I have a top-of-the-line Anti-virus program, a massive firewall, every known pop-up blocker known to man…..yet somehow….the damn NETFLIX pop-ups always manage to get past everything and jump up on my screen!

If I were a Computer Security Expert working for Microsoft or the US Government, trying to locate the authors of the thousands of worms and viruses that plague the Internet, I would look first at whoever created the damn NETFLIX pop-ups.

We have finally bought the first Christmas present of the season. One tiny little present, with 100 people still to buy for, but it is a start.

Give me 10 seconds at one of those Gift Card racks that contains cards for 100 different stores….and I can finish my Christmas Shopping in the blink of an eye.

I am still sadistic enough that I would buy a gift card for someone, put it into a 7ft tall box, weight it down with 20 bricks, then wrap it with 3 layers of wrapping and 2lbs of duct tape, just to disguise the fact that a gift card is contained inside.

While eating at a Chinese Buffet yesterday, I think that me and my nephew got our fortune cookies mixed up. His fortune said “You will soon enjoy great success in the Stock Market”. Mine said “An Itch not relieved by scratching is a sign of approaching manhood”.

I am starting to waiver on my lifelong support of the Death Penalty. This past week, yet another man was executed here in Texas. He and his friend had been convicted of murdering a store clerk. His friend was the shooter. The shooter was tried separately was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. The accomplice was found guilty in his trial but was sentenced to death, even though he was not the shooter. A State Board issued a report to our Governor which recommended that the accomplice have his death sentence commuted to life in prison, the same sentence as the shooter. The Governor denied the recommendation and had the man executed earlier this week. And…..it’s an election year……here in a state which is HEAVILY Pro-Death Penalty………

So, the accomplice is dead, and the shooter is alive and well in prison for the rest of his life. Welcome to Texas Justice.

Went to the Doc yesterday due to three of my surgical sites looking infected. I had the surgery to remove the skin cancers almost 4 weeks ago, yet due to my poor circulation because of the spinal cord damage, and due to the high amount of blood thinning medication I take, a few of the sites were never able to heal. I was given some “Horse Strength” antibiotics to take for the next 3-5 years which the Doctor guarantees will knock out any infection in my body and in anyone Else’s body that happens to come within 10 feet of me. He did say however that the medication would grow hair on my tongue, cause my finger and toenails to turn green, would cause uncontrollable rectal bleeding, and that my testicles would retract up into my abdomen.

I think I would rather die of my staph infection than be forced to sit through any of the “Twilight” movies.

We have not bought a single Christmas present as of yet.

A house down the block already has it’s Christmas lights on.

Citibank is raising the interest rates on the credit card my wife has held for over 20 years to 21%…..even though we always pay off the balance. There is no reward for being a loyal customer anymore.

It seems to me that a year ago, I would get about a dozen mailers a week from every credit card company under the sun trying to sell me a credit card. Now we get none.

Should I be worried that my wife is trying to get me into looking into pre-paying for my funeral/cremation costs in advance…..yet mentions nothing about her own arrangements? If I should keel over under questionable circumstances….someone call the Authorities and refer them to this blog.

I saw on the news last night that Seattle has had rain for 30 of the past 35 days. Here, our town has not had a drop of rain for the entire month of November.

My parents, who were going to move home to Oregon next year, have decided to stay in Texas. The person who guessed November 18th as the date they would change their minds, please contact me, you have won the raffle and the cash prize!

I have taken to watching the BBC World News on BBC AMERICA to get an unbiased recap of our daily political happenings here in the US. Our major cable news channels have gotten to be a joke. FOX is blatantly Republican, MSNBC is blatantly Democrat, and CNN is too busy doing “human interest specials” like “Black in America”, “Latino in America”, “Asian in America”, “Gay in America”, “Cross Dressing, heel wearing, leather-clad, tap-dancing Businessman in America”….etc.

During a recent password audit, it was found that a blonde was using the following password:

MickeyMinniePlutoHueyLouieDeweyDonaldGoofySacramento

When asked why such a long password, she said she was told that it had to be at least 8 characters long and include at least one capital.

Courtesy of Blonde Cousin Whitney….

The kid had his first ever Middle School Basketball game tonight. He started at point guard, scored 7 of his teams 13 points, had 4 steals, 2 assists, 2 fouls, and much to his dismay….was held “dunkless”.

He was mightily pleased with his performance…..to say the least. We had to press the little valve behind his ear to let out enough air from his head so that we could squeeze him into the car for the drive home.

Where he got his Basketball talent is a mystery to me. I had a major case of “White Man’s Disease” when I was in school, meaning I could not run, shoot, rebound, or put my jock strap on correctly (“Those aren’t arm holes?”).

We had a great time at the TCU-UTAH game on Saturday night. The Frogs crushed the Stormin Mormons 55-28 and are only 2 wins away from the BCS and a date with a “big name” school.

I sat directly in front of the CBS COLLEGE SPORTS broadcast desk and managed to get on camera a couple times, despite a burly security guard repeatedly motioning for me to sit down and turn around. “I can stand up and watch the game but I cannot turn around??? Is this Communist China that we live in???”

The game drew 50,300 fans, the largest crowd in school history. The place only seats 46,000. You could barely move to get to the restroom or snack bar with all the people clogging the walkways that had bought “standing room” tickets to the game. TCU has never sold standing room tickets before….ever.

CBS had a helicopter hovering over the stadium to get overhead shots of the game. We will know we finally made it to the “big time” when we warrant an actual blimp to fly over the games.

Three new autographs in the past week. Betty White, Emma Thompson, and Steve Martin. They are all posted on the autograph blog. That blog is now nearing the 750,000 visitor level. It should race past a million in February at the current pace. THIS blog should reach a million in 2013…..IF….the world is not destroyed before then…..either by ancient Mayan Prophecies….or by FACEBOOK gaining control of the world’s nuclear arsenals and unleashing a holocaust onto the planet……

Sarah Pain continues to make my head hurt. I heard that she sent John McCain an unsolicited autographed copy of her new book. I would bet that Cindy used it to start a fire in the fireplace that same night the book arrived. Do you think that every time Cindy McCain sees video of Michelle Obama in the White House that she gets a major “Sarah Palin Chill” down her spine?

How long before we get the inevitable Oliver Stone directed Sarah Palin biopic? Tina Fey….calling Tina Fey!!……

My wife is begging and pleading with me to start virtual farming on FACEBOOK so that she can have a neighboring farm to her own farm. I have no desire to virtually farm online. My life is useless and wasted as it is….why would I want even more misery by resorting to staring at the screen for 5 more hours a day watching my virtual corn wilt on the stalks?…..

The kid is in the living room watching wrestling on TV. Has Pro Wrestling always looked that stupid? Adults actually watch that crap without laughing uncontrollably? Power to you!

A new pet peeve…..going to the history bar, scrolling down to the desired web page, and then clicking on it…only to watch it dissapear from the bar…causing my lazy butt to have to manually type in the address again……aaaaarrggggg!!! Serenity Now!! Serenity Now!!!

I first started going to TCU Football games about 10 years ago. Although I never attended the University, I figured the 2,000 mile drive back to Oregon to watch my beloved Ducks play was just a tad too far…so I adopted the Horned Frogs as my team.
When I first started going to games, the team was terrible and they could not give away seats at the games. My first year as a season ticket holder, my seats cost me the equivalent of $6 a game, and I sat on the 45 yd line.
My youngest son has been attending games since he was 5 yrs old. As a 5 yr old he sat in the stands with a piece of paper and a pen and kept stats while all the other kids around us played and ignored the game. My daughter has also attended a ton of games and although her main reason for attending has always been to drool over the “hot” college guys, she has become a huge TCU fan along with my son.
Over the seasons, the Frogs got better and better, the stadium started to fill up, and like everything else in the world, the tickets got more expensive.
Over the past 3 years, the TCU Horned Frogs have quietly become the best team in College Football that no one knows about outside of the Dallas-Fort Worth area. People know all about Boise State football, as do we. We played Boise State last year in the Poinsettia Bowl when Boise State was undefeated for the entire season. TCU won.
This year we are 9-0 with 3 games to play and are ranked #4 in the Country. Probably the biggest game in TCU History is this Saturday against Utah here in Fort Worth. The game is so important that ESPN Gameday will be broadcasting from TCU for the first time ever. The game is so beyond sold-out that the school is selling standing-room only tickets. That is the first time EVER that has occurred for a home game.
My son and I will be there, along with my Father and nephew.
Why is this such an important game? Utah is the last major hurdle to an undefeated season and a trip to one of the big BCS bowl games which would bring the school a major amount of national exposure and respect. TCU has won 11 games in a row dating back to last season. The last game we lost was to UTAH. In fact, the last 3 times we have played the Utes, UTAH has won. Utah is our main nemesis in our league and probably the only thing standing in the way of this being the best TCU team in history.
You may not know much about TCU at this moment, but after Saturday, and in a few short weeks when the season ends, YOU WILL.

Go Horned Frogs!!

A great post submitted by my friend in Canada, Cheryl…..

A lesson that should be taught in all schools . . And colleges

Back in September, on the first day of school, Martha Cothren, a social studies school teacher at Robinson High School, did something not to be forgotten. On the first day of school, with the permission of the school superintendent, the principal and the building supervisor, she removed all of the desks out of her classroom.

When the first period kids entered the room they discovered that there were no desks.

‘Ms.. Cothren, where’s our desks?’

She replied, ‘You can’t have a desk until you tell me how you earn the right to sit at a desk.’

They thought, ‘Well, maybe it’s our grades.’

‘No,’ she said.

‘Maybe it’s our behavior.’

She told them, ‘No, it’s not even your behavior.’

And so, they came and went, the first period, second period, third period. Still no desks in the classroom.

By early afternoon television news crews had started gathering in Ms.Cothren’s classroom to report about this crazy teacher who had taken all the desks out of her room.

The final period of the day came and as the puzzled students found seats on the floor of the deskless classroom, Martha Cothren said, ‘Throughout the day no one has been able to tell me just what he/she has done to earn the right to sit at the desks that are ordinarily found in this classroom. Now I am going to tell you.’

At this point, Martha Cothren went over to the door of her classroom and opened it.

Twenty-seven (27) War Veterans, all in uniforms, walked into that classroom, each one carrying a school desk. The Vets began placing the school desks in rows, and then they would walk over and stand alongside the wall… By the time the last soldier had set the final desk in place those kids started to understand, perhaps for the first time in their lives, just how the right to sit at those desks had been earned..

Martha said, ‘You didn’t earn the right to sit at these desks. These heroes did it for you. They placed the desks here for you. Now, it’s up to you to sit in them. It is your responsibility to learn, to be good students, to be good citizens. They paid the price so that you could have the freedom to get an education. Don’t ever forget it.’

By the way, this is a true story.

Please consider passing this along so others won’t forget that the freedoms we have in this great country were earned by War Veterans.

Thanks Cheryl! and a very special thanks to all Veterans, here in the US and those in Canada!

Some of the Veterans in my own family:

My Cousin David (Current Active Duty US Army)
My Father Gerald (Retired USAF)
My Son Alex (USMC Veteran)
My Grandfather Sam (US Army Veteran)
My Grandfather Del (US Army Veteran)
My Uncle Keith (USAF Veteran)
My Uncle Dennis (USAF Veteran)
My Uncle Dwayne (US Army Veteran)
My Uncle Rodney (US Army Veteran)
My Cousin Whitney (US Navy Veteran)
My Grandfather-in-Law Cecil (US Army Veteran)
I am a USAF Veteran.

My Dear Mother-in-Law had the unfortunate luck of undergoing knee replacement surgery this past week. She is now back home recuperating and like all other people who have had that kind of surgery, she is wishing she had just taken a rusty saw and cut the kneecap off herself, without any anesthesia, in that she is sure the post-surgery pain and misery could not have been any worse than what she is currently experiencing.

I called to check on her and was told that she was resting comfortably in her favorite chair and in an effort to minimize her pain, she “pees” on her knee.

OK…..that is a new one. How “peeing” on your knee would alleviate the post-surgical pain associated with having bone and tissue carved from your body….is beyond my idiot level of comprehension.

I tried to visualize the poor lady trying to recline in a chair and going through the process of actually “peeing” on her wounded knee. This is not a memory or vision you want to have of any close relative…..

Maybe modern science had evolved to weird levels that I do not fully comprehend.

I banged my own elbow on a doorway yesterday and it has been causing me great pain and discomfort….so maybe I should “pee” on my elbow.

My mind started to race trying to figure out the painful and awkward positions I would have to contort my body into in order to successfully “pee” on my elbow….without “peeing” all over everything else within a 10 foot radius…..

I thought….”What the Heck….Give it a shot…”

I was just beginning to contort my crippled body into a pretzel-like position to commence the “peeing” therapy when the phone rang.

It was my wife, who is up taking care of her ailing, pee-soaked Mother.

I told my wife what I was about to undertake in order to “relieve myself” of my own elbow pain.

I cannot repeat the vulgar and filthy words that she screamed at me but most of them involved my apparent like of any semblance of common sense and my complete and utter inability to use my God-given brain.

Apparently, to alleviate her knee pain, my dear Mother-in-Law puts a bag of frozen peas on her knee. Peas.

Oops.

As Emily Litella would say…

NEVER MIND!!

After the tragic shootings at Fort Hood earlier today, I just wanted to send out a heartfelt THANK YOU to all the brave men and women who choose to serve our Country in the US Military. You are the greatest!

I am a veteran. However, I had the “luxury” of serving during peacetime. With wars currently raging in two different countries, you hear everyday about the brave soldiers that we are sending over for their 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or even 5th tours of duty in the War Zones.

It is virtually impossible to get sent to Iraq or Afghanistan for three or four deployments unless you have voluntarily re-enlisted in the service during that time frame. These are brave souls who have been over there repeatedly, have seen the worst of war, and who come home and then re-enlist knowing it will most likely lead to even more deployments overseas.

To die here at home, on their own base, at the hands of one of their own, is just tragic and sad in so many ways. Home is the one place that they should be able to have the luxury of feeling safe and now even that appears to have taken away from our soldiers.

Keep in mind the huge sacrifices that these men and women make every day that they serve our great Country.

A special thanks to my cousin David Pakulak who has been serving in the US ARMY for well over a decade. Be safe Dave! We are proud of you and all that serve with you! Your Dad would be very proud to see the sacrifices you have made as you have served all these years!

Local Weather: Sunny and 85 degrees. I hear sleigh bells ringing…….

Kind of weird to see all the trees in their fall colors…..when it is 85 degrees outside.

The trees around here don’t really change colors with the seasons as much as this is the time of year they just up and die from the heat and drought conditions of the previous 9 months.

I followed a redneck pulling a boat behind his truck, which was plastered with 200 NASCAR bumper stickers, for about 20 miles today. His boat was named “WET DREAM”. I would take bets that the guy is a “career bachelor” and has no clue why.

My son and I went to Dallas today for a couple Doctors appointments and spent about 2 hours stuck in gridlocked traffic. What a maddening experience! I do not know how commuters who deal with that crap every day survive. After not moving at one point for about 10 minutes, I glanced at the car next to me and saw the driver seated with his head thrown back, his eyes closed, and his mouth hanging wide open…obviously napping. Come to think of it though….this was Dallas…..there might be a pretty good chance that the guy had been shot…..

Idiocracy of the day. The Dallas Cowboys forced a SEASON TICKET HOLDER to take down the banner she had hung up at this past weekends game against the Seattle Seahawks. The banner said “WE SUPPORT OUR TROOPS” and had the emblems for each branch of the Military on it. At the other end of the field, the team allowed a banner to stay up that said “#24 BARBER SHOP in reference to Marion Barber, #24, the Star running back of the Team.

Also related to that same game…..the retractable roof over the stadium was kept closed for the entire game even though it was 73 degrees and sunny during the game….perfect weather. When asked why the team had kept the roof closed, a Dallas Cowboys Spokesman replied “For Fan Comfort”. Well thank heavens the team is looking out for the fans! We wouldn’t want anyone to break a sweat in that unbearable 73 degree heat…would we?

We had 2 local school bond issues on the election this week. One passed and one failed. The ballot measure asking for money to buy more classroom materials, portable classrooms, and upgrade the current facilities failed.
The measure to spend $100 Million dollars to build a 48,000 seat, retractable roof, 3 decked Football Stadium for our High School….passed in a landslide. There is a provision though that the retractable roof MUST be closed in any weather above 70 degrees….”For Fan Comfort”.

