PSA: A Fate Worse Than Death

Hello there. I'm here today to deliver a very important message. Countless people each year and their loved ones suffer from a terrible affliction. According to science, every single person on Earth either suffers from, or has at least one direct relation to someone suffering from this condition. However due to a troubling lack of awareness, many are not even aware that this condition exists. Sadly, many people will go their entire lives unaware that they are suffering from this insidious blight, never understanding how their problem is destroying those around them. I am here to tell you that in these dark times, there is still hope.

The condition I am describing is of course, Uncontrollable Compulsive Plastic Bag Hoarding Disorder or U.C.P.B.H.D.

U.C.P.B.H.D. is a condition afflicting 82% of women and 15% of men worldwide in which the afflicted individual suffers from an unstoppable need to save every single plastic shopping bag that enters their home and stuff them into spare cabinets.

Doctors recognize several subsets of the condition which often go hand in hand with U.C.P.B.H.D. involving the hoarding of other similarly unnecessary items. Many distraught loved ones of sufferers have found themselves buried under a haphazard avalanche of saved birthday and Christmas gift bags, tissue paper and department store clothing boxes. Others lament their fate while wading elbow deep through a heap of cleaned out and saved cool whip, cottage cheese or 'kind of fancy' plastic take out containers, most without the accompanying lid, all saved for an undefined and largely unnecessary reason.

U.C.P.B.H.D. is a silent killer, it destroys the lives of those unfortunate enough to cross it's path. Due to under-reporting, exact figures are difficult to pinpoint, but it is believed that roughly 40 million drawers in the United States alone are rendered useless due to plastic shopping bag crowding. The number of lives destroyed is beyond count.

It is up to you, the trail of broken and shattered homes left in the wake of this terrible, terrible condition can only be ended by raising awareness. Help is out there, it just takes the courage of loved ones to open the discussion about the realities of U.C.P.B.H.D.

If you suspect you or someone you love may be suffering from U.C.P.B.H.D., I urge you to ask yourself the following questions:

How many drawers are there in my kitchen? How many of them are devoted entirely to plastic grocery store bags?

Are there more containers in the cabinets which are the cleaned out containers that some other thing came in than actual tupperware?

Is there a closet in my home that I do not open under any circumstance because that's 'the wrapping paper closet' and the last time I went in there it took twenty minutes to stuff everything back in place?

Do you have a 'crammin' spoon' in your kitchen? (A sturdy wooden spoon used to jam down plastic bags so drawers will shut properly.

If you answered yes to any of these questions it is possible that you or your loved one is suffering from U.C.P.B.H.D. This can be a serious condition for some, and often may require professional intervention.

If you think you may be living with an individual suffering from U.C.P.B.H.D. but you are still not sure or not sure of the severity of the issue, here are a carefully designed series of questions that you may ask in order to gauge the extent of the problem.

1. Do you really feel you need to save ALL of these (plastic bags/Tupperware/gift bags)?
2. Why do you feel the need to save all of these (plastic bags/Tupperware/gift bags)?
3. What do you use these (plastic bags/Tupperware/gift bags) for?
4. How many of these items do you think you have saved total?
5. What percent of that amount do you think you have ever or will ever use?
6. How many cabinets and closets in the house to you think have been rendered unusable because they are stuffed full of shopping bags?
7. Are you aware that we already have bags in the house which we purchased and keep specifically for trash and things?
8. Are you aware that we already own a significant amount of nice Tupperware which is regularly sized and stack-able for neat, organized storage as opposed to having to throw things into the cupboard and slam the door as fast as possible so it doesn't all come out?
9. Are you aware that they sell wrapping paper and bags at a number of different stores for relatively little money, and that these items can be purchased as needed for gifts?

See how your loved one responds to these questions. Did they react reasonably? Did they react with Anger? Complete Denial?

The road to healing may be long and filled with strife. Many have been suffering for years with U.C.P.B.H.D. and will find the transition to a normal, healthy, hoarding-free lifestyle difficult. They will need your love and support during the coming hardships, but remember, you are not alone. Resources are available to ease the burden of a recovering bag hoarder and their families. Do not be afraid to seek help.

This has been a public service announcement. I hope that it will help you or someone you care about deal with the horrors of Uncontrollable Compulsive Plastic Bag Hoarding Disorder. Please, if anything you have seen here reminds you of someone you know. Share it with them. Encourage them to seek help. You may just save a life.

   Paid for by the Foundation for Husbands Who Wish Every Drawer in Their House Wasn't Full of Goddamn Shopping Bags.

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People Who Take Their Dog to See Santa Are A-holes.

There are many Holiday traditions that I simply don't understand. One such tradition is taking your dogs to go have their picture taken with Santa Claus.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not against Mall Santas or anything like that. When you are a kid, going to the mall to see the ACTUAL Santa Claus and tell him what you want for Christmas is a completely awesome experience. (I of course am the exception as I distinctly remember being pant-crappingly terrified of going anywhere near Mall Santa as a child. Apparently my general dislike of strangers even included Father Christmas himself).

I love the Idea of taking kids to see Santa when they are young. It's an experience parents can treasure, it creates a memorable moment for the kid, and its all around a good bonding experience for everyone involved.

