I Can't Find My Camouflage Shirt

I just got back from au bon pain. I resisted going there for the longest time, ever since that time I tried to order a bagel. But now that I've cracked their complicated ordering system, it's not so bad.

On the way out the door, I grabbed a plastic knife to spread the cream cheese with. But I've looked all around my desk and I can't find it anywhere. It's made of clear plastic, so it may as well be invisible. I know I put it in the bag. Or maybe my pocket. I know it's not in my jacket, because it was warm today and I didn't bring it.

Where's my stupid knife?! Why can't I ever just eat a bagel without some kind of drama?

But that's not all. Guess what came yesterday:



And so it begins...

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Coyote. Shaken, Not Stirred.

This morning on the way to the train, I saw a dead coyote on the side of the road. My parents said they can hear them howling at night, but this was really the first time I'd actually seen one. Maybe.

When I was in college, there was a semester where one day I only had a morning class, so I'd spend the afternoon sitting around the house. Everyone else was either at work or school, so I could basically do anything I wanted. And what I wanted was to watch old sitcoms on USA. One day, during a commercial break for The John Larroquette Show, I got up to get a drink and saw something outside. I went over to the window to get a closer look. At the edge of the woods, I saw what looked like a dog, only bigger. It was tall and white and looking right at me. I didn't have a National Audubon Society booklet on me, but I was pretty sure I was looking at a wolf. I wanted to get a closer look, so I got a big stick, because, you know, "Stand back! I've got a stick!" and took off in pursuit.

I never saw it again although my dad says he has, and it wasn't even until a few years later that I started hearing reports of coyotes in the area. Since there are apparently no wolves Massachusetts, I figured it must have been a coyote I saw out there. But when I actually saw the footage of coyotes on the news, they were tiny, with short legs. So I still say it was a wolf. And how weird is it that we even have coyotes? I always just assumed that wolves lived in the woods and coyotes lived in the desert. And since we're hardly in the desert...

Anyway, back to the dead coyote on the side of the road. When I got to work, I told John T. about it. He lives closer to the city, so he wasn't as aware of the growing number of coyotes seen on the South Shore.

"A coyote? How did you know it was a coyote?"

"Well, he was clutching a tiny umbrella."

He laughed, so I thought I'd try it out on John M., the "Bud has donuts" guy.

"Hey, I was telling T. that I saw a dead coyote on the road this morning. He asked how I knew it was a coyote and I said because he had a little umbrella."

"What, is a coyote a type of drink or something?"

As Trinamick would say, great googly-moogly.

So here's a question. If there really was a drink called "the coyote," what would be in it? No Goldschlager allowed.

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Hello, Boss!

As if I needed another reason to dump a sack of scorpions in Joe's bed.

Whenever we get unsolicited sales calls at work, we put them on hold for a few minutes, then tell them whoever they're looking for stepped away from their desk. That's what we're supposed to do, anyway.

Last week, Joe said "Halo Direct" is on the line for me. I'd never heard of Halo Direct, but I knew they were either trying to sell me an Xbox or ask me if I've accepted the Lord Jesus Christ into my life. So I took the call, found out it was actually Hello Direct and they sell wireless headsets for phones. I told the guy that the person in charge of making those decisions is away, asked if he wanted to leave a messege, you know, the usual stuff. When I got off the phone, I told Joe that it was a sales call, and next time, just blow him off.

"Sorry. I thought it was a collection agency," he whispered. Jackass.

A few days later, Joe calls me again and says there's an Andrew [Last name begrudgingly withheld] on the phone for me. Again, I've never heard of this guy, but I picked up the phone, and before I can say anything, this guy starts spewing his rehearsed Hello Direct sales pitch. God damn it, Joe. What's worse, is that our entire conversation was echoing loudly back into my ear. I'm not sure what was causing it, but I hope for his sake it wasn't that hands-free thingamagic he was undoubtedly wearing.

