I mean, sure, I could sit here and ponder whether my morality is up to snuff, but GEEZ, what a drag. It's Saturday night! It's bad enough that I'm blogging, but there's no need to be a complete killjoy and spend my evening contemplating my worthiness/less as a human.

Instead, I'd like to think about another aspect of my identity: my name.

Hi, my name is Mike.

Technically my name is Michael, but names are malleable enough that most of us get the opportunity to tweak them without jumping through any legal hoops. I've been Mike for my entire adult life, but it's not because I really prefer Mike over Michael. I just always raised one internal eyebrow each time I met someone who insisted on being called their full name. I didn't want to be one of those "No, my name isn't Mike, it's Michael!" kind of people. Too formal. Too uptight. So, Mike it is.

The main problem with the name Mike is that it is so goddamn common. It was rare that I was the only Mike in any of my classes in school. In 8th-grade Spanish, we had two Mikes. The other guy got to be Miguel, but due to my slightly smaller size, I was Miguelito. Nice. I also recall one algebra class of 30 people where we had 5 Mikes. Ugh.

Even today I can be on a teleconference with a single digit number of people, and we might have 3 Mikes on the line. We're everywhere! When my boss says, "Hey Mike" half the team ducks and hides under their desk. So much for names being a vaguely unique identifier.

Michael has been the most popular boy's name in this country starting in the 1960s and running through the end of the century. Its reign as the #1 name is unprecedented in modern history. There are so many of us that it's hard for any one famous Michael to dominate the perception of the name. The very commonness of Michael has stripped it of the often colorful associations that get attached to more unique names like the Adolphs, Osamas, and Voldemorts of the world. We're all just Michaels, from Mr. Jackson, to Mr. Jordan, to Mr. Dukakis.

Its ubiquitousness also means it's a hard name to love. You can't love a name like Mike any more than you can choose beige as your favorite color. You might actually buy a beige couch or beige carpet, but you're never going to roll around on that carpet and marvel at the brilliance of the color. It's just beige. On the plus side though, Mikes rarely clash with your drapes.

In the 21 century, however, the name has fallen out of favor. Although this web site* lists it as the #2 name as recently as 2006, I find that hard to believe. I have not met a single kid in any of Daisy's classes, or among any of our friends' kids, who is named Mike. (Actually, there's one Michael, but he never goes by that name, and uses his middle name instead.) I perused the entire directory of Daisy's school and only found one or two Mikes out of hundreds of boys.

As a name species, we are on the brink of endangerment. (Save the Mike!) We are experiencing a Mikecide the likes of which have never been seen before. This is surely a time for reflection.

So, after all this, what do I think about my name? Do I like it? Do I have good name self-esteem?

Eh. I think I'd rather be called Zeke.

* Go play with that name website! The graphs are very entertaining. You can enter a name at the top, and see the graph of the popularity over time. Note that it can be a bit clunky entering the name sometimes.

Mostly in this blog I tell stories that are my own. Sometimes, however, I come across someone else's story that they refuse to commit to a blog of their own, so I'm forced to write it up myself

Earlier this month I wrote briefly about my friend Scott and the task he had been given. I'm going to tell the same story again, but include details that I learned after writing that initial post.

As I covered previously, Scott had been entrusted with what was described as a "sacred ritual". He was to, upon his father-in-law's death, enter the man's private storage buildings, disarm the various traps, gather and catalog the man's "collection", and then sell it so that the proceeds could be distributed among the man's four daughters. Scott was aware that the man was a security nut and a paranoid survivalist, but wasn't really sure what the collection consisted of.

Scott spoke with his father-in-law over the phone a few weeks ago, and the man reminded Scott of his duty. Scott acknowledged it and asked for instructions on how to get past the various security measures that had been alluded to. The man agreed, but said he was feeling too weak that day. He suggested that they speak again soon.

Scott's father-in-law died before they had another chance to speak.

So, Scott flew out to the compound in Idaho, unsure exactly of what he was supposed to gather and how he'd go about it. What he found was a pack-rat nightmare. His father-in-law had completely filled a 5000 square foot garage, floor to ceiling with boxes of survival gear and assorted nonsense. There was virtually no room to walk or maneuver. The collection sat in a distant corner of the building, in a series of attics only accessible through ladders and crawlspaces.

