Velcrometer
Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks
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M. Giant's Velcrometer Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks |
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Wednesday, September 29, 2004 Humpblog (9/29/04) I had a chance to substitute-recap Survivor on Television Without Pity this week, since Miss Alli was off throwing down with Amazing Racers face-to-face. The recap’s here. Not the recap of the Amazing Race encounters, silly. You’re just going to have to wait like the rest of us. * * * Back when I was applying for regular jobs, there was one online application that I filled out that had a couple of interesting questions. I won’t say which company it was with, but I will say they make commercials that you’ve seen if you watch television in the United States. Actual question from the application: You are interviewing a balding candidate for a job. In the middle of the interview, he excuses himself and returns a few minutes later with an obvious hairpiece. What do you do? My actual answer: I continue with the interview as if nothing has changed. The next actual question from the application: Describe your most embarrassing moment and how you handled it. Say how you might have handled it differently if given the chance. My actual answer: I was at a job interview when I suddenly realized I had forgotten my hairpiece. I tried to continue, but I felt too self-conscious. Finally I excused myself, put on my hairpiece, and returned to the interviewer’s office. He continued as if nothing had changed, but in hindsight, I now realize that I should have left the hairpiece off. I not only got an interview, I later got a face-to-face meeting with a creative director who has since won an Emmy. Congratulations, dude. And thanks for your time. * * * Before I started working at home, I figured I’d be able to get so much more done in a given day. Getting up and going to an office was such a timesuck. There was all this stuff I had to spend time doing all day that I don’t have to any more. Things like matching one’s clothes, packing a lunch, showering, shaving, grooming, getting up out of my chair when I empty my bladder. These minutes devoted to daily vanity add up. But they are unnecessary chores for the home worker. So I thought I’d accomplish a lot more. But as it turns out, time moves just as fast here at home as it did when I commuted to the office. But you know where time moves slower? At the grocery store. I don’t know why that is. I go on a weekday morning every couple of weeks and do the shopping now. What used to take Trash and me two hours only takes me about a half hour. And that’s with a fistful of coupons. I can only assume that some kind of highly localized time distortion is in effect there. That might explain why the aisles are nearly empty of people when I’m there, and why there’s never a wait at the checkout line. Although they don’t fully understand it, people sense that there’s something amok at the supermarket at 8:30 on a Tuesday, and it repels them. But not me. I revel in walking in and coming back out with a full cart, having burned only twenty minutes of my life or so. Imagine the amount of work I could get done if I spent the whole day there. If I had a laptop and they had WiFi, I could set up a little workstation in the snack aisle and do an entire week’s writing in a day. And I still wouldn’t have to pack a lunch, because hello, snack aisle. I’d probably have to shower and get dressed, though. Huh. Never mind. Today’s best search phrase: “You can’t catch a break, can you?” Man, haven’t you been paying attention? posted by M. Giant 8:39 PM 9 comments 9 Comments:I dreamed last night that I was reading an article in People magazine, and at the end of the article, they said that they'd met M. Giant, and had a great time up there in wherever it is that you live, and that you had a lovely wife and cat too. They didn't get the names right, except for M. Giant. And in my dream, I was going to go sign your guestbook and tell you about it. Hmmm... am I still sleeping? :) from thatgrrrl.diaryland.com.
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I swear, I saw the hairpiece thing coming, and yet it still made me laugh my damn head off.
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Oh dear. Linda's head has fallen off.
By Wait -- you filled that actual answer out on an application? I don't know where you applied, but I work at an agency on the east coast, and I think we would hire you without an interview if you answered that way.
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To: M.Giant and ZV's junior high teachers
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I'll just say, before anyone else does, that there are many who would say my head falling off would mean that very little HAD in fact changed.
By BWAH! I love it. I also knew something was coming, but the execution = priceless.
By grhyuck!
By dude i love Caitlin Linell! my best friend is Josh Gams!!!!
By Monday, September 27, 2004 The Story So Far So we're suddenly quite busy around here, preparing for the arrival of M. Tiny (TM the folks who bring you Television Without Pity). We were given a couple of months, and now that about a twelfth of that has ticked away, let me see if I can't get you caught up on what's been going on in the M. Giant/Trash house over the past year and a half in regard to matters reproductive. Last spring, Trash was having herself a little round of denial. She took approximately a hundred pregnancy tests, as if the things were graded on a curve. "I think I can pee again, a little," she'd say. "Grab me a test, would you? No, a different one." She threw most of them away after seeing the results, but she held on to one in particular. "Look at this one," she'd say. "Remember how long it took for the line to show up? Remember how light it was at first?" I learned that grocery shopping for a pregnant woman is hard. One Monday, she called me from work to tell me she was bleeding. I left work, picked her up at her office, and took her to the hospital. Three days later, the two of us--no longer 2.5--were on the plane to Hawaii. Try going to Hawaii sometime when you can't swim, drink, or spend much time in the sun. Not the best way to experience the Aloha State. On the other hand, if you need to recover from a miscarriage, there are a lot of worse places to do it. The months went by. I changed jobs. The two of us lived in a house that we'd thought would soon be housing three. There was talking. Thinking. Crying. Soul-searching. And eventually, our first informational meeting at an adoption agency. When we originally decided to pursue adoption, they told us that once you're approved, the wait can be anywhere from six months to two years. Most people wind up on the long end of that range. This was in January. Adoption is expensive and it requires a lot of paperwork. Maybe someday people will be able to go to a baby store and choose small humans from right off of the shelf. Or, more realistically, fish them out of a vat of liquid nutrients. Then they'll go up to the checkout counter, hand over their credit card and ZIP code, and boom. One-stop shopping for your whole family, so to speak. But we're not there yet. Filling out the paperwork and organizing the finances took a couple of months. We scheduled a home study for the first week of this past May. We spent most of April and the first week of May getting the house ready for the adoption worker's visit. With the help of my parents and Trash's mom (who came all the way from Iowa for the privilege), we addressed each of the thousand niggling things that were wrong with our house. From touching up chipped paint, to reinstalling window trim that had been off the walls for ten years, to attaching friction treads to the basement stairs, to reorganizing the contents of every cabinet and cupboard and drawer and shelf in the place, to tearing up the living room carpet, to installing a new floor in