People in my area love to bash President Obama at every chance they get. They seem to forget that the man inherited what amounted to a broken down car parked on the side of the road that had all 4 tires missing, no engine, and no seats….all a result of the poor maintenance that the previous owner (“W”) did while he owned the car. Now, not even a year later, the GOP leaders are all siting in this broken down car, that the President is trying to repair as fast as he can,…all screaming…..”Come on already!! What is the hold up???? Why is this taking so long???”….wanting him to fix the problems….but not by spending any money in the process.

All the people that seem to be going nuts over health care are people that actually have health care benefits. Somehow I think that if you have a family and no health insurance, and one of your kids gets sick or hurt, then you tend to at least give the President credit for trying to do SOMETHING to give everyone benefits. Lord knows the previous man in charge did nothing about it. I have health insurance. I might gripe like Hell about the outrageous cost that we pay, but I am so thankful that we do have benefits. Everyone in our country deserves some kind of coverage.

Let’s just let Rush Limbaugh run the country. He obviously is the only one on the planet that knows how to fix everything that is broken in our Country and how to make everyone happy in the process.

Sometimes the beauty of Mother Nature and all of God’s glorious creatures is amazing. Yesterday I was kind of down on life in general and was in a foul mood when I walked outside to check my mailbox. Outside my front door, about 3 feet into my yard was a cute little bunny rabbit, happily munching away on grass and seemingly undisturbed by my presence so close to him/her. I saw this cute, cuddly little innocent creature, took a deep breath, let out a deep sigh, and then dropkicked the little furball about 30 yards across the yard.

Sometimes the beauty of Mother Nature and all of God’s glorious creatures is amazing. Sometimes in life you just need to kick the snot out of a bunny!

How low can a person get in life? When I post a “Status Update” on FACEBOOK…..I find myself clicking “I LIKE THIS” to my own comments….

Is it a bad sign when you log onto FACEBOOK and see that their are 5 “Friends” online….then within 3.2 seconds….4 of them log off?

The kid, piano prodigy that he is, sat down at the piano and started hammering a long piece of classical music virtually without any flaws or flubs, for about 20 minutes. I finally broke down and asked him what he was playing. “Rachmanonov’s Piano Suite in C Minor” he happily replied. Ever the idiot and with little appreciation for the fine arts…I politely asked him..”Can you play the theme from Sesame Street for me?”
Now THAT is some classical music!!

Sunny Day
Sweepin’ the clouds away
On my way to where the air is sweet

Can you tell me how to get,
How to get to Sesame Street

Remember the prison quality food you used to eat in the school cafeteria when you were a kid? I remember holding a rusty tray and sliding down the serving line like Chevy Chase and Randy Quaid in “Vegas Vacation”…telling the serving ladies….”some more yellah…and some green…..and give me some of the Blue….”

My 12yr old complains because he can eat Pizza every day, chicken strips everyday, hamburgers every day, and he complains because they don’t change the flavors in the SLURPEE machine often enough for his liking.

And for you bunny lovers out there. I did not kick the bunny, repeat, I did not kick the bunny. At least…that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Sesame Street is now broadcasting a special version designed solely for young viewers in the Detroit, New York, and Miami areas. (Below)

Judgement Day.

The pathology results of the 13 skin cancers I had carved from my hide last week all came back today, and just as I suspected, none of them were actual skin cancers. Six of the sites were just smudges of dirt, 3 were specks of spaghetti sauce, 2 were splotches of Taco Bell Fire Hot Sauce, one was a small piece of crystallized corned beef hash, and one was listed as “left pinkie toe”. Upon reading that, I ripped off my left sock and sure enough…no pinkie toe. No wonder I have been walking tilted at an angle in circles all week!

OK so maybe I exaggerated just a little. All the pathology results came back as Basal Cell Carcinomas
but I had to frantically try to think up some rational way to explain away the fact that I woke up this morning without a pinkie toe. My loving wife will have a field day with this little nugget as she is always quick to remind me that I would lose my own head if it was not attached to my body. I spent the better part of the morning scouring through the bedding and under the bed but could find no sign of the toe. How in the world does a pinkie toe just up and run away anyway? I somehow suspect that one or more of our Obese House Cats are to blame as I have noticed they tend to drool quite a bit as I shuffle past with bare feet. I am going to try to play this one low key and will pray that the wife does not notice the missing toe anytime soon. I just hope that someday a week or two from now she is not rifling through the fridge looking for a snack and then starts screaming “OH MY GOD!!! WHO THE HELL PUT A PINKIE TOE IN THE REFRIDGERATOR AND DID NOT PUT IT IN A BAGGIE OR TUPPERWARE CONTAINER!!!”

Somewhere in New York City, Cosmo Kramer is recounting the pinkie toe incident to George Costanza and Jerry Seinfeld…

Kramer: Yeah, I found the toe. So I put it in a Cracker Jack box, filled it with ice and took off for the hospital.

George: You ran!?

Kramer: No I jumped on the bus. I told the driver “I got a toe here buddy, step on it!”

George: Holy cow!

Kramer: Yeah, yeah, then all of a sudden, this guy pulls out a gun. Well, I knew any delay is gonna cost the idiot guy in Texas his pinkie toe, so I got out of the seat and I started walking towards him. He says, “Where do you think you’re going, Cracker Jack?” I said, “Well, I got a little prize for ya, buddy – ” – knocked him out cold!

George: How could you do that!?

Kramer: Then everybody is screamin,’ because the driver, he’s passed out from all the commotion…the bus is out of control! So, I grab him by the collar, I take him out of the seat, I get behind the wheel and now I’m drivin’ the bus.

George: You’re Batman!

Kramer: Yeah. Yeah, I am Batman. Then the mugger, he comes to, and he starts chokin’ me! So I’m fightin’ him off with one hand and I kept drivin’ the bus with the other, y’know? Then I managed to open up the door, and I kicked him out the door with my foot, you know – at the next stop.

Jerry:(Incredulous)You kept making all the stops!?

Kramer: Well, people kept ringing the bell!

George: You did all of this for a pinky toe?

Kramer: Well, it’s a valuable appendage.

Jerry: What the hell kind of Idiot loses a Pinkie Toe anyway? What a loser!

A friend of mine is currently trying to sell much of her belongings on EBAY. I tried selling my soul on EBAY once but did not get any bidders. I was contacted by one fellow who wanted to know if I could post a photo of my soul to help him decide if he wanted to bid….and I was also contacted by a member of an obscure pagan cult in Alabama that was very interested…but who balked at the $4.99 Shipping charge I was asking.

Next time we get low on funds, I may try to sell my sense of humor….though I fear it also may go without any bids.

Happy November! It was 75 degrees here today. Brrrrrrrr I may have to start wearing socks…..

A local radio station has already started streaming 24hrs a day of Christmas Music on their website and will go to 24hrs a day on the radio after Thanksgiving.

We were in a Kohl’s Saturday and they already had Christmas stuff up. Bah-humbug.

While in Kohl’s, I was assigned the task of helping my son pick out some new basketball shoes for his upcoming season. My wife gave me strict instructions to NOT buy any shoes that had any BLUE, GREEN, YELLOW, ORANGE, BLACK, SILVER, or RED in them in that these were the colors of all of our district opponents.

I bought him a pair of brown flip-flops.

I think a slackjawed drooling idiot would be able to explain the theory of relativity easier than it would be for ANYONE in the NCAA to explain how exactly the BCS rankings are obtained. Personally, I think it is just a group of lab monkeys in some research facility crapping all over some buttons and dials and as a result, whatever the computer spits out…..that is your BCS rankings!

The kid can play “Yellow Submarine” on our piano with just one hand. I drank way too much in college one night and thought I saw a Yellow Submarine submerging in the middle of a shopping mall though what that memory has to do with my son’s musical talent is confusing even to me.

At this stage in life, just trying to remember how to breathe manages to confuse me.

A passenger in the airport one day asked me how come they do the announcements for the MEXICANA AIRLINES flight to Mexico City in “Mexican” on the Airports PA system. I told her that they were doing the announcements in SPANISH. She then remarked…. “MEXICANA flies to Spain from here?”

Listening to Idiot’s like that, I now know why Tigers eat their young.

In the past week, I have gotten autographs from Lee Grant, Billy Crystal, and Angie Dickinson…..or as my smart aleck son puts it….”An old fart and two old broads…”

My son remarked yesterday that 40yr old NFL Quarterback Brett Favre needs to retire for good because he is “so dang old!!”. When I told him that Brett Favre was younger than his own Mother and I, the kid just laughed….”Look at you Dad! Your at Death’s door already!!”

Lesson Learned:

When frustrated by the lack of not even a single trick-or-treater coming to our door, after the wife had spent a small fortune on bags of candy, it is not advisable under any circumstances for a middle aged man to stand in his yard and yell “Hey pretty little girl…ya want some candy?….come over to my house and I will give you some candy….” at packs of passing school children.

The local police were not amused.

I hate that my son no longer trick-or-treats. I no longer get to experience the utter and complete joy of sneaking into his room in the middle of the night and gracefully and quietly rifling through his Halloween Candy bucket in search of my favorite candies. Oh sure, I can go out and buy bags of candy at the store anytime I want….but pilfered candy stolen in the heat of the night is the best! There is no substitute.

My 19yr old daughter, who obviously inherited my warped sense of humor, went to a Halloween party dressed with a makeshift table built around her with a lamp sitting on the table. She was a “One Night Stand”.

I watched about 10 minutes of the recent remake of “Halloween” before becoming bored and turning the channel. Some classic are not meant to be remade and the great original “Halloween” is one of them. Can you imagine someone remaking “Caddyshack”, “The Blues Brothers”, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”, “Stripes”, or best yet….”Road House”? I could name dozens more that should not be touched. I read recently that they are currently filming a remake of “Red Dawn”. Big mistake! Leave the greats alone!

Anyone besides me willing to pay to see a Sarah Palin/Levi Johnston no-holds barred, fight to the death cage match? Personally, I think she would probably kick his butt.
I feel sorry for Bristol’s poor baby that will grow up and get to look back and read and watch all the mud that Grandma and Daddy were constantly flinging at each other.

Word here in Texas that thousands of Prison Inmates will be getting Swine Flu vaccines before many members of the general public. The reason..”the prisoners are in constant close proximity to each other”. Gee…I guess all the schoolchildren in the state do NOT get close to each other at all during a typical day.

My parents both went to the Doctor yesterday and were told that because they are both in a “High Risk” category of patient, they would both be getting Swine Flu shots. My Dad asked what made them “High Risk” and the Nurse just laughed uncontrollably for about 5 minutes while staring at both of my parents Medical Records which are each twice as large as New York City phone books.

Wal-Mart, the store chain that will be the death of me, either through some kind of horrific contagious disease I catch in one of their stores, or through my murder at the hands of a gun-crazed, toothless store employee tired of my constant ragging on their stores, will now be following me and millions of other poor souls into the afterlife.
Yes, Wal-Mart is now selling discounted Caskets and Urns on their website. First they aim to put ALL small “Mom and Pop” stores out of business in our Country, and now they want to put the Nations Funeral Homes out of business as well. This is just the first step. How long before they start opening Wal-Mart Cemeteries and Mausoleums across the Country? How long before Cremation services are offered right in the store alongside the Tire and Lube Services? “Attention in the store….John Smith….your Dodge Durango is ready in the Tire Center and your Father-in-Law is ready in the Cremation Center…” Think of the consequences, no matter how gross and sickening they may be. Their will be low-income, uneducated folks (in the deep south) who will be stuffing loved one’s corpses into the back of the garage or pickup in order to wait for the next good sale on caskets or Urns at Wal-Mart. It WILL happen. I better stay on my wifes good side. Once she reads this, she will undoubtedly be on the Wal-Mart website looking to purchase me a cheap plastic Urn to hold my remains….just in case I do get on her bad side.

While working at the Airport recently, passengers started filling up the waiting area right behind my podium for a flight to Newark, New Jersey. Two huge burly looking gentleman who appeared to be of Italian descent and who looked like they had both stepped off the set of “The Sopranos”, came up to me and one of them asked “Yo…if dis is Texas…how comes der aint no oil wells and them cowzus with da big horns outside the winduhs?” Tired of the constant stereotyping of our dear Lone Star State, I immediately shot back a rude look and then replied “So…If I fly to Newark I can expect to look out the window and see you guys unloading a large bag filled with someone you WHACKED out of the trunk of a large sedan…right outside the window of the airport?” Both huge men instantly grabbed me by the scruff of my collar, yanked me up to within a whisker of their angry faces, and whispered…”What did you see Fat man??? WHAT DID YOU SEE????!!!!!”

COLLEGE PUMPKINS GONE WILD!!!

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A Dallas City Councilman wants to pass a new city procedure that would require 911 Operators that receive calls for Ambulance or Paramedic assistance to get a credit card number from callers before dispatching assistance.

Yes, it’s true. I can’t make this stuff up.

A possible future call.

Operator: “911 Emergency”

Caller: “Help!! I’m on fire!! Help!!”

Operator: “What card will you be paying with tonight sir?”

Caller: “Aaarrrrgggg!! Help meeeeee!! Aaarrrggggggg”

Operator: ” Sir we take Visa, American Express, Masterc……”

Caller: “Aaaaarrrrggggg…..I’ts….a……V….IIIIII….sssssss…Aaaaaaaarrrgggggggg Help Me Please……Number…..672….aaaaarrrgggg…76…….Oooooowwwwwwwwww….4327…………expires 5/11……Aaaaaaarrrgggggg For the Love of God Please send help!! I’m burning!!!!”

Operator: “Let me repeat that sir….Visa 672764327 Expires 5 of 2011?”

Caller: ” AAAAAArrrrrrggggggggg The Pain!! The Pain!!…..Aaaaarggggggg!!”

Operator: Thank you sir…I have your confirmation code…do you have a pen handy?”

Caller” I’m coming towards the light Mama…aaaaarrrggggg…I’m comin towards the light!…..Aaaaarrrrrgggggg”
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Last night, a friend of mine posted on her FACEBOOK page that she had attended……..a QUILT GUILD Meeting!! Yes, a QUILT GUILD MEETING!!! I know I know….I was just as shocked as you probably are!!

I too thought we had rid the USA of these radical anarchists decades ago. But no, apparently…despite all the strides we have made in our great land, there is still at least one pocket of citizens who so little of the unwritten laws of human decency and respect…..that they formed another dreaded QUILT GUILD. I am so sad that my dear friend has gone to the dark side and joined this group of backwards thinking nutjobs. I shall pray that she comes to her senses quickly and can escape their evil clutches before she becomes a full-blown, gun-waving, Government hating member of THE QUILT GUILD!!
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The Quilters Guild #239 of East Omaha, Nebraska
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A tragic thing happened yesterday evening in a small nearby town. The KWIK STOP burned down. The KWIK STOP, a combination Convenience Store, Gas Station, Fine Dining establishment, and the center of all social interaction for the town, is no more. This morning, hundreds of overweight locals are standing in the street, staring at the smoldering ruins, tears streaming down their faces, wondering where in the world they will get their usual morning 96 ounce soft drink. What a sad, sad scene.
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I must be luckiest dude on the face of the planet! Every day I get about a half-dozen emails from numerous African Princes, Dukes, Counts, and Kings all explaining that I alone have been chosen to share in a great fortune of money that they have recently come into. Lucky Lucky me!!
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Speaking of FACEBOOK, the all-dominating center of the universe as we know it, my Cousin Whitney and I were having an interesting online chat (on FACEBOOK) about one of our favorite subjects, SEINFELD. As huge addicts and fans of the show, we both agreed that the characters on the show would all be having a field day with the current state of our FACEBOOK and TWITTER dominated society. George in particular would be a basket case, always worried about how many FACEBOOK friends he has, jealous that Newman has hundreds more than him, causing George to spend hours online creating fake accounts for people like “Art Vandelay” and “Buck Naked” so that these fake people could become FACEBOOK friends with him. George would, of course, use a High School photo of him with hair on his FACEBOOK page, he would list himself as an Architect, and would be advertising that he is looking for a female soul-mate who has a “pinkish hue” to her cheeks.
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College Cats gone wild!
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For years, I have been trying to convince my wife that we need to retire in Red River, New Mexico….my favorite place on Earth. The wife wants to retire in Austin, Texas….her favorite place on Earth. In her mind, she is the major bread winner of the family, therefore we are destined for old age in Austin. Me, I think that destiny has major plans for us in Red River and I see little subtle hints that lead me down that road of belief. The other day my wife’s retirement account statement from the Teachers Retirement System of Texas arrived in the mail. While the TRS is located in Austin (which my wife takes as a sign from above)…..the actual office is located on RED RIVER STREET!! Hint hint… I say that is a major hint from above that we need to live in Red River. My wife has not budged in the slightest, telling me to look real close at the name of the TRS Administrator that signed her annual statement. The woman’s name: Mya Idiotubbie.
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Today as I was preparing to step into the shower I noticed one those minuscule little “free” body wash and shampoo containers that we all love to swipe from the finer hotels in the world. This tiny little bottle had the “Sheraton” label so happily snapped it up and took it into the shower looking forward to using it instead of the usual cheapo wet-mullet smelling swill I usually use from Wal-Mart. I got in, got my trusted SpongeBob scrubbie, squeezed all the contents of the small bottle onto the scrubbie and commenced happily scrubbing. I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed but for the life of me, I could not work up the slightest bit of a lather. The stuff smelled real good, alot better than wet-mullet, but not a bubble was to be seen anywhere. So, be warned if you stay at a Sheraton. The Sheraton brand Body Lotion is worthless and will not lather up worth a bean!
My wife later informed me that apparently body lotion is meant to be applied AFTER you shower….to dry skin. How the Heck was I supposed to know that? It doesn’t say that on the bottle! Where’s my trusty wet-mullet!!? Why is life so confusing?

