Last Minute Plea

All the news outlets are reporting that California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (that still sounds so weird) has denied clemency for Stanley "Tookie" Williams, founding member of the infamous Crips gang. He is scheduled to die Tuesday morning. This story has been making headlines for the past few weeks, especially after Kenneth Lee Boyd become the 1,000th person to be executed in the United States. He died of a leathal injection, but reports say he did live long enough to see the confetti and balloons with "1000!" printed on them drop from the ceiling. According to an AP report, prosecutors and victims' advocates say Williams is undeserving...

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Hey, Remember That Time...

Remember back in the late ninties when NBC aired reruns all summer, but tried to pawn them off as new, because "if you haven't seen them, they're new to you"? Man, that was lame. Who did they think they were kidding? Hey, remember when the fate of the world depended on going back to the year 2004? Or when I watched Catwoman? And who could forget when that guy on the train asked the woman next to him if she wanted to see his toes? Oooh...or how about that time I did something remarkably similar to what I'm doing right now? Yeah, those were the days. ...

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Is it Safe?

I walked through the Public Garden on my way to work yesterday morning and I saw a squirrel fall out of a tree. I didn't even know what it was at first, I just saw something drop out of the corner of my eye (I saw it out of the corner of my eye, it didn't drop out of the corner of my eye), followed by a loud thud. The squirrel was okay, though. He landed in the pond and jumped out as quickly as he fell in. The way he hopped back onto the tree almost looked like the was he fell out, only in reverse. Except that now his once-fluffy tail was all wet and stringy. And he looked pretty mad. I don't know if he was mad because he fell and all his little...

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There. I posted. Happy?

I found twenty dollars in my pocket today. That was pretty cool. I have no idea where it came from, though. Hmm. I hope these are my pants. ...

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Sometimes They Come Back

This may come as a shock to those of you who check back here for updates every day, but I'd have to say that my biggest weakness is procrastination. Why put off until tomorrow what you can do next week? That's my motto. Actually, I was going to write about this earlier, but, well...you know. Procrastination is my Kryptonite™. Actually, I've never been anywhere near Kryptonite. Maybe Kryptonite is my Kryptonite. I mean, it looks extremely radioactive, like it could give you cancer or something. But excluding actual Kryptonite, I'd say that procrastination is my Kryptonite. Case in point: any number of the purchases I've made over the years based...

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A Question For the Ages

The fine folks at the Comedy Research Institute have dedicated their lives to the scientific pursuit of a higher understanding of comedy. Some have even given their lives to this pursuit (see "the great custard pie massacre of 1932") Others merely die on the inside, toiling away in CRI's vast archives, in search of answers to comedy's most Sphynx-like riddles: "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" "What is the average person's threshold for knock-knock jokes?" and, of course, "Is Andy Dick punishment from God?" Today, CRI "Laughologists" ask you to kindly participate in the poll below, scientifically designed to extrapolate the "lifespan" of...

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The Final Countdown

Over the past few years, TV has become less of a form of entertainment and more like a form of torture. The airwaves have been cluttered with mind-numbingly awful sitcoms, scores of CSI and Law & Order clones, and an unrelenting torrent of reality shows that are so bottom-of-the-barrel putrid, they leave you begging for more mind-numbingly awful sitcoms and CSI and Law & Order clones. Anything that's even remotely interesting is swiftly and quietly taken out back and put down. But every season I come back, with the hopes that one of those good shows might last a season or two. No matter how many times I've been beat down, I always come...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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The Only One That Could Ever Reach Me

Yesterday I asked Brianna how she likes Nash school. She's very excited about first grade. She told me her teacher is reading the book Because of Winn-Dixie to the class. They're only about ten pages in, but she gave me a summary of what's happened so far. "The girl has no mother and her father is a creature, but she's just a person." Her father's a creature? I know virtually nothing about the book, except there's a girl and a dog, and that it was made into a movie earlier this year, but I'm pretty sure that didn't sound right. Then again, maybe her father died and came back as the dog. Didn't that happen in some book? Or am I thinking of that...

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Hang In There

There's nothing like 96 hours of disaster relief coverage to make your own problems seem like minor inconveniences. I saw a guy on TV the other day that was desperately trying to find his wife and three grandchildren, and suddenly having to sleep on my parents' couch didn't seem so bad. Slightly less depressing (okay, a lot less depressing) then all the heartbreaking news stories was the commercial I saw for the Toy Story 10th Anniversary Edition. How could that movie have come out ten years ago?! How did that happen?! I feel old now. Well, on the bright side, football season starts on Thursday. Last year, Nick and Jose were part of a fantasy...

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