Monthly Archives: November 2010

Have A Happy, Hemorrhagic Fever-Free Thanksgiving!

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This is a highly magnified version of the deadly Ebola virus. In reality, you could fit about 4-5 million of them into the period at the end of this sentence.

When I bow my head at the Thanksgiving dinner table this year, it’ll probably be because I ate too much turkey and drank too much wine and accidentally put myself into a tryptophan- and alcohol-induced coma.

But if I can stay awake, I’m going to take a few minutes to thank God for giving me a loving wife and family, and for allowing the good and clever candy makers at Russell Stover to invent the dark chocolate marshmallow Santa Claus. They’re melt-in-your mouth good, and on sale two-for-a-dollar at Walgreen’s pharmacy.

Most of all, though, I’m going to thank God for saving me from the deadly Ebola virus.

The deadly Ebola virus is one of nature’s simplest and most dangerous life forms. To use a sporting analogy, which I don’t recommend doing unless you’re desperate for ideas, the deadly Ebola virus is the Mike Tyson of viruses—not the kinder, gentler Mike Tyson who infamously nibbled on opponents’ ears, but the infamously enraged Mike Tyson who knocked his foes to the canvas like they were nerdy infectious-disease scientists instead of professional boxers.

The deadly Ebola virus doesn’t merely punch you in the face until your eyes swell shut and your battered soul starts drifting toward the happy halls of Valhalla. It rapidly pierces and then explodes almost every cell in your body, shutting down your brain and chewing through your guts until they look like puréed blood pudding. There is no medical treatment for the deadly Ebola virus and the hemorrhagic fever it causes, and about nine out of 10 people who are infected with it die within two weeks, usually falling face-first into black pools of their own blood and vomit that they involuntarily excrete from every bodily orifice (yes, even that one).

Scientists believe the deadly Ebola virus thrives in warm, damp places like the rotting jungles and slimy caves of central Africa. But it’s cropped up in America, too, and I figure it could just as easily live in our homes. It could be hiding in the stubborn, slimy band of dark goo at the base of the kitchen faucet, for example, or silently multiplying in the mysterious, shadowy crack between the stove and kitchen counter that oozes with rotting turkey grease, spilled cranberry sauce, soggy grocery-store receipts and old socks.

In my case, the source of the deadly Ebola virus was the toilet in our master bathroom. The toilet’s filler valve broke, and because I’m both handy and poor, I decided to replace it myself instead of calling a plumber to risk his life fixing it.

Bathrooms are inherently dank—not unlike the African jungle—and I’m sure toilets are natural breeding grounds for germs. Yes, they seem relatively safe under normal operating conditions, especially if you’re a guy and you can stand 3 feet away from them to do your business, gingerly using your left foot to lift the lid and flush.

But in order to replace a toilet’s guts, you’re basically forced to have dirty-hot sex with the commode, groping around in the dark like a virgin groom on his honeymoon for things you can’t see and certainly don’t understand. And after 3 sweaty hours of this nuptial piss, I was covered head-to-toe with patches of what I can only describe as disease-laden glop, some of it greenish-yellow glop, some of it brownish-red glop and some of it jet-black glop that wouldn’t wash off my hands with ordinary soap.

This is what our family's Thanksgiving feast looks like. Except not as nice and with more arguing.

Because I’d recently been reading about the deadly Ebola virus, I was pretty much 100 percent sort of positive that I’d certainly most probably just infected myself with the deadly Ebola virus.

I knew the deadly Ebola virus’ early symptoms include headache, fever, bloodshot eyes and nausea. Those symptoms—not much worse than a hangover, really—are quickly followed by extreme pain, bruising, malaise and then the final rush to the face plant into the horrible puked-up wreckage of your own innards.

So I waited, nervously.

I was on a grim death vigil.

And I waited some more, anxiously.

Time slowed to a crawl. I heard the slow ticking of the clock in the family room. I saw dust motes floating lazily in the air. The afternoon light streaming through the window assumed an ethereal quality that gave everything it touched a golden, iridescent glow.

But nothing happened.

No headache.

No fever.

No bloodshot eyes.

No pain.

No nausea, although I felt a little queasy when I thought about drowning in a pool of my own blood and vomit. If I could choose my preferred way of dying, it would never include drowning in a pool of my own blood and vomit.

Not ever.

Hours went by.

