Make Mine Estrogen

My wife recently wrote about how she was surprised that she couldn't get me out of the girly stores we visited.

There were several reasons for this, but the most time consuming reason was because I discovered a whole section of Anne Taintor stuff. It was cracking me up.

Here are a few examples:

However Far Away

I have a hard time with rap music when it seems like their ultimate goal is to take a cool song and make it worse. Like this:



Or this one, where the song they start out with isn't even that great:



Songs like these make it seem like torture when we listen to rap at work. However, I respect guys like this, who seem more original, give credit to other song writers and seem to have some actual talent:



I also think the auto-harmonizer microphone should be completely banned from music. That is all.

To be fair, here is a P.O.S. original:

Once Every Hundred Thousand Years Or So When The Sun Doth Shine And The Moon Doth Glow And The Grass Doth Grow

The only reason I look forward to the end of summer is that it means that I can stop mowing the lawn. I'm usually so busy that I only get around to it every other weekend but I must admit it looks a million times better right after it's been cut.

But it's good because when I mow the lawn I also pick up any garbage that's blown into our yard and pick up pine cones and put bikes away and pick a few weeds. It's weird because I'm very concerned by which pattern I will choose to use each time. Will I mow in lines parallel to the street? Perpendicular to the street? The ever impressive diagonal? And whichever pattern I choose, I am very careful to keep up the same pattern in the backyard just in case someone looks down at our house from a traffic or military helicopter. It's important for the yards to match.

We have a lot of fruit trees which are a pain and a blessing. We have tasty plums, pears, grapes, peaches and cherries but most of them end up on the ground. It makes a disgusting mess if you try to rake up mushy fruit. I usually just plow through the fruit, leaving fruit guts all over the mower and a nice fruity smell in the air.

So I think it makes a big difference in the appearance of our house but I never weedwack or edge the lawn. Because people who do that have some sort of nuerological disorder. Or at least that's the excuse I use to avoid doing the work.

So if you are planning to visit you should do it today or tomorrow. Otherwise, you will need to wait two weeks.

Reality Television

About a week ago, my wife and I were watching a documentary on ABC about this guy in North Carolina who may have stabbed his wife to death. After the incident, he packed up and moved near his family in Sandy, Utah and will not respond to police requests to answer any questions or take a polygraph test. He was also engaged to be married to another girl here in Utah but, after seeing his split personality, she ran for her life.

The whole show was pretty creepy and makes you worry that the case was never investigated to a satisfying end. It's worse that the guy lives in our city.

One of the guys that I work with was a teacher for nearly ten years and he knows many of the people in our profession. When I showed up to work on Monday he was asking me, "Did you see that crime show on TV last weekend about one of our guys (he's in our labor union)?"

I didn't know what he was talking about so I said, "No." But then he retold the story of what had happened in that documentary and asked me if I had gone to school with the suspected killer. He said that he and his wife had watched the show and it bothered them. He told his wife that the guy would probably be at the union Labor Day picnic.

His wife said, "No way. If they did a report on you like that on television would you show your face in public?"

But a couple days later, my coworker and his wife went to the picnic and, sure enough, the suspected killer was there. He recognized the guy I work with and said, "Hey! How's it going!" and shook his hand. It was funny to hear my coworker describe how his wife yelled at him, "I can't believe it! You just shook hands with a MURDERER! How could you do that?"

Later in the day I called my wife to tell her that the guy in the creepy TV murder mystery was in my trade and likely to be a coworker in the near future. She was stunned. I told her, "I actually look forward to meeting the guy so I can treat him like crap and mess with him."

My wife said, "Do you really think it's a good idea to provoke a murderer?"

I said, "The guy is a coward. He spent years of his life convincing this girl that he loves her and that he would do anything for her and that she was the most important thing to him... and then when she wasn't expecting it, he stabbed her. Do you know how easy it would be for you or me to kill the other one? I doubt this guy is quite so brave when faced with someone his own size who doesn't like him. He got away with murder once. It won't happen twice and he has nowhere left to run. He's already living with his parents."

I know there is a minority of guys out there who wish they had the guts to stab their wives who are saying, "Dude, you don't KNOW for a fact that he did it." But there aren't any other suspects and he won't cooperate with police and that's enough reason to treat him like a jerk. So he may not be in jail but it doesn't mean there won't be consequences.

There is also a channel that shows re-runs of the show "SuperNanny." I was flipping through channels one day when my wife pointed out the show and said, "This episode is about a boy that grew up in my neighborhood."

We watched it for a little while and I said, "That would be really embarrassing to be on SuperNanny. Not only do they point out what a horrible parent you are, they also break down your marraige and show you what a jerk you are."

