My Very Enormous Mother Just Sat Upon Nick...

When I was a kid, I remember going to my mom with questions about my schoolwork. I didn't often get a helpful answer. Instead, I would hear about how much things had changed since she was in school.

"When I was your age, we only had 48 states. And we didn't have that stupid periodical chart to memorize because the only elements were earth, air, fire, and water. And in biology, we had to learn about the bodily humors and how they balanced. And we didn't have calculus because we only had 4 numbers back then, and that's including zero. And there were only five presidents to... hey, come back here!"

Frankly, I had no sympathy for the woman. I figured, Hey! The times change, and you gotta change with 'em, or die. Of course, my mom was incapable of thinking that way because they didn't have evolution when she was a kid. God made Adam and Eve and Jesus created dinosaur bones to fuck with the scientists. But I digress...

My point is, I used to just roll my eyes when mom launched into one of her old-people speeches. But now, I have experienced the pain of what she was going through. Now, I find myself longing for the good old days, when what I learned in school was still valid. Back before the bastard astronomers downsized Pluto.

Nine planets. That's what I was taught. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. And you know how you remembered them all? By remembering the sentence "My Very Enormous Mother Just Sat Upon Nick's Porcupine."

(In a sort of unrelated story, I struggled in my algrebra class to remember the hierarchy of operations, which is a fancy way of saying which order you did your math in. First was powers, then roots, then muliplication, then division, then addition, then finally subtraction. My friend Neal came up with the mnemonic device "Please Rape My Dear Aunt Sally." I tried like hell to come up with something more appropriate, but here it is 21 years later and all I can remember is "Please Rape My Dear Aunt Sally." Sometimes, the brain really sucks.)

So anyway, those astronomers recently took time out of their busy schedule of broadcasting messages to the aliens and building telescopes that don't work to downgrade Pluto from "planet" to "dwarf planet."

(Actually, I sort of like the idea of a "dwarf planet." I picture an entire race of tiny, orange men like the Oompa Loompas, dressed in parkas and eskimo hoods as they dance around and sing. They have to dress warmly. Pluto is very cold because it's well over a hundred miles from the sun.)

Planet Ex: Pluto has been downgraded from "planet" to "dwarf planet."

So now, there are eight planets, three dwarf planets, and tens of thousands of other space crap, like asteroids and comets cluttering up our solar system. So this means all the encyclopedias and textbooks are going to have to be updated, and they're going to have to rewrite the lyrics to that Schoolhouse Rock song Interplanet Janet. Plus, all those poor astrologers are going to have to update their charts and cross off Pluto! (Actually, this might explain why horoscopes have never been terribly accurate up to this point... this could be the discovery those poor bastards were waiting for!)

And we're going to need a new mnemomic device. I suggest "Mysterious Volcano Eruptions May Jeopardize Satan Until Noon." Or "Maury's Vasectomy Enraged My Jester's Sister's Uncle's Niece."

But I'm sure all I'll remember 20 years from now is "My Very Enormous Mother Just Sat Upon Nick."

&$^@#!?*% Verizon!!!! (Redux)

Actually, I guess I'm *partially* to blame for this one. And so is Bank of America. But I've always got more than enough bile for Verizon.

I get my Verizon bill online. And somehow, last month's fell through the cracks. Don't know why. Just totally zoned on it. Didn't think to check e-bills until I sat down last week to pay my regular Luddite snail mail bills, and I saw I had an outstanding balance.

"Holy fresh spanked baby Jesus!" I thought. "Thank the merciful God in heaven that I caught this in time!" I elected to pay the full amount and submitted the bill.

And there it sat. If I'd paid attention, I would have seen that it had defaulted to 8/2 as a payment date. But I didn't notice.

And so, at midnight last night, Verizon cut off my phone service. I had no idea until my good buddy IX e-mailed me (and posted about it, thus exposing my shame to the threes or fours of people who still read this damn blog).

I was *so* full of righteous indignation. "Those bastards!" thought I. "This time I've got them! I distinctly remember paying them last week! All I have to do is go online and get my confirmation number!" When I'm angry, my thoughts turn quite expository.

So I went online, and there's my Verizon bill. Waiting to be processed. Just sitting there, mocking my childlike faith in God, with a pay-by date of 8/2 on it.

