The best part about cancelling my subscription to Newsweek is continuing to get Newsweek. Uninterrupted in fact. Even after the "if you don't respond to this you will have interrupted service" letter. The next day, boom, a Newsweek with the Olsen twins on the cover (touche Newsweek).
In other news. I am beginning to annoy myself with the amount of love i have for this dog of mine. I mean, i am that guy (as opposed to becoming that guy). And here is what i take from this: I'm pretty sure that i can't have kids.
Hear me out. At this point, i'm at least pretty sure that nobody wants to see more pics/vids/more pics that i continue to show my friends . . . ad nausea. This fact hasn't stopped, or even slowed, me from continuing to whip out my phone and brandish pic after pic of puppy excellence.
From what i can tell, kids are like 10x as cute as pups. or at least narcissisticly, they look like their parents, so they seem 10x cuter. Same end result . . . picpicpicpicpicpicpicpicpicpicpicpicpicpicpicpic. And i'm not sure i can do that to all of my loved ones. I'm not sure i can, with the foresight i have now, subject all of you good people to the level of annoyance that is me with a kid (do you think i should mention any of this to my mmf?). I owe the world to save them from myself.
Now, i leave open the possibility that one day i will awake with the primal urge to create a smaller version of myself (ahhhh . . . i mean . . . of
mmf). And if that feeling emerges with a concurrent and similar feeling in my partner, i will have no qualms about trying to put a little parasitic copy of myself to incubate inside my loved one.
But until that point, if that point exists, i will try to hold steady at my current level of annoyingness. Cause there is no way i'll ever be able to stop from showing you shit like this:
Barren Forever
Friday, May 13, 2011 | 3 Comment(s)
Wednesday, May 11, 2011 | 5 Comment(s)
While the title may seem dirty, i assure you that whirlyball is fun for the entire non-pregnant family.
This weekend i journeyed to chicago for a friend's bachelor party. whirlyball was the main course on the menu of fun.
What is whirlyball you ask. i am SO glad you asked. Whirlyball combines . . . jai alai, basketball, lacrosse, and mf'n bumper-cars. yup. you heard me right. bumper-cars.
the sport takes place on a hockey rink sized floor with a basketball hoop backboard on either side. The backboards have no basket or netting on them, and instead have a dodge-ball sized hole in the middle of them. you pass and then fling (using those middle school plastic jai alai scoops) a whiffle-ball through the hole to hit a sensor which registers a score. Scoring, i found, to be one of the least fun aspects to shoot (pun) for. Because, you shouldn't forget, you're in bumper cars!!!! And the speed is just fast enough to really be able to put a lick'n on your friends. Especially if they dont see you coming. And so, in teams of 5 or so, you try to get the ball into the hole. No using your hands -- ever.
Oh, ps, there are no steering wheels on the cars. Instead, there is a single crank which loosely guides your car through space (you actually do learn how to control it with some accuracy). To reverse, rotate the crank one time fast, and you go backwards. Crank it again to go forward. this may sound annoying, but it become part of the fun, and allows for one handed steering.
So, you are asking yourself, how could this seemingly perfect sport get even more amazingface?
Another great question. Well, directly next to said Whirlyball rink is a WhirlyBAR!!!! Whirlyball is where you can go to drink and drive. Hell, being a drunk driver can actually make you BETTER at Whirlyball, where collisions and heckling are encouraged (note: i do not condone drinking in driving outside of licensed Whirlyball facilities). I would love to tell you how i got super drunk and ran into everyone, but the truth is i was way too busy playing Whirlyball to have time to stop and drink. I had one beer. I'm telling you, this game is that fun. But, my sobriety did not cut down on the amount of running into other people i did. not at all. I feel i was a bit of a defensive force (aka. i couldn't shoot for shit). I was the Dennis Rodman of Whirlyball (minus Carmen and Madonna). Lock-down defense combined with some pure aggression and crowd pleasing drive-by's and donuts.
By the end, i feel i got good enough to see how this could develop into a more organized team sport. You could see how spreading the court and having people stay back on defense made you a more effective team. I mean, we didn't do any of that . . . but i saw how it could have developed.