You know who gives exactly zero fucks about Santa Claus though? Your dog.

Our furry family pets have no concept of Christmas, Santa, or generally anything besides wanting to eat food, nap and lick their own butthole. In fact,  in my experience they are downright against the idea of being taken to a strange place to be plopped on a chair with a large, scary bearded stranger, and then screeched at by their owners and yet another stranger with a camera trying to get them to look in the right direction.

The entire ordeal seems generally confusing and upsetting for them. The exercise of taking the dog to see Santa is clearly entirely for the benefit of the owner without consideration for how dog feels about it.

In fact, here is a short list of things I've comprised that you can do for your dog that they will appreciate more than being taken to see Santa:

• Give them a dog treat
• Take them for a nice walk
• Throw a ball or a stick with them for a while
• Literally just do nothing and leave them alone to do whatever it is they are already doing
• Take them for a ride in the car (to a place where they aren't going to be manhandled by a festive stranger)
• Give them a nice belly rub

Further, here is a list of things you can do with your dog that they may not appreciate necessarily, but will cause them less displeasure and confusion than being trundled off for a strange and uncomfortable holiday experience.

• Read a complete Shakespeare play to them start to finish
• Register them to be a wedding officiant on a shady internet site
• Show them a series of artistic photographs of Cantaloupes
• Make them a fake ID
• Pretend you are a character on Cheers and shout "Norm!" at them every time they enter a room before returning to whatever you were doing.

When it comes down to it, I just don't get the appeal of dragging a creature who has no concept of Christmas to take a picture with Santa Claus, an experience which is clearly not enjoyable for them, purely for the sake of my own gratification.

Or at least that's what I thought about it before this:

My wife decided she wanted to take the dogs to see Santa. I articulately and clearly explained why I disagreed with the practice. I then packed the car up with two dogs and a pair of Christmas hats at 8.am on a Sunday because as it turns out I do not get a vote and therefore can shove it.

Now, I still believe all of the things I said above are true, but goddamn if watching that man in his fake beard struggle to hold my two dogs still long enough for the photographer to snap a picture as they flailed their little asses off trying to get away from him was not the best thing I've ever seen.

They hated it. They hated Santa from the top of his red hat to the tips of his pleather faux-boot shoe covers. They hated the stupid Christmas hats we put on them and they hated the noise of everyone trying to coax them to look at the camera. They are pretty well trained dogs, we constantly get compliments in public abut how well behaved they are but they were simply not having one bit of Santa.

Now, while my dogs hated this, I on the other hand could barely stand I was laughing so hard while trying to convince the photographer to take the picture when Olive  was a blur of kicking feet and Griff was halfway off the chair making a break for it while Santa desperately held on to his back legs.

In the desperate confusion of writhing dogs and flopping elastic-bound Christmas hats the photographer actually managed to snap the above picture in the .5 seconds the two of them were holding still and looking in the same direction. Personally I'd have much preferred this years Christmas card to be a picture of them being maniacs, but you can't win 'em all.

If you take your dog to see Santa Claus you, like me, are totally an A-hole. You know what though? I'm alright with that because someday those  four-legged little mongrels aren't going to be around anymore and you'll always have a hilarious memory and a potentially epic photo to remember them by.

Happy Holidays, A-holes.

Halloween Costumes

Halloween is easily my favorite holiday. There is candy, you get to dress up in whatever kind of outfit your heart desires and hardly anybody ever gets murdered by razor-blades in their Milky Way.

For someone like myself, who spends a large portion of the time upset over the fact that superpowers and interstellar travel via fancy space ships aren't real, Halloween is about as close as I'm able to get to living in a sci-fi world. Hell I'll even take a good zombie apocalypse over another week of going to work and paying bills.

The point is Halloween is awesome and my favorite, even though my wife isn't nearly as into it as I am. On the bright side, being that she doesn't care so much, she agreed to let me pick our costumes this year.

I'm not gonna sugar coat it. I spent an unnatural amount of time thinking about Halloween Costumes. I probably sat in bed and searched costumes every night before I went to sleep for a month before settling on what I wanted to do.

The thing that got me stuck for so long was this: Even though she had agreed to let me pick the costumes I've got to at least respect the fact that shes not as into Halloween as I am a little. It's all well and good for me to dress myself in a spandex Deadpool bodysuit or go as a Borg or a Dalek or something, but whatever I pick has to at least be something she recognizes and isn't so bizarre that she refuses to wear it.

So I thought long and hard about what would be a great costume, not too outrageous, and would satisfy my desire to live out my whimsical and childlike desires to dress up like cool stuff from movies.

After much consideration, I found the answer to my costume conundrum in the form of a question. What was that question?

"Who you gonna call?"  

We were gonna be the goddamn Ghosbusters for Halloween.

It was the perfect balance between nerdy and not too ridiculous that I knew it was what I wanted us to be.

The jumpsuits and stuff I could buy, and I wanted to try and make a pair of proton packs to go with the costumes.

Luckily, the internet is full of other nerds who want to make proton packs as well, so I was able to find a sweet set of schematics to follow on a site called http://www.gbfans.com/. 

