you know how those dancers, some dancers, can make their butt shake and bounce crazy fast. you know, the ones in the music videos where they turn around and hold their arms in the air, which somehow signals the cameraman to zoom onto their ass because it's about to do some magical stuff. and then it shakes like Jell-O on the train. you wouldn't know it to look at me, but i can do this, just like the girls in the video.

well, let me amend that. i can do this while face-down in bed and about to go to sleep. since i don't dance or often raise my arms over my head this is the obvious place for me to discover this talent. i'm not sure if i can do it while standing, i haven't tried it, am actually a little scared to try it, but while sprawled across the bed i look like j-lo herself.

i recently heard a commercial advertising a new product, the totally silent tampon wrapper or as they put it 'you would need bionic hearing to know this tampon was being opened.'

3 seconds after hearing this i thought ...
'oh lord, you've got to be kidding me. what next?'

42 seconds after hearing this i thought ...
'but wait a minute. is this akin to plopping in the toilet. i know some people can't drop their payload if others are in earshot and do things like hold it to the point of discomfiture or padding the water with a few squares in attempt to absorb the sound (and we all know that's only about a 50-50). is announcing to others in the room that your endometrial lining has begun sloughing from your uterine walls equally embarrassing? i can see wanting to avoid advertising that.'

2 minutes after hearing this i thought ...
'i just don't know. in some respects it seems like it would be a far more embarrassing admission but i've never gone through with it so cannot say. must begin asking women if menstruation is embarassing.'

2 hours after hearing this ...
'i wish i had something that required a totally silent thing that someone needed bionic hearing to hear me using.'

1 day after.
'i never get any cool stuff.'

scientific footnote: i have always likened the sloughing of the endometrial lining to large shards of an iceberg sliding into the water even though i know that the female version must be a much more gelatinous affair but i just can't come up with a better comparison. and, don't get me wrong, i'm thankful each and every day for not having a better something to visualize this against.

imagine a man sitting on the front porch of a house. in his hand is a plastic bottle of bubbles which he is dipping a neon green wand into before bringing it to his lips to blow a shiny-wet bubble. the man's bubbles are large and elaborate and it's easy to see he has been making such bubbles for many years.

after blowing a bubble the man would lean back in his chair and watch it slowly ro...

of the documentary-based movies i've seen recently (fog of war, super-size me) and am about to see (fahrenheit 9/11, like don't ya know) i must say that my majority feeling has been one of anger. well, and of course there's disbelief. and, i'd hate to leave out disappointment. and then you've always got good ole american apathy.

if only selfish-ass behavior was a reusable natural resource, this planet would be set for the next trillion years. assuming that the corporate or governmental agency charged with its control didn't totally screw the human race over for the benefit of the top three executives. and in considering that, go ahead and scrap the canning of selfish behavior idea because the power broker's record aint all that impressive when it comes to doing the noble and global thing.

and, don't think i'm not hip to how unoriginal this rant is. that's just how damn sad i feel about it all.

after watching the first episode i was excited.

after watching the second episode i was suspicious.

after watching the third episode i was certain.

and, after watching the fourth episode they admitted it.

the show i'm talking about is last comic standing. the trespass the show made is that the whole damn 'reality-based' competition is 100% rigged.

the show's premise has comics compete against one another to win a spot into some house in hollywood. once they are in the house i don't know what happens but with whatever happens, whoever is the last comic standing wins some tv contract or something of the like. to start out there are about a trillion of them and they are whittled down to 40 and then 20 and then 10.

in the last round of judging (to get the crop down to 10) nbc delivered 3 big names (drew carey, brett butler, anthony clark) and some super annoying woman to decide who the funniest of them were and consequently who moves forward in the competition. so the comics do their thing and then the judges do their thing and then the winners are announced. this is where it gets all sticky because the winners were, problematically, not who the celebrity panel voted on.

drew carey, brett butler and some of the comics freak out wondering what the hell happened. ultimately a producer comes down and explains that in addition to the celebrity panel there are nbc producers and executives also voting. put aside the fact that the producers and executives most likely don't know as much about comedy as the professional comics. also put aside the fact that the producers and executives votes seemed to totally nullify the professional comics votes. put aside the fact that the pros were there for nothing other than their name recognition. and putting all those things aside leaves you with a really screwed up handjob.

