For Whom the Bellhorn Tolls

Alright, take a good look at him.




Bellhorn. The Bell-man. The Bellmiester. I don't know why, but I get more hits from that picture than any other thing on this site. Even more than the Steve Perry picture, and that's saying something. We're talking several searches from all over the world a day, every day. If you do a Google image search for "bellhorn," it's the first image that comes up. I guess my question is, why are so many people looking for pictures of this guy?

It even showed up on an Oakland A's message board yesterday after the Herald reported that the A's are "expected" to sign him after he clears waivers. However, the news today is that he'll be playing with the evil, puppy-eating Yankees. Whatever the case, Deuce Bellhorn's days in Boston are over. And while he may have lost his Sox gig to crazy-good Tony Graffanino, I'm sure he'd be proud to know that he's the most clicked-on image on random-squeegee.com. I think that might even entitle him to some kind of major award.

Speaking of major awards, guess what site the Complimenting Commenter is featuring today?

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Ode to Bunny

Michele made me go to the doctor on Tuesday after my fingers started growing hoards of little bubbles that, left unchecked, could potentially become self aware. Especially that particularly nasty little cluster on my left index finger. I could feel it thinking...plotting.

I hadn't been to the doctor since December 2003 when I came down with a case of walking pneumonia. We reminisced about the good old days for a while, then he scribbled some jibberish onto a piece of paper and sent me on my way. The jibberish was then taken to CVS, where a crack team of pharmacologic graphologists determined that it was in fact a perscription for Prednisone.

So I've been on steroids for three days now. There's hardly any traces of the poison whatever anymore, but now my skin is drying up and flaking like crazy. I look like I passed out in a bowl of oatmeal. I needed some moisturizer, but since I had to leave for work before Michele got home this morning, I had to find it on my own. I checked all the closets, drawers and medicine cabinets to see if she had any, but I didn't find anything. Don't all women keep moisturizer with them at all times? Actually, I'm not really sure what moisturizer even looks like, but I'd imagine it would say "moisturizer" somewhere on the label. I did find some Suave conditioner with built-in moisturizer, but I didn't want to rub shampoo all over my eyes. It wasn't the no-tears kind. So I've just been throwing some water on my face every fifteen minutes or so to keep from turning into Mumm-Ra.



Now that that's out of the way, I've got to say "Happy birthday" to my aunt Bunny. Her real name is Rose, but everyone calls her "Bunny" because when she was growing up, she once nursed an injured rabbit back to health. She'd carry it everywhere; to the park, to school, even to church. All the other kids began making fun of her and called her names. But what they didn't know, what they couldn't have known, was that the rabbit was enchanted, and thanked Bunny for her kindness by granting her three wishes. Actually, I don't really know why she's called Bunny. It's just another one of life's great mysteries.

Bunny is my dad's sister, and like I said on his birthday, whenever I stayed the night at Bunny and Nana's house, I'd always come home with a fistful of shiny new toys. Bunny never had any children of her own, which meant she spoiled us rotten. No visit to her house was complete without the requisite trip to Toys "R" Us, Child World and McDonald's. I loved the smell of her car. The scent of the Buick seat cushions mingled with her perfume and McDonald's grease. It was bliss.

Sometimes, Roger, their neighbor, would come over to visit. Roger looked like he stepped out of a Norman Rockwell painting. He always had a pipe, a buzz cut and Drew Carey glasses. Whenever Roger was there, he'd always give me a few dollars, for no apparent reason. Remember that purple UFO that flew across the top of the screen every once in a while in the old Space Invaders game? That's kind of like what Roger was like. There was no guarantee that you'd see him, but if you did, you'd really clean up.

Roger passed away a couple of years ago, but I can still picture him sitting in my grandmother's kitchen with his pipe.

Even though we were never allowed to set foot outside for fear of getting hit by a drunk driver or being swollowed whole by the chasm in the backyard, those weekends at Bunny and Nana's house where probably the best times any kid could ask for. Nana always made french toast for breakfast. Now, it's not like I never had french toast before; I practically lived on french toast at one point. But Nana's always seemed to taste...better. Maybe it was because she had a gas oven instead of an electric one. Could the blue flames have made it taste better? Or maybe it was the maple syrup that she kept in the refrigerator. The refrigerator! It was like eating on a different planet!

Everything seemed different there. Better somehow. Like the TV. It was an older model. Big and boxy. But the same shows I watched at home sounded better at Bunny's house. It's not like she had a Dolby surround sound system or anything, but the speakers on that old TV ran circles around the ones in my parents' set. And Nana had this weird blue spherical radio. It looked like a mini blue Death Star, or Pac Man if he held his breath for too long. Even the blankets were comfier over there. They were down or something. She had one in the spare bedroom, and one for the sofa bed in the living room.

