and the record remains unblemished; i've yet to meet a drunk guy i've liked.

marty asked me if i would rather be shockingly beautiful and a little dim or super smart and a little dumpy. after refusing to answer her question until she agreed that i already had both looks and smarts i said that it was a no-brainer and really a bit of a non-question. i, as all people, would of course take the brains over the braun. who wouldn't? marty then explained that in a nationwide poll,...

in case you missed it on the front page, this is new today.

a girl i used to work with once sat in our office and audibly pondered why her dog kept tearing up her underwear. "why would a dog want to mess with someone's dirty underwear, i mean how gross is that?"

i don't know what's worse; that i know why or that she doesn't.

my dad was selling a car on autoTrader.com. he quickly got an inquiry from a guy in africa saying he wanted to buy it. the guy said he was going to send my dad a check for more than double the cost of the car and asked that my father forward the excess funds to the company that was going to ship the car to africa. while a bit of a pain in the ass, my dad agreed happy to get a buyer. so africa-guy sent a cashier's check for $8,000 (4k over the cost of the car) and asked my dad to wire the extra jack to the delivery people. now something i failed to mention is that every time dad talked to this guy he (the guy) used one of those operator assistance services where he types his messages and a third party voices them to the other person. the guy cited a speech impediment in explaining the reason, a touch bizarre, but not a deal-breaker. my dad agreed and the cashier's check came but looked a little off in ways i won't get into, it just looked wierd. but it was a cashiers check all the same, essentially legal tender, so pops deposited it but asked the bank to notify him after it cleared because it looked kinda funky. they called two days later and said it was a fraudulent document.

dad spoke to the fraud units of the fbi and secret service to report the situation. they asked him to forward any further correspondence their way. so my dad, emailed the guy, said he got the check and what should he do next. the guy replied and said to wire the extra jack to such and such company in atlanta or somewhere. my dad said he would do it the next day by 3pm and then forwarded all of this information to the coppers.

the authorities did not do anything with the information in the window my dad gave them (3pm next day). my father obviously didn't wire the cash and was working towards getting the car re-listed and for the most part forgot about it. forgot until he got a call at 2:30 in the morning from the guy (sans his operator assistance) asking where his money was. after taking a moment to ponder the gargantuan balls on the dude my father asked him where a cashable check was. the guy then got haughty with my dad who simply cut him off to ask what happened to his debilitating speech impediment and hung up.

my father later asked the feds why they didn't do anything with the information he sent them and they apologized for the lack of response but unfortunately get thousands of these a day and don't get to all of them. thousands a day. amazing. abso-bloody-lutely amazing.

my friend, who i'll call bookguy, compared opening his newly purchased ipod to undressing a beautiful young woman. if we respect this assessment, it is safe to say that unwrapping the 17 inch powerbook could be likened to undressing 100 women who are all jennifer love hewitt.

i think i'm going to need a moment. you'll please excuse me.

the closing argument in my 'saying it doesn't make it so' campaign came today when i saw an airline stewardess bumper sticker on the back of a crappy mini-van which stated:

stewardesses: we're here to save lives, not to kiss your ass.

yeah, well in-between saving all those lives get me another bag of peanuts and coke ... with extra ice. and, you're not as puckered up as i like to see my lifesaving sky waitress-help so can i see a little more pout behind the bombay red lip gloss. and, would i be way out on a limb to guess that the newly founded hooters air isn't doing your cause any favors.

question, if you stood every stewardess in a long line, in plain clothes, and then had to guess what occupation they were in would you think seasoned paramedic or people who used to work at j crew.

and, in response to this spin project, i'm representing my own interest with the following bumper sticker:



there. respect me now. really, i insist.

it's shipped! it's shipped! my new powerbook o' sex has shipped! once received you may look, but under no circumstance touch. you may envy from afar or up close, you pick. but it has shipped and i will be living on the fed ex tracking page for the next several days. tragically it is sitting in some Taiwanese port en route to indianapolis so it will not be as immediate as i may like.

and i haven't gotten any takers on the current powerbook, not counting the guy who wanted to trade sexual favors for this morsel. while i respect the initiative, unless he signs his checks Brad Pitt, no deal. and for those who may not have taken me seriously in the first place (as i'm learning with the taos ski trip) it is a legitimate offer. although if i have to explain the merits of the hardware to you, perhaps you should be at dell's site instead.

he's at it again.