Can you imagine if people from your childhood came up to you and said, "Bro! What's up? I saw you on SuperNanny! Dude... you really need to step up and help your wife around the house. You're a FATHER! Act like it. Welp... see you at the reunion in 10 years."

Moving on a scene surreal. No, my heart will never, never be far from here.

I've told you stories on my blog of times when I've suffered. The most prominent stories probably regarded the years and years that I spent working in an office, in a cubicle, in Hell, for a popular web company. They are a good business and I made good money there, but I suffered for it. It was a desperate inner-struggle everyday I had drive myself there and stare at the computer and be quiet with dark hounds with glowing red eyes and droopy jowls watching over my shoulder.

At the time, I considered the movie "Office Space" to be one of the funniest movies of all time. I still do. But what you laugh at most during that movie is the misery and absurdity these people endure just to bring home a paycheck. I would watch that movie and laugh. But it also hurt me inside. It hit too close to home. When I stopped laughing my face would distort.

I would complain to my wife, "It's so true. The suffering is real. It shouldn't be allowed. It's crazy that everyone knows how horrible it is but nobody stops it. I don't know if I can go to work tomorrow. Or ever again."

And my wife would try to calm me down and tell me not to think about it. She would try to convince me that my job was not so horrible as it actually was. More importantly, she would threaten me with the movie, Office Space, "You are not allowed to watch this movie anymore."

And anytime I would try to watch, she would try to stop me. "You're not allowed!" Because she didn't want me to get into that work funk.

That was years ago and I haven't seen her react that way to any other movie until recently.

I checked out the DVD of "Into The Wild" from our local library. If you don't know, the movie is based on a true story of a young man who finds no value in typical american culture or lifestyle. He's a nice kid from a relatively affluent family but he leaves everything behind and sets off to see the world on his own terms. He makes some friends and works on the plains for a little while. He canoes down the Colorado River down into Mexico. He makes friends in the desert and on the redwood coast of northern California. But his life ambition is to live in the wilds of Alaska.

We were probably less than 20 minutes into the movie before my wife turned to me and said "DONT. GET. ANY. IDEAS."

I hadn't said anything. I made no gesture. My wife is scared to death of the movie "Into The Wild" and sees it as the primary threat to her marraige. If the name comes up in conversation, she repeats, "Don't get any ideas."

I guess it's flattering that she sees me as that type of person. And the thought seemed to occur to her before it occured to me. And while I agree that I would make an amazing and outstanding drifter, I don't believe that a dust-in-the-wind philosophy is in my future.

Maybe my mother cured me of it before it became a problem. She fed my craving for the outdoors. It's even possible she created it. That kid grew up in a stifling city and went to stifling schools to the point where he felt like he needed to run away just to breathe. Myself, I grew up on the redwood coast and the Colorado/Green River. I'm sure I've gone places that few will ever go. I've met good people. I've been a part of beautiful things. I don't need to stare at a frozen tundra to discover the secrets of the universe.

So I feel like I have things in common with this person in the movie but I don't feel like I need to be him. And to be honest, living in the city is not my cup of tea. I tell my wife that I need a chance to miss people so I don't get into fist fights when people cut me off in traffic. I do feel like I need trees and mountains and rivers and oceans in my life.

Living in the city makes me feel like the main character from the movie "Gran Torino." And I shudder to think of the similarities I feel between myself and the grumpy old man. I guess it comes back to intolerance for this society. It does bother me to see so many people who make a living by standing around and BS-ing all day. It bothers me to see the attitudes of punk kids around our neighborhood. It bothers me to see grown men who don't seem to be capable of working because they only want to play video games all day long. And television is worse than real life. My son was quoting "Family Guy" the other day ("giggety-giggety"), which I'm sure is popular around school, and it made me want to tear someone's head off. And then I had to be a jerk and tell him that "giggety-giggety" isn't a "bad word" but that it is a part of "Family Guy" which represents everything that is wrong with entertainment.

It's okay if YOU like family guy, and I don't need to hear about it, but it offends me that such retarded crap is the epitome of comedy right now and that our kids are learning that such empty-headed, boring crap is GOOD.

There are so many better things to do with my life

Everybody's Got Nice Stuff But Me

My wife and I took this picture in a nice neighborhood up on the east bench of Sandy. Do-it-yourself projects like this crack me up (which is not to say that I have never been guilty of any of these special projects myself).




I thought about sending the pic to thereifixedit.com but I figure they probably have enough mailbox pictures. I also think it is funny how you can forget that you were going to fix something and become completely blind to an obvious problem. In your mind, nobody notices.