Christopher's Home!

Christopher was released from the hospital last night, and he's doing great!!!

I went to visit him in the ICU on Monday morning. He was asleep when I walked in the room, hugging one of his teddy bears (I think it might have been Beary White). He had a strip of hair shaved from the left side of his head, and a scar running from behind his ear to the top of his scalp. He also had a tube stuck into the back of his head, which was a bit disquieting. I can't even begin to imagine what that felt like.

Sunny was asleep on the couch, and Nick was sitting up in the chair when I got there. He told me Christopher was doing a lot better, that he'd been awake and watching Scooby Doo earlier. "He's still a little groggy from the medication, but he was cracking jokes with us earlier."

About that time, Christopher sat up sleepily, his eyes not even open, and let out a pathetic moan. Nick asked, "You waking up, kiddo?" Christopher let out another groan and laid back down. He sat up a few seconds later, looked at me brightly, and said, "Oh, hey Bubba!"

God, that kid is so amazing.

So we talked about the accident and what he could remember. We talked about his cool scar and how girls really dig a guy who looks dangerous. We talked about comic books ad nauseum. And when the doctor came in to remove the tube from his head, I kept him busy talking about Ice Age: The Meltdown which, he assures me, is way funnier than the first one.

I can't tell you what a relief it was to be laughing and joking with him. And when I told him Stephanie and I would swing by to see him the next day, he got really excited. Especially when I told him we'd bring him one of those big X-Men comics.

(I can't remember if I've mentioned this before or not, but Christopher is totally smitten with Stephanie. She calls him her "other boyfriend," and he totally eats it up.)

So Steph and I were waiting for him when he got home late yesterday afternoon. Steph gave him the promised comic book, plus something called a Chicken Chucker, which is a toy gun that shoots small, plastic chickens. Stephanie said, "You can have this on two conditions. One, you can't shoot the chickens at your brothers or your pets or anybody. And two, I don't want you falling out of any more swings and scaring me like that anymore."

Christopher assured us his days of tire swinging are over. However, he did remind us that he still has a trampoline in the backyard...

Sunny said she knew he was going to be fine the first time he rolled his eyes at her. He's been doing that for about a year now, and been getting in trouble for it. So when he did it in the hospital on Monday morning, she just laughed and said, "I thought we asked the doctor to take that eye-rolling part of his brain out while he was in there."

So it looks like everything is going to be fine. Christopher is already back to his fun, smartass self. He's excited that he gets to miss school for the rest of the week, but he's hoping his hair doesn't grow back TOO fast because he wants to show off his scar to his classmates.

Thanks to all of you who posted or e-mailed to let me know you were hoping/praying/thinking good thoughts for Christopher. It really meant a lot.

I got the call from my mom about an hour ago that Christopher was out of surgery and everything went fine. The poor kid has a shaved strip on his head, and a scar on his temple, but he's recovering nicely and they expect he'll be back to his old smart-ass self in no time.

I just got home, and suddenly I'm so exhausted I can barely hold my head up. Visiting hours start at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow (today), so I'll be heading back up to the hospital in a few hours.

Just a quick aside, so you'll know just how incredibly awesome my nephew is:

Back in November, I was hanging out with him in his playroom, and we were watching some Superman episodes on DVD. He accidentally called him "Pooperman," and that set the both of us to giggling. So we ran with it. Christopher decided that Pooperman's super powers would include "Poopervision," which basically involved him crapping from the eyes.

So I suggested the people could point up at him while he was flying overhead and say, "Look, up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's... EEEEEWWWWW!"

By this point, we were both laughing so hard we couldn't form coherent sentences. Finally, we got it under control, and Christopher suggested, "The main bad guy for Pooperman could be Dr. French Yes. Get it? Because in French, they say 'Oui oui!'"

Which of course set us both to laughing again.

By January, Christopher had decided he actually wanted to flesh this out into a movie and, since he knows I'm a writer of sorts, he asked me if I'd help him write the screenplay. I told him we could take a meeting and he could pitch all of his ideas to me.

When the time came for our meeting, he actually had only one new idea. He'd decided he wanted me to play a villain in the movie. I swear, the following is his pitch, verbatim.

"His name is Dr. Bubba, and he's just like you, only he's a bad guy. And there's this one scene where he's in his hideout watching The Passion of the Christ, and he looks up and says, 'Ewww, that is so not right.'"

Hell, it's already better than the Fantastic Four movie! Jesus, I love that kid!

Christopher, my 8-year-old nephew and namesake, is in the hospital right now.