Instead i spent my time trying to pick up speed and then use that speed to ram someone looking the other way. Kaboom! If you hit someone hard enough, this white foamy/feathery stuff came flying out of the bumpers, making it look like you knocked the head off their Rock-Em Sock-Em robot. And if s/he was on your team . . . ? it happens. if the hit is good enough, all is forgiven. Guilt free aggression. We all need it.
I, naively, thought that all this fun would come with no consequences at all. Two days later, however, the top of my quads are stones of immobility from being all squished up and counteracting the impact of the cars smashing me. I hobbled through the airport like a mannequin with my puppet-master gliding above me, gingerly tapping my feet against the linoleum as progressed past the terminal gates.
Upon my return to Massachusetts, spouting stories of this epic new sports craze, i simultaneously lamented its distance away from me, geographically (it is obviously already in my heart). And then . . . with one quick search on the google . . . i find: "Welcome to Whirlyball East Coast"!
Did you get the chills too? and better yet . . . its in CT, only an hour from where i live. So it guess the only question to ask now is . . . . Who's in?
This weekend i journeyed to chicago for a friend's bachelor party. whirlyball was the main course on the menu of fun.
What is whirlyball you ask. i am SO glad you asked. Whirlyball combines . . . jai alai, basketball, lacrosse, and mf'n bumper-cars. yup. you heard me right. bumper-cars.
the sport takes place on a hockey rink sized floor with a basketball hoop backboard on either side. The backboards have no basket or netting on them, and instead have a dodge-ball sized hole in the middle of them. you pass and then fling (using those middle school plastic jai alai scoops) a whiffle-ball through the hole to hit a sensor which registers a score. Scoring, i found, to be one of the least fun aspects to shoot (pun) for. Because, you shouldn't forget, you're in bumper cars!!!! And the speed is just fast enough to really be able to put a lick'n on your friends. Especially if they dont see you coming. And so, in teams of 5 or so, you try to get the ball into the hole. No using your hands -- ever.
Oh, ps, there are no steering wheels on the cars. Instead, there is a single crank which loosely guides your car through space (you actually do learn how to control it with some accuracy). To reverse, rotate the crank one time fast, and you go backwards. Crank it again to go forward. this may sound annoying, but it become part of the fun, and allows for one handed steering.
So, you are asking yourself, how could this seemingly perfect sport get even more amazingface?
Another great question. Well, directly next to said Whirlyball rink is a WhirlyBAR!!!! Whirlyball is where you can go to drink and drive. Hell, being a drunk driver can actually make you BETTER at Whirlyball, where collisions and heckling are encouraged (note: i do not condone drinking in driving outside of licensed Whirlyball facilities). I would love to tell you how i got super drunk and ran into everyone, but the truth is i was way too busy playing Whirlyball to have time to stop and drink. I had one beer. I'm telling you, this game is that fun. But, my sobriety did not cut down on the amount of running into other people i did. not at all. I feel i was a bit of a defensive force (aka. i couldn't shoot for shit). I was the Dennis Rodman of Whirlyball (minus Carmen and Madonna). Lock-down defense combined with some pure aggression and crowd pleasing drive-by's and donuts.
 |
| this is me during a combo donut / drive-by. cant you *FEEL* the aggression? |
Instead i spent my time trying to pick up speed and then use that speed to ram someone looking the other way. Kaboom! If you hit someone hard enough, this white foamy/feathery stuff came flying out of the bumpers, making it look like you knocked the head off their Rock-Em Sock-Em robot. And if s/he was on your team . . . ? it happens. if the hit is good enough, all is forgiven. Guilt free aggression. We all need it.
I, naively, thought that all this fun would come with no consequences at all. Two days later, however, the top of my quads are stones of immobility from being all squished up and counteracting the impact of the cars smashing me. I hobbled through the airport like a mannequin with my puppet-master gliding above me, gingerly tapping my feet against the linoleum as progressed past the terminal gates.