Hours turned into days.

Days turned into weeks, and nothing suspicious happened at all except that I got itchy whenever I thought about the glop that pretty much 100 percent sort of positively most probably infected me with the deadly Ebola virus. But itching isn’t a symptom of the deadly Ebola virus, and I always get itchy when I think I’m sick.

We always roast a turkey that's at least half the size of my wife, Kerry.

Then Thanksgiving Day arrived and I realized with indescribable relief that I’m almost certainly free of the deadly Ebola virus.

I’m still alive.

And that’s truly something to be thankful for.

I hope all of you are also free of the deadly Ebola virus this Thanksgiving, and that you also take a moment during this festive holiday season to thank God for sparing you from drowning in a pool of your own blood and vomit. Or that if you do drown in a pool of your own blood and vomit, it’s because you want to, and not because the deadly Ebola virus made you do it.

Happy Thanksgiving.

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I Saw My First Christmas Tree Tonight, And It Made Me Think

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This is what my neighbor's Christmas tree looked like. Bastard.

I was driving home from work after dark tonight when I spotted a beautifully lit Christmas tree framed by my neighbor’s bay window—my first Christmas tree of the holiday season.

Bah!

Humbug!

Call me Scrooge, call me Ishmael, but Christmas trees and mid-November go together like Charlie Sheen and church.

I nearly stomped on the brakes and screamed, “Hey, you fucking moron, unless your fucking name is Santa fucking Claus and you’ve got a crew of merry fucking elves building toys in that fucking shithole you call a basement, stuff your fucking tree where the sun don’t shine for another couple of weeks! It’s not even fucking Thanksgiving yet! Celebrate one holiday at a time, you fucking asshole!”

I didn’t do it, though, partly because I abhor inappropriate language, but mostly because I don’t know my neighbor. For all I know, he really is Santa Claus and there really is a gang of elves working in the basement, and that thought scares me more than I like to admit.

You never want to piss off a brood of elves. Those tiny roustabouts might seem cute in cookie commercials and animated television shows like Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, but most of them are practically begging to prove their manhood in a fistfight because they’re short and contractually obligated to wear girly tights and pointy green elf shoes with ruby-red bells at the tips.

Hell hath no fury like an elf with scones.

Anyway, there was a time when Americans never considered putting up Christmas trees until Christmas Eve. It was a simpler time, and some people say it was a happier time, too, although I doubt it. I don’t know how anybody can be truly happy without television. You can only sit outside on your front porch whittling and playing the banjo for so many nights in row before you go stark-raving berserk and start taking potshots at your neighbor’s kitchen windows with your Winchester. Thank God for The Mentalist and The Daily Show or I’d probably be in prison by now.

Still, I think fondly of the olden days. It’s not because I remember them, I’m not that old. But I have watched The Homecoming: A Christmas Story almost every year since sometime in the late-1980s, and it’s a movie that will make you crave the minimalist pleasures of early 20th-century rural American life like Charlie Sheen craves cocaine and crack whores.

A candy cane is a deadly weapon in the hands of an angry elf.

The movie’s plot is very basic.

The Great Depression forces patriarch John Walton to leave home to find work in the city, far away from his adorably cute, Mormon-sized family. When he fails to return home on Christmas Eve as promised, his hardscrabble wife faithfully struggles to maintain control of the household and her deep well of anger, which probably comes from living in the sticks surrounded by nothing but trees, farm animals, a flock of kids and her cranky in-laws. Eventually, she sends her eldest son, John-Boy, out into a blizzard to find Papa John, but not before John-Boy and Grandpa Walton cut down a fresh Christmas tree so the family can decorate it to celebrate the blessed birth of the baby Jesus.

A bunch of other important stuff happens before and after the tree-cutting-and-decorating incident, including a remarkably frank discussion about puberty and the local sheriff’s dramatic capture of a daring turkey thief. But I don’t want to talk about all that stuff because I want you to focus on the movie’s central theme, which is that people shouldn’t put up their Christmas trees too early.

Okay, okay! I admit the movie’s main theme doesn’t have anything to do with putting up your Christmas tree too early. The main theme has something to do with the importance of familial love and the true meaning of Christmas.

But between Oprah and Dr. Phil, I figure you’ve had it up to your ears with all that feel-good family togetherness crap, let alone the true meaning of Christmas. What nobody on television ever talks about enough in my opinion is Christmas trees and the putting up of Christmas trees too early.