He was playing on a tire swing earlier this afternoon, and the rope snapped and he hit his head on the driveway. Turns out he's got an epidural hematoma, which means he's got blood accumulating in the space between the skull and the menbrane that surrounds the brain. Or something like that. I'm not a goddamn brain surgeon, you understand.

He was pretty lucid when they took him to the hospital. He had some short term memory loss, but he was conscious and he recognized his mom and dad (Sunny and Nick). The side of his head was swollen up pretty bad, so they took him to the emergency room at Presbyterian.

Once he got to Presby, he stated complaining about the pain, so they gave him morphine and something else that they don't ordinarily give kids. They looked him over there, and decided to transport him to Children's Medical Center (across town) by ambulance for observation.

The doctor at Presby had said it looked pretty serious. The EMTs who rode in the ambulance with Christopher and Sunny said it didn't look like a big deal, and he'd probably be released that day. After all, he hadn't even thrown up (which is a major symptom of epidural hematomas).

So once they arrived at Children's Medical, they did a CT scan and realized it really was an epidural hematoma. By the time I got to the Emergency Room, poor Christopher was in a bad state. He was screaming about the pain, saying he couldn't stand it. He was fighting the doctors and nurses, and he kept trying to pull off his monitors and pull out his IV. And he was starting to vomit. A lot.

He finally settled down and fell asleep almost immediately. Even when the nurses came in to draw blood or check his pupils, he didn't wake up. He just kept snoring away. (Christopher snores like a goddamn old person. It's the funniest thing to hear it coming from that tiny little guy.)

The neurosurgeon showed up, and for the first time started talking about surgery. He said he wanted to observe Christopher a little bit longer, because he wasn't sure if the grogginess and slow reactions were from the head injury or the drugs he'd been given at Presbyterian.

(From what I can gather, they fucked up at Presbyterian. There are medications much more approriate for kids Christopher's age, and the ones they prescribed actually made his diagnosis a bit harder.)

At first, the neurosurgeon was pretty optimistic. He said he hadn't seen anything really alarming on the first CT scan, so he was thinking they'd just move Christopher out of ICU and into a regular room so they could observe him overnight. Then, tomorrow, they'd decide whether or not to operate.

My mom was at Sunny and Nick's house, watching the twins. Just as Sunny was calling her with the good news, the neurosurgeon came back in and said he was still concerned by Christopher's lack of response and couldn't really determine if it was from the drugs or the head injury. So they were going to keep him in the ICU overnight after all.

They took Christopher down to get another CT scan, and the poor guy didn't even wake up when they ran him through that huge machine. They moved him back down to ICU, and I left to take a turn watching the twins so my mom could go up to the hospital.

By the time I got to their house, they'd already called to let my mom know that the blood clot was twice as big in the second CT scan as the first, and they were going to operate tonight. My mom grabbed some clothes and things for Sunny and Nick, and took off for the hospital.

So now it's about 10:00 on Sunday night. I'm at my Sunny and Nick's house, manning the phone and babysitting. The twins are asleep in the other room. Adult Swim is playing on Cartoon Network in the living room, and I'm in here blogging because I'm going out of my fucking mind just sitting around doing nothing.

Nick just called. They took Christopher in for surgery about 10 minutes ago.

It's supposed to be a slam dunk. The neurosurgeon explained it to us while I was there. Said they'll make an incision, cut out a small circle of his skull, remove the clot and drain the blood to relieve the pressure, then plug the piece of skull back in place and sew him up. The surgeon made it sound like he'd be up and around the next day.

Christ, I hope he's right.

A Few Random Musings...

If you really love the Lord so much that you're willing to put a bumper sticker on your car proclaiming your faith, then MAYBE you shouldn't drive like an asshole. I'm just saying...

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My favorite food is Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls. In fact, my fantasy is to actually be married to Little Debbie and have her say to me, "Sweetheart, as soon as I take these Swiss Cake Rolls out of the oven, we'll go make love on the veranda."

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If you're ever on your way to buy a lottery ticket and you get struck by lightning, you should probably just give up because what are the odds?

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Since Bill Frist and Howard Dean are both doctors, they should go into practice together. Comedy hijinx would ensue.

Dean: Would you call the time of death?
Frist: Wait a minute, Howard! The patient could still make a full recovery.
Dean: Are you retarded, Bill? He's been decapitated!
Frist: Yes, I know. But look at his eyes! He's obviously still alert.
Dean: Bill, his head has been cut off! There is no medical cure for that!
Frist: Well, we still haven't tried prayer.
Dean: YEEEEAAAAAAAARGH!!!!

