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December 27, 2007

Bio Degraded

As with Noah, Derek Anderson, little baby Jesus and George W. Bush, I too have been chosen by a higher authority to do something seemingly beyond my abilities.  Unlike the fourth (and hopefully not the second), I intend not to disappoint.

Last week my boss, my so-called superior, the chemically-imbalanced ex-hippie who annually rewards me with a 3% cost-of-living raise and is always surprised when I’m not duly “re-energized,” asked me to be a presenter at our annual national conference. This is a conference where hundreds of do-gooders come from across our great nation to pat themselves on the back, bitch about how busy they are, skip training sessions, drink excessively and come out of/go back into the closet. 

Since I’m an official presenter, I was asked to write a BIO about myself to distribute to the attendee(s) at my training session.  Let me tell you, writing my own BIO is truly the most difficult and unfulfilling form of masturbation in which I have ever engaged.  And you are hearing this from a man whose linen closet is basically a sanctuary for protein stains.

Anyway, here it is:

Crunchy Blue Commando has been with The Organization since 1999.  He served as the first Executive Director of the Ohio Chapter, taking it from $0 to $500K in four years. Since 2003, Crunchy has served as a Regional Director, during which his major focus has been to create and refine board development and strategic planning materials for The Organization.  He has also facilitated and participated in numerous strategic planning retreats with Chapters across the country.

(Here’s where it starts to go bad).

Before arriving at The Organization, Crunchy actually held a number of real jobs working with normal people who produced tangible things, and during which he was compensated quite fairly.  Several of his more notable position include: the Vice President of an international trading company, and the Director of Marketing for a computer hardware manufacturer. He holds an MBA in Business Management, a valid Ohio driver’s license, and, if properly dared, up to 15 peeled eggs within the confines of his rosy cheeks.

And yes ladies, the carpet matches the curtains.

Finally, Crunchy is an award-winning yo-yo-ist (famously known for coining the phrase, “Yo-yo, Mama!”), a raisin bran aficionado, and writes an awesome blog under a highly-secretive pseudonym which none of you fuckholes will never ever know. 

He is survived by his wife, Nerdy, an iPod Classic, and two cats, Max and that other one.

Whadda ya think?

December 26, 2007

Goody, Goody Two-Face

Several months ago I joined the board of a local hunger charity in hopes that the experience would help me to hate people a little less.  Especially poor people.  I really hate the poor, with their loud, grumbling stomachs and their constant begging for free medicine to cure their awful children of the rickets or scabies or gout or whatever. 

Plus, I needed put some credit on my “Get Out Of Being An Asshole Free” card.  It’s been an angry couple of months.

Anyway, a big part of my regular “paying” job is to spend colossal amounts of time attempting to convince the local boards throughout our organization to make fewer idiotic decisions.  While I think I’m pretty good at my job (and would surely be an improvement over you at yours), the vast potential for improvement all but guarantees success. 

So I thought that joining a local board would be a neat little twist for me.  Instead of trying to sway people away from the alluring glimmer of stupidity, I can just say, “Listen, dipshits, I do this for a fucking living.  If we were making a decision about purchasing a colostomy bag or fixing macaroni & cheese from a box, then we’d ask you.”  

Volunteering is good for the soul.

Here’s the thing though: volunteers are inherently lazy.  People who sit on boards will gladly let you make the decisions. Gladly, as long as you do all the actual work which results from the decision.  Then, once it’s done, they will linger around to scrutinize your work like an IRS agent who’s been assigned to audit a titty bar.

Here’s another thing: extremely smart people mysteriously lose IQ points when they volunteer. Having worked with volunteers for over a decade, this one has always perplexed me.  I’ve seen everything from business executives standing around watching old women stack boxes of t-shirts (“Oh, do you want us to help them?”),  to young professionals with college degrees ask me if they should put the coffee cups over by the coffee pot.  It is a truly amazing phenomenon.  It’s as if the mere good intention of volunteering caused some sort of massive, temporary head trauma. 

Here’s the last thing: lazy, stupid volunteers like…no, expect…to be made to feel good about their lazy, stupid efforts.  Everyone in the biz knows this.  It is a sunk cost of doing business as a charity.

And in my new role as a volunteer board member, it is the thing I have struggled with the most. 