When Grampa was alive, I used to listen to his police scanner he kept on the floor in his bedroom. He was a retired cop with the Dedham Police department. He died when I was eight, and a short time later, Nana gave me his badge. I thought that was just about the coolest thing ever. It was an honor to recieve something like that, so I was understandably horrified when I lost it a few years later. My room wasn't exactly the textbook definition of "clean," but I had my own method. Basically, I'd toss everything into boxes and shove the boxes under the bed and in the closet. My mom wasn't especially impressed with this method. She'd periodically, say, whenever there was a repeat on TV, come into the room, pull all the boxes out, dump them on the floor, and make me put everything back where it "belongs." What was wrong with stuffing everything into boxes? It was off the floor, wasn't it? Anyway, something always seemed to get lost during one of these Gestapo raids, and I'd bet anything that the badge got lost in the shuffle.

So there I sat, utterly depressed that I'd let my grandfather down, until I remembered what was actually written on the badge. "SECURITY." That's when I realized, she didn't give me his police badge, she gave me his security badge from when he worked at the toll booth at the Foxboro Racetrack! I felt a little cheated, but on the other hand, I did lose the badge, so I guess I'm glad I didn't get the real one. And I'm sure it's not really lost, anyway. It's probably in that one drawer in the white bureau that won't open, along with that bug-faced bounty hunter guy from Star Wars and a couple of California Raisins.

Police scanners and weird blue radios aside, the coolest stuff in Bunny's house was kept in the basement. I usually had to sneak down there, because Nana was sure that something would inevitably fall on me and kill me, and they'd never hear it upstairs. In fact, when I actually saw the basement after hearing her description of it, I couldn't belive she was talking about the same place. You could actually walk around down there! That's more than I could say about my parents' basement. There was all kinds of cool stuff in Nana's basement; my dad's old toys, Grampa's stuff, various nick-nacks from distant lands, even a few creepy thingamabobs that still haunt me to this day. A certain plastic clown scalp comes to mind...

Bunny may have never had any kids of her own, but she sure kept herself busy. Nana doesn't have a driver's licence, so after Grampa died, Bunny became her full-time driver. And I'll be honest, I saw my share of bickering between them.

"Turn left. Now. No, now! Okay, wait for this guy. Now, turn left. No, left! Aw, geez, you missed it!"

"Ma, I'm trying to drive!"

But whatever else was going on in her life, Bunny always found time for us. She'd take us to Rocky Point, get tickets to the circus and the Disney ice shows every year. One time they actually had Herbie...on ice! Really, we probably still have the program in that one drawer that won't open.

One year, she thought she'd do something really special by getting us backstage at the circus. Most kids would have loved that, I'm sure, but...all those clowns...so many wigs...I'd rather not talk about it.

Anyway, Nana hasn't been her usual spry self the past few years, and with the exception of a few pilgrimages to Foxwoods, rarely leaves the house. So we don't see as much of her and Bunny as we used to. Bunny's never even been to my apartment, and since I've got to be out of here by Wednesday night, I guess she never will. But for all the time and energy she put into making her four nephews and one niece happy, (and now Brianna, too) I salute Bunny with the most fitting tribute I can think of. Pictures of actual bunnies taken in my parents' backyard. Happy birthday, Bunny. Thanks for everything.

Click images to enlarge

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Look! It's TV's French Stewart!

All right, webmonkeys. This is the face of poison ivy/oak/sumac/whatever. I don't think it's as bad as Michele was saying, though. Sure, my rugged good looks took a hit, but we're not in Dick Tracy villain territory here.

Why is it that tragic deformities or birth defects always translate into a life of crime, anyway? Remember that chewed-up Cooter figure I had? I always used him as a bad guy, and I never gave it a second thought. But think about it. All the cartoons and comics, toys and movies you've ever seen; there always seems to be one constant. Mangled and gross equals evil. Face left horribly scarred by acid? Become a vicious, maniacal killer. Born with goats where you're arms should be? Mastermind a plot to steal the world's largest opal.

Is that really the message we want to send out to impressionable young minds? "Remember kids, do your homework, eat your vegetables, and if you look different in any way, you will be subjected to years of ridicule, until you inevitibly launch a full-scale attack on the entire planet from your hollowed-out volcano lair."