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For some reason, I really hate it when men wear sandals. I can't explain why. It's just one of those things that makes my skin crawl. Jesus wore sandals, and that's one of the reasons why I'm no longer a Christian.

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They finally added the name "Lara" to the Microsoft Word dictionary. I used to go out with a girl named Lara back in 1996, and every time I'd type her name in Word, it would suggest that I replace "Lara" with "larva" or "lard". She didn't find it nearly as funny as I did.

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When my nephew was 2 years old, my mom gave him some Chronicles of Narnia picture books. One day, he announced he was going to read me a story, which basically meant he was going to look at the pictures and then make up a story to go along with them. He got to the picture of the children meeting Father Christmas and he said in a solem voice, "And then they met God and God told them everything would be okay, but He lied."

Have I mentioned that my nephew is astonishingly cool?

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I was watching The Three Stooges the other night, and I finally figured out why women don't like them.

They're not funny.

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If you really are an investment counselor, and you wish to notify me by e-mail about an exciting new investment opportunity, you might want to make your subject line a little more descriptive than "BANJO FISH UNDERWEAR".

Same thing goes for you pharmaceutical companies.

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How come so many conservatives insist that the only method of birth control that's 100% effective is abstinence? I can think of one documented case where even THAT didn't work, and you'd think they'd at least be familiar with it...

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And finally, an oldie but a goodie. Go to Google, type in "failure" and click the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button.

Fuzzy Mathematation

Poor George W. Try as he might, he just can't seem to get past the WMD thing. Or the Hurricane Katrina fiasco. Or the Abu Ghriab and Guatanamo Bay prison scandals. Or the NSA wiretapping issue. Or the Valerie Plame affair. Or the Al Jazeera bombing memo. Or the yellowcake uranium forgery. Or the...

Well, let's just say the man has a full plate and, as a result, his approval rating is falling faster than pants at the Kennedy compound. Currently, his rating is sitting at 36%, which coincidentally is the number of Americans who also believe that dinosaur bones were buried by Jesus to fuck with secular humanists.

But Bush and his klavern are no strangers to adversity. Why just recently, it was brought to Bush's attention that the federal government debt was about to hit the $8,180,000,000,000 legal limit, and Bush fixed it by raising the debt ceiling (for the fourth time).

The strategy has proven successful, which has encouraged Bush to apply it to other areas as well. Social Security has been fixed by changing the retirement age to 98, and the definition of terrorist has been broadened to include anybody not in the aforementioned 36%.

So it was hardly a surprise to anyone when Scott McClellan, White House Press Secretary and Tiny Pair of Legs Dangling from President Bush's Ass, held a press conference on Monday morning to announce changes to the approval rating process.

"Ever since the president was swept into office with a historical overwhelming record-breaking 51% of the vote, he's been constantly penalized by the liberal bias of our mathematical system," McClellan told reporters. "We've decided the will of the American people can best be reflected by capping the approval rating system at 40%."

"In light of this adjustment, the president is now more popular than he's ever been!"

The announcement was met with cheers and glossolalia from the FOX News correspondents, but the response from the rest of the press corps was lukewarm at best. Senior White House Correspondent Helen Thomas voiced her outrage, but her protests were cut short when she was shot in the face by Dick Cheney.

"This is nothing new," McClellan insisted to reporters. "The president has always been a staunch supporter of grading on a curve. How do you think he got through Yale and Harvard? Or became president in 2000?"

In his rebuttal, feral Democrat Howard Dean stated, "This is just another example of the current administration's penchant for massaging facts to... wait a minute. Bush went to Yale and Harvard? How the fuck did THAT happen?"

He then added, "YEEAAAAARGH!!!!"

"God hates... well, me!"

You have to admit. "Reverend" Phelps is looking mighty gay in that cowboy hat...

Overheard in the Blizzard Entertainment Breakroom...

"I just got through designing another quest for World of Warcraft."

"Oh yeah? Tell me about it."

"Well, basically Ginko the dwarf wants you to kill some Swamp Orcs and bring him back 10 Orc Fingers."

"Sounds pretty straightforward."

"Not really. The Orc Fingers are a pretty rare drop. You'll probably have to kill somewhere around 3,000 Swamp Orcs before you get enough Orc Fingers to complete the quest."

"So... not all the Swamp Orcs have fingers?"

"No."

"How do they hold their swords?"

"It doesn't matter."