I didn't think to take pictures during the process of building these things, though I really should have as it would have been great to show. I do have one picture that I took after I had cut/glued, sculpted and sawed my way through a good chunk of the building process and made the bases of the packs.

Here they are after they were put together and received their first coat of spray paint:

It took me about a month to complete both packs as well as get all the other odds and ends we needed for the costumes. In fact, I was putting finishing touches on at like 6:00pm the night of a Halloween party we were supposed to be at in an hour.

Here are the finished packs:

Emily ironed the patches onto the jumpsuits for the costumes and helped me attach the backpack frames to the pack. All in all I think the costumes came out pretty freakin' good. I had to put aside the obsessive need to make everything 100% movie accurate for the sake of time, keeping the cost of materials reasonable, and keeping everything fairly light weight. A small part of me screams inside that the guns aren't perfect and I had to use various hazard stickers I found at Lowe's instead of buying movie ones online, but I'll get over it.

Our costumes went over great, we had a bunch of folks take pictures with us, and I'm generally pleased with how everything turned out. I may be completely useless when it comes to things like fixing sink drains, remembering to make doctors appointments or responding to important mail but I'll be damned if I didn't make the crap out of some proton packs.

I've got a whole year to bask in the awesomeness in these costumes before I have to start worrying. Next year, I agreed to let her pick the costumes, and I swear to the baby Jesus I'm gonna purposefully contract polio if I have to go as something egregious like raggedy Anne and Andy.

Happy Halloween, folks.

Star Wars

As you probably already know if you've read A Night at the Movies, my wife is not really into films or most of the general nerd stuff that I love. Recently, I was reminded of something I posted on Facebook years ago when we were apparently watching one of the original Star Wars films.

It occurred to me that it would be interesting to revisit her familiarity with one of the most beloved film franchises in all of nerd culture after all this time. Since we originally had that conversation we have grown to be each others closest companions, gotten engaged, married, and shared a life together. We have lived together and gone through the experience of moving to a new home, away from our old friends where we are each others primary lifeline in a new town. After all of that time shared together I wondered if she had absorbed any greater familiarity with Star Wars.

She had not.

I interviewed her on the plot of the original films. The following is Star Wars, as described by my wife:

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M: Okay, so walk me through the story. Start at the beginning.

E: So it opens up in a desert and its Luke Skywalker and the robots and his Aunt and Uncle cause his Dad died. And his Mom died, I guess.

M: What are the robots names?

E: R2-D2 and C3-PO

M: Okay, what happens?

E: He finds out he has the Force and he gets upset and runs away.

M: How does he find out he has the Force?

E: He can move things with his mind.

M: So he's just going along and he accidentally moves things with his mind and finds out he has the Force?

E: Yeah.

E: So he gets upset and runs away and runs into Yoda.

M: Why is he so upset?

E: His aunt and uncle kept things from him and he's upset because he doesnt understand the Force.

M Okay where are they while all this is happening?

E: Vulcan.

M: Alright, so he's on Vulcan with his Aunt and Uncle and the robots, and finds out he has the Force and runs away, and finds Yoda?

E: Yeah

M: Okay, so he finds Yoda and then what?

E: Yoda sees he needs guidance so he goes with Luke and the robots. They go to the bar.

They meet Han Solo and Chewy, and they see that blubber guy.

E: They say "Something is up" and they see Princess Leia in her sleazy outfit and they don't like it.

M: And they know shes a Princess?

E: Yeah I think Han Solo recognizes her. 

M: Okay.

E: Yeah they get her, and go on Han Solo's ship

M: Whats Han Solo's ship called?

E: ..... What's the President's plane called?

M: Air Force One?

E: Yeah That.

M: So Han Solo, Chewy, the robots, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Yoda are all Air Force One and escaped the booger guy, what do they do now?

E: They just go to space and eventually end up on a jungle planet and Yoda helps Luke learn the force. 

E: I think Luke wants to kill Darth Vader because he thinks Darth Vader killed his dad and he needs to learn the Force to fight Darth Vader.

M: So it's all because Luke wants to fight Darth Vader for killing his dad?

E: Yea.  Probably his mom too.

M: So they're on the planet and Yoda trains Luke so he can fight Darth Vader, for killing his dad-

E: And his mom.

M: And his mom.

M: So what happens next. 

E: So they go to the Death Star and they fight. There is a big room with a bridge and Luke and Darth Vader fight with their light sabers and Darth Vader is falling and says:  "Luke I'm your Father."

M:  As hes falling?

E: Yea.

E: And that's the End.

E: Oh and there are storm troopers too.

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Idiot Tantrum RSS

The Night of 1000 Dog Farts: Part 1

We have two dogs in our household. Olive is almost two years old, and we've had her since she was a puppy.

She is incredibly smart. In fact, she is rather too smart for her own good. Her intellect borders on that of an evil genius for a dog. She also has a particular food allergy to poultry so she has to be on a special fish based dog chow. That might seem like a random and superfluous detail, but it will be important later.  

Once Olive was out of the worst of her puppy phase we decided it would good for us to get a second dog.Eventually that led us to our second dog Griff. Griff is a good boy, but Griff is very stupid. He is also not in this story so I don't know why I'm even mentioning him.