Yet another huge car bombing in Pakistan today. Business as usual for that Country. But what can you expect from a country where QUILT GUILDS are allowed to operate without restrictions? Before you know it, that chaos will all find it’s way to our shores…..

Our town is hosting its annual “HALLOWEEN SPOOKTACULAR” celebration this Saturday. According to the posters plastered all over town, this years event features such classics as “Candy, Games, Face Painting, Inflatables, trick or treating, scariest costume contest, flaming machete toss (Last kid with an upper extremity still attached and not aflame wins), Texas toddler bounce house (in which toddlers are placed in a bounce house and then dropped from a tall building), roadkill pie cook-off, the Rush Limbaugh Sexorama House of Horrors (in which patrons are restrained and forced to watch a pirated Rush Limbaugh Sex Tape), and scariest of all, a Kathy Griffin look-alike contest.

My 12yr old has finally reached the age where he has no desire to go out trick or treating, although he could easily do so, because for some strange reason, people in Texas tend to trick or treat until they reach the age of 30. My son desires only to spend the whole evening trying to scare the daylights out of any innocent little kids that my wander up to our door. My wife and I have told him that he will do no such thing and that he will instead do what every other mature and upstanding adult in town does, he will hide in the dark on the living room floor with his Mom and I and pretend that we are not at home every time the doorbell rings.

I love “Flash Forward”, “The Middle” and “Cougar Town”, but to me, “Modern Family” is destined to be a sitcom classic and will be around for years to come. What a great show!

I am proudly the only male in the entire Lone Star State who does NOT carry any type of knife. Need something cut, sliced, chopped, skewered, poked, or prodded? Grab any Texas male over the age of 3 months old (except me) and they will be able to gladly assist you. Even at my own wedding, while standing on the altar awaiting the arrival of my bride, after discovering a loose thread protruding from my rental tux, I was greeted by the sight of my best man, 13 men in the audience, and the preacher himself, all proudly holding out knives, pocketknives, butcher knives, and jagged saws of all shapes and sizes for me to use to cut the thread. Why do I not carry any type of knife product? Because I am an uncoordinated idiot. Me and sharp instruments is just asking for grotesque bodily mutilation and loss of prized appendages. But, for those real men out there in the world that just have to have another damn knife…..here is the ultimate do-it-all Swiss Army Knife that will have every guy and boy in Texas drooling this Christmas.

Now that’s a KNIFE!! (But good luck trying to carry that thing around in your pocket without damaging your goodies…)

To show you what an idiot my wife thinks I am…… Today she decided that she would make cornbread and beans (a redneck delicacy) for dinner. She called from work and told me to get into the pantry, put some beans into the crock pot, add some water, and then turn the crock pot on to high so the beans could cook all day. Within minutes of hanging up, she called me back just to verify that I understood that it was PINTO beans that I needed to put in the crock pot. In her head, she had visions of me opening up cans of green beans and dumping them into the pot.

What kind of idiot does she take me for?

(I sure hope she doesn’t find the green bean cans in the trash….)

I can understand employees of a hospital dressing up in costumes to get everyone in the Halloween mood. I was kind of alarmed though when I found myself having my blood drawn by a male lab technician dressed as Freddy Krueger (complete with knife blade gloves), and was very shocked when I was laying on the operating room table, just getting ready to get put under anesthesia, when my SURGEON bursts through the OR doors in full Texas Chainsaw Massacre Leatherface gear complete with human skin mask, bloody apron, and roaring blood-soaked chainsaw. That increased the old pucker factor a bit.

Saw a real good documentary last week about the English comedy group “Monty Python”. One of the shows was about the troubles they encountered with their classic film “The Life of Brian”. I love British Humor and think this is one of the funniest movies ever made. The documentary talked about the huge uproar the film caused from Church groups around the world that found the film blasphemous and derogatory towards Christ although the film only pokes fun at everything around Christ and not the man himself. I am a Christian and I am not the least bit offended by the film at all. One of the Monty Python members described a scene which was cut from the film due to the uproar and as he described it, I found it to be very funny.

He says that the scene would have involved Jesus and the 12 Apostles all showing up at the Restaurant for the Last Supper. They approach the Maitre’d and say that they “need a table for 13 please”. The Maitre’d says that 13 will not work…..he can do a table for 7 and then an adjacent table for 6. Jesus says that they HAVE to have a table for 13…..AND everyone HAS to be sitting on the same side of the table. The Maitr’d gets a worried look and says “Now THAT is going to be a problem……”

Of course it sounded alot funnier as he was describing it, but I thought that scene would have been hilarious.

So, the two Northwest Airline Pilots who overflew their destination by over 100 miles, admit now that they were on their personal laptops “checking their crew schedules”. Riiiiiigggghhhhhtttttttttt. I think the “Tending their Virtual Farms on FACEBOOK theory is looking alot more plausible now. Personally, I still think they HAD to be sleeping.

One thing I would like to see made legal:

If you are stuck in a long line at SUBWAY and the person in front of you finally gets to order but takes forever because he/she cannot decide what kind of bread they want, or what toppings they want, even though they have been in line staring at the food for 10 minutes…..you should be legally allowed to bypass that person, go directly to the cash register area, grab someone Else’s plastic sack with two or preferably three sandwiches already inside, work your way back through the line to the idiot that was in front of you, then you should legally be able to pummel and smack them repeatedly with the sandwich bag until they are a bruised and weeping lump on the floor.

A salesperson from the Fort Worth Newspaper, that I used to subscribe to, called me and all but begged me to resume my subscription to the paper. When he asked why I no longer took the paper, I told him that I can read the entire paper online for FREE. He said “but…but….but……but…..” but could not think of a good response.

A state Appeals Court here in Texas upheld a 4,060 year prison sentence for a convicted sex offender. That amounts to nearly 1.5 MILLION days in prison. Good grief people! Sentence the man to LIFE in prison like “normal” states do and be done with it.

Final Tally. Thirteen skin cancers removed. Lucky 13!!

A few less pounds to carry around.

Herman Munster legs to encourage me to wear long pants.

That Hiiiiiiiiiisssssssssssssssssiiiiinnnnnnnggggg sound you hear is my wallet slowly deflating.

All in all, an interesting day.

My kudo’s to you brave souls that have actual jobs that have to get up at the crack of dawn each day. Man is not meant to be up when it is still dark outside in the morning. (At least not THIS man)

I got to the hospital at 7am, was on a gurney by 7:30am, and then proceeded to lay and stare up at ceiling tiles until about 11am. Just like my military days…..hurry up and wait.

The RN got my IV going on the 4th try. I was only an LVN (LPN) when I was a nurse and I never took 4 attempts on anybody. My cousin Whit was a Phlebotomy Tech (Pofessional Vampire) and also probably never took 4 stabs at someone.

Every time a new person came into my room, I had to say my name and date of birth.

After the 4th person came in, I started saying my name and birth date backwards. When they looked confused, I told them that my bracelet was on inside out……

The Operating Room nurses came in and started circling what they thought were skin cancers. The only problem was that they circled skin cancers, bruises, spaghetti sauce stains, and since I used to be a redhead….about 12,000 freckles.

A few bored nurses drew a game of Tic-Tac-Toe on my right leg.

I myself took a marker and marked on my extreme upper thighs before I left the house. I wrote “Vasectomy Patient in next room!…not me!!”

The Anesthesia Doctor came in right before I was wheeled off to surgery and said “I am now going to inject the I DON’T CARE medicine into your IV”. She did so and then asked me “Mr. Packawack…do you mind if I rifle through your wallet, take all your money, paint your lips bright pink with lipstick, and then photograph you with my cell phone camera?”

I smiled…”I don’t care”

The surgery went off without incident, the incriminating photos were taken, and my Dear Dad drove me back home so that I could crawl in bed and watch my soa….stock programs on CNBC.

There are a few positives to being carved up. For the next couple days at least, I get to pass off all cooking, cleaning, and cat litter duties to the wife and kid, get to lay around and watch TV guilt free, and get to be waited on, hand and foot….which makes all of the permanent disfigurement to my legs….a little more tolerable.

The Autograph blog has now reached its One Year Anniversary. To date, 242 Autographs and over 630,000 views.

Life is good in the sporting world. My TCU Horned Frogs, my wifes Texas Longhorns, and my hometown Oregon Ducks are all in the top-10!

Will resume blogging my normal idiot stuff tomorrow.

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More like….Closed for a few days while recovering from trauma of sadistic scalpel wielding Surgeon carving up my lower extremities in futile attempt to rid my body of a dozen more skin cancers…..

My Dear Dad is coming over at the crack of dawn tomorrow morning to drive me to the Hospital.

My 12yr old son’s reaction to his father going under the knife first thing in the morning…..

“Make sure you don’t wake me up as you leave Dad!!……”

My wife’s reaction to her dear husband going under the knife…

“You better not get any blood on my sheets!!”

Will get back to the blog asap once all the pain meds have worn off.

You probably all heard or read about the Northwest Airlines flight going to Minneapolis that flew over 100 miles PAST it’s destination despite being repeatedly called by controllers, the Airline dispatchers, and despite numerous computer systems on-board that would have told them it was time to land.

The first thought is that both pilots were sound asleep.

The cockpit voice recorders only record the last 30 minutes of the flight, so it would not have recorded them sleeping in that it took them longer than 30 minutes to get back to land once they were finally contacted.

Both pilots have been real evasive on what exactly they were doing, if they were not sleeping.

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Many people speculate they were “busy” doing “other” things……(let your mind wander to the gutter or beyond)

I read another possible explanation that I find to very plausible given what I have observed over recent months on a popular website.

“They were tending their virtual farms on FACEBOOK!”

Talk to ya’ll in a few days!

All in a days work here in Idiotland.

Yesterday I had to go into the Hospital to get pre-admitted and have some Pre-Op tests done prior to my surgery coming up on Monday. This wonderful little excursion amounted to actually getting admitted, getting a goofy little green hospital wristband clamped to my wrist, and then being led around the building to donate blood, get a chest x-ray, have an EKG, and then told to strip down, put on a speedo, and then instructed to pose provocatively while bouncing a large beach ball with two burly male orderlies wearing black leather and spiked collars while being photographed in front of a pull-down screen of a tropical beach.

What the heck an EKG has to do with anything is beyond me……

As you know, I am an Idiot.

To say that I have a SICK sense of humor would be degrading to people that actually have a SICK sense of humor.

Sometimes I get joy and perverse pleasure at the most inopportune moments.

Take the EKG for example.

I have had EKG’s before and I have given EKG’s in my former career as a Nurse.

EKG’s are boring.

Hook up the electrodes, flip a switch, the machine goes “Bing Bing Bing”….end of story.

So, yesterday I found myself laying on the gurney, shirt pulled up over my eyes, as the female technician busily attached the electrodes to my upper body. As inconsequential chit-chit ensued, she asked what I would be doing for Halloween. “Scaring Hospital Employees” was my reply. She giggled and finished attaching the 485 electrodes, all the while explaining the procedure to me as if I was a mildly retarded field mouse. She finished the electrodes, and then said “OK Sir, please hold still, this will take just a Second…..”

She reached over to the machine and hit the “ON” button.

At the exact moment of the “click” of the switch, I let out a blood curdling scream and started convulsing on the table, flopping around like a dying fish in a boat.

“OOOOHHHHHHH MMMMMYYYY GGGGGOOOOOODDDDDD!!!!” she screamed as she hysterically flicked every switch on her panel in an effort to keep from further frying me to death.

After about 10 seconds of dying fish flopping, I stiffened both arms and legs straight out in front of me, raised them into the air, and then crashed them down onto the gurney, rolled my head to the side, and then held my breath…eyes and mouth wide open.

The poor woman screamed from the room like a Banshee……

Within 30 seconds about 5 people came barreling into the room, crash cart in tow, only to find me sitting up on the bed, happily detaching the electrodes.

I looked at the technician, who was white as a ghost, and calmly smiled “Happy Halloween”.

You know, come to think of it…..I was only scheduled to have the EKG, Blood Work, and X-Ray done. The escapade with the Speedo and the two burly spiked fellows came about AFTER my little prank on the EKG technician.

I wonder if there was any correlation?

Hmmmmmmmm….

Last night, the wife and I went down to civilization to see a Christian Rock Concert by the group “Third Day”. We got to the arena and searched out our seats only to find that they were 6 rows from the top….closer to the moon than the stage. Just my luck! No matter the concert or event, whenever I use Ticketmaster online and click on “Best Available Seats”……my seats are ALWAYS located in outer space!

My poor, weary little wife did not want any part of hiking up the mountain into the stratosphere, so she plopped down in the very first row of the upper level, right next to the stairs, content to sit there until the rightful seat owners came along.

For some odd unexplainable reason….seat stealing is one of my weird little phobias that just totally freaks the bejeezus of out me. If I go to a sporting event or concert and try to sit in any seat that is not my ticketed seat….I sit there in total abject fear, watching every single person that approaches me, wondering if I am in THEIR seat. It becomes a total obsession and totally distracts me from what is going on down on the field or stage. I see a person walking up the steps, ticket in hand, and think….”This is it! This is that mans seat!! We are dead people!! We are going to have to face the humiliating embarrassment of a public confrontation and then the disgrace of having to get up and move in front of hundreds of witnesses who will know that we are Seat Stealers!!! So it was last night. As each little group of smiling happy Christians slowly made their way up to the nosebleed seats, I stared them down in trembling fear, waiting to be embarrassed and humiliated. My wife could care less. She had no intentions of leaving that row. If someone showed up, she was not leaving, she would merely “slide down”. Oh…to have her strength.

To take someone else’s seat at an event was one thing. But this was a CHRISTIAN event. What I was doing, while common, was wrong….. Not only was I fighting my inner demons of truth and decency, I was in fact facing the wrath of the “Big Man” himself for all of eternity!!

I sat there and trembled with every person that approached, sure that my future would now result in eternal damnation for my seat-stealing sins against my fellow man….

Then a Priest approached me from behind and placed his hand on my shoulder.

This was it! I was busted!!

Start up the express elevator to the eternally “HOT” place that we all fear ending up in…..

(Cue: “Don’t fear the Reaper” by Blue Oyster Cult)

The Priest smiled, leaned down and whispered….”My son….are those seats next to you taken? We are up in the nosebleed seats and thought we could just sit down here IF these seats are not occupied….”

My heart raced.

A Priest and his companions wanted to sit in seats other than the ones they were ticketed for.

Just like me and my wife.

I did what every good Christian would do. I stood up….extended my right arm straight out in front of me….turned to face the Priest….and yelled at the top of my lungs….

“SEAT STEALER!!!’ “SEAT STEALER!!!” “SEAT STEALER!!!”

As most of you are aware, I volunteer at DFW Airport one day a week as a Airport Ambassador. I work one 4hr shift manning an information podium in the International Terminal helping domestic and foreign travellers with any problems or questions they may have while in the airport.

Often, during busy periods, I may have numerous people lined up waiting to ask me questions, while during slower periods, I just sit, smile to my teeth bleed, and watch the endless stream of humanity that strolls by my desk.

