The Letter D

If You Happen to Still Be Out There

2009-10-06T12:57:00.001-07:00

Still alive, still doing stand-up. If you're in the Midwest, there's a fairly decent chance that I'll be performing in your state soon. "Friend" me here on Facebook to get more information.

Just In Case You've Wondered What I've Been Up To

2009-07-03T20:15:00.000-07:00

Do You Know What A Dashiki Is?

2008-11-08T10:13:00.000-08:00

Damn, this is funny:

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

Solo

2008-09-23T13:33:00.000-07:00

My gym sells various things such as "power" drinks, t-shirts, earphones, and feather boas.

Yes, feather boas.

I though this was strange and asked the counter clerk what the feather boas were for. It turns out that my gym offers a "cardio strip" class and the boas are used for props. This class reportedly offers a fun way for women to sweat off the pounds. Of course, the women in the class were either north of their 50's or pushing two bills. So the class is full of aged, portly women pretending to be in a burlesque show.

Having seen a bit of this class, words cannot express the disappointment suffered by the men in these women's lives if they apply those moves at home.

Clearly, no one who participates in or runs this class knows anything about strip clubs, at least not those that have been in existence since prohibition was repealed. I've been to my fair share of Gentleman's Clubs, purely for sociological purposes of course, and while I've seen many things in these clubs, feather boas are not one of them.

Whatever you want to call them, these clubs emphasize the "strip" and minimize the "tease." You generally won't see feather boas, peacock fans, or any type of choreographed routine.

The women in the class must think that the stripper experience is exotic. It isn't. They probably think that dancers are beautiful or in good shape. Not always. In fact, the only thing that makes a woman qualified to be a stripper is the willingness to take off her clothes in public.

These are the things that you are far more likely to see on a stripper than a feather boa:

Caesarian scars.
Razor bumps.
Six inch stiletto heels.
Exit wounds.
7 to 12 tattoos.

My college roommate eventually became a police officer. As an undocumented perk, he could get in clubs for free because, while police couldn't moonlight as security, the owners encouraged the presence of off-duty cops. So when we hung out, it was either there or the donut shop. Basically, we went so often that I think I'm only I about four credits short of getting my M.D. in Gynecology

It eventually got old. But I had my "scared straight" moment about seven years ago. I was in Brownsville, TX for work and across the highway was the best gentleman's establishment that I'd ever been to. Beautiful women, not too smoky, nicely decorated, no cover, and inexpensive lap dances.

Everything was going well until one dancer approached for a dance. I agreed. She started the dance and top off her top revealing one breast. I don't mean that she only showed one breast, I mean she only had one breast. On the other side was something that resembled a deployed airbag with scar tissue.

Needless to say, I wasn't expecting this. Her top must have been padded. But what was I to do? I didn't want to offend her, but it was freaking me out. Every time, she leaned in, I flinched. I couldn't look at her. I just wanted the song to be over before I started crying. I blame the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Someone should have warned me. She could have least taken "Solo" as her stage name. Or I should have at least got half of my money back.

I don't ask for much but an even number of breasts should be a given.

Heavy Petting And The City

2008-09-17T12:10:00.000-07:00

Harper-Collins is planning a line of books, aimed at "young adults", based on the teenage lives of the characters in Sex and the City.

Strangely enough, I've already been working on this idea. To throw my hat in the ring, I offer the following:

Carrie, jotting in her diary: Boy, I wish there was some way that I could type my thoughts in a device that I could use while I'm sitting on my bed in my underwear. I tried this with my Apple II but I almost set my Duran Duran comforter on fire.

Anyway, it's not easy being a teen that wants to have it all. Things with Big are going okay. He's pretty busy with being the president of Student Council and of the Future Tycoons of America Club. But whenever we're together, he totally pushes me to a stage in the relationship that I'm not sure that I'm ready for.

Is it okay for me to mind "it", when "it" is the only thing on his mind?

Fortunately, I have my friends to support me:

Fade to lunchroom:

Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda are having their daily lunch in the gym/cafeteria.

Carrie: Big has been pushing me to do "it."

Miranda: (gasps) Are we talking the big "it"?

Carrie: Not the big "it", it's more like a little "it."

Samantha: Big has a little "it"?

Carrie: No, I mean his "it" is fine. I mean, I don't know if it's little or not, it's not like I've seen a lot of them.

Samantha: Well I have. For example, Mr. Derringer has an absolutely enormous "it."

Miranda: You've seen the guidance counselor's "it?"

Samantha: What? I needed a good letter of recommendation for college. So we did the big "it."

Charlotte: Ewww. I'm never going to do the big "it." Well, at least not after I marry Craig, the team quarterback, and we have a big wedding with announcements in the New York Times, and I have a beautiful wedding dress designed by either Camp Beverly Hills or Izod.

Carrie: No, it's not the big "it," it's the other "it."

Samantha: What other "it" are we talking about? There's like a hundred other "its" Believe me, I 've done them all.

Miranda: She's done a hundred "its." I can't find any time to do any "it" with AP Calculus, Debate Club, the Chess Team, the Pre-Law Society and the Curious About My True Sexual Orientation Club. Oh my God, did I just say that last one out loud?

The girls ignore Miranda.

Carrie: No, he wants me to do the "hand it."

Charlotte: Ewwww! (pause) What is the "hand it"?

Carrie: He wants me to touch his (pause) "it" and rub it.

Samantha: Oh, so he wants Handus Strokus?

Miranda: I've never heard of Handus Strokus.

Charlotte: Ewwww!

Carrie: Why does he want me to do that? What if I do it wrong? Will he still respect me if I do it? What if he tells all his friends? I don't want people to go around thinking I'm the type of girl who does Handus Strokus. Uh...no offense, Samantha.

Samantha: None taken. Listen Honey, guys are going to ask for a lot of things. And on the scale of "its," Handus Strokus is like a three out of ten.

Carrie: How do I know if I'm doing it right?

Samantha: Well, if you're doing it right, you'll know. Just bring a lot of Kleenex.

Carrie: For what?

Samantha: You'll see.

Charlotte: Ewwww!

The Persistence of Mammaries

2008-08-19T08:30:00.000-07:00

Why are guys so fascinated by breasts? I'm perplexed by the awesome power that a plunging neckline can have. I'm not even a "breast" guy. I can name several other female body parts that are more worthy of my attention. Even under the ideal situation, breasts are like Scooby-Doo cartoons, they only provide about seven or so minutes of entertainment before it's time to move on to other things.

Nonetheless I, like roughly 90% of my male brethen, have been held in sway by lovely lady lumps.

Case in point. Every year our fantasy football league holds its draft party in a nearby bar or restaurant. Last year, we took over the loft area of a piano bar (that was its "sports bar" section, so shut up).

Our waitress, to put it delicately, had an enormous rack.

She wore a scoop necked blouse. And there we were, about fifteen or so grown-ass men, with wives, girlfriends, inflatable love objects, etc., utterly beguiled by our server and her breasty ways, reduced to the level of twelve year olds who had just stumbled across their first Playboy.

At first, we exchanged elbow digs and knowing glances. I may have ordered dinner in a soft voice just so she'd lean in. One guy, who's probably still over the legal blood alcohol limit a year later, voiced some comments about her endowment.

At first I was mortified for her. Then I thought, "she knew what she looked like when she left the house. She didn't grow those things overnight." I'm all for being respectful, but come on now. It's not like she didn't know what she was packing. She works for tips. Her breasts were like my laptop - a tool of the trade.

That's another thing that I don't get, when are we supposed to notice breasts and when aren't we? I think there may be an acceptable level of glancing or gazing, maybe for a second or two, but after that it just gets creepy.

Women, I know that your "eyes are up here," but sometimes the harder I try not to notice, the harder it is not to look.

Here's what happens:

I'm minding my own business, thinking about work, the meaning of life, or Spider-Man, when I come across a comely young woman wearing one of those Victoria Secret's "push'em up if you've got 'em" bras and a low neckline.

I'm saying to myself, "Don't look down. Don't look down."

Meanwhile, I'm trying hard to listen to the conversation, which sometimes ends up being a story about something cute her dog did or how annoying her boyfriend is, when I hear another voice.

"Psst. D, down here. Check us out."

"I can't do that, that would be rude."

"Come on, don't be a wuss. Look how perky we are."

"I'm not listening to you. I'm listening to her talk about what she saw on the Food Channel last night."

"Seriously, you could bounce a quarter off of us."

"I'm ...trying... to look her...in the...eyes."

"Oh my, looks like it's a little chilly in here, doesn't it?

Before I get taken to task for objectifying women, I want to tell you who the real victims were that evening - the men.

You see, when we have the draft parties, we run a tab for food and alcohol and split it equally once the night is over. Some people abuse this and order things that they wouldn't if they were directly footing the bill, like desserts and drinks that are neither clear nor brown. This is the reason why socialism doesn't work.

Anyway, at the end of the evening, our team commissioner gave Dolly a tip as generous as her bust line. In his inebriated state, however, he failed to notice that because of the size of the group, the establishment had already included a 20% gratuity in our bill. She was more than double tipped (kinda poetic), she was tipped on her original tip. He passed on the lack of savings to the rest of the group.

I won the league last year and came away with less money than she did that evening.

So tell me, who was exploited that night?

I'm Still Back

2008-08-13T07:15:00.000-07:00

I intended to post again earlier, but the J-O-B prohibited it.

Anyway, I'm trying to regain all of your confidences in me, so I'm going to make the effort to get back to a regular posting schedule. For some reason, the firm keeps asking me to go to recruiting conferences and job fairs to trick eager young law students into the rewarding and soul-fulfilling life of law firm practice.

The firm even assigned me a mentee this summer, despite the fact that I'm not good at giving the rah-rah company line speech.

This is an actual quote from a conversation between me and a friend of mine who had just started at the firm, to give you a flavor for my "advice:"

Her: D, you have a lot of involvement in the community, you write freelance, and you practice law. How do you find the time?

Me: The secret is to do everything poorly.

I also told the summer clerks this year the following: "Law school has nothing to do with the practice of law. Look at law school exams. No client is going to call you with a question and expect you to give him or her an answer in three hours, without doing research, without talking to anyone else, and while sober."

Despite my habit of giving abysmal advice and my own career-limiting actions (e.g., writing a blog that obsesses about Jessica Alba's ass), I drove to Chicago last week to interview law students.

The cool thing about the trip was that I got to try out my GPS on my Blackberry. I finally caved in and got one of these horrible torture devices, so now I can't even go to the bathroom in peace without being e-mailed. One big problem is that you can't talk on the phone and hear directions at the same time. So I'm on the phone and I miss a turn and exit the highway, figuring that the GPS would recalculate the route to get me back on track.

Well the GPS ended up sending me through some rather interesting parts of Gary, Indiana. The first place that I see is a "Gentleman's Club," but trying to make good time on my trip and not having enough singles on me, I keep going. Not too far from there I see an adult bookstore, with a huge obnoxious banner that says "Toys. DVDs. Lubes."

Excuse me, lubes? That's not something that you usually see so boldly advertised. But apparently, it's a big impulse buy, so this business highlighted its wares.

Speaking of lube advertisements, have you noticed that companies are starting to advertise "personal lubricants" openly on television and in the newspapers? I'm not a prude by any stretch, but on Sunday mornings, when I'm reading the paper while enjoying my French toast, a full size circular advertising K-Y can be a little jarring. They had a campaign that actually said "Try K-Y and see what happens." Let me tell you from personal experience, that trick only works once.

Anyway, I'm still following the GPS instructions, when I notice a woman standing on the side of the road wearing pajama bottoms and a t-shirt. I think "that's odd" and move on. The next block is another women, dressed provactively, holding up a streetlight and surveying the traffic.

It finally dawns on me. I'm driving down the Gary "ho stroll." Thanks GPS!

I keep driving when I hear instructions that alarm me. Instead of the usual cold, robotic directions my phone says:

"Lock doors in ...fifty feet."

Sure enough, I drive through the Beirut section of Gary. I grew up in the Detroit area, so I'm used to seeing urban desolation, but this was like a Stephen King novel. I saw whole blocks of empty buildings, with no people whatsoever. The GPS chimed in.

"Keep your head ...on a swivel. Crack house in ... point two miles... on the left."

Next weekend, I'm in beautiful downtown Cleveland to do some more interviewing. This time I'll be flying and you know how my luck goes with flying.

Back From The Dead And Looking For A New Love

2008-07-22T07:51:00.000-07:00

Due to the wonders of sunlight, nice weather, and the finest pharmaceutical products, I'm ending my hibernation. The last several months have been a wild ride and it was hard to type from the fetal position, but it's time to get back into the swing of things.

I posted a couple of times in April, before I was fully emotionally ready with a few cryptic posts.

I suppose that I owe you all an explanation. It's been a difficult time, with Jessica Alba entering into her sham of a marriage and bearing the seed of some freaking production assistant, who's currently sponging off of her faltering career ("The Love Guru," really?") He's enjoying a lifestyle that by all rights should be mine. I should be denting her sofa cushions instead of typing this.

Anyway, enough of that. I'm pretty much open to a new love and am taking applications. So far, here are my options:

Kim Kardashian: She really should be the subject of my older posts, "I Hate Myself For Loving You." I didn't even know who she was until her sex tape was "leaked." I use the quotes because it is by far the most calculated celebrity sex tape out there. Seriously, if there was an Academy Award for Celebrity Sex Tapes, this should be the winner. But there is no way that this wasn't intended for wide release (apparently, much like Kim herself). It had professional lighting! There was a sound boom in one of the shots! The thing had credits! I tried to watch her show on VH1, but couldn't last a minute without having the sudden nearly uncontrollable urge to start hitting myself in the face with my shoe. It went away after I pressed "mute" on my remote. Anyway, I must admit that I'm uncontrollably drawn to her and her generously proportioned rear end, despite the fact that she is functionally (and just barely) retarded. I mean she's at the level of those "greeters" that Wal-Marts and the Home Depot hire for good luck.

Tila Tequila. Ok, this is one of those phenomenons that make me feel old. I really don't understand why she's on my television. Is it me or does she look like an alien visitor? But the kids (male and female) seem to dig her, so I guess I should give her some consideration. Plus, with her I'd never forget to take my medications, especially the antibiotics.

Dania Ramirez: An obscure choice perhaps. She played AJ's girlfriend Bianca on the Sopranos and one of the slayers on "Buffy." I started watching "Heroes" just because she was on it. Her character had the superhuman ability to suddenly make my pants fit uncomfortably.

Rachel Maddow: This is an unorthodox choice. But I keep seeing her on MSNBC and I think she's really clever, and I love clever women. She's a Rhodes Scholar, and you know what they say about women who are Rhodes Scholars (they are like Scorpios). Sure, she may not be "hot," or traditionally "attractive," or "heterosexual." Yes, she's a lesbian and that means that she probably hates men. Ok, maybe that's a stereotype. Just because she's a lesbian doesn't mean that she hates men or has a golden retriever, but I'm just playing the odds here. Even if she does hate men, most of my relationships have been with women who hated me. The good thing is that there would be a pretty good chance that she'd be open to introducing another women in the relationship.

I'm Going To Hell For This

2008-01-09T11:19:00.000-08:00

I'm not a religious person. Spiritually, my major is still "undeclared."

My three year old daughter, the Cub, however, goes to a "Christian" preschool, though I made sure that it was predominately a preschool with just a little Jesus sauce on the side, rather than a full blown indoctrination center where they don't teach any science (i.e., the Devil's subject).

Now all I hear about is how great Jesus is. She was singing some song, which I think was "Jesus Loves Me" even though my rule after the holidays is that I don't want to hear any songs with Santa, Frosty, Rudolph, or Jesus until at least Thanksgiving.

She sang a verse about Jesus being strong and I interrupted her asking:

"Who's stronger, Daddy or Jesus?"

I'm used to being the only superhero in her life. She thinks I'm the strongest man in the world. When I ask her who's stronger, Daddy or Spider-Man, or Daddy or the circus strongman, she always says that I am.

But this time she said "Jesus."

I know I shouldn't have been offended but I couldn't let it go. Granted, my biblical knowledge is limited, but I can't think of any instance where Jesus displayed superhuman strength. Transmutation, yes. Levitation, sure. Resurrection, check. But no superhuman strength. In fact, I can think of at least one instance where having superhuman strength would have come in handy for him.

I don't want to squelch her faith, so I tried to leave it alone, although I did tell her that night to finish her vegetables so that she could grow up to be big and strong like Jesus.

There's nothing like a three year old asking you if you've gotten right with the Lord.

Anyway, her mother took her to church this weekend and she was excited because she thought that Jesus was going to be there. She was disappointed when she was told that it was pretty unlikely that he'd appear.

I understand her expectation. Chuck E. Cheese is there when she goes to Chuck E. Cheese's. Mickey Mouse is at Disneyland. So why wouldn't Jesus show up at church?

I think churches are missing a golden opportunity. If you want to increase membership, you've got to get kids when they're young and less prone to asking critical questions. Why not have a Jesus mascot at the church for the kids?

He could come down the aisle during the service and hug or give hi-fives to the kids. Maybe the kids could sit on his lap and talk to him:

Jesus: Hey there, kid. What's your name?

Billy: Billy.

Jesus: Great, Billy. So have you been a good boy?

Billy: Yes, Jesus.

Jesus: You haven't been sinning have you?

Billy: I don't think so.

Jesus: Good, because that makes me sad. So what can I do for you?

Billy: Can you make my mom and dad get back together?

Jesus: Umm... (whispering) Listen kid. I'm not the real Jesus.

Billy: You're not?

Jesus: No, I'm just ... one of Jesus' helpers.

Billy: I wondered why you weren't the same Jesus as the one at my Grandma's church.

Jesus: That's another helper. I can't get your parents back together. But how about this nice coloring book?

Billy: Uh...OK. Thanks, Jesus. Or Jesus' friend, I mean.

This is the way to get asses in the pews. I can't believe no one has thought of this.

Smoke 'Em If You've Got 'Em (Or My Dad Loved Cigarettes More Than He Loved Me)

2008-01-08T11:34:00.000-08:00

My father has a great memory. His recall is so great that he remembers things that never actually happened. Sometimes I listen to him recount events from my childhood that I'm sure he must have seen on television because they never took place.

His more amusing imaginary anecdotes concern the sports life that he and I allegedly shared together. He has expressed his dismay in the past that I never played any sports in school, which is not completely true because I spent two (non-consecutive) days on the high school wrestling team.

He remembers throwing the football to me, which is odd because I never had a football growing up. The only piece of sporting equipment that I remember having was an under-inflated basketball that he brought home from the gym of the school where he taught. Flat ball + no air pump + no hoop = seconds of entertainment.

My father spent most of my childhood in his (aptly) La-Z-Boy recliner. If he ever tossed a football to me, it would have gone down like this:

Daddy D (holding football) "Hey, D. Go long."

Me (running) "How's this?"

Daddy D: "Further."

Me (running further): "Now?"

Daddy D (now yelling): "A little more."

Me: "Is this good?"

Daddy: "Yes. Hey, while you're down there, can you get me a pack of cigarettes at the store?"

My father loves smoking more than anything in the world. He's smoked at least two packs a day every day over the past 50 years. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if he threw a golden anniversary party to himself and his Benson & Hedges.

I've never even tried a cigarette. My father is my role model by opposition. I've rebelled against him by becoming a productive member of society. Yet, I probably inhaled more cigarette smoke in my life than you're average professional bowler.

When I was growing up, I constantly worried about him dying of lung cancer. So when I was like 11 or 12, I started making a simple request: Every year on my birthday, I asked him not to smoke. Just for that day. For me. And each year, he'd promise not to smoke.

But he would anyway.

It was a simple request, particularly for someone who claimed that he wasn't addicted. But every year, I'd catch him smoking or smell the smoke on him.

All I wanted was for him not to die. All he wanted was the next drag. So I learned at an early age that my dad cared more about nicotine than me, which has done wonders for my self-esteem.

I don't worry about him smoking anymore. It really is the closest thing that he's ever had to a hobby. At most, I worry about him having a long lingering death, but that's partially because medical care is expensive.

But his smoking has been a pain in the ass for me. What is it about smokers that the first thing to go is their ability to smell smoke? When he'd borrow my car, when I'd make him promise not to smoke only to return it so smoked up that I couldn't even sit in it. Even when I'd ask him not to smoke with me in the car, he'd make the concession of cracking his window, believing that the smoke would magically be removed from the vehicle.

And going out with him is the worst. When asked, I always request the non-smoking section out of habit. He'll correct me and we'd be seated in the dirtiest, dingiest part of the restaurant, where they hide the smokers. I'm just glad they don't have more options in restaurants or else he'd take them too. ("Sirs, would you like farting or non-farting?")

He's long reached the point that you can't even say anything about his smoking without him taking it personally. It's no longer something he does, but rather who he is. Before they divorced, my mom asked him not to smoke around him. He said that she knew he smoked when they walked down the aisle (and, knowing, my father, he literally smoked while he walked down the aisle) so he saw no reason to change.

I can't imagine why those crazy kids couldn't work things out.

The only good thing about his sedentary and unhealthy "lifestyle" is that it's apparently rendered his body so inhospitable that even cancer can't take hold.

D's Voters Guide

2008-01-03T10:11:00.000-08:00

As a public service, I'm weighing in on the stable of presidential candidates. The sad thing is that one of them is going to win. Whatever you may think of the current resident on Pennsylvania Avenue, really, is this the best that we can do? I'm seriously considering sitting this one out. Usually, I end up voting against someone rather than voting for someone, but this time out I'm really depressed.

Why can't we find better choices? I mean look at the perqs:

1. You get your own plane.

2. You can "legally" torture people (well, I'm not sure that you personally get to torture them. I think you have to assign the task to other people. But I'm sure if you really wanted to, they'd let you at least hook up the jumper cables).

3. You only get a performance evaluation once every four years.

4. Instant revenge on old girlfriends. "What does your husband do, again? Oh, he's that's right, he's an accountant. That's cool. Oh, me? Leader of the free world. Yep. I have the entire armed forces at my command. Stressful? Yeah. But I hear tax season is bad too, huh? Tell Greg I said 'hello.' "

5. Interns, baby, interns.

It's like being a rock star, but being able to send people to secret prisons.

But you'd think we'd posted the position on Monster.com with this crowd. In no particular order, here are our choices:

Mitt Romney: I don't see what the big deal is about him being a Mormon. In fact, I think he should play this up as much as possible, with the slogan "We've tried morons. Isn't it time we tried a Mormon?" Yes, the Latter Day Saints have some unusual beliefs, but name a religion that doesn't.

Yes, it's silly to believe that your prophet received a communication from God that came through his hat because everyone knows that the real God communicates through flaming shruberry. My point is that everyone who has deeply held religious beliefs, necessarily believes in something that to an outsider seems patently absurd.

Besides, who doesn't want to rule their own planet in the afterlife?

Which leads me to...

Mike Huckabee: The only thing that keeps Huckabee's beliefs from seeming as strange as Romney's is that more people just happen to share them. Huckabee has locked up the crucial Chuck Norris endorsement (No word yet on The Rock or Vin Diesel, so I'm still on the fence). If nothing else, wouldn't it be funny to hear someone say "President Huckabee" for at least four years?

Barack Obama: I was pretty amused at first when he was battling (and losing) to Hilary on who was "blacker." As much as I'd like to vote for him, the more he says about foreign policy, the more I think his bread is not quite baked yet. I'd be more partial to an Obama presidency if I wasn't sure that I could beat him at a game of Risk.

Dennis Kucinich: The question is not whether this nation is ready for its first black, female, Hispanic, or Mormon president, but rather are we ready for our first magical pixie president?

Fred Thompson: There was a groundswell to get this guy to run? Are you kidding me? What is it about being a bad actor makes people think that someone is qualified one to run for elected office? Do we really think that all a President does is read lines written by someone else? Wait, don't answer that.

Under this logic, Jackie Chan would make a great president. He's a man of action, always plays a good guy, and most importantly, does his own stunts. Thompson's faltering campaign is probably due to the writers' strike. If he gets the nomination, the Democrats will be forced to draft Joe Pesci.

John Edwards: I think he's gotten a bad rep for being overly feminine just because he may occasionally spend more than the GDP of Guatemela on his grooming. Why doesn't Mitt Romney get the same amount of flack? They have about 3,000 pearly teeth between them. On the other hand, he was voted as the candidate that Americans would most like to share a Mojito with.

Rudy Giuliani: Only he can save us from another 9/11. But how tough can he really be if he let his wife (I can't remember which one, maybe his seventh or eighth one) kick him out of Gracie Mansion when they split? I would have been all like, "You lissen here, woman. This here is the mansion for the Mayor of New York City. You're just a squirrel trying to get a nut. How many people were sodomized or slain in a hail of gunfire by police officers under your command? Yeah, that's what I thought. I'm not moving anywhere."

Ron Paul: In recent Presidental elections there has been a candidate who upsets the mainstream but captures the attention of those who have felt politically disenfranchised. Invariably, this person will be insane (see e.g., Ross Perot and Ralph Nader). Ron Paul, come on down.

You would think he's a real conservative's wet dream. I'm not saying that I agree with him but he appears to actually have a good command of the Constitution and guides his policies based on those parameters. So, in other words, there's no way he could ever win. Then again, what other candidate can attract both stoners and neo-nazi's? That's what they mean by being a uniter not a divider.

Hillary Clinton: How, other than mass hypnosis, did she pretty much begin this race as a front runner? I mean, half of the country thinks that she's the anti-Christ. There is hate and then there is hate. We'd have to quadruple the Secret Service budget. Then again, how can someone who gave their husband a Get Out of Jail Free Card after he got the most publicly dissected BJ from a twenty-something lose the Joe Six-Pack vote? Shannon Tweed has the same policy, and nobody hates her.

John McCain: A decorated war veteran and POW in the Spanish-American War (note to self: fact check this later.) One of the things about McCain is he's reached crazy old age. You know how when people get to be a certain age, they just don't give a damn about what anybody thinks and say the most blunt and insulting things and think nothing of it. It would be like my grandmother running the country, although I don't think he believes a lion lives in his bedroom closet. Plus, it will be funny when he finds out that he can't appoint Matlock to the Supreme Court.

Joe Biden, Christopher Dodd, Bill Richardson, Duncan Hunter, Mike Gravel: I'm not even sure if these guys are still in the race.

Happy New Year!

2007-12-31T07:20:00.000-08:00

I'm not dead.

I won the case that I discussed in my last two (very old)" posts.