the entryway, we went through weeks of domestic boot camp with this place. The adoption worker's walk-through took about ten minutes. The house is still clean, but thanks to entropy and our raised standards, there are about a thousand new little niggling things that are much littler and a bit more niggling. Later that month, we got the news that we'd been approved. We figured we'd better tell the neighbors, because after seeing all this activity next door they were pretty well convinced that we were getting the house ready to go on the market. In June, we finished the little portfolio that hopeful adoptive parents have to put together. It includes photos (many of which make us look like dorks) and a letter to birth parents (which kind of makes me sound like a dork). It went into the adoption agency's files, which meant that we were on the market for birth parents to choose us. We settled in for our six-month to two-year wait, hoping that maybe we'd find a miniature person under our tree around Christmas 2005. And, well, you know the rest. In terms of preparation time, we woke up one day last week as a childless couple, and went to bed seven months pregnant. But without all the extra eating and peeing. Please don't feel bad about not knowing all this, because very few people did. Even Trash and I had to have several debriefings to make sure we had the whole picture here. If you're among the few who did know, thank you for your discretion. I can't tell you how much we've appreciated all the comments and e-mails we've gotten in the past few days. Even on the 24 forum at TWoP. In answer to the person who asked whether we have a baby registry, I would like to point you to the Loot section of my sidebar. Going through the miles and miles of baby gear threatened to freak us the fuck out, so I hope compiling it was worth it. And also, did I mention? Two months? Yikes. I just hope the kid doesn't mind sleeping on the sofa for a little while, you know? (Birth parents, if you're reading this, I'm kidding about that last part. Totally kidding.) Today's best search phrase: "M. Giant and Trash's Baby Registry." Well, funny you should ask, because again, it's right here. What? No, I totally didn't just make up that search phrase. Okay, I might have, a little bit. posted by M. Giant 8:45 PM 14 comments 14 Comments:
God forbid I register on blogger.
By It is so exciting that there will be an M.Tiny! You and Trash will be excellent parents. Congratulations! - angeline
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"M. Tiny" is the funniest online nickname ever.
By Congratulations and best of luck to the three of you!
By Yeah! Congratulations. You didn't register for Good Night Gorilla that one keeps you guessing until the end! I wish you all the best. Theresa
By Aggg, of course when my hard drive crashes and I'm without a computer for a few days is when the big announcements come! Congrats to both of you; excellent news! I hope the kitties take it well :~}
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Congratulations!! Can't wait to hear funny M. Tiny stories!
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I've known M. Giant since we were both 13 years old, and Trash since not long after that... so I'll just mention at this time that seeing their names on a baby registry is-- for just a moment-- pretty F'ed up, man.
By Awww, I'm so happy for a lot of people today! My brother's wife just gave birth to their first child today [9/28] and now you are expecting M.Tiny 11/28. I'm headed over to amazon to order up two copies of "How To Be a Daddy!" Congratulations. --Sayer
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I leave town for one week and the world turns upsaide down. This is great news, M. Giant. I am so excited for you both.
By And to think that I forgot to mention that my brother's baby was born in Fairview Ridges Hospital in Burnsville, Minnesota! Another cool MN baby. When's the party? --Sayer
By Hey birth parents, if you are reading this, let me be the first to tell you that you have selected some amazing people. They're funny, and caring, and smart. You made a great choice in selecting them!
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Oh, wow!! Congrats, Dad!
By CONGRATS so much... 35 years ago on the 4th of December I was born with strict instructions from my birth mother that I had to be in a home BY CHRISTMAS... which didn't leave much time and my parents knew they had been approved and then all of the sudden BABY! But with a little help from my grandmother and friends they pulled it all together and there are these GREAT shots of me under the Christmas Tree. That baby is going to have a great time with you as parents!
By Friday, September 24, 2004 Family Business You know, people are always saying, "Trash should do a guest entry." It shows up in my comments, and it shows up in my inbox. I recognize that she and the cats are the real stars of this thing, but honestly. Trash herself is generally pretty reluctant to step up, because we both like to consider me the writer of the family. But today, with her permission, I'd like to share with you an e-mail that we sent out to some of our friends and relatives. I think it demonstrates her writing skills quite well. Hey everyone -- We are sorry for the bulk e-mail, but we have some big news, and (as it turns out) a short time to relay it. As some of you know, Trash and M. Giant had a bit of an eye-opener a year ago last May, when in the span of 6 weeks, we discovered that we might be pregnant, we found out that we were pregnant, we spent some time convincing Trash that we were pregnant, and then we had a miscarriage. This chain of events shook up our world quite a bit, and made us do some serious thinking about our future. After a few months of talking and thinking, we decided that the path that felt most comfortable for both of us was to pursue an adoption. While race and sex were not factors in choosing a child, we did feel strongly that we wanted to adopt a child born in the USA if possible. We shopped around for an agency that felt comfortable, and in January we selected one in the Twin Cities area. We went through the long approval and home study process, and we were approved to go forward in May. It took us a little while to get our book and letter approved, but as of June we were available to adopt. If you are adopting in Minnesota, after you have been approved for adopting and have put together your pictures and your home letter, your portfolio then becomes available for birth parents to view. The birth parents then choose to meet with those families that seem a possible match. We were notified this past Tuesday afternoon that a young couple had chosen our portfolio from the book and wanted to meet with us. We did meet them on Wednesday afternoon, and without going into too much detail, we loved them, they seemed to like us, and they decided to choose us to parent their baby-to-be. They are due in late November, and we know that it's a boy. The parents are legally allowed to change their minds up until 30 days after the birth, but we both believe that what's supposed to happen will indeed happen, and we want to make sure the parents feel comfortable with their decision. So, we have some big changes ahead of us, especially with M. Giant in the middle of launching his freelance writing career. We are very excited and nervous, and can't wait to find out what happens next. And of course we are deeply grateful to the birth parents for choosing us. Love, M. Giant and Trash See? She's a perfectly good writer. I hope this will satisfy some of the clamoring for a guest entry from her for a while. Anyway, it should be clear now why we spent so much time working on the house last spring. And why there was no entry on Wednesday. It'll be a relief to be able to write about the biggest thing going on in our lives. At least while I still have time. posted by M. Giant 5:50 PM 22 comments 22 Comments:
How exciting! Congratulations to you both! Thank you for sharing.