Resist the urge.

Don’t do it.

Slow down a little. After the summer’s over, enjoy Halloween and then ease gently into Veteran’s Day and Thanksgiving before rushing into the sweet celebrations of Christmas.

Because if you don’t, I just might drive by your house one night and throw a brick through your fucking picture window.

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101 Fun & Useful Things To Do With Eggshells

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One of the fun and useful things you can do with eggshells is to paint them for Easter.

When I was cleaning the kitchen tonight, I had an excellent idea for a best-selling coffee-table book that I called 101 Fun & Useful Things to Do With Eggshells.

This idea came to me in a flash, all at once.

I was tossing about a dozen cracked eggshells into the garbage when I thought, “Gee, eggshells seem like a lot of work for chickens to make. It’s too bad they can’t be re-used.” And then, Wham!, the book idea hit me in the head like a coffee-table book—a heavy coffee-table book accidentally lobbed at you by your best friend’s wife, who’s a little drunk on rum and cokes, and more than a little pissed off because your best friend keeps leering at Kate Walsh, the sexy redhead who plays the sexy Dr. Addison Montgomery in “Private Practice” and the sexy Escalade driver in Cadillac commercials.

I should pause here for a moment to share some earnest, hard-earned advice with husbands and boyfriends everywhere: Quick, admiring looks at sexy redheads are one thing, but leering at sexy redheads while repeatedly saying, “I wouldn’t throw her out of bed for eating crackers,” is another thing entirely, and not advisable in front of your wife or girlfriend, especially if your wife or girlfriend didn’t have time to take a shower or wash her hair that morning, and is feeling less than pretty, and has been drinking rum and cokes for about three hours, and has a large coffee-table book available to throw at you, or, because she’s tipsy and feeling dizzy in addition to grungy, your best friend.

Anyway, once I got the smoking-hot idea for my eggshell book, I immediately started cataloging my list of 101 fun and useful things to do with eggshells. Three ideas came to me instantly: painting them, coloring them and recycling them in the compost pile. Then my speeding brain hit a brick wall—probably the very same brick wall that Humpty Dumpty fell off when he cracked his eggshell body and created a lot of uncompensated make-work for all the King’s horses and all the King’s men, who couldn’t put him back together again and probably didn’t try all that hard in the first place because, hey, who really cares about eggshells? Busted eggshells are a dime a dozen. Actually, not even a dime. That’s why people throw them away.

This is actress Kate Walsh. Just for the record, I'd like to point out that I would throw her out of bed for eating crackers.

Suddenly, my book idea didn’t seem so hot. You can’t write a book called Three Fun & Useful Things to Do With Eggshells because nobody will buy it.

Well, almost nobody.

There’s always some crazy lunatic out there who will think you’re an artistic genius even if you’re an idiot and happily shell out $25 for a coffee-table book featuring page-after-page of Easter eggs and compost piles, or Easter eggs in compost piles, or compost piles inside giant Easter eggs. They’ll probably even ask you to sign it, which you can do, although I don’t recommend going out for a slice peach pie with them afterward because they might unexpectedly “go off their meds” and jab a fork into your neck while you’re absentmindedly staring out the window, sullenly wondering how it was that you came to be the author of a coffee-table book about three fun and useful things to do with eggshells when you really wanted to be a serious historical novelist, or maybe a race car driver.

Naturally, it dawned on me that I could easily come up with 98 more ideas by Googling phrases like “things to do with eggshells,” or “how to re-use eggshells,” or “recycling eggshells.”

And I did.

And I was truly surprised to learn how many fun and useful things you can do with eggshells.

But by then, my enthusiasm for the book project had waned, and I decided to take a nap.

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It’s A Small World After All. Smaller, Anyway.

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I never thought the world was getting smaller until this week, when events convinced me otherwise.

Disneyland has performed “It’s a Small World” at its parks since 1966.

It’s a catchy tune, with an even catchier theme.

But nobody believes the world is small. They don’t believe the world’s people will learn to sing in perfect harmony, either–let alone build the world a home, furnish it with love, and then grow apple trees, honey bees and snow-white turtle doves.

Everybody, including me, believes the world is huge.

In fact, it is.