Prior to officially finding a permanent second dog of our own we had been doing some fostering. It was important to Emily, and I liked reaping the benefits of having a second dog (mainly that Olive had a playmate to burn off her excess energy with so that she wasn't such a terror) without the financial responsibility of owning them ourselves. We searched around to find a foster program that we liked and started taking in dogs while they were waiting to find a home.

One of the first dogs we took in was named Riley.

Riley, like Olive was a shepherd mixed with something small. She was about 30lbs to Olive's 40 and pretty close in size. Riley also happened to share another particularly troublesome characteristic with Olive. A very high intellect for a dog.

In addition to the other traits I have already described, both Riley and Olive shared one other characteristic. An insatiable, manic drive to obtain and consume every edible substance known to dog-kind.

I could start an entire website dedicated to stories about the times Olive has broken out of or into places and devoured an entire cake- I won't as every story would end with "Then she ate the entire cake and looked like a bowling ball with feet" which would get boring after the first or second time.

Due to the fact that we had two evil geniuses in the house, hell bent at all costs to obtain and devour anything the could possibly lay their furry little mitts on, we had to take a series of security measures to prevent them from escaping whenever we left the house.

Olive is typically kept in the living room downstairs whenever we leave the house. She has a couch near the window in there that she likes to lay on. We barricade the two doorways into that room with baby gates (We started with one and now have four due to continued escape endeavors).

The baby gate dog jail is typically enough to contain Olive. Riley, we kept in the den inside a large dog crate. Due to the combination of an uncanny and diabolical ability to  escape from this crate, and Emily's paranoia about dogs breaking their neck trying to squeeze out of cages with these types of doors we latched it and had to resort to putting a combination lock on the door just to try and keep her in there.

Emily's job is one where she will work a 14 hour day, but only works about three days a week. On days when she is at work, I am typically left to my own devices from the time I get out of work until she arrives home that night.

On one such occasion during Riley's stay with us I went to the gym in the late afternoon, securing both dogs in their designated areas before leaving. I went to the gym, worked out, and came home. All in all I was probably out of the house for two hours.

Upon returning I was greeted by two things: The first was Riley, happily coming to see me at the door.

This confused me, as Riley was not supposed to be greeting me at the door-Riley was supposed to be padlocked inside a crate in the other room. 

The second thing was the sight of our house transformed into a desolate wasteland of dog poo. 

Imagine a barren expanse of endless depressing landscape as far as the eye can see. Nothing but bombed out buildings and ruin in all directions. Imagine that you are standing at the center of this hellscape as the crumbling remains of society decay around you, leaving you to question if it would not be better if you had never existed at all, so that you would never have had to suffer the misery of the sight before your very eyes.

Now imagine that, plus everything is covered in dog shits. 

There were no fewer than eight full sized dog poos and urine puddles scattered throughout the first two floors of the house. I truly and honestly do not understand how a single 30lb dog crapped that much, that many times in such a short period of time.

I went into the den to see if I had forgotten to properly secure Riley in the crate, and on my life I swear to you that when I went in there and looked, the door to the crate was still closed and latched and the padlock was still on there. 

That dog somehow got out of a closed, latched and padlocked crate without opening the door. To this day I frankly just don't know how she did it. I can only presume that she has the ability to teleport.

I went into the kitchen next and discovered the source of all the pooing. Riley had gotten onto the counter, pulled down her bag of chow along with Olives special fish food and apparently proceeded to undertake a continuous chain of eating and crapping for the entirety of the time I was out of the house.

I picked up the chow and went to let Olive out of captivity from the other room. I put them both outside so that they wouldn't be in the way while I cleaned up the mess, and because I didn't trust that Riley was finished evacuating the foods she had eaten.

It took me a solid 45 minutes to locate and clean up all of the messes scattered throughout both the downstairs and upstairs of the house. What struck me the entire time was that instead of the messes becoming sloppy or Riley having thrown anything up she seriously appeared to have eaten, processed and crapped out a weeks worth of food over the course of two hours. 

Science may never unravel the mysteries of that dog's digestive system.

Little did I know at this point that the nightmare was just beginning.... 

A Night at the Movies (or: Why My Wife Will Probably Develop A Drinking Problem)

One of the things upon which my wife and I do not see eye to eye is going to the movies. 

One thing I will establish is that my wife is not big on movies in the first place. 

"What?!" you might ask "What kind of person doesn't like movies? Is she a serial killer? Did she suffer some sort of movie related emotional trauma as a child? Was her sense of fun surgically removed?"

To answer your oddly detailed series of questions in order:

1. I don't believe so, but if I disappear mysteriously, start asking questions,

2. Not that I am aware of

3. Maybe.

She has a hard time sitting through movies as she either feels like we've wasted two hours of our day not doing anything productive, or she gets put to sleep.

Trying to get her to actually go out to a movie theater is even worse. I think the idea of wasting three or four hours of her day not doing something constructive combined with the idea that we're paying money to do it makes her want to  bang her head into a wall.

Also I think watching me shovel pretzel nuggets into my face like a pig makes her a little sad.