I'm ready to get back to regularly scheduled programming. To prove this look for the following posts in the near future:

The Persistence of Mammaries: An Unscientific Study of the Power of Cleavage
My Dad Loved Cigarettes More Than He Loved Me
My Mom: Serial Dog Killer
Replacing Jessica Alba
D's Voter's Guide.

I'm serious about all of the above.

See you soon.

The Destination, Part II

2007-11-05T12:13:00.000-08:00

When we last left our hero, Northwest Airlines lost his suit the night before he was scheduled to be in court.

Northwest assured me that it would deliver my suitcase to the hotel at around midnight. I was up until about 12:45am preparing for my oral argument (man that sounds dirty when writing for a lay audience). I decided to go to bed once I started wondering if I could get away with working the word "freakstacy" in during my argument.

My bag still hadn't arrived.

I called the front desk to see if the bag came. The desk clerk told me that it hadn't but that sometimes bags come in as late (or early) as 2-3:00am.

Despite my cynical exterior, I'm an optimist at heart. I wanted to believe that nothing as horrible as having to appear in court wearing a sweater and khaki's would ever happen to me. The good people at Northwest wouldn't let that happen, right? My bag would arrive something while I slept and I would arrive in court impeccably groomed and with clean underwear.

Wrong.

I looked at the clock at about a quarter to three, called the desk and was told that my bag hadn't arrived and that there probably wouldn't be any deliveries until the morning.

I had to be in court at 9:00am.

A lesser man would have panicked. I considered my options. I could turn the events to my advantage by just showing up in court in my "street" clothes, and use that to demonstrate my faith in my argument.

Your honors (three judges in an appeal panel), I stand before you today in khakis and a sweater because that's how sure I am in my client's position. I'd be a fool to appear without proper attire if I thought in any way that my position was unsound. In fact, I am so confident that I'm actually freeballing right now! That's how I roll.

Well, that was Plan B. Plan A was to try to find some suitable attire in Covington, Kentucky at 4:00 in the morning. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Enter Wal-Mart.

I hopped in a cab. I never thought that I'd be grateful for Wal-Mart. I must confess that I'm a little shallow. I'm brand conscious and a little snobbish about clothes. My rule, up to this point, was "Never buy clothes at the same place where you can buy tools." But hey, that's what happens at four in the morning. You eat at Denny's, you shop at Wal-Mart. Both are establishments that thrive because they operate when there are no other options.

I ended up buying a $50 suit jacket, $12 shirt and $8 tie, because those were the nicest things they had. I looked at myself, under the harsh flourescent light. I thought that my skin would blister under these synthetic fabrics. It burned, I tell you, it burned. I bought underwear, t-shirts, and all the various products that I needed. For the first time in my life, I put my business attire on a conveyer belt and checked out.

The cab driver waited for me, but asked me when I got back in the cab why I had to go to court. I guess it did look weird, buying clothes at 4:00am for a court appearance. I just told him that is was all a big misunderstand and that I had no idea how those severed heads got in my trunk.

I got dressed back at the hotel, dazed from lack of sleep.

But I made it to court and gave what I thought was a pretty good argument, considering that I was dressed like the world's worst insurance agent.

By the time I left to catch my return flight, my bag still hadn't arrived. When I checked in, Northwest told me that my bag was coming in from Detroit about 40 minutes before my flight, but that they would tag it and it would immediately make it to my new flight.

I was skeptical. I argued that there was no way that it would make it. The clerk assured me that it had an "expedited" tag on it and that it would make it.

I knew he was lying. But I didn't care. I wanted to be lied to. I wanted him to tell me that everything was going to be ok. I wanted to believe that Northwest would be able to accomplish this relatively complicated task, despite the fact that they had been utterly incompetent in every other step of the way. I was Tina Turner in the second act of "What's Love Got To Do With It?" and Northwest was Ike.

Needless to say, my bag didn't make it. It somehow ended up in Minneapolis. I got the bag Saturday night, two days after I originally left.

No apology, no explanation, nothing.

I'll let you know how the judges ruled. This story would really suck if I lost.

It's Not The Journey, It's The Destination.

2007-11-01T15:42:00.000-07:00

Well, as we learned in the last post, an unhappy D is a writin’ D.

Right now, I’m making my way to Cincinnati for a hearing. It’s about a five and a half hour drive, so I had to decide whether I should fly or drive. I mistakenly thought that it would be more convenient to fly and have been paying for it since.

Something always goes wrong when I fly. The airline once lost my bag when I took a direct flight to Cleveland (which was less than an hour flight), though I flew at 6:00 am and there was no one else in the check-in or security line. So they really had to work extra hard at losing that bag.

Because I can’t afford to have the airline play Criss Angel with my luggage this time around, I FedExed my files to the hotel and planned to take my suit in a carry-on bag. Well, everything was fine until I got stopped in security because of the new guidelines regarding carrying “liquids” on the plane. I couldn’t keep my toiletries in its usual case. I had to place them all in a clear one-quart sized plastic bag. This was very important to the airline, because my otherwise explosive toothpaste would be rendered harmless by the miraculous healing properties of a Ziploc bag.

But I didn’t have such a bag and no place there sold them. You can buy everything short of a handjob in an airport these days, but I couldn’t find a simple plastic bag. When I get back, I’m going to get a kiosk, where I’ll sell these bags for $10 each. I would have been ecstatic to pay this amount.

Not wanting to part with my stuff, I decided checked my bag, which is probably somewhere over the Great Plains as I write this.

I know this is a security measure designed to keep me safe. But I also know that there is absolutely no risk of terrorism on my flight.

I know this because I fly Northwest.

No self-respecting terrorist would ever fly Northwest. It lacks the professionalism and commitment to quality service demanded by the modern-day evildoer.

Phone conversation transcripts (obtained courtesy of FISA)

Ahmad: Dear Leader, it is I, your servant Ahmad.

OBL: Where are you, Ahmad? You were scheduled for martyrdom two hours ago!

Ahmad: I’m sorry Benevolent One, but my flight is delayed. Northwest says that there is "weather" in Chicago.

OBL: They always say there is “weather” in Chicago! What does that mean anyway?

Ahmad: I have no idea. They also said that they are changing crews. And I believe a lightbulb in out in one of the flight instruments. They said to check back in a couple of hours.

OBL: Next time we attack the Great Satan, we fly Delta!

Another transcript:

Ahmad: What do you mean that you lost my bag? How can you lose my bag? I had a direct flight!

Customer Service Rep: I’m sorry, sir. Can you please describe it?

Ahmad: Yes, it was a black suitcase. And…uh… it might glow in the dark.

I took a connecting flight to Detroit, which was so small and so packed that I sincerely hope that none of the women on it were ovulating, because they would probably end up impregnated from the sheer proximity to the other passengers.

I have the worst luck with seatmates when I travel. I never get the twenty-one year old wanna-be spokesmodel, who’s traveling from the Midwest to the big city with nothing but perky breasts and a dream. No, like on my recent trip to California, I get the guy who farted his way through two time-zones. I spent the flight hoping for a sudden loss of cabin pressure so that the oxygen masks would drop.

Airplanes are disgusting places. I can’t imagine ever being horny enough to join the Mile High Club. First off, the bathrooms are not even big enough for me to have sex with myself, much less with someone else. Plus, I’d hate to come in contact with the particulates that coat everything in there after repeated explosive flushings.

I figured out why airlines are so bad during the flight attendant’s pre-flight instructions. How can they have any respect for their customers when they think that we are so dumb that they have to show us how to fasten our seatbelt?

Update: Ok, I made it to the airport, and guess whose bag didn’t make it? I’m completely serious. I went to the customer service rep. She looked on the computer and tells me that my bag is still in Detroit. She can’t explain why my bag decided not to join me. Perhaps it is visiting friends.

My suit is in the bag. I’d hate to appear in court without a suit. I’d hate even more to go commando. She tells me that my bag is will be at the airport at 10:30 and that they’ll deliver it to the hotel about midnight.

I’m starting to think that Northwest has something against me. It may have something to do with a nasty series of letters that I wrote them when trying to help a friend with her own lost bag dispute. I closed the last letter with “Blow me” instead of “Sincerely,” although I sincerely meant it. I wrote it in Latin because that seemed more lawyerly.

Plagiarism Is The Sincerest Form Of Flattery

2007-10-16T13:04:00.000-07:00

See, I was going to write a nice little post today, but now I'm all pissed off.

Things today started fine. About a month ago, someone wrote me to ask if he could read D's True Halloween Story on his podcast, The Halloween Haunt. I agreed and listened to the podcast today. I thought he did an excellent job. It's weird hearing my words read by someone else butI appreciated the time and production that went into the piece. Very well done, thank you.

That is how you go about things. I'm flattered if someone likes my stuff and wants to link me to their site or re-posts something while giving me credit.

My friend J-Jo, found this shameless ripoff of my post, which some guy passed off as his own "true story" on his site last year. This is what you do not do:

Here he is by the way, from his blog, Gallagher's love child:

Let's compare and contrast, shall we?

Me (Originally posted on October 28, 2005):

I'm generally a skeptic. I don't believe in things that I can't prove exist like alien abduction, ghosts, or the female orgasm.

Pale imitation of Yours Truly:

I'm generally a skeptic. I don't believe in things that I can't prove exist like alien abductions, free Nokia ringtones, "straight" Metallica fans, intelligence in the "White House", escape from Spammers or the female orgasm. Okay, enough said.

So he steals my joke, but thinks his embellishment made it better. Asshole.

That's just the first paragraph, he goes on to steal my post, yet going through the motions of changing the names and adding his own stupid stuff, because he's so freaking creative.

Let's move along.

The genius that is me:

My roommate Charles and I called BS. We were sure that they were just trying to mess with us. You can't communicate with the dead, especially with something that's sold in the same aisle as Monopoly and Hungry Hungry Hippos.

They invited us to watch them use it on Halloween. Charles and I decided that the only way we'd believe the story is if he and I used the board ourselves. We only trusted each other not to move the pointer.

The Douche:

My roommate (I'll call him Wayne for reasons of anonymity) and I called all this BS. We were sure they were just trying to mess with us. You can't communicate with the dead, especially with something that's sold in the same aisle as Monopoly and Hungry Hungry Hippos, right?

Come Halloween Night they invited us to watch them use it. But, Wayne and I had decided the only way we'd believe the story was if we could make our own board and use it ourselves. We'd heard home made boards worked just as well and we only trusted each other not to move the planchette. The picture shown above is the actual photo of the Ouija Board we had made.

I really hate him. He decided the story would be better if he and "Wayne" made their own Ouija board? What is wrong with this guy? So he and his imaginary friend made a freaking imaginary Ouija board, no doubt gazing lovingly in each other's eyes. Yep, I knew my story was missing something. Arts and crafts.

Let's compare again.

Someone who is actually interesting:

Eventually, the reaction from the pointer got more furious. Even though we both had only our fingertips lightly on the board, I felt the a strong pulling force coming from below the board itself practically pulling it away. Without a question, the pointer raced across the board, quicker than we could follow.

The message stated:"H-E-I-S-H-E-R-E"

It took us a second before it registered.

He is here.

Game over. Charles and I, along with the entire group, ran outside the room. I've never been that freaked out before in my life.

Someone who is a sad pathetic person:

At that very instant I felt a coldness overtake me, and something I don't know what, or even if it was real, touched my shoulder. I glanced upwards and saw everyone staring, with frightened faces, past my head at what should have been empty space behind me in the room.
That was all we could take.

Game over. Wayne and I, along with the entire group, ran outdown the satirs and out of the attic. I've never been that freaked out before in my life.

When we got home, I was so frightened that I begged Wayne to hold me. I'd thought of Wayne as a friend yet hoped we could be more. Something about his masculinity comforted me at this time. I could tell from the pressure against my leg as he held me, that he felt the same longing that I had.

Hysterical from the experience, I begged him to take me then and there.

And he did strongly, repeatedly and vigorously. I fondly recall the remnants of his love on my ridiculous moustache.

We were joined in a civil ceremony late last spring.

If you can't think of your own stuff and have to steal from others, then you shouldn't post. I'd read more of your stuff to see what else you've stolen but I can't make it through your weak narcolepsy inducing posts.

Asshole.

The Belly Of The Beast

2007-09-14T10:43:00.000-07:00

Today, the most powerful man in the free world, V.P. Dick Cheney, came to Grand Rapids to speak about Iraq and the War on Terror to an invitation-only group of politicians, friends, donors, VIPs, and others. Due to a glitch in the Matrix, I received an invitation.

The event took place at the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum. President Ford was Grand Rapids' favorite son, who rose to the Presidency in an unlikely turn of events similar to when Abin Sur passed on the mantle of the Green Lantern to Hal Jordan.

Those who have read this blog can probably sense my political bend. I'm a radical moderate. My general philosophy is that people should be left alone to do what they want as long as it doesn't hurt others and I don't have to pay for it. That kind of sounds like I'm a libertarian, but I don't think I am, if for no other reason that I don't still live with my parents.

Although I'm not a Cheney fan, I wasn't going to turn down such a rare invitation. I sat in front of a couple of blue hairs, who must have alternatively thought they were either at church or a Tom Jones' concert. They couldn't agree enough with everything that he said, literally saying "Amen" to every other statement. I was ready for them to start throwing hotel keys or their giant panties up on the podium.

So there I was, like an aneurysm in the Hive Mind. You see, when you talk about the conservative Midwest, when you're wondering who makes up the 25% or so people who think everything is going swimmingly, you're probably talking about Grand Rapids.

I resisted the urge to get my 15 minutes of national prominence by yelling out "Howard Stern!" or "Make my funk the P-Funk!" If I hadn't controlled myself, you all could be watching clips of me being pummeled by the Secret Service on YouTube right now.

Cheney's opening act was a patriotic a capella group called (seriously) Voices of Freedom. They performed all the hits like "God Bless America," "I'm Proud to Be An American," and "Sexual Healing". Ok, maybe not the last one, but it would've brought down the house.

I'm an open-minded person. I appreciate good, persuasive arguments even if I don't agree with them. And in fairness, Cheney delivered the best justification that I've ever heard for keeping a significant military presence in Iraq. Although he made numerous conclusory statements on things that I think are arguable at best, he gave an excellent clear-minded, logical, forceful argument for the necessity of the war.

And then he turned into a bat and flew away.

The Revolution Will Be Airbrushed

2007-08-03T07:17:00.000-07:00

Lindsay, I know things have been crazy for you lately. I appreciate that you've taken time to talk to me.

That's ok, D. I knew that I could count on you to get my message out unfiltered. But I have to ask that you not call me by my government name. I am now Afeni Amaru X.

Uh, Ok. Why did you change your name?

It's part of my journey to truth. I have defined myself and rejected the classification that the oppressors have laid on me.

Who are the oppressors?

Isn't it obvious? There is a network of corporate, government, and media conspirators that is pulling the strings not only to bring me down, but also my sisters in the struggle, Paris, Nicole, and Britney.

Why do you believe that you are being targeted?

The Man does not want to see thin attractive young women of economic means succeed. They want to bring us down and incarcerate us. It's political, isn't it obvious?

Frankly, no.

Surely you can't think that so many of us being jailed and vilified in the media all at the same time is mere coincidence. The proof of the conspiracy is staggering. Do you know that right now, there are more debutantes and actresses in jail than in college? Why is that?

Most seem to be jailed for alcohol related offenses.

Alcohol. That's how the Man dealt with the Native Americans, isn't it?

I still don't understand why you believe that the government would conspire to bring you down.

We inspire youth. They know that we could one day rise up and start the revolution.

It would be the only revolution that has to stop after every meal to purge.

Don't make light of this. I am part of the SLF, the Starlet Liberation Front, a revolutionary group designed to cast off the Tiffany chains of our oppressors.

How long has the SLF been in operation?

We've been operating in secret over the past several years, usually meeting in the VIP sections of nightclubs. You've seen our signs in your media rags and internet sites, but you've been blind to them.

I don't understand.

The black power movement used the powerful sign of the black fist to show solidarity. We've adopted our own. Surely, you don't think all those pictures of us getting out of limousines without underwear were accidental. That's our sign. Instead of the black fist, we use the pink...

Um, this is a family site.

I'm sorry. But can you think of any more powerful sign? What prompts more anxiety in our society than female sexuality? Originally, we were going to use the nipple slip but it wasn't as empowering.

So what we are seeing now in the media is evidence that your organization is under attack?

Yes. Although we managed to operate in secret for awhile, the FBI started putting infiltrators in our midst. When the revolution occurs, that traitorous snitch Hilary Duff while be the first up against the wall!

Why are you telling me this?

Just in case something happens to me. Look at Sister Britney. She's being made an example. And Sister Nicole, going to jail while she carries a child of the revolution. It won't be long until one of us is assassinated.

Is there anything that you want to tell today's young women?

Stay strong, my sisters. Wake up. And don't let them hate you because you're beautiful.

It's Business Time!

2007-07-17T15:57:00.001-07:00

Damn, I love this.

Screw You, Neal Schweiber!

2007-07-11T11:11:00.000-07:00

Last month, I attended Robert McKee's Story Seminar in San Francisco. For those that are unfamiliar, McKee is considered the "guru" for aspiring (and working) screenwriters and has created a cult-like following. I've read his book "Story" and decided to treat myself to travelling across the country on Northwest Airlines (whose motto is a tie between "Bags? What bags?" and "We've cancelled your flight, isn't that funny?") for his 36-hour, three day seminar.

I can't even make a joke about it. It was an amazing, profound experience. I unsuccessly tried to explain how great this weekend was to a friend, but he kept asking me "Are you sure that you didn't get laid out there?"

Anyway, Pixar reportedly sends a bunch of people to the seminar when it's in SF. It's not unusual for well known screenwriters, directors, producers, etc. to attend along side wanna-be's like yours truly. I saw a couple of people that looked familiar and I thought were in the industry, but there was one that I had no doubt about.

On the first day, I noticed a guy in the class that looked very familar. I leaned over to a guy sitting next to me:

"Wait a minute, is that...?"

"Yeah, it's the guy from Freaks and Geeks."

It was Samm Levine, who played Neal Schweiber on the late lamented Freaks and Geeks, a cult favorite show. Ok, not exactly A-list, but there is something weird about seeing someone "famous" in an intimate setting (no really, I didn't get laid on the trip).

So for the rest of the weekend, I tortured myself about whether I should introduce myself to him. My internal dialogue was like this:

Wow, I should say 'hello'. But what do I say? That I liked Freaks and Geeks. I could say that I enjoyed his work. No, that's too trite. I bet everyone says that. Besides, it wasn't like he was my favorite character or anything. That would be Bill Haverchuck. What if I said that I thought he was good on that episode of Entourage. Maybe even "That's so Raven," I bet no one has ever said that. He doesn't seem to be interacting with anyone. Maybe he doesn't want to be bothered.

Later that day:

Screw Samm Levine! Thinks he's too good to say hello? It's not like he's ridden to a high level of success after the show tanked. Not Another Teen Movie? Please. Freaking child star. Who does he think he is, anyway? Look at him sitting there, all aloof.

The next day:

You know, he's probably a decent guy. No one is approaching him, maybe they don't know who he is. Not that many people watched Freaks and Geeks. But wait, would I even talk to him if he wasn't on a television show? Probably not. So I'm supposed to drop everything to kiss his ass? Forget that! Well, I guess I could pretend like I don't know who he is, and let him tell me. And then I could play it off, like "yeah, I watched Freaks and Geeks, you were on that? Really, who did you play? No, I don't remember you." You know, put him on the defensive and make him do the work.

Sunday afternoon:

Hey, a couple of people are talking to him. He's making conversation. He's telling them a story. Boy, he's really getting into it. He's really animated. A little too much if you ask me. That's so sad, he's like relieved that someone recognized him. Maybe I've got him all wrong.

I'm embarrassed to say that I tried to make eye contact with him during breaks. You know, then smoothly open up with a line. Who knows, maybe we'd hit it off, you never know, right? But nothing. I think by the end of the seminar, he was starting to get a little scared of me.

So yeah, in addition to attending an incredible seminar, I spent the weekend unsuccessfully trying to "hit on" a guy. Then again, I was in San Francisco. When in Rome, I guess.

The Rumors Of My Demise

2007-05-30T10:12:00.000-07:00

... have only been slightly exaggerated.

I won't bore you all with the details of my absence (cough...rehab... cough, cough). I will share with you another career limiting opportunity that I've been offered. To add to attorney, freelance writer, stand-up comedian, and failed blogger, I know will be a beauty pageant judge...um...for Miss Teen Michigan.

Man, that last sentence would have been a lot more impressive if not for the "teen" part. I mean, we're not talking about the Jon Benet Ramsey types of pageant, which I think are only legal in Thailand. No, this is affiliated with Miss Michigan which feeds into Miss America. So see, it's totally respectable, right?

My friends' reactions have been divided among gender lines. The word "creepy" isn't used in everyday conversation, but just about every single woman that I've shared this news with has uttered it. One even accused me of being a tool of patriarchal oppression, as if the pageant is kidnapping girls off the street and forcing them to come up with a five minute talent routine (If only...)

My male friends just want to know who I paid off.

The weird thing is that someone recommended me saying that I would be "perfect" as a judge.
I'm a little concerned why someone thought that I would be perfect for this. I hope it's because of my sense of humor and not because I'm not a registered sex offender.

As a writer, I think this is worth doing for the experience alone. And let me tell you, I need new experiences. The only things you all have missed from me in the last month are deconstructions of "Dora the Explorer" and "Wonderpets."

Something In The Water (Does Not Compute)

2007-04-18T10:49:00.000-07:00

As if I'm not already fully stocked up on crazy, I recently read that testing of our local water supply revealed traces of prescription medications such as birth control hormones, Codeine, and Prozac.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. I'm not an alarmist. I'd put this on my list of worries down somewhere between spontaneous human combustion and goblins.

I'm not even sure I'm opposed to intentionally putting drugs in the water supply. In fact, they should probably pump anti-depressants into the water like they do Flouride. I do find it interesting, however, that given the area's prevailing moral values, it is easier to get birth control medication from the water here than in our pharmacies.

I found some of the comments in the article interesting:

Perbeck is most concerned about the effect of birth-control hormones on fish. In some parts of the country, scientists have found male fish with female ovarian tissues.

"The fish are constantly exposed to hormones," Perbeck said.

So as if high mercury levels aren't enough, now we have to worry about transsexual fish. And if they mate with the snakehead fish, they'll be able to walk on land. Giving fish uncontrolled access birth control would no doubt lead to increased aquatic promiscuity and the spread of STD's.

I don't suggest that our water is any worse that in any other place. If drugs are in our water, they're probably in yours, too. So from now on, no more flushing your drugs down the toilet.

Unless, of course, the police are banging on your door.

Sam-I-Am: An Intimate Portrait

2007-04-16T08:00:00.000-07:00

It's evening on a rundown corner of Whoville. Few would suspect that the shaggy haired man standing next to me was once one of the most notorious drug pushers in the land.

He says those days are behind him. Just recently paroled, he says he's fortunate to get out of what he calls "The Game" still a relatively young man. So many others meet their ends in prison or in a body bag.

He returns home seeking a new life and stopping others from following in his footsteps.

Tell me what it was like growing up here.

It was rough. Unfortunately, things haven't gotten much better. My earliest childhood memory was peeking out of the window one night after hearing some shouting in front of our house. See back then, the Star-Bellied Boys ran this block. That night, a crew got caught on the wrong side of Whoville without stars upon thars, you know what I'm sayin'. Things got a little heated. I remember a stray bullet crashing in through my window, just missing my head.

Say, that's a story I bet no one can beat.

Yeah. And to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street.

When did you start pushing drugs?

Well, I was brought up in The Game. My pops ran a Star-On/Star-Off Machine Scam down on the beach, so it was in my blood. It seemed like everybody had a hustle in that day. I used to run with a home invasion crew led by the Cat in the Hat and Thing One and Thing Two.

When I was about fifteen I got hooked up with a crew that found a green eggs and ham supplier from Colombia. I'll never forget my first sale. There was this old cranky Who from down the block who didn't like me. I was like "Never mind liking me, I'm about to hook you up with some green eggs and ham. You've got to hit this stuff. It'll blow your mind." He was all on this "just say no" shit, so he wasn't trying to hear it. But I was persistent. I wouldn't take "no" for an answer. I was like, "just try it."

And what happened when he did?

You can guess. That's some addictive shit. Crack has nothing on green eggs and ham. The next thing you know, he was a green eggs and ham fiend. He was eating it in the rain, on the train, in a house, with a mouse. He would eat it here and there. He would eat it anywhere.

But only the first hit was free, you know.

So I was making lots of money, having fun that's funny, all that stuff. Eventually, I got too big and I got brought down. I ended up getting sent upstate for 10 years.

What was prison like?

There is nothing good about prison, don't let anyone fool you. My cellie Horton was cool though.

Horton? Why was he in prison?

He was in for assault.

Assault? Horton seems like a gentle soul.

Well they say Horton hurt a ho.

So what are you going to do now that you're out?

I'm trying to reach out to the youngsters. See that kid over there?

Sam-I-Am points to a teenaged yellow furred Who wearing a "Stop Sneetchin'" t-shirt.

That's the type of young Who that I'm trying to reach. He reminds me of myself at that age. Tryin' to be hard. You know, acting like his heart is two sizes too small. He probably grew up without a pop to hop on.

I tell kids like him that they don't have to end up like me. He's got a head full of brains and shoes full of feet. If he could just stay away from the Game...Oh, the places he'll go!

ADHD

2007-04-11T10:14:00.000-07:00

Idle thought in an attempt to get the motor running again:

Snoop Dogg, being charged with gun and marijuana possession? Are you serious? How can this be?

Talk about picking the low-hanging fruit. He's been picked up several times over the last few months for having marijuana and weapons. It's almost too easy for the police. Police departments should use him to train their cadets on drug searches. Anyone who can't find weed on him should flunk out of the academy.

Usually police officers have to have probable cause to search someone. Here, the probable cause is that he's freaking Snoop Dogg.

I would imagine that the prosecution is going to have a relatively easy time with this one:

Prosecutor: Can you please tell the Jury what Mr. Dogg was doing before you searched him?

Police Officer: Well, he was rolling down the street smoking endo and I believe he was sipping on a substance that turned out to be gin and juice.

Prosecutor: What was his demeanor?

Police Officer: Laid back.

Prosecutor: Laid back?

Police Officer: Yes. You know, like he had his mind on his money and his money on his mind.

I wonder if it's too late to market and sell some "Free Snoop" t-shirts.