Most of the stuff is pretty trivial. “How do I get to gate C-12?”, “What time is it here?”, “Where is the Bathroom?”, “Where is the ATM?”, “Will you Father my Child?”, Etc. are all the types of questions that make up most of my typical day.

Being in the International Terminal, I do get access to large numbers of travellers that speak no English whatsoever. In that I can barely speak proper English, and speak no foreign languages…..this can sometimes present small problems when trying to communicate with these foreign travelers.

Often, non-verbal communication can be key to understanding the person and what they are attempting to ask.

A person grabbing their crotch area and hopping on one leg….wants to know where the bathroom is.

A crying adult woman pushing an empty stroller…..cannot remember where she left her children.

A person that dumps about $3,000 worth of foreign currency down on the desk in front of you…..needs change for a dollar.

A person standing in front of you, shaking uncontrollably, sweating profusely, and continuously nervously fidgeting…..wants to know where they can smoke a cigarette after the 13 hour flight from their home country.

A man brandishing a tire iron and a pair of brass knuckles….wants my wallet, watch, and car keys.

All in all, even though I don’t have a clue what they are saying, as they have no clue what I am saying, I really enjoy helping our foreign visitors. There is no greater satisfaction than going through a long series of charades and arm gestures, figuring out what the person wants, and then doing what is necessary to help them.

This past Monday was no different.

After about 2 hours of sitting and smiling on a pretty slow day, I found myself staring at an elderly man who had approached my desk.

The man launched into a rapid-fire burst of Spanish or at least it sounded like Spanish, all the while nervously waving his arms around like a madman. Out of the whole outburst, I understood only “San Jose”.

I smiled and said “San Jose?”

He grinned and eagerly replied “SI! San Jose!!”

The code had been broken. I now knew exactly what this poor man needed, he needed to know how to get to the gate for the Flight to San Jose. No problem, that is what I am there for.

For I…..

Am an AMBASSADOR!!! (start dramatic music)

I leaped from my desk in a single bound, hobbled to the nearby Flight Information Board, scanned the thousands of flights until I located San Jose in mere milliseconds, and then hobbled back to the old man where I proceeded to launch into a very animated physical charade of the Internationally recognized “FOLLOW ME” symbol. I tugged at the mans sleeve and off we went to the SKylink Train Station to connect to one of our domestic terminals on the other side of the huge airport.

This man WOULD get to San Jose Damnit!! He is cutting it close on time…..but WE WILL MAKE IT!!

For I am an Ambassador!! (more dramatic music)

Once on the train, I motioned for the man to sit down and I took up post standing next to him, trying to gesture at the airport map above us that showed we had to travel to the other side of the airport to reach his terminal. I happily stood guard over my wayward traveler as he looked out the window in obvious awe of just how huge our massive airport is. He rattled on again in rapid-fire Spanish, 99% of which I did not understand, but I did catch the word “Grande!”. I nodded and smiled “Si…Grande!! Mucho Grande!!” ( I only know that much courtesy of Taco Bell)

Soon, my wayward San Jose bound foreigner and I reached our desired terminal. Looking at my watch, I feared we were going to be real close to the departure time so I knew we would have to really hoof it, as much as an elderly man and a disabled fat guy could hoof anything….

Our train arrived at the terminal and I did the internationally recognized charade for “we need to run” which involved me looking like a total idiot as I tried to run in place without falling over. I took off out of the train, motioned for the man to follow, and we took off through the terminal.

This terminal that we were now in was a total chaotic zoo crammed with thousands of people. We shuffled along as fast we could, the old man rattling on in Spanish all the while, me not understanding a thing other than the occasional “San Jose” that I could hear.

Finally we got to the point to where I could see the mans gate and was shocked to see the gate agent in the process of closing the boarding door.

I grabbed the old man by the collar, and then screamed out “Wait!! Wait!! I have one of your passengers!!!”

The agent heard me, saw us stumbling through the crowd, and held the door.

I got the man to the door, she grabbed his ticket and dropped it in a pile on the desk, and told the man to board the plane as quickly as possibly.

I looked at the man, smiled, pointed at the plane outside the window, and said “San Jose!”.

The man got a huge grin and held out his hand.

We shook hands, he rattled on in staccato Spanish of which I understood nothing, and he turned and boarded the plane.

This is exactly why I volunteer 4hrs out of my busy schedule each week. There is no greater feeling of accomplishment than to realize you took a poor frightened traveller, in a strange and scary land, and helped that person get to where they needed to go. I am sure that when that man arrives in San Jose, his relatives or friends that pick him up at the airport will hear all about the kind gray-haired fat man back in Dallas that helped him find his way through our maze of an airport.

My job accomplished, I smiled, patted myself on the back, and started the long waddle back to the train to get back to my desk.

After arriving back in the International Terminal, I returned back to my desk, smiled again, and happily waited for my next lost and wayward soul to approach my podium.

After a few minutes, the silence of the moment was interrupted by yet another of the endless thousands of flight announcements blaring over the airport P.A. system.

This one involved a International Flight leaving just 2 gates down from my desk.

“This is the final boarding call for American Airlines flight #1217 with non-stop service to San Jose, Costa Rica. All passengers with tickets on #1217 to San Jose need to be on the aircraft at this time.

The IDIOT bulb exploded in my head.

SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA

SAN JOSE………COSTA FREAKIN RICA!!!

Old man…

Speaking no English….

Speaking only SPANISH…..

IN the INTERNATIONAL TERMINAL!!!…..

Going to SAN JOSE!!!!!

AAAAARRRGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!

I can just see that poor man now, sitting at his window, staring out at the Rocky Mountains far below when he should have been staring at the Gulf of Mexico……smiling….rattling on in incoherent Spanish….”San Jose…San Jose….San Jose…….”

My dear Cousin Whitney, without who’s tremendous support this blog would not exist, thinks the new NEURONTIN medication I am taking is having a bizarre side effect not listed on the informational sheet.

Prior to the NEURONTIN, I would come in the computer, sit down, open up a new post template on the blog, would stare at the screen, yawn, scratch, drool, stare, scratch again, get up and get a soda, sit down, stare, scratch, yawn, repeat…….you get the picture.

What the heck can a middle aged guy who is home all day with no human contact for hours on end possibly have to write about? Nothing!! My life has been reduced to taking solace in small little moments of joy, that I enjoy all alone, scattered through the days of the week.

One day I found 34 cents at the bottom of the washing machine!

One day I accidentally ran over my own foot with my lawnmower but the blades were so dull that I actually dented the blade and did no damage to my foot!

One day I found a yellow starburst that had made it through the washing and drying cycles and was still intact in the dryer. It was a little squishy….but delicious!

Cherish the small victories of life!…..

What was I writing about again…….sorry, I kind of got off track……..

That is the side effect that my Dear Cousin is talking about. This new drug seems to have repaired my “ON” switch in my brain which has been broken for ages. Now, I got all kinds of sick stuff floating around in there, ready to be put on the blog. The NEURONTIN has really unlocked the creative juices, until such time as the Doctor decides to put me on something else, and then I find myself back in this chair, drooling, yawning, and scratching…….

Personally, the only read side effect I have noticed is a tiny little furry tail that seems to be growing out of my belly button……Oh well, no worries…….

In other Family News….

My Dear Mother-in-Law will soon be going in for Knee Surgery. (Senior Ladies Rugby League Injury) Yesterday, she went in for some pre-op tests and procedures which included donating blood to be used in her surgery….just in case. I don’t know for sure how much they drained from the poor woman, but it was too much! The woman is the size of Estelle Getty on “The Golden Girls” on a good day. She can not afford to give more than like…..1 cup or so of blood. Well, anyhow….she gives the blood, drinks her juice, eats her cookie, and then heads off to a pizza buffet for lunch. Nothing replenishes blood cells better than greasy fast-food pizza! While eating, my Father-in-Law had to “leave the room” for a moment, at which time the Mother-in-Law decided to do a little pirouette and then plant herself unconscious on the floor. In a pure stroke of luck, she collapsed and passed out at the feet of two EMT’s that were trying to enjoy lunch. (Me…I would have passed out at the feet of two blind, deaf mutes and would have gone unnoticed for hours…) The Mom-in Law was rushed back to the hospital (after the EMT’s finished their slices…) and the word is that she will be fine.

My Aunt Terry out in Oregon also recently had knee surgery and has had some setbacks, resulting in her having been in the hospital for weeks. Hopefully she is recovering and doing well now. Hang in there Terry!

My Cousin Matt’s wife, Kris, contacted me via this blog in reference to my NAME ROBBERS post, and has made it clear that she understood that naming her son ALEX, when I already had an ALEX, was a violation of the Pakulak Family Code of Ethics and Kris has made it clear that she intends to make restitution in the form of renaming her son ALEX…VLADIMIR….,she will be paying us monetary penalties in the amount of $12,834.49(VISA,MC, DISCOVER…SORRY NO CHECKS), and she will be making her home available to my family for use as a vacation home at any time of our choosing. Thanks Kris! All is forgiven.

My Cousin Whitney told me the TRUTH about her female friends on Facebook after I had made comments that they looked like the cast of Desperate Housewives and all looked like former Supermodels. Whitney confirmed what I had expected, the women, like me, are using their High School Photos (or in some cases..Junior High School photos) on their FACEBOOK profiles, and Whitney assures me that like the rest of us “Normal” people, the ladies have all gained a few pounds, added some gray hairs, a few wrinkles, and all the other wonderful battle-scars that adults of our ages accumulate over the years. Thanks for the clarification Whitney!

Now, if they would like to refute these charges, I am always willing to listen to the other side of the story….

Not that I watch “Dancing with the Stars”…(fingers crossed)……but I hear the guest dancers last night were real good….

I remember School Picture Day well from my childhood.

Even though I remember being sent home from school/prison with no notices about picture day whatsoever, my Mother always knew the exact date my mugshot was to be taken.

My Mom is one of those doting parents that tries to ensure that their kid “dresses up” for school pictures. Those in the family know that I wear polo shirts about 97.3% of the time and have done so since birth. My newborn picture from the hospital features me in a stunning baby blue Izod Polo while all the other little pink otters in the nursery were wearing hand-me down hospital issue blankets. I get this trait from my Dad. He too is a Polo shirt wearing freak. Even though he was a career military man…..he never went without his Polo shirts. Hunkered down in a foxhole, bullets whizzing past his head, grenades exploding everywhere around him, my Dad was always the sharpest dressed soldier with his combat fatigues and helmet covering a brightly colored, vertical striped Polo with snazzy breast pocket….. Dear Cousin Whitney can laugh all she wants….but her dear Father, (My Dads kid brother) was EXACTLY the same way. My Uncle Keith was also a POLO man. He was a Male Nurse by trade and was the first nurse, in the whole country, to incorporate POLO shirt technology into a pair of surgical scrubs. What a feat!

Well, any hooooo…… Mom would automatically know that it was picture day and would make sure that I wore just the “Perfect” Polo shirt to school that day. Understand, I went to school in the 1970’s for most of my childhood…..and this resulted in some fashion nightmares that would make people sick today. What other time in history could you get a school photo of a 10yr old kid wearing a Polo shirt that incorporated the colors of blue, brown, yellow, and purple….interlaced with both vertical and horizontal stripes, and bright pink polka-dots? Only in the 70’s! The great thing about clothes in the 70’s was that you did not have to worry about color-coordinating anything. Everything went together!

My High School graduation featured me clad in brown shoes, white pants, brown belt, baby blue dress shirt (Polo’s not allowed), with a gray and silver striped tie…..all worn under a dark GREEN gown. (Even though it was 1983, we were ALL kids of the 70’s) My wife still laughs at the white pants, seeing as how I still wore white pants right up until I met her in 1990. I proudly wore white pants before white pants became the coolest thing of the mid 80’s. Actor Don Johnson was at my High School Graduation and seeing me stroll across the stage with that hint of white pant protruding from the bottom of the gown…..thought to himself…”Damn those white pants are cool! I should incorporate them into my character on this Miami Cop show I am trying to get made….” The rest is history.

Well anyhoo…. All my school pictures, hideous colors and all, came out fine. My Mom has all of them proudly displayed on her hallway wall. In all of them, even over the glow of the blinding colors, I am smiling and appear to be happy.

Flash Forward to reality and current day.

My son, a happy and smiling child full of boundless joy, absolutely hates Picture day with a passion. For some reason, school pictures today must be purchased in advance so that you are stuck with the photos no matter how awful they may turn out. We always paid for our pictures AFTER they were taken when I was a kid. So, anyway…the kid gets a packet to order the photos and is supposed to bring that home for us to fill out and send back to the school with a check enclosed. In our hallway, is the prerequisite school year collage of photos of each of our children, showing all of their school photos from kindergarten to High School Graduation. My son, who is only in the 7Th grade, already has 4 holes from school years where he neglected to bring home the packet and conveniently forgot to mention that it was picture time. In those years that he does have photos on display……his appearance is far from the happy and smiling child that we think we live with. The kid HATES to pose for pictures! He takes a great photo if you snap him when he is not looking but if you try to get him to actually smile for a photo on cue…..what you get is……laughable…..

A normal photo of him….

Here is his 5Th grade photo……

And his most recent photo (now in Middle School)

His big sister was exactly the same way, with one small difference, she LOVES posing for a camera, ANY camera, as long as it is NOT a school Photo.

Take for example a photo I took of her here at home just last year…….

And now…..flashback to her High School photo from her Junior Year…….

YIKES!!!

This is what walking down our hallway and looking at all the school pictures of my children is like. My oldest son was a true pro. He had the same expressionless glare for the camera on every school photo ever taken of him. The two younger kids have really made life interesting to say the least.
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*Just so my wife does not kill me, no….the last photo that I alledged to be my son….is not actually my son……*Now as for my daughter…..

As you remember, (both of you faithful readers), last week I went to my Family Doctor to have a few suspicious spots on my legs looked at. These were spots that I feared were more skin cancers. Most of these spots had grown to the size of huge blood-oozing basketballs months earlier, so I wisely decided to have them checked out.

As you know, my Family Doc’s immediate reaction was to yell “DAAAAAMMMNNNNN!!!” while hurriedly climbing back into a protective chemical and biological warfare suit. I was then referred to the only surgeon in town, a man that also owns the only BBQ Restaurant in town, which has long been a source of community gossip and rumors as to where he gets some of his “leaner” cuts of meat…….

I am not saying the good Doctor would ever be accused of surgically removing body parts, slipping them into an ice chest hidden under the operating table and then taking said pieces and parts to be used in his next round of meat smoking……

I am not saying that, but other people do……

Well anyway……..

I went into the surgeons waiting room and judging by the motley bunch of folks in there, I could swear I had seen this place in a movie before……If only I could remember the movie…..

I got into the exam room (which smelled like smoked ribs) and waited for the Doctor. After reading half of the July 1942 issue of Knitting Magazine, the Doc finally came into the room. Using wild hand gestures, needless crying, the use of cell phone photos, and the use of a fake British Accent for no apparent reason, I explained the reason for my visit while pulling my shorts up around my throat so as to expose all the possible cancers on my legs. Whereas the Family Doctor had yelped and jumped for her suit, the surgeon merely smiled, pulled out a marker, and started drawing on my legs.

I figured he was circling the possible cancers that would need to be removed in surgery but quickly noticed that the marker was not making circles around the spots, but was rather making familiar shapes across much of my massive legs. On my left leg were shapes which clearly resembled a “T-Bone” and 2 “Rib-Eyes” while my right leg was now adorned with a crude drawing of what appeared to be a chicken or waterfowl of some kind.

I explained that I was trying to weigh the financial costs of getting a ton of skin cancers cut off, versus the cost of just inserting my legs into a wood chipper and incurring the one-time cost of getting the stumps sewn up.

The Doc got out a calculator, started pounding in some figures, glanced at my legs, hit the multiply button a few times, pounded some more keys, glanced again at my legs, looked at the meat product drawings on them, began to drool ever so slightly, and informed me that I definitely needed to go the surgery route.

There was no other option.

The Doc explained that I would need to get admitted to the hospital this next Monday for surgery. I will be knocked out, “processed”, hung from a large hook in the Operating Room, and then placed into the hospital freezer for recuperation after the surgery.

So that is it. Monday, the little buggers and a few choice cuts of meat, get carved from my legs. I can hardly wait.

Monday evening, if I can still walk, we will all go out to dinner at the BBQ place. If I bite into a hunk of steak that has a familiar mole on it….I am going to scream!!!!

Yes, I am truly a sick puppy!! On what other blog can you get educated about skin cancer and cannibalistic Doctors all in one post? You are very welcome!! Now pass the BBQ sauce!!!

