Whoa! He Says What We're All Thinking

There's a guy at work who is a typical Utah Republican. I think I got him bothered the other day when we were talking about voting. Utah was voting on whether or not to have state-funded vouchers for kids that attend private school. For some reason, he was all excited about these vouchers even though he has no school aged kids. I told him that those vouchers only help upper-middle class families as poor families are still too poor to afford private school, as are most people with even moderate incomes. I don't think that he appreciated me playing the devil's advocate.

The other day we were sitting on break and there was a loud noise like thunder and the ground shook. He stared into the construction zone and said, "What the hell was that?"

And in a voice somewhere between John Wayne and Forrest Gump, I said, "It sounded like a Tyrannosaurus Rex to me."

The guy stared at me with penetrating eyes. Then he said, "Dude. Someone seriously needs to kick your ass."

I said, "Yeah. That's what people have been saying my whole life... but no one ever does it so I don't feel bad. I blame all of you for letting me act this way."

But that surprised the crew, "YOU have never had your ass kicked? Ever?"

And I don't know how they meant it. Like you of all people should have had his ass kicked by now? Or How is it possible for you to get drunk so many times and hit on other people's girlfriends and win every barroom brawl... that's not possible is it?

Anyway. I just think that it's funny. Yes. We know what the problem is. Now what are we going to do about it?

The Land of the Free? Whoever Told You That is Your Enemy

Sometimes I think it's better that all I do is work. Otherwise I could be these kids:



I sit around wondering how long before the day comes when police taser me. My sister-in-law was telling me how her little brother got tasered by police about a month ago. Seven Times. Including a deliberate shot to his testicles. Because he's a criminal? She said he was at a party and the cops broke it up. He wasn't happy about it and was scowling at the police so they wanted to teach him a lesson. He's an adult but not old enough to drink. The cops threatened to give him a breath-a-lizer test. He told them that he had had one beer and that it would be a waste of time. Next thing you know, Taser-time!

Some of my wife's brother's friends were also there and they said that doesn't sound too bad considering what happened to our friend Jonny. He was driving along with his 20 yr old wife and their infant strapped in the backseat when the police pulled him over. He was annoyed because he felt he had been following all of the traffic laws but he didn't get a chance to say anything. Before they knew what was happening, the car was surrounded by cops and machine gun barrels were in their faces. Including the baby. Despite the attack dog, Jonny cooperated until he and his wife were lying facedown on the pavement with their hands cuffed behind their backs, then he got upset because the cops were still pointing machine guns at the baby in the backseat. I guess it probably looked like one of those suicide-bomber terrorist babies or something.

In the end it turned out to be a misunderstanding. You see, a Honda Prelude had been reported stolen and the thief had apparently switched plates with Jonny's Prelude. And even though the stolen car was several years newer... and a different color, Jonny understood how it is far more important for all of our Honda Preludes to be accounted for than it is not to have machine guns pointed in your babies face. Jonny sent the police flowers and asked them if they would like to rough him up a little more, just for kicks.

I know it makes me feel safer to see undercover cops waving machine guns in the faces of teenagers when I try to drop my kids off at the school where my wife works. That's how you know America rules. Cause we don't really wait for crimes to be committed. We just have our police harass normal people until they try to defend themselves, WHICH IS AGAINST THE LAW. And then we move in with some mostly non-lethal (only 69 accidental killings by police with tasers in 2005!) remedies.

In school they teach you that you don't get punished until AFTER you have been CONVICTED of a crime. You know... with a trial and everything. And if our new Attorney General doesn't think that waterboarding to be torture then why would anyone think that having your genitals electrocuted was actually a punishment. Think of it more as being dragged to the princiPAL's office by your ear. Even as someone who is only SUSPECTED of committing a crime.

You probably have it coming. Because we are probably ALL criminals just like we are ALL sinners. I saw on CNN a little bit ago, how "APPLE" and "AT&T" had concerns about "Hackers" and iPhones. Apparently, some people who went out and bought iPhones adjusted the software on those phones THAT THEY BOUGHT to allow them to use a different phone service, rather than AT&T. And that is all it takes to make you a "Hacker." A monster. A free-thinking anarchist. And to strike back at all those big-butt butt-faces who dared to adjust their software, Apple has planned to make knew software upgrades that won't work if you have modified your iPhone away from what Apple intended. Take that, loyal-customers who don't want to use AT&T!

Because freedom isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Sometimes we don't even need the IDEA of having a choice:

(This is where I meant to insert a picture I took at the gas station the other day where the 85 octane was "out of service" and the 87 octane was "out of service" but the 91 was ready to go! It was going to be a very forceful image but I can't get the stupid picture off my stupid cellphone. It's all Benjamin Franklin's fault.)

If you haven't had your own run in with the cops lately, please see what your missing. Bad boys, bad boys, watcha gonna do...

15 isn't so innocent an age as it used to be:

Hellfire Club

It seems like a lot of the people I end up spending my time with are grumpy and cuss and shout a lot. I usually just let them get it out of their system but sometimes it almost seems like they are redirecting their life's anger at me.

For this reason, I have decided to devise an incongruous scapegoat to effectively "pass the buck" in nearly any situation.

