a bad day is having your breath mistaken for gas by your wife upon first waking up.

a worse day is having your your breath mistaken for gas by your two year old daughter who won't stop chanting "gas. gas. gas. daddy gas. gas. gas. daddy gas. gas. gas. gas. daddy gas." and, all this while patting me on the shoulder just in case anyone in the store was uncertain of who exactly daddy was.

that spike in the altoids' stock was me. and me alone.

i plucked my eyebrows for the first time ever last thursday, the day before the taos ski bonanza. it began after i spotted a single rogue hair a bit above the rest. so i found marty's tweezers, leaned in close and yanked it. do you realize how much chaos you can see on your face when you lean in two inches from a well lit mirror. i didn't either. so twenty minutes later i'm done with the razing. nothing extreme. just addressing 34 years of unfettered growth.

when i was finished it occurred to me that i was seeing bookguy the next day. now he didn't cross my mind during the maintenance but primping and preening to such dire levels before meeting an old friend makes one take pause.

admittedly, there's something you got to know about bookguy. he's a little on the observant and opinion-friendly side. i mean until he started shaving his head he had this thin fang of hair charging over the top of his scalp. i called it hair's last stand. since eliminating that he's been a little harder to ding physically and he seems to harbor a keen memory for this distant poke at his fading coif.

in regard to my ablutions, he didn't say anything one way or another. and, i don't want to say i'm hurt, but it would have been nice for him to have noticed. that's all.

on a side thought, if i ever started a band i'd name it Marty's Tweezers. additionally i'd make certain we'd open for buddy james' band Amy's Flank Steak. a certain one-two punch for all ages.

the bar scene. this is something i don't do a whole lot. correction, this is something i don't do at all. i used to but was broken by the spouse of one of marty's high school girlfriends. you've yet to meet the guy who could tell more stories about being smashed, hammered and wasted in a single sitting. he was your all-too typical card-carrying, ankle-tatooed, window-decaled, bulky sweatshirted fr...

our mailman smokes or rather chews a cigar while walking his route. he is a very affable guy and when we moved in he made it a point to come up and introduce himself. we religiously receive a christmas card from him, chat regularly, basically we're friendly.

sometimes if we have more stuff than will fit through the door's mail slot and the door is unlocked he will come in, go to the kitchen and set our mail on the counter and then leave as discreetly as he entered. i like this. it's a little bit of mayberry right here in the big city.

the other day he was bringing one such bundle in when he caught me home from work, heating a plate of leftovers in the oven and singing michaelpella-style to the stevie nicks melody Edge of Seventeen. ok, so getting caught doing the whole singing thing, pretty bad, but it was what i was doing while singing that proved the real burn. i have this condition where hearing stevie nicks makes me want to move and groove as she did in those long 70's flowing, tasseled dresses. unfortunately, in my homage, something doesn't properly translate. perhaps it's the undersized khakis, my awkward grinding motions or even the contorted faces i make when singing. bottom-line is it may look a tad off.

steve the mailman got a little more than he bargained for on this day.

on the positive side, at least it lessens the embarrassment of all the brown wrapper magazine and vhs sized parcels he delivers to my address.

note: it didn't occur to me until writing this up that i always thought the lyrics of this song said just like a one-winged dove instead of the more accurate and flight-worthy white-winged dove.

and for my lackadaisical postings this week, i'm givin' love with the above and this and this.

it started with a search for this and culminated in a search to this.

i'm sure that i don't need to launch into a dissertation at the number of things wrong in the world when one of the better shows on television not only gets cancelled after a single season but can't be released to the public when the content offered on the latter link is, on dvd nonetheless.

but, as the saying goes, if you can't beat 'em, join em. and i'll assume that revealing my discovery of this unique video explains why i haven't been posting a whole lot as of late.

it wouldn't be accurate to say that with last year's everyman i got caught with my pants down. it was more like they were across the room and i wasn't wearing any underwear. not this year though. the 2003 everyman contest is up and baked a full 8 months before the deadline.

there have been some significant changes to many facets of the contest. whole new dedicated site, modified entry requirements and an increased stick yet again for subsequent entries.

i welcome you to swing by and see what's what at www.theEveryman.com.

and any pictures of a bottomless me dashing across the room towards my tired Levi's will not be well received.

the other day i expressed my love for a close friend, michael (02.06.2003). today i must also divulge that i have an equal amount of concern for this very same fellow.

in example, you can see how a moment of inspiration moves michael and his cohort, buddy james.

my household is keeping the oral b folks in business since bella discovered the host of cool things that can be done with a toothbrush. you'd never guess what a versatile tool it was. but to my point, someone i know owns and uses some juiced kind of electric toothbrush that has an auto-timer and other amenities on it. i'm looking for you. clues as to your identity.