By Oh man, that's amazing news! How awesome for you guys, congrats! - Sundry
By no way! That's awesome! Congrats to you both.
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Best news!
By Oh, yay! That's the best news I've heard in weeks. You guys will be great parents - I just feel it. Have you registered anywhere? Like on Babies-R-Us? You know, just in case one of us would want to buy something for little giant?
By Congrats to you and Trash! This is excellent news! Good luck on your impending parenthood :)
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Well, if this is an example of Trash's guest entries, then I'd really prefer it if you let her post more often, darlin'. ;-)
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Wait! What? I mean, WHAT? You never so much as slipped a clue. Oh my goodness, that's amazing. But still, WHAT?!
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Congratulations!
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M. Giant and Trash, that is fantastic! I wish you mucho, mucho congratualtions.
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Man, I love when cool people become parents. Congratulations!
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THIS is your excuse for not posting a Humpblog?
By Yay! I'm so happy for you both. I've heard that the very best thing you can do for your child is to love each other and clearly you do - very much - so I'm sure you'll be excellent parents. However, when that baby pees on you (and he will because boys do that) you must not stuff him in the Brita pitcher in the fridge! - trish
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I am so happy for you both that I could cry.
By Much congratulations to the both of you!
By Oh my goodness, many congratulations. I am so happy for the two of you, couldn't happen to better people.
By Congratulations! I am so happy for you and Trash! My husband and I adopted our two beautiful sons, so I know of the elation and fear that you are going through. You two will make wonderful parents!
By Congratulations! We need more little Minnesotans. Keep us updated on the progress! Yay! - Amy
By Excellent, excellent news! It must be really scary and exciting that it's coming so soon, but I'm sure you guys will handle in style. Congrats! -- Scott from L.A. (DaiNoga)
By My, my, my, HOW your lives are going change! Good thing you've had those cats to practice your patiences with, huh? Congrats to all of you!
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Late November, that's pretty soon. I hope that you and Trash are living it up while you have the chance.
By Congratulations!
By Monday, September 20, 2004 ¿Que the Hell Pasa? (Parte Seis) I kind of had the idea that once I was working at home, I'd have a lot more time to do stuff like practice my Spanish. Maybe relearn what I've forgotten in the past several months. But as it turns out, working at home finds me spending a lot of time, well, working. Which is good. I'm not complaining. Not when there are other things to complain about, like the surreally absurd conversational exchanges in my Spanish textbook. I've covered some of these in Partes Uno, Dos, Tres, Quatro, and Cinco, of course, but now things are going to get really weird. As you may recall from previous lessons, Pedro is now an adult. Which worried me a little. As you recall, the whole point of Pedro was to learn Spanish the way a child does. How am I to keep up, now that Pedro has undergone a decade and change of intensive tutelage by Mr. Garcia? Yes he's still locked in that dysfunctional relationship with his lifelong teacher. But there is hope. As we join them for Scene 11, Mr. Garcia appears to have buckled down and begun to take his responsibilities as a teacher seriously. Maybe he watched a couple of episodes of Boston Public. "Pedro…Are you ready?" he asks. Pedro is. "Do you have your pen?" he asks. Pedro has it right here. "Then, to begin, an exercise. Write this: 'I am in my house.'" He then asks Pedro to conjugate using other pronouns. Pedro's up for it: "She is in her house. He is in his house. You are in your house." Mr. Garcia congratulates him heartily. Obviously, Pedro's been hitting the books pretty hard the past fifteen years. Mr. Garcia comes right back at him with plurals: "'We are in our houses.'" And now Pedro must conjugate using the plural third and second person pronouns: "Those guys, those women, and y'all." Which looks weird in English, but Spanish actually does have plural pronouns. Which, believe it or not, is news to Pedro. "Y'all?" he responds in bafflement, as if he's never heard it before. Or "youse," for that matter. But Mr. Garcia is there to clarify it for him. "You, you, and you: y'all." Pedro seems to accept this. My question is, what the hell has Mr. Garcia been "teaching" him all this time? We'll have to return to that question later, because now Pedro has slipped his leash and is bugging Maria the secretary again. "Maria," he queries, "that machine is for photocopying document, right?" Um… "And this is a computer, right?" Maria agrees, suppressing the urge to defenestrate him. Instead, she gives him a little demonstration on how you type on the computer just like you would on a typewriter. I see. So now we're no longer learning Spanish the way a child does. We're learning Spanish the way a child who has had some sort of catastrophic head injury and has spent the past fifteen years in a coma does. If this is an important distinction, nobody at Berlitz seems to think so. There's always another possibility. It is conceivable that Maria got so tired of interruptions from the school's one student that she lost patience with him and locked him in the boiler room all this time, occasionally dropping food to him down the garbage chute. I can't decide whether I find that more or less disturbing than the other option, which is that Mr. Garcia clubbed him so vigorously and repeatedly about the head and shoulders that he's spent the past decade and a half getting fluid drained from inside his skull twice a day. Whatever the case, nobody's talking about it. It's like a big elephant in the room, wearing a sombrero and watching Univision at top volume. We can only hope that future scenes will answer these questions and more. They won't, of course, which is why we can only hope. Today's best search phrase: "Why don't squirrels need haircuts." Well, someone had better rock me to sleep tonight. posted by M. Giant 9:08 PM 7 comments 7 Comments:
I love this series. I don't know why but everytime I've read it I end up laughing so hard it hurts, which was fine when I was in an office by myself but not so much now.