Scott made his first trip up the ladder and slammed his head against a low beam near the top. As he flailed to keep his balance, that's when his arm knocked against a hidden wire. Scott froze, fearing that this was one of the security devices that the man had warned him of. Nothing happened and Scott breathed a sigh of relief, beginning to believe that perhaps his father-in-law had been more bark than bite.

Then he heard a low hiss and instantly his lungs filled with tear gas. Scott fled back down the ladder, through the box labyrinth and out into the cold Idaho winter, coughing all the while.

He let the building air out for the next 12 hours. That was day one. He spent time instead gathering up the various weapons that his father-in-law had stashed in the main house. He found that there was always at least one gun within easy reach of each place where the man had spent any time. There were guns under the couches, under the bed, in kitchen cabinets, etc. All guns were loaded, with the safety off, and often with the hammer cocked and ready.

Everywhere Scott went, he took with him a series of keys and access codes. Entering each area of the house, and the compound in general, required unlocking some security device. Often the access code to enter an area was different than the code to leave it. Forgetting any of these codes would result in the alarm system going off, which would be followed by a visit from the authorities.

One day two Scott reentered the garage. He became good at spotting the trip wires that led to the tear gas cannisters, that populated the most secure storage areas. The only other booby trap that he failed to spot was a piercing alarm attached to a motion detector that left Scott immobilized, hands pressed over his ears, waiting for the alarm to cease. When it failed to shut off, he eventually dismantled that alarm, along with all of its clones.

Let me note at this point that if I had to pick anyone in the world, that I personally know, to perform these types of feats, it would be Scott. He is the MacGyverest of all my acquaintances. He can program a computer, cook a meal, perform most any physical feat, restore a car, or fix virtually any type of mechanical system. Whenever I mention to Scott that I've called a repairman, or an exterminator, or a mechanic, he berates me for not fixing, killing, or lubing the problem myself.

Scott slowly began to gather and catalog the "collection". It was, as he expected, a large cache of weapons, optics, ammunition, explosives, and other high-end survival gear. Each box that he took from storage involved scooting through crawlspaces like an inchworm, going down the ladder, weaving through the narrow box labyrinth and then making his way around the outside of the garage on the icy ground to his car, praying that he didn't ever drop his boxes of explosives, tear gas, etc.

He eventually realized that he could reduce this "commute" if he could only get the massive steel garage door open. So, he spent a few hours moving boxes out of the way. In this cramped environment, doing that was like playing a massive version of the hand-held puzzle game where you try to put pieces of the puzzle in order by sliding pieces into the one open space. Finding space for each box was a chore. After he actually moved enough boxes to get to the door, he found that it was secured with a large lock for which he did not have the combination. Thankfully, a bolt cutter solved that problem, but the door still wouldn't open. He eventually discovered that his father-in-law had bolted the door to the frame of the garage in 16 different locations. So, Scott unscrewed each of the bolts, but the door STILL wouldn't open. After much head-scratching he finally found that his father-in-law had hidden three more bolts, covering them so that they would be invisible.

He eventually got the garage door open, but it took nearly the whole day.

By day four Scott had cleared out the vast majority of the "secret" areas. His final challenge was a safe that had been hidden in the corner of one of the attics. Of course Scott didn't have the combination to the safe, but he eventually found a metal grinder amidst the man's tools. So, he hunkered down with the grinder, drilling his way to the final treasure, sparks flying everywhere.

Scott paused for a moment, contemplating what was inside the safe and whether it would be affected by the flurry of sparks caused by metal grinder. He considered perhaps that it might be filled with explosives, which are definitely not spark-friendly. So, he put the grinder aside, and re-tackled the job with crowbars and mallets. When he finally got inside the safe, sure enough, in addition to a few valuable guns, it also contained a considerable amount of explosive powder, more then enough to blow up Scott and the entire garage.

Death averted.