Maybe Pruneface would have lived a perfectly normal suburban life if he wasn't the perennial victim of verbal abuse. Would it really have been so hard just to call the poor man Larry? Could we as a society be the ones creating these supervillains with our cruel words? Let's hear some testimonials from actual supervillains to find out:

"People like you are the reason I was afraid
to go to school as a child."
- Mystique




"When one of your legs is a pig, people can't help
but say, 'Oh, there's a pig there.' And that hurts."
- The Deadly Bulb




"It was the kids! They called me Mr. Glass!"
- That guy from Unbreakable

So there you go. One the other hand, we could argue that these people could rise above their detractors and do something positive with their misshapen selves. Who's to say that a gamma ray accident that leaves you with an extra arm is a free pass to a supervillainy? Couldn't you just as easily put that third arm to use as a drummer in a rock band, or better yet, a surgeon?

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko was left heavily disfigured by Dioxin poisoning last year. It doesn't seem as though it's swayed him towards a life of crime. And I say good for him. But if I ever turn on the news and see that someone's stolen the Golden Gate Bridge, you can bet all eyes will be on the Ukraine. You hear that, hamburger face? I'm watching you...

Oh, by the way, I now offer an RSS feed of this site. You can check it out on the sidebar over there. Pretty swank, huh? I have no idea what an RSS feed actually is, but someone asked for it, and I'm nothing if not compliant.

And finally, they say everyone and his brother has a blog these days. Well, now it appears to be true. Yes, Ryan the Wonder Middle Child has a blog. Behold it in all it's splendor.

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I Look Like A Goldfish

Saturday, my mom thought it would be fun if we all went over to my grandmother's house and clean up her garden. Hey, who doesn't enjoy pulling up weeds and cutting down overgrown plants in the blistering heat?

I'd love to relive all that family fun time for you, but I can't, because my face is all swollen and I can barely see. Somehow, I managed to get poison...something... all over me. It wasn't posion ivy; there weren't any "leaves of three" in sight. It could have been poison oak or sumac. I don't know what they look like.

Anyway, I've got it all over my arms and around my eyes. My lips look normal, but they feel the same way they do when the dentist shoots novacaine into my gums. My left eye especially is all puffy, and I'm having trouble keeping it open. So I'm going to bed now.

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Joey Bag O Donuts Smells Like Egg Nog

Have you ever got a song stuck in your head, but you don't...hey look, a balloon!






That was weird. Anyway, I've had this song stuck in my head for the past two days, and it's driving me nuts. It's one of those songs that you'd hear when you're in line at a department store, or waiting at the dentist's office. I don't know what it's called, or who sings it; I don't even know the words. But there's this one part that keeps cycling through my brain, right after the woman sings something that ends with "hold you dear," or "happy dear," the backing vocals say something like, "Smells like egg nog."

I know that can't possibly be right, but I have no idea what they're really saying, and all I hear, over and over again, is "Smells like egg nog." Does anyone think they know what song that is, and more importantly, what they're saying? As far as I know, they really are saying "smells like egg nog." Maybe it's a Christmas song. After all, I was amazed when I found out Prince actually was saying "raspberry beret."

In other news, there's been an influx of people saying "Joey Bag O Donuts" around the office recently. Joe's been saying it for a while now, and as usual, for no apparent reason. But now we're all saying it, because, well, it's fun to say. Joey Bag O Donuts.

Joe labels everything. It's gotten a little better since we got the laptops, but he used to have yellow sticky notes all his monitor. BACK UP YOUR WORK AT 4:30. TABLOID PAPER IS IN TRAY 2. REMEMBER TO TAKE YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE PILLS. In his folder on the server, he's created two sub-directories; • Active Jobs and • In-Active Jobs. As a joke, John T. added a third folder, • Fairly Sluggish Jobs. I think it was two days before Joe even noticed.

Yesterday, John T. added a new folder inside • Fairly Sluggish Jobs called "Bag o' Donuts." John M. decided to take it a step further and add some photos of bags of doughnuts. He searched Yahoo for some pictures, and eventually found this:




"This is perfect! Bud has doughnuts!" He said, reading the name of the image to me.

He snuck into John T.'s office to show him his contribution. A few seconds later, I heard bursts of laughter, much more than that stupid picture should have warranted.

"John," John T. said, "this says 'Buddha's Doughnuts!"

It was, in fact, BuddhasDoughnuts.jpg. Here is an excerpt from the website it comes from (about an expedition to the summit of Mt. Everest):

Our fantastic cook, Buddha made and served the most fantastic doughnuts this lunchtime. Everyone enjoyed them immensely. Buddha has done a remarkable job thus far; we all remain strong because of this fine cook. We are all working together, which is so important for success up here....

Bud has doughnuts. I must have laughed for a solid ten minutes after that. Of course, once the laughing stopped, all I could think about was that egg nog song again.