There are a few reasons that this makes things hard on us sometimes. Firstly, I love movies. Watching movies and specifically going out to the theater has always been one of my favorite activities. I end up not seeing more than one or two movies a year because either she flat out refuses to go, or I feel guilty dragging her along somewhere she has no interest in going.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, pretzel nuggets may in fact be the single greatest nugget shaped food of all time. I LOVE pretzel nuggets more than a grown man reasonably has the right to. If it was possible for a man to enter into a polygamous marriage with one woman and one bite sized cheese dipped bread product I would join that cult, re-marry my wife, and take pretzel nuggets as my second life partner. If you have never had pretzel nuggets, go to literally any movie right this second, get some pretzel nuggets, eat them and then come back and finish reading this blog. I'll wait.

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Done? Good. If you are a decent human being you've now just had a life altering experience and are filled with an overwhelming sense of euphoria.

If you didn't like the pretzel nuggets you are a child molesting carnival of tortoise excrement that probably thinks Hitler "made some good points". You disgust me.

Anyway. You can see how my love of movies and pretzel nuggets clashes with her general disinterest in movies and dislike of me eating things that will slowly kill me.

However, once in a while there will come a time when the stars align in such away that something miraculous happens. For one reason or anther my wife will be willing to go out to the movies. Maybe there is something out that she is interested in, or maybe she is just throwing me a bone by going with me so I shut up for a few months.

This was one of those times, but we were in a further crisis. We each wanted to see a different movie. Because I am a sane and reasonable person I wanted to see Jurassic World. She, being a girl and clearly not understanding that there was a movie currently playing that featured Dinosaurs, wanted to see Pitch Perfect 2.

Now look. I've got nothing against Pitch Perfect 2. I more or less enjoyed the first one, and I'll happily watch anything with Anna Kendrick in it, but I can almost guarantee that unless there is a MAJOR plot twist, there will not even be one dinosaur in Pitch Perfect 2.

We seem to have reached an impasse here. I want to go to the movies and for once she is willing to go with me. But she wants to see Pitch Perfect 2 and while I'd normally not mind going to something that she had more of an interest in... dinosaurs.

Like all great disputes in our relationship. This would have to be settled by fate. Time to flip a quarter.

The rules are simple. Whenever we can't agree on what to do or have an important decision to make like if we should go home and cook dinner or buy Salad Works, we flip the quarter. One and done, fate decides and we live with the consequences. Two out of three is for little bitches.

So we flip our coin. Heads is Jurassic World, Tails is Pitch Perfect 2. C'mooon fate...

F#@k.

Whelp It looks like we'll be going to see Pitch Perfect 2. Fair is fair, we let fate decide, and I lost. I am a man of honor and I will respect the sanctity of the coin flip.

But if you think I'm going to do so quietly, you are very wrong. So very, deliciously wrong. I'll see Pitch Perfect 2. But I'll do so under protest.

So let's see. How can I go to this singing lady movie whilst still making a statement that the addition of Dinosaurs to literally any situation would make it instantly more awesome. 

I head to Target because when I need to buy something for an elaborate and foolish prank I always head to Target. They never let me down and this time was no different. Lets see what we've got:

Naturally. Jurassic Park logo fake vintage looking t-shirt. That is practically a given. What other Dino stuff you got for me Target?

Foamy T-rex head lookin' hand puppet thing? Check. I can hardly imagine going to the movies without this. How else would I hold my drink if it got too cold for my hand? What would I use to make loud 'OM NOM NOM' noises while rooting around in my popcorn? This is a good start, but so far I'm just a guy with a t-shirt and a puppet and I'm pretty sure that's how you get on To Catch a Predator. We can do better.

Small inaccurately painted plastic dinosaur figure? Yep. Now I have something to hold in my other hand while I watch the movie. Along with my dino-fist hand I've practically added enough Dinosaurs to make Pitch Perfect 2 just as good as seeing the real Jurassic Park. Almost done but something is still missing... I really need an accessory to tie the whole thing together, but what?

Safari hat. Nailed it. It'll be like I literally stepped off the screen of Jurassic World and wandered into the nearest adjacent theater which just happened to be a movie about singing ladies.

Whelp now I'll be ready for our date to the movies and my wife can add another thing to her future divorce case against me/topics of discussion in therapy. 

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   UPDATE

I wrote this piece whilst still in the planning phases of operation: Make a fool of yourself at the movies. 

Specifically. I wrote this in the couple of days between buying all of the dino-swag and when we were supposed to go to the movies. Best laid plans, as they say. I purchased all of the stuff without accounting for my wife's ability to lose enthusiasm for going to the movies.

We ended up not going to the movies when we had planned to, and in fact, it took so long before guilt at depriving me of a movie trip after promising me one overwhelmed her, that not only was Pitch Perfect 2 no longer in theaters, Jurassic World was nearly finished it's run by the time we actually went.

Her procrastination worked out in my favor really, as it took her so long to agree to go that we ended up getting to see Jurassic World anyway. Point, me.

I did however find myself in a dilemma. I had already done all the leg work and spent money on this idiotic gag, but the fact that we were going to end up seeing my movie anyway kind of ruins the joke. I had to ask myself very seriously what course of action to take at this juncture? Do I admit defeat and accept that timing has rendered the punchline to my joke obsolete? Do I shrug and forever let my plan have been the fond memory of an unfunny and humiliating thing I almost did once just for the sake of annoying my wife?