I have all but completely settled on Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin. Because logic can so easily be traced back to him:

His discovery of electricity has done many great things for mankind but think of all the bad it has done in your personal life:

Did your alarm clock inexplicably NOT go off this morning? That situation would never have occurred if not for Franklin.

Did your computer lose that file before you could Save it? Damn you, Franklin!

Do you hate vegetarians who still eat fish?
Does the whole Daylight Savings thing bug you?

Benjamin! H! Franklin!

A penny saved is a penny discontinued.

Franklin has officially been filed among all my favorite fricatives.

Non-consensual Tickling II

I found out that my blog gets A LOT of traffic from people who are searching for "nonconsensual tickling." I almost feel like I owe these people something, so I've been trying to think of a follow up post.

I told my wife about this and she can't fathom the appeal of this fetish. Mostly because she really, really, really hates to be tickled. She says, "What I want to know is: What tickling has ever been consensual? Have you ever seen anyone going around to their friends asking Would you tickle me please? Could you tickle me? People don't do that. Therefore, ALL TICKLING is NONconsensual tickling."

But I set out to find an entertaining tickling video and it turns out that they are all pretty boring. I DID find this video that suggests that living things actually DO crave being tickled:



When my wife finished watching this video she curtly said, "That man has wasted his life." And then she walked away. I think the bottom line is still that people enjoy seeing other people without their clothes on. I guess there is also a Lite-Version-of-S&M appeal to the tickling thing.

And it turns out that all of the people in the tickling videos I saw weren't very surprised that they were about to be tickled and they start smiling and laughing before they are even touched. How is that Nonconsensual?

But I'm probably missing the point because I also don't understand why people like dirty socks or wearing adult diapers for recreation. The fetishes we have in our household are pretty boring too:

Wearing ragged clothing
Eating foods from the frozen food section
Chronic fatigue
Pretending like it's all normal

These things don't get us aroused but we still seem to do them habitually.

This video is still cooler than all the tickling stuff:

Help With Bulimia

It's estimated that between 1% and 4% of women will suffer from Bulimia during their lifetime.

In other news, I was in the shower this morning and the water was having a hard time draining from the tub.

What I'm getting at is: If there is a high number of people out there inducing themselves to vomit on a regular basis they may as well pull the big hair plug out of the bathtub drain while they're at it.

Thank you.

She'll show you a good time Then she'll show you the door

Halloween is an awesome holiday. We've got little kids and we live in a neighborhood of old fogies so we figured we'd better make an effort to set the standard on decorating.

We are usually poor and usually short on time so our decorations aren't the best but we wanted to give it our best shot. We put some leaves and a cheap wreath on the door and some pumpkins and spiderwebs on the stoop. We've also got a bunch of ghosts and pumpkin lights around but they aren't in the picture. And of course, we're still rocking the pirate flag.

I've got the hookup on paint being as my wife is from a family of painters. I painted our front door with some really expensive paint that I got for free. During the summer we were painting for a lady who was only fixing up her house for the purpose of selling it.

It seemed that her biggest priority was to have a black door. It must be dark. It's an East Coast thing. IT'S VERY EAST COAST! It was important to have an East Coast door or the house would never sell or something. I don't know. I don't understand.

My door is kind of a blackish, brownish, purplish, greenish door. It's good paint. But something tells me that nobody on the East Coast gives a crap.

Happy Halloween!

I'm not playing the role, just being who I am and if you try and dis' me I couldn't give a damn

I started my new job a couple of weeks ago and we've been working a lot. That's why I've hardly done any blogging. I'm going to avoid talking about the profession as much as I can but I'll still talk a little about work.

One cool thing about the job is that the company hires welders to follow our crew around and we can just point at anything and say "Weld this." And they'll do it. One morning we showed up for work and the welder asked "Do you have anything you want me to weld?" and one of the bosses-of-me put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Yes. I want you to weld HIS lips to MY penis."

(That's right. The new job is just like the job with the mofos. It just pays more.)

To which I added, "You're going to need a lot of filler rod." Because welding jokes are cool.

Another thing about the new job is hardhats. Suddenly, I own hardhats in various colors. One day I was swinging around in the high pipes of a smelly yogurt factory and my hardhat almost fell off. I thought, "Wouldn't that be super-ironic to get hit on the head by a falling hardhat?"

Now I wear a hardhat all day and when I leave that job my hair is totally screwed up with hardhat-head. But I figure that it's probably a punk kind of look so I don't fix it. Hathead is less trendy than mohawks right now.

Yeah, I mostly work with rough dudes but there are a couple of girls. I heard a rumor that there is a company policy of one girl for every seven men but the reality appears to be about one girl to every fifty guys.

There is a woman on my crew named Judy. She's about the same age as my mother. I think it's strange that Judy does this work. One day we were installing a giant stainless steel cabinet but it needed to be cleaned first. It was laying outside in the dirt and Judy asked me if I could hold the doors open so they wouldn't fall down and crush her while she vacuumed the inside of the big box.

I asked her why she chose this profession. She said she thought it would make her rich. She said, "The money IS good but these men still don't treat me as equals. It bothers me. I've got more experience than a lot of them do but they send me outside to clean."

I said, "Yeah, I see that a lot. Men always seem to end up treating girls like maids and secretaries."

Judy said, "It's not right."