Mary Estes Peters, former slave

i've often heard people comment on the 'misdirected' hate of our oppressed towards the living ancestors of these evil-doers saying things like "i didn't do it" or "you can't hold me accountable for what someone did a 100 years ago". i may have even uttered this a time or two myself. that said, if this happened to my mother or grandmother, etc i think i may harbor some ill-will, however ill-logical it may seem to someone who doesn't have this as part of their family tree.

the un-correctable nature of this history totally sucks. but the even sadder fact is that this history is still being written.

chris mcgrath is back to doing what he should be doing; entertaining and educating the planet en masse. several years ago when we each had bourgeoning home pages i remember saying to him, "i post every day and have nothing to say, you actually have an interesting life and never post." while he agreed, he didn't change his behavior. he said something about the fact that he had a life was why he didn't post or some such nonsense. silly logic that.

well, it may have taken two years for him to act on my suggestion but act he has. chris, who has just returned to bosnia for three months, has committed to update his web site every day during his stay. i'm absolutely giddy. i'm telling you, i can't get enough of this guy. sienfeld would term it a non-sexual crush. for those who have seen chris in a tank-top would know that it's not exactly that. but, i could say, without causing a hiccup in a lie detector that chris is one of the most vibrant and entertaining fellows on the planet and his wife one of the most charming and calming and his child, well i got my own kid and don't ask me to go against the family.

i know i'll enjoy the next few months of getting full-frontal descriptions of chris' days and insights. and while i'd love to keep him all to myself, his entries are just too entertaining. so i welcome you to swing by and catch up and then keep up at chrismcgrath.com because we're all going to be a little richer in the end. i know of what i speak.

as noted yesterday i recently purchased an electric toothbrush. something i didn't mention is that another thing i'm doing now is i read the instructions for things that i buy. i haven't done that since i could make noise with my armpit. and i couldn't read before that. if you do the math that does mean i've never read instructions.

not only am i now reading the instructions, i'm heeding them. for instance point five from the braun people reads:

5. never drop or insert any object into any openings.

the problem is they do not specifically apply this tenet to their product. therefore, i'm forced to take it as general advice. one would think they might say "do not insert this item into electrical outlets, lest you may have a bad day" or "do not prod humans smaller than you with this device because that would pretty much make you a dick and karma would dictate some larger human will later violate you in a like manner."

given my quandary, problems abound.

there are three garbage bags sitting NEXT to the dumpster behind my house. they're mine. i put them there. i'm fearful of placing them INTO the actual dumpster.

a man pushed me at the ATM because i wouldn't put my card into the slot. he didn't even give me time to explain. he just called me a name involving the rather troglodytic term 'moron' and cut in line.

i've urinated on the bathroom floor eight times since getting my toothbrush. i have tried explaining the reason to marty, i even showed her the instruction pamphlet, which i now carry in my wallet for quick reference, but she just grabbed it from me, crumpled it in her raised fist, threw it back at me and told me to stop pissing on her floor.

i wrecked my car after swerving to avoid going through a tunnel and then almost got hit by another car once i realized i inserted myself in my car in the first place. that close shave knocked me out of my inserting things into other things stupor.

however, the instructions for some elbow patches i just bought tell me to never think about something i'm unaware of. this may get worrisome.

oh, and happy birthday to the raised fist one.

i've realized, only recently, that i have been abducted by aliens. i'm not sure how long it has been going on, only that is has been awhile. the signs were numerous but the course of events began so rapidly and mildly i was impotent to put it all together. but, this is how they want it.

the epiphany began after waking up from a dream where i was being escorted around by someone who knocked on doors after passing through them. i was then suddenly sitting in a diner, eating alone with my father. for those of you who know my father and i, know the plausibility of this, but you see, the aliens don't. they just know that this should be a viable combination. but we're unique like that. then a waitress moved to the middle of the serving floor raised one foot and passed some very audible gas. all the patrons in the restaurant looked up from the plates or conversations to stare at her and her looking back at them standing with one foot square on the ground and the other slightly raised, bent at the toe. has flatulence woke up bella. not in the dream but in real life, which woke me.