I didn't get much done yesterday.

UPDATE! I found the song! And it doesn't sound anything like "smells like egg nog!" But I still don't know what they're saying. Listen to As I Lay Me Down yourself and let me know what they're saying in the background! Now I'm leaning more towards "Una gato."

YET ANOTHER UPDATE! Okay, it's September 14, why in the blue hell are so many people viewing this page from last month? What's the deal?

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Changed His Name Again, Diddy?

I don't usually write about the news. The way I see it, you can get that stuff anywhere. It would be silly for me to write, "Hey, guys, did you see that scientists have discovered new way to make macaroni and cheese?" and then sit back and wait for the comments to come flooding in. I like to think I offer my readers entertainment value that they just can't find anywhere else. For instance, a few weeks ago, Jose told me the following story:

I had a customer ask me, "Do you have Oliver Twist by Winston Churchill?" I thought I heard wrong, so I asked her to repeat it. She said, "Winston Churchill, you know, the same guy who wrote A Christmas Carol."

That's the sort of stuff I write about. You're not going to find any stories about Nick's bachelor party on the Drudge Report.

However, yesterday I saw something that I couldn't pass up. Apparently, Sean "P. Diddy" Combs is changing his name again. That's right, folks, P. Diddy is no more. Now he's simply "Diddy." Seriously. He said the 'P' was confusing people.

"I felt like the 'P' was getting between me and my fans and now we're closer."

Yeah, that 'P' was holding him back. His name was too closely associated with urine before, but now that he's broken the shackles of that extra letter, his career can really take off!

That would have been the funniest thing I read all day, but then I saw this:

"During concerts, half the crowd is saying 'P. Diddy'--half the crowd is chanting 'Diddy'--now everybody can just chant 'Diddy.' "

Amazing.

Let's take a look back at Diddy's various monikers throughout his career, shall we? And while we're doing it, let's make most of it up so I don't have to search the wikipedia file on him.

Before Sean "Puffy" Combs burst onto the music scene with his innovative technique of saying, "Uh-huh. Yeah," over other peoples' songs, he was known in certain circles as Sean "Honey" Combs. This was during his early years as a cabaret performer. He upgraded to "Puffy" after an allergic reaction to shelfish left him with a swollen face minutes before he was to appear on Hip Hop Hoedown, an experimental stage show co-sponsored by Black Entertainment Television and the Nashville Network. Although the concert was a disaster, Puffy remained determined to achieve his goal of saying "Uh-huh. Yeah," over other peoples' songs for a living.

He formed Bad Boy Records in 1993, and changed his name to a slightly more sinister "Puff Daddy." With his new label and a name that conjures images of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, "Puff Daddy" took the world by storm. By 1997, kids all over the world were singing along, saying "Uh-huh. Yeah," over other peoples' songs. Puff Daddy's dream had come true.

However, controversy struck in 1999, when a string of charges led Combs to change his name yet again, this time to P. Diddy.

"See, the cops, they're all looking for Puff Daddy. But I'm like, 'Who dat? I'm P. Diddy. I don't know anybody named Puff Daddy.' And the cops are like, 'Oh, sorry, sir. We had you confused with someone else.'"

The P. Diddy ruse worked. Unfortunately, it worked a little too well. By 2005, most people had forgotten who P. Diddy was, and those that remembered assumed he'd been shot by a rival artist years ago.

With news this week that Combs is back with a fresh new name, it's clear that not only was Diddy not gunned down by West Coast rivals, but he'll be saying "Uh-huh. Yeah," over other peoples' songs for years to come.

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I'm J. Peterman

Yesterday I got an email from southofboston.com about the Battle of the Blogs. Guess who won? Well, it wasn't me. It was this one. I still get $250, so at least I'm slightly less broke. So I've got that going fo me, which is nice.

Anyway, congratulations to Jolianne Chaffee, and thanks to all the readers from southofboston.com. I hope you enjoyed reading my stuff and decide to keep coming back. I got this really nice comment from someone named Nicole a while back:

"This entry has finally compelled me to post a comment. I stumbled upon your site via the Battle of the Blogs and I'm hooked. If you don't win, there is no justice in the world. Anyway- I had to write because oddly enough I knew exactly what 'Scooter my daisy heads' meant when I read it. For some reason I found that commercial to be hysterical- as I do the shiny spoons story. My mother should have married your father, she can't get a story right to save her life."

That was pretty cool. Not only was it a ringing endorsement from my potential sister, but she actually remembered that commercial. So special thanks to Nicole and everyone that wrote to the judges and supported me. Unless you wrote something derogatory about the judges' mothers. Thanks for costing me the contest, jerkwads!