I have no clue…

Who this freakish family is…..

But this has to be the family pic of the year!!

I have seen this pic floating around on the net for some time, and on some other blogs, so I figured I would pass it on to ya’ll.

I assume that the “gentleman” in the back of the photo is the Dad of this strange clan…..at least let’s hope so….

What the heck is he doing with his pants? Pulling them up…..or down……???

And now for something completely different:

Saturday, me, the kid, and my Dad, all went down to Fort Worth to see the TCU-Colorado State Football game. TCU won the game easily 44-6 but the true highlight of the afternoon was me mercilessly plastering a small toddler in the back with a piece of skittles candy in a feat of gravity and physics that had to be seen to be believed…

I was perched on my bench, enjoying the game, when my son decided to rip into a bag of skittles. I held out my aging paw and begged for a handful. The kid grudgingly heeded my request and started pouring skittles into my hand. After the filling process was complete, I began the tricky maneuver of trying to manipulate a small number of the crafty little bastards from my clenched fist into my gapingly widened open mouth. Not accounting for changes in wind direction, humidity, the physical strain on my hand and arm from supporting the back-breaking weight of 23 small candies….I suffered a horrific loss of skittular hand control, causing one of the buggers to be forcibly ejected from my clenched fist. My son and I both watched in slow-motion horror as the tiny skittle (I believe it was a red one but I cannot be positive) cartwheeled through the air until the forces of gravity became too great and the tiny candy was dragged earthward where it impacted the empty bench directly in front of us. Hitting with ear shattering velocity, the tiny fellow was again launched skyward and into the sky, at which point gravity again took control and yanked the candy back to earth where it next impacted the next row of benches, directly below the first impact row. With a sickening “Click!” “Boooiiinnnggg” “Click!” “Booooiinnnggg” “Click!” “Booooiiinnngg” the little wayward skittle proceeded to hop from bench to bench to bench to bench…..before cleanly plastering the backside of a small male toddler standing innocently on the bench next to his seated Father, approximately 5 rows directly beneath us.

The candy hit his back with enough force to knock the Giraffe shaped “Nubbie” from his mouth and within seconds, the kid was screaming hysterically. The Dad immediately turned his attention from his screaming toddler, noticed the plastered skittle spread all over his son’s back and then instinctively turned around and looked up in our direction.

The kid and I both did what any respectable human being and adolescent respectable human being in training would do….

We both pointed at my Father…….who was watching the game and who was oblivious to all the chaos happening mere rows below him…..

Come on……ya’ll know you would have done the same thing!

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Now, in the directors cut of this story, directed by Quentin Tarantino, the father of the innocent toddler would have slowly risen in slow motion, with “Don’t let me be understood” by Santa Esmeralda playing in the background, and would have slowly drawn a pair of semi-automatic assault rifles from underneath the long coat he was wearing. Seeing this, the kid and I, also in slow-motion, reach into our Polo shirts and withdraw obscenely long shotguns and semi-machine guns. As people in nearby seats begin to scatter, still in slow motion, a barrage of bullets and shotgun pellets fly though the air, as the music still plays, before striking their targets. In slow motion still, the toddlers father, me, and my kid are all slowly and graphically shredded by gunfire as blood splatters, in slow motion, in all directions. Our bullet riddled bodies slowly falling to the ground, guns still blazing, music still playing, nearby a flock of white doves flies into the air, and then the camera zooms in for a close-up of the face of the now orphaned toddler who had been smacked with the Skittle. A single tear is running down his left cheek. In slow motion.

Meanwhile, my Dad, now covered in our blood, wipes the blood from his eyes…..and continues watching the game.

I watch way too many movies……

Sunday was a truly shocking and eye-opening day in Church.

During the sermon, the speaker professed an embarrassing and humiliating personal secret from his adolescence that he has been carrying around in a cloak of shame for well over 20 years.

When I heard his impassioned confession, my heart sank for I knew exactly the shame and embarrassment he had endured all these years.

This is a secret that only my parents know about. My own wife has never heard of this sick and twisted chapter of my life.

But, now it is time to cleanse my soul of this burden. Hopefully, confessing this awful deed will give me a fresh outlook on life in general. Maybe I will be a better and happier person and Father.

Maybe some of you men out there have also been hiding this dark secret from your friends, family, and loved ones.

I know you are out there.

I am not alone in carrying this embarrassing legacy through life.

Surely, millions of men have suffered this same fate.

It is time for me to come clean.

I was a male hooker during my early teen years of Junior High School.

Yes, I hooked…..

Rugs.

(Someone please shoot me!….)

I don’t remember how exactly it started, but I know my Dear Mother is fully to blame. For all I can remember, maybe I was home sick from school for an extended period of time…… All I know for sure is that I found my self with a hook, color-coded mat, and a whole boatload of brightly colored yarn which quickly became a very colorful Santa Claus rug….

Oh…the shame…….

I am tearing up as we speak……tears are dripping onto the keyboard…..and my hands are trembling.

For over 30 long years I have kept this secret. Once the Santa rug was completed, no one talked of the embarrassing little escapade ever again.

My father was a military man serving in the US Air Force. If word got out on the base that his oldest boy was a closet rug hooker…..my Dad would have been laughed out of the service.

I am now well over 40 years old. My parents are long retired. I fear that somewhere in my parents home, buried deep in a box or storage bin……is a brightly colored little Santa rug…..

The source of 3 decades of shame and humiliation to yours truly.

I am thinking of joining a support group for other shamed and scorned men suffering my same indignity. I look forward to the day when I can walk in to the group, stand, and proudly proclaim….”Hi….My name is Mark…..and I am a Hooker…”

Wish me luck.

I have now been “on the wagon” and “Hook-Free” for these past 30 years. Sometimes I still get the shakes when I walk past the arts and crafts section at Wal-Mart, and I admit to calling a few “Hooker” support Hot-Lines over the years…..but my hands have NOT touched a hooking utensil since those dark days of the late 1970’s…….

You bet it will…

As you know, a week ago I began an experiment to see if adding pictures of scantily clad women to my blog would have any effect on the numbers of daily readers.

My theory is that you could write a post about discovering the “True Meaning of Life and the way to make millions of dollars in the process”……or something to that effect….and that post would have far less readers than if you did a post entitled the “The Glorious History of Belly-Button Lint” which just happened to contain a random picture of a bikini-clad gal above the post.

Face it. People surf blogs looking for pictures of scantily clad women. (or men) There is a reason why my autograph blog has gotten nearly 600,000 views in its one year of existence………it is because tens of thousands of horndog men are surfing for photos of Kaley Cuoco and Jessica Biel…..instead of photos of Jean Stapleton or Doris Day.

Last week, with no skin photos on the posts on this blog, this blog averaged 678 views per day.

This week, with tons of skin (and a shirtless Chris Farley) on full display, the blog averaged 866 views per day.

An increase of 27.7%.

Verdict: Sex sells.

Just as I suspected.

Well, I would love to keep posting the sexy photos but I will not, unless I just feel the sick urge to do so on occasion. The views will drop back down to their Pre-Baywatch levels and life here in Idiotland will again return to normal…….until I can again figure out a sneaky way to incorporate that great Jeniffer Aniston photo into a post.

Hmmmm……maybe if I was to use that Jennifer Aniston photo on EVERY post….the numbers might stay up a bit……..

Have a great day.

The Things we do for love….

And the things we do because we have to…….as parents……

The kid is in the Band at school. This makes the wife and I….Band parents…..and therefore, official members of the Band Boosters….

The Band Boosters raise money to help fund the kids Marching Band Uniforms, road trips, bail money, etc.

Our kid is still in Middle School, and the kids do not yet march, so I assume the money raised goes to other useful projects like earplugs and hearing aides for the parents of kids just learning a particular instrument and other such useful endeavors….

What is the main way they raise these much needed funds?

They operate a concession stand at the Junior High and High School Football games.

Who works in these stands? The lucky Band Booster Parents.

So, this past Friday Night was the dreaded day that had been circled on the calendar for months….the day that my wife and I would have to work in the concession stand to raise money for the Marching Band even though our kid does not yet march.

It was a day that I looked forward to about as much as you would look forward to having your wisdom teeth extracted with a pair of rusty pliers by an epileptic and blind Dentist with poor depth perception.

Why did we dread it so much? My wife had a valid excuse, she was just coming off working a full day at work and was exhausted. Me? I’m just Anti-Social and really don’t like co-mingling with strangers very much.

We both arrived at the concession stand at 5pm, each of us looking at each other with as much enthusiasm as condemned people being led to the gallows…..

The only person we knew was our friend Teresa. A whole slew of other ladies were introduced and within seconds, I could not remember any of there names. The concession stand was not yet open and had large wood shutters covering the windows. Inside, the ladies were all laughing and gabbing and were busily eating and drinking the various snack bar items to build up energy for the throngs of people that would soon be arriving for the game. I was given the task of being in-charge of Hot Dogs. I was directed to my work station and was given a quick lesson in proper Hot Dog construction. In front of me was a vat full of about 3,000 hot dogs. Next to the vat was a box of aluminum foil squares. Above me, were about 200 crates full of hot dog buns. The instructor made it all pretty clear.
A. Get a foil square.
B. Get a Bun.
C. Remove a Hot Dog from Vat and place in bun.
D. Roll Hot Dog in foil.
E. Give to cashier that requested Hot Dog.

Easy Enough. Even an idiot like me could handle that.

I did a test dog to test my skill.

Actually, I did 4 test dogs.

The first dog ended with me horrifically burning my right hand by attempting to physically grab a hot dog out of the cauldron without using the pair of tongs that they had neglected to inform me about.
The second dog went out without benefit of a bun in that I was still woozy and delirious in pain from the burns and just ended up wrapping a dog into the foil minus any type of bread product.
The Third one, while teetering on the edge of unconsciousness due to the burns, was sent out with only a bun, no meat.
The last one, which I do not remember even doing, was apparently just a little rolled torpedo of tin foil with no hot dog OR bun inside.

After a half dozen pain pills, muscle relaxers, and a large Mr. Pibb, I was finally ready for action. There was about 10 of us in the small concession stand, each of standing at the ready at our positions, ready for the wood shutters to be raised, signalling the opening of the stand.

I was on the dogs, Teresa was next to me doing the BBQ Sandwiches, and feet away, my wife shook in fear as she prepared to dish out Frito Pies and Pizza.

All was eerily quiet as the shutters were slowly raised.

Then all HELL rained down upon the little building and Chaos erupted into anarchy. Outside the window, wads of money clenched in their fists, drool tricking from the corners of their mouths, was every single kid within a three county radius of our Football Stadium! Zombielike kids stretching as far as the eye could see.

It started out like the first 10 minutes of “Saving Private Ryan”. I heard a shout of “Hot Dog!!!” I grabbed a foil square, lunged for a bun, reached in grabbed a …”OOOOOOOOWWWWWWWCCCCHHHH!!! )!(*@#&()*!(*@!!!” (Remember the Damn tongs Idiot!!) and rolled up a dog and then handed it over the counter to the waiting cashier.
I had about a 2 second break before “2 HOT DOGS!!!” was screamed from across the room. I fumbled for the foil squares, grabbed a handful of buns, and THANK GOD ALMIGHTY….I grabbed the tongs to fish a couple bobbing dogs out of the vat. The dogs were wrapped and held out…but before they could be safely delivered…..”4 HOT DOGS!!!!!” was yelled from some far off corner of the room.

I went into autistic octopus mode and just started grabbing, wrapping, rolling, burning, wrapping, grabbing, etc……but it was no use, I could not keep up with having to wait for the cashiers to come get their dogs.

Then the idiot light bulb went on. Why wait? Save them AND me some time…why not THROW the dogs to them? Hmmmmmmmm It started out with an innocent little toss. I lobbed one dog, underhanded, to a woman standing about 5 feet from me. I gradually worked my way up to soft overhead throws of 10-20 feet before finally getting so busy that I would roll a dog, cock my arm, and then launch a 100mph Oscar Mayer Fastball at the cashiers within seconds of them yelling for a dog.

The last I saw of my wife, she was cowering under the counter of her station, covered in Frito-Pie Chili and Nacho Cheese, and was weeping uncontrollably due to the unbelievably stressful atmosphere of the crowded stand.

“Hot Dog!!!” ZZIIIIINNNGGGGG “Hot Dog!!” ZIIIINNNNNNGGGG “2 Hot Dogs!!!” ZZZZINNNGG ZIIINNNGGGG

This worked well until 8:17pm CST, when on my 139th fastball of the session, Cashier #3 Zigged when she should have zagged, and an errant fastball went sailing by her outstretched fingertips…….and out the cashiers window….

Eighty-Three year old Retired Nun Sister Edna Frampton had just placed an order for her and the small group of Honduran Orphans she had brought to the game when my wayward Hot Dog Fastball had occasion to strike her on the forehead with such force that she was knocked backwards 13 feet, she was forcibly ejected from her shoes, and sent into a state of total loss of consciousness for the next 12 minutes.

The entire concession stand, stadium, county and State became deathly silent.

I had just flattened an orphan loving Woman of God….with a blazing Hot Dog heater to the face…..

As to the final outcome of this story. I cannot say more, under the advisement of my legal counsel.

As a Church-going Christian, I know that someday…..I am going to have to answer to the big guy upstairs for this little fiasco….and it will not be pretty…..

The last I heard, the Nuns of Sister Frampton’s former Parish were planning on paying me a little visit the next time my name comes up to work the concession stand….(below)

*Note* No Nuns were harmed during the making of this post. Any similarities to any real Nuns that have actually been decked by flying wieners or other food products is purely coincidental and down right freaky.

If I was Jennifer Aniston, I would use THIS photo on my FACEBOOK page…and on my Drivers License….and on my Resume…and on my passport…and on my screensaver…..

Ok, First of all, many of my FACEBOOK friends are far from Sexy in most circles (Sorry Phil, Leland, etc), but I needed a sly way to slip SEX into the post to attract more Internet Sex and Nudity surfers to artificially increase my daily visit totals. So shoot me.

I continue to believe that FACEBOOK will be the end of society as we know it. You know how the “Terminator” movies are all premised on the fact that machines eventually grow intelligent enough to take over the world and kill all the humans? The truth is it will not be the machines….it will be FACEBOOK.

One thing I do not really like about the application is the fact that everyone and their sister can see how many “friends” you have. When I got dragged into starting a page, my wife already had like 3,000 friends on her page, while after a week, I had one…..my wife. Through online solicitation of incarcerated prisoners, friendless shut-ins and hermits, and through just making up false accounts with bogus names, I have now grown my friend count to well over a dozen! Woo Hoo!

One thing that is great about FACEBOOK is the ability to communicate with people I have not seen or heard from in years. I chat with people in knew in High School that I had not contacted at all in the previous 26 years since I graduated. That is great, don’t get me wrong… However……now I am being bombarded by what I hope are computer generated friend requests from friends of those people I had not seen or talked to in a quarter of a Century. I get messages that “Drumbo Hazewood” wants to be my friend. It indicates that “Drumbo” is a Mutual Friend of “Rupert Dillwagger”, one of the Quarter-Century Friends. Hey, let’s get real. I have chatted with Rupert Dillwagger once in the last 26 years and have no earthly clue who the heck Drumbo Hazewood is…….Why would I want to add him as a friend?

Answer: Because it is all part of FACEBOOK’s MASTER PLAN FOR WORLD DOMINATION, ENSLAVEMENT, AND ANNIHILATION.

(I need to quit reading those Scientology pamphlets that Jenna Elfman sent me…..)

Changing the channel for a moment, I am now into day three on the NEURONTIN medication for my nerve pain. I think I had my first side effect. Usually I go to sleep between 1am-2am and get up between 8am- 830am. I HAVE to be up before 830am because that is when the Stock Market opens. Last night, I could not keep my eyes open past about 1230am and went to bed, only to wake up with cobwebs covering my face at 11am this morning! Judging by the huge red crease on the side of my face, I must not have moved all night long. I told my Dad about this and he remarked that he too had been knocked out all night long….the night right before he was knocked unconscious by the drug and ended up kissing the floor for an hour. With that said, I have now donned all the protective gear and pillows that I mentioned in my earlier post. The mail carrier must have thought I was a real headcase when she came to the door and I was standing there in full-pillow gear.