"So, what level is this quest?"

"That's the cool part. The Swamp Orcs are around level 10, so it's a level 10 quest. But I've bunched them together in groups of 5, so you can't possibly fight them one at a time."

"Cool!"

"Plus, I've given them a ridiculous aggro, so as soon as you attack one, every single Swamp Orc on the continent will come at you."

"Wow, I love this quest!"

"And some of the Swamp Orcs are spellcasters, so they'll be pegging you with lightning from about two miles away."

"Genius!"

"And I've got a bunch of elites wandering around in the area too, just to make sure the players get killed a lot."

"I salute you, my friend. You have totally outdone yourself this time."

"I haven't even told you the best part yet. The graveyard is all the way on the other side of the map, so every time the players die, they'll have to waste 20 minutes getting back to where their body is."

"..."

"Are you okay?"

"I think I just came."

Personally, I was hoping for Otto...

You Are Barney

You could have been an intellectual leader... Instead, your whole life is an homage to beer You will be remembered for: your beautiful singing voice and your burps Your life philosophy: "There's nothing like beer to give you that inflated sense of self-esteem."

The Simpsons Personality Test

Thanks to Sideshow Bob for this soul-numbing insight into my dark and wondrous psyche.

Fun with Babel Fish

I'm bored, and I have internet access. And since my workplace sort of frowns on the downloading of porn, I'm forced to find other ways to entertain myself.

So what I've done is use Babel Fish to translate some famous quotes into Japanese, and then back into English. Or Engrish, if you will. All you have to do is figure out the original quote.

So have fun, and let the good times roll. Or as our Japanese friends might say, "When, being pleasant pass, when being good, permit the roll."

Oh, those inscrutible Asians, with their kung fu and their eggrolls and their tiger penis coffee...

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1. Our fathers who are in the heaven and are converted holy are your name. When there is a heaven, your will it ended simultaneously with the afterlife your earth.

2. As for us because it is self-explanatory these truths it is that all person and the same which was drawn up you keep.

3. Perhaps the purpose of the mirror appearing rather than it is not close.

4. I am Elfstar and already you want. I think that we would like to be Davy.

5. Just a little, the baby. Is your sign what?

6. It had the new nation where 87 years ago, our fathers are imagined, being the same where human everyone was drawn up in this continent being free, are used exclusively in proposition.

7. It possesses the right to remain silently.

8. Someone left the cake to the rain.
I took, therefore to be long that
And never the cooking method for the second time
Being not to be in burning me, you do not think that I can take that.
Well, no!

9. So, him that the son who is born the world where it gives simply because of the God which is loved, depending upon the whosoever the life which continues eternally does not die, passes him believes, but.

10. As for me that the butter, cannot believe that it is not the goddamn liar.

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Answers

1. Our father, who is in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

2. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

3. Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear.

4. I don't want to be Elfstar anymore. I want to be Debbie.

5. Hey, baby. What's your sign?

6. Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

7. You have the right to remain silent.

8. Someone left the cake out in the rain.
I don't think that I can take it
Because it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe again.
Oh, no!

9. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.

10. I can't believe it's not butter, you goddamn liar.

Fun with Jack Chick #10

Fuzzy Memories and Drug-Induced Flashbacks - Part VII

There were three 5th grade teachers at Club Hill Elementary (GO SCOTS, or whatever the fuck the team name was). The classroom was one large room divided into three areas. Each teacher had his/her own area of expertise, so we moved from area to area during the day.

Mr. Price was my homeroom teacher, and he also taught social studies. He was a badass (short and bald, but a badass nonetheless) who wore a leather jacket and rode a motorcycle to school. I remember most of the girls got giggly and squishy around him.

Mrs. Bouchard was the matronly math teacher who was born sometime during the Taft administration. She was always going on about "the New Math" and explaining to us how lucky we were because when she was our age, they didn't have numbers and they had to do all their arithmetic with I's, V's, and L's.

And then, there was Miss McCollaugh, the English teacher. Young and perky, with bobbed blonde hair and big blue eyes. She was particularly fond of wearing tight blouses without a bra, which made her inordinately popular with most of the boys. She was stern and bossy, but in the hottest way imaginable. I used to fantasize about being forced to stay after school, but unfortunately she wasn't my homeroom teacher.

Mr. Price was a married man and Miss McCollaugh had a fiance, but the two of them used to hang out together a lot. They ate their meals together, stood near each other while we were at recess, and occasionally left us unattended so they could go converse in the hall. Of course, this gave rise to the rumor that they were having an affair. Hell, we were 5th graders with no understanding of sex, and even WE assumed they were knocking naughty bits.