By Ah Pedro, we meet again. I think Pedro is my favorite recurring character in your blog. Well, except for Trash. and the cats. But still, one of my favorites.
By Oh, I love these stories, as well. M. Giant, yer too funny.
By "Defenestrate" is such a great word. I try to work it into essay questions on exams just to confuse the profs.
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For some reason your technical (and legally sufficient)description of Pedro's being clubbed "about the head and shoulders" cracks me up. Not that assault is funny, but, yeah.
By I don't understand -- what is this all about?
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MG maybe had to chase Strat away from something dangerous, so parts I through V, while mentioned, were not presented as links... however if you look back a ways, this will make more sense. It's the sixth in an ongoing series about the Berlitz(tm) language tapes MG is using to study up on the Spanish language. He's telling us about them in terms of the content and presentation of the little story they use as they introduce Spanish words and phrases.
By Friday, September 17, 2004 Curbstomped You can imagine the volume of unwanted detritus that can accumulate in a house’s basement over the course of a couple of decades. Especially if said basement isn’t being used for much else besides storing said detritus. But Trash’s stepfather doesn’t have to imagine it, because several years ago, when he was remodeling their basement, all that stuff had to go. Out to the curb, to be precise. The problem was that there was too much crap for the garbage truck to pick up on any one trip. So we were talking multiple garbage weeks of stuff from downstairs. But my stepfather-in-law wanted to minimize the number of necessary trips. To, like, fifty. It was a delicate balance, putting out enough stuff to make a dent without making a big enough pile to scare the garbage truck into blowing right by (which it did a couple of times). But that was no way to get everything out there, at least before the mortgage got paid off. So the night before trash day, he’d put out an innocuously-sized pile. And then, the next morning, he’d wait and watch out the front window for the truck to stop in front of the house, and when it did, he’d start carrying stuff out as quickly as possible and adding it to the pile. It would turn into a weekly race, with SFIL schlepping as much stuff as he could into the collection zone before the two collectors could clear it. After a while, those garbage men hated him. Almost as much as Trash’s aunt hated garbage day. She was living with them at the time, and the time she needed to go to work tended to coincide with morning garbage collection. She’d sneak out of the house in embarrassment, hiding her face as if from paparazzi. She probably would have stayed with them a lot longer if it hadn't been for that. Even so, it was still a job getting rid of everything. SFIL also put various items out on the curb during the week for the use of anyone who might happen to drive by. Only thing was, nobody ever drove by. They all stopped. I actually saw this firsthand one evening, when I went over to help SFIL haul some of the heaviest stuff out to the curb. This was just random crap that happened to be really big. Not that that stopped anyone. Or, rather, failed to stop anyone. From stopping, I mean. One guy passing by pulled over, examined the stuff critically, and left empty-handed. He returned fifteen minutes later with some kind of mutated short bus and his entire family. More cars stopped, drawn by the sight of potential free garbage. Soon it reached critical mass, and every human in the northern suburbs was crawling over the pile like trailer-park Jawas. I was so freaked out I hid in the house and called Trash, who heard the horror in my voice and instantly wondered who was dying. I had to leave not long after. Not that everyone was so undiscriminating. SFIL told me about one woman who had stopped to examine a discarded desk. This was another day of hauling stuff out to the curb, one in which I did not participate. So I didn't get to meet the woman in question. "Is this your desk?" she asked SFIL. "Well, I'm getting rid of it," SFIL said. "It's nice," she said. "I suppose," he agreed. "And you're just getting rid of it?" "Yeah." She busied herself with a closer examination while he went in to get more stuff. "So I could use this as a computer desk, or a work desk," she said when he returned, as if trying to get him to sell it to her. "Sure," he said, completely uninterested in selling anything at any price. "What's wrong with it?" she persisted. "Well, the bottom of one drawer is broken, but you could probably fix that," he offered, just to be polite. She recoiled as if from a bad smell. "Well, it might be good for someone else, but not for me," she sniffed, and took off, satisfied in the knowledge that she was too smart a shopper to take home a slightly broken desk for free. She was probably already composing an offended story in her head about the shameless huckster who had tried to put one over on her at his curb. The funny thing is, she ended up being right about the desk. It was good for someone else. And as far as I know, so was everything else on every curbside pile for the next couple of months. And yet when we helped them move to Iowa last year, there was still enough to fill two U-Hauls and a convoy of cars. Go figure. There was a minute there where I was just about prepared to abandon one of the trucks on a lonely, snow-swept stretch of Interstate 35 in the middle of January, minutes before sunset. If I'd opened the back door and dumped everything out on the shoulder, I'm convinced it would have all been gone within ten minutes. Today's best search phrase: "Going to push your face in." At the time, this site was the only hit on Google for that phrase. Now I don't come up at all. Someone at Google is not getting the message. posted by M. Giant 9:17 PM 3 comments 3 Comments:One way to explain why something's at the curb, if you really want to interact with lookie-lous, is to glare at the object and say, "I have to get rid of it! It's CURSED!"