The weekend of the deadline, the Patriot Ledger printed samples of the finalists' blogs. Here's what they ran from mine:

Anyone who rides it with any regularity should know that if they need to be somewhere, they need to leave at least two hours early to account for the inevitable delays, switching problems, out-of-service trains, and other intangibles that make up the T experience. Sometimes I feel like I'm Mario, work is the Princess, and the MBTA is Donkey Kong, hurling barrel after barrel at me to keep me from my destination.

I thought that was sort of a dubious choice, considering the very next line I wrote was "That probably wasn't the best metaphor." I would have went with my slogan for the T, "Why be late for work, when you can be late for work AND smell like three hundred other people?" Oh well, it's not that bad. Although now I've got that damn song in my head again.

So what now? Well, the Bloggies aren't until next year, but I've got a feeling that next year will be the year. I can almost taste the twenty dollars. And it's delicious. In the meantime, there's always Blog Rankings. Earlier this year, I got as far as number nine, before falling to fourteen. I've been at fourteen for months, but I just noticed I'm back up to thirteen now. Woo-hoo! So if you haven't done so already (you can only do it once) head on over there and rank my blog! I'm not actually sure how it works, honestly. The top-ranked blog only has a rating of 6.59 out of 10, so I think they go by number of hits. Or not. Let's see if I can get at least ranked higher than "The Lesbian Lifestyle."

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Cooter My Daisy Heads

One of the highlights of five dollar movie night is the music they play before the previews start. Other theaters have Movie Watcher Network, or some other fake radio station, with a smooth-sounding dj to inform you that you've just heard the latest from Brian McKnight. But Hanover does it's own thing. Most of the time, they either play weird jungle music with chanting and parrot noises, or banjo-laced cowboy yodelling. A few times, they've had Musak versions of TV show themes. One night we heard jazzed-up instrumental versions of Cheers, The Cosby Show, Rosanne, Family Ties, and Taxi before the previews started. Another time, they had the Mambo-style end credits from Songs in the Key of Sprinfield. I love that place.

Last night, we saw the Dukes of Hazzard movie. It was pretty good. That Cooter guy from the TV show has been running around all over the place telling anyone that will listen that the movie is too raunchy and it's nothing like the family-friendly TV show. I think he might have forgotten where "Daisy Dukes" originated. He didn't like all the swearing in the movie, either. It's irrational to assume that people placed in some of the situations in the movie wouldn't swear, but I can see his point in that many scenes it seemed like they were swearing for the sake of swearing. A movie full of "dangs" and "aw, shuckses" would have been unrealistic, but it almost seemed like their goal was to work the word "ass" into every scene.

Speaking of Cooter, somewhere in my parent's basement, there's a plastic Cooter action figure with a mangled face. I loved the Dukes of Hazzard when I was a kid and had most of the toys put out by Mego (who also had a line of figures for CHiPs and, for some reason, Dallas). The crown jewel was the General Lee, with the flip-top roof for easy access. Man, that was a cool toy. I think I was only two or three when I got them, so my memories are a bit hazy. All I know is that as time went on Bo, Luke, Daisy, Roscoe and Cletus mysteriously vanished. One by one, they met their fate, be it getting sucked up into the lawn mower or getting lost between the cushions of the station wagon. Even my Dukes of Hazzard swimming pool got lost when it blew off into the woods during Hurricane Gloria.

Uncle Jesse, who remained a stalwart plaything even after losing a leg, was lost for years until he showed up inexplicably in the medicine cabinet one day. Maybe he was looking for Teeny Little Super Guy. And Cooter? Poor Cooter got most of his face and upper body chewed off by our dog. It looked like Larry the Cable Guy got caught in a threshing machine. By the time I was around eight years old, I didn't even know who that figure was supposed to be. He was just some nameless (and sleeveless) trucker guy. He saw his share of time at the bottom of the toy box. It wasn't until I found a site online that had all the old figures that I found out who he actually was.

The only one that escaped unharmed was Boss Hogg. I used Boss Hogg for everything. He was about the same size as the handful of Star Wars figures I had, so I created my own little world where Boss Hogg and the three-eyed goat face guy from Jabba's palace served as crime bosses for the Imperial Guard. Eventually, Boss Hogg's cigar broke off, but that only made him cooler because then it looked like he had a great big pimp ring on.