Upon my return to Massachusetts, spouting stories of this epic new sports craze, i simultaneously lamented its distance away from me, geographically (it is obviously already in my heart). And then . . . with one quick search on the google . . . i find: "Welcome to Whirlyball East Coast"!
Did you get the chills too? and better yet . . . its in CT, only an hour from where i live. So it guess the only question to ask now is . . . . Who's in?
Tuesday, May 3, 2011 | 0 Comment(s)
I feel like i must have been an indoors kid. before the dog.
let me start by saying that i didn't know that my heart would sing when i saw my dog's head hanging out my car window.
i didn't know that when i come home after leaving grover in the crate for a few hours, instead of being resentful of my short lived abandonment, he would just want to press his wiggly little body up against mine for as long as possible in celebration of our reunion.
but i also didn't really know about ticks.
I mean, i knew what a tick was of course. I knew they existed. I knew they carried lyme disease (sure fire "you may be Jewish if . . ." you know the disease everything is linked to). And i guess i kinda knew there was a tick season, though, if pressed i probably would just guess it was the summer (its the spring folks [maybe summer too . . . gulp?]).
With a dog . . . ticks are prevalent. And i guess that for people who . . . ah . . . do outside things in warm weather, they are always around. But this is the first time, for me, that they are a solid part of my reality.
Last night, right before going to bed, i found two ticks, back to back, on my dog grover. not cool ticks. super not cool. As i grabbed the first one, sandwiched between a small piece of paper-towel, i found myself with the apple sauce jar full of hydrogen peroxide that we use for tick execution/burial at sea (*osama reference!*) in one hand, and the paper-towel in the other. And i'm trying to scrap the tick off the towel into the jar. but those friggin ticks are built to grip. I hope we use tick-leg technology in our car-tire technology. cause im sitting there for like 30 seconds trying to scrap this impenetrably shelled sesame-seed-sized piece of turd off this fucking piece of paper towel. And then, in a moment of 1am clarity, i just tossed the little piece of towel, tick and all, into the peroxide bath. smart mattiti. cant believe it took that long to make it to that mental outcome.
Suffice it to say, i used the same technique when i discovered tick #2. Buh-bye
And then, as i turned to go back to the couch, i looked down and saw the hugest fucking bug i've seen in awhile (i have seen bigger in Japan). It looked like that huge lava-shooting horned bug from Starship Troopers.
But i think it also may have had wings. it was solid like one of those fat ol' bumble bees, but twice as big. It was big enough that i didn't feel a magazine would be a definite one shot kill. I ended up using a car battery sized box of "greenies" doggie treats on the queen bee. (sorry insect lovers) but it died so dead.
and right afterward. i was shaken. i was lying in bed, with phantom tick itches, worried that the insect giant was just the probe of some larger bug master race that was propagating in our vent system. I had flashes of an insect version of Arachnophobia happening in my very own home.
Sorry mmf. i know you had to get up early to teach. but i really needed that bug . . . i mean hug.
let me start by saying that i didn't know that my heart would sing when i saw my dog's head hanging out my car window.
i didn't know that when i come home after leaving grover in the crate for a few hours, instead of being resentful of my short lived abandonment, he would just want to press his wiggly little body up against mine for as long as possible in celebration of our reunion.
but i also didn't really know about ticks.
I mean, i knew what a tick was of course. I knew they existed. I knew they carried lyme disease (sure fire "you may be Jewish if . . ." you know the disease everything is linked to). And i guess i kinda knew there was a tick season, though, if pressed i probably would just guess it was the summer (its the spring folks [maybe summer too . . . gulp?]).
With a dog . . . ticks are prevalent. And i guess that for people who . . . ah . . . do outside things in warm weather, they are always around. But this is the first time, for me, that they are a solid part of my reality.