when i went to get up to get her i could not bend my arms. it was as though the joints were soldered and hence swollen and since rusted. but the elbow joint wouldn't give. i laid there for a moment, bella crying and me looking at my arms as they were magically held in invisible plaster paris, up and away from my body. i kept working them until the hold broke and i was able to begin slowly moving them. they were ginger all that day but getting better by the next.

after this, things started becoming more apparent to me.

first, this journal, for the last several months has primarily focused on aspects of the body. while this has long been a pastime of mine, it has been a little unbalanced as of late.

next, i bought an electric toothbrush. you see, this pulsating device of insertion had unknowningly become comforting to me, because of the experiments plied to my body by the guys who welded my elbows.

then there was the startling change in my behavior where i started getting up at 6:30. yes in the morning. to say this is unprecedented would be an insult to every instructor and employer who ever talked to me alone in their office about my loose definition of punctuality. (what is punctuality, really, if we think about it, is it real or is it simply imagined, and in the big and evolutionary picture, i'm really way early, all things considered?)

there's more, but i fear if i delve much deeper into my symptoms you may actually begin to believe me but i will mention one other aspect of this all just so you know the serious nature of my situation. i am actually doing work at work.

scared yet?

ok, this one here's for all the ladies out there. i'm going to let you in on a little secret. ready. ok. here goes. there is no such thing as blue balls. never has been. you know how i know. well, a couple of reasons. first, i own a set and they've been through all kinds of trauma and abuse and they have never, ever taken on such a jaundiced hue. second, i've seen every In Search Of ever made and nimoy never tackled this mythic beast which pretty much confirms the veracity of the whole deal for me.

now we know all kinds of guys are going to come crawling out of the morass saying i'm wrong and that they've had them or their cousin had them or this guy up in canada got em once and how they were wicked terrible and ached so. it's bullshit. don't believe a word of it. it is a male-wide conspiracy to dupe women into granting favors of the flesh that they may otherwise be disinclined to provide. i mean believe me, i've been tormented, turned down, and left in quite a state by an inordinate number of ladies all over the planet and my sack has never gone through such permutations.

now here's the deal, should a guy try to work this con on you, ask them what the remedy is. when they say it is to get some relief, bust one or flush the tanks, tell them that they are probably more qualified to address the issue than yourself and they should go to the john or behind the bushes and handle their bidnez. because, you see, even if there was such an affliction no one ever said that a woman had to be the one to extract the demons. hell, i know a doctor that will give you a a prostate massage to the point of climax. send them there and see if the mere thought of a gloved hand two feet up their ass corrects their mood.

and since i believe in being thorough, let's say the above tactic doesn't take. tell the guy you'll help him out but that you are a little trepidatious given the colony of warts on your hands, the chancre sores in your mouth and the odoriferous yellow-green discharge your girlfriend said you should have checked out by a professional. if they're still game after that, run. run like hell. don't stop, don't look back. just run.

today is bella's birthday. she's two. two! i woke up this morning and i have a two year old child. you start gettin' the vibe of what older parents are talking about when they're all like "it seems just like yesterday we brought you home" or "they grow up so fast, right in front of your eyes". my response to them was always the same ... pah-leez. well, here i am wishing my eldest child happy two-year birthday and her saying "thank you. bella birthday. bella two. bella birthday'. why do i have a feeling i'll be at a high school graduation in about 12 minutes.

and for the goods, marty got her play-doh and i got her a silver ringer-bell for her bike. for those thinking what paltry gifts, last year we didn't get her anything. we actually bought ourselves presents for making in through the first year of parenthood.

it has come to my attention that when marty describes my hair to people she tells them it could be likened to that of a terrier dog, coarse and dry. she unfortunately had to reconsider this position after actually petting a terrier dog the other night and realizing that the canine's pelt was much softer than her husband's.

on sharing this with me she went on to wonder aloud if a bald man (specifically e-love) would rather be bald or be saddled with my heavy head of hair.

i cannot convey how touching it is to be the subject of such inquisitive and flattering points of rumination by, of all people, my wife and/or people who have never had the unique experience my hair has to offer.