for those missing the confrontational or negotiating gene

wednesday night i drove a shiny new honda odyssey home. it started out with 5 miles on the odometer and ended up with 30 by the time i backed it into the garage. i know that the car is for marty and most would think that she would have been jonsin' to drive it but she was afraid of wrecking it pulling onto the busy road in front of the dealership and how sucky would that be. so i got the honors of driving my/marty's/our first brand new automobile off the lot.

now, how marty got this car is an interesting story. she researches everything to death and in her studies she learned of this technique of purchasing a car over the internet. she sent an email to every honda dealer within 100 miles and basically said, i'm buying a car, this car, this week and am looking for who will give me the best deal. she was worried that no one would respond for a number of unforeseen reasons. well she worried for naught because they not only responded but they were climbing over one another to get her in their showroom. one guy offered this. the next guy offered this plus this. they ratted one another out on available deals going on this month until one guy ultimately said, i'll beat any offer you get. well all right then.

now unfortunately our good fortune hit a wall. and that wall was we were looking to purchase the most sought after car of this type on the market. additionally it is year end so the deals were there. our ultimate challenge was finding someone who could keep a 2003 odyssey on their lot for more than three hours let alone finding a salesman who will come down on their price. so in the end we got partially screwed and had to buy one that was on a tractor trailer en route. when cars are selling in this manner, it's hard to get dealers to budge. why the hell would they. but this scenario aside, the internet deal has legs, as the motley fool claims, and if you're in the market, i'd recommend considering such a strategy in your process.

well, when you put it that way

last thursday after first getting up and passing bella in the hall she stopped and held her hand up to me as if a cop instructing traffic to halt and said the following in a doctor-serious voice.

you go take a shower.
you get underwear on.
then you watch big bird with me.

she then turned and headed towards the tv room. the body of the teddy bear she had in a serious headlock bobbing behind her. if i could express a thought in the office using half her conviction and firmness, i might actually make something happen. which i think may have worked out had i not been watching the prescribed episodes of big bird and company all morning.

you can always get the spoiler

they officially totaled marty's car last week (bitch). we are both quite sad. it was a beautiful and beautifully preserved 92 bmw touring wagon that had a very particular single owner.

in discussing what to do next, we had multiple things to consider. when we bought the last car, we were a one baby family. marty was moving from a sporty two door and needed something, emotionally, not too far off the mark there.

but, in looking at both our present and future it's time we embrace some facts. we may not live in typical suburbia but we are a couple of thirty somethings with 2 kids, 2 kids from a woman who says she enjoyed both of her pregnancies. so with functionality in mind, it's time to suck the pipe and get the mini-van (gasp from audience and friends). we're eyeing a honda odyssey. if you gotta do the mini-van-thing there's no reason not to get the sexiest, most feature-filled and SAFEST one on the road.

marty's struggling. function over form. function over form. function over form is the phrase i keep repeating to her since the topic arose. that said, if you think there's any chance i won't present her with one of those six inch soccer ball decals for the back window, you don't know me very well.

price is irrelevant. emotion is irrelevant. there is a point where all is irrelevant.

it has come to my attention that the most particular of my friends is struggling through a dilemma.

it would seem his wife dropped her shiny new clie palm pilot in a public toilet. he and i thought the same thing, 'oh suck, now i've got to buy another pda'. she thought something entirely different though, something along the lines of 'how am i ever going to dry off my pda now that i just fished it out of the toilet'.

i leave you with a message i know to be fact; all things are disposable given the proper conditions.

in the cogs of the great wide web

thanks to a plug from passerby lordrich and then a subsequent link of the day honor from userfriendly.org, boycott city is out of the gate and charging ahead full tilt racking up new members and content with daily routine.

i must thank bookguy for continuing to nurture this nascent site while i was out to lunch. without his diligence it would have grown stale for these first-time visitors dropping in for a looksey.

it's all about patience people. after all the slyfox wasn't built in a day.

she's so damn smart

marty has a rule that if i'm ever going to cheat on her it's totally ok, under one condition; i must call her beforehand.

while this seems like a pretty keen deal, i can't help but wonder what effect speaking to my wife moments before would do to the mood. i'm guessing not heighten it.

but, just in case, anyone have a cellphone i can borrow?

how about a dime?

did you see that elephant run under the pew?