On his final day there, Scott drove a van full of these boxes out to a storage place, planning on returning another day to begin the job of selling everything of value. The storage space operator watched Scott pack the boxes into the space and asked, "So, what do you have in there?"

Scott stared at the man for a moment and replied, "Memorabilia."

Dear Daisy,

If you're reading this, it must mean that I'm dead. Spooooooky! Boo!

Or maybe it just means that you found my blog. I suppose that's probably the most likely theory. You found my blog and clicked on the "Daughter, click here first!" link. (It can't hurt to go check on me right now though, just to make sure that I'm not dead. Thanks, babe!)

So, allow me to explain what we have here.

As I write this you're eight and a half years old. It occurred to me today that it's just a matter of time before you find my blog, either just by asking me for the URL or by noticing one of the bookmarks on any one of the computers/cellphones in this house. It also occurred to me that you might not be crazy about everything that I write here, so this entry is my explanation to you.

First, let me explain what this is. You are reading my blog. I don't know if you're reading this at the age of 8.6 or 86, so let me explain what a blog is (just in case blogs don't exist in 2086). It's kind of like a diary except instead of writing what I REALLY feel, I exaggerate for the purposes of humor and self-centeredness. Also, instead of hiding my diary under my mattress (no, there's nothing hidden under my real mattress (don't check the toilet tank!)), I post my blog for the world to see. Of course the world doesn't really read it. A few dozen people stop by each day. Many of them got here by accident, by googling for some phrase like "giganticasses". Those people generally don't come back.

A couple dozen readers do come back on a regular basis though, and although I personally know a handful of them, most of these people are total strangers. They generally enjoy reading my silly posts about the daily events in my life. A few of them have remarked to me that what they most enjoy about my blog is hearing about you.

If you read enough of this blog, you'll notice that I often refer to someone named "Daisy". That's my blog-name for you. I didn't use your real name because I didn't want someone to google you in the future and end up reading my stories about how I used to wipe your butt for you. So I anonymized you. "Daisy" seemed like a name that was as cheerful as you are.

In this blog I make fun of almost everything. I make fun of the government, old people, myself, your mom (I call her "Hank"), you, and anything else I can think of. So, don't be surprised if you find a post that makes fun of you. I love you a lot, but writing a blog filled with posts that just said "I sure do love Daisy today, AGAIN!" wouldn't be very interesting.

Also, you may notice that the "Mike" that I describe in this blog doesn't always seem like your father. Things in this blog tend to be exaggerated and so I come across as somewhat ruder here than I am in real life. I make the kinds of jokes here that just wouldn't be very polite to make in real life. You could argue that it's not polite to make them in a blog either and you'd be right, but it's nice to have a place where you can be a ruder version of yourself. Remember, this is kind of like a diary in that I get to express thoughts here that I wouldn't necessarily blurt out in real life.

Anyway, I can't imagine that you'll be interested in reading this on a regular basis. Surely there's some good TV on, or maybe it's 2086 and you can go enjoy the holodeck. However, if you do read more, and you have any questions about what I've written, please come ask me. You and your mother are my favorite things in the world, but you won't get that impression from reading this blog, so don't get your undies in a bunch (do they wear undies in 2086?) without talking to me first.

Now, go do your homework, or job, or retirement hobbies, or whatever.

I love you, Daisy.

There's a lot that's good about my job. I work from home, my coworkers and manager are easy to get along with, and I get paid pretty well. Granted, there's no BJ Friday, but I'm still hopeful on that front.

There are two major flaws though. First, the product that I work on is excruciatingly boring. Does anyone here have an interest in business process management engine software? Me either. I can assure you that it's not as interesting as it sounds.

Second, it's just a matter of time before my job moves to India without me.

As it turns out, there are many millions of programmers in India, and I'd guess that about 99% of them can be hired for a small fraction of my salary. You don't need to be an efficiency Nazi to see the economic benefits of moving software jobs from San Francisco to India. So, if, hypothetically speaking, you worked for a company run by Germans, it's not difficult to imagine a scenario where management realizes das benefit of das cheap salaries.

This week a product team in our company, that was somewhat similar to my team, got axed. The expensive long-time engineers were laid off and their product was moved over to the development team in India.