Last night, right before going to bed, i found two ticks, back to back, on my dog grover. not cool ticks. super not cool. As i grabbed the first one, sandwiched between a small piece of paper-towel, i found myself with the apple sauce jar full of hydrogen peroxide that we use for tick execution/burial at sea (*osama reference!*) in one hand, and the paper-towel in the other. And i'm trying to scrap the tick off the towel into the jar. but those friggin ticks are built to grip. I hope we use tick-leg technology in our car-tire technology. cause im sitting there for like 30 seconds trying to scrap this impenetrably shelled sesame-seed-sized piece of turd off this fucking piece of paper towel. And then, in a moment of 1am clarity, i just tossed the little piece of towel, tick and all, into the peroxide bath. smart mattiti. cant believe it took that long to make it to that mental outcome.
Suffice it to say, i used the same technique when i discovered tick #2. Buh-bye
And then, as i turned to go back to the couch, i looked down and saw the hugest fucking bug i've seen in awhile (i have seen bigger in Japan). It looked like that huge lava-shooting horned bug from Starship Troopers.
 | ||
| but just a tad bit smaller |
and right afterward. i was shaken. i was lying in bed, with phantom tick itches, worried that the insect giant was just the probe of some larger bug master race that was propagating in our vent system. I had flashes of an insect version of Arachnophobia happening in my very own home.
Sorry mmf. i know you had to get up early to teach. but i really needed that bug . . . i mean hug.
Monday, May 2, 2011 | 0 Comment(s)
It's hard to write a post right now without discussing this whole "we killed Osama" thing going on. And yet, i don't really feel like going too too deeply into it. so ill say a few things and move on in my next post.
1. I'm glad he's done with. I felt much more relieved and maybe even a version of happy to hear the news of his apprehension/assassination. As i was living in NYC for 9-11, i saw the hurt and horror up close, and whether i like it or not, Osama is the figurehead of that attack and his killing represented our ability to hold a non-country terrorist accountable for their actions.
2. I was surprised by the whole "dancing in the streets" aspect of his killing. As good as i felt about this "being over" (those are huge quotes), i just can't get to dancing over death. i'm for closure, i'm for accountability, i have just seen and felt nauseous over too many broadcasts of Arab nations dancing in the streets over attacks (9-11, israel, etc) and killings to see it as an option. Celebrating killing is like fighting for peace and fucking for virginity . . . in the end it just doesn't seem to turn out for the best.
3. I saw a headline, "Rumsfeld: Intelligence may have come from Gitmo" (i will NOT link to this video). Here's my reaction to that. Fuck you Rumsfeld. Fuck you so fucking hard you fucking fuck. You can not try to rationalize your torture of prisoners by going on tv and saying it may have helped the administration after yours do what you couldn't. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. You aren't allowed to try and re-write history anymore. You're out. Your 15 minutes are over and you made your country worse. There is no excuse for torture. Torture without due process is exactly what we are fighting against you tired bag of shit. perhaps we need to water-board you until you can admit this to your own country who you feel so comfortable lying to.
1. I'm glad he's done with. I felt much more relieved and maybe even a version of happy to hear the news of his apprehension/assassination. As i was living in NYC for 9-11, i saw the hurt and horror up close, and whether i like it or not, Osama is the figurehead of that attack and his killing represented our ability to hold a non-country terrorist accountable for their actions.
2. I was surprised by the whole "dancing in the streets" aspect of his killing. As good as i felt about this "being over" (those are huge quotes), i just can't get to dancing over death. i'm for closure, i'm for accountability, i have just seen and felt nauseous over too many broadcasts of Arab nations dancing in the streets over attacks (9-11, israel, etc) and killings to see it as an option. Celebrating killing is like fighting for peace and fucking for virginity . . . in the end it just doesn't seem to turn out for the best.
3. I saw a headline, "Rumsfeld: Intelligence may have come from Gitmo" (i will NOT link to this video). Here's my reaction to that. Fuck you Rumsfeld. Fuck you so fucking hard you fucking fuck. You can not try to rationalize your torture of prisoners by going on tv and saying it may have helped the administration after yours do what you couldn't. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. You aren't allowed to try and re-write history anymore. You're out. Your 15 minutes are over and you made your country worse. There is no excuse for torture. Torture without due process is exactly what we are fighting against you tired bag of shit. perhaps we need to water-board you until you can admit this to your own country who you feel so comfortable lying to.