Every afternoon, around 2:00, all three classes would gather in a common area for story time. Mr. Price never participated, but Mrs. Bouchard and Miss McCollaugh took turns reading chapters to us from their novel of choice.

So one fine spring afternoon, we were all gathered around Miss McCollaugh as she read to us from A Wrinkle in Time. She was an animated reader, really getting into the voices. She was wearing a loose-fitting white sweater with nothing on underneath, and her breasts were bouncing around happily as she regaled us with the tale of... well, hell. I don't really remember what was going on. It involved tesseracts and hobbits or something.

At one particularly exciting moment in the narrative, Miss McCollaugh leaned forward. She took a deep breath, pausing to maximize the dramatic tension... and her left breast popped out!

For several seconds, we all just stared in stunned silence at that lone nipple, peeking at us over the neckline of her sweater. Miss McCollaugh stopped reading and just looked out at us, her cheeks burning bright red. Nobody made a sound.

Then all at once, wild and crazy laughter from all 80 of us. We shrieked and howled and pointed. Miss McCollaugh let out a cry, threw down the book, and bolted out of the classroom. Mr. Price ran after her, which just made us laugh louder. And poor Mrs. Bouchard was left to try and calm us all down.

Somehow, Miss McCollaugh managed to finish out the day. The next morning, she came to school wearing five bras and fourteen sweaters under her heavy winter coat, and no mention was made of the incident. Like I said, she was stern and bossy, and many of us were terrified of incurring her wrath.

But when we were sure she wasn't looking, we'd poke our hands under our shirts and recreate the incident, complete with "Boing!" sound effects. And then we'd giggle like Karl Rove with a freezer full of orphans.

You know how kind kids can be...

What Famous Leader Am I?

So I stumbled across this test on the Internets. Basically, you answer a series of questions and it determines which famous leader best fits your personality. I have to say, I was utterly blown away by the results!

Okay, just kidding. This was the real result, and I guess I wasn't all that terribly surprised...

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

To All the Blogs I've Blogged Before...

I'm a shallow prick, and I'll be the first to admit it. As Dennis Miller once said, back when he was funny, "It's okay to be shallow so long as you're insightful about it."

So what's my point? I'm glad you asked, Winona.

I consider blog links to be a sacred, life-long commitment, like marriage or circumcision. If you linka me like I linka you like we linka both the same...

But I've been going through my blog links lately, and SOME OF YOU HAVE ABANDONED ME! I don't know why. Maybe it was because I use the word "retard" like it's punctuation, or maybe it's because I have a potty mouth, or maybe you just don't find me nearly as funny as I find myself. Personally, I find that hard to believe because I think I'm pretty goddamn fucking funny. And if you can't see that, then you're a retard.

Um, so anyway. To those of you who stopped linking to this blog, you are dead to me. No, don't bother trying to kiss up now. It's too late. The damage is done, and things will never be the same between us again.

You done stepped on my heart
And stomped that sucker flat.
I guess you sorta
Squished my aorta.

As for those of you who have stood by me and stayed linked to me through thick and thin, all I can say is that I love each and every one of you with the insane passion of Bradgelina. I would marry you if not for all those pesky same-sex/bigamy laws.

And finally, if through some terrible series of events far too horrible to contemplate you have linked to me and I have yet to return the favor, please let me know and I will rectify the situation post haste.

*** XXX - Hot Wet Spanking News - XXX ***

Cheney's Got a Gun - A Follow-Up

A lot of conservatives seem to have their panties in a knot these days because of all the media attention the Cheney story has been getting. I mean, okay. So our vice president mistook an old man for a bird and shot him IN THE GODDAMN FACE!. What's the big deal? Al Gore used to beat strippers to death and toss them on the White House lawn and nobody seemed to care. But Cheney blasts one old man IN THE GODDAMN FACE with a shotgun, and suddenly it's news.

FOX News attempted to take the high road. Rather than spend day after day reporting on Cheney (who shot an old man IN THE GODDAMN FACE), they decided to spend day after day pointing out the fact that they WEREN'T reporting on Cheney. You know, despite the fact he shot an old man IN THE GODDAMN FACE!

Fortunately, CNN is always there to take up the slack when they're not too busy covering stories about Bradgelina's lawn rakings or how Beyonce doesn't like to be called "Bootylicious." Today, CNN reported on Harry Whittington, the old man who was shot IN THE GODDAMN FACE by Vice President Cheney.