I said, "I know. But I'm amazed to see any girls in this profession at all. So that's one cool thing. You put your mind to it and you accomplished it. Even though the odds were against you."

It didn't seem to be very reassuring to her. And Judy and the oldest man on the crew got laid off yesterday. They found other work for the rest of us.

The only other girl in the big factory is a welder. She is intriguing. She's young and thin and blond, I think. She doesn't shower in the morning. She doesn't wear make up. She wears boys clothes. And yet you look at her and you think, "Hey, she's not bad." I think that's what is so intriguing. Her cheeks have a glow that you can only attain by welding for 60 hours a week. Tufts of hair stick out from under her bandana. But it's captivating in a Robotech-sort-of-way when she gives her head a vigorous nod to drop her welding mask in front of her face from its perch on top of her head and then fires up a torch too bright to look at. She drops the F-bomb a lot and her normal speaking voice seems to be a yell, but that's true of just about everyone in the factory.

I told my wife I had a plan to completely ignore the girl and I did for the first two weeks. My wife asked, "Why would you do that?" I said, "Because I've got nothing to offer her. I figured it would be nicest not to send mixed signals."

My wife said, "But you're a nice guy. You're friendly. You can be friendly to her."

I said, "Yeah. I had a strange feeling about vowing to completely ignore her because the last time I did that to a girl I ended up marrying her."

But one day she had all her welding crap in the way and one of the bosses-of-me told me to move it. So I asked her if and where I could move it. She said, "Don't worry about it. I'll move it for you." But there was a lot of crap to move so I started rolling up cords and hoses for her. I asked her what her name was. Shannon. I told her my name is Emmett even though it's printed across the front of my hardhat so the bosses know who to yell at.

Shannon said, "I'm not supposed to talk to anyone. Well, my crew is allowed to talk but I'M not allowed to talk to people.... because I'm a girl."

I said, "You are?"

She said, "Yes! I know. It's getting hard to tell anymore, huh? But they tell me I'm not allowed to talk or I'll get in trouble but I'm always in trouble so I do anyway."

I said, "That sucks. They're punishing you just for being who you are."

She said, "I know."

I said, "What kind of a world are we living in?"

She said, "A man's world. Especially this place (referring to the factory)."

I said, "Yep. Get used to it." But I don't think she needed to be told because she's already trying her hardest to look like a boy. She's just short. And stands with her legs together. And when she walks it makes a fast clomp, clomp, clomp sound instead of the shuffle sound guys make when they walk.

There is a big guy with a beard on Shannon's crew who has the girliest voice I've ever heard. It phases me every time I hear him talk. MAN, he has got a girly voice. And one day I was working and I heard a SOMEWHAT girly voice behind me and I thought, "That wasn't TOO girly. Maybe his voice isn't quite as girly as I thought." But then I turned around and it wasn't the guy with the girly voice talking. It was Shannon.

Anyway. My heart goes out to those hardworking girls who can't get an even break. You're a corker Shannon.

I'm Just an Average Joe with an Average Job

Lastnight we had a meeting at work with the mofos. Three crews of mofos shuffled into the room and quietly took their seats. They can't stay quiet for long though. One of the mofos, aptly called Bubblehead, decided to get on somebody's case just cause he could.

He yelled a derogatory comment to Morgan. But there are two black guys on our crew who are both named Morgan. So Morgan said, "Are you talking to me or to the other Morgan?"

Bubblehead said, "To you. Why would yell at the other Morgan? He's never done anything to me."

Morgan said, "What did I do to you?"

Bubblehead said, "You parked in my parking space."

Morgan said, "Since when do we have assigned parking spots? I didn't see anyone's name on it."

I chimed in, "But didn't you see the 'handicapped' sign, Morgan?"

And a strange thing happened. ALL the mofos applauded. They applauded and shouted approval.

Bubblehead admitted defeat. He turned around in his chair with his fist pointed at me. He said, "That was pretty good, man."

I gave him a fist-pound. But I didn't apologize.

What would we do, baby, without us?

Last year my wife bought some sheets and comforters for our kids by mail order. Ever since then we receive a lot of family-oriented catalogs in the mail in which we simply are not interested.

When my wife thumbs through the catalogs she finds it highly entertaining that many of these magazines seem to support a strange and (as far as we know) non-existent family value where families like to buy matching pajamas for the entire family:


Who are these people? What really goes on in their homes?

"If you're REALLY an ANDERSON you will march your butt upstairs and get your stripy jammies on NOW, Little Lady! THEN you will come back down and have some cocoa! WE'RE GONNA HAVE FUN FOR ONCE! As a family!"

"Hey, what's everybody doing in their stripes? I thought tonight was snowmen? Oh crap! Does this mean today was THURSDAY?"

"Family Meeting! Family Meeting! The pajama thing is off tonight. Dad's top is still in the dirty clothes hamper. It's just not the same when WE'RE all dressed up and HE just throws on a white t-shirt. Sorry. Maybe tomorrow."

I don't know. People who spend their time dreaming up scenarios like matching family jammies to convince themselves it will be a fulfilling experience really worry me. It seems like overcompensating in all the wrong places; places too much importance on sleepwear.

"How can Billy be gay? Didn't we do everything right when he was a kid? Didn't we buy him all those Baby Einstein videos? Didn't we do that thing with the pajamas? I just don't see where we went wrong?"