After every board meeting, our Executive Director (the senior paid staff member) takes a few minutes to share an anecdote about someone who was helped by the organization.  I’ve learned to tolerate this. 

Last week, however, in the “spirit of the holiday season,” instead of an anecdote she decided to read a children’s book.  Not a passage from a children’s book.  Not a few pages from a children’s book.  This overweight, sixty-something woman rose up from her chair, moved to the middle of the room and performed an entire fucking children’s book, complete with voices, animated gestures and animal noises to a group of adults.  It was like watching the severely-disabled bastard child of Captain Kangaroo and Nurse Ratched perform her very own made-up one-woman show. 

The moment was surreal.  I couldn’t make eye contact with anyone, and it took every bit of my will to not jump up and scream, “What in the name of all that is decent and sane are you thinking?!   Please, please tell me you are drunk.  Please, just say it so I have a plausible reason to wipe this retarded episode from my mind without another thought.  Otherwise, someone will have to been thrown off the room of this building tonight.” 

But I didn’t.  I just sat there and stared at my notebook for the longest 20 minutes of my life.

Now I hate people even more.

December 22, 2007

Pilfered Email OR Urine Vietnam Now

Last week Nerdy Squirrel, Esq.’s co-clerk and her father went to Vietnam to visit her sister for the holidays.  Whether her sister is a missionary, a POW, a lethal CIA agent posing as a communist, or playing the doomed love-interest in Rambo V is unknown to me. 

In any case, N.S. shared with me an email her co-clerk received from her sister prior to leaving.   I’m sharing it with you because 1) it is interesting and funny, 2) it totally captures my experience in Asia in the 90's, and 3) her co-clerk is in Vietnam and can’t stop me from doing so, and will likely not return alive anyway due to bird flu or mistakenly approaching a smiling little Vietnamese girl who has a bomb strapped to her chest.  Oh, and lastly, because then I don’t have to write anything.

Enjoy.

Dear Dad and (co-clerk's name),

Here are some things about Vietnamese culture/lifestyle that you should be aware of before you arrive, just so you don't get confused/horrified/angry.

Here they don't use "please" and rarely use "thank you". They don't tip in restaurants (but I'll tell you about traffic
and eating habits when you arrive).

They serve unsweetened iced (green) tea with EVERYTHING.

They add HEAPING tablespoons of sugar to almost all beverages(except ice tea), regardless of whether or not it's been pre-sweetened. I know what to say to avoid this, don't worry.

They eat their fruit with salt and chillies.

There is often meat in tofu dishes (not at vegetarian places, obviously! Although they have loads of fake meat.)  And they serve shrimp paste with fried tofu.  We'll watch out for this, don't
worry, (co-clerk's name).

Picking one's nose in public is a national pastime.  Ditto for ears and teeth.

Public urination is normal.

Not washing one's hands after going to the bathroom is normal.

They don't really use toilet paper either (they have hoses and drains, thanks to the French, I'm guessing) and squatting is pretty
 standard.

Janitors of the opposite sex occassionally clean the bathroom while you're in there.

Littering is acceptable because trash collectors are always clearing it away (there are 3 trash cans in the whole country, I think).
     
People eat out of the trash (including the janitors at my language center!).

It's normal and acceptable to push or even elbow people if they are in your way.

Standing in line is literally a foreign concept to them.

Smacking kids/each other is completely normal.

People don't hug face to face, but putting their arms around each other is okay.

People hold hands with their same sex friends, but not with their husbands/wives or boyfriends/girlfriends (this is changing).

Women wearing sheer clothing is completely acceptable, even in formalsituations (think white shirt with a black bra or even an open back shirt with a bra).  It's showing your shoulders that is considered sexy and risque in some cases.

Carting around live animals in teeny tiny cages (whether to be sold as pets or meat...or both!) is common.

Selling raw meat on the street is normal...sometimes directly on the street. (But it doesn't smell because they keep it fresh!)

Blatant staring/pointing and laughing at people is also standard.

Aren't you excited?  :)  I'll email you with more if it comes to me.

Love,
(sister)

December 14, 2007

Major League Baseball Announces New Anti-Steroid Program

Hot on the heels of the Mitchell Report which implicated an unprecedented number of Major League Baseball players – including Cy Young Award winners, league MVPs and several top ten home run hitters – in illegal steroid use, MLB has announced a new awareness program to combat the seeming epidemic and re-polish its tarnished image. 