Whittington, wearing a suit and tie, had several bruises on his neck and face, probably because he was shot IN THE GODDAMN FACE! Speaking to reporters outside the hospital where he was treated (for getting shot IN THE GODDAMN FACE), Whittington apologized to Cheney and his family for everything they've been forced to go through this past week.

Yeah, Cheney's had it pretty tough. In a television interview on Wednesday, he said the day of the accident was "one of the worst days of my life." It must have been hard for the poor man. The only thing I could think of that would be worse would be getting shot IN THE GODDAMN FACE!

The Dallas Morning News ran a story about how Cheney didn't even have a tag to hunt quail, and received a bunch of angry letters (probably written in crayon) from people chiding them for not reporting the REAL news. I'm still not sure what the REAL news is, but apparently it's anything else that might be going on whenever somebody in the current administration fucks up.

But they're all missing the silver lining here. Just think... if Cheney had shot a quail without a license, he might have been in some serious trouble. I mean, they fine people for that! But fortunately, all he shot was an old man.

IN THE GODDAMN FACE!

Allah My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight!

So some paper in Denmark printed some comics that mocked the Prophet Mohammed, and a bunch of Muslims in Pakistan responded by rioting. So far, this only qualifies as news the same way that "I dropped something into the water, and it got wet" might.

But now, they're marching on U.S. businesses (like KFC and Citibank) and chanting "Death to America." I mean, come on! For once, we're NOT responsible for what pissed them off in the first place, so why are they coming after us? That's almost as retarded as, say, going to war with Iraq because you're mad at Al Qaeda.

Scathing, anti-muslim comics like this one
have created a serious backlash in Pakistan.

Iran has been showing remarkable restraint in the wake of the whole cartoon jihad. Not a lot of death and carnage so far, although the Ayatollah did put a $1,000,000 price on the cartoonists' heads. Because, hey! It worked so well with Salman Rushdie. Also, one of their papers responded with a contest inviting readers to submit wacky cartoons making fun of the Holocaust. Seriously.

But by far, my favorite story of Muslim protest has been the Iranian bakeries that renamed their danishes to "Roses of the Prophet Mohammed." They were originally going to go with "Freedom Pastries," but of course the idea was voted down because everybody knows how much THOSE DAMN IRANIANS HATE FREEDOM!

Heart Attack

I really hate to see the godless secular mainstream liberals take over a religious holiday like Valentine's Day and turn it into some kind of celebration of lust and filthy, filthy sex. After all, like Christmas, St. Valentine's Day is a holiday steeped in rich, Christian traditions... many of which predate Christ!!!

Um, okay. Maybe not. I was confused because the day is named after Saint Valentine, who was obviously a churchgoer of some kind. If I remember correctly, there were a bunch of snakes in Ireland who ate all the potatoes and were about to start on the beer when St. Valentine joined forces with the leprechauns to send them to hell. Or maybe that was St. Patrick. Fuck, I don't know!

Okay, I just checked on Wikipedia and I found out that St. Valentine was likely one of three martyrs who may or may not have helped Roman soldiers get married (but not to each other).

I also learned that St. Valentine's Day first became associated with romantic love sometime in the 14th century in England and France. They chose February 14th, because that's traditionally the day that birds pair off to mate.

Ewww!

But even prior to that, mid February has always been associated with love and fertility. In ancient Greece, the date coincided with the end of the month of Gamelion, during which the marriage of Zeus and Hera was honored by everyone except for Zeus, who apparently spent his every waking moment assuming animal forms and impregnating hapless young virgins. Plus, I think Hera was actually his sister or something.

Goddamn Greeks.

And in ancient Rome, February 15 was Lupercalia. This was the festival of the fertility god Lupercus, who was traditionally half-naked and dressed in goat skins. His priests would sacrifice goats and drink wine. Then they'd run through the streets of Rome holding bits of goat over their heads and touching them to everyone that came near them. Apparently getting touched by goat pieces was supposed to make you fertile, so young women would run up and take a severed goat udder to the forehead so they could...

God, that's disgusting! I hate you, Rome! And I'm glad your empire crumbled!

So it turns out that this holiday doesn't have much of anything to do with Jesus. We cut out paper hearts and eat boxes of Whitman Samplers in honor of horny birds, pervy Greeks, and those sick fucking Romans.

Oh, and the Catholic Church removed St. Valentine's Day as an official holiday from its calendar back in 1969. I'm not sure why, but I can only hope it had something to do with all those goat bits littering the streets of Vatican City.