Stay Tuned

2007-04-09T13:28:00.000-07:00

I've had Britney chained to a radiator in my house over the past few weeks. It's taking a little longer than I expected to get the Devil out of her. Will post soon.

Cookie Monster

2007-03-15T07:46:00.000-07:00

My co-workers have received their annual delivery of Girl Scout Cookies. For some reason, and despite the fact that there were at least 90 people selling them, I've missed the ordering time. I feel like a Hindu on Christmas.

I'm not happy about this. I think the Girl Scouts are very savvy by limiting the sales period and narrowing the distrubition channels, thereby artificially increasing demand. So now I'm cookieless when people are practically making forts in their offices out of the dozens of boxes they ordered. Sure I've thought about entering the Girl Scout Cookie gray market, and pay a premium to get some of their surplus cookies, but people are pretty reluctant to part with their cookies, knowing that they won't be able to get more until next year.

And Girl Scout Cookies are like crack. Actually, I take that back. Besides that being an overused cliche, I've never actually tried crack, so I'm unqualified to compare its addictive quality to these cookies. So I guess what I mean to say is that Girl Scout Cookies are like heroin.

I managed to score a box of Shortbread cookies from a generous co-worker. Well, actually they fell out of her tote bag after I pushed her down a stairway.

Anyway, Girl Scout Cookies have to be the greatest fundraising device. Nothing against the Girl Scouts, but they aren't that high on my list of charitable organizations. The highest, by the way, would be the Society for the Prevention of BDD. But it doesn't matter, if Al-Qaeda sold Cartwheels, I'd probably buy them.

Guess Who's Back?

2007-03-13T07:55:00.000-07:00

I know. I've got a hell of a lot of nerve strolling back in after being gone for so long. I didn't call, I didn't write. And now I expect you to just take me back. Don't make me beg.

I know I've posted like an old man with a bad prostate pees, in spurts or not at all. But as the snow melts here, daylight saving time began (or ended, I can never remember), and Angelina Jolie has adopted another kid, I know that spring is just around the corner and I feel optimistic.

One of the few stories that I've been following over the last few weeks took place here in Michigan, where Stephen Grant allegedly strangled his wife to death and dismembered her. He was charged after police found his wife's torso in the garage.

Have you ever noticed that unlike just about every other body part, if you read a story with the word "torso" in it, chances are that something has gone horribly wrong? The first thing I thought about when I read about the discovery was "that totally sounds like something that I'd do." Not the dismemberment part, but leaving the torso in the garage.

I could totally see myself putting the torso in the garage with full intentions of disposing of it later. But you kind of forget about that stuff after awhile, right? I still have some paint cans from four years ago in my garage. All I have to do is take it to some recycling facility or wherever, but I haven't gotten around to it. So yeah, I could see thinking, "Man I have to go get something to weigh this torso down and then I have to drive really far to find a lake or someplace to dump it. Man, gas prices are really high. It would be nice if I had a business trip in a rural area so that I could get a mileage reimbusement." The next thing I know, it's several months later and police dogs are sniffing around my home. Know what I mean? Yeah, me neither.

But the plot thickens. Now the word is that Mr. Grant may have had an affair with his German au pair (that rhymes). I didn't know that au pairs were real. I thought that was something that Cinemax invented, you know, like really hot lesbians.

Anyway, can having an au pair ever be a good idea? Doesn't the man in the house end up hooking up with the au pair like 90% of the time? In fact, I think that's part of the whole deal for au pairs - food, lodging and penis.

Stephen Grant has not only killed his wife and forever scarred his children, but he has also ruined things for any man whose wife was on the fence about getting an au pair or even hiring a really hot babysitter.

Sure it may sound fun to have a young attractive foreign woman in your house taking care of your children and doing light housework. But then the next thing you know you're scattering limbs over frozen land in Michigan.

It's just not worth it.

This public service announcement has been brought to you by The Letter D.

It's Never Pretty When Love Dies

2007-02-19T07:44:00.000-08:00

The first thing I thought of when I saw that Britney Spears freaked out and cut off all her hair is that maybe I've been wrong about Kevin Federline. Any man that can drive a woman to do something so crazy after a break-up must be doing something right.

Of course, the Player of the Year is still Astronaut William Oefelein , who had a woman so desperate to be with him that she drove hundreds of miles to abduct and possibly kill a rival for his affections, even wearing diapers so she could save time. I thought, wow, he must be able to use his penis to harness him to the shuttle when he goes on space walks.

So K-Fed has become a national punchline, a failed rapper, and sideshow attraction. But it's now clear that in at least one area, he was "putting in work." So from now on, he's getting a pass from me.

Don't we all secretly hope that our exes flame out spectacularly after we break-up? Don't we want to see that the other person can't make it without us rather than our just being a speed bump in their lives? I usually hope that she has a significant weight gain or that she joins a cult or something.

There are bad break-ups and then there is Britney Spears. She was America's Sweetheart and a once unattainable sex symbol. Unless someone is casting for a new Star Trek series, I'm not sure she can ever come back from this. Whitney Houston is laughing at her.

(See Baldney, you should have listened to my advice).

Looking For Love

2007-02-14T07:19:00.000-08:00

Romance is in the air (Or on the Internet).

I can tell by looking at the Googled search terms that are leading people to this blog on this Valentine's Day:

"Is it ok for boys to touch their mom's breasts?" If the boy is old enough to ask first, probably not.

"The fine line between romance and stalking" Hint: The line is not as fine as you may think.

"girls chloroformed at work clips" See above.

"Should I cheat on my girlfriend on spring break?" Absolutely. That's what happens when people go on spring break without their significant others. Hence, the "break". My senior year of undergrad, I stayed home while my girlfriend went to South Padre (this was when that was the hot place). She said she's bring me something back. I told her that whatever she brought back, I hoped it was curable.

"Mom son sex stories blogspot" I usually get hits like this closer to Mother's Day.

"Married to a bedwetter" Let me look at the vows. Hmm, sickness and health...richer or poorer... nope, nothing about incontinence.

"Tips on being a Hooter's waitress" Actually, I have one. That rule about not dating patrons? It's really more of a suggestion.

Ok, now I have to send Jason Mulgrew $5.

If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it's yours. If it doesn't, it never was.

That is probably the most often used quote about relationships, usually uttered by someone who is trying to get out of the relationship. This line is really about the person that's leaving actually wanting to get a head start. You have about two weeks or so, while the other person wonders if you're ever coming back.

I say if you love something, hobble it like Kathy Bates did to James Caan in Misery. That way you can easily drag it back if it tries to escape.

Round Up The Usual Suspects

2007-02-12T07:05:00.000-08:00

As Chuck Klosterman wrote, "Live weird, die weird."

The death of Anna Nicole Smith has people wondering about the nature of her death. What little is known so far is that she was found naked and with a small amount of vomit present on her, neither of which was an unusual circumstance before her death.

But the real mystery appears to be, "Who's the father of Baby Dannielynn Hope Marshall Stern?" We here at The Letter D have broken down the odds. Men generally deny being the progenitor of offspring under such circumstances, but several men believe that there are approximately 474 million reasons to claim this child as their own.

Larry Birkhead: Reputedly Anna Nicole's boyfriend during the magical conception period. What does it say when the person who had his attorney request that a sample be taken from Anna Nicole's corpse may have been the most stable person in Anna Nicole's life? Odds 3:2

Howard K. Stern: Anna Nicole's parasitic stalker/attorney. I'm not even sure what type of law he practiced, but I've never had the opportunity to latch on to a drug addled ex-stripper reality star heiress. (I'm keeping my fingers crossed, though). If you've been found in the same room as two separate dead bodies in six months, isn't it time for you to closely examine your life? Unless Anna accidentally dried off with the wrong towel, there's no way he's the father. Odds 4:1

J. Howard Marshall: I've read the now-debunked rumor that Anna Nicole may had some of his 90-year old DNA frozen before his death. For this to be true, his ancient fossilized "product" must not only have been viable, it must have been able to survive freezing, thawing, then the long journey through Casa Anna Nicole. Plus, he would have had to survive its "extraction." This guy was so old, if Dannielynn was his daughter, she would have been born at least seven years old. Odds: 1000:1.

Prince Frederick Von Anhalt: This freak, also known as Mr. Zsa Zsa Gabor (husband number 8!) gave a press conference where he said that he's been a "bad boy" and could possibly be the father of Dannielynn. Yes, we're in a slow news period. The things people will do to escape the daily horror of servicing a decaying sex symbol. Though I'm kinda hoping it's him because he sounds like a James Bond villain. Odds 5,000:1

Kevin Federline: Ok, he may not have any ties to Anna Nicole, but the U.S. Census Bureau states that 1 out of every 250 births in the United States last year were sired by K-Fed, so I'd be irresponsible to not even raise the possibility. Odds 250:1

Satan: I'm just sayin' that deals for fame with infernal beings often have a catch. Odds 10,000:1

Parthenogenesis: Could Dannielynn have been asexually conceived? It occurs in nature all the time, though usually only with life forms such as reptiles and fish. So, it could happen. Odds. 25,000:1

Naptime Of The Dead

2007-02-09T05:37:00.000-08:00

Last month, the world's oldest woman died at 115. I didn't pay it much mind because as soon as she did, sure enough, there was another world's oldest woman ready to assume her duties.

The local paper then featured an article on a woman who is 111. Invariably, the theme to any interview with a person that old is, "Why aren't you dead yet?" Because that's really what we want to know. Otherwise the conversation with a person that old ends up being about how inexpensive candy used to be.

People always want the secret to longevity. But who really wants to be 111 years old? The human body isn't designed to last that long. And if you've lived so long that it's been decades since your last satisfactory bowel movement, isn't it time to put the Grim Reaper on speed dial?

The article said that there are about 80 people in the world that are 110 or so. This seems like a lot of people unless you understand that a lot of people that we think are really old are actually zombies.

It's easy to get the extremely elderly and the living dead confused. On one hand, you have people who stumble around awkwardly, moaning, and smelling like decayed flesh. And, on the other hand, you have zombies.

I'd estimate that at least 30-40% of people 90 years or older are actually undead. Death has not yet been completely privatized and is a hugely mismanaged bureaucracy. Budget cuts have caused a Reaper hiring freeze since the late 60's and due to decreased staffing levels there's a slight backlog in culling the living (this explains why Nicole Richie is still alive despite wearing less than a chipmunk).

Some people slip through the cracks.

This reminds me of my great-grandmother, who lived well into her 90's. It was great having her around. She was like a living history book, telling us stories like about the time that she lost her virginity to Cab Calloway. We all admired her vitality.

At least until the day she wandered off and we found her a few blocks away eating a poodle.

It fell to me to put great-grandma down. Of course, I didn't want to. But my father insisted that you weren't truly a "man" until you slayed your first zombie (he had to behead his great-grandfather when he was only thirteen).

So anyway, that's why I don't like visiting people in nursing homes. Too many zombies and the staff gets upsets when you come armed.

Farewell To A Friend

2007-02-07T05:13:00.000-08:00

I was at my local bookstore the other day and perusing the magazine racks when I noted the final issue of FHM was on the stands.

How this could be possible? How can a magazine that serves the male populace so well by providing dubious advice on getting women, relationship tips from Isaac the Bartender from the Love Boat, and poorly researched articles, yet filled with glossy shots of female celebrities in bikinis and lingerie, go out of business? Maxim is still going strong and I defy anyone to be able to tell these two magazines apart.

I was somewhat relieved to see that FHM will continue as an online-only site but it's nearly impossible to sneak a desktop PC into the bathroom.

But the loss of FHM is not merely a sad event for me, but for America.

You see, FHM has helped one woman achieve the American Dream. A young Cuban girl named Vida Guerra fled with her family to the United States, dreaming of a better life. Once teased by classmates because of her oversized ass but believing in herself, in 2002, she made the fateful decision to send pictures of herself in lingerie to FHM , some of which were published in the December 2002 issue.

In almost fairy tale like fashion, her pictures caused a sensation among FHM's readers. Over the next several months, a whopping third of letters and email to FHM were requests for more Vida. Her image became the hottest tattoo in the country's correctional institutions. She became FHM's 2004 Model of The Year and has since parlayed her exposure into leading roles in direct to home video films, a number of relationships with professional athletes and rappers and, yes, a music career. What others thought was a liability, turned out to be her greatest asset (see, how I did that? Clever, huh?)

Sure, it may still be old-fashioned to love my country. But I am not ashamed to be a patriot. When I think of Vida's journey from an oppressive regime (no doubt floating to Florida's shores on her ample buttocks) to catapulting into C-list celebrity status with nothing more than a dream and the second best nalga out there, it brings a tear to my eyes.

Baseball, Apple Pie, and Vida Guerra.

Yes, FHM really made dreams come true.

MILFs

2007-02-05T07:41:00.000-08:00

Kids today are so spoiled.

Ok, though I hate it when people pick out one or two isolated incidents and extrapolate them as if it were some societal epidemic, allow me to ask this simple question:

Since when did it become ok for teenage boys to start banging each other's mothers?

The hot story over the last several years were about young female teachers having sex with their students. And for the most part, these were really hot teachers, nothing at all like that butch girls' gym teacher that used to molest me when I was in school.

But that's old news. Now, I've seen a number of stories about mothers who hook up with their son's friends.

Now back when I was growing up, guys would talk a good game. We'd rip on each other and claim that we had hooked up with our friends' mothers, sometimes even claiming to have breached the space-time continuum, and that were actually our friends' father. Then we'd tell them to mow the lawn or something so that we could mack on their moms.

But that was just fantasy, ok? It was just healthy male bonding. There's a huge difference between fantasy and reality (also known as D's "You cannot have a healthy realtionship with Pamela Anderson or Halle Berry rule). No one actually did it, right?

Not anymore. This mom had a sex and alcohol party in her son's honor where she hooked up with one of his friends. This mom had an ongoing relationship with her son's 15 year-old friend. This woman, hooked up with her son's best friend with one of her kids in the room. By the way, through my intrepid internet research skills, it also appears that this woman also won Kid Rock tickets and backstage passes from a local radio station. So congratulations!

So while I'm hoping these stories are merely examples of aberrant behavior, the fact is that some guys are breaching the Holiest of Holy Grails. As a teen, I may have fantasized about breaching the very same vessel which once housed a good friend, but I would never have actually done it (or I never had the opportunity, it was definitely one of the two). But kids are doing it these days.

It's no wonder Playstation 3's aren't selling that well.

Is this conversation going on in our neighborhoods?

Wanna play Halo?

Nah.

Want to go to the movies?

Nah.

What do you want to do then?

I don't know... I was thinking about hooking up with your mom.

(pause) Again? Well ok, but just remember I'm crashing at your place next weekend.

So kids remember, friends do not let friends have carnal relations with their mothers.

This public service announcement has been brought to you by the good folks at The Letter D.

Mini Master Of Death

2007-01-29T00:01:00.000-08:00

Longtime readers know about my daughter, the Cub. I generally don't write about her because it hurts my ratings in the 18-34 male demographic.

But anyway, that little kid is starting to freak me out.

I've long thought that little kids are scary. There are plenty of horror movies that feature freaky little kids like The Ring, The Grudge and Home Alone. With their disproportionately large heads, tiny little feet, and hands that are always sticky for some reason, kids give me the creeps.

Up until now, the Cub has been the exception. But she's recently started creeping around the house well after she's been tucked in for the night. When she does, she's totally a different girl than she is during the day. She's stealthy, eerily quiet, appears out of nowhere, and usually just stares at me.

I think she's plotting my death.

The other night, I walked up the stairs and saw a little two and a half foot tall shadowy figure staring down at me. I asked her why she was out of bed. She just stared at me. And while she didn't say a word, I swear I heard her voice in my head saying:

Foolish Father. We both know that this laughable baby gate will not separate me from you should I choose otherwise. Tell me, is this gate for my protection . . . or yours?

And I can't tell you how alarming it is to wake up with a little person appearing on the side of my bed without warning, whispering in my ear, "I want to go downstairs and watch Elmo now."

I've been sleeping with one eye open to make sure she doesn't get the drop on me again. This weekend I'm going to put a bell on her door.

Sure, I may sound paranoid, but keep in mind that this is the same toddler that once nearly rendered me unconscious with a nerve pinch about a year ago.

Now when I put her to bed, it usually goes something like this:

"Good night. Sweet dreams. Daddy loves you. And...uh, you aren't still mad about that time-out that I gave you earlier, right?"

If you read about someone dying in their bed after mysteriously suffocating on a wad of Play Doh, it's probably me.

There Are No Small Parts, Just Small Actresses

2007-01-22T06:28:00.000-08:00

I'm honored to have today on The Letter D, Sidney Stone, an agent who's blazing a trail in celebrity representation.

Welcome Sidney. You represent some of the most well known young starlets in Hollywood, such as Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Britney Spears, yet you're still relatively unknown in the industry.

Well D, let me make a slight clarification. I don't represent those actresses per se, but I represent parts of them.

Explain.

Well, these celebrities have agents that manage their film, publishing, and movie careers separately. I have my own special niche. I only represent their breasts, buttock region, and genitals. I'm sure you're familiar with my work.

Do you mean that all of those nip slips and crotch shots that we read about in the tabloids and see on the Internet are all your doing?

Pretty much. I'm blazing a whole new trail in Hollywood. Surely, you can't think that these events are all accidents?

So how does it work?

I make bookings, generally for award shows, movie premieres, and the occasional high-end bar mitzvah. I set up everything and make sure the photographers are strategically placed.

Ok, so let's say that I have a function and I want to hire one of your clients. How does that work?

Well, the cost depends on what you want. A nip slip, depending on the level of the celebrity, starts at about $5,000. A pantied up-skirt shot can run anywhere from $2,500 to $10,000 or so. And of course, the "Full Monty" starts at about $25,000.

You must be making a killing on Tara Reid alone.

Actually, I don't represent her. She just happens to be a little skanky.

You've been working a lot with Britney Spears lately.

That's right, she's really got a great future here. I actually had three consectutive bookings for her in November.

I saw that, she was "caught" on camera three nights in a row.

Yeah, that may have been a little overkill. I mean, after the first night, the average woman would have either put panties on or at least become a little more careful on how she exits a vehicle. But I'm selling magic here. I wanted to make a bold introduction. Britney's nether region has been considerably devalued due to the whole Federline debacle. I'm working to rebuild the brand, so to speak. I really think she can revolutionize the industry.

How's that?

Well, I've got some exciting news that I would like to announce to your readers. I think it's something that will rock the industry: Britney's privates are going solo.

Amazing. But how will that work?

We've got some of the hottest producers working on a debut album. Scott Storch is working on her lead single, which is a remake of "Like a Virgin."

Genius.

I think so.

But how does he feel about working with making music with a set of genitalia?

Well, as you know, he did some work on Paris Hilton's album, so far it's been a fairly smooth transition.

Tales From The Hard Drive

2007-01-10T17:56:00.000-08:00

I found this while transferring files from my old computer. I think I planned to submit this to Phat Phree back when I was a contributor, but I never found a home for it. It's not supposed to be written in my voice, but rather that of a (even more) clueless guy. I was inspired one day after being bombarded with spam and wondered what type of person would respond to those ads:

Hey guys,

I’m sorry I haven’t gotten around to answering your e-mails before now. Things have been pretty hectic lately. You know how it goes. Anyway, thanks for keeping in touch with me on a daily basis. I have one question though –

Why is everyone so concerned about my penis?

Everyday, about a dozen of you send me e-mails offering me the lowest online prices on Viagra or promising to increase my manhood’s length and girth. If I get many more of these, I might have to give my dick its own e-mail address. I appreciate your concern but really, no worries here.

I don’t even remember meeting some of you. I didn’t think I knew a Cheri Rojas or Zalatan Ewing, but I guess you all must know me because your subject lines always say “I haven’t seen you in awhile,” “We never get together anymore,” or “I miss you.” We must have met during my college days, because I got pretty wasted and blacked out a lot back then.

But, hey, thanks anyway for offering to help increase the firmness of my erections. Big Ben may not fly quite as high as when I was seventeen, but that’s to be expected. I don’t know what you guys have heard, but he still does the job.

I don’t need any Cialis either. I’ve never had any problem “rising to the occasion.” Well except for that one time last September, but I was worn out from a hard day at work so that doesn’t count.

I’m not exactly getting any complaints about my length and girth either. I’m sure I’ve dated some of you ladies and some of you guys have seen me at the gym. Still others may remember that time at Jeff and Christine’s wedding when I did one too many Jaegerbombs. Regardless, you know what I’m packing.

I’m not even sure how some of you got my e-mail address at work. I was getting e-mail from some of you two days after I started there. You guys need to be more careful though about sending me messages at the office with subjects like “Wear her out with good hard sex” or “Ride her longer.” They screen my e-mail here and I don’t want to get fired.

I don't know what you've heard, but really, I'm all good.

Anyway, I have to go now and get back to this Nigerian guy who needs some help getting money into the country.

Technical Difficulties

2007-01-09T12:21:00.000-08:00

I bricked my home computer last week. Thinking it could still be saved, at least until Vista comes out, I took it to a tech who looked all of fifteen.

It was going to cost about $200 just to pop open the hood and start figuring out what was going on. He recommended that I have my hard drive backed up before he did anything. I probably had about 75 out of 80 gigs on the hard drive filled up. Out of that I had about three years of digital pictures, including a couple thousand of the Cub (yes, in this age of digital photography, her life is like The Truman Show).

I had most of her pics burned on disc or stored on photo websites, but not all of them. If you're a parent, you know not having all of your pictures saved is little different from not having any saved. I hadn't yet backed up the Christmas pictures, so I spent the money to get everything burned on DVD.

There's little as invasive as giving your computer over to a stranger. I had the computer for over four years, so of course I had a bunch of stuff on it. He asked me specifically what I needed saved. I told him that I wanted all the pictures, all the .mp3s that I've stolen over the last several years, all documents, and email. I'd rather have strangers read my medical records.

I sheepishly told the tech that if for some reason he found any...movies... that he didn't need to save them.

There was nothing on the computer that would warrant a visit from the FBI. But let's just say that thanks to the beauty of Lime Wire, I may have accululated a few clips of a mature nature (by this I mean videos of lectures by MIT professors on string theory). I've been married for nearly 10 years so I only had about 30 or 40 gigs of stuff on there, you know, just to get me through the lean times.

Anyway, he followed my instructions and saved what I said I wanted saved, though not everything I really wanted saved.

Even though I used virus protection software and spyware/adware blockers, my computer was no doubt as infection riddled as a Tijuana hooker. And, in retrospect, this may have adversely affected the computer's performance (unless it's normal for a computer to take 10 minutes to boot up). Of course, this didn't keep me from suggesting that maybe the Spousal Unit bricked the computer, because it died while she was using it damn it.

I was a little nervous when I picked up the backup DVDs. And the tech now looked about five years older. I think his hair was now flecked with gray. Clearly he had seen too much.

I decided to buy a new computer. So my new computer is pristine. And I have vowed not to download any questionable material.

So I may be a little cranky over the next few weeks until I inevitably cave.

I'm Sure There Is A Logical Explanation For This

2006-12-22T07:45:00.000-08:00

I won't bore you with the details (oops, I already did) but I have to take antibiotics before I go to the dentist, including simple cleanings. My dentist had an open spot for a cleaning this week. I forgot that I have to pre-medicate but the dentist called home and told the Spousal Unit to remind me that I needed to take Amoxicillin an hour before my appointment and that she called in a prescription for me.

The SU told the dentist that she found some leftover amoxicillin that I was prescribed from June 2005. My dentist asked about the dosage of that prescription and said "Wow, That's pretty unusual." Which, let's just say, caused some complications on the homefront.

Here's the thing: I honestly don't rememeber why I was taking antibiotics a year and a half ago. It wasn't for a dentist apointment. I don't remember going to the doctor. I don't remember being sick. And I don't think I'd been to Vegas or Bangkok that year.

Weird.

I was on more antibiotics than Barbarro last year and I have absolutely no recollection why. I even tried to read my posts from June 2005 just to see if I can piece together what was going on in my life (and I don't think you can catch anything from just thinking about Jessica Alba's ass).

By the way, if you think trying to recall why you took massive doses of antibiotics is fun, just wait until you try to explain it to your significant other.

How To Kill A Blog

2006-12-19T07:07:00.000-08:00

My deepest apologies for my extended absence. All I can say is that sometimes words flow out like endless rain into a paper cup...but other times, not so much.

Of course, these sporadic posts have occurred during the times that I received exposure that most bloggers would kill for. The Prince post was linked on Defamer and gave me thousands of new unique visitors (never underestimate the power of Prince's penis).

I also guest blogged for Jason Mulgrew's site earlier this month (how's that for balls? I haven't updated here, but wrote for someone else).

So despite being an attention craving blogwhore who wants to hit the big time, what do I do with my new found exposure? Oh, go through mind numbing writer's block.

Figures.

Anyway, I don't know what's gotten into me lately. Why word went around a few weeks ago that Britney was caught on camera sans panties and I haven't even had the urge to look for the pics. Not long ago, this would have been a cause for celebration and I may have even taken a day or two off from work. Now, not even the glorious display of Britney's labia inspired me to post.

But fear not, things are getting back to normal here in the House of D.

He-Man: An Intimate Portrait

2006-12-04T10:16:00.000-08:00

I met He-Man at a rundown gym in Venice Beach. His tanned skin was leathery. His frame while not as massive as in his heyday, still told the story of countless hours spent here and gyms just like this. He-Man's once prominent blond hair has noticeably receded, with what's left tied into a ponytail.

He took an active interest in the routines of the younger bodybuilders, offering them tips and giving advice. He's mellowed into a mentor role these days, far removed from his brash youth at Castle Greyskull.

He-Man, all these years and you're still hanging out at the gym?

(laughing) Call me Adam, He-Man is better left in the past. Yeah, I'm still a gym rat at heart. It's good to see the young guns out here. Reminds me of the good times in the old days. I'm trying to keep them from making the same mistakes that I did.

I was going to get to that. You've had a past history of steroid abuse.

It feels good to be able to talk about it openly now, but yeah I was a heavy user back in the day. Hell, we all were. All us guys were pumped up on the juice. We thought we were invincible. We were so arrogant we called ourselves the "Masters of the Universe."

I never considered it back then. I thought you guys were just superhuman.

I'm amazed we got away with it back then. Looking back, it seemed so obvious. How can you have a man named Skeletor get that ripped? He used to weigh like 120 pounds soaking wet.

When did it go bad?