What do I have to look forward to in later years? I look at my Dad and I see what I will be like in 20 years (or less). Today he stopped by on his way to the store. He had a list of errands he needed to run in town. The list said 1- Go to Store 2- Go to Pharmacy 3- Return Home ……then it had his address written out underneath the list. I guess this what happens when you come home with a handful of groceries and start unloading them into the fridge…..of the wrong house…..a few too many times……..

I am reading the Autobiography written by Ted Kennedy just before he passed away. (Yes, I read….) Whether your a Democrat, a Republican, or a FACEBOOK zombie, the book is a great read. By the time he was 6 years old he had already seen US Presidents, Movie Stars, and a Pope come to eat dinner at his house. He also played in a back room at Buckingham Palace with the soon-to-be Queen Elizabeth. That man led a heck of a life.

I am really just totally sick and disgusted with the state of Politics in our Country. The constant fighting and backstabbing is worse than what you get with a group of kindergartners. I heard the other day that a Republican Senator, Olympia Snowe of Maine, was going to vote in favor of the Democrats Health Plan. Of course, this set off a bees nest of screaming from her fellow Republicans and one came out on camera and called her a “Traitor” to her party. Republican or Democrat, I would hope that our elected officials would vote their CONSCIENCE and not just straight along party lines because that is what is expected of them. When I served as a City Councilman, every vote I cast was based solely on my personal belief and conscience, not on the desires of any particular group of townspeople or the views of other council members. So, this Senator is now a “Traitor” in the eyes of her own counterparts for daring to vote her Conscience. Power to her! If everyone in Congress and the Senate did what she did, maybe our Government would not act like spoiled brats all the time.

Getting back to the title of this post for a moment… I must say that a certain friend of mine, in Oregon, a Blonde Family Member, has a bunch of lady friends that all look like former supermodels. Must be something in the water out there.

But, being the major blog-geek that I am, I noticed that “Stevie Nicks” was one of the most popular search engine terms for today…so what the heck, I will blatantly use her name in the title of my post but for no other reason than to attract more wayward surfers….

Due to the little Medical Malpractice “accident” that caused me to become disabled nearly 11 years ago, I have quite a few issues with nerve pain in my legs. Those of you who have experienced nerve pain will know how miserable it can make you in a real hurry. My nerve pain involves sharp, electrical shock type pains jolting my legs at random intervals, for hours on end, usually always at night. To combat this, over the years I have been prescribed just about every type of pain reducing medication on the market. Some help the nerve pain but cause unwanted side effects..

Anything with Codeine makes me unable to sleep and unable to go #2 for about a month.

A few meds had me curled up in the fetal position, crying uncontrollably like a spineless jellyfish, resulting in my being repeatedly beaten to a pulp by my aggravated wife who was trying to sleep at the time.

Other pain medications give me a rash, cause night sweats, dramatically increase my blood pressure, and have caused me to have auditory hallucinations like the medication that had me hearing a voice (of Vincent Price) whisper into my ear that I needed to paint my whole body purple, then smother my sons stuffed teddy bear with a pillow while singing “I feel Pretty”. That’s some pretty sick stuff. Needless to say, after smothering multiple bears, and after going through gallons of purple paint, I stopped that medication quickly!

But now I have been prescribed yet another medication.

This one has been around a long time and after reading about it, I was shocked that I had never been prescribed it before now.

It is Neurontin.

I did some research online and was shocked at what I read. Among it’s indications for usage it read “to help patients with post-operative chronic pain (usually caused by nerves that have been severed accidentally in an operation and when grown back, have reconnected incorrectly) and nerve pain associated with spinal cord injury”

That is me!! I got disabled when the Quack Spinal Surgeon I had was digging around in my spinal cord area with a sharp instrument and then had a major “OOPSIE!”, causing two of my spinal cord nerve roots to be severed…. Just the two little old roots that control feeling in the legs, muscle control of the legs, circulation, bowel and bladder function, etc. No Biggie.

So, why the heck had I not been prescribed this medicine before? The indications for it fit my case to a “T”.

I called my Dad, another physical wreck of a human being, and told him the news.

He then told me that he had also been on Neurontin, very recently, but had to abruptly stop the medication due to a bad side effect.

According to Dad, about 3 days after starting Neurontin, he was walking across his living room normally and then “POW!!”…..

He woke up in a pool of his own drool, face down on the floor, after passing completely out for quite a period of time. (He was home alone at the time) One minute he was fine, the next he was unconscious on the floor.

I read more of the warnings about possible side effects…

Apparently this medication greatly increases the risk of suicide in many patients.

It can also cause moodiness, dizziness, drowsiness, swelling of extremities, hypersensitivity to Barry Manilow songs recorded before 1979, uncontrolled drooling, loss of memory, and sudden death.

I can live with all that. I already live with most of those symptoms on a daily basis right now.

So, last night I started taking the Neurontin. Dad made it 3 days before hugging the floor passed out cold. I have a day and a half till that landmark. Tomorrow,I will hide all the stools, ropes, guns, knives, etc….and will strap pillows to the front and rear of my body, as I stroll around in hockey pads and a football helmet, just in case I happen to kiss the floor in a fit of unconsciousness.

I will keep you updated.

Best Stevie Nicks song: “Sara” (Fleetwood Mac)

Today, out in remote, windswept, cold and rainy Oregon, a woman is rising from bed. It takes all the woman’s strength to lift her tired and frail body up from the pillow. As she does so, joints pop, bones creak, and her breathing rapidly increases as she struggles to pull herself upright. Now panting and gasping for air, she sits on the edge of the bed, dreading the horrible pain about to be experienced during the painfully slow shuffle to the bathroom only 8 feet away. She rises and grimaces in pain as her few remaining pounds are lowered onto her tired and weary feet. More bones creak, more joints pop, multiple body parts sag to embarrassing levels, as she painfully shuffles towards the bathroom, her face wrapped in pain and agony with each step….. Through the torture, the woman starts to crack a slight smile onto her weary and worn face. Today is her Birthday. She flashes back to the time, oh so many years ago, when she could leap from the bed with ease and float across the room as light as a feather….

But, that was many, many, many moons ago.

For today, my dear Cousin Whitney turns 39!

Today, she will happily leap from her bed and float across the room on her birthday……for the last time.

Next year, it is “GROAN, SNAP, CRACKLE, AND POP!!” as she struggles to get herself up.

Enjoy this Birthday Whitney!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!

In all seriousness, You are the Greatest Whitney….Have a great day!! Love ya Cousin!

My last name is Pakulak. Depending on what part of the family you are in, it can be pronounced a number of ways.

The most popular is “PACK-YOU-LACK”.

Some people say “PACK-UH-LACK”

My Great Grandparents….from whom we got the name…..pronounced it “PAH-KOO-LICK”

Me, I just give it the Bill the Cat pronouciation from “Bloom County” and say…”Aaaaccckkkk”…with everything else being silent….

Up in Canada, our name would be as common as Smith or Jones is here in the USA. Watch an NHL Hockey Game….there are last names with a dozen more consanants and vowels than what Pakulak is blessed with.

Here in the US, people hear the name and automatically think one of two things….

We are Polish or we are Russian

Close. The name is Ukranian.

Ukraine, Home of Chernobyl, Milla Jovovich, Mila Kunis, and Oksana Baiul, and whole villages crawling with Pakulaks…..

Being blessed/cursed with a “unique” last name, the elders in our family decided that each child born into the family should not be burdened with a “Unique” or “Freakish” first name, given the fact that they would go through life forever spelling and pronouncing their last name. So, most adults were generous enough to give their newborns “normal” first names like Mark, Peter, Jayson, Whitney, Matthew, David, Tracy, Alex, Hannah, Tyler, etc.

There are how many “normal names” floating around out there in the Universe that a parent could choose from?

Gujillions…..

There should be enough available first names so that no name should have to be repeated for at least the next 500 years or so.

Of course, you may have occasion where a child is named after a relative or father….

My Great-Grandpa, from the Ukraine, was named something like “AleksalkjlaskdakhwlkhdlakhdfujsGFKJH”. The nice immigration folks in Canada heard that and were kind enough to shorten it to “Alex”.

He was the first Alex Pakulak.

My oldest son is named Alex. You would think that he would have been named in memory of my Great Grandfather….but my Alex was born in the mid 1980’s….so, of course, he was named after Alex P. Keaton, the character played by Michael J. Fox on “Family Ties”.

My Daughters name is Hannah. I have no unique story on how she got her name. My ex-wife would have to fill in the details on that one.

So, I have a Alex and a Hannah.

My dear cousins, Matthew and Jayson, each with wives spitting out kids right and left, but with an infinite supply of names from which to choose, of course, have chosen to pilfer names from my branch of the family tree.

One has an Alex.
And one has a Hannah.

At the next family reunion, I shall arrange for the two Hannah’s and the two Alex’s to have a knock-down, drag-out, last man standing, fight to the death with chains, knives, whips, folding chairs, and large stuffed animals to see who gets to keep their names.

The two Hannahs have already found each other on FACEBOOK.

Hannah Pakulak…you have a message from your friend Hannah Pakulak.

I am 44yrs old. My wife is 4….27yrs old. We are counting down the years until the last kid is out of the house. I am seriously thinking of asking my wife to spit out a couple more critters so I can name them Matthew and Jayson…..

The only kid we have left here at home is our son Tyler.

Wouldn’t you know our luck….our daughter, Hannah Pakulak #1, is living with her boyfriend….

His name is Tyler.

If you have read this blog for any time, you remember that his last name is Hannah.

If they were to marry, my daughter would be Hannah Hannah.

I would have a son named Tyler and a Son-in-Law named Tyler.

If Hannah were to get her cousin Hannah to be a Bridesmaid, then Hannah Pakulak would be the Bridesmaid for Hannah Pakulak’s wedding……

There will be a quiz later.

Now, if you will excuse me, I need some aspirin…..

Special thanks to the young Raquel Welch for providing the irrelvent photo for this post.

Yes…No…Maybe….Can you repeat the Question?

I went in to the Doctor today to have a few suspected skin cancers on my legs looked at.

First of all, everyone, I mean EVERYONE in the waiting area had the Swine Flu. At least they were all coughing, wheezing, choking, and panting like they had the Swine Flu.

I set a new record. I held my breath for the 39 minutes and 12 seconds that I had to wait to be seen. Don’t want to take any chances….

They had a sign on the counter at check-in that suggested things you could do to prevent yourself from getting the swine flu..(Don’t go to a Doctors office should be #1….)

Apparently, you can greatly protect yourself from infection if you…

DO NOT TOUCH ANY SURFACES WHICH MAY BE CONTAMINATED.

DO NOT PLACE YOUR HANDS NEAR ANY OPEN ORRIFICE OF YOUR BODY INCLUDING YOUR MOUTH, EYES, EARS, NOSE, AND YOUR NETHER REGIONS….

STAY OUT OF SMALL, CONFINED SPACES WHERE PEOPLE TEND TO GATHER.

AVOID USING PUBLIC RESTROOMS.

AVOID BREATHING WHILE IN PUBLIC.

YES, AVOID BREATHING WHILE IN PUBLIC.

So, if you absolutely have to go out….DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING, ANYONE, DON’T BREATHE, AND WAIT TO DO YOUR BATHROOM BUSINESS UNTIL YOU GET HOME.

I went into the Exam room and was greeted with a sign that said “Tell us if you need to get a Flu Shot”.

I, of course, told the nurse that I needed to get a Flu Shot.

She laughed uncontrollably for about 15 minutes.

Apparently, the 3 small vials of flu vaccine that my clinic was lucky enough to get….were all used up within 23 seconds of their arrival…with the next shipment expected to arrive sometime in August of 2014.

The Doctor came into my exam room in full Biological Warfare Survival Gear, sure that I was yet another Swine Flu patient, but was greatly relieved when I told her that I just needed some possible skin cancers on my legs looked at.

She took about 5 minutes to unhook her respirator, climb out of her suit, and get situated to where she could look at my legs.

I started pointing out spots….

“DAAAAAMMMMNNNNNN!!!!!….” was all she could get out before she started scrambling to get back into the Space Suit…..

When trying to seek Medical Guidance and Comfort from your chosen Health care Professional….it is always bad if the good Doctor looks at your afflicted body part…yells “Dammmmmnnnnnn” and scrambles to get BACK into a protective Space Suit.

The Verdict. 7-10 little buggers on my legs that will need to be cut out by a Surgeon.

Trying to figure up the costs involved with cutting off 7-10 spots from my leg, I quickly wondered if maybe it would be quicker and cheaper to just stick both legs into a wood chipper and then just pay a Doctor for the one-time charge to sew up the stumps…

My Cousin David, an Army Sergeant serving the in the Hostile Wilds of El Paso, Texas…suggested I use some C4 Explosives to blow my legs off…theorizing the high heat created by the explosion would cauterize the open wounds….thereby removing the need for sutures…..

He and I discussed this little theory on FACEBOOK chat earlier today and quickly found that a US Soldier, using a Government Computer, from a Government Installation, talking about the transfer of Explosives to a Civilian……seems to set off a few alarms in secretive Washington Agencies that monitor computer and Internet communications here in our great Land.

Last I heard, my Cousin was being dragged from his computer by a dozen sunglasses wearing men in dark suits after being simultaneously tasered by 3 of the men….

I have not heard from him since……

Above, you were privileged enough to read the description of me getting checked out for skin cancers….

Now, you can enjoy the sight of Sharon Stone as she awaits her own skin cancer exam……(Above)

This pic should really get the view totals revved up! Yes, that is 40-something Cindy Crawford trying on a little shaving cream, or soap suds, or DROOL…. for size……… Surely that will garner some views…….

Not much new here today. I would give you a play-by-play description of the dishes I washed and details of me cleaning the living room……but you would be better served to wait and buy the Blu-Ray DVD when it comes out.

Tomorrow is the day I do my wife’s laundry so I have to be sure to set my alarm clock because I sure don’t want to be late for that excitement….

Being a Disabled Househusband is just about as much fun as a person should legally be allowed to have…..

I need to get my 4yr old nephew to change my ring tone on my cell phone. I have no clue how to do it myself and I am getting tired of “FUNKYTOWN” blasting out loud at the worst possible moments. Sitting in a stall in a deathly quiet restroom with “Won’t you take me to….FUNKEEEEEEEE-TOOOOOWWNNNNN!!!” blasting as you fumble around in your wadded up pants is pretty embarrassing.

While volunteering at DFW Airport yesterday I met a passenger from my Home State of Oregon that was not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed….

Oregon Man (OM) – “Do you know if there is a time difference between Texas and Oregon?

ME – “Yes Sir, we are two hours ahead of Oregon…”

OM – “Whoa…..”

ME – “I am from Eugene myself….”

OM – “And you volunteer here?”

ME – “Yes”

OM – “And you live in Eugene?”

(Man has puzzled look on face trying to comprehend the driving time involved with living in Eugene, Oregon and driving to the DFW Airport to Volunteer….)

ME – “No, I live here…..have so for the last 20 years….”

OM – “Whoa…”

You gotta understand the typical Oregon resident. The chances of his brain cells being literally baked and fried on a large amount of illegal homegrown substances…..was EXTREMELY high…..

The kid brought home another booklet full of crap that his school is selling to raise money. The poor parents and relatives of the kid never have a chance….we HAVE to buy whatever the kid is selling. I ask him…”What are you selling now?” He grins…..”Greasy pork sandwiches rolled in an ashtray to be eaten in front of a warm fan”

I grimace….”We’ll take 10 please…..”

My Cousin Whitney in Oregon, a frequent commenter on this blog, is married to a Portland Firefighter/Paramedic, Lt. Don Davis. Don is a 20yr public servant having served in Departments in Las Vegas, Salem Oregon, and Portland. In recent years he has spent his vacation time travelling, with other first responders,to remote parts of the globe, on a volunteer basis, to teach Emergency Services procedures in Cambodia, Vietnam, and in 2010, Peru. To my amazement, Don has founded a non-profit charitable organization, “GLOBAL MISSION READINESS”, which seeks to advance this great effort.

www.globalmissionreadiness.org

www.globalmissionreadiness.org

You can thank my Cousin Whitney for this one….. She suggested that my daily bikini pic experiment might be better served if I instead posted a picture of a hot celebrity. I will give her suggestion a shot. So, for those of you males between the ages of 5 and 35 yrs of age, I present Megan Fox. For those men over 35, I present the great Loni Anderson in her late 1970’s glory…..and for you women out there…..I present the slim and trim…..Chris Farley…….

Enjoy.

An example of the difference between an adult having a college degree and an an adult who does NOT have a degree….