Nope.

I wore that Jurassic Park t-shirt, Safari hat and t-rex hand puppet and carried that little green inaccurately painted dino-toy like a champion. 

While the original joke may have been ruined in that I didn't get to sit in a theater full of enthusiastic acaplla fans in full dino-gear, I did get to go to a movie dressed up in a crappily slapped together outfit one might expect to see from someone standing in line for a midnight release a full month after the movie opened been out.

Since, as stated the movie had nearly completed its theatrical run, there was almost nobody besides us there. In the end it may only have been funny for me, but isn't that what the point was all along really? Plus to be annoying to Emily and that, I assure you, went off without a hitch.

Notice her resolutely ignoring me as I loudly hummed the Jurassic Park theme song at the side of her head with the puppet. 

If you look closely though, you can see her planning my murder.

How I Ended Up With a Box of Pulled Pork and an Avocado

I had the opportunity to perform a random act of kindness towards a stranger at the grocery store today.

I did not perform said act of kindness.

To start, I like to think that I'm a good person. I possess what I would consider to be the qualities of a good person; I'm generally friendly, I try to do things which are helpful to others, I've never lit an orphanage on fire, I go to the upstairs bathroom to poo so that my wife does not have to pay for my sins... I could continue but I think you get the idea. I am, for the most part not a complete iguana scrotum of a human being.  

Nice as I like to think I am, and as much as I would like to pride myself on being the type of person who would do an unsolicited charitable thing for a stranger, I am also cripplingly uncomfortable with even the most casual social interaction with strangers. 

This has been the case for as long as I can remember. In fact my father takes particular glee in recounting tales of how I would glare murderously at any adult that would attempt to interact with me when I was as young as two years old. Don't believe me? This is my second grade school photo.

Yeah.

I specifically remember that the photographer was overly cheery and made way too much of an effort to be my pal and get me to smile. This, naturally, made me so uncomfortable that I resorted to staring unhappily at her until she gave up and just took the picture.

Now, realistically, I don't think I was ever legitimately an angry hateful little bastard. I mostly just remember being shy and uncomfortable, but lacking a developed sense of socially acceptable behavior to mask it.

As I've grown older, I don't particularly feel like I've become any less uncomfortable around other people, but I've definitely developed the ability to generate the appropriate facial expressions, inflection of voice, and general level of pleasantness not to make people think I'm some sort of sociopath. Retreating behind a stone faced deadpan might fly when you are six but it certainly doesn't when you are a grown ass man.  

Now, I am not sure if this ability to interact socially is something that comes naturally to most people, but it typically requires a herculean amount of mental effort for me to accomplish. I am usually left feeling like a trauma victim for several days after any major amount of socializing with people I don't know all that well. It's not that I dislike socialization, it just takes a lot of energy out of me and I need to recharge afterwards.

I detail all of this general social discomfort because I believe it sets the stage for understanding the following story:

On the particular day this occurred, I ran into the grocery store next to our gym after my workout in order to pick up a gallon of milk Emily had asked me to bring home. This grocery store is one of those ones where they shave costs by doing things like putting coin slots on carts to make sure  people restock them, don't offer any type of bags for the groceries they sell and sell meat and produce that is of questionable quality at best. It is however cheap, so as long as we avoid the iffy stuff it's great for getting the basics.

Though the level of detail I've gotten into about our grocery habits is probably superfluous, the fact that this is one of those "cost saving" stores does relate to the story.

I enter the store, grab my gallon of milk and head over to the register to check out.

There is a woman ahead of me at the checkout when I set my gallon of milk down on the conveyor thing. She is far enough along in the process of her transaction that all of her items have been scanned and she is working on the pin pad.

The conversation underway as I arrive goes something like this:

Cashier: "Is that a credit card? We can't accept credit here, only debit or cash."

Woman: "Oh, yeah I think it is, it might be a combo credit/debit though..."

Cashier: "Ok. As long as you've got a pin number it should work."

*woman swipes card, and fusses with pin pad for a few seconds, discovering that it's not going to work*

Cashier: "Ok, well you can try to call the number on the card and set up your pin if you don't know it. That sometimes works..."

Apparently as a method of keeping costs down, this store does not accept credit to avoid the processing fees associated with them. This woman apparently only had a credit card on her as a means of attempting to make her purchase.

 As the interaction between the cashier and the woman ahead of me takes place, I am undergoing a silent battle within myself; It only looks like the woman has a couple of items, her entire transaction is probably under fifteen bucks. I could just offer to pay for the groceries along with my milk and do a good deed for this person. I am conflicted however.

 Firstly, the cart is partially blocked from my view so I can't be entirely sure that there are not sixty-eight cans of soup, an entire turkey and a gold Rolex in that cart that I just cant see.

If I make a move and the contents of this cart turn out to be more expensive than I am prepared to pay, I'm now forced to either rescind my offer like a total doucher or blow my own weekly grocery budget on this lady and her unreasonable amount of soup.

