And That's The Way It Was And We Liked It!

I must be getting old because I keep getting it in my head that things made today are cheap knock offs of those from yesterday.

For instance, you can't find a steel snow shovel. All you can buy are plastic and aluminum snow shovels that fall to pieces after one winter of shovelling. An old man backed into our minivan at the bank and had to buy us a new headlight. Our original headlights on the van were all old and cloudy and looked like crap. When the shop replaced our broken headlight, I asked how much it would cost to replace the second light. The shop said $350. For a headlight. I can get a headlight replacement for my 1992 Jeep and replace it in about 5 minutes for $10. My minivan doesn't even have HID lights or anything. Just a typical headlight that functions fine but looks like crap. $350.

But I actually think it's strange that the autobody industry exists. It's an industry where thousands of businesses wait around for good, everyday people to crash their cars. They don't care if you hit a pole in a parking lot or if you slam into cars while you're running a red light. They'll just hang out waiting for misfortune to hit you and then cash in when it does. People don't seem to do much to prevent accidents. They don't even put bumpers on cars anymore. They just wait for you to crash. Have you ever asked about getting a car painted when someone's insurance ISN'T going to pay for it. Autobody shops freak out. It's just like not having health insurance. Because it's all about getting checks from insurance companies.

When I got married in 1999, we bought ourselves a DVD player for Christmas. We got an awesome discount and brought that puppy home for $200. We used that DVD player until late 2007. By then it was a noisy old clunker so I packed it up and put it in the closet. Since 2007, we have gone through at least 4 more DVD players. They seem to last about 6 months before they die. I finally got bothered to the point where I pulled the old clunker out of our closet and started using that one again because I'm positive that it will last more than 6 months.

My pants are worn out. My wallet is falling apart. My computer is barely alive. And these things don't just nickel and dime you, EVERYTHING seems to cost somewhere between $50 and $500 anymore.

If my Jazzy wasn't on the fritz I would use it to roll on Washington.

Tell Your Children Not To Walk My Way

About this time last year, my wife hung a windchime in front of our house. Within a week or so it had disappeared. Last Christmas, I bought my wife some copper-looking sun and moon lights to put in the ground along the walkway to our front door.

When I got home the other day I realized that someone had stolen all of the moon ornaments. One moon was left behind because the thief broke it as they tried to pull it out of the ground. The suns were untouched. My wife hung a new windchime in front of our house and I checked to see if it had been stolen, too. It's still hanging there.

I told my wife about the theft and before I could say it, she said, "I think some punk kid in our neighborhood is coming over every spring to steal his mom a Mother's Day present from our yard."

I said, "That's exactly what I was thinking. They didn't steal the new windchime because that's what mom got last year."

After Mother's Day, we're going to cruise around the neighborhood and see if we can find our moons in someone's yard.

You're Gonna Get Yourself Knocked Down And You Better Learn To Stand Back Up For Those That Dwell On Disaster Let Sorrow Be Their Master

I was just remembering a day from my senior year in high school. There was a girl who seemed out to get me in a romantic way. I don't know if she was nice or not. She always just asked me to give her a ride home. I don't know much about her personality. She always just wanted me to drive her home.

I did once. Usually I said no. One day I told her I would sit with her until her bus came. We just sat there in the sun, not saying much. We decided we should do something so I asked, "Do you want to fall over backwards and I'll catch you (a.k.a The Trust Game)?"

She said, "Okay."

And I hopped up and I was about to jump over the railing to get behind her but by the time my feet were under me, she was already flopping off the rail backwards. I stood there in front of her and watched her as she hit the ground, flat on her back.

She immediately started yelling at me, "YOU'RE A JERK!!!"

I said, "You weren't supposed to fall yet. You were supposed to wait until I got behind you."

Her first mistake was trusting me. Which isn't a bad thing in and of itself but I suppose the lesson of this story is that: If you're going to trust me, you need to give me half a second to get behind you.

I was just remembering that today and it made me laugh.

Gayboobs

My wife and I were watching a DVD I checked out from the library the other night.

Her: "This is the longest and WORST movie I've ever seen."

Me: "It has a lot of good actors in it: Tom Cruise, Julianne Moore, William H. Macy. Philip Seymour Hoffman... I figured it must be alright but it's gayboobs."

Her: "This movie really is gayboobs. It would have made so much more sense if the name of the movie was Gayboobs. There was a gay guy in it, there were boobs in it. But what does a Magnolia have to do with the movie. Nothing!"

We Will Win!

I know I'm probably one of the rare full-grown people in this world to be a fan of Robotech AND to have kissed a girl, but there may be others out there like me and I'm posting this for them.

The cartoon Robotech was actually three seperate japanese cartoons dubbed into english and jerry-rigged together to tell a single story. The first season was based on the japanese cartoon called "Macross."

Americans have tried to make their own sequals based on the old Macross story but they pretty much suck. Last year, for the 25th anniversary of Macross, they released a new show in Japan called Macross Frontier and it looks pretty cool with a lot of similarities to the original. You can watch an episode here. It's in japanese with english subtitles, though.


Watch macross frontier 2 in Animation  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

But I Don't Know That Guy And I'm Not Going Over There

I got home from work today and my son and a couple of his friends were playing video games. His friends looked up at me when I walked in the door and one of them said, "Uh oh. Your dad's home."

I said, "Yep. You'd better be scared. I spank every kid in the house every time I get home from work. That's my policy."

The friend said, "But I'm a GUEST!"

I said, "That means you get it first."

Yes. No. Maybe. I Don't Know. Could You Repeat The Question?

The weather has been pretty horrible lately. But here is one brightside.

My boss is a tough old grizzly bear of a man. His way of encouraging you to work harder or faster is to say things like, "Do you need me to do that for you? I would have had that done by now," and so on. It doesn't bother me because I understood his personality from the first day I worked with him. The bottom line is that you aren't really ever allowed to complain about anything to him.