Yesterday, my wife (who has 2 degrees) told me (no degree) and the kid (still in middle school) to put “risers” underneath the corners of my sons bed in order to lift it off the floor, allowing junk to be stored under the bed. The bed is situated up against a wall and in the corner of the room. Me (no degree) and the kid (a kid for crying out loud) both stood in the room and scratched our heads trying to figure out how we would get the risers under the side of the bed that was up against the wall. We could pull the bed out, place the risers underneath, but then we would try to push to bed back up against the wall, surely the bed would come off the risers….right? Me (no degree) and the kid (son of man with no degree) both determined that it was virtually impossible to place risers under any bed that was not centered in the room…away from the walls. It could not be done. Impossible with a capital “I” (for idiot). The wife came home from work and we explained the physical impossibility and mechanical geophysical mathematical problems which prevented any bed up against a wall from being placed on risers. Her response?

“She would do it herself”

We reminded her that it was physically impossible, degree or no degree, and asked how she planned on overcoming the laws of nature….

“I will just take the mattress off the bed, place the risers under the legs, and then place the mattress back on the bed…..”

The kid (dumb as a post) and I (Dumber than Dumb as a post) both looked at each other and grimaced……

See kids…..STAY IN SCHOOL!! That seemingly worthless little College degree (or two) WILL come in handy some day!!

Needless to say….If I had married a fellow idiot with no college degree…….none of our beds would have risers……

Come to think of it, our own bed is up on risers and I never had any part in that little task…..Now I know how she did it!! Hmmmmmmm

My In-Laws both went to college….I bet their beds are on risers…….

A cold front came through late last week and dropped our daytime temperature 35 degrees from Friday to Saturday. To take advantage, we shut off the A/C and opened the windows, our first shot at saving money on the electric bill in about 7 months. While the temps this weekend have been in the 50’s and 60’s, not COLD by any means, my youngest kid, a true TEXAN, is literally freezing to death and has resorted to using a small space heater in his bedroom.

The kid would never survive a month of winter anywhere farther north than….Kansas.

I love Hockey and love watching Hockey on TV. He hates it. Now I realize it must be because the sport just LOOKS cold to him….

The National League Playoff game between the Colorado Rockies and Philadelphia Phillies was postponed yesterday due to bad weather in Colorado. It was in the 20’s with some light freezing drizzle and fog. Our TCU football team had to play Air Force in Colorado Springs in the same conditions and the game started with no delay. My wife asked how come the college kids had to play and the Pro Baseball players got the day off? I told her that Baseball players are Pansies….

The kid ran the best cross-country race of his career yesterday. He finished towards the rear but he managed to beat 18 kids. For once, they had an actual “cross-country” course layed out which required the kids to run through a large swath of mud right before the finish line. My kid, like most of the others, chose to run “around” the mud rather than through it. Back in Oregon, when I was in CC many moons ago, 10 coaches and 3 spectators would have pulled out pistols and shot dead any runner that even thought about not running through the mud….

The kid, in the midst of puberty, has finally hit full-blown teenager mode in the restaurants. Up until recently, he always ate off the kids menu and always had the same exact thing in every single sit-down restaurant we ever ate at……chicken nuggets. No matter the nationality of food, there is always something resembling a chicken nugget or chicken strip on the kids menu and that is all my youngest would ever order. Until now. Last week, we went to a Mexican place for lunch and while we are ordering $5 and $6 lunch plates….the kid up and orders a STEAK. A HUGE steak! My wife and I’s lunches come out on nice little plates and the kid gets a side of beef about 4 feet wide that appears to be served on a rectangular cookie sheet, being pushed out on a cart by half of the kitchen staff.

Me thinks my wallet is in for some major damage over the next 6-10 years.

We have taken my daughter and her boyfriend out to eat a few times and though the boyfriend is 22 years old….he still orders like a starving bird off of the menu….probably out of fear of me raising an eyebrow at the cost of what he orders. It is just a matter of time before he too puts me in the poor house and starts ordering full heads of cattle for dinner.

When I first met my Father-in-Law and he would pay for a meal…I would eat sensibly……..within a few months…….I was taking him to the cleaners……

My Dad actually took my Brother and I out to a OUTBACK STEAKHOUSE a few years ago and made the mistake of telling us (two grown men) to “order whatever you want”. Of course, the Brother and I both ordered Porterhouse Steaks with all the trimmings and years later my Dad can still tell you the exact amount of the bill….with tears welling in both eyes.

When my own son and the daughters boyfriend both loosen up when ordering…..I am a dead man. If there are 2 people in the world that could eat like horses it would be a 12yr old boy hitting his growth spurt and a 22yr old guy used to eating Ramen Noodles for dinner every night of the week.

Our adjacent town, Bridgeport, was just named “Stagecoach Capital of Texas” and that dubious distinction has now been printed on the welcome signs on the highway and on every piece of official literature from the City of Bridgeport. How many Stagecoaches do they have? One.

A local blogger in my area has a popular blog in which he comments on the issues of the day and local headlines….much like I do…..but he also includes a daily photo of a random sexy woman, usually in a bikini. His blog gets a ton more visits than mine on a daily basis. While I am sure he has a large core of faithful readers, human nature would suggest that a large portion of his readers are stopping by everyday to see the half-naked women. This week, I will test this theory and will include a bikini shot in every post and will see if my numbers go up from last weeks results. Maybe I will be proven wrong and the numbers will stay the same. I don’t think so. I will let you know the results next Sunday.

Swine Flu hysteria really hits home when someone in your family actually comes down with the illness. My 2yr old niece Cate is now fighting the illness and so far is doing pretty well. She was able to get the TAMIFLU medication but not the actual H1N1 vaccine in that I don’t think they have any available in our area as of yet. Even though he has had no contact recently with his cousin, we find ourselves feeling our sons forehead every hour or so to make sure he has no fever.

Mother Nature hates me. I sit on the couch patiently watching the Twins/Tigers playoff game, which is tied and in the 12th inning, when Mother Nature decides to drop a thunderstorm on our town that is just bad enough to knock out the darn satellite just before the Twins scored the game winning run. Aaarrrgggg!!

My son has popped yet another wire loose on the hardware in his mouth requiring yet another 160 mile round-trip to Dallas for the 5 minute fix to repair the wire. The hardware is related to his cleft lip/palate surgery and is nothing like normal orthodontic hardware so no one in our area is able to do the quick repair. The bad part is that due to the distance, he pretty much misses the whole day of school and this will already be his 4th absence this year.

Our son the Trombone King has worked his way up to first chair. We are all very proud.

Our town was excited this past Friday Night when University of Texas Quarterback, and Heisman Trophy contender, Colt McCoy showed up at our High School Football game with Police Escorts and ESPN cameras in tow. He was in town to see his kid brother Quarterback our opposition. We lost by 1 point to Colt’s kid brother but no one really cared, the town was just freaked out that a “STAR” and “ESPN” were both in our little backwater town.

In my opinion, the new shows “Modern Family”, “Cougar Town”, and “The Middle” are all real good and should be on for years to come. Kelsey Grammer will never be able to find a role that will overcome “Frasier Crane” and his new show “Hank” looks destined for a quick cancellation or no more than 1 season on the air.

A special Kudos to my cousin, US ARMY SSGT DAVID PAKULAK, who recently ran and completed his first marathon. To my knowledge, he and I are the only Pak’s to have ever been idiotic enough to run that crazy distance. I ran marathons when I was a teenager, was in tremendous shape, and had nothing else of any importance to worry about in life. David is a full-time Soldier, Father, and is well over 30 years old. Trust me, just to finish a marathon, under your own power, when you are really not a “gung-ho” runner, is a great accomplishment. I’m proud of ya Dave!
Here in Texas, my Brother-in-Law Horace has ran two marathons past the age of 30, so he too can be proud. 26.2 Miles is a damn long way to run, no matter how old or how good of shape you are in.

My sons recent adventures into the world of Cross-Country Athletics has revived the good old running itch that I scratched for the last time over 25 years ago. Back in my late teens, I was a lean, mean, running machine and could not go to bed at night if I had not ran at some point during that day. I trained nearly 80 miles per week, ran races of all distances including 3 marathons, and had visions of one day running the coveted Boston Marathon….until I just quit running one day and never started again.

Seeing my youngest huff and puff his way through his first Cross-Country meet struck that running nerve in me that has long been dead.

Of course, now, there are just a few minor life changes that are standing in between me and running glory. I tip the scales a tad heavier (as if I was holding an adult Hippopotamus while standing on the scale), I am 25 years older, and there is the small annoyance of being disabled with numb legs and feet, a crippled left leg, and the small circulation problem that greatly increases my chances of getting potentially fatal blood clots….

No worries.

Determined to relive my lost youth, I donned a pair of walking shoes, put on my wannabe IPOD rip-off, clicked on “EYE OF THE TIGER”, cranked the volume up, and waddled out the door with the intention of becoming the first aged fat man with my disability to ever waddle through a marathon. Today the legend would begin. Today was the first day of training for my great comeback.

I started out from our house and did fine for awhile. It was hot but I was not an idiot and had brought along a water bottle. Not realizing just how hot it actually was, I guzzled the whole water bottle down in about 30 seconds. I plodded onward.

After awhile, my numb feet and legs started getting very heavy and tired. My breathing increased rapidly and I started gasping for air like a winded horse. Sweat was pouring off me like I had just walked through a waterfall. My vision started to blur…….

But I pressed onward……

No pain, no gain.

Onward to victory!

Never surrender!!

(Start theme to “Chariots of Fire”)

Finally I hit the dreaded “wall”. I was just shuffling along innocently when suddenly every system in my body just shut down at the exact same moment and I found myself laying face down in the street. I fumbled in my pocket for my cell and called my wife at home.

I let her know that the Running Gods had struck me down and that I needed a ride back home. I told her that I was on the street from our house to the city pool, which was 2 miles away, and that I would be easy to spot….just look for the fat man spread-eagled in the middle of the road floating in a pool of sweat.

She was still on the phone, telling me “OK..I’m heading out the door right now….hang in there ya idiot!”… when I suddenly heard a woman shriek from a short distance away.

“Good Grief!! Get the Hell up!!”

I rolled my head towards the voice, expecting to see an angry homeowner, not amused that I had plastered myself in front of her house, and instead saw my wife…..standing in our driveway…..yelling….

I was about 30 yards from our house.

WOO HOO!! YEAH BABY!! 30 YARDS!!! I AM BACK!!!

Re-start “EYE OF THE TIGER”

It seems like forever since we had a 4yr old in the house. Seeing as how our youngest ankle grabber is almost 13yrs old I had forgotten that a typical male of the species requires a trained female translator when the grown man tries to communicate with the 4yr old. This was all made apparent to me last night when my 4yr old nephew spent a few hours at our house.

The poor little guy would wander up to me, babble some gibberish, I would instantly become totally confused as to what he was trying to say, he would babble the phrase again, again I would be lost…..the cycle would repeat endless times until the wife would wander into the room, hear the little guy babble, and she of course, would immediately know every single word he was trying to say.

He wanders in from the backyard…

“Unka Ark I Tate Fitty Eye-uh rans”

Confused….I look frantically around the room…..”Translator!!!!”

The wife comes in, the kid babbles the phrase again…pointing at his throat……

The wife shrieks and grabs the boy..”He said…Uncle Mark I ate Fifty Fire Ants!!”

The wife takes the boy into the bathroom, applies a little first-aid, and within minutes the kid is out back happily playing again.

About 10 minutes later, he wanders back in…

“Unka Ark I get Titties out on the Yacht!!”

I scream for the wife/translator….Eager to hear where in the world the kid saw some female skin in my back yard…..

She comes into the room, the kid babbles the phrase again, and then the wife bolts out the back door in a frantic blur….”He said…Uncle Mark I let the Kitties out of the Yard!!”

Of course, our Kitties have never been outside in their lives, let alone outside the yard, and of course..all 3 of them chose different directions to run in so the next hour was real fun.

Eventually we got the cats corralled and returned to their prison in our home. I went back to watching my Hockey game until the kid wandered in for a third time…

“Unka Ark…Tie Bust Scooped Onder Door”

“TRANSLATOR!!!!”

The wife comes in, the kid recites the line on cue, and again the wife bolts from the room….this time into the kitchen….

I clearly understood the “Uncle Mark” part but was confused as to the other cryptic part of the message…

The wife yells from the kitchen….

“He said “Uncle Mark….I just pooped on your floor!!”

Ah…the joys of young children…..never a dull moment………

After a few hours, his Mom returned to pick him up and when she asked if anything had happened….of course….we both told her that he was a little angel…….

Which he was……Unka Ark just has a real active imagination for an old guy…….

A far more accurate account of the events of that fateful morning…

Baby bear goes downstairs, sits in his small chair at the table, looks
into his small bowl. It is empty. ‘Who’s been eating my porridge?’ he
squeaks.

Daddy bear arrives at the big table and sits in his big chair. He looks
into his big bowl and it is also empty. ‘Who’s been eating my
porridge?!’ he roars.

Mummy Bear puts her head through the serving hatch from the kitchen and
yells, ‘For God’s sake, how many times do I have to go through this with
you idiots? It was Mummy Bear who got up first. It was Mummy Bear who
woke everyone in the house. It was Mummy Bear who made the coffee. It
was Mummy Bear who unloaded the dishwasher from last night and put
everything away. It was Mummy Bear who swept the floor in the kitchen.
It was Mummy Bear who went out in the cold early morning air to fetch
the newspaper and croissants. It was Mummy Bear who set the damn table.

‘It was Mummy Bear who walked the bloody dog, cleaned the cat’s litter,
gave them their food, and refilled their water.

‘And now that you’ve decided to drag your sorry bear-asses downstairs
and grace Mummy Bear with your grumpy presence, listen carefully,
because I’m only going to say this once….

I HAVEN’T MADE THE F***ING PORRIDGE YET!!!’

(Courtesy of Cheryl up in the Great White North)

Today I find myself a changed person.

I no longer consider myself fat. As near as I can tell, I am about the same proportions as about 2/3 of the population of my area.

NASCAR is the only TRUE sport in America.

Why fret about losing a few teeth? You have a bunch more left…….

Huge Green Tattoo’s of large dragons that take up a woman’s whole back are real sexy……even if it will shrivel up and look like a squashed caterpillar in later years of life….

Every woman SHOULD by law, have a kid on each hip.

And those kids should be of different colors….

I am thinking of selling my lakefront home and moving back into a Manufactured home.

My SUV seems naked without a gun rack.

I suddenly have the urge to buy a pair of blue-jean overalls to wear over a camouflaged t-shirt.

None of the many baseball caps I own will ever be worn again in public until I take them out and mop up all the oil stains in the driveway with them and use them to towel under my pits after a hard walk on a hot day…..

Conway Twitty was MUCH more talented than the Lame Beatles…….Conway was a God!!

I suddenly have the urge to purchase the complete DVD collection of “Mama’s Family”.

CMT is the greatest channel in the history of Television.

People were right……squirrel DOES taste like chicken!

I am going to grow my 13 remaining gray hairs out so that I have a mullet that allows me to be “all business in the front and party in the back”

Jeff Foxworthy needs to run for President.

Why Food Stamps will not cover Beer and Smokes is beyond me…..

Why does the world look a little different to me today? Today was the day I got my new tires put on our car…..at Wal-Mart. Two lovely hours I spent wandering the aisles in a daze….soaking up the humanity around me……

Somebody please shoot me!

My son has a special strain of the dreaded Swine Flu. What is going around the world right now is being called a “seasonal” Flu. What my son has is considered the more rare strain known as the “Mama Swine Flu”.

This strain has interesting symptoms that I was able to witness first hand today. The kid only had a half-day of school today. I picked up him and my nephew and brought them home. It was cool and cloudy so I decided to go for a walk rather than trying to be lobotomized by listening to two 12yr olds argue for hours on end. I took off walking and was gone for 2 hours.

When I approached my house on my return, I noticed clearly that 3 kids were jumping on the trampoline in our backyard. There was the kid, the nephew, and some wayward urchin that they had apparently plucked off the street. Even though I was still 100 yards away from the house, it was clear that the kids were having a grand old time by themselves. As I walked closer, the blaring sounds of ghetto rap started blasting through the neighborhood, courtesy of my son and his homeboys in the back yard.