Anyway, back to the movie. I've seen people referring to Jessica Simpson's Daisy as a "ditzy slut," whereas Catherine Bach played her more intelligently. All I can say is I think these people are romanticizing the past too much. I may have only been a small child when the show was on the air, but I don't recall Daisy being a brain surgeon. Jessica Simpson may not know the difference between tuna and chicken in real life, but she played Daisy as being just as clever, if not more so then her TV counterpart. I didn't see her as being ditzy at all. And as far as being a slut, the movie did just about everything it could to give the exact opposite impression. While she did use her figure to get information from depraved lawmen or to distract them from what the Duke boys were doing, she's never seen "with" another man. In fact, the only guy that even tries to hit on her ends up on the wrong end of a good ol' fashioned ass-kicking. Not to mention that her family is so protective, she's probably got a metal plate underneath those cutoffs.

As crazy as it sounds, I would bet that if she'd dyed her hair, the words "ditz" and "slut" would have been removed from the equation altogether. I heard that they made a wig for her, but she refused to wear it. They should have told her to put on the damn wig, she was getting paid enough. She should have been a brunette. Not just because Daisy Duke is supposed to be, but because brunettes are waaay hotter than blondes. And I'm probably alone here, but Jessica Simpson's face looked like her cheeks collapsed in on themselves or something. She didn't always look like that, did she? I don't know. I guess no one's really looking at her face anyway.

The movie was directed by Jay Chandrasekhar, and written by his comedy toupe Broken Lizard, the guys that did Super Troopers. People either love that movie or hate it, so I guess that statement can be seen as a good or bad thing depending on which camp your in. (Afganistanimation... c'mon, how can you not like that movie?) Since I fall in the former category, I got a kick out of seeing some of the guys doing cameos, especially a scene involving campus police. Mother of God. That was probably my favorite part, along with the different reactions to the rebel flag painted on top of the General Lee. And I was up all night trying to remember where I'd seen the kid at the college before. It didn't come to me until I was walking to work this morning. It's the kid that poked a hole in Farva's liter of cola.

Sean Williams Scott and Johnny Knoxville were really good, especially Scott. I don't know about Burt Reynolds, though. I like him, but all throughout the movie I kept thinking, "Why is Burt Reynolds Boss Hogg?" Boss Hogg is a fat sweaty guy, remember? Why didn't they get his Evening Shade co-star, Charles Durning. He'd have made an excellent Boss Hogg. Just imagine the final showdown between him and the Duke Boys...




Bo: Hogg, what's the matter with you? You gotta be crazy chasin' us halfway across the county. Why are you doin' this to us?

Boss Hogg: 'Cause all my life I wanted to own a coal mine, and Hazzard's the key, hillbilly.

Bo: Yeah, well, I've got a dream too. But it's about driving and moonshine and making people happy. That's the kind of dream that gets better the more people you share it with. And, well, I've found a whole bunch of friends who have the same dream. And, well, it kind of makes us like a family. You have anyone like that, Boss? I mean, once you get all that coal, who are you gonna share it with? Who are your friends, Boss? Those guys? ...I don't think you're a bad man, Boss. And I think if you look in your heart, you'll find you really want to let me and my friends go to follow our dream. But if that's not the kind of man you are and if what I'm saying doesn't make any sense to you, well, then, go ahead and kill us.

Boss Hogg: (sighs, removes his hat) Alright, boys. Kill 'em.

Then the ground shakes, and a giant Uncle Jesse bursts out of the Boar's Nest, saving the day. That would've been cool. Instead, some other thing that's less cool happens.

Roscoe was all wrong, too. The pilot from Con Air can't be Roscoe P. Coltrane. He was too...mean. He's supposed to be bumbling. Bumbling! You know who would have been a great Roscoe? R. Lee Ermy. But instead of his usual drill sergeant barking, he'd be all folksy and true to the original character. Imagine R. Lee Ermy saying, "Ya done scuffed my vee-hicle!" I'm cracking up just thinking about it.

Basically, the movie's not as good as it could have been (with Simpson as a brunette, Charles Durning as Boss Hogg, R. Lee Ermy as Roscoe, and John Stamos as Uncle Jesse) but not nearly as bad as critics say it is. I liked it, anyway.



Oh, one more thing. I've got a website you have to check out. I've always said that Joe is the world's most annoying co-worker. Well, get ready to meet the world's most disgusting co-worker. This girl actually makes me thankful to have Joe around. I'd rather work with a braying ass than a stinky ass any day. The language is pretty strong and explicit, so kids and guys that used to play Cooter on TV should stay clear, But for the rest of you, enjoy The Disgusting Girl I Work With. It's an ongoing story, so make sure you start at the bottom of the page and work your way up to the most recent post.