fact is, the network most likely knew who they wanted in the house right after the initial crop were selected. i mean this one comic received a standing ovation by the 1100 people in the forum, including the judges, yet was told to go home because he just didn't seem to have what it took. but the not-funny, yet oddly attractive sicilian woman sure did and was asked to move forward.

and i think that it was this dicked comic, dan nauterman, who put it best when he said ...

i don't want to have anything more to do with this f*cking show.

ok, so he may have said stupid show but not only would he have been completely justified to say the harsher version, he should have said the harsher version, twice, and with hand gestures and groin-grabs included.

how can someone ruin a competition involving a whole heap of comedians saying funny stuff. i mean how can you possibly mess that up?

at a social gathering last weekend, unbeknownst to me, one corner of the room spent several minutes of their life trying to figure out why i looked different.

one person said i looked thinner. another explained that was not because i lost weight but because i seemed to have not gotten my hair cut for a month and because of this it only appeared as though i was wearing a batter's helmet and therefore skinnier through the body.

another guessed that it was the clothes i was wearing and that the best they could tell i was attempting to pay some sort of homage to bill bixby from the hulk given my tattered, tight jean shorts, super baggy, mostly unbuttoned shirt and drifter necklace (bomber's words).

upon hearing of this discussion i asked one of the participants if my ensemble smacked of bixby before he became the hulk or ferigino as the hulk or bixby, post hulk after waking up in a landfill. bomber said i was definitely sportin' the post hulked out look. this was not a promising opinion in that i certainly wasn't trying to look like a person who had recently turned into a wild, green, oversized mutant and tore to shreds every last thing on his body.

i'm thinking we may need invest in one of those mirrors that hang on the back of the door.

ok. so we have two of those already. maybe i just need to have my wife ok my outfits before leaving the house.

i'm not happy that it's come to this.

so yesterday's post showed alex in one of his calmer moments with the corn. the below image gives a more accurate sense of what that meal really looked like.

if you think he looks quite possessed, consider this ... i never took the below picture. it was just on the flash card when i uploaded the images.

while playing outside at the neighbors house, bella ran up to me and said she had to go pee. "so go pee" i told her. she promptly whipped down her pants, squatted and proceeded to urinate in the grass pretty much right where she was standing when she asked the question.

some of you may think that the odd part of this story is that i not only encourage but actually instruct my child to drop trow and whiz in someone else's lawn, but it is not. nor is it in the detail that one of the boys playing with us, a four year old, ran up behind bella, laid down on the ground desperately trying to see the pee come out. i'm watching this little guy watching my daughter and thought, man this kid is a freakshow.

ten minutes later freakshow-boy announces his own need to urinate. his mom, like me, told him to go ahead and go. so he pulled the bottom of his shirt up to his neck, pinching it under his chin. he then pushed his pants and underwear down to his ankles and jutted his groin out in front of him as if he were trying to form the letter C for some seseme street skit. now for those of you out there certain this nearly naked pose is the weird part of my story, slow down. the weird part is not his body's pose, but what he did with his hands during the stance ... using both hands, he made a diamond shape around his penis/genitals, framing them while he peed. as i'm taking this whole vision in, i spied bella squatting a few feet from him studying the heck out of this dude's urination technique. i considered yelling at her to leave the freak alone while he peed but was myself too transfixed for such petty administration. so we both, father and daughter, watched the 4 year old from next door empty his bladder into the front yard of his home.

in closing, i can't even tell you how much i'm looking forward to my next work day where i can casually stroll to the bathroom, cram my polo shirt up under my chin, lower my pants and boxers to my ankles, jut my doughy paunch forward, letter-C-style, and aim for the urinal which will be an impressive four feet away. the only real question left will be if others in the bathroom will lay on the ground (ala freakshow) or simply squat (ala bella) to observe, what i'm sure they will all agree is, a mesmerizing vision to behold.

excerpt from t.h. white's the once and future king

after watching sleeping beauty for the first time, the following conversation took place between bella and marty in front of grandma nat ...

BELLA
lay down on the bed mom and i will put a prick in you.

MARTY
excuse me.

BELLA
i said, lay down on the bed and i will put a prick in you.

MARTY
and, that would be what i thought you said.