was at a wedding last weekend and something happened.

what would you say the act of a guest passing very audible gas during the bride reciting her vows portends?

yeah, i don't know either.

they laughed, they cried, they screamed 'get away from her you wayward bitch!'

so i've spent the last six months building a replacement intranet for my employer. there were 40 applications. a cumulative total of more than 2,000 files. we were meticulous. we were clean. i've worked 10 weekends since alex was born. i've been in the office 25 of the last 34 hours. i would not fail. it was simply not permissable.

and then, 7 hours before my site went live, some totally unrelated systems issues took a giant wet shit on the hood of my shiny new sports car. it was the most tainted successful rollout i've ever been asked to oversee.

bitch.

you know that thing has a suck setting, just like you

there is a guy in my neighborhood some call the most anal resident but they are wrong. he is the most anal person ever invented, and he's pissing me off.

here's the deal. he has this gas powered blower and weekly he sets out to relocate every blade, grain and follicle he doesn't deem attractive away from his home. the magic radius seems to be 150 feet which coincidentally is about how far the beginning of my property line is from him (he's two doors down). so he meticulously escorts the natural varmints away from his front door and stops his maintenance in front of my home. this leaves a small wave of outdoor dust bunnies sitting on my sidewalk and street, yes he does the street too, remember we're talking about the most anal human to ever sport an anus.

now while this habit has been noticeably annoying i've never really sweated it too much, but the other day i was sitting on the front porch reading, heard something, looked up and saw him walking back towards his home. i looked into the street and saw that he had just dumped some twigs and dried leaves right in front of my house. it was apparent he hadn't seen me sitting there and he was too far away by the time i realized what happened to gig him in the act.

to my point. i'm seeking applications form the more deviant among us describing what it is you would do to this guy for me. please make your submissions generously verbose. also, include any past experience, references and what you feel would be an appropriate fee for your services. photos of previous work would also be appreciated.

and, i'd totally do this myself, but ...

absolutely one of the coolest humans on the planet

bayless
when you interrogate him i'd like to sit in.

pembleton
then what you will be privileged to witness will not be an interrogation but an act of salesmanship as silver-tongued and thieving as ever moved used cars, floated swampland or bibles. for what i am selling is a long prison term and to a client who has no genuine use for the product.

frank pembleton (andre braugher) from pilot episode (gone for goode) of homicide: life on the street.

i can't be alone here

i could tell you but you wouldn't believe me. i could draft a check out right in front of you and you'd swear it would bounce. i could count the hundred dollar bills out and place them in your wallet and you'd simply remove one, sniff it and snap it with your index finger, certain i printed them in my basement. what i'm saying is i could tell you the amount of money i'm willing to pay the individual who tivo'd or taped the recently aired Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of 'Three's Company' but you simply wouldn't believe me.

marty and i sat down while it was in its last hour and each secretly chortled at the other for watching it but by the end we were feverish to know what happened in the initial two hours. this would be the two hours that set the stage for the tumultuous and riveting finale.

we must see this.

me and my checkbook will be waiting for your call.

strap on that there feedbag already

a surprising number of people have requested some sort of explanation about the what i'm eating section of this site. i've always personally felt that it should be, well for lack of a better reason, self-explanatory. but, that part of the site does get pounded by the masses coming from google so for those types some explanation may be in order.

but you all know the drill so if you're looking to kill a few minutes on the job, feel free to read the newly added, what i'm eating explained.

sidenote: i just went through a server upgrade and think that i missed some mail over the last few days. so if i don't respond to something, please re-gig me.

back to the drawing board

i'm quite different from most of the guys i work with. this is typical. but usually not as pronounced as my current situation. in the eyes of my colleagues i'm prissy, snobbish, delicate and several other decidedly negative terms, by their estimation at least. the only thing i could say about them is they are men, real, un-concentrated men.

the other day one of the uber-men informed me that if i mentioned UNIX one more time (they are a microsoft shop) a certain three of them were going to drag me out back and kick my ass. they don't know UNIX and aren't entirely comfortable with what such a change may hold for their future employment in this firm. i confidently told him i could defend such an attack. curious, he asked what 160 pounds of me was going to do against the combined 2,000 pounds of their three-man gorilla-squad. i would simply act like your pummeling aroused me, sexually. his countenance changed quite visibly. he admitted that this just may work.