*gulp*

Our manager was out of the office this week, so his manager called a meeting of our team to break the news to us about the layoffs, and to reassure us that our jobs were still safe blah blah blah. He's a good guy, but it's clearly his job to reassure us regardless of the big blinking billboard in the sky that says "YOUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED, LAZY AMERICAN CHUMPS"

Big Boss: Also, you guys should know that the laid-off engineers were given their bonuses and were given severance packages based on the length of time they had spent in the company.
Me: So, hypothetically speaking, say an engineer had been with the company 11 years, how many weeks of pay would he get were he laid off? Hypothetically.
Big Boss: That's a good question, and I'm not quite sure. I'll find out for you though.
Me: Nah, don't bother. I'm sure I'll find out soon enough.
Big Boss: I'm sure you will.

So, that's reassuring.

Daisy's school had a "Meeting for the Community" yesterday. This is a meeting where they bring together administrators, parents, students, hobos, midget marsupials, and Xzo?vo! from Planet kPqoook to help guide the direction of the school. Normally I would not attend meetings like this, but the school principal had sent an email to the PTA Board (where I am known as Mike, Lord Secretary!) explaining that our presence at the meeting was expected. So, I showed up.

I strolled into the meeting on Wednesday night with my laptop in hand, hoping to get some work done while the "community" met. However, I immediately noticed the agenda posted on the wall which contained ominous phrases like "Group brainstorming".

Ugh. I was expected to interact. With humans. That's not really one of my strengths.

I plopped onto the bench and put my laptop bag down. A couple minutes later, Mr. Psychologerson entered the room. He came over and expressed pleasure at seeing me at the meeting.

"Yeah," I said, "I figured I'd give it a try, although I suspect this isn't really my thing."

"Oh, this is definitely NOT your thing," he replied, looking unwaveringly directly into my eyes.

The dude had me nailed. Chalk one up for psychology.

The meeting started and the first part wasn't too bad. Overhead slides. Children making speeches. Administrators explaining which four-letter words to use and not use when writing our budget-complaint letters to Governor Schwarzenegger (a title that still rolls off the tongue like a mouthful of marshmallows and peanut butter).

Then, we got to the group-breakout sessions. They gave each group specific questions to contemplate and brainstorm answers for. This part sucked really hard. Brainstorming has several serious flaws:

1) There aren't supposed to be any wrong answers in brainstorming. Mr. Psychologerson could have a brilliant insight, and then I could open my mouth and barf up a burrito, and both of those expressed thoughts would get written down with equal importance.

2) The people who dominate the conversation are those people who like to hear themselves talk. The correlation between good ideas and people who like to talk is very low.

3) People generally ignore the topic and just spew syllables about their pet peeves.

On top of all this, the person writing down our thoughts was an eighth grader. Even the occasional good idea got mangled by the time it made it onto her paper. The end result was several pounds of chaff with a few grains of wheat. That is going to be some crappy bread.

Next time I'm sending Hank.

When I was growing up, I knew my parents were weirdos. They had both immigrated to the U.S. in their 20s, so they were a little different than most of my friends' all-American parents. My dad, for example, knew nothing about sports and my mother persisted in referring to popcorn as "cornpop". See? Weirdos.

It was only after I became an adult and reflected upon my childhood that I realized how very normal and stable it was. My parents just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary and they still live in the same house that I was raised in. They had 2 kids, we lived in the suburbs, and my mom was a stay-at-home-mom. Really, in hindsight, we were normalcy incarnate.

I feel even more strongly about this when my friends tell me about their crazy families. Today, for example, I heard one of the craziest stories.

About a year ago my buddy Scott's father-in-law became ill with a terminal disease. Scott's wife flew out to Idaho a few times but at one point her father requested Scott's presence as well. He had a special "project" that he only entrusted Scott with.

When Scott arrived, his father-in-law led him to a large locked garage, told him to wait outside, and then disappeared into the building. He emerged an hour later, and told Scott to follow closely behind him. The garage, which was probably about 5000 sq feet, was filled floor to ceiling with boxes containing all kinds of junk. Scott followed the man through the maze, up a ladder, and into an equally cluttered attic. It was there that he showed Scott his arsenal of weapons and stock of ammunition. Now that he was nearing death, he was prepared to part with some of his weaponry and needed help cataloging and selling it.