By Before finally breaking down and investing in a good one, my husband and I went through a series of cheap vacuum cleaners. When we moved, we at last got around to taking these hunks of useless, broken metal and plastic down to the curb for pick-up. An hour later, various neighbors had helped themselves to our trashed vacs. That was our last week in the neighborhood, so we didn't get to see whether any of these machines reappeared at someone else's curb the next trash day.
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My mother *cannot* drive past a pile of junk on the curb, which means that her garage is filled with crap from other people's garages in perpetuity.
By Wednesday, September 15, 2004 Humpblog (9/15/04) Tonight at the Kieran's Pub Quiz, I went to the restroom. Which is not surprising, given that the average tenancy of a pint of beer in my system is approximately forty-three seconds. Anyway, piled in one corner of the stall, between the terlet and the wall, was a shredded pair of Fruit of the Looms. I wouldn’t have even recognized them as such but for the distinctive "FTL" logo on the mostly intact waistband. These unders had suffered catastrophic structural failure. As I said when I got back to the table, I'd been in plenty of bathrooms where the plumbing was broken, but this was the first time I'd seen one with broken underwear. DragonAttack advised me to be careful. And indeed I was, for my eight hundred subsequent trips to the biffy over the course of the evening. * * * Yesterday was Trash and my thirteenth wedding anniversary. I don't feel unlucky in the slightest. * * * Speaking of domestic bliss, this just in, courtesy of the aforementioned Trash: Associated Press September 10, 2004 DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- A man who swung an alligator at his girlfriend during an argument was sentenced to six months in jail. David Havenner, 41, pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges of battery and possession of an alligator, said Linda Pruitt, spokeswoman for the State Attorney's Office. What? There's no separate law on the books for alligator possession with intent to batter? Sheriff's officials said Havenner was keeping the 3-foot gator in his bathtub and swung it at his girlfriend, Nancy Monico, 39, during an argument on July 16. Monico told investigators that Havenner beat her with his fists, then grabbed the gator and swung it at her as she tried to escape. The gator struck Monico at least once. Havenner then threw empty beer bottles at her and kicked her out of their mobile home, she told investigators. Havenner told investigators that Monico bit his hand because she was upset that they had run out of alcohol. She should be happy they ran out of alcohol. Full beer bottles hurt a lot more when someone throws them at you, I suspect. The alligator was later released into the St. Johns River, wildlife commission officials said. Dude, what are you doing swinging the alligator? The alligator is already the perfect killing machine, okay? Tens of millions of years of evolution have not been able to improve the alligator's lethality, yet you presume to think that just because you have opposable thumbs and a rudimentary understanding of the laws of centrifugal force, you're going to be able to kick things up a notch? It's common sense. If you're trying to kill someone with an alligator, let the alligator do the work. If I've taught you people nothing else in these pages, at least know that. * * * Oh, sorry, did I leave you hanging on the Pub Quiz? Wondering how we did? Well, obviously if we had won, I wouldn't be burying the lede like this. It was pretty clear from round one that we were destined for the middle of the pack. Trash and Linda were there, of course. But DragonAttack was filling in for G. Grod (her second Quiz), and ZV's girlfriend was in for him (her first Quiz!), so I think we did pretty well for a team that was composed of 40% substitutes. Once again, the Quizmaster had failed to get our trophies from our July Quiz victory ready in time, so we went home empty-handed. Again. Oh, wait. Now that I think of it, we did get those gift certificates and t-shirts for winning first place. Yes, we won again. Our third Pub Quiz victory in four months. Sadly there's not a special trophy for that, like there is for the unprecedented threepeat. Unless there is, and it's bupkes, in which case we already have it. We feel extra special, having just won the historic fiftieth Kieran's Pub Quiz. Winning the forty-seventh and forty-eighth were pretty special, too, but there's something about round numbers. I think it's their roundness. More on that Friday, perhaps. Today's best search phrase: "Brita pitcher urine." Ain't enough filters in the world, my friend. posted by M. Giant 9:16 PM 10 comments 10 Comments:Happy belated anniversary to you and Trash! Also, I really enjoyed hearing your story about Strat and the cell phone, although I kept thinking to myself, "Drat! I WISH that phone had vibrated!" (My cat Yuki seems to believe that it's perfectly okay to try and take over my laptop and employ it as a low-grade warming device while I'm trying to write.)
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Congrats on the anniversary! I am totally in denial about the fact it's been that many years. But you kids are happy, and you give me hope for the future.
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(Oh, that was me. Anonymously. Ooooooo...)
By Congrats on the win. You guys have become a dynasty of sorts. I read in Miss Alli's blog that you have entertainment guys from the newspaper (Neal Justin) playing against you, and you still won. That rocks the house.
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Make sure you check out Linda's entry as well -- between Velcrometer and Frolic and Detour, it's like you're there with us, but with less swearing. and beer.
By Happy anniversary, you two! I swear to the good Lord above, I WILL celebrate my next wedding anniversary by having my husband throw empty beer bottles at me as I hastily escape a trailer. I will record it, burn it to a cd, and send it to family and friends as a memento of the occasion. How could those folks engage in this behavior without dissolving into each others' arms in uncontrollable laughter? Never mind the alligator swinging. --Laura
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Thanks for the 'gator advise... now I know not to swing my gator in anager, but let him do all the work for me. Whew - almost made a fatal mistake!
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Ahh, Happy Anniversary! It's nice to read about people who have been married for a while and are still happy. Here's to many more years in the future.
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I am really REALLY hoping that in your evaluation of your victory, you are not underestimating nor under-appreciating the force of nature that IS DragonAttack, aka the one, the only RockSnob. Therein lies a veritable fountain of music trivia, a pierced and tattooed textbook, if you will, of all that is harmonious and true.