Anyway, Happy Valentine's Day.

All Good Things...

Looks like my job is coming to an end on March 31st.

I've been doing contract tech support for Netherland, Sewell & Associates, a petroleum consulting firm here in Dallas. Originally it was just supposed to be a one month gig, but they kept extending my contract and I kept signing on for another month or two.

But my boss just told me that, when my current contract expires at the end of March, they won't be needing me anymore. Their busy season ends in March, and she just can't justify keeping me on the payroll during the slow months.

She said she'd be flexible about my hours, so I could look for something else. She also said that I could take off before March 31st if something better came along. All in all, she's being a real mensch.

I can't say I'm surprised. I mean, it's the nature of contract work. And what was supposed to be a one month job did stretch out to seven, so the last six months have pretty much been a bonus.

I'm not even all that worried about finding something else. I turned down several contract jobs while this one was going on, so once I start looking again, I'm sure something will turn up.

But still, I am a little disappointed. I like this company, and I've really come to like the people. I've made a lot of friends here, and I'm going to miss working with them every day. The work was fun, the hours were great, and the pay was... well, it was a living, anyway.

Oh, well. C'est la vie. Que sera sera. Shit happens.

------------------------------------

Speaking of March 31st, my play (originally slated for the end of March) has been moved to July 7th. It seems the Pocket Sandwich Theatre had somebody in mind to direct it, but he won't be available until sometime in May.

But they've listed the play and they've scheduled auditions. And I'm still giddy as hell about the whole thing.

Now if I could just write 250 of these things a year, I wouldn't need another job!

You Can Have My Gun When You Pry It From My Cold, Dead... OW, FUCK!!!

WASHINGTON (CNN) - Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and wounded a campaign contributor during a weekend quail hunt on a friend's South Texas ranch, local authorities and the vice president's office said Sunday.

The recipient of Cheney's 28-gauge largesse was 78-year old Harry Whittington, who contributed to Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Republican contribution system, $1,000 will buy you a seat at one of the president's dinners. For $2,000, you get to personally shake the president's hand and read him a heartfelt greeting scripted by Scott McLellan. And for contributions of $3,000 or more, the vice president himself will SHOOT YOU IN THE FUCKING FACE!!!

Actually, authorities are calling the shooting an accident, since Vice President Cheney mistook the charging geriatric for one of those elusive Iraqi Al Qaeda terrorists. "As soon as I shot him, and he didn't cry out to Allah in that goddamn Moon Man language they talk in, I realized my mistake," the vice president told reporters on Sunday. He then added, "Go fuck yourself."

Some Democrats are questioning the decision of the vice president's office to wait a day before releasing any information on the shooting. "The incident happened early Saturday evening," Senator Ted Kennedy said, "and yet, we heard nothing about it until sometime late Sunday morning. There is absolutely no excuse for waiting that long before... um, I mean... er... anyone want a drink?"

Dr. Bill Frist said that Whittington was doing well and should be released from the hospital in a day or two. He also announced that Terry Schiavo was in stable condition, and he was optimistic that Coretta Scott King would be making a full recovery.

President Bush was available for comment but, as usual, the senior staff decided it would be best if he didn't speak.

The War on Terror... and MANIMALS!!!!

I watched the State of the Union address the other night, because I don't trust those damned liberal Jew-run media outlets to keep me apprised of the news. I prefer to get it from an unbiased source, namely whoever writes President Bush's speeches.

So first, the good news. The state of our union is... STRONG! Yes, that's right. In spite of the prodigious quantities of shit still raining down on the fan, Bush has assured us that everything is swell. I'm not sure who gathers the criteria for that decision, but I suspect it might be Dr. Bill Frist.

(In a related story, Terry Schiavo is still as active and alert as she ever was. Brilliant diagnosis there, Bones.)

Anyway, things are sunshine and rainbows and baskets of kittens here in the U.S. Plus, it seems that democracy is all the rage in the Middle East these days! Even the Palestinians recently held elections, although I notice Bush sort of forgot to mention them...

America is addicted to oil!

However, it appears there may be some darkness on the horizon. After telling us about how spying on us was good for the country and how every American president since Benjamin Franklin had done it, and his grand plans to cut the deficit in half by 2009 through prayer and magic, and his scheme to wean America off of its oil addiction by gradually making the move to switch grass... wh... what?... Bush finally zeroed in on the true threat.

