new post coming...

It's on it's way. Really. In the meantime, here's a picture of an evil dummy bound and gagged and hanging from the ceiling of a backwards E.T.-wallpaper-covered closet. Discuss. ...

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My Photo of Scary Balls

Back when I lived in Quincy, I was accosted in my sleep by a grim specter of evil. Or, like millions of Americans, I suffer from sleep apnea. It all depends on your willingness to believe that there are some things in life that just can't be explained away. As for me, I feel content thinking that it was just isolated sleep paralysis, although it is a bit strange that while it happened several times in that apartment, it hasn't happened before or since. Only happened there. Granted, I've made it a point not to sleep on my back since then, (it only happened while I was on my back) I usually move around so much in my sleep that I'm never in the...

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Zombie Midget Realtor

I don't quite remember what caused it, but a few years ago I missed a dentist appointment and never rescheduled. I haven't been back since, and I'm pretty sure every tooth in my head is completely decayed. It's now to the point where so much time has passed that I'm afraid to go back, just out of shame. I don't want to face the inevitable lecture. I never had a single cavity when I was growing up, and now all my teeth feel weird and hollow. That can't be good. Last summer I had about 30-something returning visitors to this blog every day. It's not a lot, but it's nice to know that, of the hundreds of millions of blogs out there, a couple dozen complete strangers are bored enough to spend their lunch hours reading about my fascination with Asian coffee drinks. After moving into our new place...

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New Post on Monday

Really. And it won't even be lame. Or at least it want be exessively la...

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Your Mission

At some point in the history of the world, somebody made an a cartoon about anthropomorphic firecrackers whose sole purpose in life was to explode. More importantly, at some point in my childhood I happened to see this cartoon. I think it was one of those "little ugly duckling that could" stories, where the larger firecrackers thumbed their noses at the little guy, who wanted nothing more to be part of a Forth of July fireworks display. And sure enough, in the end, his is the most spectacular display of them all. Or maybe he wasn't chosen, but was the lone survivor after all the others exploded. I forget. I don't really remember much about it, except it was pretty disturbing, and possibly at least slightly racist (my recollection is hazy, but at least one of the characters may or may not have...

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My Computer Thinks I'm British

I've had My Yahoo! set up as my homepage for several years now. I can't say that I've ever really paid attention to the banner ads, although the low mortgage rates one with creepy elongated panting wolf with all the states written on him haunts my dreams. But now for some reason, the past few weeks, every time I launch my browser, the banner ad on My Yahoo! is for a British company or website. Just today, I've seen an ad for Zurich Insurance (zurichinsurance.co.uk), "Europe's biggest ski-lift" (easyJet.com), Yahoo! Music UK & Ireland (music.uk.launch.yahoo.com), and BUPA, which is some kind of healthcare, I guess (bupa.co.uk). No explanation whatsoever. Weird. It's really great that HMV has free UK delivery, and that I can get 5 classic DVDs for just £5.99, but since I don't live in the...

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The Worst Part of Waking Up

Labor Day. I'm not really sure what the point of it is, since all the stores are open anyway, but any chance I get to get in a few extra hours of precious sleep I'll take. Such was the case yesterday, as I layed peacefuly on the bed, wrapped snugly in an oversized blanket, dreaming of sugarplums or something, when suddenly I hear, "Guess who died?" Still groggy, I ask who. "Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter." "Really? How?" "A stingray punctured his heart." "A stingray? Really?" Well, great. How am I supposed to sleep now? I was bummed out for the rest of the day. I kept thinking about stingrays. She did the same thing to me when Christopher...

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And Knowing is Half the Battle

I know you can't see it, but right now I'm doing the Dance of Joy. That's because we're finally (mostly) moved into our NEW HOME! I'm sure you want to know all about the move, but right now I want to share with you something I learned yesterday. I like to think that this blog, while ocassionally entertaining, is also ocassionally educational. Just like, as it turns out, unsolicited emails for sexual performance enhancers. Unlike all the other emails touting a "SPECIAL 70% DISC8OUNT[sic] OFER[sic]" and exclaiming, "Just disolve [sic] half a pil [sic] under your tongue and get ready for action in 15 minutes," this one had "Order status, mummy...

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Farewell, Sweet Prince...

You know those round tins of fancy butter cookies that every grandmother in America is required to have in her house at all times? Well my boss just came back from lunch with one of them and announced that she brought cookies for the office. Yay, cookies! But it turns out she had ulterior motives. It seems her daughter's pet gerbil, Tom Brady, died last night and she needed something to bury him in. So she bought a tin of cookies and told us it needs to be empty by the time she leaves for the day. So we're eating out of a casket. Great, thanks for that. Sadly, Brianna's own pet gerbil Nibbles also recently passed on. She too got a tin box...

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It's Not All Smiles And Sunshine

As Joe would inexplicably blurt out every couple of hours, "Sherman, set the WABAC Machine to the nine-teen-fifties." Yup, he actually says that, and in true Joe fashion, it's always "the 1950's". Didn't that show come out in the 60's? (1959, actually.) In it's entire 90-plus episode run, I don't think they ever did an episode where they went back in time 10 years. It was always like the old west or ancient Egypt or something. Anyway, instead of the '50's, let's go back about three weeks. Ryan had just come home from China, and had a little over a week of downtime before he and the rest of my family left for Bermuda. We went to see the Pirates...

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Please Stand By

I don't know when I'm going to have the next post ready, but when it is, it's going to be a long one. Things aren't all smiles and sunshine right now. ...

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Somebody Get The Drano!