Don't worry about the rapscallion in the red there, I'm sure she'll be sent to one of those camps for bad teens if she doesn't straighten up her act soon.

I can't tell you how to make a family work but I can tell you that matching PJ's are not the answer.

Here's a funny topic that my daughter constantly brings up to my wife:

O: "Mommy, we're all Indians in this family. This is an Indian family."
Eleanor: "Really?"
O: "But YOU'RE NOT INDIAN. But that's okay. You can still be in our family."
Eleanor: "Thanks a lot."

Yeah, she's not Indian. She slipped in under the family Affirmative Action policy. But she's okay. We'll keep her. Provided she can adhere to our family clothing themes.

Sha-la-la-la

Take It On The Other Side

A little while ago I was watching that old 80's movie "Flash Gordon" with my kids. I thought it was funny AND disturbing that my daughter became more fascinated with the princess daughter of the evil Ming The Merciless who is very well defined as the slut of the movie even more than she cared about the main characters of the film.

When the slut wasn't in the scene, my daughter would constantly ask, "Where is that other girl? What's that other girl doing? Why don't they show her?"

And if I had to venture a guess as to what the slut was doing when she wasn't on camera, I would guess she must be... shopping for fabulous outfits?

I believe that this was actually the next scene with the slut after my daughter requested her presence:



If you ask most guys, there are likely to tell you that it is a no-brainer that slutty girls are vastly more interesting than conservative girls. It's a fast and easy answer but I don't think it's true. I think a girl needs to be MORE than just skanky to be interesting and fun to be around.

If the show "Elimidate" has taught us anything (which it probably hasn't), it's that the slutty girl rarely wins in the end.



So there is more to the evil princess than revealing clothing. In fact, if it wasn't for her than Flash Gordon would have been dead within the first 20 minutes of the movie. Thanks to her insatiable appettite for blonde meatheads, he saved every one of us!

I don't know what to tell my daughter about the evil princess. She's actually one of the good guys in the end.

The roof has a hole in it and everything is ruined by the rain

For the past three days we have been re-roofing my wife's parent's house. It's kind of hot and tedious but we've tried to make it as fun as possible without nailing ourselves to the plywood.

It makes me imagine the dawn of humanity when the very first people got together to take a vote. The elders said, "We are here to choose between a land of flat, level surfaces or this second option that we simply call, Slanty-World."

And even the Cro-magnons voted for the land of flat surfaces. I think it was a wise choice on the part of our ancestors because it would be really annoying to always be in a world of slants. For one thing, your tape measurer would constantly be rolling away. And it wouldn't be worth diving for. You'd just have to watch it roll and bounce down the slanty surface until it ultimately bounces into the wisteria vines, over and over again. That would be so annoying.

And when the wind picked up while we were laying some tar-paper I made up a new super hero (based on my brother-in-law): Eric, The Human Paper-Weight. Which also led to the creation of another super hero: Crabman/Paper-Weight Hybrid, which is pretty much just a Human Paper-Weight who occassionally crawls around like a crab and occassionally lifts his pinchers up over his head and claps them open and closed like that Zoidberg guy on Futurama.

An aluminum vent came flying at my head on a big gust of wind and I had to catch it like a frisbee. That was an exciting moment.

Now I bet you all wish you could come over and help us roof. But you can't. Sorry. It's only for off-the-wall super heroes.

Come On, Add It Up

My wife is always worried about our son not having any close friends. I told her I made my first best-friend when I was in second grade. She said it was the same for her. Now our son is in second grade and he doesn't seem to be hitting it off with anyone yet. We even tell him we'll buy him prizes if he makes an effort to be extra friendly to people (Just meaning he says 'hello' more and holds the door open for people and stuff).

He complains a lot about school being so boring, which we all know is true. And I tell him that that is why it's important to make some friends. I tell him that anytime you ever have to do anything in life that you don't enjoy, it's better to have a friend or someone to talk to around. I tell him that's my method of getting through working so much, because I certainly don't enjoy that.

But yesterday I walked him to school. I like to wait for him to enter the building before I leave but I told him, "You don't have to stand here with me. You can go play."

But he stood by me. And after a few minutes I started to recognize all the same kid faces from last year. And I noticed the only game that anyone plays here is the "kick and slap" game. There was one kid standing by himself against the wall near the door. I said, "Why don't you go stand by Skyler. He looks lonely." So Ethan did. He went and stood right next to him and waited patiently. Skyler was still lost in space and he stayed that way until the teacher came to collect them. I told my wife about that later and she told me that she has gone through the same thing a few times and that Skyler ALWAYS snubs Ethan.

Another kid eventually came and said hello to him but then he immediately got in a slap fight with a giant girl on the other side of Ethan. I looked around for anyone who I thought might be worth playing with and found nobody. Ethan didn't look sad but he stood there looking around like anyone who is forced to wait for something they don't want. I thought to myself, "What would I do in his situation?" And quickly realized, I would do exactly what he was doing.

It made me feel bad for him. If you want to find an upside, maybe this isolation-in-a-crowd will give him that good kind of cynical-salty-sea-dog personality and make him more of an individual inside. He just stood there that whole time, like he was doing his duty and I'm proud of him for it. At the last minute when they were filing inside he turned and waved to me.