One day, I'm at the gym with Man-At-Arms, Ram-Man, and Barry Bonds, right? Orko is hanging around us, just floating around. I don't know what got into me, but I just snapped and started punching his face in. I beat my little buddy into a bloody pulp. It was all a red haze, you know?

Steroid rage?

Yeah, I didn't know what it was called then. Hell, I didn't know half of the stuff that I was putting into my body. I'd just pop over to a Tijuana pharmacy and stock up. I didn't care as long as I got the results.

Did you use any other drugs?

These were the 80's, you know and I was a celebrity so you can guess what that means. I was offered cocaine everywhere I went. I was more into marijuana, you know. It helped smooth out my mood. One day though, I was so high, I thought it would be funny to juice up my cat Cringer. I thought it would man him up, you know?

So that explains Battle Cat. I'm almost embarrassed to ask you this, but there appeared to be a homoerotic context to the show with a bunch of pumped up men and very few women. What was the deal?

Oh, we loved women. I was dating Bianca Jagger off and on during that time. No, we were all straight. Well, except for Fisto.

Anything that you want to pass on to the kids?

Absolutely. Kids, it may be fun to pretend that you're a fantasy hero. But in reality, steroids and other performance enhancing drugs are for losers. Take it from me, the testicles that you save may be your own.

Won't You Please Help?

2006-11-22T10:23:00.000-08:00

The PS3 launch has come and gone. I've remained faithful to my XBox 360 and have not had my head turned by the newer system. I'm not saying I'll never get one, but as of launch, there is only one game for the PS3 that isn't also available on the 360 and that's gotten good reviews, and even I won't spend well over $600 to play one game.

Not having waited out in line in the cold and dark this year, I read the stories about people waiting 24 hours or more with detachment. What I find interesting, if the news reports are accurate, is that most of the people who were waiting in line had no intention to actually keep it for themselves, but rather put it on EBay or Craigslist, where they'll offer it in exchange for thousands of dollars and/or sexual favors.

So there's a shadow economy where people will essentially pay others thousands of dollars to wait in line for them. I never gave selling my 360 a single thought last year. If I'm going to stand in the cold for hours, it's not going to be for someone else.

Some people, however, were even further ahead of the curve. I've read reports from Japan, the UK, and the US, that people have hired the homeless to stay in line for them for this high-end toy. In a way, this makes sense, because it's not like they weren't going to be outside in the middle of the night anyway. I've also read that before the election in Maryland, the homeless were recruited to pass out misleading campaign flyers.

This says something about society. I have paused to consider this issue in this Thanksgiving week. In this time of broadening gaps between the haves and have-nots, where people face a daily struggle for survival, I wonder if I'm doing my share. What is my responsibility?

I have had to face an uncomfortable question:

Am I doing all that I can to exploit the homeless?

Isn't there something that I can avoid doing by harnessing the power of the less fortunate?

Holiday parking is always a hassle. Can't I slip a guy a dollar or two to squat in the choice parking places at the mall? Or maybe now's the time to finally shoot that zombie movie that's been floating in my head. Our how about finally testing the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique?

Sure I may have to deal with their hygenic issues or endure a little consipracy talk, messages from God, or real or imagined flashbacks to Vietnam, but if I can get them to trade a little bit of their dignity for a couple of bucks, I think it'll all be worth it.

Baby David's Diary

2006-11-15T07:22:00.000-08:00

October 10, 2006

Dear Diary,

I have learned today that I am to be adopted by an American pop singer. Many people think that she is using me for publicity and that adopting children from third world countries is a celebrity fad. I am grateful that my new mother will take me away from the orphanage in Malawi, where my country's greatest natural resource is flies.

October 16, 2006

Dear Diary,

After finally getting my Visa, I have arrived at my new home in London. It is very large and spacious. I love it here. Mother has a full staff of cooks, tutors, and choreographers here. My sister Lourdes and brother Rocco are very nice.

October 18, 2006

Dear Diary,

Who is this "Willis?" Lourdes keeps asking me to say "Whatchu talkin' bout, Willis?" I do not know any Willis.

October 21, 2006

Dear Diary,

I had to get up early and meet with my stylist today because Mother set me up on a play date with the children of that "bitch" Angelina Jolie.

October 27, 2006

I've learned that my new Father is a film director. I saw his movies Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and Snatch. I enjoyed them both. Mother also starred in a movie that Father directed called Swept Away, but he says I'm never to talk about it again.

November 1, 2006

Dear Diary,

I learned yesterday that my Mother used to be intimate with Dennis Rodman, which gave me a nightmare last night. Rocco says Father has the same nightmares.

November 11, 2006

Dear Diary,

I had a temper tantrum today because Chef Pierre improperly carmelized my crème brulee. Mother was very cross with me and said that naughty boys get sent to Neverland Ranch.

November 15, 2006

Dear Diary,

Mother says that she will raise me as a Catholic but with Kabbalah teachings as well. I will be an African Catholic Jew. Perhaps I can runaway from home when I am older.

My New Venture

2006-11-14T06:52:00.000-08:00

Nothing like a post saying "Happy Halloween" being up for two weeks, huh?

I've been busy working on the launch of my new publication Celebrity Divorce Magazine. I'm amazed that no one has thought of this. I'm planning on challenging US Weekly, People, and every other magazine that litters the checkout lane. These stories speak to the insecurities of American women(not all certainly, but enough for me to make this generalization). Every month, I'll cover another celebrity divorce and speculate about why it happened in a manner that will resonate with the fears that people have in their own marriages, i.e, infidelity, one partner not wanting a child, and addiction to plastic surgery.

If this is successful, I'll launch a sister publication Fat Cellulite-Laden Actresses/Anorexic Substance-Abusing Starlets that will speak to our obsession with the bodies of women that we don't even know. Then I'll launch Celebrity Death Pool, which will be the topic of another post, as soon as I finish it.

Anyway, because you all have been loyal during my hiatus, I'm going to share an exclusive interview from my first issue.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you K-Fed:

D: Kevin, Thank you for giving Celebrity Divorce your first interview. How are you holding up?

K-Fed: I'm doing ok, D. I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to tell my side of the story, you know what I'm sayin'?

D: So ... what happened?

K-Fed: Haters, man. I'm telling you. People are always tryin' to hate on me. People tryin' to get all in Brit's ear, tellin' her I party too much. But see, I'm hustlin' out there trying to get mine. You know what I mean?

D: Just barely.

K-Fed: See, to the untrained eye, it looks like I'm partyin'. But I'm out there trying to get exposure. I'm not partyin', I'm promotin'. You see me in clubs, you see me on WWE, that's to sell my new album.

D: That's right, Playing with Fire came out. How'd it do?

K-FEd. It sold 6,500 copies in the first week!

D: Well, it's good to see all that promotion has paid off.

K-Fed: That's enough to be certified Wood status by the RIAA. See, strippers buy CDs too.

D: Um...congratulations.

K-Fed: Thanks. But I came to your publication to talk about my championing men's rights in divorce. I'm out there fighting the battle for all my brothers out there who are getting jacked.

D: Yeah, but most of these men aren't trying to get spousal support from their wives.

K-Fed: It's not about spousal support. It's about respect and keeping promises, yo. I gave Brit the best two years of my life. I think I should be kept up in the manner that I've grown accustomed to. Do you know how much bottles of Cristal go for in the clubs these days?

D: I see that you seeking custody of Sean Preston and Jayden James.

K-Fed: Who?

D: Your sons.

K-Fed: Oh yeah. See that's what I'm talking about. Shorties need daddies, ya feel me?'

D: Sure. But are you saying that Britney's an unfit mother?

K-Fed: Not at all. She's fit. She's been working out a lot since we split. That's just wrong, she was all bloated before, now that we split, she's a MILF again.

D: No, I mean do you think she's a bad mother?

K-Fed: Oh... All I'm sayin' is that if you look at those accidents with Sean Preston, him fallin' out the high chair, Brit almost dropping him, her driving with him in her lap. No one pointed out that I wasn't there at any of those times!

D: That's a good point.

K-Fed: Damn straight. You don't see any pictures of me droppin' babies and shit. Plus, I've got two other kids, so I'm twice the parent as Brit. Numbers don't lie. That's like math and stuff.

D: K-Fed, is there anything you'd like to say to Britney now?

K-Fed: Yeah. Breaking up with me in a text message? That's just cold-blooded. See that's why I don't like to read. But if I have to say something, it would go a little somethin' like this:

Never been a surfer
But my chain hang loose
Got so much flavour
Like 2Pac juice
Got dudes wishing you're in my shoes
I'm a rockstar baby
I do what I wanna do
Tough pack
My crew will come and clobber you
Let the pope come out
And watch it swallow you
Not a pretty boy
But I look like a model do

D: Well I guess that says it all.

Happy Halloween

2006-10-31T12:06:00.001-08:00

This has been floating around YouTube for awhile, but today seemed like the perfect day to share it. See if you can get this song out of your head.

Also, if they can show "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" every year, I can do the same. Check out D's True Halloween Story post from last year.

My Gay Ass Cell Phone

2006-10-30T12:02:00.000-08:00

My cell phone was taken from my car last week while I was at the gym (lesson learned - don't exercise). My briefcase was also stolen, but fortunately it didn't have much sensitive information, other than a journal that I keep with my movie and television ideas, bits from my still in progress attempt to write the Great American Novel, and my list of people who will pay dearly when I finally amass power (I was up to 1,413 people).

Anyway, I had my old cellphone for about three years. It faithfully served all my cellphone needs. I've resisted the pressure to get a "smart phone", which, in allowing me to access work-related email wherever I go, sounds about as much fun as a lobotomy. I don't need to be that accessible.

Anyway, of course, my old phone had long since been discontinued. I called the phone company and they said that I could get a Razr phone as a free replacement. I'd seen a few people with Razrs and thought they looked pretty sleek and cool.

I know realize that all the people that I knew with Razrs were women.

It's not that I'm not secure with my masculinity. But this phone is completely emasculating. I've only had it one day and already it's causing problems. I was on my office phone trying to have settlement negotiations with opposing counsel, when my cell phone rang.

I'd never heard the default ring before, but it totally threw me off my game:

D: I think our offer is more than fair considering the strength of our case.

Opposing attorney: Well, we're not that far apart. Surely, your clients wouldn't try this case over the small difference in our numbers.

D: Listen, you don't know how hard it was to get them to agree to this figure. They want to take this all the way...

(cell phone rings with the most effeminate ring tone ever)

Opposing attorney: What is that?

D: Uh...that's my cell phone. I just got it today. I haven't changed the settings yet.

Opposing attorney: I know that ringtone. Was that "It's Raining Men?"

D: Umm... I'm afraid so.

By the way, ringtones are the biggest scam ever. Please everyone, stop buying them. Whatever you think your ringtone says about you is wrong. Unless your intended message is "I'm a big tool." They sound like a good idea, but after the second ring, they're just embarrassing.

When I'm running the world Nextel phones will be one of the first things to go. And did you know 75% of pictures taken on camera phones are of genitalia? Another thing - please stop wearing those wireless earphone things. When people wear those I always think they're controlling air traffic in the cloud city of Bespin. Can't I just have a simple cell phone?

Anyway, the Razr is just a little too sleek for my tastes. If it was any sleeker, it would come with a cardboard applicator.

Just like every other annoying application on cell phones, the engineers will keep "improving" them. So the Razr will become even more emasculating over time:

Motorola engineer #1: I've done it! I've finally made a cell phone so small it can comfortably be housed in the rectum of an average sized adult male.

Motorola engineer #2: That's amazing! We've been working on crossing that threshold for years! But how will people use it?

Motorola engineer #1: It's Bluetooth compatible.

Motorola engineer #2: High-five! I'll work on improving the vibration function!

I Could Really Get Behind Scarlett Johansson

2006-10-26T11:51:00.000-07:00

Dear Scarlett,

Congratulations on being named Esquire's Sexiest Woman. It's well deserved and you're a much better choice than Jessica Biel, whose choice last year can only be explained by her doing an imitation of a trained seal act on Esquire's editorial board, if you know what I mean.

I know talent and you've got it. I'm not jumping on the Scarlett bandwagon. I thought you were talented long before I saw Lost in Translation. I loved you in Ghost World, where you starred along with Steve Buscemi and Thora Birch's breasts.

I have to confess, I thought Lost in Translation was a little overrated. I mean it started great, with the shot of you in translucent panties but all that promise went unfulfilled. A movie can pretty much only go downhill from there. With Bill Murray, I was hoping for a little more high-spirited hi-jinks. He didn't even give you a single noogie. Sometimes it's like he's not even trying anymore.

I rented The Girl with a Pearl Necklace because I enjoy your work. It turns out that I meant to get The Girl with a Pearl Earring. Boy, one word can totally make a difference. But that explains why I had to go into the curtained-off area of the video store to find the DVD.

You may have heard about me through Jessica Alba. To put it simply, we are no longer together because third parties kept getting in the way. Hollywood relationships between two people are tough enough without the involvement of agents, hangers-on, and law enforcement officers. Let me just say she's a drama queen and liar, so don't believe anything she tells you. She's totally jealous of your career. And, unlike her, I don't think you have a fat ass (not that there's anything wrong with that).

I've adopted you as my muse. I'm hoping you'll read the attached screenplay that I wrote for you. It has a little tasteful nudity in it (no more than 30-35 minutes). It's called Scarlett Johansson is Nude in This Movie for Thirty to Thirty Five Minutes, so the nudity is pretty much required by the story. Remember how much free publicity Snakes on a Plane got simply from its title?

I'm telling you, this movie will sell itself.

Call me,

D

The Night I Saw Prince's Penis

2006-10-18T06:56:00.000-07:00

I've been a Prince fan since I was nine years old. Since then I've lost count of how many of his concerts I've attended. Although they've uniformly have been great shows, they kinda blur together in my memory. Except for one.

One of the things that is interesting about Prince is that he frequently comes to the conclusion, " Hey, I think I'm making too much money. What can I do to sabotage my career?" Change my name to an unpronouncable symbol? Etch "slave" on my face? Release an entire album devoted to being a Jehovah's Witness? Try to act? Through it all, I've stayed faithful.

Almost 10 years ago, Prince played his "Jam of the Year" tour at smaller venues, which included the Fox Theatre in Detroit. I drove with the soon to be Spousal Unit two hours from Grand Rapids, excited to see him for the first time in such an intimate setting.

People watching is fun at Prince concerts. As usual, there were plenty of freaky people there and a few women in lingerie. But this was fourteen years past his Purple Rain prime. And the women who were wearing lingerie were the same ones who wore them to Prince concerts in 1984. Do the math. Age x + 14 years + wearing lingerie in public = no longer sexy.

The show was general admission with standing room only on the main floor. I managed to get a good spot on the stage right corner. There were ramps on either side of the stage so periodically he'd play the guitar or sing roughly five feet away from me.

This was cool until about the third costume change, when he changed into lime green lace pants (?) and blouse. I'm pretty open minded, but men really shouldn't wear lace pants.

This would be a good time to remind you that Prince hasn't worn underwear since 1980.

So I'm watching him playing a guitar solo when I saw a disturbing sight:

Le petit Prince.

I thought I was hallucinating. I had to check with the SU.

"Is that Prince's dick?"

I wasn't hallucinating.

The evening had taken a disturbing turn. I hadn't signed up for this. The most disturbing part is that I couldn't turn away. I wanted to, believe me. Ok, don't think about an elephant. See, you just did. You couldn't help it. It's like when you try not to notice that a person you're talking to has a gigantic mole on their face. The harder you try not to focus on it, the more you look at it. That's what happened.

So just in case you were curious, the answers are as follows: circumcised, to the left, and not too bad considering he's only three feet tall.

Let us never speak of this again.

The Man Has Got Me Down

2006-10-17T07:44:00.000-07:00

Sorry for being AWOL, but I've been busy making the donuts in my day job. I see the light at the end of the tunnel and should be back to my regular irregular posting no later than tomorrow.

See, if you all had made this blog famous by now, I would have more time to devote to it. So I really think we should share the blame for this.

Thy Will Be Done

2006-10-06T06:51:00.000-07:00

Genius of Love X: I Didn't Mean To Turn You On

2006-10-04T06:58:00.000-07:00

A common comment about my Genius of Love posts is that they're like Charlie Brown and Lucy with the football: You secretly root for Charlie Brown to boot that thing, but you know at the last second, Lucy's going to pull the ball away at the last minute.

Don't think that all my romantic encounters have ended so comically. I'm saving all the stories where I was the Mack Daddy Du Jour for my memoir D:The Exquisite Art Of Interplanetary Cocoa Love.

Our story takes place during my first year of law school. I don't think I've told any stories from that period of my life because I have repressed most of those traumatic memories.

There was a woman, Renee, who was in my evening class. We spoke occasionally after class and one night she asked me if I had eaten. I hadn't, so I figured we'd go the nearby diner and I'd have another of the roughly 6,417 chicken gyros that I ate during lawschool.

She suggested a restaurant downtown that was more appropriate for a date than a simple post-class meal. Despite this, I agreed.

Now, would be a good time to mention that I wasn't attracted to her romantically. Nothing was wrong with her, but I didn't feel any chemical resonance. But I was mildly intrigued by the attention because she was about 10 years older than me and I've always wanted to be kept by an older woman who would give me the lifestyle that I would like to become accustomed to.

Renee called me occasionally. She invited me over to her apartment to study one afternoon. When I got there, I found that she had ordered pizza and had a bunch of candy in dishes around her place. She also casually mentioned that she taped a few episodes of the Batman cartoon and that we could watch it during our breaks.

I thought, hmm, pizza, candy, cartoons? Was I going to be molested? All that was missing was her asking me to get in her car to help her find a lost puppy. But I'm happy to report that there was no touching anyplace where my swimsuit covers.

She invited me out to Jamie Foxx stand up comedy show (this was before his career took off). It was a free ticket(to me at least) so I accepted. As we walked, she wanted to walk arm in arm. I thought it was strange, but figured that was an older woman thing.

She casually mentioned that evening that she told one of her girlfriends about me, and that she'd asked whether I had a brother. I thought that was strange, because it's not like I was spoken for. Did she tell her friend that we were a couple? We weren't by any stretch of the imagination. We never had any conversations leading in that direction and there had never been any physical contact except, I guess, for me helping her across the street.

The subject of her age came up later on. As it turned out, she was only a year or so earlier than me. I just assumed she was older because she was more mature and always wore suits to class (plus, I'm apparently a horrible judge of age). Either way, what little intrigue I felt dissappeared upon my discovery. She was no sugar mama.

So how could I extricate myself from this situation? As it turns out, the fates smiled upon me.

Again, during this time I wasn't dating anybody. I did, however, have the prototypical, "friend with benefits" Tammy, who I had known since high school. Whenever neither one of us were dating someone seriously, we shared our mutual appreciation for Prince music, video games, and Interplanetary Cocoa Love.

I went to the mall with Tammy one Saturday afternoon. Tammy was in a dressing room in one of the stores as I waited in the designated guy chair.

"Hey, D"

I looked up and there was Renee.

"Oh, hey," I replied nervously.

"What are you doing here?"

As if on cue, Tammy emerged from the dressing room in an impossibly skimpy outfit, which she paraded in front of me in an exaggerated supermodel walk.

Renee looked her, then to me, and turned heel and stormed out. If this was a bad romantic comedy she would've slapped me. If this was a Lifetime movie, she would've killed me and gotten acquitted.

Renee never talked to me again. So for the next couple of years she was pissed off at me. Again, I hadn't taken advantage of her (ok maybe the stand up show, but let the woman who has accepted a date with a guy that she wasn't interested in to see a concert or play cast the first stone). It's not like anything happened. I didn't do anything. I never lead her on.

Damn this roguish charm of mine.

Scenes From The House Of D

2006-09-29T09:01:00.000-07:00

Our house was a model in our subdivision. Consequently, once we moved just about everyone we've talked to in our subdivision have mentioned that they've been in our house. Which is unnerving considering the statistic probability that some of them had to use our bathrooms.

Because it was a model home, there are all sorts of weird little "features." For example, we have about four different phone lines in the house. Our garage has built-in audio speakers. A number of rooms have ethernet jacks, although we've never been able to determine where the entry point is for the ethernet network (I've decided that they were glued on).

Another weird thing is that the door going down to the finished lower level has a key lock on it. It's the same strong lock that we have on the exterior doors, not one of those push button locks that you find in bathrooms and bedrooms.

We've never had the key to that lock. I thought about having it removed, but downstairs is where I have the "Decompression Chamber" HDTV, home theatre, videogames, DVDs, you name it. I liked the idea of being able to lock people out from inside.

Until last night, that is. I was all set to go downstairs to play Texas Hold'Em on the XBox 360, my latest obsession, when I tried to turn the doorknob.

Somehow I had locked myself out of Nirvana. Again, nothing makes me want to do something more than finding out that I can't. I was determined to get downstairs. So I went through every key that I found in the house and tried them all to no avail.

If you read the story about my daughter last week, you saw the softer side of D. But last night displayed the guy that I usually am. This is a quote from my conversation with the Spousal Unit last night:

Me: None of the keys work.

SU: You spend too much time down there anyway. You know, we could just sit and talk for a change.

Me: (pause) I think I'm going to try to pick the lock.

Which, by the way, is not as easy as they make it look in the movies.

Thanks, Screech!

2006-09-27T07:31:00.000-07:00

Just when I was feeling creatively spent and wondered where my next post was coming from, co-worker and frequent commenter MH sent me this link about the Dustin "Screech" Diamond sex tape. Yes, I used the words Screech and sex tape in the same sentence. And now, ladies and gentlemen, the Apocalypse.

I'm always skeptical about celebrity sex tapes, because they seem so contrived. They're like C-list celebrity press releases. What better way to change for Screech to change his image as a geek than to leak one of these tapes with him and two women? Yes that's right, Screech, who pretty much just crawled out of the ocean on the celebrity evolutionary scale is scoring three-ways (sign of the Apocalypse, part two).

But wait. Here's the truly interesting part, and by interesting I mean horrifying. Apparently, Screech can't do anything right. He has now gone on video as being the only person to actually perform the mythical "sex" act, the Dirty Sanchez.

Didn't everyone agree that the Donkey Punch, the Arabian Goggles, and Dirty Sanchez don't really exist (see Urban Dictionary, if you absolutely must know)? No one is crazy enough to perform these acts in real life, right? And who'd want to?

I think that instead of naming imaginary sex acts, we need to name the ones that actually exist.

Like the following:

The Woodpecker. This act involves a man who wakes up aroused in the middle of the night and tries to wake his partner up and entice her into having intercourse by nudging her with the evidence of his ardor.

The Belligerent Opossum. This act involves the female's inevitable reaction to the Woodpecker, by pretending that she's still asleep, though both parties know she's now fully awake.

The Hibernator. This act involves a person who dreads the prospect of intercourse sneaking off to bed before his or her partner realizes, actually falling asleep or pretending to fall asleep to avoid the encounter.

The Billy the Kid. This act involves a man who tries to cover up for his premature ejaculation by pretending that he's suddenly changed his mind about having intercourse.

The Encyclopedia Britannica. This act involves a man who tries to mentally recall random facts during intercourse, such as listing state capitals, usually to avoid performing the Billy the Kid.

The Dry Cleaner. The act of a man driving with all the car windows down and the sunroof open, even during the dead of winter, in the vain attempt to eradicate the olfactory evidence that he has visited a strip club without his wife or girlfriend's knowledge.

The Zsa Zsa: The act of a female, who's clearly with a man for the money, mentally thinking of all the things he's going to buy her to get through perfunctory intercourse.

The Munchausen: The act of a female announcing a sudden illness or infirmity (most famously a headache) which dashes the man's hope of intercourse.

The Curtain Call: The act of a female annoucing to the man that he can "finish" anytime, because the show's pretty much over.

About A Girl 2006

2006-09-21T10:25:00.000-07:00

When I came home from work on April 26, 2004, I could tell something was wrong. The Spousal Unit, then not-quite four months' pregnant, didn't call out or say anything when I came in the door.

I found her doubled over, crying and in pain.

"What's wrong?"

"I don't know, we need to go to the hospital right now."

So we did, violating several laws of traffic and a few laws of physics. We went through the emergency room and were sent immediately to the maternity ward.

The SU was experiencing severe pain. The nurses checked her to see if she was having contractions. Every moment and adjustment caused her agony. They checked the Cub's heart rate, after a few tense minutes trying to locate her, her heartbeat rang out strongly.

The SU wasn't having contractions, but the staff couldn't find any source for her pain. Her OB-GYN came to the hospital and sent her downstairs for an ultrasound.

We were actually scheduled for her ultrasound the following week and had decided that we wanted to know whether we were having a boy or a girl. During the ultrasound, while they were trying to figure out what was wrong, the technician told is that the Cub was a girl.

Whenever you ask an expectant couple if they are hoping for a boy or a girl, they usually claim to have no preference, hoping instead "just for a healthy child." That kinda goes without saying, right? Of course, everyone wants a healthy child. But there are so many things that can go wrong during a pregnancy, so many things that are outside your control that even the most rational person surrenders to superstition. But we had a preference, we wanted a girl.

Even despite still being in the dark as to what was going on, we were elated with the news. I asked the technician if she was sure. She showed me a pulsating mass on a black and white screen that to her was incontrovertible evidence (or maybe, more properly, an incontrovertible lack of evidence). I saw a gray blob, she could have said I was looking at the surface of the moon for all that I could make out of the screen.

Our joy was short lived though. Shortly, after the technician left with the images, the OB came back with dire news.

"We're going to have to prep you for surgery immediately. It looks like your pain is caused by torsion of one of your ovaries. We have to remove it tonight."

"But what about the baby?"

"We don't like to perform surgery on the mother during this stage of pregnancy. And there are risks to the baby including miscarriage. We think they are manageable, but we have to do this and we have to do it now. She can't go on with it like it is now."

The prognosis got worse.

"There is a chance that we made need to take a fallopian tube as well. This may cause problems with future conception."

Ok, I thought to myself, let me see if I have this straight. Not only might we lose our baby tonight, but now she's telling me that we may not be able to have children again?

The SU went into surgery prep. Despite freaking out internally, I knew that if I didn't appear to be strong, that she would panic even more.

"It's going to be ok. Remember how strong her heartbeat is, and how much she moves around. We've got a tough little girl"

Before they wheeled her away, the SU said.

"D, if it comes down to either me or the baby, keep the baby."

I stayed in the waiting room. By now, it was about three or four in the morning. I was too exhausted to stay awake but too anxious to sleep. The OB broke through my zombielike haze.