I know that some of you have been coming here day in and day out, only to have your little hearts crushed by seeing that same Brave Little Toaster Goes to Albany story from weeks ago (or the haunting visage of the Great Amazo, depending on what link you used to get here). And I apologize, but you have to understand how the internet works. See, the internet is not a truck. I don't know where you got that idea. That's just silly. No, it's a series of tubes. Those tubes can only hold so much before they get filled. And that's a real problem, because when I try to update the blog, and the guy in front of me is stuffing huge amounts of material into...

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The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Albany: Part 3

It was well after midnight by the time we got to bed. But the plan for the next day was to be up and out to breakfast before seven-thirty. Whoever decided on that did not take into consideration how much I enjoy sleeping. Especially on a bed! I hadn't slept on a real bed in months and planned on sleeping the hell out of it. Saturday morning started off rainy, which didn't bode well for our trip. But considering the distance some of us had traveled, we knew we'd still be going, rain or shine. I sat in bed, waiting for the others to call, and turned the TV on. They were showing a bunch of clips of Aaron Spelling, ending with a static photo set...

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The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Albany, Part 2

Yeah, yeah, it took a while. But it was still quicker than the breaks in-between Henry's Woodstock story. Okay, so we were waiting for Christy at the airport, with most of us not even knowing what she looked like. I thought Jose should have held up a sign with her name on it, like in the movies and beer commercials so she'd spot us. After nearly everyone from the flight had cleared out, Ali saw Christy. This was it. Jose's big moment. As funny as it would have been if at the last minute he'd have taken off down the hall like the Cowardly Lion and jumped out the window, he seemed pretty relaxed and didn't try to run (although we were blocking...

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The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Albany, Part 1

Until last Friday, the last real road trip I went on with my friends was to Niagra Falls. That was three years ago, before Michele and Brianna moved up here and Nick started going on long trips for work. It was the end of an era, really, and I can't think of a better send-off than being asked to leave Canada. But that's a story for another time. Today is all about the weekend trip to Albany, which could be considered the start of a new era. Or not. Noticeably absent this time around was Hedie, the primary orchestrator of most of our previous trips. When Nick first told her about it, she wanted to come, until she found out it was the same weekend...

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Nevermind

There's a big truck outside, pumping water out of the parking garage next door. It's making a very loud humming noise, and it's annoying everyone in the office. Except me. I kind of like it. It reminds me of when I was a little kid, and my parents would vacuum during the weekend. I always liked that sound. Not when it first turned on; that part was always abrupt and loud, but after that when, it had been going for a while and became a background hum. Sometimes I'd be watching cartoons, and I'd turn the TV way up so I could hear it over the vacuum, but most of the time the TV was off and there was a tape in the stereo. To this day, Cyndi Lauper...

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A Laser For Every Occasion

When lasers aren't choreographed to the music of Pink Floyd, they're busy performing an ever-growing number of tasks. From LASIK corrective eye surgery to assisting symposia keynote speakers point to charts, it seems there's nothing lasers can't do. What other invention of this or any generation can be credited with aiding in the printing of homemade greeting cards, as well as being the primary weapon used to fight the evil forces of Cobra's dreaded Crimson Guard? I don't see Gore-Tex™ making any such claims. For some time now, I've seen ads for laser hair removal. But yesterday I saw an ad that confused and frightened me. It was for laser...

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The Best Two Bucks I Ever Spent

Nick and Jose embarked on an epic trip to the cineplex for a six-movies-in-one-day marathon Saturday. While I admire their proctal fortitude that enambles them to sit for intervals that mere mortals can only begin to contemplate, I had to forgo the cinematic extraviganza to take care of some tedious but probably significant things at home. Namely, getting the house ready for a party next Sunday. Michele and I will be away this weekend to check out NYPinTA's Serenity showing and spend hours in the line ride at Six Flags, so we tried to get as much done around the house before we left as possible. I've still got a lot of my stuff up in the living...

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Turtle Turtle Turtle

In the summer of 1994, as American televisions were tuned into O.J.'s harrowing slow-speed police chase, a slow-speed chase of another kind was talking place right in my backyard. A few months earlier, a giant snapping turtle dug herself into my grandparents' garden and layed her eggs. The day they hatched, eight baby turtles started off on a long and perilous trek, presumably to the river to which their mother had returned after burrying the eggs in the dirt. Actually, it's not such a long and perilous trek. In fact, if they'd just gone in the opposite direction, the river was about ten feet away. But I guess instincts hadn't quite kicked in...

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It's Friday!

Wow, this is some Friday, huh? Yup. Some Friday. I can't wait for the weekend that hasn't happened yet. I hope I see a snapping turtle and a Pink Floyd laser show. That'd be neat. When I left work yesterday, (you know, Thursday) I saw a CBS Channel 4 News truck drive by, followed by a couple of police cars. Some people standing on the sidewalk turned their heads, and I even saw a couple of guys running to see what was going on. Obviously I had no choice but to check it out and see what was going on. I turned the corner onto Boylston Street and heard music and a muffled voice over a loudspeaker. It sounded like it was coming from the other...

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This Guy Needs An Agent

Okay, first of all, this was originally meant to be the June 7th entry, but Blogger went on strike or lapsed into a coma and otherwise refused to cooperate, so it was left in the queue until Blogger decided to play nice. Then I forgot about it. But here we are, so let's get to it: Paris Hilton is completely useless and needs to go away. She's famous for being famous. She was born into money, and used her wealth to make sure she was seen at all the right places, making her more famous, and even more rich. The fact that she has no talent and looks like a foot doesn't seem to matter. Meanwhile, there's poor old Spare Change Guy. You've got to...

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