The campaign, titled “Avoid The Roid” was unveiled this morning by MLB Commissioner Bud Selig just outside his favorite Venice Beach hangout.  As part of the campaign, a mascot called “The Roid” will be used in all publicity materials.

“We want to make it clear to fans that Major League Baseball neither encourages nor condones steroid use.  Especially our younger fans.  We want them to know that you can get buff and smack a lot of home runs (and maybe a few mouthy broads…just kidding!) the all-natural way.” 

Selig then tore away his suit in a single, swift motion and posed for the cameras. 

 

 

“Take me for example, this is not from steroids, it’s from spending hours and hours in the gym and ingesting lots of legal supplements,” Selig flexed.  “Are you feeling me, people?  Seriously, feel my bicep.  I could crush your head like a soggy walnut with these guns.” 

Despite Selig’s enthusiasm, the MLB campaign appeared both rushed and derivative. 

When asked about the campaign’s unmistakable likeness to the 1980’s Pizza Hut campaign, “Avoid The Noid”, right down to the “N” emblem on the mascot’s costume, Selig suddenly became highly agitated.

“Well, stupid, the ‘N’ stands for ‘No Roids.’  If it were an ‘R,’ then we would be promoting steroid use, wouldn’t we?!  But we’re not.  We’re against it!  You got a problem with that, pansy?!”

Undaunted, one reporter suggested that the campaign was a blatant and hasty rip-off, offered only as a knee-jerk reaction to the negative publicity.

“That’s bullshit!” Selig yelled.  “This is a well-crafted and highly effective campaign to help stop steroid use!  And if you want to be part of the solution and not part of the problem, then you will help push this campaign!”

Selig then stepped away from the podium and began flexing while screaming red-faced, “Push it!  Push!!!”

Selig was asked a final question about any other campaigns MLB had considered.  It seemed to catch him off-guard and he appeared befuddled before stumbling out a few examples, including: Where’s The Beef Now That You Are Steroid-Free?;   Please Don’t Squeeze The Steroids Into Your Body;  Just Do It, Unless We’re Talking About Performance Enhancing Drugs (Or Betting On Baseball For That Matter); and The Best Part of Waking Up Is Not Having Shrunken Testicles In Your (athletic) Cup

In related news, Preparation H has filed a cease and desist warrant in federal court against Major League Baseball, claiming the league is infringing on its newly planned advertising campaign of the same name.


 

December 12, 2007

Candles, Schmandles

After making the mistake of ordering the homemade meatloaf for lunch at a family-style restaurant,  I was belching like a strip mall Santa at a beer-drinking contest.

Then I swallowed a homemade concoction of nutmeg and cinnamon, now I'm a bursting with the scents of the holiday. 

P.S. I'm so pleased with myself that tomorrow I might try shoving a pinecone up my ass.  Hopefully I won't end up at the emergency room this time. 

'Tis The Reason

As a charity insider, I’ll let you in on a little secret:  we love to hit you up for money around the holidays. 

Why?  Because we know you’re a different person then.  Four weeks ago you wouldn’t stop to piss on a burning homeless man on your way home from a water drinking contest.  “It’s a waste of good piss.  He’ll only drink it away,” you said.   Instead, you went home, filled up another milk jug with your “essence” and saved it in the back of your closet with the others and your “emergency jumpsuit” made entirely of human hair. 

After Thanksgiving, though, you go through a metamorphosis.  Suddenly, as if mutated by irradiated tryptophan during a mishap at the Butterball laboratory, you turn into Happy, Drunken Holiday Man.  And Happy, Drunken Holiday Man is fast and loose with his cash.  Now, the very same homeless man, charred and, ironically, reeking of piss, only has to tickle a little bell in your general vicinity, and you’ll gladly stumble over to empty the pockets of your loose-fitting khaki Dockers.

Yep.  We love Happy, Drunken Holiday Man.  Especially if we can hit you up when you’re out holiday shopping, fully in the spirit, half in the bag and feeling all smug about the crass diamond pendant you picked out for your ugly wife at some shitty mall jewelry store. 

So beware. 