"We're all done, and both your wife and your daughter are fine."

My daughter. I like the sound of that.

Without violating her privacy anymore that I already have, the problem turned out to be something other than what the ultrasound appeared to reveal.

Being first time parents, we read everything about what pregnant women are supposed to avoid, foods, chemicals, etc. But now, the SU had to take morphine and other painkillers during her recovery. The doctors said it was safe, but we worried. How can so many things be bad for a baby, yet strong painkillers perfectly safe. Despite the clearance, the SU refused to take pain medication except when she couldn't stand it anymore.

We spent the rest of the pregancy worrying about the Cub and whether she would be affected by the surgery and the recovery.

She was born almost five months later. September 21, 2004 at 7:46pm. Strong, beautiful, and healthy.

Two years later, I'm still amazed by her.

Happy Birthday, Little One.

Why I've Been Lame

2006-09-20T08:19:00.000-07:00

Sorry for not updating this week. I've been preparing for my return to the stage this evening. I'm performing at Dr. Grin's here in GR tonight. So all my creative juices lately have been devoted writing and preparing for tonight in the hope that I won't end up dying on stage.

Tomorrow is a very special day for me, so there will absolutely be a new post.

Wish me luck.

D

Did I Mention That I Love YouTube?

2006-09-16T17:32:00.000-07:00

I've watched this like a hundred times.

Thanks to Joey at Straight Bangin' who posted this earlier in the week.

Lies My Teachers Told Me

2006-09-15T07:54:00.000-07:00

I took math all through high school, finishing with Calculus in my senior year. While a number of my friends were taking blow-off classes and had phys ed, like, three times I day, I was getting my head knocked around by derivatives.

My teachers always said that the math that they were trying to force into my inpregnable skull would have practical application throughout my life. With the exception of algebra, they lied. I don't think I've used any thing that I "learned," i.e. crammed on the night before the test, after that.

Algebra. Here's a very real life story problem that shows how I apply algebra in my life:

D has a hearing in a courtroom 170 miles away at 9:00 am. If D drives at the average speed of 77 mph, what is the latest possible moment that he can set his alarm clock for so that he can get to court in time allowing, of course, for him to miss at least one highway exit and stop by a McDonald's drive through to get a "steak," egg, and cheese bagel?

By the way, I understand why people smoke when I eat those things. I know they're bad for me, in fact, I'm sure I lose at least ten minutes off my life whenever I eat one. But I don't care.

I wonder how long it'll be until parents protest schools teaching algebra, since it sounds too much like al-Qaeda.

Geometry. I can't tell you how many times I've had to apply my geometry lessons to figure out the area of a parallelogram. Oh, wait a minute, yes I can. None.

Trigonometry. I have actually used Trig once, but that was during a ill-advised one night stand in college.

Pre-Calculus/Calculus. The bane of my existence of my junior and senior high school years, yet strangely have had nothing to do with my life since. I really don't see this changing in the remaining years of my life.

(Don't) Legalize It

2006-09-13T12:27:00.000-07:00

I've come to the conclusion that I'm against the legalization of drugs for a selfish reason. I appreciate the argument that the War on Drugs has cost billions of dollars and has largely been ineffective (Wars on inanimate objects and intangible concepts rarely go well). Setting those arguments aside, I'm now against legalization for a simple reason: If drugs were legalized, I would undoubtedly end up addicted to them.

I say this even though I've never "experimented" with drugs. I've never tried any nor have I ever been even remotely tempted by them. Other than being offered marijuana at fourteen by my then girlfriend's father, I never even saw drugs until I was in undergrad.

But when I was around them, nothing about drugs seemed glamourous. I'm very big into aesthetics and presentation. Drug scenes always seemed dirty and illicit. If I won't go to Wal-Mart because I don't like the lighting, do you really think I'm going to indulge in a substance that at the very least was coated with someone else's saliva or at worst snuck into the country in someone's rectum?

But if drugs were legalized, then the pharmaceutical companies would be able market them and presumably clean them up. They would be advertised on television with brand names like Craque. Cocaine will be the New New Coke.

You're probably thinking, "What about alcohol? Alcohol is legal and there are plenty of commercials and ads. You must be an alcoholic?"

I'm not. But the difference between alcohol and drug advertisements is the difference between correlation and causation.

Commericials for alcohol never actually show people under the effects of alcohol. Think for a second how weird that is. The best thing about alcohol is that it's a legalized mood altering substance. In commericials, people drink Mountain Dew and base jump off skyscrapers. Red Bull gives you wings. But in alcohol ads, no one is ever drunk or even buzzed. The commercials would have us to believe that people who drink beer are more concerned with carb counting than getting a buzz. In alcohol commericials, people are always enjoying themselves, but the alcohol seems to be merely part of the scene but not the cause. It's not that beer makes people happy, it's that happy people drink beer.

Beer commercials work on the premise of peer pressure. All the cool people drink brand X beer, so you should too. And I'm rarely succeptible to peer pressure.

I am, however, extremely vulnerable to effective advertising. Beer ads, while creative, aren't very effective. I enjoy the multi-million dollar Super Bowl commericals that beer companies use to sway the seven or eight beer drinkers who haven't already established brand loyalty, but I can rarely remember which companies ran which ads.

I am especially vulnerable to advertising that insists that the product will make me happy. That's what pharmeceutical ads do. In drug commercials, happiness does not merely correlate to prescription or over the counter drug usage, but is actually caused by their usage. These ads make it pretty clear that if you use their anti-depressant or laxatives, soon you'll be running happily on a rolling hill in the springtime (of course, if you're using the laxatives you may be running for a different reason). The exception to this rule is apparently erectile dysfunction ads, in which the only demonstrable effect is a man being able to suddenly throw a football through a tire.

Although I've never been tempted by drugs, I have stood in line during the middle of a cold November night in Michigan to buy an XBOX 360. So I know I'll do crazy things if the marketing is effective. If drugs are legalized, the marketing companies will start putting Ecstacy in easy-to-swallow sustained released caplets and Hostess will start lacing their cupcakes with marijuana.

Visit your local physician to see how pervasive drug marketing is. You can barely find a set with all the pamphlets and standing ads on the latest anti-depressant or allergy medication. Now imagine if drugs were legalized and the industry could market these products.

I wouldn't stand a chance.

The Weekend The Boobies Went Away

2006-09-11T05:16:00.000-07:00

Like clockwork, fall weather arrived in Michigan the first weekend after Labor Day. And with it, women have put their breasts away for winter storage. Sure, we may get an Indian Summer and a few nice days between now and the spring, but cleavage season is over.

I'm saddened by this. Low cut tops are being replaced by bulky outerwear and comfort foods. Sure, I may occasionally catch a good pair nicely framed under a cashmere sweater, but it's not the same.

The only thing that is keeping me from full blown depression is that Justin Timberlake has promised to bring SexyBack.

But this onsetting depression has brought a revelation. I've long believed that I have Seasonal Affect Disorder, or the "Winter Blues," which is caused by lack of sunlight. But maybe, all this time, it's been something else.

I believe that I actually have a condition known as Breast Deprivation Disorder (I can't tell you how much I wanted to think of a euphemism for breasts that started with D, so that I could have called this nicknamed this condition "Triple Ds," but there really aren't any good ones out there. I googled and everything. I just don't think people call breasts "dumplings" or "doodads").

Anyway, BDD is often misdiagnosed as SAD. because the onset usually occurs about the same time, in the late fall and early winter. These conditions can also be treated similarly. A person suffering from SAD will usually show mood elevation after about 30 minutes of sunlight exposure. Fortunately, BDD sufferers show marked improvement after only about 30 seconds of exposure to cleavage.

Artificial sunlight will also help SAD suffers. With BDD, exposure to artificial breasts may actually cure symptoms quicker and more effectively than natural breasts depending on the source. So if you see me visiting a gentlemen's establishment, remember it's for a medical condition, no matter what my health insurer says.

Millions of men in the northern states are afflicted with BDD. Although there is no known cure for BDD, it can be treated. With your e-mailed pictures and monetary donations, together we can beat this terrible disease.

Won't you please help?

Teach The Controversy!

2006-09-07T10:02:00.000-07:00

Our students are being held hostage by their science teachers who refuse to acknowledge that there are opposing explanations to their dogma. They'd much rather advance their agenda than admit that they are not infallible and let the students decide matters for themselves.

I speak, of course, about science teachers stifling the debate on whether the Earth is really round or flat. There are only a few scattered school districts that take their mission to educate our youth seriously enough to discuss the evidence contrary to the "mainstream" belief that we are living on a spherical object that miraculously floats in space.

I'm not a scientist, but even I can poke holes in the Round Earthers' beliefs. If the Earth is round, then why aren't the people in Australia upside down? I've never been to Australia, but I minored in Australian studies in college. There are three things that I know for sure about Australia: 1) Australia was discovered in 1962 by Olivia Newton-John 2) Australians hold cows as sacred and 3) It is not upside down! Why aren't Australians flying out into space?

Round Earthers argue that Australians don't fall off the Earth because of "gravitational theory". Did you catch that? They don't even bother to cover up that they rely on a "theory," yet they teach it to our precious children like it was an actual fact. They say this "gravity" is a force that pulls objects towards the center of Earth's allegedly spherical mass.

Please.

Ask a science teacher why you can't see gravity and he or she will tell you because it's "invisible." You know what they call people who talk about invisible things? Kooks! Yet, this is what they are teaching our children. The scientists talk out of both sides of their mouths when on one hand they say they rely on "observable data," but then talk about the invisible gravity fairy.

Why don't we eat off sperichal plates? Or sleep on spherical beds? You know what would happen. Why don't they try experiments on spheres in science classes? Because teachers don't want kids to know that some shapes are just better than others, that's why. Flat is good. Yes I said it. Flat is good! I'm sick of all the shape relativism in this country and whiny liberals saying "Ooh, you can't say that. Flat is no better than round. All shapes are the same." I think we all know BS when we smell it.

For too long, scientists have thumbed their eye at the beliefs that we hold dear. Look at Copernicus, who attempted to discredit thousands of years of biblical teachings that the sun revolves around the Earth. He had to convince everyone that the Earth revolved around the sun to show how smart he was. Not feeling so smart in Hell now, are you Mr. Smartypants astronomer?

Now, I'm not advocating teaching religion in public schools. They can't teach anything else correctly, so why let them screw up religion too? I think that you can have a meaningful discussion about the Flat Earth, without mentioning the Great, Wise and Benevolent Turtle, upon which the Earth rests.

So where is the proof about the Round Earth? Don't give me any of that crap about satellite pictures and the space program, which have obviously been faked. It is common knowledge that the "moon landing" was created on a soundstage and scripted by Arthur C. Clarke.

Many people think that teaching about the Round Earth is harmless. Oh yeah? Well, here's something to consider. You know what Hitler, Stalin, and Bin Laden all have in common? They all believed the Earth is round!

Clearly, this Round Earth talk is a ploy by the feminists, socialists, terrorists and all the other "ists" out there, who want to destroy marriage, put condoms in kindergartens and make boys learn to ballet, to destroy America.

I'm not trying to drive Round Earth "theory" out of our schools. Let's face it, none of us were around when the Earth came out of the giant celestial oven. The jury is still out. My modest proposal is that we present both sides of the issue to our students and let them decide for themselves.

Flying Below The Gaydar

2006-09-06T12:18:00.000-07:00

I admit to having a poorly functioning gaydar.

I remember being suprised when Boy George was outed, though in retrospect when was he ever in the closet? A lot of my female friends were into him, so I thought his gimmick was just a clever way to get women.

Recently, I had lunch with two female co-workers who remarked about how Tony, a bartender at a local watering hole that I frequent, was obviously gay.

There was no way this was true. I argued against it having seen nothing that made me think for a second that he might be gay. I consulted with a male co-worker who also knew the guy and who like me, on many occasions, talked with Tony about sports and the sordid social lives of the waitresses. Like me, he didn't think for a second that Tony was gay.

I should explain that the point isn't whether Tony is actually gay or not. I don't care about his sexual orientation other than if he was gay, it would prove that my skill at being a keen observer and student of human behavior isn't as great as I'd like to think. Unlike a lot of guys that I know, I don't assume that just because someone is gay that he's going to automatically think that I'm magically delicious.

No, this was more about proving a point. So we decided to pull aside one of the waitresses to ask her. Her immediate reaction proved us wrong.

She was discrete though. She said that people have questioned whether Tony was gay but that he's always denied it. I was prepared to claim the benefit of the doubt and declare victory until she mentioned that one night he got drunk and made out with another guy.

Hold the phone.

Although I'm not much of a drinker, I've been around enough drunks to know that indulging in even the most copious amounts of alcohol is not enought to make a man indulge in The Love That Dares Not Speak Its Name who is not otherwise inclined. Can it make you utter anti-Semitic slurs? Sure. But mess around with a guy? I think not. If so, we really need to put on some warning labels. At the very least this would have to be reflected in commercials, right?

Less filling! Tastes Great! 40% less likely to cause you to wake up next to your frat brother!

If he ever saw a drop of alcohol after that night without running screaming into the night, then he's probably gay.

99 Problems (But A Blog Ain't One) 2006

2006-08-31T12:03:00.000-07:00

Today is the second anniversary for The Letter D. This makes my relationship with you all the second longest one I've had in my life. In my first post, which was originally read by no one that didn't have my last name, I reserved the right to suddenly stop posting.

But here we are. I'm no quitter. And a good thing too. It's amazing how this blog has changed my life. I went from being a frustrated writer with a soul-draining day job to being a ...

Ok, maybe things haven't changed that much.

But that's cool, I still love being able to pull something out of my brain on a semi-regular basis and be able to kill a few minutes of your work/school day a few times a week.

Thanks to everyone who reads, comments, e-mails, links, sends pictures of Jessica Alba, or whatever to spead the D-ness throughout the blogosphere.

Attack of the 6' 5" Women

2006-08-28T09:53:00.000-07:00

Are women getting taller? Like freakishly tall?

I'm starting to get a little concerned about the increase in extremely tall women. I'm not talking 5'9" to 5'11, I'm talking 6 feet plus at least.

I've gotten used to seeing them in West Michigan, where the combination of a lot of people of Dutch descent and the continued practice of Eugenics has affected the local population. But I was in Cleveland this weekend and saw a large number of Amazons out Saturday night looming over Sixth Street.

I remember seeing the occasional six footer 10 years ago, but most of them seemed to have oddly protruding foreheads or other parts which made me think that they had been stitched together from the parts of several other women. But most of the women I see now don't look like that anymore and many are really attractive. Apparently, they've perfected the production process.

Or maybe, I think they're more attractive because of their height.

Several years ago, coming back from a Jim Rome tour stop, the group of guys that I was with stopped off at a gentlemen's establishment. The only dancer that I can still remember, was one we nicknamed She-Hulk. She was at least 6' 2." Add on the skyscraping stripper heels and she could probably have played power forward for most NBA teams. And to save you from asking the inevitable question, I'm 89% percent sure that she was born female.

She-Hulk was powerfully built. She was like Chyna from the WWE, only without the penis. Whenever she twirled on the dancer's pole, we thought she'd rip out the stage from the building's foundation. In between sets and lapdances, She-Hulk would get dances from the other normal-sized strippers and on occasion would pick one up and throw the dancer over her shoulders and walk off. I'm not ashamed to say that this was kinda hot.

Despite her average looks, we all found her strangely alluring because of her size. None of us got a dance from her, partially from fear, partially because she didn't work the crowd like the other dancers. Not that we could've turned her down if approached.

"Would you like a dance?"

"Um, no thank you. Maybe later"

"You're making me angry, puny man. You wouldn't like me when I get angry."

"Here's all my money. Just don't hurt me."

Anyway, I'm not sure what has caused the rise in giant women, but I've got it narrowed down to either alien experimentation or the military-industrial complex.

Farewell To A Friend

2006-08-25T06:20:00.000-07:00

My XBox 360 died at 8:05pm on August 23rd.

Please forgive me, this is still very difficult to talk about.

We had a good run. Together we won the Superbowl, closed the last Oblivion gate, and won War War II. In fact, I still have a hard time remembering anything that happened in my life between late November to about mid-March. Eventually, we started to grow apart. The responsibilities of life and other commitments took up my time. I was unable to spend as much time with it as I would have liked.

When I did visit it, I started noticing signs of failing health. It would lock up when I tried to play Halo 2. It shut down just as I was about to assassinate a Columbian drug lord. But the other night, just as I was about to download Texas Hold'em, it finally succumbed to the dreaded Red Rings of Death, a condition which has taken the lives of far too many other Xbox 360s that were sold on launch day.

Why, why did you have to be taken away from me so soon? Especially on the week that Madden 2007 came out?

Give me a minute...

It was a harrowing 37 minutes of going through the grieving process of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance until I went back to Best Buy with my extended warranty in hand to get another Xbox 360. (Yes, I paid for the extra warranty, we are talking about a Microsoft product here).

Goodbye dear friend. Just because you were quite literally replaced, doesn't mean that you weren't irreplaceable.

Operation: I'm Your Baby Tonight

2006-08-22T06:52:00.000-07:00

Regular readers know that I despise celebrity news and gossip. I would never lower myself to discuss such trivial things. I won't stand for it. But there is one story that I must discuss.

Osama Bin Laden has a thing for Whitney Houston. At least according to his former "sex slave," Kola Boof (she sounds like a Jedi). In Harper's, the Sudanese poet, novelist and author of autobiography, "Little Girl Lost", discusses her time with Bin Laden, who she reports had a major crush on Whitney Houston.

I've never wanted something to be true so badly.

My question is, why isn't the CIA using this information to capture him? Can't we scan Netflix user files to see if someone in the Pakistani mountains is ordering "The Bodyguard" and "Waiting to Exhale?"

Osama wants to kill Bobby Brown because he's a bad influence on Whitney. Not that we haven't all thought that, but how bad do you have to be for Osama to think that you are a bad influence?

Who needs 72 virgins in the afterlife when Whitney is Every Woman and can give him The Greatest Love of All? I don't think she would mind his other three of four wives, when Bobby has at least that many baby mommas.

I'm generally opposed to negotiating with terrorists. But shouldn't we make an exception here? Here's the chance to kill two birds with one stone. One one had we have one of the most despicable characters in modern history and on the other we have Osama Bin Laden. They'd kill each other in a week. Or at the very least, be so cracked out that he could no longer form a coherent plot. Plus, Bobby Brown would likely get beheaded. Win-Win-Win.

My favorite part is that Osama reads Star Magazine. I imagine this has occurred at least once:

Deep in a secluded mountain fortress. Khaled, one of Osama's underling's, brings in a package.
Khaled: Great one, I have procured the package.

Osama: Excellent. If you continue to perform well, then one day you too shall join the roughly 17,358 of your brothers who are the #2 leader of al-Qaeda. (Osama opens the package) Khaled, what is the meaning of this?

Khaled: They are the magazines that you requested.

Osama: Fool! I demanded Star Magazine. These are In Touch and Life and Style! These are totally uncredible. How will I know if Vince and Jen are to be engaged? Guards, take him away and cut off his incompetent hands.

Khaled(being hauled away): Please Great One, be merciful!

Strange, but I've always figured Osama would be more into Kelly Clarkson.

Attention Wal-Mart Shoppers!

2006-08-21T07:10:00.000-07:00

Last weekend marked the second time in less than a month that I was stuck in a golf resort. This time was up in Gaylord, Michigan and I went for a conference. Yes, there is a Gaylord, Michigan. I don't know if it's the Michigan accent or what but people up here pronounce it "Gay-lerd." I think they're just being defensive.

Gaylord is just on the other side of the 45th parallel, making it closer to the North Pole than the Equator, yet people live here voluntarily.

I am not a golfer. I have, however, experimented with golf but didn't like the side-effects. It made me hungry, paranoid, and want the estate tax repealed. A lot of people think that golf is for the rich. That's not true. Golf, instead, is a sport for people whose lives are a little too good, and seek out novel ways to get some healthy frustration in their lives. But I can see how people confuse the two.

Instead of spending my afternoon on the golf course, I decided to go to the movies. Gaylord only had one movie theatre, and I had an hour and a half until the next showtime. Unable to find any other place to kill time, I went to the exact opposite of the golf resort: Wal-Mart. Actually it was a Super Wal-Mart, which meant it had powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal Wal-Marts.

Everyone knows that I'm a man of the people. It is not my intention to disparage all Wal-Marts or the good folks that frequent them. I'm sure that there are many perfectly well-adjusted, fully self-actualized people that shop there. This is just my read on one Wal-Mart, in one rural Midwestern town, on one Friday afternoon.

Still, I now understand why people protest whenever Wal-Mart plans to build another store.

It was an amazing slice of Americana. I was tempted to take over the store's P.A. system to address the shoppers:

Attention Wal-Mart Shoppers!

To the couple with the Mohawked five year old son: I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt by assuming that the haircut was your son's idea. But that's why we don't let five-year olds make decisions. If it was your idea, don't be surprised if this kid tries to murder you in your sleep one day. Wouldn't it have been easier just to make the boy walk around in a t-shirt that said "I was unplanned?"

To the Goth, Emo or whatever you call that look teenaged boy: Your black trenchcoat and black eyeliner and dyed hair certainly caught people's attention. Especially since it is like 84 degrees out. But Vlad, the next time you want to make a statement, you might want to leave one accessory at home:

Your mother.

She totally blew whatever look that you were going for. I'm sorry, you're not living an alternative lifestyle if your mother is out buying you Hanes underwear.

To the three separate women that I saw within fifteen minutes with tattooed necks: I suppose there are simpler ways to disqualify you from most professional careers, but I can't think of any right now.

To the guy driving the 67' Dodge Charger with the flag pole with a giant Confederate flag planted on it: You're really not showing that you're a rebellious bad-ass by flying that flag in one of the whitest towns in the Midwest. If you sincerely waive the flag to show your pride in the South, wouldn't the best way to show your belief is to, I don't know, live in the South?

Next weekend, I travel to beautiful downtown Cleveland.

Opponents Beware!

2006-08-19T18:48:00.000-07:00

Some Girls

2006-08-16T13:06:00.000-07:00

As little as I know about women, I am frequently amazed by the ignorance of my fellow man about them.

Every now and then I'll hear a guy make an amazing but comical generality about redheads or Asians, or Catholic girls. Apparently, every woman who is of a different race, background or religion than the speaker is gifted with some super-sexual power or predilection uncommon to that of mortal mankind.

I've dated women from many different ethnicities, religions, and backgrounds. Yet, I haven't dated enough of any one group to constitute a representative sample sufficient to form a conclusion. I think you need to date at least 100 women of any group to even begin to draw a general conclusion.

But from my limited experience, here's a list of my own beliefs about women, which I swear is 100% true:

Brunettes are all practicing pagans.

Chinese women can glide for short distances.

Blonde women can communicate with animals except penguins.

Jewish women are natural jugglers.

Canadian women all know Kung-Fu.

Women from Los Angeles live to be 140 years old.

Australian women are ambidextrous.

East Coast women don't leave footprints in the snow.

Short women often have wings.

Women from the South cannot sneeze.

Black women are immune to poison.

Redheads are direct descendants of the survivors of Atlantis.

Catholic women can see better at night.

Women in their forties are nocturnal.

Latinas cannot see the color green.

Women from the Midwest cannot legally work at Hooters.

New York women have the strength of ten men.

Filipinas are the best cooks, but they refuse to do so on general principle.

Women from the Middle East can run at 40 miles per hour.

Native American women can tell if you're lying.

Texan women all know how to speak Portugese.

Japanese women are terrible drivers, but excellent pilots.

Italian women are never born on March 17.

Please feel free to print this list out as a guide to use at the bar.

Coincidence Is The Word We Use When We Can't See The Levers And Pulleys

2006-08-15T12:01:00.000-07:00

Next month, I'll be performing stand-up in a fundraiser for a local charity. This charity is so efficient that it'll save money on this event by featuring entertainers who aren't professionals . . . doing comedy. Really, what could be greater?

Anyway, I was a little leery of what to say onstage, because the audience will be made up largely of people that I work either for, with, or against. I thought this would limit what I could or couldn't say. But in another one of my career-limiting decisions, I've decided that if my professional side has to clash with my creative side, I'm going to let the creative side win. Hence, the chance to 1) die onstage 2) get fired, and 3) probably get divorced all in one evening.

In preparation for the event, I've been talking on the phone to the program manager from the entity for which we're raising money. The receptionist called me yesterday to let me know that she was here to drop off some flyers and tickets. When I arrived in the lobby, I recognized her. It was the former waitress that I wrote about several months ago, who remembered me from another bar she worked in, and recalled me in great (but inaccurate) detail in front of the Spousal Unit, which caused all sorts of domestic strife.

I'd think I was making this up if I wasn't me.

So, yeah, she now works for this center and is in charge of the event. Small world. But as it turns out, she's married with a five-year old. So I told the SU that she couldn't have possibly been interested in me, and this is one of the few times that I really wanted to be proven wrong. The SU proved resistant to my irrefutable logic, however, and views this all as some nefarious plot.

During our last encounter, the SU recalls her physically placing herself in front of me, with her back completely turned to the SU. She called it "giving [her] the butt." I replied that, "if she had been interested in me, don't you think she would have given me the butt?"

It is weird that she keeps popping up though but hey, Grand Rapids....err, New York City is a small town.

But if my rougish charm had worked its magic on her before, imagine her inflammed passion once she sees me on stage in all my glory.

Useless Friday Post

2006-08-11T11:44:00.000-07:00

There really isn't much point to a late Friday afternoon post, because fewer people are around to read it. But because I haven't posted since Monday I feel compelled to post something.

Here are a few thoughts:

Paris Hilton: Thank you for all those who've forwarded the story about Paris Hilton taking a vow of celibacy for me to comment on. But I'm not going to talk about her anymore because 1) it's too easy, and 2) she's a force of nature and we all lie helplessly in her wake.

I could easily write that there was widespread media panic when they were unable to locate Paris for a three minute period between 6:47 abd 6:50pm PST on August 7 and, thus, had nothing to write about. Or how Paris has reached the point when she says anything she wants and people will believe it. Along with her vow of celibacy, Paris claims to have had only two sexual partners. I suppose that's possible, but it's extremely implausible that she could have had sex with two guys and that encounters with both of those partners would be immortalized on videotape.

But I won't. Here's the thing. She doesn't care what people think about her. No matter how stupid, classless, untalented, or flat out evil, we think she may be, she gets paid up to a million dollars just to show up at parties. Game, set, and match. Her life doesn't suck. I told you she was a genius.