I told him we weren't interested, but he insisted that it was a free trial with no obligations. I told him again, adding that we're a small company and don't really need anything like that. But he kept pushing, and the feedback in my ear was getting worse. I could have hung up at any time. I should have. But I couldn't. I guess I should add here that I absolutely HATE the phone. I get really nervous and uncomfortable. I only use my phone when I have to. I say what I need to say, and then hang up. I was stuck on the phone with this guy, and I just wanted him to stop talking, so I said "fine." No big deal, right? I started to give him the company's address, when he interrupted, "Now, I have your address as [my home address], is that correct?"

Holy crap! How'd this guy get my home address? Well, now there was no way I could hang up on him, he knows were I live. I don't want to come home to a burnt-out shell one day, with this Andrew guy standing in the driveway, smelling of gasoline.

Let's see you hang up on me now!

So now I've got this stupid headset coming to my house. And if I don't send it back in thirty days, I've got to pay $293. God damn it, Joe.

"Sorry. It sounded like he knew you."

If discovering that you're getting a $293 hands free headset from Hello Direct shipped directly to your house had a polar opposite, it would have to be discovering the 69 cent miracle in a can that is Hello Boss.


I bought a can last weekend when Michele took me to Kam Man Food, the Asian marketplace in Quincy. Dispite living in Quincy for over a year, we never really went there, except when her mom came to visit. The first night we drove by, part of the "K" wasn't lit, so Michele looked up at the sign and said "I Am Man Food?"

Anyway, they have all kinds of cool weird-looking Asian fruits and vegetables that I'd never heard of. Most of them were all spikey and imposing, like they were from outer space. But the best part is the candy and drink isles, where you can pick up some Japanese candy and some really cheap Red Bull knock-offs from Thailand. Red Ice comes in a little brown glass bottle, and tastes a little like cough syrup.

Then there's Hello Boss. It's kind of like those little Starbucks drinks they sell for almost two dollars, only they're 69 cents and they have that funny little guy on the can.
Hello, boss!

I also grabbed a few cans of what I'd imagine to be Hello Boss' chief rival, Mr. Brown. Mr. Brown is also a coffee drink in a can, costs the same, and has an eerily similar mascot. I don't know which came first, but someone is clearly ripping somebody else off.



I think I'd prefer vanilla Mr. Brown to the vanilla Starbucks Frappuccino even if I wasn't broke. That stuff's pretty good. As for Mr. Brown versus Hello Boss, I think I've got to go with the Boss Man. Sure, they're both only 69 cents, but Hello Boss is a hefty 11.5 oz., while Mr. Brown is only 8.12. Plus that Mr. Brown looks a little too cocky for his own good.

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What Have We Learned?

I think we leared a lot yesterday. We learned that you can find just about anything on the internet. We learned that the guy that cuts off his legs every night for a living was not some childhood hallucination, but magician Rudy Coby, and that he even had his own comic book. Who knew? I think the lesson here is that just because someone remembers something that no one else does, it doesn't mean they imagined it. It just means they watched an obscene amount of television when they were growing up.

Anyone remember D.C. Follies, with Fred Willard and a bunch of terrifying Kroftt puppet versions of late eighties media and political figures? There's not much about it on the internet, and what little there is doesn't include pictures. I remember watching an Entertainment Tonight segment about how they made the puppets. Until then, I thought the puppet likenesses were silly and harmless, which was the point. But at the end of the segment, the lights shut off in the warehouse, and the camera zoomed in on the Nancy Reagan puppet, which winked and nodded at the audience or something to that effect. It was supposed to be this cutesy ending to the story, I guess. But that Nancy Reagan puppet scared the ever-loving crap out of me. I must have had nightmares for a week, convinced that a smiling, felt caricature of the First Lady was going to eat my soul. Oh God! It's alive!!

Fantasy Football Update: Week 7
Well, it had to happen sooner or later. After six weeks, I'm 6-1, coming off a major smackdown thanks to Bill "Old Biff" Parcells.



No big deal, though. I'm still in first with a two game cushion.