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Scooter My Daisy Heads

Guess what today is? If you said Monday, you'd be wrong, because it's Friday. See, it says so right up there in the date line. August 5th. Would the date line lie? I think not. And today, the 5th, is my dad's birthday. I can't think of a more heart-felt and cheap gift than to share some dad stories with my closest internet friends and a couple of other people who stumbled onto this site by Googling "d'artagnan cartoon porn." Seriously, people do searches for some freaky stuff to end up here. Once my page came up after someone did a search for "pantsless man and an excited donkey." Yikes. Just...yikes.

Anyway, here's a little background information. When he was growing up, my dad wasn't allowed to do much of anything. There was a dip in the road in front of his house that would fill with water after rainstorms. All the other kids in the neighborhood used to swim and splash around in it on hot summer days, but my grandmother (not the one who was in the car accident) kept him away. "Sure, you can go play in the water with the other kids...if you want polio!" So my dad stayed inside and sweated out the heat. To his knowledge, none of the other kids ever got polio.

Nana wouldn't let my dad or his sisters eat popcorn at the movie theater, either. She said they'd choke in the dark. She invents things to worry about. I used to stay with her and my aunt on the weekends. It was great, because every Saturday morning, my aunt would take me to Toys "R" Us, and Child World. We'd come back with the back seat loaded with toys. Although my mom may have seen differently, the toys were a necessity. Nana didn't want me to playing in the back yard, because there was a well back there that I could fall into. And I couldn't play in the front yard because I could get hit by a car. She might as well have drawn a circle on the floor around me and said, "Here, you can play anywhere you want. As long as it's in this spot." The only thing I could do while I was there was play with my new Legos in the saftey of the living room.

Nowadays, my dad eats popcorn in the dark with reckless abandon. I'm not sure if she knows that or not. I can only imagine what she said when he told her he was going to Viet Nam.

Also, maybe it's just me, but I think he kinda looks like George Washington. Or he did until his face got all droopy. Geez, it's like he's melting.



My dad has the uncanny ability to somehow screw up any story he's trying to tell. For example, remember those Sprint PCS commercials from a few years ago, where everyone misheard everyone else until that guy that looks like Judd Nelson introduced them to the Sprint PCS Free & Clear plan? Well, dimple monkey twice the pudding octopi for tango man. I mean, one night my mom told Glenn to take out all the Chinese food for dinner, but he thought she said "shiny spoons," so when she got to the kitchen, all the spoons where on the counter and the leftover Chinese food was still in the refrigerator. It was just like something out of one of those commercials, so we all started laughing, even though "take out all the shiny spoons" seems like an odd request. Now here's my dad's version of that story when he told my aunt about it a couple of days later:

Debbie told Glenn to take out the Chinese food, but he thought she said to take out the Chinese silverware....

See how it's not quite the same? There was another commercial a few years ago for McDonalds that had an Asian guy saying "quarter pounder with cheese" really fast in broken English, so it sounded like "quarter pounder witchies." Again, we all laughed about it, but when my dad told someone about it, the phrase inexplicably changed to "bacon egg and cheese." Bacon egg and cheese isn't funny! Well, now it is, I guess. But the whole point was the guy was saying witchies. Quarter pounder witchies! How do you get bacon egg and cheese out of that?

Glenn has one of those Gorbachev marks on his head. You can't really tell it's there because his hair covers it, but one time my mom noticed there was a little fleshy thing on it. So she asked my dad to point it out to the doctor when he takes Glenn for a check up. She wanted to know if he could remove it because she was worried that it would get ripped off with a comb. So the doctor removed the fleshy thing and sent it out for a biopsy. The reply came in the mail. Dad read it to Glenn:

UNTRULY BENIGN. FOLLOW UP IS NEEDED.

My dad told him that he had a brain tumor. Glenn was horrified. Untruly benign! That sounds bad. The poor kid sat in tears on the steps, waiting for my mom to come home. He thought he was going to die.

When my mom got home, he told her what it said. "Untruly? Is that even a word?" She looked at the paper.

ENTIRELY BENIGN. FOLLOW UP AS NEEDED.

So anyway, be sure to say "Happy Birthday" to my dad today. Just be sure to say it really loud.

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The Experiment

I've been working at this graphic design company since January, 2001, when I started as an intern. That summer, a woman who had been there a few years announced she was moving to Connecticut. Two freelancers were hired on until a suitable replacement could be found. One of them was an older woman who the company had used in the past, but ultimately turned out to be a little slow when it came to computers. To her credit, in her day she was the best damn telegraph operator John D. Rockefeller had in his employ. The other freelancer, the one that ended up with the job, was Joe.