After school, I went to the office to give them some lunch money. I took Ethan outside and asked him to show me where he had recess. They have to run to the opposite corner of the school. Which we did. We ran along the edge of a huge field of grass and Ethan did a hop, skip and jump thing across a long row of green plastic sprinkler boxes. When we got to the playground he literally DOVE into the gravel pit and tucked into summersault. He showed me each piece of equipment on the playground. He climbed to the top of a ladder and said, "This is what I like to do." And he jumped down like he was driving his fist into the ground, sending a spray of gravel everywhere. Like something The Hulk would do. He also showed me how he likes to "swim" through the gravel. I must say that he is a surprisingly CLEAN kid considering his playground habits.

The point is: He's a fun kid. I don't know what the problem is with those other kids. I guess it's his fault that he feels a moral conflict at the idea of walking up to another kid and slapping them across the face. You know, for fun. Like normal people do when they get together with their friends.

More Than Meets The Eye

I told you that I can't get "Transformers as drawn by girls" off my mind, so I took PsychoIntern's advice and looked some up on Deviantart.com. I'm sure there is art on there by girls much better than this but I liked scrolling through and picking out the ones that I could just tell were drawn by girls without checking:

(I tried to get links to each picture but Deviantart wouldn't let me cut and paste and when I typed the URL's out by hand and tried to re-enter them into the browser, it said the files could not be found. But the pictures are saved with the title and artist name so click on them and check the URL or hover over them and you should be able to get that info if you want to find the artist on Deviantart)

I feel a little better about things now. A weight has been lifted. Thanks for the idea Psycho.

What's Weak this Week (More Blabbing about Work)

A month ago, if you would have asked me, "Emmett, do you think that you will ever in your lifetime clean up a meth-house?" I would have laughed and quickly responded, "I would never expect to clean a meth-house within my lifetime." But, for about a week we spent our days cleaning up a meth-house (we refinished the cupboards). Now I can say I've done that. Cross it right off the list. It's done.

I start my new daytime job next week and I'm staying on part-time at the furniture store. Mostly for the money, but also because it's a low-stress insurance policy in case the new job isn't as great as it seems. But maybe there's more still.

Last winter, I talked about a guy named Isaac, who people called Lazik, because of his Coke bottle glasses. He bought himself season tickets to the Utah Jazz games and got a new job washing cars. But every couple of weeks he comes to the furniture warehouse just to hang out. He was there lastnight. We were eating dinner and one of the mofos says, "What's that kid doing here?"

I said, "He must not have many friends."

Another mofo said, "Maybe he just comes here to get treated like shit."

I said, "This place definitely has it's own unique flavor of treating people badly. It's the only place I know where you can flip someone off who you've never met before and it just means, 'Hello and how are you today?.'"

Here's another example:

We've been having wet weather in Utah the last few days. The other night I went into the office to give my bosses some information:

Me: "Hey, you guys left a big skylight open. I'm getting rained on in aisle 123."

And let me tell you that it's a strange experience to be comfortable in the knowledge that you are driving your stockpicker INSIDE a building, safe from the elements outside, and then for a stretch of 15 feet you are getting rained on from a hole 50 ft above you in the ceiling.

Boss #1: "There's a vent open?!?!"
Boss #2: "No, Emmett, you didn't see anything."
Boss #1 to Boss #2: "We'd better get up there and close it."
Boss #2: "I don't want to climb my fat ass up there in the rain. My shoes will get all wet."
Boss #1: "No, we'd better go close it. Thanks, Emmett."
Boss #2: "Fuck off, Emmett."
Me: "You're welcome."

Probably not the response YOU would look for from your boss at your job but it's actually kind of nice because you know that people aren't harboring bad feelings towards you. They have no problem yelling there bad feelings at you.

One time I did get worried because of this loud-mouth spazzy straight-edger kid because he came back from break and started yelling, "Fuck this job! This place fucking sucks and all you motherfuckers are assholes!"

That's pretty normal for him. You only have to worry about him if he STOPS yelling and cussing and throwing things around.

But at the end of that rant he looked over and saw me standing there and then he added, "Except for Emmett. He's cool!" And I worried for a minute about being singled out as The Nice Guy. But I think we've all learned to tune that guy out anyway.

I took pleasure in it lastnight. Zack-Morris-with-a-Lobotomy isn't allowed to work by himself. Which means EVERYONE takes turns working with him. He's worked with every single mofo in the place. At the end of the shift lastnight he came to me and said, "You know what I've realized. That YOU are the only person in the whole warehouse that people don't talk bad about. All of these guys complain about eachother all the time but nobody ever complains about you."

I said, "I'm glad to hear that." And I choose to believe it because it's not the first time in my life that I've heard that.

Then Zack added, "Not like me. Everyone talks bad about me here." He was smiling when he said it because we all know better than to REALLY value what the mofos think.

I said, "They like giving you a hard time. But they actually like you. They wouldn't have anything to talk about if you weren't here."

He said, "But they're laughing at me. Not with me."

There isn't a believable way to argue against that. I said, "It's an act, though. They all put up a front because they like picking on you. They like acting tough. They like you."

I even get asked on a lot of Man-Dates from a lot of different mofos:

Do you want to go hiking?
Do you want to go to the Waffle House after work?
Do you want to come to a poker game on Sunday?
Do you want to come over and watch movies this weekend?
We should go see Bourne Ultimatum.
You should get X-Box Live and play Halo 3 with us.