For me, I enjoy making a sport out of spotting bogus charity pitches.  Like the other day when I went out to get some coffee to combat the excessive drowsiness I was feeling from the Allegra D that I’m taking because of an apparent allergy to our Christmas tree.  Right there at Caribou was my first seasonal sighting of a totally retarded Christmas charity solicitation.  On the counter, attached to a decorated box filled with packages of Caribou Coffee beans, was the following sign:

Help Warm The Troops
Donate A Pound Of Your Favorite Coffee
and We’ll Send It To Iraq

To the untrained eye, this might seem harmless enough.  But step back, bitches, and watch me go all C.S.I. on your ass.

First, Caribou makes a good play by using the phrase “Help Warm The Troops” which is very similar to “Help Support The Troops.”  As an American, you are obligated to support the troops without question at every turn, lest you be labeled unpatriotic, arrested as a terrorist and shipped off to Guantanamo to be photographed playing naked Twister between waterboardings.  Caribou knows this.  

However, it occurs to me that the troops aren’t necessarily in need of being warmed.  Quite the opposite, actually.  They’re in the fucking desert wearing full packs and forty pounds of Kevlar.  No one is heading home after a long day of patrolling the shitty, sand-bleached streets of Baghdad to toast their tootsies by the campfire.
   
Second, doesn’t the army have coffee?  I’ve watched the PBS specials.  They’ve build entire food complexes there with McDonald’s, Pizza Huts and the like.  Sure, Halliburton might charge Uncle Sam $20 for a single cup, but Dick Cheney has a lesbian daughter he needs to keep in flannel and dental dams.  That’s the price of democracy.   

Third, Iraq is the Middle East, the birthplace of coffee cultivation.  Arabic coffee beans are some of the best in the world.  In fact, Caribou uses only Arabic coffee beans.  Maybe I’m stretching here, but I’ll bet coffee is both good and plentiful in Iraq (if you don’t mind sidestepping a few IEDs). 

Fourth, Caribou says they will send the coffee to Iraq.  Shouldn’t they give is to the USO, the Red Cross or some other organization that is already over there supporting the military?  Why go to the trouble of hiring a pilot, chartering a plane, painting a stupid logo on the side, flying the 300 or so miles to Iraq (I’m guessing here), dodging RPGs on the landing and risking friendly fire just so some sweaty guy in a smelly Santa suit can unload a few pounds of coffee.  Methinks this is a waste.

Lastly, if Caribou cares so much about the troops, why the fuck are they asking me to buy the coffee?  They are a large corporation that gets the stuff at wholesale prices, not to mention huge tax breaks for making charitable contributions.  Why don’t they just donate it?

Screw Caribou and their shameless attempt to pimp the holiday and the troops to sell more of their crappy coffee. 

P.S. I did succumb to another Caribou scam.  Every day they ask a trivia question and give you $0.10 off your purchase if you get it right.  Today’s question, “Under law, what is the maximum value of a gift you can give your postal carrier?”  I answered correctly that it was $20, and then proceeded to buy a $20 gift card for my mailman.  Very clever, you bastards.

 

December 10, 2007

This Post Is Called...

The Epic November
OR
The Long Winding Road To Nowhere
OR
Another Reason Why I Desperately Need An Editor

Thank God it’s finally December.  After enduring six weeks filled with visions of handguns, asbestos, canker sores and cannibalism, a few sugarplums will certainly be a welcome change of pace.

It all started back in October as I was gearing up for my favorite holiday.  In addition to hiding plastic spiders on Nerdy Squirrel’s person and startling the living shit out of the cats at every available opportunity,  part of my longtime Halloween ritual involves watching a horror movie every night for the seven days leading up to October 31st  (TNT totally ripped me off,  by the way.  And I’ve also been told that I have a very actionable resemblance case against their popular Monk character).   

For no apparent reason (or possibly a horrible omen), this year my movie choices heavily leaned towards the post-apocalypse, such as 28 Days Later, Dawn of the Dead and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  Normally I’m very big fan of end-of-the-world scenarios, and in and of themselves, these movies always lift my spirits.  This time though, I immediately followed up a week of celluloid cataclysm by watching the first season of Jericho (or as I like to call it, Jericho: The Town That Nuclear Winter Mysteriously Skipped; Where A Single Magical Rainfall Eliminates All The Effects of Radiation; And Where Despite The Lack of Food No One Is Getting Any Thinner Except Skeet Ulrich Who Definitely Has A Meth Habit) and reading the all-consuming and wonderfully grim book “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy.  