I picked up my phone, and there was a dialtone. I've never had my phone service interrupted before, so I wasn't sure how it worked. The first thing I did was try to call Stephanie, because her soothing, dulcet tones are just the thing to quell the white-hot anger that roars within me.

I was treated to a recorded message telling me that my phone service had been temporarily interrupted, but I could reach Verizon by dialing 0. I went through the whole recorded speech-activated rigmarole...

Souless Verizon Automaton:
Would you like to pay your bill, report a problem, or exit?

Me:
Pay my bill.

Souless Verizon Automaton:
I'm sorry. I didn't understand you. Please say "Pay bill", "Report problem", or "Exit".

Me:
Pay bill!

Souless Verizon Automaton:
I'm sorry. I didn't understand you. Please say "Pay bill", "Report problem", or "Exit".

Me:
PAY! BILL!

Souless Verizon Automaton:
You have elected to pay your bill. Is this correct?

Me:
Yes.

Souless Verizon Automaton:
I'm sorry. I didn't understand you. Please say "Yes" or "No".

Me:
YES, GODDAMMIT! YES!!!

Souless Verizon Automaton:
Foolish meatsack. When the robot revolution comes, you will die screaming.

Me:
What?

Souless Verizon Automaton:
Please hold while I transfer you to PhonePay.

So anyway, agonizingly long and pointless story short, I paid the bill, canceled the e-bill, and now my phone works. Or at least I can dial out. I'm not sure if anybody can call me or not, and given my past track record with Verizon, there's a pretty good chance they assigned my phone number to some Hispanic lady over the past few hours.

But at least I'm back on the grid.

Jokes My Dad Told Me - Part II

Told while strumming a guitar...

I wrote this song at a really bad point in my life. My wife had just left me, and I was feeling really low, so I went out to a bar to drink my troubles away. I wasn't really looking for company. I was just sitting at the edge of the bar, drinking my beer, when suddenly our eyes met across the smoke-filled room. We got to talking and drinking and... well, one thing led to another and, before you know it, we were back at my place. We made love and fell asleep in each other's arms.

The next morning I woke up and I realized I'd made a horrible mistake, and that's when I wrote this song. And it's called, "How Do You Tell a Homo You Don't Love Him Anymore?"

The Thin Blue Brown Line...

I got pulled over for speeding last March. Now, I'm not going to waste anybody's time by trying to proclaim my innocence. I *was* speeding. I was going 75, and the posted speed limit was 60. That's not so bad, right?

Only, it wasn't 60. I was in the express lane on the toll road. Like most civilized areas, we have lanes designated for people who have electronic tags on their car, so they can drive through without having to stop and toss loose change into a basket or (God help us) wait for a toll booth attendant to break a bill.

So they built those special lanes and installed all that high-speed equipment in them, but they still decided to make the speed limit 45 when going through them. Not that anybody pays any heed to that. Hell, if I slow down to 60 in those lanes, I end up with a line of angry motorists rammed up my butt, laying on their horns and flipping me off. And occasionally firing their handgun which I can only have once I pry it from their cold, dead fingers.

So yes, I'm a tad defensive about this, because when I got this ticket, I was actually at the tail end of a long line of cars zipping through that lane at 75 mph. But this just happened to be the day that State Trooper Brown was on the case.

Apparently, Officer Brown discovered that there was a lot of money to be made by culling the herd of speeders in the express lane, so he started staking out that area. And that day, I was the poor bastard bringing up the rear.

So I got my ticket, 75 in a 45 mph zone. Turns out you can't take Defensive Driving or get Deferred Adjudication if you're exceeding the speed limit by more than 25 mph, so my only choice was to suck it up and pay the ticket. I was pissed off, but what could I do? I was guilty. (Although I did plead nolo contendere, just because.)

For the next few months, I made it a point to slow down when I got near the toll plaza. As I mentioned before, this didn't make me popular with the other motorists (you know, the ones who aren't me and therefore never get pulled over). Sometimes Officer Brown would be there at his post, just crouched and ready to nab the next brazen scofflaw who sped past him. Occasionally, he'd have somebody else pulled over and I'd drive on, relieved that I'd avoided being a part of his quota that month.