Additionally and more prominently, I am highly paranoid that if I say something, I'll end up looking awkwardly eager to buy her groceries for her. This, I am convinced, will for some reason cause everyone in the store to think I am a giant creepy sex pervert/murder rapist who chooses his victims based on buying them foodstuffs.

I honestly don't know if this is a fear that other people experience, but the number of times that I haven't done something nice for a stranger because I'm truly afraid they will think I'm using whatever the situation may be as my opener before trying to lure them into my windowless bang-van is a little out of control.

I live in constant fear of saying, doing, or just generally existing in such a way that leads people to think I am some sort of molester.

As this woman struggles to successfully complete her transaction I am crippled by indecision, social awkwardness, and the paralyzing fear of strangers thinking I am a creep. I am a prisoner inside my own body. I want to be helpful but I cannot force myself to move or speak, no matter how hard I try to will myself into action. 

Before I can internally spur myself to action the woman gives up on making her purchase, apologizes to the cashier for wasting her time and turns to leave the store.

I move up with my gallon of milk and am able to get a good look at the now abandoned contents of the woman's cart. It isn't very much at all. The shame of my inability to act gentlemanly combined with the fact that the woman was now no longer standing there inspires me to make a desperate attempt to rectify the situation.

I quickly tell the cashier to just ring up my milk with the rest of that lady's stuff before she clears the transaction saying that I'd run out and see if I could catch her and give it to her. 

I pay for my milk and the items in the cart along with one of those plastic bags they'll sell you for fifteen cents if you forgot to bring your own ahead of time before running out of the store to the parking lot after the woman.

It was too late. By the time I made it out, there was no sign of her. It then occurred to me that even if there had been, I'm not entirely sure I could have identified her anyway. I had been so consumed with my own thoughts and trying to see what was in the cart while she had been standing there, I hadn't really taken note of what she looked like or was wearing.

I do a mental recap to see if I can recall her appearance from my subconscious.

My subconscious is a dick, and is unhelpful as usual. 

Defeated, I returned to my car with my gallon of milk and unwanted groceries and went home.

And that is how I ended up with two limes, an avocado, some rice, and a box of frozen, microwavable pulled pork.  

Autocorrect makes me Harpy

Sometimes autocorrect is super embarrassing, like when you text your mother something about whores when you were just trying to tell you how long you had left at work before you'd be coming over to help move a dresser.

Sometimes it happens to someone else, in which case it's always hilarious.

My wife had the misfortune of having autocorrect sabotage her request for dinner.

Now I'm sure what she meant to say was that she wanted me to make her a scramble of eggs and vegetables in a wrap. Her iphone, it it's infinite wisdom decided that she wanted eggs and vegetables on a raft.

I refuse to let it be said that I am a husband incapable of following instructions to the letter.

I responded accordingly.

It should be noted that my lettuce raft construction turned out to be sub par. The S.S. Egg Scramble started taking on water shortly after this image was taken.

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Inspirational Texts

My wife got a rough nights sleep last night and was on her way out the door for a 14 hour shift at the vet clinic where she works. 

Tired, slightly ill and feeling generally bleak about the work day to come, she asked me:

"Can you text me throughout the day to help me get through it?"

Why yes I can dear. I decided that in order to keep her spirits up and her sense of motivation and vigor at maximum levels I should send her some inspirational quotes throughout the day.

Lets begin:

Starting strong. When life gives you lemons is a classic, can't go wrong there. And throwing in a reference to some sort of weird hesperidium fetish really gives it a nice finish.

As you can see, she is clearly not as enthralled as she should be by the uplifting messages with which I am attempting to enrapture her. Her attempts to carry out a normal conversation with me must mean that she is insufficiently inspired. (Apparently we're doing alliteration today, just let it happen.)

Really feel like I was taking it to the next level with this one. I was all like, "Snap! Work some scathing social commentary in there by taking a cheap shot at some low hanging fruit, yeah!"

Actually I should admit, I'm so out of touch with popular culture that I first typed "look at the people from the Jersey Shore". I went back and changed when I realized that none of those people have been relevant since 2012 though.

BAM! Worked another one in there. Someone break out the industrial sized tub of ointment for all of these burns! 

Still texting me normal stuff? This is getting out of hand. I have basically been pelting a steady stream of concentrated rainbows and awesomeness at her phone all day. She should pretty much be so motivated and inspired at this point that, that last text should not have read "Last appointment here. I'm ready for bed."

It should have read:

"Last appointment here. I'm ready to strap on a jetpack and fly through the air whilst shooting two guns simultaneously only one gun is actually a flamethrower that shoots democracy and the other on is a bald eagle and I fly my jetpack to the top of a mountain comprised of all my hopes and dreams and I plant a flag at the top of that mountain with my face on it and shout "F*@k YEAH, I AM THE GREATEST!"

Not to be discouraged, I've got at least one more inspirational quote for her before she gets home. 

Mission accomplished. I mean, it's no jetpack bald eagle flamethrower, but I'll take it.

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The Laptop Charger

I learned a lesson the other day; Sometimes following my innate man-instincts to rig something together with nothing but tape and stubbornness is actually a perfectly viable solution. Here's how I learned that lesson:

I'm fairly certain Griff wants to be a bomb disposal dog when he grows up. This is the only logical conclusion I am able to come to based on his obsession with biting through wires.