By mid-November, I had stuffed myself so full of Armageddon that I could barely drag myself to the couch to watch football and nap.  Fortunately, a few days of watching the Sportscenter is just enough to make me realize the end of the world wouldn’t be all bad.  Slowly I began to regain my will to live.  Regrettably, I did not wait until my emotional immune system was strong enough to combat my obsessive impulses, and in moving too quickly I succumbed to my longtime narcotic nemesis: home improvement. 

Three years ago when we first moved into our house, Nerdy Squirrel, Esq. and I decided we wanted to have an elegant, deep red dining room in which to eat our Chinese take-out and pile unopened mail.  Unfortunately our first attempt at red rum…uh, sorry… a red room was a sore disappointment.  After two coats of Kiltz primer and four coats of Behr paint, the walls looked like the ass cheeks of a naughty baboon on his way home from a Dominatrix’s dungeon.  It was literally McDonald’s red, and when viewed in the context of our bright yellow foyer, had the unfortunate yet predictable effect of inducing acne and imminent diarrhea.

After recently purchasing some new furniture, we decided it was time to repaint the dining room.  And since we were repainting, we decided to rip out the unsightly chair rail that had been added by the previous homeowners.  And since we were tearing out the chair rail, we decided to upgrade the lighting fixtures.  And since we were upgrading the lighting fixtures, we also decided to replace the “updated” crappy aluminum heat and cold-air-return vents with original cast iron ones that we found in an antique store.  You get the idea.  Oh, and when it comes to the actual work, when I say “we” I mean “me.”  The only thing Nerdy Squirrel ever paints is coffee spills and cruddy fingerprints on every conceivable surface. 

One more thing, we wanted to have it all done before December 8, the day we planned to erect the Christmas tree.

By the last week on November, the chair rail removal, plaster patching, sanding, re-patching and re-sanding, priming and painting had all proceeded as planned.  The vents, rusty little bitches that they are, were another story altogether.  (You might say that I’m venting about the vents, but if you did Ohio law says I have the legal right to smash your balls into a crystalline powder with the cryogenically-frozen skull of  Ted Williams, a law that makes no sense whatsoever because Williams played for Boston which is in like Vermont or something.). 

Anyway, after you’ve done a little home improvement, you begin to understand what I like to call the I-Can’t-Fucking- Believe-I’ve-Wasted-My-Entire-Fucking-Saturday-On-This-Stupid-Little-Fucking-Job Principle.  Basically this law of home improvement says, “The seemingly simplest of jobs will turn out to be the most aggravating and require at least three trips to Home Depot,” or for the literalists out there, “…the most fucking aggravating...”   So it was with our cast iron grates.

First, due to a modification by the previous homeowners, one of the dining room vents was no longer connected to the HVAC system.  It was a dead vent, and should therefore be extremely easy to replace.  However, when I began tearing out the vent housing, I noticed a distinctly textured covering and suddenly felt my health insurance premiums skyrocket. Asbestos.  Holy fuck me. 
 
Immediately all work was halted and I set to fashioning a makeshift HAZMAT suit and removal container made from garbage bags, duct tape, an Amazon.com cardboard box and some aluminum foil (the foil was mostly for affect, as were the nametag, the multiple “DANGER” signs and the two fun-size Butterfingers I used for captain’s bars on my shoulders).  Once the asbestos covered materials were bagged up and left in the highly capable hands of my garbage man via the bin, I blew my nose twice and hocked up three consecutive loogies.  This is a little-known but effective field technique for completely removing air-borne carcinogens from the body, brought to you by the folks over at “Duck and Cover.”

Second, the grates we purchased from the antique store (a shop quite reminiscent of the one owned by Fred Sanford) were completely covered in rust and lead paint.  And while I’m a big fan of some forms of grinding, the intricate designs on these grates were going to take hours and hours of the tedious, highly-abrasive metal-on-metal type, as opposed to the sweaty, mildly-abrasive (depending on your underwear preference) man-on-reluctant-woman type.  Fortunately I am the owner of a computer, an inflated sense of ability and excessive gullibility to highly suspect information.  Putting all my assets to use at once, I found an alternative: the homemade Electrolytic Rust Removal Type Thingamajig.