Turns out, it's not terrorists. It's not liberals. It's not even monogamous gays! No, the danger we all face as Americans is... wait for it... animal/human hybrids!!!

Yep. Manimals. Chimeras. Unholy, unstoppable monkeyman killing machines who eat bullets and shit wholesale destruction! And then fling it at you!!!

Bush apparently became quite concerned about this issue after watching the documentary Thundercats, and has now decided to nip it in the bud lest we face a nightmarish, Orwellian future of beastmen infiltrating our culture, taking away jobs from hard-working Indian contractors and demanding the vote.

Animal/human hybrids respond to the President's attacks.

So, to recap: The union is strong. Democracy is good, unless you're a Palestinian. Spying is good. Switch grass is better than oil. Manimals are bad! BAAAD!!!!

And, most likely, liberal.

Soapbox Derby

I haven't been posting a lot of political stuff lately. I guess I've sort of lost my taste for it.

When I started blogging, I was angry about a lot of things. I was angry that our administration had rushed us to war, and only started worrying about a REAL rationale when the body count exceeded their retardedly optimistic estimates. I was angry that Bush and his Legion of Doom had taken us from our most prosperous to our most destitute, and were STILL trying to blame the whole thing on Clinton. I was angry that so many people had their heads so far up Bush's ass that they refused to admit that anything was wrong, and instead blamed the administration's problems on the liberal media, gay marriage, stem cells, Satan, the French, and women in the workplace. But mainly, I was pissed off that anyone who dared voice their disagreement with the president was immediately labeled a bad American who hated freedom and the baby Jesus.

And so I posted. And in my zeal to sound off, I demonized an entire political ideology. I made conservatives the enemy, and I railed against them like they were this vast organization of racists and zealots who refused to hold Bush accountable for anything he said or did because they couldn't remember more than two days into the past.

But since the election, I've started to move away from that mindset. I mean, don't get me wrong. I still think Karl Rove is so evil that he has four sixes on his fucking forehead, and George W. Bush is so stupid he couldn't outthink a crack baby with its head in a plastic bag. The fact that they're conservative has nothing to do with any of it.

I also think John Kerry is a meandering blowhard is more likely to think an issue to death than to take any definitive action, and Ted Kennedy is a disgusting, drunken lecher who in all likelihood got away with murder. The fact that they're liberal is irrelevent.

Both sides have their share of embarrasments and assholes, and it's just our nation's bad luck that the worst the conservatives have to offer have managed to seize power. It's also our bad luck that so many people are so mired down by liberal vs. conservative or Democrat vs. Republican that they'll blindly support their team rather than concern themselves with the good of the country.

I guess what I'm saying is, I'm all about despising the people and railing against the issues. But I'm tired of the whole "What is wrong with conservatives" and "That's the problem with you liberals" arguments. Liberalism and Conservatism are political ideologies, and nothing more. If you honestly believe any one side holds a monopoly on morality or integrity, then you're too fucking stupid to vote. Or operate a motor vehicle.

Or as Stephanie, who is both beautiful and wise beyond her years, once put it, "There are no good guys and bad guys. You just pick the side whose hypocrisy offends you least, and you stick with them."

Thanks for listening. You've been very therapeutic.

Set 'Em Up, Country Music!

Several months ago, I thought it would be funny to start referring to my friend Sean as "Country Music."

You see, Sean is as urbane and sophisticated as anyone raised in Garland could possibly be. He was metrosexual before anybody was ever using that word. So the idea of saddling Sean with the nickname "Country Music" made me giggle like Karl Rove at his mom's funeral.

At first, Sean was resistant to the idea. However, once his wife Laura joined me in my campaign to make the nickname stick, he decided to fight fire with fire. He announced that if I was going to call him "Country Music," he was going to call me "Buttercup."

So now both nicknames have stuck.

Sean has decided that "Country Music and Buttercup" would be a great name for a musical act, so for Christmas he made me this:

At this point, I feel I should mention:

1. Sean really is one hell of a graphic artist.
2. I don't really own a rhinestone-studded shirt. Those were added in post-production.
3. Sean is married and I've got a girlfriend, which means we couldn't possibly be as gay as we look in that picture.
4. If we ever really do take our musical act on the road, I want our first hit to be a cover of "Convoy." Or "Freebird."

I wanna thank y'all for coming out tonight, and remind you to be generous to your foodservers! You can catch us here at the Dover Airport Ramada every Wednesday night! And don't forget, tapes and CDs are available from the truck of our car after each show!

Goodnight, fillies and buckeroos! Drive carefully!