And that's all I've got to say about that.

Volkswagen ads: I'm scared to watch television for fear of the new VW ads. They all start of innocuously, with a group of people in a car, talking about nothing, having a good time, when WHAM! A car comes out of nowhere and broadsides the car.

That freaks me out because I never expect it. and the underlying message, true or not, is that calamity can come out of thin air, generally when you least expect it. And if you don't drive a VW, you're probably going to die.

D's Nudity Policy: Jason Mulgrew has a post about women who email him nude pictures. He institutes a policy for women who send him nude pictures of themselves. Although nowhere near as well known as Mulgrew, I have been lucky enough to get the occasional nude picture from readers (some even from women!). This is an unintended but much appreciated perq of humor blogging I guess. Unlike Mulgrew, I've been married for nearly 10 years, I won't look free nudity in the mouth (there's a joke in there somewhere) So here's my policy: To send me a nude picture of yourself, you must over 18 and must have been born female or, ok fine,you must have been a woman for at least 3 out of the last five years. Simple, no?

Take a walk on the Darkside: There's a "next blog" button on blogspot site. You click on it and it randomly pulls up another blog. Every now and then you find something interesting. I hit it the other day and hit a site where a woman writes about her fantasies of being spanked by Anakin Skywalker(with pics!). I would say it's not safe for work, but I hate to presume anything. You may work in a place where it's perfectly acceptable to look at a site from a woman who wants to be spanked by the Dark Lord of the Sith. If you do, are they hiring?

Germophobia

2006-08-07T06:59:00.000-07:00

It's really all about the journey and not the destination when you travel with a germophobe.

It's a wonder we ever go anywhere. The Spousal Unit watches all those Dateline and 20/20 shows where they do an expose on hotel rooms by going over everything with a black light and tell horror stories about people taking dumps in the ice buckets.

So two seconds after entering a hotel room, the SU is hosing the room down with Lysol (all doorknobs and handles will be dripping with disinfectant) and wiping all surfaces down with anti-bacterial wipes.

It's not like were staying in a dive. We stayed in a pretty well-known resort, which had a house keeping staff made up of middle-aged Jamaican women. But all the while, she made me feel like we had to maneuver through the room in an apparatus like Tom Cruise used in Mission Impossible.

And try to explain to a toddler that she's not allowed to touch anything in a room. On the positive side, her frustrated cries helped remind several women within a floor of our room to take their birth control pills.

The SU and I had a minor argument about my "forgetting" to bring flip-flops to shower in, because, of course, you can touch any surface with your bare feet. I said that I didn't bring them and wouldn't buy them and that when she goes to sleep, I would rub my now surely contaminated feet on her legs. After nearly ten years of marriage, you have to take your victories where you can get them.

I couldn't really argue with her general fears though. Hotels change the comforters and blankets with the same frequency as solar eclipses. And the SU's logic regarding the television remote controls, that is, that guys watch hotel porn and when they are "done" use the remote to turn off the television, is pretty much bulletproof.

If you live with a germophobe long enough, you will eventually become one yourself. As I'm trying to go to sleep that night, but can't because I'm thinking 1) I wonder how many hundreds of people have had sex on this bed; and 2) Wait a minute, that's right, other people are still having sex!

Which reminds me of a story:

I knew someone who feared that he was exposed to HIV from a hotel bedspread.

He told me that as he was sitting on the bed watching television and eating pizza, he rested his hand in a warm sticky reddish-brown substance. He freaked out and wanted the hotel to run a screen on the substance. The people at the hotel understandably treated him as if he was a little paranoid and unstable.

According to this man's imagined scenario, while he was outside the room on business, two people, presumably men, entered into his hotel room and engaged in the act which dare not speak its name. After their tryst, they left the hotel room leaving him to be exposed in the remnants of their love.

Anyway, even though I tried to explain how unlikely it was that this happened, he was convinced that he had contracted HIV and wondered how he would explain this to his girlfriend.

To this day, I'm not sure how he made that mental connection here and convinced himself that such an unlikely thing happened. To me, this seemed like a case where someone protested a little too much, if you know what I mean.

Listen, some guys get away on business and do things they may not do normally. The airport newsstands have nudie mags, the cabs advertise strip clubs, the hotels have porn. Maybe he did something he shouldn't have, like maybe calling an escort agency, getting his order significantly wrong, and getting surprised but thinking, "what the hell, I've already paid the deposit." I don't judge.

The hotel tested the bedspread and it tested positive ... for pizza sauce.

I Felt Sorry For Myself Because I Had No Shoes Until I Met A Woman Who Had No Toes

2006-08-03T10:03:00.000-07:00

Once again, as I warned you, the Earth is trying to kill us. But the recent high temperatures have caused people to dress more casually in response to the blistering heat. Normally, I'm a big fan of this,when, to quote myself, "women dress like they're going to a pagan fertility ritual." But exactly when did it become appropriate to wear flip-flops in the office? I'm distracted by the sounds of clip-clopping feet going back and forth down the hall with the slightly damp smacking sound of feet's thin layer of sweat peels away from the sole of the shoe.

Flip-flops are unsuitable for about 90% of the population. Most people have weird looking feet.

And if there is the opposite of a foot fetish, I have it.

This isn't worth its own Genius of Love entry, but I had a friend in college with whom I spent a lot of time. She'd crash in my room although we lived in the same dorm. She was cute and I probably could have hooked up with her if I tried. But she had horrible feet. In fact, I think her big toe was opposable. As tempted as I was to make a move in the small hours of the night, the fear of her grazing me with one of her hooves was enough to keep me away. Alas, Frodo and I were not meant to be.

I'm sure that many woman have refused to hook up with me for similar superficial reasons, but the bad karma in this case was a small matter to pay.

Anyway, I was out at lunch the other day and noticed a woman who was wearing flip-flops. Nothing weird about that, right? Wrong, what alarmed me is that she didn't have toes. I mean she had unformed toe-like appendanges on her feet, otherwise she couldn't have worn flip-flops. But they were more like nubs than toes, though, certainly lacking the nails that you would find on fully developed toes.

I thought that she should be among the last people who should expose their feet, but in retrospect, I was being overly judgmental. Who am I to criticize her? She shouldn't hide her feet in shame because of her condition.

When I was in undergrad, I had a psychology professor who I remember far more from his stories than the substance of his classes. He once counseled a woman who was reluctant to date after losing the lower part of her left arm in an automobile accident. On the rare occasions that she went out, she would pin the sleeves of her blouses to hide her arm.

My professor suggested that she do just the opposite. He told her to wear sundresses when she went out. Instead of being ashamed of her arm, he told her to wave it around. She took his advice and reported than several guys hit on her that night and she felt a lot better about herself. He explained that he expected that to happen as she would inevitably run into guys who were, in his words, "stump freaks."

Where was I?

Oh yeah, anyway, more power to this woman. I think she sets a great example for everyone else. Have self-confidence. Screw what other people think. Don't let anyone tell you that you're too old, too fat, too bald, too toeless, etc. to live your life the way that you want.

Just don't wear flip-flops in the office.

Spin Class

2006-08-01T06:43:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry that I've been AWOL. Moving this blog to NYC took a lot out of me. Plus, I had an emergency on the West Coast to take care of at my public relations firm in Los Angeles.

This is what kept me busy:

LOS ANGELES, CA, . I would like to take this opportunity to clear up any misunderstandings regarding the incident over the weekend that involved my client Mel Gibson. Mr. Gibson is responsible for some of the world's most beloved films, including Bird on a Wire, The Man Without A Face, Air America, and maybe Tango and Cash, though I'd have to check.

First and foremost, I would like to state unequivocally that Mr. Gibson is not an anti-Semite. His alleged statements were completely misquoted and misconstrued. The reckless media has reported that Mr. Gibson told a police officer that Jewish people "were responsible for all the wars in the world." What Mr. Gibson actually said was that they were responsible for The War of The Worlds, a movie that Mr. Gibson recently rented and enjoyed tremendously and which was, in fact, directed by Steven Spielberg.

Further, although Mr. Gibson had a blood alcohol content of .12 percent, we cannot look at that figure in a vacuum. Mr. Gibson, although born in New York, was raised in Australia, a land where alcoholic beverages have a much higher content. Unlike Americans, who are internationally known to be lightweights at alcohol consumption, Australians are able to have blood alcohol levels approaching .20 percent before they even get a buzz. Even sober Australians have a baseline blood alcohol content of at least .06 percent.

The media's insensitivity to Australians is also shown by highlighting that Mr. Gibson may have called a female police officer "Sugartits." As most people know, Australians are beloved in America for their charming colloquialisms, like "bonzer," "shrimp on the barbie," and "You call that a knife? Now that's a knife." In Australia, Sugartits is a term of great reverence and affection.

Mr. Gibson looks forward to returning to his craft and continuing a career in making movies spoken entirely in dead languages.

XBoxes Don't Kill People, People Kill People

2006-07-25T11:40:00.000-07:00

What a misleading headline: Jury convicts 3 accused of murder over Xbox

If you actually read the story, you'll see that the homicides had little to do with an XBox. This guy was angry because he was evicted by one of the victims and she kept his belongings, which included his XBox. It's not like he went on a killing spree because he lost an online game of Halo 2 to a bunch of squeaky voiced twelve year olds who compulsively yell racial epithets or that someone pulled the plug on the unit when they were down by three touchdowns in Madden '07. Though I could totally understand murder under those circumstances.

This is a routine multiple homicide(?) but mentioning the XBox makes it worthy of national news coverage. The danger is such reckless coverage, of course, is copycat PlayStation slayings.

On a side note, this guy was found guilty of murdering six people, which I believe gives him the new high score.

But the XBox is not to blame. XBoxes are only used to kill virtual people, not real people. By sensationalizing this story, there will be an outcry for a response. We don't need to have new laws restricting XBoxes or installing a three-day waiting period before buying a new videogame console. Let's just enforce the existing laws on the books, OK?

If they outlaw XBoxes, then only outlaws will have Xboxes.

And, of course, they'll have to pry my Xbox from my cold dead hands.

All The Critics Love U In New York

2006-07-25T00:39:00.000-07:00

Change of Address: In the attempt to hasten the inevitable tipping point of The Letter D, I'm moving the home office of this blog from Flyover Country to New York, New York. This will ensure my status amongst the giants in the blogging world and will increase my chances of having another post picked up by Gawker.

Speaking of getting to the tipping point, it's really time to do something about this template. I'm bored with it and while I didn't want anything to distract you all from the brilliance of my words, I need something a little more eye-catching. I'd welcome any tips or suggestions. Keep in mind, that I can't spell HTML it would have to be user-friendly, and I'd need to be able to transfer my old stuff to the new template.

Actually, ideally I think having a cool banner would probably be enough. I spent a lot of time over the weekend trying to figure out how to make one. I might as well try to enrich uranium, I can't figure it out. Again, any suggestions or instructions would be most appreciated.

I don't ask for much.

D Opens Big Mouth, Trouble Ensues: One of the heavy hitters of the firm is organizing a fundraiser for a legal assistance center here in Grand Rapids, errr . . . I mean in New York, on September 20. It's a night at a local comedy club. He asked me if I'd be willing to perform and, having a finely-tuned sense of self-preservation, I agreed.

It's not like I haven't done stand-up before, but I'm guessing that the audience will be predominately lawyers. Individually, lawyers can be funny. In a group, however, I can't think of a worse audience. For example, I've been writing a humor column for the local bar and every month, some lawyer personally writes me to take offense at what I wrote. Last issue, I wrote about a woman that called me to complain that the police break into her house every night a force her to take medication. I told her that that probably wasn't a bad thing. He said that I was insensitve to schizophrenics. Of course, I'm insensitive to schizophrenics. But not one schizophrenic complained about the column.

What can I talk about? I don't want to talk about lawyer stuff, because frankly, being a lawyer is the least interesting part of my life. And I'm pretty sure I won't be able to drop the F-bomb. Not that I do a lot, but it's always nice to have it available if I need it.

If you're in town in September and want to see me die on stage, check it out.

Blame Chuck: This profile of Britney Spears, written for Esquire years ago by Chuck Klosterman, more than just about anything else prompted me to start this blog. I read it and realized that there was someone out there who had the same kind of perspective and humor that I do, and someone is paying him for it. The rest is history.

Update: I fixed the link.

Enter Chad Vader: I caught this on YouTube. Excellent stuff:

Age Ain't Nothin' But A Number

2006-07-24T08:14:00.000-07:00

I came across this article over the weekend. This article had the following passages that caught my attention:

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. - A jury convicted a man of trying to persuade his girlfriend to kill his ex-wife, then trying to hire a hit man from behind bars to kill both.

Stuart Shader, 35, was found guilty Friday of three counts of soliciting to commit first-degree murder and two counts of attempting to commit murder. He faces up to 24 years in prison on each of the five counts when sentenced Sept. 15.

Last year, Shader wanted his then-girlfriend Shawna Nelson, who practiced witchcraft, to sneak into his ex-wife's house and put pits of the poisonous belladonna plant into a can of ground coffee, according to court records. He told Nelson he'd "understand" if she chose to kill herself or go to Mexico afterward.

Ok, something about this article bothered me. No, not the part about the guy trying to kill his wife. Not even the part about his girlfriend practicing witchcraft, even though that violates D's Rule of Relationships #49, which is, if you must cheat, find someone less crazy than the person you're already with.

No, it's the fact that the man's age is in the article.

How is this relevant to the story? All it made me wonder is how old his girlfriend was relative to his wife? And of course, that's not in the story.

Now, I admit that I have no journalism background. But what does his age have to do with him having his wife killed? Why is this something that we're supposed to care about? Is 35 about the age that you start seeing men try to off their wives through arcane means?

Journalists randomly disclose people's ages in a lot of news articles. In this article, it was a little distracting. I wanted to know more about his girlfriend's amazing grasp of the Dark Arts. Could this explain why he cheated? Maybe she cast a spell on him on used a love potion.

Instead of disclosing people's ages in stories where that fact has nothing to do with them, I propose that journalists state other random facts to spice them up.

I've rewritten the offending sentence to give you some examples:

Stuart Shader, lactose intolerant, was found guilty Friday of three counts of soliciting to commit first-degree murder and two counts of attempting to commit murder.

Or how about this?

Stuart Shader, chronic bedwetter, was found guilty Friday of three counts of soliciting to commit first-degree murder and two counts of attempting to commit murder.

My favorite:

Stuart Shader, uncircumcised, was found guilty Friday of three counts of soliciting to commit first-degree murder and two counts of attempting to commit murder.

The Danica Patrick Awards

2006-07-20T11:40:00.000-07:00

Not to get all Go Fug Yourself here (especially because, as a red-blooded American male, I'm totally unfamiliar with that site), but to me Danica Patrick is graded on a very generous curve for her beauty simply because she's a female in a non-traditional field. Sure, she's far and away the most attractive race car driver out there(?) and is a relatively good-looking woman. Take her outside the race car setting, however she'd be more like the hot mom at the PTA meeting. She shouldn't be in FHM.

It's kinda like when guys talk about who's hot in the office. With a few exceptions, those we describe as hot are usually "office hot." We wouldn't necessarily think they were hot in a bar on a Friday night, for example. So there's a curve. Kinda like how I'm the hottest guy that writes this blog.

In that spirit, I'm naming the Danica Patrick Awards for women who get credit for being hot for reasons other than what their actual beauty would dictate.

Ann Coulter: I know a lot of middle-aged uberconservative men who think that Ann Coulter is a sex symbol. And sure, that appears to be part of her gimmick (hence her wearing cocktail dresses on morning news shows). But just because she may voice your political viewpoints doesn't make her hot. She weighs like 70 pounds (the blood of virgins is remarkably low in calories) and I'm not convinced that at some point in her life she hasn't regulary urinated while standing. My opinion has nothing to do with her politics. For example, I think Michelle Malkin is very attractive, and she's only slightly less scary than Coulter. Nonetheless, I'd like to bang the evil right out of her.
Rachael Ray: I confess that I didn't know who she was until recently. I'd see covers of her books in stores and think that she has a cute face. But here's what you're probably thinking: "Who says she's supposed to be hot?" That's what I thought until I remembered her spread in FHM a few years ago. I don't know what they were going for in this picture. Is that supposed to get me aroused? Is it supposed to make me hungry? Let's just combine the two and say it's a little disturbing.
Paris Hilton: Paris, I give up. You're a force of nature. Like high gasoline prices, I thought that I could wait you out but it looks like you're here to stay. Television shows, movies, music, books, Everything you touch turns to gold. Or shows up at the health clinic within 72 hours. But just because you are always on television, selling products and in the tabloids doesn't mean you're hot. It's just that we're so accustomed to seeing you that we don't even think about it how odd looking you are anymore.

Madonna: I admire Madonna for enduring in the entertainment industry, where last year's stars are disposable and people always want something new. And when I was younger I thought she was hot. Now I wonder what happened. She's a master at reinventing herself. Maybe next time, she can reinvent herself as something a little less scary. It's like she's doing a parody of a drag queen doing a parody of her. Does anybody (besides her) think that she's still hot?

Congratulations to all the winners!

Mack Daddy

2006-07-17T10:47:00.000-07:00

In one of life's greatest paradoxes, the less available men are, the more attention we get. Before I got married, I heard that some women were attracted to married men. Maybe it's the unavailability, maybe it's because someone else is picking out our clothes, maybe it's because women recognize when men's wills have already been broken.

Now I'm starting to notice that there are a lot of women who are attracted to men with children. Consequently, the Cub and I have been taking a lot of field trips together.

I enjoy the looks of admiration. I can tell what they're thinking:

That's so cute. Oh, look at him. Spending quality time with his daughter. He's so good with her. And he seems to know what he's doing. What a caring father! Not like that damn Earl.

Kids are the greatest "in." Even better than puppies. Every now and then, a woman will approach us and the conversation usually goes like this:

"She is so cute."

"Thank you."

"How old is she?"

"About twenty-two months."

"You're very good with her."

"Thank you. I try to spend as much time with her as I can."

"Where is her mother?"

"She's over in Iraq serving our country."

"Oh, you're so brave."

"No, she's the brave one. But it does get a little lonely."

But while it's a great "in," it's kind of a dead end. Let's say, hypothetically of course, an attractive woman (let's say in her early twenties) sparks up a conversation. This woman hypothetically works at the Banana Republic at the hypothetical mall. Hypothetically, it's the one by the Orange Julius. The one with the Dairy Queen next to it. I mean, the hypothetical Orange Julius.

Anyway, let's say she shows interest. Purely for the sake of argument, where could a hypothetical man in this situation possibly go with this? Nowhere. Would I, hypothetically, have to bring the hypothetical Cub out with us? Would taking off the Baby Bjorn break the spell?

I want to make it clear that this is all just rhetorical. It's wrong to use your child to get attention from women. And it's really wrong to bring a child to Hooter's for this purpose. And I wouldn't tolerate such behavior for one instant. And there's another ethical dilemma that I just can't quite put my finger on.

I'm just curious about this phenomenon. It's annoying. Just another in a long line in perplexing female behavior.

I'm trying to solve the mystery sometime before the Cub is fully verbal.

Google Stalking

2006-07-12T06:42:00.000-07:00

I have Googled just about every woman who I've been involved with or have been remotely interested in. While it's not necessarily as good as old fashioned stalking, at least this way I don't have to register with the authorities every time I move.

Still there is room for improvement. Google really needs to concentrate on making it easier to cyberstalk people. It'd be good client service.

One huge hurdle is that it's too hard to stalk women once they've married, if you only know their maiden names. The other is than I've dated too many women with common names, in hindsight I should have gone out with more Aquanettas. It would also help if my exes remained in the same states where I met them. Their moving shows the same lack of consideration for my needs that probably resulted in the end of our relationship.

Regrettably, I've learned that far too many of my exes have gone on to live productive lives. They've gone on to get doctorates, practice law, have families, start their own business, etc. Maybe that speaks to the quality of the people whom I've dated, but it would be nice if at least one submitted to despair and crashed and burned after me.

In fact, here is how I think my exes should turn out:

If I broke up with them: I wish her success and a life as happy as it could be without me. I want her to do well, just not too well. All I ask for if a brief battle with depression after the break up. Maybe alcoholism. Or spontaneous uncontrollable weeping upon hearing a Prince song on the radio. A life of celibacy would also be a nice gesture. Most importantly, while she can't be as attractive as she was when we were together, I only expect a reasonable decline (A good friend found a picture online of someone I dated in high school, and let's just say the years haven't been kind. That's just embarrassing now). Keep it together, you're still representing me out there.

If she broke up with me: All bets are off. She must gain a minimum of forty pounds, serve a light prison sentence, and maybe go bald. Every day of her life must be spent in regret over the lost chance that she had. She must never know the touch of a man again. And when I inevitably make it big, she must beg for my forgiveness. And I will pretend as if I don't remember who she is. Oh, and I'm totally over you.

I'm thinking about starting a website called Exster. Each member would enter each of their exes into a database with all the sordid details. Eventually, it would be a huge network, where people can more effectively stalk their old significant others.

Great, now someone is going to steal my idea.

Law And Order:Celebrity Victims Unit

2006-07-06T23:16:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately, based on a true story:

Narrator: In the criminal justice system, celebrity based offenses are considered especially heinous. The dedicated law enforcement officers who investigate these vicious felonies are members of a elite squad known as the Celebrity Victims Unit. These are their stories.

Westfield, MA -July 2, 2006

A group of agents arrives in front of a suburban home in a black SUV. The house is surrounded by state and local police officers.

Lt. John "Mac" McTaggart: Alright men, this is a hot situation. I want everyone to keep their heads on a swivel. Rookie, I hear you were pretty hot stuff in the academy. It's time to prove yourself.

Shane "The Rookie" Miller. Yes, sir! What's the situation?

Mac: We're going into the house. We've got a perp in there that's holding something very precious to Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.

Rookie: Baby Shiloh is in there?

Mac: Baby Shiloh is on a play date with Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale's baby. No, this scumbag is holding her baby pictures.

Rookie. Baby pictures? Isn't this a little overkill for baby pictures?

Mac: (grabbing rookie by the collar) Listen here, you little snot nosed punk! Don't try to get high-minded with me. I was sneaking dead hookers out of Steven Seagal's hotel rooms since before you were an itch in your daddy's pants! Mercer, why don't you fill the Rookie in at what's at stake here?

Sgt. Ken "Merciless" Mercer: These pictures have a street value of up to $100,000. Factor in foreign tabloids and we could be talking a quarter mil easy.

Mac: That's right. Maybe you're not cut out for serious police work, Rookie. We have to keep this authorized stuff off of the streets. These pictures could be totally unfiltered. I've seen celebrity candid shots before and I can tell you they're not pretty. They're poorly lit, shot from bad angles, or maybe even have shots of the star's bad side. This could end up in the hands of schoolchildren! You ever think about that?

Rookie: No. I'm sorry, sir.

Mac: Just keep quiet and maybe you'll learn something. Excuse me Sheriff. (flashing badge) Lt. McTaggart of the Celebrity Victims Unit. We'll take over from here.

Sheriff Riley: I'm glad to see you guys.

Mac: What's the situation?

Sheriff: The suspect is still inside. We think he's got Angelina's digital camera. It seems to be undamaged. We've got the house surrounded and a sharpshooter is on the neighbor's roof.

Mac: Excellent work, Sheriff.

Sheriff: I bet you boys have handled a ton of these.

Mac: We see a fair amount of action. Last month, we lost one of our guys in a raid to recover the Jessica Simpson- Dane Cook sex tape.

Sheriff: I'm sorry to hear that. Hey, I didn't even know there was a Simpson-Cook sex tape.

Mac: Exactly. All right boys, we're going in. Mercer, take Jackson and circle around the back. Make sure he doesn't escape. Rookie, you're with me. We're going in the front door. Move out!

Mac arrives at front door.

Mac: This is Lt. McTaggart of the Celebrity Victims Unit! We know you have the pictures and the camera in there. Open up the door and no one will get hurt!

(silence)

Alright, if that's the way you want it. Rook, take out this door.

(the Rookie knocks the door off the hinges with a battering ram. Mercer and Jackson go in the back door)

Mercer: Room clear! Anybody see him?

Rookie: I see him. In the bathroom! He's trying to flush something down the toilet!

Mac: Stop him!

(The rookie grabs a small object before it flushes. He tosses it to Mercer)

Mac: What do we have?

Mercer: It's a memory card. Oh, man. 2 gigabytes!

Mac: (slapping cuffs on the perpetrator) You're going away for a long time, punk. With possession of over 512mb of unauthorized celebrity images, you're looking at a minimum of twenty years. I hope you're not too attached to seeing the sun. Get this piece of trash out of my face!

Rookie: Lieutenant, I want to apologize for earlier. This unit does important work. I'm proud to be part of the CVU.

Mac: Good work, kid.

It's All Fun And Games Until The Dog Catches On Fire

2006-07-03T15:22:00.000-07:00

Here in the good ol' U.S.A, it's time to sacrifice our digits to the gods in the name of freedom by lighting our own explosives.

Despite all the other ways in which they were oblivious to my safety, my parents never allowed me to have fireworks. I had never even lit a firecracker until my first 4th of July with my in-laws.

My in-laws take their holidays very seriously. That year, the SU's father bought dozens of sparklers and other non-lethal forms of fireworks. Michigan is one of the few states that makes it illegal to buy or sell fireworks that actually shoot into the air or do anything interesting. It's also one of the few states with a motorcycle mandatory helmet law. I think the rest of us suffer when the state won't allow the herd to be thinned as nature intended.

That first year, I enjoyed being able to singe my fingers and run away from a lit wick, only to see the firework briefly sparkle and fizzle out. This was fun for about the first half-dozen or so but quickly turned into a chore when I realized that with all the fireworks left, I would be lighting these things until Labor Day. So I started lighting like five a time, toasting my fingers several times in the process.

I learned that I really hadn't missed much from not being able to have fireworks, given that I had lit enough to make up for my childhood over the course of a few hours.

The next year - Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

And so it's gone pretty much every year since. Except for about five years ago. That 4th, I was once again in the in-laws' driveway lighting a never ending supply of really weak fireworks. To stave off the mosquitos, which were known to fly off with small children, my mother-in-law lined the front porch with citronella candles.

Enter Bear. Bear was the SU's Chow Chow. Blind from birth, Bear was rescued from a breeder that was going to put him down because of his defect. Bear usually sat on the porch during the festivities, but this year began to walk around precariously near the candles.

We called out to him to warn him of the impending danger. He thought he was getting some attention and started getting excited. He walked over one of the candles, tail wagging. . .