(I spent fifteen minutes at a Christmas party this weekend sucking the life out of a room full of people with a painful description of my wildly successful ERRTT project.  I’m not going to make the same mistake twice.  Let’s just say that if you are interested, check this out . Oh, and it produces a significant amount of hydrogen gas.  You know, the stuff the Hindenburg was filled with.)

All said, by December 1 I had exposed myself to massive amounts of latex fumes, asbestos, lead paint, hydrogen, acrylic spray paint, alcohol (It’s the holidays!) and farty fuselage air, resulting in what can only be called a Extra-Crunchy Chemical Vapor-Induced Sinus Infection with Canker Sores and Blinding Halitosis.  My mouth and esophagus has turned into a foul, festering cavern of raw, putrid sores that could open a wide berth through a colony of lepers waiting to buy Hanna Montana tickets for their spoiled, shitty, armless children.  It was if I had eaten a pair of Paris Hilton’s underpants, assuming she would ever wear some.

But remember, it’s Christmas, the time of miracles like the Immaculate Reception, the Drive, and The Play. Within a week’s time my illness was miraculously lifted save a single, well-placed canker sore on the business end of my tongue, the home improvement was completed and my grim obsession with the end of the world has ended.  And on Sunday, Nerdy Squirrel wandered through the old Christmas tree farm in Concord, Ohio and cut down our very first real Christmas tree, a fine, fat Norwegian Pine. Now our newly-decorated home is filled with the wonderful smell of pine and fond memories of childhood Christmases. 

As of this morning, my eyes are puffy and my head is stuffed. I’m pretty sure I’m allergic.

December 03, 2007

Twelve Inches of Christmas

I love Sunday mornings.  They always feel so wholesome.  Lounging about, sipping jasmine tea, cool jazz drifting out of the hi-fi, screaming at the lying shitbags on Meet The Press. 

When relaxing in my favorite Sunday chair, I usually keep my wireless laptop handy in case the mood strikes me.  The mood to surf for misinformation, the mood to compulsively shop for survival gear, the mood to watch people using glassware as a bedpan.  Any mood, really.

Yesterday morning as I was tip-tapping away I opened up my mailbox to find the following emails:

Increase your di*k for Christmas

Give her the gift of a larger c*ck for Christmas

First, let me say that the senders of these emails are lucky I’m not Jewish or Muslim, or I might have been offended by their presumptiveness.  Christmas is not celebrated by everyone.

Second, as a husband, I appreciate a novel gift idea for my wife as much the other guy.   Unlike every brainstorming session I’ve ever participated in at work, this is a situation where there truly are no bad ideas.  Simply put, left to my own devices, painfully disappointing things are bound to be purchased.

For example, the other night we were watching Flight of the Conchords on DVD when I was suddenly reminded of a Christmas gift that I had purchased for a girlfriend years ago.  She was majoring in Geology at the time, and I wanted to get her something that was original, creative and reflected her personal interest.  Not only did I think that I hit a home run with this gift, I was actually giddy about the prospect of giving it to her.  I was certain that she would be overcome with love and emotion and immediately reward me with the gift that keeps on giving…for roughly two and a half minutes.

My offering: a custom-designed sweatshirt that said, “Geology…Rocks!” on the front and, just in case you didn’t get the joke, explained on the back, “Igneous, Metamorphic & Sedimentary.”

*shudder*

Needless to say, I will gladly accept assistance from all comers.  Still, like the portable basketball hoop, the Harry K. McEvoy Beginner’s Knife Throwing Kit, or the ass-less leather chaps, I don’t want to make the mistake of getting my wife another gift that is really intended to benefit me.  Let’s be honest, I’m probably going to get more enjoyment from having a giant clam hammer than she would. While she would certainly receive moments of pleasure every two weeks or so on "date night", I’m the one who would get to drag it around the house like Quasimodo with a separated shoulder.  I’m the one who would get to shake it at the cats to show them who’s the boss.  I’m the one who would get to hide in the bushes and use it to trip unsuspecting joggers.

The other problem is, well, how do you offer up such a gift?  I mean, Dick in a Box is sooooooo 2006.