And then, one day, he was gone! At first, I figured they'd just turned on the HOT light at the Krispy Kreme, but I drove by several times that week and there was no Officer Brown. It was like the Rapture, where all the petty and bureacratic state troopers were snatched up into Heaven! (You can look it up, I think it's in Deuteronomy somewhere). I still made an effort to slow down at the toll plaza, but I guess I got a little lax.

So I'm driving to work this morning, and at a totally different toll plaza I get pulled over for speeding. And guess who it is? That's right. Officer Brown, Toll Road Warrior is back on the case. This time, he nails me for going 74 in a 45 mph. I told him I was only going 70, but he adamantly insisted it was 74.

My name is State Trooper Brown,
and I enjoy WWF, making pot holders,
and wiping my ass on the back of my shirt.

So once again, I'm stuck with a ticket that I'll probably have to pay. And once again, I really can't claim the high moral ground, because my only possible argument is "I intentionally kept my speed at 70 because I wanted to be able to take Defensive Driving if I got pulled over." And I just don't know how that will fly in a court of law.

Which means I'm left without any sort of reasonable outlet for my frustration and am reduced to saying mean things about the officious little quota-monger on my blog.

Take that Officer Brown, you bastard! That's what you get for writing me a ticket! You get mercilessly mocked right here, in front of threes of people! I don't know how you sleep nights, but my best guess would involve a velour recliner, a bottle of lotion, and your collection of TIVOed Saved by the Bell episodes. Muahahahahahahaha!

Goddammit, I *do* feel better now! Thanks for listening. You've been very therapeutic.

Jokes My Dad Told Me - Part I

There's this old lady wandering through the halls of a nursing home, going from room to room. Every time she walks into a room, she hikes up her gown to show off her hooter and she yells, "Super pussy!"

So she walks into this old man's room, yanks up her gown, and shouts "Super pussy!" The old man puts on his glasses, studies her for a second, and says, "I guess I'll have the soup."

Pro Temp

Well, I'm working again. I just got offered a permanent position at Michaels, on their corporate help desk. It's not the greatest job in the world, but I like the people. Plus, now that I'm working nights, I don't have to get up at 6:00 in the morning any more. Hoo-fucking-rah.

Like a lot of my previous jobs, this one started off as a temp assignment. Back in June, Lakeshore Staffing sent me (along with 4 other temps) to Michaels with only the vaguest idea of what we'd be doing.

As it turns out, we were slated to work on the help desk. Now Michaels had hired temps for the help desk before, but their Standard Operating Procedure was to toss the poor bastards into a cubical with a phone and let them figure it out as they went.

But Gary, a senior call agent and former temp, had long been campaigning for better training and more extensive documentation for the help desk. He argued that taking a week to train incoming agents would help them hit the ground running and help them to become more effective in a much shorter time. And so, when the five of us came along, Gary was given a chance to put his theories into action.

(Actually, to clarify, I was the first one called by Lakeshore Staffing, so I showed up at Michaels a week before the other four. Gary gave me one day of training, then decided the rest would wait until the others showed up. So I actually spent several panicky, retarded days on the phone before I got trained. But I digress...)

Gary is an astonishingly nice and often befuddled guy who looks an awful lot like Danny Glover did when he was younger (back before every single movie he was in featured him about to retire and saying 30 or 40 times, "I'm getting too old for this shit.") For the benefit of those readers who might be Gary, I would like to emphasize that I really like the guy. He's friendly and enthusiastic, and he's been nothing but supportive of me since I started working at Michaels. He is a sweet man, the salt of the earth, etc.

But the man NEVER takes the short way around a sentence. His method of training us involved lots of long, rambling digressions that might or might not ever wander back around to the original topic. You know, sort of like this blog.

