Name this!

Ever hear those radio commercials that invite you to "name a star after somebody"? So...okay, if we go with the premise that this is real, I have one question. Do the astronomers and scientists who actually DEAL with stars and space on a regular basis seriously have to adopt this naming process? Can you imagine an emergency someday at NASA where one astronomer yells something like "LOOK!! A comet!! Heading straight for us!". "Where where!" shouts his buddy. Then the first one goes "Look, in the telescope,...see that bright object in the sky right by Iben Poopen and to the left of Mybalz Itch?".

Keeping me grounded

You CAN, on rare occasions, have a conversation with a 4 year old. I have and felt very rewarded for doing so. We connect, we bond, we share thoughts. Then there are times like today when we are having a conversation and I am handling my end well and the retort I get back from my daughter is "Daddy, poo and tinkle live under ground". Hmmmm....really sweetie, well....Daddy didn't know that. Point well taken. I beleive I shall use this phrase or another gem of hers when I am stuck without an answer at work. "Why wasn't this taken care of yesterday?", and I shall reply "My big girl pants are up my bum-bum". They can't fire you if you're crazy,..really, I looked it up.

Stop in again!

Ever have a pleasant uninvited guest? I guess putting the word "uninvited" has so many negative conotations you probably haven't. Well I did. I had 5 very large guests this evening.

My neighborhood isn't at all different from planned communities you see everywhere. A yard just big enough that mowing it with one of those electric mowers wouldn't make sense. I have a small yard in front and a decent sized area in back and the kicker here is for the story, my yard ends in a very thick wooded area.

After work tonight I decided to do something productive and clean out my car so I left it out on the driveway. Normally I am not productive in the evening and on days like last Friday, I drown my sorrows in a Jack and Coke, or as I like to call it "Pain go bye-bye juice".

So I'm out in my driveway pulling Wendy's rappers and Kleenex (the title of my last album) out of my car when I suddenly hear a leaf crack behind me. I check quickly to make sure my "Sounds Of Nature" CD is out of my car stereo (BTW - if you ever need to grab a couple quick Z's at a stop light - BUY IT!) and I turn around to see three deer not 15 feet away from me in my yard eating my crab apples. I freeze. VERY slowly, I back up against my car and face them resting my butt against the car for support. All of a sudden, three deer turn into five. At this point I am just in total disbeleif at what I'm seeing. There's about three fawns and two adults and one of them is pretty big and eyeing me up flintching at any move I make.

Not like I'd ever have an opportunity to take a picture but it's just KILLING me that I can't take their picture. This is the one time I didn't have my cell phone camera with me. So there I stood, motionless........leaning against my car just watching these peaceful creatures eat the fallen crab apples. It's about then I try to test my psychic abilities to get my wife to look out the window. No dice. What struck me as amazing was these deer, again, not 15 feet away from me just stared at me and looked at the ground too as if to say "Sooooo......we cool?".

This whole event lasted a good ten minutes with the adults bolting first and the younger deer sticking around (kids!...Pfffft!, right?). So I go back in the house, my hands almost shaking from being that close to so many.........the theme from Born Free playing in my head.......then it hits me. Those are the bastards that have been clearing out my bird feed every night!! "I HOPE YOU GET THE SHITS FROM THOSE YOU SEED STEALING ASSHOLES!!!".

A lesson in perspective

Some sounds are good. Some are bad. As I was backing out of my garage this morning I heard one from column B, the bad sound column. Ever hear the sound a balloon makes if you rub against your hand, a sweater, sleeping hobo? That sort of 10 percent good squeaky sound but mostly bad? Well I heard that, and it was not a balloon being rubbed on a hobo it was my car rubbing against the wood trim on the garagae. This was indeed a bad sound.

So with my daughter in the back lost in her 8 billionth viewing of Wall-E there I was in the driveway at the crack of dawn feverishly trying to make the bad bad site go away. First a wet rag to get the white paint off my still not fully ours yet car. Then an old bath sponge. Finally I Got the paint off but could feel (but not fully see due to the small amount of sun around) a scratch, a protruding scratch. Out of frustration and the need to harm something that wasn't me (the REAL culprit) I angrily tossed the bucket of water i brought out against the driveway and it loudly smacked against our garage door. My daughter didn't find this scary, just odd. She is quite the observationalist and knew this wasn't right and she proceeded to tell me that it was "bad to make a mess". Yes sweetie, but the bucket had it coming.

So off we go, her to my in-laws and me to work all the while I'm cursing the big loon that is me. Then I look in my rear view mirror and I see my daughter with her knit hat but the mittens I had just put on her tucked up under the hat. "Sweetie, what are you doing?" I said as she made a sound that appeared to be clucking. "I'm a rooster Daddy! Cluck..cluck!". I know what foolish is now. Foolish isn't a three year old pretending to be a rooster, nope,,.....we NEED that type of nonsense to ground us. Foolish is a 43 year old yutz behaving like a baby in his driveway at 6:50 am on a Monday. Now I know.

Product Warning

Having recently graduated from the fru-fru sissy girl coffee Starbucks pours out to regular coffee I've been searching for that one magic brand that I will stick with until I can no longer pee without assistance and they tell me my heart condition necessitates me going to decaf. It's THEN when I put the pillow over my head.