So when the wind was blowing all directions and the rain came pouring down yesterday we were standing in a four foot deep trench I had dug, heating up some PVC pipe with a little blowtorch.

It was seriously like being in the shower with your clothes on. We were soaked and dripping from head to toe. I sat there smiling like I didn't even realize it had started to rain and finally he snapped and said, "I think this work will be waiting for us when we come back next time. I'm going home."

So even though the weather was bad, I got sent home early with pay. I would stand in the rain for that any day. He also told me he had got us some inside work for the next day.

Today, we were moving some equipment in at a hospital. The equipment was bigger than the door to the building. The thing was heavy but we got it in by laying it down on its side. But it involved standing in the rain and snow for over an hour. I said, "I thought you got us some INSIDE work today."

But later we did go do some work at some other businesses that was inside so he wasn't lying.

After digging trenches for a week and working in the rafters of a warehouse that had never been cleaned once in the 50 years that people have been welding there, I gave up on trying to keep my sweatshirt clean.

I heard that the word "Khaki" is an old persian word meaning "dust." And today I realized that khaki is the color that ALL clothes turn when you never wash them. I have a hypothesis that if you look at homeless people from a hundred yards away they will all have a khaki tinge to them.

Today, my boss and I pulled into a parking lot on 4th South in downtown Salt Lake and we saw some shabby guys running to a coffee shop. They wore ragged work coveralls and winter coats and hats and they were very dirty. They each carried a small guitar case and a bunch of other stuff. It looked like they were carrying everything they owned.

My boss pointed at them and asked, "Homeless?"

I said, "No. They're just musicians."

Take her arms and hold her down and hold her down and hold her down

Me: "At the last job I was working on there was this cool Dodge Charger always parked in the parking lot; bright red with racing stripes and a hood scoop and fancy brakes. At first I thought it must belong to some snooty guy but later I found it that it belongs to this girl. This really big girl. This really big girl in a sporty red leather jacket.

And then at the bank where I'm working now there is this nice Ford Mustang that parks next to me everyday. And I finally saw the girl that drives it and she's kind of this squatty little blonde girl...

And I just sort of think...

...it seems like...

...it's kind of weird..."

Then my wife realizes that her husband is about to demonstrate what an insensitive and shallow jerk he really is. She yells, "Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!" as if she can stop me from finishing.

Me: "It's weird that these mediocre girls are driving cars that are way sexier than they are."

And my wife's face is crushed like she can feel the pain those girls would be feeling if I had said that directly to them. I don't mean to sound like a jerk, but I would rather prefer a pretty girl in a crappy car. Like a flower on a withered branch. That's all. It's just an opinion.

And it probably applies the same to guys. Except I don't sit around thinking about how sexy guys may or may not be.

It's just something that's been on my mind.

It had to come out.

Don't worry. I like girls with sweet spirits, too.

Stop What Your Doin, Cuz I'm About To Ruin The Image And The Style That Your Used To

The financial world is in pretty poor standing at the moment. Banks are closing, home foreclosure and unemployment are high, but the devastating affects of this economic downturn are even farther reaching than you may have guessed. Even people who are still lucky enough to have a steady job are facing new challenges.

For instance, the mofos at the furniture store find themselves with a lot of down-time because furniture is not selling like it used to. When work slows down, horsing around increases. But you can only hog-tie your coworkers or unexpectedly jump out of boxes yelling RAH! so many times before you need to come up with a new form of entertainment.

This is how it came to pass that the mofos decided it would be a good idea to get the two goofiest goobers on our crew and convince them that they should have a dance contest, to see who was the ultimate furniture store Lord Of The Dance.

Before you watch the video of these guys, please know that as it transpired, whispers did circulate through the crowd, "Are we going to hell for this? Yes. We are totally going to hell." It is disturbing, yet you can't look away.

At first, I felt so bad for the dancers. I have talked about Bregg (yes, his name is BREGG) several times on my blog before, and his exploits are endless. ENDLESS. But I stopped telling them because they could carry their own blog and I didn't want to completely demean him. Please trust me when I tell you that the footage of him dancing is practically a compliment in comparison to the embarrassing stories that I have avoided telling.

I've never talked much about Richard. I am pretty sure that he suffers from turret's syndrome (no foolin). The more excited he is about something, the harder it is for him to concentrate and he ends up grunting a lot. He also considers himself a serious martial arts student.

It is also important to remember that the mofos do not hold anything back. These two guys have spent years being verbally abused, yelled at, called names, and talked down to. During the dancing, the people who usually tell them where to stick things are suddenly cheering them on. I think the guys enjoy being the center of attention. They definitely give it their all. And for a brief moment or two, I think they actually believe, in their minds, that they are spectacular dancers.

The next couple of days after this video was shot, they seemed to strut around with pride at work. Richard came to me today and asked, "Did you see our video on Youtube? They cut out my best parts. They didn't even show my grand finale." Richard wished the mofos had posted the full 30 minutes of dancing. It's for the better. You have been spared the part where Bregg throws off his shirt.

Anyway, here are the highlights (If you don't like cussing then turn down the sound, they aren't called the mofos for nothin):



Anyway, if business doesn't pick up from here, just imagine what else may happen.

Speaking of dancing: After my brother's wedding, they had some dancing in a beachhouse. I didn't dance, but my wife was talking about it to my sister.

My wife said, "Have you seen Emmett dance? It is so...."

My sister said, "Yes. He used to dance like Axel Rose."

My wife said, "Yeah. It's so interesting. And people form circles around him when he dances."

I said, "Yeah, but it sucks. They make a circle around you and you just sit there dancing and you're like this is all I've got, people!"