All of those things sound like fun but I'd rather do them with my family. No hard feelings. I told my wife's brother that my wife wants to see Bourne Ultimatum really bad. He said, "Did you tell her to shut up and get back in the kitchen?"

I joked, "Yeah, I did. I said, 'I've got an Ultimatum for you... my dinner on the table in one hour.'"

When I repeated that story to my wife later, she didn't find it all that funny.

I did go to the Waffle House with them on Saturday night. One of the guys started talking about buying some special green herbs. He said, "I've been meaning to ask Kwame where I can buy some."

Another mofo said, "Why are you going to ask Kwame?"

The first mofo said, "Because he's black and he listens to reggae music. He must know where to get some."

The second mofo said, "You can't assume he knows where to buy drugs just because he's black and listens to reggae music. Look at Emmett, he's Indian but that doesn't mean he's out hunting buffalo everyday."

I added, "And I don't have any peyote on me either, fool. But I bet any of employees at this restaurant could probably hook you up."

Mofo #1 gave me a black eye playing basketball lastnight. It's only the second black eye that I've ever had. The first one happened when I was in fourth grade and I was running with a bunch of kids, racing to line up at our classroom door after recess and a girl fell on the backs of my legs and knocked me down. When I got up, I had a black eye.

But try telling that story to elementary school kids. It translates directly to: EMMETT GOT BEAT UP BY A GIRL. So I don't really like telling that story. I also got accused of wearing lipstick in first grade cause I put on some chapstick in front of my classmates. I'm sure they were all just jealous and would have happily eaten that chapstick if I offered it to them though.

When the guy elbowed me in the face, I said, "You're a jerk if you make me show up to my first day at my new job with a black eye."

But here's a thing that I don't like about myself. I rarely get visible bruises. I get banged up and hurt all the time and I get stomping mad because I go to inspect the wounds and there's nothing there. I got hit right in the eye with an elbow harder than anyone has ever punched me and there is just a little red mark under my eye. If it was impressive at all I would post a picture but it's less of a blemish than most pimples I get. Yet, it still hurts when I talk or open my mouth.

So it's not much of a black eye. I'm glad in regard to the new job but I feel like I should have more of a battle scar to show off.

How was work for you this week?

When you're riding home tonight, make for the bridge with all your might

I was hoping for another month of Summer but it looks like winter is at our door instead.

The best part of school picture day: FREE COMB!

Some terrific radiant humble thing-a-ma-jig of a pig

The latest thing I have been doing to drive my wife to her wits end:

Talking like Templeton the rat from Charlotte's Web



My favorite line to quote is: "It says crunchy."

I think it mostly annoys her because she thinks my impersonation is lousy. But I think it's

T
Double E
Double R
Double I
Double F
Double I
Double C, C, C

Hey, what's that sound coming out of the hole in the wood?

A couple of days ago I thought I would commit to a blog project using a minimum of 51% of my ass. I thought I would write and perform a "Hey There Delilah" spoof for the people in blog-land.

So I pulled out the guitar for the first time since last winter and figured out the chords for the song (D, F-minor then G, A, Fm, A). I even wrote out some lyrics. I didn't finalize them but here is what I was playing with:

Hey there, Delilah
Are you tired of hearing this song?
It was cool when I first wrote it
But now it seems its dragging on and on
and on and on and on and on
It's my only song

Hey there, Delilah
I guess I'm sorry about the instance
When I tried to teach your cat to swim
Despite all his resistance
In the pond out back
It was wrong of me to use a gunny sack
And that's a fact

Chorus

Hey there, Delilah
I know times are getting hard
And I hope that you don't freak out
When you get the bill for this guitar
I used your credit card
I found it in my wallet
Isn't that bizarre?
Yes, how bizzare

Change

You can run to any town
And I will come and track you down
I'll walk to you and live in your crawl space
And I will build a shrine to you
with jelly beans and crazy glue
A tribute to your smiling angel face
Your tasty faaaa-ah-a-ah-ace

Anyway, I didn't have much time to practice and it was hard to remember all the new words. I also realized that if I did this, then this is the kind of company I would be keeping on Youtube:



I decided I would pass on that idea. So don't ask.

But a day or two later my 2 and 4 year old kids knew I had the guitar lying around and they came busting in and demanded that I play it. The 2 year old seemed to want it the most and he made me finger the chords for him while he slapped the strings.

Then my 4 yr old daughter said, "Play a song, Daddy." And, of course, I started playing "Hey There Delilah" and my daughter got all excited and said, "Daddy, I like that song. It's the song where the guy sings all the OH's."

Then she asked about the guitar that I was playing. She said, "Is this Ian's guitar?"

I said, "This is grandpa's guitar. Ian's guitar is that blue one over there."

She said, "Where is your guitar, dad?"

I said, "Mine is that pile of junk sitting over there."

She walked over to my old beat-up guitar and put her hand on it lovingly, "I like this guitar, Dad. It has good songs on it."

Maybe that's why my spoof didn't sound right. Maybe it was waiting to come out of the old clunker.