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Happy anniversary! And also happy pub quiz victory. We might be coming to Mpls sometime in Oct., maybe I can pinch hit. But my knowledge is limited to petty street crime and Civilization III.
By Monday, September 13, 2004 Roadside Resistance Thanks to those of you who were worried that my cat was dead. Rest assured that if I ever have to write that entry, I'll prepare you a little better than that. Now my problem is that Orca is strutting around the house, being all offended and going, "HellOOO! Not dead either!" * * * On Saturday, Trash and I went out on Lake Minnetonka. Yes, the same Lake Minnetonka that's so famous for not being in that one scene in Purple Rain. Trash's dad had been inviting us out for a cruise for…oh, about four years or so, and our schedules finally meshed. It really wasn't as busy on the water as one might expect for as nice a day as it was. We spent a few hours zipping around, marveling at the huge, ocean-going yachts that are able to carry their owners all the way to the middle of the lake and back. I believe one of them was called the S.S. More Money Than Sense. On the way back from the lake, there seems to be one major road leading back from the marina. It isn't actually a major road, though. It's just a regular residential street that appears to have been built years before Lake Minnetonka got so busy, but now it's just about the only way to get away from that side of the lake. Sucks for the people who live there, who have to deal with auto traffic to and from the lake but don't get the view. So at least one homeowner in this neighborhood has taken matters into his own hands. We saw a large, carefully hand-lettered stand-up sign in the front yard, about five feet from the edge of the road. It said, "PLEASE SLOW DOWN FOR MY KIDS." And in that five-foot space between the sign and the curb? Two kids. So this guy wasn't bluffing. He wanted us to slow down for the children, and if we didn't believe him, why, there they were. THERE THEY ARE! NOW SLOW DOWN! I don't know how long they'd been there or what they were actually doing (we screamed past too quickly to tell), but I can imagine Dad ordering them out onto the lawn: "Kids, you better head out to the curb, right now. Traffic's just going by too fast. Quit whining and get your asses out there! It's for your own good. Read the sign, why don't you?" The sign didn't say that these kids were the only ones he had left, but we couldn't help speculating. We also wondered if maybe the kids weren't his at all, but just part of his little roadside display designed to slow people down. Maybe he gives the neighborhood kneebiters ten cents an hour to stand inches away from the hurtling river of steel and glass and look vulnerable. Or maybe he'd just hired these kids because his own offspring had been long since squished. In which case the sign may not be working. A few years ago, in our own neighborhood, signs started popping up in people's lawns saying, "Slow down! We live here." They were red-and-yellow, professionally printed signs that were the brainchild of some busybody who thought people drive too fast around the lakes—and who, for your information, doesn't live here. Trash despised these signs to distraction, because the one thing she cannot stand, above all other things, is being just a few blocks from home and getting stuck behind some moron traveling at haywagon speeds. The last thing she wanted was an organized campaign to slow these idiots down even more. I won't say she stole any of these signs out of people's yards in the dead of night, because that might have been illegal. If she had, I mean. Which I'm not saying she did. But the thought occurred to her. I can't say whether it occurred to her to steal that sign off the road near Lake Minnetonka, or to kidnap its live visual aids. If the thought crossed her mind, she didn't say anything to me. But I can't help thinking that if it were on her everyday commute, "PLEASE SLOW DOWN FOR MY KIDS" might just threaten to take on a new meaning. If only to rescue them from their control-freak "guardian." Today's best search phrase: "What year did New York install its first elevator train? Well?" Okay, okay, I'm looking! Simmer! posted by M. Giant 4:22 PM 11 comments 11 Comments:Everytime I see one of those "slow down, kids at play" signs in my neighborhood, where I've actually had to go around people going 5 miles an hour, I want to come back in the dead of night and replace the sign with one that says, "slow down, inattentive parents letting their idiot kids play in the street unsupervised".
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We have one of the infamous "Slow Children" signs in our neighborhood. And since I'm evil, I chuckle.
By Dunno, I kind of sympathize with the guy. I live on a street that's a shortcut between two arterials, and jeez, people zoom up my block like maniacs. And I have a lot of cats.
By one summer my sister and i stole some of our "friends" signs and did a little "art work" and replaced the signs. the next thing that was coming was a knock on the door from the "neighborhood diva" asking if we knew anything about the tire tracks across the signs (which was done in red colour, it was a beauty)..of course, i gave my best.."oh no"..but i got so sick of those brats and their streamers in the middle of the road all the time...sheeesh
By one summer my sister and i stole some of our "friends" signs and did a little "art work" and replaced the signs. the next thing i know, a knock on the door from the "neighborhood diva" asking if we knew anything about the tire tracks across the signs (which was done in red colour, it was a beauty)..of course, i gave my best.."oh no"..but i got so sick of those brats and their streamers in the middle of the road all the time...sheeesh
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M. Giant-I read in Ms. Ali's recap that Trash has very strong opinions on the Burger King ads.
By In 1853, Elisha Otis introduced the safety elevator, which prevented the fall of the cab if the cable broke, and on March 23, 1857 his first elevator was installed at 488 Broadway in New York City. The first elevator shaft preceded the first elevator by four years. Construction for Peter Cooper's Cooper Union building in New York began in 1853. An elevator shaft was included in the design for Cooper Union, because Cooper was utterly confident a safe passenger elevator would soon be invented: the shaft however was circular because Cooper felt it was the most efficient design. Later Otis designed a special elevator for the school. Today the Otis Elevator Company, now a subsidiary of United Technologies Corporation, is the world's largest manufacturer of vertical transportation systems.
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I would LOVE a Trash guest entry. Has she ever done one before? How else can we know that she is real, and not made up? Oh wait, you included pictures, didn't you? Never mind.