What had he been doing for the hour while Scott stood outside in the cold? He had been carefully disarming the various booby-traps that were scattered throughout his locked storage space. Trip-wires, shotguns, etc. The man was paranoid about securing his belongings.

Well, Scott's father-in-law died this weekend without ever really getting around to clearing out any of his storage space. So, Scott flew out yesterday charged with the task of disarming the various booby-traps on the property.

As it turns out, the man was pretty good at setting these traps. Today Scott accidentally set one off and gassed himself with teargas.

Teargas. Jesus. I am so happy I got the cornpop parents and not the teargas ones. Thanks, mom and dad!

As most people who spend their free time reading frivolous blogs instead of watching TV know, most TV shows suffer from serious suckage. Even among the shows that don't suck, I'm just not interested in the majority of them. Let's quickly go through the top shows (ordered by Nielsen ratings) from last week and identify their flaws.

FOX SUPER BOWL XLII - I can't really pass judgment on this. One gets the idea that TV was invented primarily to show Super Bowls. It has pretty colors, violence, and plenty of built-in pauses for commercial breaks. It's nearly a perfect caricature of U.S. culture and we sop it up, present company included.

FOX SUPER BOWL POST GAME(S) - There was a post game show? Ok, now people are just being lame. Umpteen hours of super bowling wasn't enough?

AMERICAN IDOL-TUESDAY - This show I don't quite get. I mean, I like hearing people sing, but most of the contestants on this show all sound similar to me. It's like someone decided that all singers need to sound like Beyonce, so that's all we get, and somehow they battle it out for the title of Most Beyonceest. Although I have a soft spot for reality shows that pit people against each other, this show seems rather one-dimensional. I've only seen a couple episodes, but from what I gather, every round is just a bunch of singing. No obstacles courses. No quizzes. No nasty-food-eating competition. This show suffers from a serious lack of imagination and crocodile-filled moats.

HOUSE - SUNDAY - I've heard good things about this show, but I'm disinterested in hospital dramas, especially those where the brilliant doctors conclude most episodes by diagnosing rare cases of Madagascar Lemur Leprosy or Third Testicleitis. If you're going to make the main point of the show a mystery, then give me a chance to solve it along with the protagonist. I'm not the expert in Lemur Testicles that the networks make me out to be.

AMERICAN IDOL-WEDNESDAY - Can we just give the award to Beyonce and move on already?

HOUSE - Again? Was this the Fourth Nippleitis episode? I hear that's a bodacious one.

MOMENT OF TRUTH - Is this the show where they strap a contestant to a lie detector and then humiliate him/her? I'm not a big game show fan, but this may have merit.

LOST THU 9PM - Everyone loves this show, and I've never seen an episode, but it would seem to suffer from what's known as the Gilligan Problem. Rescue the characters and the show ends, so you must put blockade after blockage in front of them despite their desperate attempts to build bicycles and sexual companions out of coconuts. I used to love the X-Files until I grew weary of the same issue. Every episode either teased me by dangling aliens in front of the screen, or they annoyed me by going off on some irrelevant side plot. Good luck, Gilligan, but no thanks.

LOST-THU 8PM - Still lost? Yep. Still lost.

NCIS - Apparently this stands for Naval Criminal Investigative Service. I didn't watch this show when it was JAG and I won't watch it now. I feel a new rule coming on. No shows with acronyms for titles.

CSI - Acronym! Denied!

LAW AND ORDER - Like House, this show shoves a mystery at me and then doesn't give me enough information to solve it. I'm supposed to marvel at how fictitious characters with fictitious evidence make brilliant fictitious deductions. Somewhere NBC has a vault with the three plot lines this show uses and the madlib-based script generator that pumps out the episodes. Last night's episode involved Colonel Mustard in the Katrina Hurricane with Waterboarding.

ELI STONE - Rumor has it that this show is 2008's Ally McBeal. You can write your own punchline.