I hadn't given it any thought up to this point, but I was still surprised at how flammable dogs can be. They should have warning labels or something.

There was a loud "PHOOMP!" sound and Bear's tail was ablaze. It burned brighter than any of the weak fireworks we were lighting. We immediately put the flames out before they burned his skin. I don't think he had any idea what happened.

The smell of singed dog hair wafted through the summer night air. And needless to say, the party broke up.

That was one way to stop the fireworks show. After all how do you top igniting the dog?

Happy 4th.

Superman's Greatest Challenge 2.0

2006-06-28T12:59:00.000-07:00

I was all set to write about why I have no interest in seeing the new Superman movie. But then I remembered that I already wrote about that last year. Many of you weren't reading this site when I first posted it, so here it is again in a slightly revised version:

I've never been a Superman fan. He's always been too powerful, too perfect, too predictable to be a compelling character. Because few people know how to write the character, he has gotten stale, DC Comics occasionally tries to prop up Superman comic sales by publicity stunts, like temporarily killing off the character.

In one such stunt in 1996, Superman married long time girlfriend Lois Lane. But instead of using this opportunity to make the character more complex, DC Comics gave him the perfect marriage.

They missed the chance to make his character truly relatable and interesting. Here are some scenes I would like to see in Superman comics:

(At the breakfast table)

Lois: All I'm saying is that you should go solo. You don't need them. There's nothing that the others in the Justice League can do that you can't do better. Why should you get the same share of the licensing profits that Aquaman gets? How often do you have missions that involve water?

(Superman is reading the Daily Planet, oblivious to Lois' comments)

Lois: Are you listening to me?

Superman: What? Oh, I'm sorry Lois. I didn't hear you.

Lois: What do you mean you didn't hear me? You have super-hearing. Last week, you heard a girl in Seattle crying because her cat was stuck in a tree. You were just ignoring me.

Superman: I said I was sorry. What were you talking about?

Lois: Nothing. And by the way, my mother's staying with us this weekend, so if the world needs saving, let Green Lantern handle it.

Or this:

(In Lex Luthor's secret lair, Superman is stuck in Luthor's death trap.)

Lex Luthor: This is the moment of my greatest triumph! I've crafted the perfect device for your doom (Cell phone rings). Uh...where was I? Oh yes, you're held into place by force beams while being bathed in a Kryptonite ray. (The phone rings again. Luthor pauses.) The harder you struggle against the field, the stronger the ray becomes. Ha ha ha. (Phone rings again) What is that infernal noise?

Superman: That's my cell phone.

Lex Luthor: That is so rude! Well, are you going to get it?

Superman: I can't, being stuck in your perfect death trap and all.

Lex Luthor: Oh, for Pete's sake! (pulls out cell phone) Do you have hands-free on this thing?

Superman: The green button.

(Luthor pushes button)

Superman: Hello?

Lois: Where the hell are you? You said you were out with Batman. Well, I'm watching the news and Batman is on now fighting the Joker! You're with that slut Wonder Woman, aren't you?

Superman: No, I'm not and I wish you wouldn't call Diana that.

Lois: How dare you defend her! If she's supposed to be an example for women, why does she dress like a stripper? Don't think that I don't know why you guys keep her around the Hall of Justice!

Superman: It's not like that. Listen, I'm kind of busy now.

Lois: Busy? Well if you're so busy, you can just stay wherever you are. Don't bother coming home.

(Lois hangs up)

Lex Luthor: How long have you been married?

Superman: Nine years.

(Lex Luthor shuts off the death trap)

Superman: What are you doing?

Lex Luthor: I'm letting you go. Your torment and suffering is greater that anything I could come up with.

Superman: Luthor, turn the machine back on. Please.

Or this:

(Superman and Batman are in the Batcave drinking)

Superman: ... and she got the Fortress of Solitude in the divorce settlement.

Batman: Dude, that's just wrong.

Superman: I know, man. I had that place before we even started dating. And that's not the worst of it.

Batman: What else?

Superman: She got my X-ray vision and my ability to fly.

Batman: Harsh.

Superman: Well, she had a great attorney. He really did a number on me.

Batman: Yeah, I didn't even know Luthor had a law degree.

Superman: Me either.

Batman: You can crash here in the Batcave as long as you need. Hey, Catwoman says Poison Ivy is getting out of the asylum tonight. We can double date. It'll be fun.

Superman: I don't know. It's a little soon. You know what, man?

Batman: What?

Superman: You remember that time that Bizarro threw Lois off that building and I swooped in to save her at the last minute?

Batman: Yeah?

Superman: I wish I'd let her drop.

Genius of Love IX: You Only Hurt The Ones You Love*

2006-06-27T22:53:00.000-07:00

When I mentioned in yesterday's post that I was once physically attacked by an angry girlfriend, I scanned my old posts to review the post where I discussed it before. As it turns out, I only briefly mentioned that incident. I don't want anyone to think that I'm holding out on them. Plus, I think some people were confused and thought that the SU was the one who attacked me. It wasn't her but thanks to all who've recommended shelters.

Before I get into the story, some of my friends find my Genius of Love posts to be disturbing. The most common complaint is "D, warn us ahead of time before you relate your past indiscretions. We don't want to visualize your exploits." I think this complaint is unfair because I don't think I've ever graphically described anything (ok, one post was a little gross) and I've imagined nearly all of you having sex at one time and you don't hear me complaining about it.

The next most common complaint, which contradicts the above complaint, is "Your Genius of Love posts are depressing me. Haven't you ever sealed the deal with any of these women?"

See, that's the purpose of the Genius of Love posts. I tell the stories of where I have screwed up absolute sure things. That's what makes them funny. The occasions (and I assure you that there have been a respectable number) where I've been successful aren't funny. Or at least weren't funny to me. Maybe for her.

Anyway, I'm sure some people are wondering what could I have done to provoke a violent reaction from a woman? Well, in reviewing my old Genius of Love posts, I've realized that there may have been some . . . ahem . . . chronological overlapping in some stories.

Which brings me to how I ended up being attacked by a girlfriend.

I've mentioned Audra before. She was the last woman that I dated before the woman who ultimately became the Spousal Unit. Audra and I had an off-again/on-again relationship that was marked by my refusal to commit. Eventually, she started dating someone who very much wanted a commitment with her, so she broke it off with me.

I had met the future SU the year before. She worked in a building next door to the law firm where I worked as a summer clerk. She was dating someone, and I was in the off-again phase with Audra. We became friends, but that was it. After I went back to school she and I spoke on the phone occasionally.

During this time, I was trying to win back Audra by promising that I was finally ready to commit, if only she would break up with the other guy. Now, this wasn't a lie, to quote George Costanza, because I believed it. I really thought I was ready.

I pulled out all the stops over a couple of months and won Audra back. She broke up with the other guy. All was well in the world.

So good in fact, that shortly thereafter, the future SU called to tell me that she broke up with her boyfriend. I had waited out that relationship for over a year and now, when I finally "committed" to someone else, she was available and interested. All of a sudden, I didn't feel so ready to be committed to Audra anymore.

I continued to talk on the phone to the SU. Audra knew about the SU, but assumed that she was still dating her ex. One Saturday, I was supposed to hang out with Audra. She was on her way over to my apartment when the SU just showed up (it was a two and a half hour drive). I called Audra and explained that the SU had come out of the blue. Needless to say it wasn't a good conversation. I said that I'd catch up with her later.

I didn't have time to woman-proof my apartment. I did my best in the few minutes before the SU buzzed my door, but realized after she used the bathroom that there may have been some women's hair supplies in my bathroom. When the SU asked about them, I offered the incredibly lame excuse that they were my sister's.

Audra had a key to my apartment (what better way to show my commitment), I suggested that we leave. Immediately. I took her to a side of town that I knew Audra rarely went to.

I was incredibly flattered by the visit. And despite my recent conversion, I wanted to pursue a possible relationship. But somewhere driving around the city was a very pissed off Audra.

I later had the awkward conversation of "Hey, remember when I said that I was ready for a steady relationship. And you broke up with someone who was ready to have you move in with him? Well, here's a funny thing. . ."

That didn't go well. But I regained my free agent status. I managed to extend this untenable situation for about a month. On one occasion, the SU came to visit overnight. Audra drove by my apartment and exploded when she saw that I hadn't drawn the blinds in the living room of my apartment, which was about the same size as my garage in my current house.

Basically, there were two areas where someone could sleep in my apartment. The single bedroom or on the sofa bed in the living room. Because the sun blazed into the living room in the morning, because the blinds weren't drawn, she surmised that no one could have slept there. She had some choice words for me after that.

The moment of truth came a few weeks later, when Audra was over my apartment. She said the fatal words - "Just tell me that you'd rather be with her."

Honesty is the best policy, right? I thought about it and said, "I'd rather be with her."

This is probably as good a time as any to mention that Audra wasn't exactly a delicate slip of a woman. She wasn't overweight, but she was about 5' 9" and athletic. This is important to visualize, because she was silent for about ten seconds then launched a flurry of blows upon me. It's not like I could retaliate. I just covered my face and my genitals and waiting for her to get tired.

She cursed me out, burst into tears, tore my apartment key of her ring, and ran outside of my apartment.

As if the evening wasn't interesting enough, about an hour later, I left my apartment to get something to eat. Sitting in the hallway about two doors' down was Audra. I asked her what she was doing there and she said, "You were supposed to come after me."

I didn't know the etiquette for post-assault. But I this wasn't a Lifetime movie. The error of my ways didn't suddenly dawn on me, and I didn't beg her to take me back. I didn't handle the situation well and in retrospect, there were about 20,000 things that I should have done differently. But I had exceeded my daily recommended amount of drama, so that was that.

That's my sole experience with domestic violence. But I'm still young.

This is my friend Darius' suggested subtitle for The Ike Turner Story, so I'm giving credit where it's due.

Anger Management

2006-06-26T07:18:00.000-07:00

There's a commercial on the local sports talk radio here that regularly plays a commercial that annoys the hell out of me.

It's for a jewerly store. One woman tells another that she's really mad at her husband Tom and says that he's in the doghouse . The other one says "Ol' Tommy's going to have to do something really nice to get back into favor."

She responds, I told him to go to [the local jewelry store]. Her friend responds, "Bling Bling. That's the way to cure those doghouse blues."

Yes, the dialogue is horrible. But what really annoys me is that this scenario is considered to be a perfectly logical premise for a man to buy a woman jewelry. I don't know what Tom did, but isn't this a little overkill? Short of having a "misunderstanding" with a young blond woman in a Colorado hotel room, why should any man have to buy jewelry to get his wife or significant other to stop being mad at him?

It must be liberating to blow your top. You say things you ordinarily wouldn't, your heart races, you get to break stuff. I'm pretty even tempered so I can count on one hand the number of times I've truly lost it. But I've been on the receiving end on more than a few occasions.

I've been yelled at, cursed out, hung up on, and on one occasion physically attacked (remember insenstive, inconsiderate, and emotionally unavailable. I briefly mentioned that occasion here, but it really warrants it's own Genius of Love post). My attitude is let her be mad, she'll get over it. Now this doesn't mean that if you did something wrong, you shouldn't apologize. Of course, you should. But, in my experience, sometimes a woman will get mad, not because of what the guy did but because no one else is around.

I believe in behavior modification. Basically, I operate under the theory that people unintentionally reward bad behavior in others by responding in a manner that they expect. They want a reaction. So if a woman is mad at me, why would I buy her something? Isn't that encouraging her to get mad at me again, if only on a subconscious level?

So wait it out. Don't get mad. Don't respond. Of course, you must ask her the most useless question in the the English language:

"What's wrong?"

999 times out of a thousand, the answer will be:

"Nothing."

Now, you've asked, right? And aren't women supposed to the be better communicators? If she says there's nothing wrong, what are you supposed to do?

Of course, it takes a while to learn to ride out the storm. A lot of women use the most illogical punishment when they're angry: The silent treatment.

The silent treatment has to be the least efficient form of punishment since UN sanctions. Let me see if I understand this. You're mad at me. To get back at me, you're going to stop talking to me?

How is that a punishment? If you really want to punish me, go in the opposite direction. Share with me every excruiating detail of your day. Recreate every minute of conversation that you had with every person you came across that day. Complain about every real or perceived slight that you experenced that day. I'll cry "Uncle" in about five minutes.

I admit that the silent treatment used to bug me. But now in my house I have what I refer to as the Fortress of Solitude. I have an HDTV, four video game systems, hundreds of DVDs, a dozen or so books that I haven't read and dozens more that I'd read again. Believe me, I can wait you out.

"But D," you're thinking. "What about the most effective way that I woman can punish a man?"

Let me tell you something. If your woman cuts you off, that means that you're not doing something right, if you know what I mean. Because otherwise, isn't she punishing herself as well? If you are an eight degree black belt in the exquisite art of Interplanetary Cocoa Love, this is not something that you'll ever have to worry about.

So I really wouldn't know what being cut off is like. Ok, maybe it's happened to me once or twice. Ok, maybe occasionally. Fine, fairly frequently.

But as I've always said, relationships are battles of will. And the will to win sometimes requires great personal sacrifice.

Like Shooting Fish In A Barrel. . .

2006-06-21T18:35:00.000-07:00

It's too easy.

Dear Rosario

2006-06-15T11:42:00.000-07:00

I hope you don't think I'm weird for contacting you. We met briefly on the Sin City set. I was only there briefly due that little misunderstanding in Jessica Alba's trailer, where she was screeching like a harpy at me. As I tried to tell her, her personal assistant is supposed to help out with tasks that the star is otherwise unavailable to perform. She just happened to go a little bit above and beyond the call of duty. Jessica, as usual, was totally unreasonable.

Anyway, my thing with Jessica is over. I've moved on. She's was a nice girl and everything but she's completely gone Hollywood. I'm interested in a real woman, someone like you who hasn't let her comparatively weaker career go to her head. You keep it real and I like that.

I've kept a close eye on your career. I thought you were outstanding in Rent. Yes I saw it, but believe me, I'm totally straight. In fact, did Jessica ever mention a thing called Interplanetary Cocoa Love? If not, well it's not something that can be described but instead experienced.

Anyway, I heard you were dating that Jason Lewis guy from Sex and the City. I don't know how to break this to you, but he's as gay as the first day of May. Plus I think it's a bad idea for an actress to date someone who is prettier than her. That is one of the reasons I think we would be perfect together.

I could understand if you were reluctant to date someone who has dated one of your friends. Let me tell you, Jessica is not your friend. She is two-faced. She said that you only get the roles that she rejects and that the biggest part in Sin City went to your forehead. Well, let me tell you, I put her straight. What are your thoughts on revenge sex?

And I'm bringing something to the table. I'm a writer on the verge of breaking big. I have been working on a screenplay with what I think will be a breakthrough role for you. You'd play a supermodel who is also secretly a CIA assassin. And a lesbian. And maybe a vampire, I'm still editing it. It's called Headshot, and I know it'll be huge.

Anyway, I look forward to hearing from you. Oh, if you happen to talk to Jessica, can you keep this between us?

Let's make this happen,

D

Scenes From A Health Food Store

2006-06-13T19:09:00.000-07:00

I went to a local helath food store the other day to buy a protein supplement.

I spent time choosing between the horrible vanilla, the foul chocolate, or the new and sure to be terrible banana flavoring. I ended up picking the vanilla, forgetting that the last vanilla protein powder that I bought tasted like socks. Of course, I bought the 5 lb. container, so I should be done with it sometime around Christmas 2007.

When I went to the cashier the following exchange occurred:

Cashier: Hey, we're giving out samples of this all natural sexual stimulant. This is the last one, do you want it?

Me: What is it supposed to do? Will it make me strong like bull?

Cashier: It increases your libido.

Me: Listen, I've been married for nine years. We're coming out of about eight months of winter and fall weather. Women are dressed like they're going to a pagan fertility ritual. The last thing I want is an increased libido. I want to take my libido behind the house and put it out of its misery. Plus, half of the stuff you sell here says "Caution. May turn user orange." I'm not going to take some weird herbal supplement, made by some fly by night organization, which if by some miracle works for a reason other than the placebo effect, will probably be the subject of a class action personal injury lawsuit in a year.

Cashier looks at me in stunned silence.

Me: Does it come with a woman?

Cashier: Uh...no.

Me: Save it for a single guy.

The Jack Tripper Paradox (Or I Totally Would Have Done Lana)

2006-06-09T07:24:00.000-07:00

During my early teen years, I was perplexed by a minor plot line on Three's Company - Why didn't Jack ever hook up with Lana? Lana, was an older, yet remarkably built neighbor who constantly threw herself at Jack. She practically writhed with sexual excitement around him. But he always eluded her advances.

This made no sense to me back then (Keep in mind, I watched Three's Company in syndication, not during its first run showings. I'm not that old. It's funny how adult television shows became after school kid shows)

I remember discussing this issue with my friends. None of us could understand what Jack's problem was. Clearly, Lana wanted Jack, why wouldn't he hook up with her? Now the actress who played Lana may not have been as traditionally "hot" as the young nubile roommates, but she wasn't repulsive. And keep in mind that during this time in my life I was pretty much sexually attracted to any female who wasn't a blood relative.

Did I stumble on the Jack Tripper Paradox? The "situation" in this situation comedy was that Jack had two attractive female roommates, which I guess was to imply to unknowing viewers that he was living in three-way sex heaven. But I never got the impression that he was the least bit attracted to either of his roommates or any of Chrissy's successors. This is strange because he was portrayed in the opening credits as so oversexed that he couldn't even ride a bike while a beautiful woman walked passed without falling over.

In order for his landlords to approve his living arrangement, Jack pretended to be gay. In retrospect, this is remarkable. Mr. Roper and Mr. Furley were open-minded enough to begrudingly accept him for being openly gay, yet would not have allowed in to him live in the apartment if they thought he was heterosexual, for fear that he was living in sin with one if not both of his roommates. If they didn't want him to have heterosexual sex with his roommates, why were they so accepting of his homosexuality? Didn't they expect him to have a sex life?

Jack essentially lived as a closeted heterosexual, constantly fearing that he would be exposed. But here's the Jack Tripper Paradox: I think that Jack was actually a gay man, posing as a straight man who was pretending to be gay. His true sexual identity was so confused, no wonder he was so clumsy.

When Lana moved into the apartment complex, she put his true sexual preference to the test. She was the one of the earliest known MILFs. If Jack was the true player that he claimed to be, he would have been all over that.

There are clues about Jack's true sexual preference: Before moving in the apartment, Jack lived at the Y.M.C.A, a place glorified in the Village People song of the same name. Jack's dream was to own his own "bistro." Most straight guys don't even want to eat in bistros. Jack Tripper opened a bistro. Sam Malone opened a bar.

So that explains why Jack never sealed the deal with Lana. He talked a good game but when push came to shove, so to speak, he couldn't make it happen. He lived a lie, never able to be with his true love, Larry.

Either that or Larry beat him to Lana first, and who would want to follow Larry?

Endorsement Of The Week

2006-06-08T12:49:00.000-07:00

As this blog makes is gradual, but inevitable, journey to its tipping point, I've been proud of a lot of things, like being listed as one of the Top Links Ever on Pointless Waste of Time, being called an "Awesome Blog" by Larry Awesome himself, Jason Mulgrew, or even being linked on the prominent website Gawker.

But last night, I came across an endorsement on the World Of Warcraft message board, of which I am most proud.

"A blog which doesn't seem to suck as much as I thought." Obscene, Level 11 Night Elf Druid.

In all sincerity, thanks for the shout out.

The Earth Must Be Destroyed

2006-06-07T07:37:00.000-07:00

I'm frustrated that our leaders are ignoring the real issues and focusing on things for political purposes to distract us rather solving real issues. Like gay marriage, for example. Why people insist on coddling homosexuals by protecting them from the institution of marriage is beyond me.

I think our leaders should focus on the Earth.

Destroying it, that is.

How long must we let the planet attack us with impunity? Just over the last few weeks, we've seen volcano eruptions and an earthquake in Indonesia. What about Hurricane Katrina, which was entirely unprovoked? Or the Tsunami, which almost took out Jet Li?

That doesn't mean that I'm anti-environment. The environmental issue really concerns the condition of the Earth, and those who advocate for the environment are essentially seeking to make the conditions here hospitable for continued life. And I’m all about comfort. But you'll have to take my air conditioning from my cold, dead hands.

And I'm not against the environmentalists themselves. I totally get why some people love trees more than people. I love trees more than people. I love Styrofoam more than most people. Of course, my position is not so much an endorsement of trees as it is an indictment of people.

On the other hand, there are those who believe that concerns about the environment are overly hyped and scientifically unfounded and claim that the true agenda for activism is to attack capitalism. And I am very much pro-having stuff.

Well, as usual, I have an entirely different read on the situation. In carefully weighing all the facts and the arguments, I've landed on the following position:

I'm anti-Earth.

I'm not the slightest bit concerned about saving the Earth. And why should I be? The Earth has been trying to systematically destroy us all throughout our existence. It routinely takes out thousands of us at a time. The Earth hates us because of our freedom, and I’m not afraid to say it.

In addition to so-called “natural disasters,” which are intended to destroy our way of life, the Earth continually produces wild animals that attack and eat us, like sharks, alligators, and Koala bears (My Australian readers will attest that four or more Koalas can pick an average-sized man clean to the bone in less than ten minutes).

I’m waiting for a leader who will get tough on the Earth. Oh sure, the President talks a good game about damaging the Earth, but I’m not sure that he’s really committed to it. Hurricane Katrina nearly took out New Orleans and greatly impeded the production of Girls Gone Wild videos. And has the administration even considered a military response? In the end, he’s still soft on the Earth in my book.

I would like to see more concerted actions to address the danger that the Earth poses to us. No more oil spills though. That’s a horribly inefficient way to destroy the world. Plus, I don’t want gas prices to go up any more. The SU has an SUV. Sure, we could have gotten a more gas efficient vehicle, but if we did, then the Earth would win.

I refuse to believe that with all our technology, courage, and know how, that we couldn’t teach the Earth a lesson that it won’t soon forget. Drop a few tactical nukes on a glacier and send a message. That’s what I’m talking about.

Earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, etc., as far as I'm concerned, the Earth started it.

Sugar Mama

2006-06-02T05:58:00.000-07:00

Last night, I hosted a benefit for area agencies that address child abuse. Don't misinterpret this as my implying that I'm a "good person", but rather that I occasionally do "good things" so that when I inevitably go to Hell, I might garner some preferential treatment.

The benefit was held at one of the area country clubs. I'm never too comfortable at these establishements, even though I've never had a bad experience at one. In fact, once a stranger walked up to me and gave me the keys to his BMW.

My task was to be funny and auction of golf and vacation packages, jewelry, and various other donated items.

I'm not internationally known. But I'm known to rock the microphone.

One of the main bidders was an older (early 60's maybe) woman, who threw around money like she had the contract on rebuilding Iraq.

She didn't seem like she was there with any of the men that were there. And during the course of the evening, I started to get a little vibe from her. Helpless before my charm and wit, I think what she really wanted to bid on was some Interplanetary Cocoa Love.

One the way home from the event, the realization of my missed opportunity suddenly dawned on me. I may have missed the chance to accomplish one of my life goals -

To be a "kept man."

This woman emanated wealth and refinement. And I could've been her boy toy. I imagine that she was the widow of a local industrialist. And she was yearning for the strong, yet gentle, touch of a younger man. A man who packs the promise of power and virility.

She would teach me about fine wines and art. In return, I would teach her of love.

Our daliance would cause a local scandal at the club, of course. They couldn't deny me membership given her status in the community. I'm not much of a golfer, but I really enjoy driving the carts. There would be whispers about me in the club locker room. The men would clutch their wives closer when I passed near.

We would winter in the Caribbean. She would buy me a pony.

Enjoying a life of leisure, she and I would enjoy our days and early afternoons(she would usually be sound asleep by 6:30 P.M.) There would be rumors of my wild nights spent at local nightclubs in the company of models, running up unconscionable tabs on her account. When confronted about my extravagances, I would convince her that people would say and do anything to destroy our perfect love.

Alas, the candle of our romance would burn brightly but briefly. After giving her, the courage to love again, I would also give her the courage to try skydiving. An unfortunate mishap would steal her away from me forever. Her will would be contested in court by my money-grubbing 40 year old step-children.

But I will prevail.

Of course, as usual I blew this golden opportunity.

But there's always next year.

Child Therapist To The Stars

2006-05-30T06:47:00.000-07:00

Just in case the day job and the writing don't pan out, I'm considering an alternate career in a growth industry - Celebrity child therapist.

Things should be interesting in 2022.

D: Well, we've got the next fifty minutes to talk things out. There are some challenges that you've all faced, being born into the spotlight. I'm hoping that we can discuss those issues today.

Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt: Instead of worrying about our minor issues, we should be focusing on the incredible poverty in third world countries, like my homeland of Namibia.

D: I wouldn't say that's your homeland, Shiloh. You really didn't spend much time there.

Shiloh: Don't trivialize my ties to my birthland. I'm very sensitive to the struggles of my African brothers and sisters.

D: Wouldn't you like to talk about your father?

Shiloh: I never knew my father. What difference does it make?

D: Your mother bit your father's head off.

Shiloh: All couples argue from time to time.

D: No, your mother literally bit your father's head off about a month after you were born.

Shiloh: Mother said it was natural to do so. Females killing after mating is quite common in nature. Look at the preying mantis. Anyway, I've brought some pamphlets for everyone on the demining efforts in Cambodia.

D: Ok, thank you. I'll pass them out at the end of our session.

Suri Cruise: I see what you're trying to do.

D: What am I trying to do?

Suri: You're trying to poison us with this "therapy" of yours. Psychiatry is a pseudoscience. You don't know the history of psychiatry, I do.

D: Psychiatry has benefited many people.

Suri: All it does is mask the problem. And if you understand the history of it, that's what it does. That's all it does. You're not getting to the reasons why. With vitamins and exercise, many of these so-called depressions and anxieties could be more effectively treated.

D: And the release of Thetans in our bodies?

Suri: You're being glib.

D: No, I'm not.

Suri: Yes, you are. You're being glib.

Sean Preston Federline: Yo man, this is wack.

D: What is, Sean?

Sean Preston: This whole "talking about our problems" shiznit.

D: Shiznit?

Sean Preston: Yeah, man. It's like, if I talk about my problems, they're not going to go away. But see, I'm not 'bout the talk. I'm 'bout the action, you know what I'm sayin'. If I have a problem, I don't talk.