By I read this story a few months ago where this mother would stand at intersections holding a hair dryer and aiming it at cars in the hopes that people going by quickly might think it was a speed camera and slow down. Or, you know, slam on the brakes and cause an accident.
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Uhhh . . . thanks for the history of the elevator shaft. That really filled in a gap in my life.
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Who writes these search questions? Are they people you know? Or are they things you write? Where do they come from?
By Friday, September 10, 2004 The [Home] Offfice Shout-out to my sister, DeBitch the Elder, who is doing the Three-Day Walk for Breast Cancer this weekend. She started this morning and will have walked 60 miles by Sunday night. From Shakopee to St. Paul. To put it in perspective for people on the East Coast, that's like walking more than halfway from Times Square to the Hamptons. If you live in L.A., it's like walking…well, anywhere. You go, Three-Dayers. * * * Are you ready for a sad story about a cat? 'Cause if you're not, you might be better off coming back later. There's not a whole lot going on in my office during the day. This is because my office is in my house, which during the day contains even fewer people than my last office did. Really, it's just me and the cats. So I spend my days in my home office, a foot and a half from a window that opens out onto our back yard. It's almost like being outside. I can even hear the cicadas sounding their annual alarm: "rrrrrreeeeeeeee-get-out-of-this-soon-to-be-frozen-solid-hellhole-while there's still tiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeem." Not much else happens. But I think the cats are glad to have me home. Strat especially enjoys his hundred or so treks along the length of my keybo4sfdeeeeeeeeevbbbbbbbbbbbiukard every afternoon. When he's not doing that, he's generally curled up somewhere. One of his favorite spots is on the rocking chair just to the left and slightly behind my work chair. Yesterday, that's where I had my cell phone. I was recharging the battery, and the cord doesn’t reach all the way to my desk. So it was in the seat of the rocking chair. I just wanted to be sure it was in the same room with me, so that when people call to offer me ridiculously lucrative freelance writing gigs, I hear it. So, anyway, the phone is charging. I'm working. At some point, I get up from my desk, and them I'm peeing. And then I'm not, and I come back into the office to see Strat curled up, fast asleep, on the rocking chair. The cell phone recharger cord leads from the outlet to somewhere under his ass. That's today's wireless communications devices for you: no sharp corners, and a comforting warmth when you're feeding the battery. Strat had a new best friend. So here's what I did, and don't even try to tell me you wouldn't do the exact same thing. I happened to know that my cell phone was on vibrate mode. I turned around, very quietly, and went into the kitchen. I carefully picked the cordless up from off its cradle. Then I sneaked into the hallway, the opposite end from where my office door is. From a safe distance away, I could see Strat sleeping peacefully. I held my hand over the little beeper grille on the cordless, and, as quietly as I could, I dialed my cell phone number. And waited. And waited. There was no reaction whatsoever. Somehow the distribution of his weight had pressed the right combination of buttons to switch the phone back over to audible mode, but at the lowest possible volume. So he didn't instantly snap awake and hop up, back arched, hissing and spitting, wondering what the hell was buzzing inside his tummy folds. Instead, somewhere under my cat, my phone was quietly beeping the intro to "Play That Funky Music White Boy" at a level low enough to be completely muffled by Strat's furry bulk. He barely even stirred when I pulled on the cord and prospected the phone out from under his gut. Isn't that just the saddest cat story you've ever heard? I've never been so disappointed in my life. This is what passes for office pranks when you work at home. But it's still better than my last two jobs, where there were no office pranks of any kind. I think this working-from-home thing is going to turn out just fine. The cats might disagree, but they're sleeping through most of it anyway. * * * The band I'm in, Myrtle Jean and the Bubs, has pretty much taken the summer off. But we'll be back on Saturday, September 18, at Betsy's Back Porch on 56th and Nicollet in Minneapolis. And we play for free, unless you want to tip us. Today's best search phrase: "Stylish rolling cats." Just the thing when you need to retrieve your cell phone in a hurry. And stylishly. posted by M. Giant 7:21 PM 13 comments 13 Comments:
Jesus, don't DO that! I thought Strat had died. You are not funny. I mean, you are, but not when you make me think your cat is dead. Curse you, M.Giant!
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I'm with Cori; you scared the shit out of me. Your warning had me deciding whether to read the blog or not. I finally decided to kind of scroll through it, squinting, so I could get the general idea of what was said without seeing anything disturbing. Luckily, I saw enough to know it was safe. Don't EVER DO THAT again!
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Seriously. I thought Strat was dead, too. I thought you were going to say that the phone WAS on vibrate but the poor kitty didn't jump up because... oh, god, I don't think I can even write it.
By Oh i was laughing so hard, and even started to break my evvvvvale smile..-"So here's what I did, and don't even try to tell me you wouldn't do the exact same thing." and yes, i would do the same. i hate cats and the sad part is that i grew up with cats...in my family, my name is CK..and you know what that is. We have no slippers around the house now, due to city living but we managed to dump all our cats at my mothers..5 monsters. But working at home now, I can see how the company of the cats would be nice. I miss my cat Stucky, who loves to bring in snakes, lizards and such into the house to show his prize work...which it really is. Here in the city, well, I think Stucky would just sleep..so he is out on the reservation driving my mother nuts.
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Awww, don't listen to the wimps. I know that if anything bad ever really did happen to YOUR cat, there would be no such blog entry. I had been thinking it was one of two things:
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Office pranks are great, but office pranks played on cats are the best! That makes me want to get an office cat.
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MMMMEEEEAAANNNNN!!!!!!!!!! Mean to your readers, mean to the cat. It serves you right that it didn't work.
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I will never learn. Don't read velcrometer at work because you will have trouble controlling your laughter while the boss is 2 feet away.
By What time are you playing on Saturday?