WITHOUT A TRACE - This is a show and not a Scott Turow novel? Really?

SMARTER THAN 5TH GRADER - It's Jeopardy except without all the smart questions. What's that you say? The whole value of Jeopardy IS the smart questions. Soooo, all this show has going for it is Jeff Foxworthy, whose sole claim to fame is the "You know you're a redneck if...." brand of stand-up comedy? That's Must Suck TV.

Ok, I give up here. I'm going to leave the mocking of the rest, including "Two and a Half Men" as an exercise for the reader.

So, what am I looking for in a TV show? That's a good question. Well, it must have at least one of these three qualities:

1) The Funny
2) Subjecting people to humiliating challenges and then kicking them off the show
3) The possibility that someone will utter the line, "I'm from the future and I have a message for you."

Obviously #1 is subjective. What's funny to me (Daily/Colbert/Office/30 Rock/South Park) may differ from what's funny to you (2.5 Men).

#2 is no guarantee of success either. Some shows like Survivor seem to have hit my sweet spot, while others like Amazing Race are uninteresting to me. It's hard to humiliate the contestants just the right amount: too much and I'm embarrassed for my species, too little and I'm bored.

#3, however, is nearly always a slam dunk for me. You put a time-portal in a show and I will sit in front of the TV with my jaw dropped open and the hair raised on the back of my neck, regardless if the portal is a stone hoop, a phone booth, or a computer with rows of red blinky LEDs. Sometimes science fiction shows suck me in despite little promise of time travel (BSG), but if they give me some of that sweet lovin', I will swoon with adoration.

My newest love is Heroes. I've been watching Season 1 on DVD and I'm only 7 episodes into it, but THERE'S A LITTLE TIME TRAVEL! And, in fact, a little time travel is the right amount. If you spend every episode hopping around through time and space (hello Quantum Leap), you're going to burn me out.

This process, however, that the characters are going through on Heroes where they come to terms with their various super powers, is very compelling to me. Much as I have come to grips with my super farts, I am eager to see how they integrate their abilities to fly, time-travel, etc into their lives.

That's today's TV roundup. Another day we'll go through literature, but I'll give you a preview. If a book involves time-travel or The Funny, it's probably going to get a place on my bookshelf.

My New Year's Resolution (to be nicer) is hanging by a thread this week.

I did pretty well for the first 5 weeks or so. Even Hank remarked that I had been noticeably nicer. Note that this is probably a commentary on my previous level of orneriness rather that my recent level of sweetness, but that's just part of the benefit you get from setting the niceness bar so damn low.

The last few days, however, I've been under the weather. Normally that's not enough to make me cranky, but this time it's been a big drag. On Sunday morning Hank threw her back out, which has made her fairly immobile. This meant that some of the household chores that she normally would do, now fall onto my plate. The one I hate the most is cooking, and it's also one I suck at.

On Sunday night, I made fishsticks.

On Monday, I "made" burritos from the local taqueria.

On Tuesday, guilt began to overwhelm me and I pan-seared some salmon (with explicit instructions from Hank) along with steamed green beans and some brown rice.

Today, everyone was home for lunch, so I "made" some japanese food by calling the local delivery place.

Tonight, I cooked some pasta with Mike's secret special sauce (the secret is that it's from a jar! Shhhh!) along with some roasted brussels sprouts.

All this cooking made me cranky, and being cranky and sick sucked the sympathy right out of me. So, although Hank is in constant pain, and Daisy is under the weather, it's all I can do stifle the growls that are rumbling around deep in my gut (which may be due to my cooking). I'm sure they'd love to have me be all nurturing and sympathetic and crap, but that stuff is a stretch for me in a good week, and this week just not available at all. Can I order some of that to be delivered? Hello local taqueria? Amazon? www.EmotionallyAvailableMen.com ?

At least I still have my support network. I was bitching to my boss this morning about computer problems I was having. Whenever something goes awry "at" work, I like to blame our German corporate overlords.