1. you stayed at my home in the last year and a half.
2. on one such visit you touted the advantages of your shiny, automated mouth tool. and, if i recall, you may have been doing that while bella was using my toothbrush to apply diaper rash medicine to her perpetually moist teddy bear.
3. you did not specifically mention how this implement could be used for alternate, possibly sexual purposes, but i was thinking it.

if you are this person, please shoot me a note with the brand and model of this device. i would be forever grateful.

and, for those thinking that this is a bad plan and that i will now simply be repeatedly replacing a more expensive toothbrush, i'm way more anal about my gizmos than i am about my $1.39 pieces of plastic. i know it's sometimes hard to see the logic behind my actions but i assure you there is a tangible reasoning beneath the murk.

ok, let's say you get picked up by a spaceship or approached on the street by an alien and they ask you what is the difference between men and women. reproductive and physical traits aside, what would you tell them? and let's say you want to keep it brief, given that they're an alien and all and possibly freaking you out a bit. i think a lot of people would jump on the horndog factor. the visceral, do-anything nature of men. or perhaps the power gene or the slob factor or their incessant need for new, young and shiny things.

while any of those work, they are relatively singular in nature. i would shoot for something fresh and more impactful, something that dug into the embarrassingly few layers of the male psyche, something that would concisely reveal the true nature of men in comparison to women. i've actually been thinking on this much longer than i'm comfortable telling you but i've finally concluded my search. the answer is underwear.

how weird is it that men dig womens' underwear as much as they do. clean, soiled, no matter. for men, a pair of delicate delicates is such a _thing_. if obtained it is a prize to be coveted and shown only to those with such backstage passes to their personal life. the appointed owner will touch them softly, smell them (say what you want but you're preaching to the wrong cat here), then fold or rumple them neatly and steal them away into some secret place specially picked out for such valued possessions.

now flip this. can you imagine giving as a present or some affectionate token, a pair of your tighty whitey's or printed boxers to a lady-friend. and forget about the soiled variety. if they're clean you're at the least going to get an "Oh my God!" and should you place a pair of your seasoned, bacon-striped, thin-where-you-scratch-most pair of undershorts in her unsuspecting and outstretched hand you just may get a merciless ass-beating. you may as well reach into the murk of a johnny-on-the-spot and let the sludgy residue slide into the powdered palm of her hand.

i was just thinking that that is what i would tell an alien race is the difference between men and women should they ask me. men like womens' underwear and nobody likes mens.

i'd never be able to convey to you how much i love this guy.

never.

so some guys at work were all huddled in this circle talking about various guy things when one of them pipes up and starts bashing the adult flushable wipe. i mean he's essentially calling them feminine hygiene commercials for men and asked "what kind of man is going to use these." i saw several heads nodding in agreement. being new and being the least testosterone ridden of the pack i found myself unable to step up in the name of my personal sanitation-based savior. my head hung in spineless shame afraid my eyes may betray my allegiance. when shockingly i heard an unlikely voice speak up in their defense. i say unlikely because if you had to pick the guy most opposite me in our group, this fellow would be it. but, all the same, here he was and proclaimed the following in a stern southern drawl. yeah. take that you heathens.

friday i had a to present an intranet design to my groups' primary client. all went well but the two-hour affair left me a touch on the spent side. so i left work a little early as to get a small nap in before the girls got home, only upon arriving home i found that my dsl provider severed my internet connection a full 10 days before they were supposed to as part of an 'upgrade' they are mandating on all customers.

16 hours later i was able to raise a web page again. i then went to check my mail only to find it equally disabled. i called them next. it would seem some moron was trying to send me a 260mb email. after further investigation it was discovered that that moron was me. at the end of every month i have my monthly logfile detailing this site's web activity emailed to me. this file is usually around 15mb, but after being linked to by jason kottke, metafilter, usa today and a south dakota 10 o'clock news show, this single text file came in at 260mb, which in itself exceeds my full web space allocation. and this does not even account for the rest of my site. ultimately this single large-ass item was rendering my mail file completely impotent. after 8 calls to my host, 6 attempts to kill the individual message, and three full deletions of my mail file, i can again receive mail.

the bad news is anyone who sent me any mail between friday afternoon and sunday evening will have to resend it should they want me to see it. the worse news is because of that mail fiasco which turned my 30mb mail file into a 1.5gb frankenstein, i have 25 days to get a 1.8gb daily space average down to under 250mb or else my usual $25.00 hosting fee will more resemble a meager $1800. and, i hope it goes without saying that the everyman prizes next year may suck worse than this weekend if i don't get that squared away on the quick.

and, i have a favor to ask of someone. if i prove unable to reduce this billing amount, i need someone to tell marty for me. someone who is big and strong and can run like the wind. a lesser man may not survive the deed.