(On a side note, I would watch the hell out of an Air Bud/Hurt Locker mashup sequel where Air Bud goes to Afghanistan and diffuses bombs like a total badass). 

His first victim was my gaming headset, and at some indeterminate time he nibbled his adorably deviant way through the cord to Emily's Chromebook.

We don't know when he did it, but if we're being honest, it was probably on my watch. This is why we have dogs and not children; if Griff chews the laptop cord I can replace it, but if my baby sticks a fork in a light socket or something I go to jail.

I went out to Target after work the day after the chewed cord had been discovered in order to pick up a universal charger as a replacement. It would seem that our Target carries only one type of universal charger. The creatively named "Targus Laptop Charger" seen here:

Now, I've got a bone to pick with the good people in the package design department over at Targus. Their package proudly states that this charger "INCLUDES 6 CONNECTOR TIPS". What they have neglected to provide you, the customer with is any sort of indication as to what size any of those tips are. Not only is the package sealed in such a way that you cannot look at the tips hidden away in there, but nowhere on the front, back, top, bottom or sides of this thing does it give any information about these six connector tips. 

Presumably they are all different sizes to fit a variety of laptops, but for all I can tell from the way it's been packaged, this thing it could just be a grab bag where some minimum wage factory worker closes their eyes, grabs a handful of connectors out of a bin and chucks them in there at random. If that guy was having a bad day there could just be six identical connectors in there with a note that says "Go F@#k yourself".

Now obviously that's preposterous, there are of course going to be six different connectors, (Also the idea that a factory worker is throwing random connectors in is absurd. They'd obviously have outsourced that job to a robot years ago.) but I've got no way of knowing if any of them are a match for my wife's laptop. 

This thing costs sixty bucks and it's pretty much a total crap shoot as to if it works or not. C'mon Targus, get your shit together.

So there is like a 50/50 shot that this thing isn't going to work, but it's the only one they've got and like hell I'm going to walk out of this Target and have to drive five minutes to the Best Buy right down the road.

I get home with my begrudgingly purchased laptop charger only to discover that none of the six connector tips are even close to the correct size for my wife's laptop. I'm sure, somehow this is my own fault but I feel much better about my failures blaming them on a faceless laptop peripherals manufacturer that cant defend themselves from my snippy internet whining. So yeah, up yours Targus Laptop Charger.

At this point, the laptop is at like 9% battery and Emily needs it for work stuff. Time is short, plus its 8:30 at night and I'm not driving back out so that more companies can lie to me about the universality of their laptop chargers.

I decide it's time to handle this like a man. A man with little to no understanding of electronics or wiring but abundant access to electrical tape and a pair of scissors. 

Sometimes I have what we'll refer to as 'Man Episodes'. These occur primarily when I get the idea into my head that I'm going to fix or build something. A man episode can start any time without warning whenever there is something my brain deems 'manly' that needs doing.

Once the Man Episode has begun, I go completely silent. I suppose my brain assumes that to achieve maximum machismo I am required to be stoic and silent. I'll just get up and begin gathering all of the supplies I think I'll need. I then begin laying them out very precisely in my designated work area like I'm some kind of safe cracker or jewel thief as opposed to an idiot laying out his kitchen table with the same supplies second graders use to make arts and crafts. 

This happens frequently enough that as soon as I begin my supply gathering ritual, my wife understands that I'm off in my own world and pretty much just leaves me to my devices. I presume she is judging me in silence and reflecting on the direction of her life which led her to be married to such a disappointment.

Upon entering into a full fledged Man Episode fugue sate over this laptop cord and completing the gathering of supplies ritual I sit down and begin to work. I am always very serious about the fixin' I am doing during these Man Episodes; my brain invents some version of the task that is way more complicated and cool than whatever it actually is. As I sit there with my little spread of tools and this busted laptop charger the scene in my head looks something like this:

Meanwhile, outside of the delusional badass wire surgeon fantasy I've concocted for myself, the way the situation actually looks is more accurately represented by this: 

I may have taken some artistic liberty with the sparkles, but they just felt right.

I cut away the chewed up bits of the wire and stripped the plastic sheath from the now cleanly cut ends. I found a few different bundles of wires within the outermost casing and using my finely honed skills of knowing what colors are the same color as each other I matched up the individual wires, wrapped them together and taped them up with electrical tape.

When all the individual wires were connected to each other I taped the whole thing up in a wad and admired my handy-work.

Despite looking like it had been smacked together by a chimp in a unitard, when I plugged it in, it worked perfectly.

I am a god.

It has been several weeks since this happened, and I still feel like a total badass every time I look at the cord to my wife's laptop. The life lesson here I think is something like: Though usually rigging something together in a haphazard and likely unsafe manner is a terrible, terrible idea, sometimes it works out and you get to strut around basking in your own glory.

Also, enjoy those small victories in life. When I look at that shittily taped together laptop cord, I feel like I am riding on a t-rex whilst wearing a monocle and fake moustache like some sort of dinosaur riding Cowboy/dapper gentleman. Also the t-rex has a monocle and moustache too.

This is what gets me through the day. 

---

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