Me: Stupid computers! I blame the Germans! These things would never happen if I worked for ESPN.com.
Boss: No kidding. Cool stuff happens to those guys.
Me: Yeah, for benefits they get Superbowl tickets and blow jobs and stuff. They probably have Blow Job Fridays!
Boss: I'm tired of Beat Off Fridays.
Me: No kidding! I'm paid too highly to waste my time managing my own penis.
Boss: Your penis is totally high maintenance!
Me: I know!
Boss: It's always "what's in it for me?"
Me: Not to mention the constant waxing, and penicures.
Boss: :)
Me: Penicures! Get it? Get it? Like pedicure! I'm writing that one down.
Boss: It's a quality joke, man!
Me: Thanks. You're very supportive.

That's the kind of emotional support my wife needs. Maybe next year's New Year's Resolution.

I never got to know my grandparents. My father's parents were killed in the Holocaust and my mother's parents lived very far away (Israel) and died when I was a kid. Because of this, and because there were mostly young families in our neighborhood, I never spent any time with old folks when I was growing up. I never got to acclimate to the speed and style of the elderly.

How does this affect me now as an adult? In one single profound way: I really really hate old people.

Take this weekend for example. When the wife and I choose a movie to see, one of our criteria is that we won't pick a movie where the audience is likely to be filled with obnoxious teenagers. I don't need people talking back to the screen or generally being rambunctious in a movie theater. Outings like that just confirm my general misanthropy. For that reason we avoid most action films and anything on opening weekend.

Seeing Michael Clayton seemed safe, and in fact when we entered the theater we noticed that most of our fellow movie goers were fairly geriatric. What I failed to realize is that old people suck in movie theaters. I'm not exactly sure why, maybe it's because they don't hear well, but when they have something to say, they tend to SHOUT IT OUT TO THE PERSON SITTING NEXT TO THEM.

You get to listen to old people yelling things like "WHAT DID HE SAY?" and "MY HIP! I BROKE MY HIP!". Ugh. Keep it down, Wilford.

The place I hate seeing old people the most, however, is the supermarket.

They impede my efficiently planned path through the store by clogging up the aisles like the cholesterol in their arteries. I peer into each aisle before committing myself to it, wary of the geriatric blockades the elderly form as they wedge themselves against their carts while squinting at over-sized bottles of Metamucil. There's no room to go around them, and antiquated laws prevent me from barreling through them, so my only recourse is to give them the stink-eye. I wield this impotent weapon accompanied by a dramatic sigh.

Even after I maneuver through the old-folks labyrinth I can still get stymied by the checkout line. I will avoid at all costs getting in line behind old people. You can be sure that at the register, they will wield at least two parts of the Annoyance Quadfecta: coupons, paying with pennies, writing a check, and general confusion.

I'd be willing to cut them some slack on the coupon issue, because fixed incomes are a bitch. Also, you have to do something with your change, so I guess annoying me with it is as good an idea as any other one. Writing checks, however, is unforgivable. Checks? What century is this? Did they run out of promissory notes?

Checks are like little forms. I hate forms. Don't we all hate filling out forms? ATM cards have been around for about 20 years now. I think they are a tried and true technology now, much like the telephone and the wheel. And, if, god forbid, you must write a check, how about starting to write it BEFORE the cashier finishes ringing you up?

It just drives me nuts. I both hate and fear old people. Hate, because of their singular mission to destroy the quality of my life, and fear due to the fact that I inch closer to old age with every passing moment. There it goes again! I'm closer now than I was at the beginning of this paragraph.

I better stop writing quick

Hank and I went to go see Michael Clayton last night.

Overall it was a pretty good flick. The performances were good, the plot kept me engaged, and George Clooney is a handsome man. I have no desire to sodomize or kiss the man, but let's be honest here, he's pretty easy on the eyes. I like actors like that. They make it easy. For my eyes.

The movie is 119 minutes long and I'd say that about 117 of those minutes were solid. The last 2, however, kind of sucked. It's like the writers wrote the first 117 minutes and then were told that the movie had to be less than 2 hours long, so they quit, and then the producers got the janitor to wrap up the plot, but instead he just took a dump on the script. I THINK that's what happened.

Regardless, the movie's central conflict was "resolved" in a near-cartoonish fashion. Clooney, however, like Mitt Romney, looks good in a suit.