Mother Earth weighs 6,600,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons, more at certain times of the month. Her area is 195,000,000 square miles, most of that water, although there’s a lot of undeveloped land in Canada practically begging to be peppered with condos. Her pole-to-pole circumference is 24,900 miles, or about how long I usually absentmindedly wait to change the oil in my car. She’s 7,926 miles wide at the equator, forcing her to shop for “relaxed-fit” pantsuits at the Big & Tall Clothing Store.

In the last week, though, the world started looking smaller to me. Three things happened to change my world view:

1) I recently started parting my hair on the left side, and less than a week after announcing it, I received an e-mail from fellow blogger Rares Cojocaru, who also parts his hair on the left side. I was amazed, because Rares is Romanian. Americans have about as much in common with Romania as former Romanian gymnast Nadia Comăneci and American opera singer Deborah Voigt, who was dismissed from a production of Ariadne auf Naxos in London because she’d gained a little too much weight and fans constantly confused her with Mother Earth.

Most Americans don’t even know where Romania is, mistakenly assuming “Romania” is Olde Latin for “Rome” and therefore must be in Belgium. And yet, Rares and I are brothers. Despite the vast expanse of the Black Sea that separates us, we are inexorably bound together by the common comb–or brush, in my case. I have lovely hair, and brush it 100 times every night before I lay me down to sleep. I’m not sure what Rares does, although Romanians are famous for their healthy heads of hair, especially the eternally youthful Romanian vampires.

2) I travelled to Washington, D.C. last month to attend a three-day handicapped accessibility conference. About two weeks later, fellow blogger Lorena also went there to participate in a similar event known as Comedy Central’s Rally to Restore Sanity and March to Keep Fear Alive.

I live in Colorado. Rena lives in Idaho, which is the world’s potato basket and may have something to do with Mother Earth’s aforementioned circumference issues. Although Rena and I read one another’s blogs and occasionally exchange e-mails, I figure the odds against two people–one a middle-aged man and the other a young woman–travelling from two disparate states to Washington, D.C. in the same month are about as infinitesimal as the odds against our president having an affair with a 22-year-old White House intern.

Wait, bad example.  

Okay, maybe it’s not that all that rare for middle-aged men and young women to travel separately to Washington, D.C. Still, it seemed unusual to me and showed me once again how small the world is getting. Oh, and just for the record, I really and truly didn’t have sexual relations with that woman. What Rena may or may not have done with former President Bill Clinton, John Stewart and Stephen Colbert, on the other hand, is her own business, and I don’t want to know.

Yes, I do. Of course, I do. Everybody does.

3) My wife, Kerry, and I just bought a new dishwasher. Our former one, an upscale KitchenAid that never worked correctly, died a premature death. The new one, a basic General Electric model, will be delivered and installed Wednesday.

That’s not amazing, but here’s what is: Busy fellow blogger Ziva and her boyfriend, M, also bought a new dishwasher!

Josephine Cochrane invented the dishwasher and her company is now known as KitchenAid. I don't recommend her machines, but, hey, it's your money.

Now remember, Kerry and I live in Colorado, which is in America. The world’s first practical dishwasher was invented here in 1866 by Josephine Cochrane. Cochrane was a rich woman who held many dinner parties and wanted a machine that could do the dishes faster, and with fewer chips, than her servants. Her dishwashing machine caught on quickly, and her company, now known as KitchenAid, is still a leader in dishwasher technology. Although I’ll probably never buy another KitchenAid because that rich bitch and her friends cheated me out of $500, everybody in America has a Constitutionally protected right to own a dishwasher. Most Americans actually own two, one for the everyday fine porcelain, and the other for the gold-plated fine porcelain.

Ziva and M, however, live in Finland, which is pretty near Romania as the vampire bat flies. I had no idea Finlandians had access to dishwashers. Until today, I didn’t even know they used dishes. I thought they still ate their food–mostly berries and muesli soaked in reindeer milk–out of hand-carved wooden bowls, and drank their strong mead from upturned horns. So imagine my surprise when I learned that Ziva and M–friends on the distant, dark and cold side of Mother Earth–also bought a dishwasher. Like us, I’m sure they’ll enjoy it, too, just as soon as Finland gets indoor plumbing.

Anyway, even though I still believe Mother Earth is pretty big, recent events have convinced me that the world is getting smaller, if only metaphorically. I’m not going to start singing that silly Disney song, though. It’s too upbeat for my tastes.

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