I went in the front door, stumbled over a couple empty coke cans, an empty box of oatmeal cookies, 3 socks, and two pairs of shoes. I made my way through the minefield until I was staring out the back door. The kid and his homies were happily bouncing away to Snoop Dogg, laughing and giggling, as water sprayed all over them courtesy of the sprinkler they had parked under the trampoline. The unknown kid was also soaking wet and laughing though at closer glance whether or not he was actually a kid came into question. From 20 feet away he looked like our cable guy……. Oh well.

Not wanting to be the mean Dad who would kill the party, I went off to the shower and left the two boys and the unknown man to their fun.

The unknown kid/man eventually left/went back to work and my wife came from home from work just in time to drive our nephew home.

That is when the “Mama Swine Flu” struck down my son and sucked the life from his little body. By the time my wife came back home, all of 3 minutes later, the kid was lying at deaths door.

According to him…

He couldn’t breathe…

His throat was sore….

He was cold…

He was achy all over…..

His stomach hurt……

His vision was blurry…….

He was dizzy……

The happy bouncing kid of not even five minutes ago….was now in desperate need of a life-flight helicopter.

Being a former Nurse, I jumped in and told him that there was one sure-fire way to determine if he did have the Flu after all…..

I told him to sit on the couch, remove his shirt, insert one finger deep into his belly button, stick a thumb in his mouth, hold his breath for 20 seconds, all while making “wuh wuh wuh wuh wuh noises with his mouth…..and told him that if after doing that, his ears hurt, then he definitely had the flu and would most likely have to miss days, weeks, or even months of school.

My wife comes in from the other room, sees her little ray of sunshine sitting on the couch having some sort of psychological meltdown, and starts to wonder if we indeed need to take him to a Hospital. “Maybe the Swine Flu has made him psychotic……”

All I know is the kid was having a pool party on the trampoline and living it up……until the Mama came home from work. He knows that I have no buttons. He knows his loving Mom is one big walking “Press Me!” button that he can push any time he wants.

Knowing that I had just the right medications for the Mama Swine Flu, I got the kid to down a Barney, a Wilma, and a couple Bam Bam’s and then sent him off to bed….telling him that the chewable pills were the most potent form of anti-flu and sleeping medications that could be bought over the counter at the local Wal-Mart.

Right now, the kid has been “sleeping” for 3 hours. My wife sent me down the hall to quietly “check on him” to make sure he is still breathing.

I crept down the hall and slowly opened the door and peered in his room. The little guy was out cold. I slowly closed the door and rather than leaving, I stood in the hall and listened through the door. Within seconds I heard the familiar sounds of his PSP Game chirping to life.

I crept down the hall and back into our bedroom. The wife, worried sick about her little baby boy, wanted to know if he was OK. Not being a mean Dad, I did not turn him in. I told the wife that he was fine.

The truth is that he will be fine…..until 6am when the alarm goes off to get him up for school.

The Mama Swine Flu will strike him down until he gets to school, he will be fine the rest of the school day, he will be perfectly normal when I pick him up, and will stay healthy until about 5:07pm when he hears the garage door starting to go up signalling Mama’s arrival home from work.

Then the dreaded illness will strike him down for yet another evening……only to repeat, night after night, after night.

My “real” wife is gone.

As far as I know, her body is now cocooned under her side of the bed as her “new” self goes about life in a glassy-eyed daze.

I blame Facebook.

I have occasionally gotten on the site and can see it’s many good virtues. I have found friends that I have not heard from in 30 years……

Have been found by enemies from whom I have been trying to hide for 30 years……

And have come to the easy conclusion that my wife has 48 Friends while I have two.

My wife will sit on the bed, her PC in her lap, and will sit and watch Facebook for hours and days on end.

Eating and personal hygiene are totally ignored as she sits and reads the minute details of her friends lives scroll by on the screen.

To some people, there is no subject about their lives that they consider off-limits…

But, how much info is too much info?

Sit and watch everyone Else’s entries for awhile and you get to know a little “too” much about the other users.

At 8:41pm, Sally informed everyone that she was battling a nasty yeast infection.

At 8:43pm Sally scratched.

5 people were indicated to have “liked this”

One person commented on the scratch…”You go girl!”

At 8:47pm Sally indicated that she scratched again.

7 more people “Liked this”

Subsequent scratches were noted at 8:51pm and 8:54pm.

At 9:03pm, Sally indicated she was in misery and was applying medicated ointment to her nether region.

12 people “Liked this”

2 unknown readers asked for a picture of the procedure to be posted.

43 people “Liked this” regarding the request for a photo of Sally applying the ointment to her nether region.

That was enough for me…….

Some things are better left unshared with everyone in cyberspace Sally……

Me, I tried to get in the Facebook mood….

One night I posted at 12:34am, “Going to sleep”

No one “Liked this”

at 1:15am, I posted “sleeping”
at 1:16am, I posted “sleeping”
at 1:17am, I posted “sleeping”……

You get the idea……

At 3:04am, I got a bite!…..

“CHESTYCHARLES0549″ commented “Do you have a picture of you sleeping?”

12 people “liked this”.

.

Here that huge flushing noise over the horizon?

That is the life being sucked out of me by the Evil Empire known as Wal-Mart.

I live in a rural area.

An area ruled with an iron fist by the Evil Empire of Wally World.

My wifes SUV needs 4 new tires.

I can either get tires from “Crazy Bubba’s House of Rubber” here in town….

or I can drive an hour to actual civilization where I will have to wait with 30 other people in a waiting room built for 5 people….for up to 5 hours….

Or I can bow down, tuck my tail between my legs, cut off my testicles, and drag myself into the local Wal-Mart Tire and Lube center.

I did some checking on prices online.

Good old Bubba wanted an arm, a leg, and my next newborn…

The Nationwide Tire chain down in the city wanted an arm, a leg, a healthy kidney, and what they described as a “slightly unneeded and irrelevant little heart valve”.

Wal-Mart wanted Peanuts in comparison…..and oh yeah, my soul for all of eternity.

In exchage for 4 name-brand tires at a real good price…..I just surrender to the dark side, take to wearing a stupid blue smock with a stinking yellow smiley face on it all day long, and voluntarily surrender about 90% of all my IQ points, 80% of my natural teeth, and cut my normal bathing routine down to about once every 4-6 weeks……

I am a tightwad.

There was no thinking about which choice to make.

I can hear the banjos playing the theme from “Deliverance” right now.

If one of the mulleted, heavily tatooed, chaw chewing tire jockeys says anything at all about me squealing like a pig for him…..I am out the door!!

AFTER they get the tires put on the car of course……

My wife, like most women (I think), has a small clothing problem. She can never have enough clothes. She has a walk-in closet that is 15 feet high, has 43 rods for hanging clothes, contains 132 pairs of shoes, boots, slippers, cleats, clogs, sandals, flip-flops, and two pairs of Scuba Diving Flippers (Though she hates the water). This closet is of course, too small. You cannot step more than 3 inches into the closet due to the large plastic tubs, filled with clothes, that are stacked on the floor.

There are only 365 days in a year (see…I paid attention in 11th grade!)….yet my wife currently has over 14,380 DIFFERENT outfits.

At this rate, given her age, she would have to change clothes about 18 times a day in order to wear everything she owns before she turns 90…..

My own walk-in closet, identical in size to hers, is located on the other side of the bathroom. It too is stuffed to the gills with clothes and boxes……most of which are not mine. Me, I have 7 outfits. Three pairs of shorts, three shirts, and one sweatshirt and I am set. Down the hall, in the computer/autograph museum room there is another closet. This one is packed floor to ceiling with clothes and none of them are mine.

Our garage contains about 28 tubs and plastic containers, all packed with women’s clothes. These clothes are “the garage sale clothes” that my wife is somehow content to part with and which she intends to sell to other “clothesaholics” at her next garage sale.

(The factory in Indonesia where the Wal-Mart plastic tubs are made had to add a third shift to keep up the increased demand once we started buying tubs.)

The only problem with the clothes is that for the most part, they do not sell. These clothes have been placed out in successive garage sales for about the past 12-15 years.

I could throw a single blood-stained dirty tube sock of mine out onto a table at our garage sale and it would sell in minutes. (Fat man clothes sell really good)

My wife’s problem is that the poor thing is not even five feet tall and barely weighs enough to defy gravity and stay planted on the ground. She is also over 40 ye….I mean 30 years old. Given her height and weight, a lady shopper with a 7-8 yr old daughter would probably be eagerly looking for clothing for her kid….but that young girl would not want to wear what a ….30 year old….woman normally wears.

So the boxes pile up. Clothes that do not sell in a garage sale are placed into a tub for the next garage sale. The cycle never stops. Adding to the pain is the fact that my wife’s sister only adds to the misery. My dear Sister-in-Law passes much of her wardrobe down to my wife. The clothes arrive in our home in a number of buckets and tubs, the wife tries them all on, and then they are sent off to new homes either on the overcrowded racks of our closets…..or are placed into more tubs.

We have tubs stacked seemingly in every room of the house except the dining room. I take that back, I just looked under the table and sure enough….two tubs! (that explains the lack of legroom)

I opened up our pantry one night and reached up onto a high shelf only to be knocked unconscious by a falling plastic tub labeled “Garage Sale November 1994″.

We have no end tables in our living room, just tubs stacked on tubs on which we place lamps, drinks, magazines etc.

I don’t blame my wife. It is in her blood. My Father-in-Law is a successful self-employed business tycoon (Insurance King of the Southwest) who owns two Insurance Agencies. At one of his offices there is a large room in the back of his building. This huge storeroom is about 20 yards wide by 40 yards long.

In it…..are about 1,000 plastic tubs.

All filled with my Mother-in-Law’s tubs of clothing.

Upon reading this, she will rant and rave that the room is in fact, filled floor to ceiling with the junk of her married daughters and their spouses….but the reality is that we only have about 2 small boxes stored in there……. There was simply no more room in between all the tubs.

My wife recently brought home one of those plastic portable clothes hanging contraptions that people use to hang clothing for garage sales. I don’t know where the thing came from. Maybe her office at work is now so crowded with clothes, and tubs of clothes, that there was no longer room for the rack. I suspect that she has devious plans that would include that plastic rack now becoming the new home of all MY clothes.

It is only a matter of time before the plastic clothes rack, placed right next to my side of the bed, becomes my new “Walk-in” closet.

Of course to get that “closet” I have to round the corner of the bed, step over 2 tubs of her clothing, sidestep some shoes and flippers on the floor, and then I might reach my area of the bed.

After she reads this, I would not be surprised to find my clothes piled in a nasty heap out on the front porch…….just past the 3 tubs of clothes that she already stores out there.

The cycle never ends.

My wife is planning the 189th Garage Sale of her married life for later this year in late October or early November.

This next weekend, her and her friend Teresa are going shopping,

Clothes shopping.

Me, I have orders to go to Wal-Mart….to buy 4 more plastic tubs.

My wife recently inherited the family piano which has apparently been passed among members of her clan since the Civil War or earlier. The thing is not all that big but it weighs at least a ton or more. The next time the tornado sirens blow, I’m jumping under the piano because there is no amount of wind on earth that can move that thing. The wife has played piano for years, and now, the kid, who has never had a lesson, is in the living room playing the “Presidential Anthem” for about the 100th consecutive time. I think it makes my wife sick that the little fart can hear a piece of music and then sit down and play it. Me, all I know is that when I pound my fists down on the keys as hard as I can…..the cats all flee the room for hours….so I am happy with that.

My nephew reported that one day last week there were only 4 kids in his home room class at school. The class usually has over 20 kids. The rest were all out sick with the flu or the swine flu.

A freak accident down in Dallas this past week ended with a school bus full of kids running off the road and into a lake. By pure luck, the kids on board were all members of a High School swim team that were on their way back to school after practice at a local pool. If a bus full of kids is going to end up in water…..at least they were all swimmers. Me, I would have drowned with the bus.

My sons school is having a rough stretch. A few weeks ago a classmate was hospitalized in serious condition when he was hit in the side of the head by a golf ball.
Today, my son informed me that a classmate had to be rushed to the hospital after being bit by a snake on campus.
Add that to the fact that my son is all but positive that his math teacher is the elderly female incarnation of Satan himself…..and it has been quite a year only 5 weeks into the year.

Our Church, which we started attending 5 years ago when it had about 200 members and met in the High School Atrium on Sundays……..had over 1,500 people in attendance last week. The town that the Church is now located in has about 400 residents. One thousand Five Hundred God loving souls that would probably like to beat me to death with church bulletins if I wore an OBAMA shirt to church.

I must be dead. I watched Michael Moore on Larry King Live the other night and found myself, again, agreeing with most of what he said. I had spent the previous 2 decades proudly declaring that the Good Lord would strike me dead if I EVER agreed with anything that Liberal Lunatic believed in.

If you took all the shoppers out of a typical Wal-Mart at a precise moment and then placed them in a Target….would the other shoppers notice? I sure would. At least after shopping at Target I don’t get the urge to stop by the Dr. and get a tetanus shot.

Target seems to hire a bunch of cashiers that appear to be local college students.

Wal-Mart seems to hire cashiers that were all survivors (or escapees) of horrific prenatal mutated gene experimentation gone bad…..

Why anyone would pay $65,000 to have dinner with Sarah Palin is beyond me. (Some nut did) You could have bought $5000 worth of clothes to give her and she would have probably invited you over to dinner for a week…..

No way I am eating at these places!

(Courtesy of Stephanie)

That is the threat I face.

I might be 6′2″ and weigh more than a mail truck……but I have learned to fear the potentially fatal physical capabilities of a hormonal, menopausal, crazy woman of barely 5 feet tall and 100 pounds….my dear Mother-in-Law.

Seeing as how my wife is so much like her dear Mother in every way, and is fast approaching the glorious “Womanly Changes of Life” herself…..I fear that I might someday have to mercifully smother my dearly betrothed while she sleeps so that I too do not find myself living in constant fear of a bi-polar, heat-flash crazed wife like my poor Father-in-Law now has to endure…..

So therefore, I will blog.

And Dear Mother-in-Law, I am just joking….I still love you so please don’t cut me out of the will…..

Not much new here. The kid, deep into the wonderful changes of puberty, has learned the hard way that shaving certain itchy body parts is not advisable. The poor kid stumbles around like an epileptic orangutan, constantly scratching himself, pleading with my wife and I to put him out of his mercy.

A few more embarrassing scratching fits in public and we may have to oblige him.

I have taken to walking in the evenings in my continuing quest to win the $500 family prize for most weight lost by Thanksgiving. I figure that regular walking, drinking 23 gallons of water a day, and excessive abuse of laxatives and diuretics should do the trick pretty well.

I walk on a nearby street that is actually a circular court located on an island in our lake. Around this circular street are about 20 houses, all located right on the lake. One trip around the circle is 3/10 of a mile. Each evening as I walk, I am always met by a heat-crazed little chihuahua, dragging it’s leash behind it, that runs out to “greet” me each night and then proceeds to nip at my heels for half a lap before turning back…only to start the same routine again as I come back around towards it’s house. Most annoying to me is the constant yipping and yelping that the little bugger barks out that is just loud enough to mute the relaxing sounds of “The Captain and Tennille” songs blaring from my MP3 player. Why this little fart is running loose, but still has a leash on, is beyond me. Last night, right at dusk with daylight fast fading away, the little devil dog was totally ruining “Muskrat Love” so I just did a spontaneous act and reached down, grabbed his little leash, swung him in a couple huge circles over my head, and launched him into the lake. I was pretty proud. Forty-four years old and I was still able to launch the little bugger a good 40 yards out from shore!

I will deny everything in court.

We have been enjoying the pleasure of having the windows open and A/C off for the last 3 days. I learned a valuable lesson the other day while mowing the yard. Our Master Bedroom features windows that are basically floor to ceiling. Right outside that open bedroom window, just inches away from the window screen, is my side yard. As I pushed the mower back and forth in front of the window, the mower, which has no bag to collect clippings, apparently launched a disgusting little cloud of grass and dirt through the window and onto our bed……my side of the bed to be exact.

My wife, wanting me to see the results of my idiocracy for myself, did not say anything to me when I came in the house.

Imagine when her shock when I emerged from the shower, still half wet, and plopped down on the bed to watch TV. She screamed and ordered me into the bathroom and yelled at me to turn around and look in the mirror. I obliged and was greeted by the sight of 321 blades of grass, a couple clumps of dirt, and a few squashed insects plastered firmly onto my back. I yelled back at her….”What’s the big deal?!!”

If only she knew the zoo-like living conditions that I lived in before I met her……

No, I did not launch the mutt into the lake…..but I sure as Hell wanted to…..

I did however kick a couple kittens along the way….