Until then I am constantly in a search for "my" coffee, the coffee I will swear by, the coffee I will go to a restaurant or someone's house and scream "WHAT?!? You don't have Beany McJava's morning roast?! I am OUTTA here!". I made up the coffee name but you get the point. MY brand....that I will live and die by.

My search has taken me to Dunkin Donuts Cinnamon coffee (a delight!), and Seattle's Best Cinnimon Roll (is this coffee or heaven in a cup?). Both excellent choices but a bit on the pricey side and I have better things to waste mon......WAIT!! Ding Dongs for 99 cents!! Sign me up!!

So I need to find a less trendy brand that will be my staple. I go into Wal Mart before work because that's convenient and the most fun. It's fun because the early morning hours are when they stock the place and I get my jollies out of asking stupid questions to people giving you a look that just screams "just keep walking pal". So the coffee aisle is the same old story, HUGE friggin container of Maxwell House and tiny nine dollar bags of the good stuff. All of a sudden I see Folgers Gourmet Blend and it's flavored. Hold the phone......there's cinnimon!!! It was under five bucks and I think "this is a STEAL!".

The next morning, my wife has it brewing and the kitchen smells GREAT! I start thinking "Did my dream come true? Am I finally going to be able to DRINK a donut?". This is going to be great! Drive in to work giving it enough time to get to a reasonable temperature and start to drink it. MAN!! That is GR...wait, what's this funny after taste. HOLY CRAP!! This is AWFUL. It's this tremenously gratifying cinnimon taste followed by this horrible burnt plastic smell and taste. DAMN YOU FOLGERS!!! To illustrate,...imagine ice cream. Who doesn't like ice cream right? Now imagine eating ice cream out of a used diaper. THAT is what this coffee is like. I was tricked by this suductiveness of cinnimon. This beautiful girl called Folgers showed up and lavished me with compliments and begged for my attention and then we got back to her place and I see she has a penis. THAT is what this coffee did to me!!!! So beware coffee drinkers.......stay clear of cheap trashy coffees!!

Yeah Clint!

Growing up a lot of my freinds played music and were interested in bands. None of them are doing it on a regular basis let alone professionally. I am proud to say, my freind since we were 6 years old, Clint Stewart has not only been doing it professionally but sustaining himself quite well. That's an achievement for guys who grew up in my neck of the woods. He's got a CD coming out and it's amazing. I was lucky enough to get it ahead of time. If you get a chance, check out Clint and Laila's website. Laila, is Clint's better half and HOLY cow can she sing.

Happy Birthday Barbie

Yesterday was what would have been my sister Barbie's birthday. For the 2nd year in a row, me and my other two older sisters got together to remember her. We aren't much on tradition in my family so that really means a lot to me.

CONGRATULATIONS PENS!!!!!!

Just like in 1979 Pittsburgh is the City Of Champions again after the second major sports team in town, the Pittsburgh Penguins won a championship this year!

Better off

I would never pronounce someone "better off dead" at their passing. I think death is a loss fealt by many people and no one really is better off.

Then there is David Carradine who was found hanging in an apparent "auto-erotic asphyxiation attempt. I initially felt sad for the former Kung Fu star but then I thought about it. What if that was it for him. What if he had done every crazy, wild, hair up your ass sexual deviancy and they did nothing for him and THIS...was it.

I mean can you imagine, he's sitting in a hotel in Bankok (now to be known as CHOKEkok...bah dum boom PEEESH!) and he's looking at a list of things he's done evaluating his next step. "Let's see,....gerbil up the ass..CHECK, done that. Car battery clamps on the nipples...CHECK, done that. Curling iron up the ass while making love to a pie...CHECK. WAIT!!! I know!! I could tie a rope around my neck AND my junk....strangle myself......how could I NOT do it!!".

So you see, there was nothing left in the world for this man to do. He had gotten to a point where choking off the blood supply to his brain while masturbating was the only way he could face the day. I would imagine that finding his 72 year old nude body in a Bankok hotel room with his neck and junk tied by the authorities was NOT his intended outcome but perhaps had he grown tired of the old Mom and Pop auto-erotic asphyxiation, maybe public humilation while doing it would have been next. So long David Carradine.........we hardly knew ye.

Old noises

You'd think I use my iPod on my eliptical machine because I enjoy the rhythm and pace the music lets me go at. Wrong. I'm 43 and out of shape. I get my iPod because it is extremely disheartening to hear my knees crack as they move. And it's not a slight noise either. It's a noise so loud that were someone to walk in the room while my knees were making their noise, I would have to say that my immediate reaction would be to loudly cough over them to disguise the noise.

But I must continue the charade. Exercise to feel good, eat to feel better, and look in the mirror after a shower NEVER!! Who ever invented the full length bathroom mirror should have his nuts ripped off. I look like the bizarre offspring of an elderly Ryan Oneil and a manatee.

I just can't get into the diet thing again. If I had to give some reasons it would be that diets lack taste, they're too complicated, and pizza just plain f**kin' rules! I mean COME ON!! Pizza is a relentless bitch godess that haunts me and calls my name. "Ray....I'm so cheesey,..you'll erase all I've done to you with that jowl work you keep threatening your wife you're gonna get anyway! Go for it!".

So my knees will continue their symphony of age and lethargy. After all, I am a man. And by nature we all assume...few pushups.....the occasional jog, hey....i'm not so bad!