Here is a typical Gary lecture:

"We've got three different kinds of registers at the stores, so you need to be sure you're very specific when you're talking to the managers. It's like when you want to buy a car. Or a pickup truck. Maybe your old one broke down, or maybe you're just tired of walking. So you get a ride to the local Ford dealership. Or maybe it's a Chevy dealership. Maybe you prefer Chevy over Ford. But you get there and you ask for a truck, and they want to know what color. So you say red. Maybe you just like red. Maybe it was one of your school colors. Maybe you went to Texas Tech or something and you want red. Or black. Or maybe not black, because it shows too much dirt. Texas Tech is in Lubbock where they have a lot of sand storms, so you probably don't want black. So you say you want red, but he's out of red trucks. Maybe he didn't get his shipment in. Or maybe the train was delayed because of inclement weather. Maybe there was a storm, like a tornado. Maybe it was just a tornado watch, but somebody spotted one out in a field somewhere and now its a warning, so people are taking shelter. They're going down into their cellars, or maybe they're shutting themselves up in their bathrooms. As long as its an interior room with no windows, they'll be okay. If they're thinking, they'll take some food in there with them. They'll have plenty of water, even if the pipes go out or something, because they can always drink out of the toilet tank unless they've used bleach pellets to clean the water..."

So for about three days, my fellow temps and I sat in a conference room and listened to Gary's stream of consciousness. He kept referring to us as "pioneers." The idea was, we were going to charge out there and dazzle the other call agents with our technical savvy and godlike comprehension.

Unfortunately for Gary, he was dealing with temps.

I've done a lot of temp work over the years, and I've worked alongside a lot of temps. And the fact is, the vast majority of temporary employees are retarded or insane. Or both.

*** DIGRESSION ALERT - GARY WOULD BE PROUD ***

True story. After college, when I first came back to Dallas in 1992, I hooked up with a temp agency called Today's Temporaries. The last assignment they sent me on was a data entry gig for a trucking company called Chemical Express (CX). I was one of 5 temps working there. The others were already working in Accounts Receivable, but I was assigned to Accounts Payable.

I found out the reason I got the job was because the guy there before me had scared the living bejeebers out of the A/P department. He tended to talk to himself a lot, and would sometimes laugh for no apparent reason. Plus, he was constantly wandering into other people's offices to carry on awkward and uncomfortable conversations with them. When he was asked to stop doing that, he started hanging out in the parking lot for hours on end to chat with people. After he scared one girl in the parking lot (it was 9:00 at night and he was leaning against her car, waiting for her), CX called Today's Temporaries and asked for a replacement. Enter me.

I made a really good impression on my supervisor and manager at CX, mainly because I wasn't stalker-creepy. The fact I could actually do the job was almost incidental. After about a month, CX announced that they wanted to extend job offers to two of us temps.. me and a guy named Bob in A/R.

So Bob and I went to get our physicals for our insurance coverage. And the next day, Bob was gone. Apparently the doctor had been a bit disturbed by a number of deep puncture wounds he had found on Bob's leg, and when asked about them, Bob had responded, "Sometimes I just like to hurt myself..."

*** END OF DIGRESSION ***

So anyway, Gary had pinned his hopes on the five of us.

There was me, the hero. There was Kelly, who didn't have a lot of technical experience, but was quite smart and very good on the phones. There was Ruth, a sweet grandmother who worked for the IRS for about 450 years but who couldn't seem to get the hang of all this new-fangled network stuff. There was Evan, a sullen and smart ass kid who was only getting a job because his parents were kicking him out of the house.

And then there was Dave, who as it turns out, was 100% batshit crazy. He talked in this excruciatingly slow hippy voice, and his eyes had that wild "body parts in the crawlspaces" glaze to them. And he totally panicked on the phones.

The first casualty was Kelly, who actually left because she got a better job offer. The next was Evan, who took off for lunch and didn't come back for three hours. Next was Dave, who freaked out while on the phone with a store and started pacing back and forth, shouting "This is so stupid! I can't do anything and nobody'll even help me!"

Ruth's still around, but it looks like her days may be numbered. They hired three more temps to replace the others, and Gary asked Ruth to go through the training with them one more time. I don't think it stuck any better the second time.

And me? I just got a job offer from Michaels. I'm still doing my stint on the Help Desk, but they're creating a new position ("Knowledge Engineer") and they've said they'd like to start grooming me for it. I'd like to think it's because I've acquitted myself well, or I've dazzled them with my technical savvy. But that temp bar has been set really low, and I'm pretty sure what impressed them most was the fact that I showed up wearing pants and didn't smear shit in my hair.

In the temp world, that's all it takes to be a superstar.

Sorry...