P.S. I don't know why but I also wrote the first couple of lines for a Kelly Clarkson parody:

Here's the deal
We're not even friends
You changed my diapers
Now I buy you Depends
Yeah, yeah
Since your my mom

But to write more I would have to learn more words to the song and I doubt I would even learn the music for this one. I guess I figure if I write about it here then these weird ideas will stop floating around in my head.

Horrible, Horrible Freedom

I'm ripping this off from another blog but it's too funny not to share with my friends. It's "Choose Your Own Adventure Books" that never made it.

Not all of them are funny but there are some good ones, such as:

What did one astronaut say to the other astronaut?

We like Ethan to talk to us about school so we ask him basic questions everyday just to see what stories he'll tell us. I don't know if he just likes messing with us or if it's just his personality but this is the kind of answer he usually gives:

Me: "So what did you have for lunch today, Ethan?"

Ethan: "Today we had a choice of Riblets or Chicken Drummies."
(He ALWAYS tells you the options)

Me: "So what did YOU eat?"

Ethan: "I had a hotdog. They were out of Chicken Drummies."


He cracks me up.

Rub-a-dub-a-tub-fish

Our family is in disarray still between school starting and me switching up jobs. I currently have 3 jobs. Anyway, things seem to be changing for the better. Gradually. Very gradually.

Do you know people who just sort of hick-up out of nowhere? Just one little hick-up in the middle of when they're talking to you and then you don't hear it again for a couple of days? That's how our daughter is, except she throws up. Just here and there, when the moment strikes her.

I asked Ethan, "What's your favorite thing about school?"

He thought about it. Hmmmm. Then he turned to me and said, "Getting up to get a drink of water."

I said, "You can take a water bottle to school if you want to."

He said, "Nah. I like getting up."

It must be hereditary or something.

Anyway, things haven't quite improved yet but they are bound to improve at any second and this inspires me to give the world a bunch of advice that it didn't ask for.

Advice #1: The importance of bathing and showing up to work.

It doesn't sound like much but I think this piece of advice is the primary component of what separates winners from losers in Western Society. To most people it sounds simple and unhelpful. Almost like COMMON SENSE or something. But there are many people skulking around who have heard of these things.... "bathing" and "showing up to work".... and they think they SOUND LIKE good ideas. But at the same time, it's just not a lifestyle that interests them. They think of these habits as details. In significant details.

I've mentioned several times throughout my blog that I hate empty promises. But I PROMISE people this: If you CURRENTLY are not bathing and showing up to work regularly and from this day forward you BEGIN to do these things, your life will improve by leaps and bounds. You have my word.

Advice #2: Recognizing a bad date.

I know a guy who has yet to realize the benefits of Advice #1. One day he was telling me how excited he was for a date he had arranged that evening. I remember how he looked. Grinning and stinking. It's the happiest I've ever seen the guy.

The next day I asked him, "So how did your date go last night?"

He said, "Hmmmmm. I think she might be a lesbian. She didn't come right out and say it, but she mentioned 'her partner' a few times."

Knowing his fragile emotional state due to his avoidance of Advice #1, I decided not to heckle him. I said, "Oh. What did you guys do?"

He said, "We went to Barnes&Noble and looked at art magazines. She's an artist, too. But she says that ever since the 'Transformers' movie came out, all she draws is Transformers."


People. I would love... I would PAY MONEY to see pictures of Transformers as drawn by a girl, letalone a lesbian. Ever since I heard about this I've felt like I've been missing out in life by not seeing these pictures. But part of me knows it will never happen.

I told my wife about it and said, "Maybe if I asked Holly, she would draw me some Transformers. I would pay her." (Holly is one of my wife's dearest friends from childhood and a bang-up graphic designer. And I should probably clarify that she is NOT a lesbian even though my friend Sandskier jokingly accused her of such the first night he ever met her.)

My wife forbade me, "You can't go bugging Holly to draw you Transformers. She's busy and it's a dumb idea."

She's right and I wouldn't want to pressure Holly to waste her time on me but, you know, if Holly is reading and ever gets bored between now and the day I die and ever thinks to herself that she would like to give me a heartfelt Christmas gift and can spend an hour doodling a Transformer... I would love that. But I would never want to pressure her.

I just said, "You know they would be CUTE if she did, though."

Now I'm WAY OFF on a tangent. The point is, if you would like to settle down and start a family some day, and you are heterosexual, then avoid dating homosexuals. And come up with a better date than looking at magazines at a book store. But first and foremost, you should bathe and show up to work.

And given how hip gay people tend to be, why can't they think of a better term than "My Partner?"

Next In A Long Line of Easy Posts

Check it out. Aunt Dianne came through with that picture of our camping trip where Jonah made me ride him around on my bike the entire time. Sorry if you can see the dust. The scanner works greats on all those imperfections.

Have To Believe We Are Magic

And While I'm hanging out on Youtube, here's a little something:

Rose said, quote: My Time Has Come At Last

I realize that I talk a lot about music that probably isn't worth mentioning while all this time I've never mentioned one of my favorite bands.

They are called dEUS and they are from Belgium, I believe. They don't sell their records in America so they don't get any exposure on our side of the pond. But if you like good music please check them out. They have a variety of styles and they are kind of artsy so they are bound to have something you love. And hate. Give them a listen:

Say to yourself, "It's just a show. I should really just relax."