Joe seemed to be a perfect fit for the company. He had spent years as production director at his previous company, and had a vast knowledge of the business. And he was pretty friendly, albeit a little on the loud side. But everyone has their quirks.

The fourth line on the phone was designated for the fax, and whenever the phone rang and fourth line lit up, Joe would say "Faxinating!" Sometimes, he'd chase it with "Should I answer it?" You could write it off as just another quirk at first, but after a while, these "quirks" started to multiply exponentially. One day, out of the blue, he announced, "You sir, are a dickhead," to absolutely no one in particular. Just another quirk, I guess. With every utterance, each quirk entered into a chrysalis of "minor irritation," until finally emerging as a beautiful, full-blown annoyance.

Day in, day out, it was the same few phrases. Over and over again.

"Hassan Chop!"

"Are you my special friend?"

"Na na na, na nana na, na na na na nananna na. The Banana Splits. Arhrhrhrahgghg"
The guy was relentless. It was like Chinese water torture. As the one sitting the closest to him, it was only a matter of time before I started to catalog how many times he'd spout his "Joe-isms" a day. It was either that or hit him repeatedly with bricks.

So I posted my grievances on a message board I frequent. Almost immediately, people began to sympathize and share their own office stories. Before long, people all over the world knew about Joe. "Holy D'Artagnan, Batman!" and "Arrurruurrghgh!" popped up all over people's signatures. There was even an "I know Joe" club. Somehow, Joe became a phenomenon. An anti-hero for the working masses. When I started this blog, I incorporated a lot of the Joe stuff, including the Joe-kus, and even more people got in on it.

I have to admit, I feel more than a little guilty about it all. The thing is, he really is a nice guy. He always asks how you're doing, but he does it while standing two centimeters from your face. No regard for personal space. But he genuinely wants to know. And he's always willing to help. If you were trapped in a burning building, Joe would run right in and rescue you without a second thought. But then he'd remind you about it every day until one of you was dead.

"Hey, remember that time I rescued you?"

"Yeah, I almost died. You tend not to forget things like that."
That's Joe. The man who wore sandals to work last week. The man who continues to pronounce the "s" in "Illinois," no matter how many times he's corrected. The man who speaks fake Spanish. Loudly.

Anyway, I was looking back at some of the stuff that I'd written down over the past few years. One of my favorites was when he announced that "Jen and J-Lo" had broken up. And who could forget when he sang Springtime for Hitler all day? Actually, he just said "Springtime...for Hilter...and Ger-man-ee!" for three minutes straight. I don't know if that really counts as singing. Eventually, we realized he was never going to stop saying stupid stuff. We decided to make the most of it by creating a game, Jingo.

Jingo, was basically Bingo. Clandestinely, Jingo sheets where handed out each morning, each with the 25 most-used Joe-isms arranged differently. Throughout the day, we'd listen for Joe to say one of the 25 words or phrases, and the first with five in a row would be the winner. Surprisingly enough, after playing for a week, no one got a Jingo yet. I was always just one away from a Jingo. "C'mon, say Arrghgrhrghr! It's you're signature thing!"

Jingo proved to make working with Joe a little more palatable. But we were still tired with the same old, same old. But...but what if we could somehow get him to at least say new stupid stuff? That's how "the experiment" began.

Like Jingo, it was a game; a contest. The object was to try to coax Joe into working some new sayings into his oeuvre. We each came up with a well-known phrase. John T. chose "Time to make the donuts." John M. went with "L'eggo my Eggo!" Mine was "I'm not going to pay a lot for this muffler," which may sound long, but my logic was that it lent itself perfectly to be followed by his infamous "Arruurrghrgrurggrahh."

John T. kicked things off, by talking about a deadline for a job he was working on, followed by, "Well, I guess it's time to make the donuts." Oh, that sneaky little bugger. After that, we all began sporadically saying our phrases to see how long it would take Joe to mimic them. A day later, Joe said "Let go my Eggo." John M. stood up and cheered, but the ruling on the field was that the actual line is "L'eggo my Eggo". He has to say the correct line for it to count. Likewise, a few days later, he said "Time to make donuts."

It's "Time to make THE donuts!" THE! THE! Geez. I was starting to think no one was ever going to win this thing. He did eventually say it right, but by that time we pretty much stopped caring. Or I did, anyway. And even though John T. got him to say his phrase, he hasn't really said it since then, making the whole experiment a bust. Oh, well. At least we still have Jingo.

Hmm...I wonder if Joe saw this article? Thanks again to janey_13 for the assist.

More about Joe:
The Tao of Joe, The Tao of Joe II, Eminem Knows Joe?, It Looks More Like Aztek to Me, Joe Rides Again, Joe-kus

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