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I'm dyin' over here. If it's any comfort, my extremely obese, extremely lazy, extremely vomity cats wouldn't notice it either.
By I skipped the entry and went straight to the comments, because I couldn't handle that Strat was gone (and he isn't even my cat! Is that considered stalking?) Thankfully, I read the comments and realized it was safe, and hysterical, and that M. Giant is a right bastard.
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Or, for those on the East Coast, the 3-Day walk is like walking from Newburg, NY to Central Park. Which is the route we took when I did their 3-day in '99.
By I just wanna know where I can get 'Play that funky music white boy' to download as my ringtone....'
By Wednesday, September 08, 2004 Humpblog (9/08/04) Check out this e-mail trash found in her inbox not too long ago: Hi, My name is Elva and I was asked by Lord to talk to you about the benefits of the product that I am using. I have been married for over 12 years now and lately, like all marriage's, we have become more and more distant from each other. We have not been intimate in over 6 months. Well about a month ago, I came across an email that was selling these products that was guaranteed to help with our problem. I was hesistant at first, but decided to go ahead and try it anyway. To my surprise, it worked exactly as they said. And yet they "have not" been intimate in over six months. What was it they said, Elva? It's not the miracle that will save a marriage but it will definatlely help put the spark back into the relationship. I am trying to help as many people as I can to find the happiness that once was. You should definately check it out and tell me what you think [link removed] Just get back to me and tell me if I was able to help you with this. Thanks, Marvin Khan Marvin? What the hell happened to Elva? This may be more spark than I'm ready to bargain for. Oh, and one more thing: compressive territorial anybody'd churchillian escheat laguerre doppler expectation scarsdale copy stoichiometry alumna resent sadler mum bitternut upwind acorn depreciable burgundy . bout grandchild hermite throes amsterdam mennonite boldface classic joyce ballerina agribusiness defrost membrane corvallis missouri prayer waterfall moser bodice biotic rutland cupful thirteen evasive Amsterdam Mennonite boldface? That's just fucked up. And while Elva/Marvin struggles to keep her/his relationship alive, there are other relationships that just won't seem to die. No matter what. From Yahoo! News: Dead Couple to Be Married JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A South African man who shot his pregnant fiance dead before killing himself will be posthumously married to her at the weekend. Police Captain Mohale Ramatseba said David Masenta shot 25-year-old Mgwanini Molomo after a quarrel before turning the gun on himself. But Johannesburg's Sowetan newspaper said family and friends wanted to remember them as a happy couple destined for a happy life together. The groom's corpse would be dressed in a cream suit and his bride's in a gown for the ceremony, at which a priest in the rural village of Ceres in Limpopo will bless the union before the two are buried, the Sowetan said. "In African culture, there is no death -- there is merely the separation of body and soul," said cultural expert Mathole Motshekga. "It is also important because the families are married together." "This does not mean the relationship has irretrievably broken down." Maybe not, but the question of what needs to be done to retrieve it still stands. Unlike the couple in question. I don't know, this just strikes me as a little presumptuous. Like, maybe the bride and/or groom knew something that the families don't. Or the reverse might have been true. Maybe the late couple figured a murder-suicide would be the only way out of a wedding that their families were pressuring them into, clearly underestimating said families' commitment to their, um, happiness. Finally, it turns out that I wrote about the Olympics this year a lot more than I thought I was going to, i.e., any. But then this came from my sister-in-law, Deniece's mom, and I just thought I had to share it with the nine of you who are as behind the curve as I am and thus haven't seen it. Assuming it's not apocryphal, of course, because some of these may date back to before the Athens games. Like, to the original Athens games. Here are the top nine comments made by NBC sports commentators during the Summer Olympics that they would like to take back: 1. Weightlifting commentator: "This is Gregoriava from Bulgaria. I saw her snatch this morning during her warm up and it was amazing." 2. Dressage commentator: "This is really a lovely horse and I speak from personal experience since I once mounted her mother." 3. Paul Hamm, Gymnast: "I owe a lot to my parents, especially my mother and father." 4. Boxing Analyst: "Sure there have been injuries, and even some deaths in boxing, but none of them really that serious." 5. Softball announcer: "If history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing again." 6. Basketball analyst: "He dribbles a lot and the opposition doesn't like it. In fact you can see it all over their faces." 7. At the rowing medal ceremony: "Ah, isn't that nice, the wife of the IOC president is hugging the cox of the British crew." 8. Soccer commentator: "Julian Dicks is everywhere. It's like they've got eleven Dicks on the field." 9. Tennis commentator: "One of the reasons Andy is playing so well is that, before the final round, his wife takes out his balls and kisses them... Oh my God, what have I just said?" What, indeed? Today's best search phrase: "The letter M." I don't know, I might have used a few of those over the years. posted by M. Giant 5:18 PM 7 comments 7 Comments:Ahh ha ha, Cox. We've got a second-string quarterback this year by the name of Cox. My husband says when the crowd wants him to get in the game, everyone will be chanting, "We want Cox, we want Cox!"
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My name is Elva and I was asked by Lord to talk to you about the benefits of the product that I am using.
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Hee! Funny stuff. For your amusement, here's a killer of a line from an Australian commentator. The Germans had just come from behind to win a rowing event, and:
By Check out snopes.com. Those comments apparently have been going around for a while and someone just changed them to fit the Olympics. Still funny though.
By Ugh -- I love my boyfriend, but if we were to have a murder/suicide situation, I don't think I would want to then be married to him. Yuck.
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Yeah, that's kind of what I thought. Even if they were happy before, she might have taken the opportunity to reconsider, knowing how it would turn out.
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No kidding. *family and friends wanted to remember them as a happy couple destined for a happy life together.* Gee, I am guessing that SHE wanted to think of them in those terms as well, right up until he shot and killed her.
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