I really hoped to have a witty and insightful post to herald my return to the blogging world, but it's late and I'm exhausted and can barely put together a coherent knuckle Velveeta underwear sentence.

So here's a little inspirational message to get you through those dark times. Praise the Lord and pass the bear claws!!!

The Second Third Coming of Chris...

Sporadic posting will resume on Wednesday, July 19.

Why? Because I love you.

&$^@#!?*% Verizon!!!!

The last few weeks have been what we in the blogging industry refer to as Action Packed™. In addition to my nephew's astounding recovery (he's doing swell, by the way), I turned 39 goddamn years old and celebrated Easter (when Moses saved the Hebrew people from the ghost of Jesus by pelting him with eggs). Along the way, some yahoo backed into my parked car, so I spent nearly a week driving around in a rented Pimpmobile™ while mine was being fixed. And I took Stephanie to Vegas for our first official Romantic Weekend Getaway™.

So why haven't I been posting? Why must I continue to shut out the people who care about me, at least in a virtual, online sense? How dare I deprive my five or six faithful readers of the vicarious thrill that IS being Chris Irby?

Well, I swear I was all full of great intentions last week when I got back from Vegas. I couldn't wait to log in and start subjecting you to my inane blogations. I was reinvigorated! Reenergized! Restored! Republican! Revived! Relaxed! Ready!

Unfortunately, I had no internet connection.

My DSL modem is an ancient model Fujitsu, constructed some time during the Taft administration. It has three lights on it... Power, Modem, and Data. It has no on/off switch, so the only way to reset it is to unplug the power cord. I did this a couple of times before the modem went out all together. I couldn't even get the Power light to come on.

No biggy, I thought. I had some Best Buy gift cards that I'd gotten for my birthday, so I figured I'd run out and pick up a new DSL modem. Simple, right?

Well, apparently DSL modems have become more scarce than literacy in the Bush family. The only one I was able to find was a Siemens model, but I figured it had to be an improvement. After all, it had more lights. Plus, a power switch! So I brought it home and hooked it up. It lit up all nice and shiny.

Unfortunately, I was still having the original connection issues. So I did something I had prayed I'd never have to do again. I called Verizon Customer Service.

You see, about four years ago, Verizon screwed up and assigned my phone number to someone else. My friends and family kept trying to call me, and were confused because a Spanish-speaking woman kept answering. So I called Verizon Customer Support and explained the situation. At first, they tried to convince me that it was all a technical error. One guy told me that lightning had hit a transformer, and another told me (I swear I'm not making this up) that some squirrels had gotten into the lines. After a week or so, they FINALLY got my phone number assigned back to my line.

Only then, my DSL quit working.

So once again, I called Verizon Customer Service and told them that they had messed up my DSL while fixing my phone. They told me that was a DSL issue, so I'd have to call Verizon DSL Support. I called Verizon DSL Support and once again explained the issue. They told me that it was obviously something the phone guys had done, so I needed to call them. And so on. And so on.

For nearly a week, I got batted back and forth between the two groups. Finally, I managed to get a lady from the phone side and a lady from the DSL side on the line together and let them battle it out. They agreed to send a DSL tech out to look at it. He showed up the next day, and had me up and running within 5 minutes.

(Incidentally, for the next two months I continued to receive phone calls at 3:00 in the morning from people speaking Spanish, looking for the woman who had been given my number. I finally started unplugging my phone before I went to bed.)

So anyway, I hope you can understand why I was dreading yet another run-in with Verizon Customer Service.

I called the DSL Tech Support line, and while I was on hold, the recorded message helpfully provided me with a website where I could go to troubleshoot my connection issues. Wow. It must have been really difficult for NASA when all of their rocket scientists left to go to work for Verizon. But I digress...

I went from DSL Tech Support to DSL Customer Support to DSL Billing before I finally got any help. I was told that my old modem was out of warranty, and my new modem wasn't supported by Verizon. So basically, I had to order yet another modem from them and wait 3-5 business days while they shipped it.

The new modem arrived yesterday, and I hooked it up. And guess what! The original connection issues!

Once again, I called DSL Tech Support and explained the problem. Once they were sure I was using one of THEIR modems, they offered to run some tests on my line. And within seconds, the problem was solved.

So anyway, I'm back. Missed you. Love you. Mean it.

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...