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Get A Leg Up On The Pile

Okay, kids, I've got an assignment for you. Back in the late eighties, there was this guy in a lab coat and green pants. Not regular green, but that bluish Miami Vice green that was all over the place back then. Anyway, this guy had four legs, and he would go up on stage and proceed to cut off his appendages with a chainsaw, one by one, while The Peter Gunn Theme plays in the background.

I would think it would be pretty hard to forget something that monumentally weird, but when I brought it up with my friends a few weeks ago, they all looked at me like I had mayonnaise bleeding out of my eyes. I should have been the one with the blank look on my face. I mean, how do you just blank out a guy sawing off his freaking legs? If we weren't all broke, I would have put money on this guy's existence.

Have you ever been the only one that remembers something, and it gets to the point where you start to think maybe you imagined your entire childhood? Fortunately, Al Gore invented the internet, where you can find 9,000 other people that remember the same ridiculous things you do. That's a pretty good feeling; to sit back and say, "See, I knew Snow White had her own sitcom in the eighties!"

So I went home and did a search for "chainsaw," "lab coat" and "Peter Gunn." Nothing. Nothing relevant, anyway.

So...anyone want to back me up on this? Max Headroom-looking four-legged chainsaw guy, anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

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Kitchen Math

4 caramel cubes+ 60 seconds in the microwave = a burnt clump of caramel, lots of smoke and everyone yelling at me.

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The Original Blue Man Group

I was reading the Metro this morning and on the top of page six were the words "UNICEF BOMBS SMURF VILLAGE," accompanied by a comically apocalyptic image. At first I thought one of the interns over there slipped it in as a joke. Nope.

UNICEF BOMBS SMURF VILLAGE



Out of an idyllic blue sky dotted with birds and butterflies come warplanes that carpet bomb the Smurfs' forest village, killing Smurfette and leaving Baby Smurf wailing in distress.

The scene from a commercial featuring the cartoon characters is part of a UNICEF ad campaign on Belgian television meant to highlight the plight of ex-child soldiers in Africa. The 20-second clip is meant to show that war can happen in the most innocent of places, a UNICEF spokesman said. (full story)

I know it's wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong. I get what they're saying, but I can't stop laughing. I think it's the fact that Smurfette was actually blown out of her shoe. And the guy running around in the background with his hat on fire...comdey gold. That whole picture just cracks me up. I'm think of setting it as the background on my laptop.

Fantasy Football Update: Week 5
The bad news is, I had Donovan McNabb playing Sunday. The good news is, I also had Drew Bledsoe. So now I'm 5-0 and have the most overall points. But the big news is that Jose finally won! He beat Nick 198-162.

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What Happened?

I don't know if you've noticed, but I haven't been around lately. I guess that means I should take a moment to dispel some of the rumors I just made up about my whereabouts. So I'd like to go on record as saying the following:

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a fugitive on the run from the Malaysian government.

I did not die as the result of mixing Pop Rocks with Coca-Cola.

I did not film a grainy, night-vision sex tape with former Attorney General Janet Reno entitled "One Night in Reno."

I have not given up my highfalutin office job for a more hands-on career at the hobo factory.

I was not called upon by supernatural forces to reluctantly play a key role in the epic battle of good and evil. Not yet, anyway.

I was not holed up in the basement, frantically scribbling lyrics to my as yet unfinished rock opera, Joe Happens.

I did not break into prison in an elaborate scheme to break my innocent brother out.

I was not trampled by adoring fans who spotted me in line at Dunkin Donuts. Not yet, anyway.

As boring as it may seem, I was just on vacation. I'll tell you all about it tomorrow. Or as soon as I shake these Malaysian operatives.

Fantasy Football Update: Week 4
The Dingleberries are doing more than just hanging on. After three weeks, I'm sitting at the top of the rankings as the only undefeated team at 3-0. This weekend I went head to head with Jose, who has yet to win a match up. We won't know the Week 4 outcome until tonight's game is over. I'm ahead by fifty points right now, but if Delhomme has a good enough game, Jose could still come out with a win. I can't believe I'm saying this, but go, Packers!

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