after sharing my notions about prefacing things with the word ADULT and what exactly it implies, i didn't want to be presumptuous enough to say that you would never see the use of the word the same again but in support of that possibility i present this message i received from my friend jen last week. it read:

Just thought of you as i drove past the the brentwood community center ... they have a sign up that says "Adult Easter Egg Hunt". Seriously.

get your baskets kids, this year we're not visiting the cousins, we're looking for eggs in someplace called brentwood!!!

fin

bookguy calls it noun-challenged. to be noun-challenged is to be someone who can't remember people's proper names. between he and i, it's unclear who is more severely afflicted. as per usual, he would claim the title and i would claim he is wrong. either way, it is a fierce race.

as evidence to my condition allow me to turn to my proclivity for nicknames. i give people such monikers for three reasons; (1) to insulate them from embarrassing things i may say about them online, (2) because i can't remember their name at all, or (3) because i can't remember the version of their name (mike, michael, mikey, m-bag) they prefer or more importantly, they greatly dislike. and on that last item, i've argued many a time that mike, michael, mikey and m-bag are entirely synonymous and should be freely interchangeable.

to recap, some of the past characters, several of which you've heard of countless times ...

• bookguy
• bookpimp
• e-love
• man who screams like woman
• doctor j
• the way with words girl
• chavez
• smart ryan
• buddy james
• thin when tan girl
• the why the hell wouldn't ya guy
• the doctor of diss
• guy with mussed hair
• and of course, girl who dates guy with mussed hair

here's a few i've never shared online and use mostly when talking with walt (or rather marty) ...

THE FAKE MOMS
a group of highly augmented ladies who hang out at our pool.

NEWSPAPER DAD
a guy who sits at the park with his four young children reading the ny times and shooing his kids away anytime they near him.

HOLD MY BABY
actually bookguy-coined this gem but it is a fast staple in our home and i'm not really in a position to speak to its origin.

SMILING LADY
i see this lady all over the place and she makes the joker look morose.

BAD, DRUNK MOM
she's not just bad and she's not just drunk, she's both and therefore gets the double-bill.

YELLING MOM
the yelling mom scares me and is not too surprisingly married to ...

THE QUIET GUY
i got ten bucks that says this fella comes out soon.

sadly, i wasn't here for the original conversation or even the retelling. i heard about it third-hand from marty so the players will have to forgive any kluged details (and, should that happen, walt is to shoulder the blame).

e-love and dr. j have a dog, hattie. they also have a new baby, alison. trying to gauge his wife's commitment to their family members, e-love recently posed the following questions to her.

1. if crazed terrorist broke into the house and said you had to cut off your pinky finger or they would kill hattie, what would you do?
2. if crazed terrorist broke into the house and said you had to cut off your baby's pinky finger or strangle hattie to death with your bare hands, what would you do?

let's just say you don't want to be hattie, or any other canine for that matter, on dr. j's watch should crazed terrorist break into the home looking to grow their collection of finger-pieces.

i am starting a business. i'm going to be a Nula. to answer your next question, a Nula is a naked doula. and, if you don't know what a doula is, it is someone who helps a woman have a baby.

why does the doula have to be naked? well, simply because the woman having the baby is naked, or should be naked at least. and why should this naked woman have to be surrounded by a bunch of folks who are dressed. i strongly believe everyone in a delivery room should be naked and this is my contribution to this missive. i will show up at anyone's delivery, undress in the bathroom, walk out and say "now let's have us a baby" while rubbing my hands together excitedly. this is the service i will provide.

and lucky for me i have two friends days from having a baby. guess that do-it-yourself brazilian waxing kit isn't going to go to waste after all. only question is will jenn or tracy get to see the goods first.

e-love and dr. j are expecting their first child. congratulations e-love and dr. j.

with that out of the way, let us now move to the interesting part of the news.

e-love describes the vaginal sonogram instrument as highly phallic. i'm not sure what he or i expected from such a tool but we agree it seems like they'd try to do something to make it, well, less obviously phallic. we surmise they feel they're dealing with childbearing age adults and should be free to let such a detail slip by. e-love and i further surmise, they assume wrong.

now in the application of the sonogram, at least they use protection. i mean of course they use protection. this is america, you know, the styrofoam country. but the question is ... if you were a medical professional working with reproductive systems and had to sheath an item that was the shape, of say, a banana, what do you think you might use?

and before you answer, let me assert that these folks are on the baby birthing side of the fence and not tooting the prevention horn as much but i gotta think they're hip to the fact that a condom just might fit this tubular rod like a glove.

can we agree on this?

well, we may, but they do not. instead of getting something to fit the instrument like a glove, they instead use A GLOVE. and when does a glove not fit something like a glove you ask? when that something is shaped like a penis.

and for those who are as inquisitive as me, they use the pinky finger of the glove. and like me, that poor vaginal sonogram device just can't catch a damn break.

i like seeing things i'm not supposed to. this is not to say that you will look up one day and find me peering into your bathroom window, but it is to say that if you're showering next to me at the gym, i could later pick you out of a lineup, without ever seeing your face. i'm not sure why i'm like this but i know when it began.

i was in second grade and my after-school baby-sitter was...

at a chili-fest over the weekend it was e-love and not me that got the conversational ball rolling when he first admitted to taking leaks in the back yard when walking the dog. it was also elove who when trying to tell a story about the breath freshener binaca, accidentally said Bianca, as in the p*rn star, and as in she is what he was occupied in the night before. and then he admitted that, yes, his mom had done time but he would only specifically speak to the incident involving a peace rally and left the drug and prostitution rumors to the listener's imagination.

elove was so busy entertaining the masses i was never called in to pitch. in some ways i felt unnecessary, useless, but in others i felt proud. i felt pride at seeing a comrade not only ignore but actually combat the typical small talk that looks to overwhelm such gatherings and to thwart the mindless prattle that can dig into your chest and remove your desire to continue in the facade. for me, elove has become the guy sitting in the missile silo through the night making sure the world stays a safe and enjoyable place so i don't have to.

although, in leaving the affair it's safe to say that dr j, elove's life partner, does not share my giddiness towards e's maturation. i guess he still has the ever conciliatory Bianca.

i mentioned earlier that a new super mall opened in saint louis. while i don't usually commit cycles to mall happenings, this one had special import in that it brought an apple store to saint lou. another goodish effect of this opening is that all the other respectable malls got face lifts and new stores were introduced to the market to keep shoppers tantalized given the new player in town. our snob mall even got a tiffany's, which is great because i obviously do a lot of business at tiffany's.

our prior alpha mall got a, brace yourself, cheesecake factory. like the apple store, this is our first. so last friday night while out with elove and dr j we decided to give it a tryst. we swung by at 9pm figuring that most people would have eaten by then. i think most had but i got to make a new facial expression when the hostess looked at me and said it would be two, possibly two and a half hours for a table. so it appears you have to make a reservation and then go eat somewhere else and just about when you're ready to eat again, a table may, possibly, be available for you at the cheesecake factory.

two and a half hours?!?! it would take me two and a half hours to list the things i could achieve in two and a half hours. and it was 9pm! i don't even think they were open two and half hours from then. how pissed would you be if you sat around all that time and they would just call your name to say that the kitchen is closed and they were going home but if you put your name in they may, may possibly, be able to seat you by 4pm the following day. she didn't even laugh demonically or scoff or mock me when saying this. two and a half hours! two and a half hours my ass.