D: What do you do then?

Sean Preston: I rap. Lissen to me break off this freestyle. Yo Shiloh, break me off one of those old school beats:

I'm on the frontline
Dodgin' cameras like the one time
Can't even chill in this California sunshine
But it's okay, I got somethin' for ya
I'm handin out ass kickin's like diplomas
Who the first to get it?

D: Uh...ok.

Sean Preston:

Ya know Sean Preston's wit it
All that shiznit rappers talk about, I already did it

D: Shiznit?

Sean Preston:

I'm committed to the game
The fame's why I hustle
Lyrical exercise, workin' every muscle on the double

D: Please stop.

Sean Preston:

Chief and commanda
Hand ya
Ass to ya in a basket wrapped in plastic
I'm looney
All these model chicks wanna do me
Tabloids tried to screw me
Magazines try to kill me
But I'm nasty

What do you think?

D: That your mother dropped you too many times.

Sean Preston: Why is everybody trying to break on my moms? (crying) Yo' she did the best she could. Papa was a rolling stone, you know what I'm saying? She was strong, but you just gotta let a player play.

D: Was your parents' divorce hard on you?

Sean Preston: (composing himself) It ain't never been easy being S.P., ya heard? Ever since I was born, Pavoratti's been all up in my grill. Yeah, it was hard when Pops left. But I've got dozens of half-brothers and sisters who've got my back.

D: I think we've made a break through here.

Don't Date Him, Girl

2006-05-24T08:00:00.000-07:00

Someone passed on this website to me, Don't Date Him, Girl, which bills itself as the "Internet's Largest Database of Lying and Cheating Men."

As usual women are ahead of the curve on relationships. I suppose it was only a matter of time that they would harness the power of the internet and pool their resources.

The site's founder claims that the site "lets women publicly out the men who cheat on them to avoid the heartache of dating the cad." It makes interesting but sordid reading, but I suspect this site provides more entertainment than practical information that anybody would use.

Here's why - we all think that it won't happen to us.

Let's say that a woman goes out with a guy a couple of times and is into him. Then she happens to come across his name on this site. Do you really think she'll stop going out with him? I don't. If she confronts him, he'll deny it and blame some bitter ex. Or maybe, she'll even become more intrigued. But even if she does believe it's true, I doubt that she'll believe that he'll cheat on her.

Have you ever given someone advice against dating someone you know is a player? How did that work out? You told them and they got mad at you.

Even if this site had irrefutable evidence that a guy was a player, I doubt that it would dampen the social life of any man featured on it. After his aquittal, I read a poll that showed that a significant percentage of women would date O.J. Simpson. I thought that these women must have thought that he didn't kill Ron and Nicole. Wrong. A follow-up question showed that a majority of the woman who said they'd date O.J. believed that he was guilty!

Why? Because they thought that they were different and that he wouldn't do that to them. (Statistically speaking, I suppose they were right, because as far as I know he hasn't killed any other women that he's been with.)

I think this partially explains why women like "bad boys." They think that a man's past behavior does not indicate his future performance. And they think that they're different and that he'll change for them. Again, wrong and wrong.

And after all, there must be something about a man who's in demand, right?

Men aren't immune to this pheonomenon. There is a crazy-girl corrollary to the bad-boy theory. In fact, I'm thinking of launching www.dudeshesafreakingpsycho.com. Men are attracted to crazy women, just like women are attracted to "dangerous" men.

You can't tell a man that his woman is bad news. If you do, at best he'll ignore it.

Here's what you say:

"She hooked up with the football team's entire offensive line!"

Here's what he hears:

"She loves sports."

Here's what you say:

"I saw her on Maury Povich's "Who's my baby daddy" show! Four times!"

Here's what he hears:

"She loves kids."

Here's what you say:

"Remember last year, when she blew the copier repair guy in the coat room at the office Christmas party?"

Here's what he hears:

"She loves Christmas"

More Friends of D

2006-05-21T16:56:00.000-07:00

I've added a number of new sites to the D Syndication Network, which is a list of blogs that link to this site. I've removed some links to sites that are either dead or haven't posted anything new this year. If you want me to put your link back up or if I've missed you, let me know.

The list is getting unwieldy. But there's lots of good stuff out there, so check these sites out. I need to make it a little more user friendly, maybe by category. I'm also bored with this blog's template so, but unfortunately, I can't spell HTML so I'm pretty much limited to the Blogger templates. I know there are some third party ones out there, but I'm concerned that I might lose all my old posts.

Anyway, I've added about twenty new links. I'm not going to be able to describe each one, but here are a few:

The Blog Blond. To quote one of the most prominent wordsmiths of our generation, me and the Blond go back like babies and pacifiers. Further back that either of us would probably like to admit as you could tell from the occasional in-joke comments that she leaves. She got me my first job, made me read Kafka, and "borrowed" my clothing. Anyway, she found the site so I'm glad that none of my stories have been about her. I offered to link to her site before, but she said she doubted that there would be much crossover with her site's readers. Her blog grabs the issues of the day and throttles the living daylights out of them. I prefer to write about Jessica Alba, but to each their own. Oh, although I don't know her, Photo Chick hails from my old hometown and for some reason, liked my site enough to link it to her own.

Lu Lu. Here, over on the opposite side of Michigan, in my adopted home is Lu Lu. Strangely enough, I met her in my secret identity as a pillar of the community. A group that I chair hosted an evening with our Mayor. Lu Lu, a transplant from Florida, asked the Mayor what he planned to do to attract and retain young professionals like herself. A nice guy, the Mayor gave a well-intentioned response. Lu Lu let him know that his answer was inadequate and impressed the hell out of me. We need like a thousand more like her. Anyway, she's also into Gnarls Barkley, writes for the same magazine that I do, and reminds me of a young Jennifer Beals, so she's aces in my book.

Murph. Murph is a pretty regular commenter. He has an uncanny talent of being able to workin a reference to a bodily fluid regardless of what the post is about. Murph, I can't tell you how disappointed I was to see I was getting hits from www.theasspage.blogspot.com, only to find out it's a guy's blog.

I'm happy that I'm linked on sites with people with a variety of life experiences and sensibilities. From women working in construction to surfers . Law students like Law Nut and Dov to bikers, The Letter D is bringing the world together.

Thanks Smartypants for making me look forward to Thursdays. You too, WhoamI, even though you don't send me cool email anymore.

Thanks also to Jake Brake, who linked the Calvin piece on Defective Yeti last month, giving me thousands of new hits.

Although I usually don't pimp sites of people that I don't know or who don't link here, I read a comment from Tui last week and checked out her site. I've been reading and catching up on her site. It makes interesting raw reading.

Thanks to everyone who's spread the word.

It's A Miracle I'm Still Alive

2006-05-19T05:54:00.000-07:00

Here in Michigan, legistators are considering a law that would make it illegal for adults to smoke in cars with children inside.

My first reaction was "That's a stupid law. What parent would smoke in the car with their children?" But the immediate response to my own question was "my father." I don't think I have a childhood memory of my father that didn't have him smoking. Or asleep. Sometimes both.

There's no question that my father would ignore this law. He'd hide his lit cigarette in my lap until the police drove past. I don't know if second hand smoke causes cancer or not. I do know, however, that I have the lung capacity of an 80 year old.

But it's not just my father's incessant smoking that put me at risk. There are a number of things that my parents did while I was growing up that would get them locked up today.

Like car seats. They didn't have car seats (or at least my parents didn't) when I was a child. In fact, I remember being two or three and sitting in the back of my father's MGB.

This isn't a picture of my father's car, but I wanted to show you what I'm talking about. Notice that the car is a two-seater. That's right, it wasn't until I was older that I realize that my parents had stuffed me behind their car seats like an old CD case. And my father has always used his horn in lieu of his brakes while driving.

Speaking of driving, I recall an incident where I "fell" out of my mother's car when I was three. I remember falling out of the car, seeing the street, seeing the sky, seeing the street, seeing the sky, then finally just seeing the street.

I didn't start wearing a seat belt until I took driver's ed. Until then, my seat belt was my mother's arm. Whenever she had to make a sudden stop, she'd reach over to hold me in the seat, I guess to keep me from flying through the windshield.

You know how parents are being arrested now for leaving their children in cars unattended? Everytime my mother went to the grocery store, she'd leave me in the car so that she could actually get her shopping done without my interference. It could be the hottest day of the year, but she'd only crack the window, evidently preferring my brain to cook in my skull than bother her by pleading for Pop-Tarts.

I've supressed a lot of these memories but every now and then one resurfaces. A couple of years ago I woke up in the middle of the night with the realization that during the first and second grade, I walked, unsupervised, a mile or so from school to my aunt's house. My aunt ran an in-home day care. Her idea of child development was to have us sit on her couch motionless and without making a sound while she watched her "stories." If we fidgeted or made too much noise, she'd tell us that we were acting like a bunch of idiots. I used to tell myself that she really meant "Indians." Even then, my defense mechanisms were fully functional.

But I digress. Did I mention that this was in Detroit? Or that I was a year ahead of my age class? This means at the age of five, I walked unsupervised down a busy street in a city mostly known for civil unrest.

I called my mother the next day.

"Mom, you and dad let me walk by myself from school when we lived in Detroit."

"No, we didn't. I used to pick you up from school"

"Not all the time, I remember walking to Auntie's house afterschool until you got off work. I was only five! What we're you thinking?"

(pausing) "Well things we're different back then. It's not like now."

"Oh yeah, Detroit was an idyllic pastoral wonderland back then."

I've come to the conclusion that back then parents weren't that attached to their kids.

Or at least mine weren't.

Escape From Jamaica

2006-05-15T06:36:00.000-07:00

Last week, I heard a retrospective on the 25th anniversary of Bob Marley's death. It made me recall one of the most stressful days in my life. No, not when he died, but the time I spent in Jamaica

The SU and I were married on a cruise while in port in Ft. Lauderdale. The first port of call was Ocho Rios, Jamaica. When we had breakfast on the deck, I looked at the mountainous but tropical isle and couldn't wait to disembark and begin our tour. That excitement was shortlived once we actually left the boat.

The cruise held an informational meeting on the at-sea day which described the characteristics of each port of call. They kept it light-hearted, like telling us whatever perishables brought from Jamaica should be consumed or smoked before we got back to the U.S. But there was an undercurrent of caution about Jamaica. And they really stressed getting back to the boat in time at the departure time.

Before the cruise, I was most excited about Jamaica (the other ports were Cozumel, the Cayman Islands, and Key West). I remembered the "Come Back to Jamaica" ad campaign from growing up. Of course, in retrospect, the campaign begged a question. Why did people stop going to Jamaica? Why are they pleading for the tourists to come back? I've since learned that the original campaign was "Come back to Jamaica. We've stopped killing the tourists."

Ocho Rios supposedly had about 11,000 residents. If that is true, about 8,000 of them drove cabs. Once we got off the boat, we were ambushed by a fleet of cabs, each driver aggressively seeking a fare. One grabbed my wrist and another grabbed the SU's and tried to pull her to his cab. I thought our honeymoon would be better if at least one of us didn't get adbucted, so I pulled my new bride away from her driver.

Like every other tourist, we climbed Dunn's River Falls. This really made me homesick for the good ol' litigious U.S. A group of about thirty people climbed 600 feet up the wet slippery rocks barefoot and holding hands in a human chain. I'm sure it was beautiful, but I couldn't enjoy myself because of the constant fear that the SU would slip from my grip and plunge to her death. I now see why Dunn's River Falls is so popular with newlyweds. For long married couples, this trip is probably the easiest way to "lose" a spouse since they installed passenger side airbags. In the U.S., this place would have been sued out of existence after a week because I'm sure people plummet off that rock on a daily basis.

I knew we'd get wet, but there's a huge difference between wet and drenched. Drenched as in, there goes all the leather wallet and all the photos and paper inside of it. This included several hundred dollars in traveler's checks. I couldn't get them replaced until we got back to the boat, leaving me a little cash-strapped.

Once we made it to the top of the falls, we were abandoned by the tour guide and left to traveled down a path with was surrounded by a shanty town of merchants who hounded us every step of the way. If I had known about the shanty town, I would have taken my chances climbing back down the waterfall.

I was harassed more than most, being a "Bruddah mon." Sure, at the first booth, I felt a kinship with my Jamaican cousins. This ended up being a hustle though, and I was made to feel like it was my responsibility to singlehandedly support the local economy. I've blocked out most of the experience, but I recall leaving that booth with two paper-thin t-shirts, a couple of "hand crafted" wood carvings, a bead necklace, and being about $60 lighter. It wasn't so much the loss of money that bothered me. It was knowing that I'd been hustled. Now soaked both figuratively and literally, all I wanted to do was go back to the boat.

Once back I got back on the boat, changed and ate lunch, I felt a little better. I didn't want to go back ashore, but this was my honeymoon so I tried to put the morning aside and enjoy myself. We got off the boat and because it was the middle of the day, there were only a few hundred cabs waiting for us.

We got in a cab and asked to go to the shopping district, the driver told me that a "Bruddah mon" shouldn't go there because it was owned by foreigners and rather than by Jamaicans. Ordinarily, this would be a compelling argument but I was still smarting from my last experience with the Jamaican local economy.

The cab driver dropped us off and well spent about two hours in the outdoor mall. When we were ready to leave and take a cab back to the boat, I saw a familiar face.

The cab driver waited for us the entire time.

I didn't ask him to do this but I had to compensate him, right? One of the many things I learned that day is that whatever I tipped, the people I dealt with always acted insulted. So for a three dollar cab ride, I tipped $20. He looked at me like I told him I saw his mother on the MILF Hunter web site. I thought, maybe that was cheap. So I gave him another $20. No reaction but there was an undercurrent of hostility that I felt from every Jamaican that I'd dealt with.

But why? I couldn't figure it out. Maybe they were resentful of me personally. Who did I think I was, an American bruddah walking around in Ralph Lauren Polo shirts. Ralph Lauren is apparently very popular, I had numerous offers for my shirts that day, usually for a very generous trade of a bead necklace.

Incidentally, our next port was the Cayman Islands. I had a totally different experience with the locals. The Caymanians were nothing like the Jamaicans. Unless those Jamaicans had been lobotomized. They were like the Stepford Negroes.

Maybe it wasn't me. Maybe they were annoyed by having to be civil around tourists all day to get tips and not being able to kill us anymore. The hair braiding, the exaggerated patois, or the ever present Bob Marley music everywhere. We'd get ticked off if all we heard every day was Elvis, right?

Exhausted, we left the cab and got back on the boat. I wanted to see the boat to pull away from Jamaica. Looking over the rail, I saw that a group of people who missed the boat. The shocked looks on the faces of our fellow travelers was greatly contrasted by the looks of the Jamaicans now surrounding them.

For the first time, they looked truly happy to me.

A Question For The Ladies

2006-05-10T10:59:00.000-07:00

Assuming that women make certain extrapolations on how a man dances to how he might perform in other areas, here's a multiple choice question:

If you saw a guy dance like this at a club, would you

A) Find him sexier;

B) Find him less sexy; or

C) Thinking he may be suffering from a seizure, put a pencil under his tongue so that he doesn't choke?

This clip is for all the guys who had to listen to their girlfriends, wives, female co-workers, etc. who've expressed their lust for Tom Cruise. I haven't been this entertained since George Michael was caught hitting on an undercover cop in a public rest room.

When you expel the Thetans from your body, I guess they take your rhythm with them.

Proud Papa

2006-05-09T12:53:00.000-07:00

The Cub and I were at the local Barnes and Noble over the weekend. As I was carrying her and looking through the aisles, she pressed her index and middle finger hard into a vein or artery (possibly the cartotid artery) in my neck. I got a little dizzy and almost lost consciousness before I broke her hold.

I researched her little maneuver when I got home. Here's what I found:

Compared to traditional manual strangulation, properly applied blood chokes require little physical strength, and can be applied successfully by a comparatively weak person[3]. Blood chokes are considered safe for practice and application [1], although being a lethal technique when held long enough.

Ok, while I guess it wasn't technically a blood choke, what's important is that she innately applied the principle and adapted it to her own strengths.

I'm so proud. She's not even twenty months old and already she's perfected a potentially lethal submission move.

Dear Jessica

2006-05-04T06:00:00.000-07:00

I've been reading a lot about the celebrity baby boom and I can't help but think that we could be one of those happy couples. I know you wanted us to have a baby but I wouldn't hear of it. I hope you didn't think it was because I didn't believe that you would be a good mother. No, I was just scared that you'd get a giant flabby ass like your mom.

But I'm not scared anymore. We can always get you a personal trainer.

I want to recapture that lost opportunity with you. I really think that having a baby would cement our relationship. If we had a child, we'd stop focusing on ourselves and stop having petty arguments over silly issues like who was caught with whose personal assistant in the hot tub or who sold whose undergarments on eBay.

I am serious about making things work this time and making this huge step. I've even been interviewing live-in nannies as well, because you know I'm not changing diapers. I think I've found the perfect one. I really think you'll like Babette. She knows CPR, is conversant in English and is trainined in the art of sensual massage. She's not one of those dour grandmother types. No, she's young and vibrant and has lots of energy. Trust me.

I've been doing some research on silent birth like Tom Cruise recommends. In fact, I think it's such a good idea that we should also have a silent conception as well. But, hey, that's never been a problem with us, right?

I hope you'll give this offer some serious consideration. Take your time to think about it. In the meantime, if you happen to have Rosario Dawson's number, forwarding that to me would be cool too.

Love Always,

D

Wake Up, America!

2006-05-02T08:04:00.000-07:00

I stay away from politics on this blog. But I can no longer be silent. Hollywood has gone too far. Forget about the controversy of Flight 93. A movie will be released this summer that takes one of the biggest hot button issues of the day and reduces it to a simplistic, one-sided piece of propaganda.

That movie is Superman Returns.

When will Hollywood stop trying to force its morals on our citizenry? This movie is a transparent call for amnesty for illegal immigrants?

This so-called "Superman," this "strange visitor from another world" entered our country's heartland, illegally mind you, from his decaying homeland. Sure he's assimilated and doesn't speak Kryptonian when he should be speaking American. But he has taken no steps whatsoever to obtain legal status as a citizen.

Don't give me that crap about Ma and Pa Kent adopting him. They never officially adopted him. No, they hid him from INS for decades and took advantange of his powers beyond those of mortal men and worked him on their farm, likely displacing dozens of able-bodied American workers.

And who is his "arch-enemy?" Lex Luthor a wealthy white male industrialist. Well that figures, right?

I know what you're thinking, what about all of Superman's contributions? I invite you to look at the implications. Superman may occasionally save the planet, which necessarily includes America. But couldn't an American citizen have performed these same heroic acts? You mean to tell me that Green Lantern couldn't handle these jobs as efficiently?

Put simply, Superman is taking away superheroic opportunities from American superheroes. He works for free. But by doing so, he's undercutting the hardworking middle-class superheros and has nearly priced them out of the market. Spider-Man can barely make ends meet. You practically have to be a billionaire playboy like Bruce Wayne or Tony Stark these days just to compete.

Now that I think about it, his alter-ego Clark Kent works as a journalist. That makes two jobs that he has taken away from Americans.

Did you ever notice how many of our so-called superheros are undocumented? As a matter of fact, superheroics is only exceeded by agriculture and food service as the industry that employs the most undocumented workers.

Look at his friends in the Justice League of America. Why, there's hardly a real American among them. The Martian Manhunter's roots are self-explanatory. Hawkman is from Thanagar. Wonder Woman is from Themyscria. Aquaman claims the throne of Atlantis.

And don't get me started on the X-Men.

Superman says he fights for "Truth, Justice, and the American Way." Well, to me that means respecting our laws. All of them.

At first, the media told us that Superman was the "Last Son of Krypton." Then all of a sudden, his cousin "Supergirl" arrives. What happened to him being the last one? How many other of his undocumented relatives can we expect to fly over our borders?

The question is no longer whether we should build fences around our borders, but rather how high must they be?

When I'm Right, I'm Right

2006-04-27T06:47:00.000-07:00

Early last year, when no one was reading this blog, in my post Live Nude Girls, I discussed the four categories of celebrities who pose nude for Playboy:

Women who make a first or early appearance in Playboy and gain fame through it. Jenny McCarthy, Pamela Anderson, Anna Nicole Smith).
Women who wait too late and do it when people no longer care about them. (Farah Fawcett, Denise Richards, Anna Nicole Smith),
Women who are quasi-famous or have gained notoriety through scandal (random Survivor contestants, Jessica Hanh, Anna Nicole Smith).
Women who use Playboy in an ultimately attempt to change their wholesome image (Tiffany, Deborah Gibson, Anna Nicole Smith).

As usual, I was prophetic.

In category number 2, enter Cindy Margolis, who ten years ago claimed to be the "Most Downloaded Woman on the Internet." After turning Playboy down several times now, at 40 years old, she's finally agreed to be featured because she felt it was empowering to pose nude at her age.

"In the past it would have been for gratuitous reasons," she said.

Spare me.

So that means it wouldn't have been empowering for her to pose 10 years ago, when people would have been more interested. Don't get me wrong, she's not exactly hard on the eyes now, but don't try to tell me that it's empowering to do something now that was presumably "degrading" in the 90's.

She fell off the face of the Earth and her most recent foray in the public eye was on Celebrity Cooking Showdown which is only slightly more respectable than The Surreal Life.

She's trying to put another quarter in the fifteen minutes of fame meter. I get that. But don't tell me you're doing this as an inspiration to other women.

But my question is who's more desperate here, Margolis or Playboy? Playboy had to be suffering. On one side, there are Maxim and FHM, who feature starlets at the height of their careers. On the other side are the hardcore skin mags, but nobody buys them but prison inmates. Victoria's Secrets catalogues are more titilating than Playboy.

So Playboy has to resort to publicity stunts like this. Is it really necessary for Playboy to devote one cover feature per year to a female professional wrestler? They even featured Chyna one year, marking the first time that Playboy featured a nude model who spent most of her life urinating while standing.

Hmm, maybe that's what Margolis means about the timing of her appearance. If she had done it while she was relevant, it would be entirely to Playboy's advantage. They both need each other now, so the maybe it's not exploitative now.

A couple of months ago, dozens of you sent me email telling me that Jessica Alba was going to pose nude in Playboy, because she was on the cover. I didn't buy it for a second because she doesn't need to at this point in her career. Plus, other than Cub's birth, nothing that wonderful has ever happened to me.

Genius of Love VIII - I Should Have Cheated

2006-04-25T06:51:00.000-07:00

Messing around behind your girlfriend's back is wrong. Messing around behind your girlfriend's back with her friend is a Bad Thing.

I've usually gotten along well with my old girlfriends' friends. Hanging out with them occasionally created the Perfect Storm of Attraction. When I was hanging out with a girlfriend, I felt generally comfortable so I made jokes and told my stories to the group(the "great guy" factor). I wasn't trying to hit on her friends (so their guards were down) and I was naturally paying the most attention to my girlfriend. Due to twisted human nature, when these factors combined sometimes one of my girlfriend's friends would abandon her otherwise good taste and irrationally become attracted to me.

Attraction is not a choice.

Of course, being a Bad Thing I (generally) never acted on it. But now, however, I look back on two instances where I regret not doing a Bad Thing.

Back in undergrad (you know, when my life was actually interesting), my girlfriend Shelley's sorority sister from her pre-transfer college came up to visit for a few days. I was crossing a lot of racial and socio-economic lines in this relationship, so Shelley warned me that her friend Susan might be a little uncomfortable with our relationship.

The first night, she was a little uncomfortable. But by the end of the evening she learned that I was a hell of a guy. Shelley had a heavy class schedule the next day, and I only had one class that day, with a psych professor who was nicknamed "Dr. Sex, so Susan hung out with me for most of the day.

Now, I'm a little "challenged" when it comes to picking up cues that a women might be interested in me. But as the day went on, as I walked her around campus and town, she threw out signals that even I could pickup on. She asked me what I thought about her body compared to Shelley's. She asked me whether I could use regular-sized condoms or had to use the larger ones. You know, subtle stuff.

I dropped her off at Shelley's dorm room and went to my room for awhile. Shortly thereafter she knocked on my door. She made a map for me of her campus at the School for the Financially Gifted, showing me where her sorority house was and gave me her contact information. She hung out for awhile laying on my bed and was all up in my personal space. I thought about making a move but, again, this would have been a Bad Thing.

At least in theory. In retrospect, Shelley and I didn't have the most stable relationship. When she went on Spring Break, she said she'd bring me something back. I said "I hope it's curable." But still, I didn't cross the line.

I should have. A couple of months later, Shelley ended up hooking back up with her ex-boyfriend during the waning days of our relationship, which I found out by reading her diary (yes, another Bad Thing).

Again, all relationships are battles of will. If I had messed around with Susan, I would have had more power in the relationship. So I should have cheated on principle alone.

The next time was during law school. I dating Audra but made it clear that I didn't want a committed relationship. She started going out with another guy but wasn't serious about it, and would frequently come by my apartment after a leaving early for the date. For one of the rare times in my life, I was in control of the relationship (remember, whoever cares the least controls the relationship.)

During this time, we hung out with Audra's friend, who now that I think about it, was also named Susan (either that or I'm being lazy in changing the names.) Susan's claim to fame was that she wore a G-cup bra. So, of course, I made jokes about it calling her "Geez", because I figured that's what guys said when she unfurled those things. Now naturally, she wasn't a small girl, but they were still way out of proportion for her frame. Susan occasionally called me, under the pretext of seeing if Audra was there but would stay on the phone, frequently bragging to me about her past sexual exploits.

Eventually the other guy started to win Audra over because he was ready and willing to commit. Of course, that meant that I lost control of the situation. Typically, this meant that now I was willing to commit to get her back. But it was too late.

Susan took advantage of the situation, she'd call and tell me how serious Audra's relationship was and that I should start going out with other people. Maybe, I should go out with her, she said. You know, just to show Audra that I'm moving on.

But again, my focus was to get Audra back. Well, in hindsight it was to get the power back, but I didn't know that at the time. But either way, I didn't take up Susan on her offer. I knew if I had, that would have been a deal-killer with Audra.

I ended up winning Audra back. Predictably though once I had the power back, I was no longer interested in a committed relationship with her and ended up with another women about a month later (bastard). So, in retrospect, I should have taken Susan up on her offer.

I never saw the G's.

The moral of the story is men, cheating is never morally right. But if you're reasonably sure you're not going to marry your girlfriend and her friend hits on you, years later you may regret passing it up.

And for women, don't trust any friend named Susan.