This is just a public service announcement to let the world know that the cast from "Mystery Science Theater 3000" is still trashing movies for the masses at Rifftrax.com. I thought their samples for "Point Break," "Top Gun," and "X Men" were pretty good.

They are also riffing TV shows like "Lost" and "Grey's Anatomy." Here is the sample from "Heroes."

This is OUR hill and these are OUR beans

For some reason summers are always hard on our family; Especially August. I guess there is always so much to do and so much change for people when August winds down. This last month has been really hard for us with more obligations than any two working people could ever be expected to handle. Along with the little jabs life throws at us like the bad wind that came and blew down my gazebo:



I guess that's what I get for shopping on clearance.

My big announcement is that I have a new job. A good job. It pays better than my old desk job. And I get to buy new tools. Soon I will be one of those special people with Health Insurance again. And I won't have to pay a dime for it. Health Insurance doesn't make you feel so special when you have it but it's a pain when you don't have it. People look at you as if you're telling them you're heading across the Sahara Desert with no water when you tell them you have no insurance:

"What insurance do you have?"
"None."
"NONE?"
"None."
Paaauuuuusssssseeee. Beads of sweat. Lowered voice, "How are you going to pay for this doctor visit?"
"The kid was fine when I brought him in for his check up. What are you planning to do to him while he's back there? Will I need a loan?"

Anyway, the Brotherhood has eyes everywhere and I finally have something to lose again so I'm going to avoid talking about the new job as much as possible. But I will say that people who administer drug tests for a living shouldn't make small talk. And while they're making inane small talk, they shouldn't interrupt themselves to bug their eyes out and say things like, "Wow! It looks YOU needed to go more than you thought."

The ray of light in our life has been our family. Our parents have done all they can for us and our kids have been almost just as helpful. They are funny and sweet. Jonah jumps on and off of everything. He even goes out of his way to create a reason to jump. And with every jump he opens his little two-year-old mouth and releases a, "Hup!" It's funny.

Olivia is hilarious. The other day I asked my wife if she had a dollar so I could buy myself a drink from the vending machine at work later in the evening. My wife said, "Here. Just borrow a dollar from Olivia." And she took a dollar out of the soup bowl that Olivia uses as a bank.

A few days later I gave my wife a dollar and said, "Here, give this back to Olivia for me." My wife went into my daughter's room to return the borrowed dollar and Olivia saw her and asked what she was doing. My wife explained that I had borrowed the dollar and was now returning it.

Upon hearing this, Olivia jumped up and yelled, "Yes! I knew it! I knew I had more money than you guys!" The sad thing is, depending on the day, she was probably right.

A little later, my wife were in our living room and our daughter came into the room with her soup bowl full of money. She said, "Here you guys. You can have it."

I said, "No. That's your money. You should keep it."

She said, "No. I don't want it. I want you guys to have it."

And I pulled rank as Dad, "Go put your money back in your room."

She went and put the money away and it was a little while before we saw her again. Then she returned with THIS PICTURE SHE DREW:


Olivia drew a picture of her parents. Look at them, they are elated. They are ecstatic. They are beyond themselves with joy because their daughter has given them all of the money in her soup bowl. Look at all of those coins on the ground. She even gave them the green rectangle dollars. Have any parents ever been as happy as Olivia's parents? Probably not. Olivia's parents are so happy because she has bestowed them with her boundless treasure. She knows it and she is proud of herself.

Here is something that Ethan and Olivia made together. It's an American Robin. Ethan made the bird using paper, Scotch tape and scissors. Olivia colored the bird. Both sides. And pretty accurately.


They have drawn some other awesome pictures that usually include princesses locked in towers, dragons, skeleton witches (because everything is in its ultimate form of scary when the word "skeleton" preceeds it) and ninjas.

Ethan has his way with words. He says to my wife:

"I love you like I love Zonk (his salamander)."

My wife, "Really?"

Ethan, "I will ALWAYS love you like I love Zonk."

My wife, "Thanks."

Ethan, "Do you love me as much as the bunnies?"

My wife, "I love you more than the bunnies."

Ethan, "Do you think Zonk would cry if I died?"

My wife, "I would cry if you died."


Last night Ethan called me at work. He said, "I miss you. I want you to come home."

Thinking out loud, I said, "I might be able to." Because it was my day off.

Ethan said, "Good. Go tell your boss."

Then I had to say, "No, I'd better stay till we're done working. I'll stay home tomorrow night."

Ethan said, "Okay. But I wish tonight was short-day at your work."

I said, "Me too."


I woke up one day and it was the quiet of morning. The curtains were closed and there wasn't any noise. I found Ethan sitting quietly on the couch. I couldn't tell if he was half asleep or pausing in cosmic reflection. I sat quietly, too.

After a minute, Ethan turned to me and said, "One day you are going to get really old and then you're going to die." It was a hard thing to argue with so I just said, "I know."

Then Ethan said, "And then I will live for a long time and then I will get really old and die, too."

I said, "Yup."

He said, "After I live for a long time and then die, I'll come to Heaven and look for you."

I said, "Okay. Do you want some Fruit Loops?" But I was really wondering if a day would ever come that he would ever think to say that to me again. Because deep down I think that is what every parent wants to hear.

I don't think he'll ever say it to me again so I'll just remember it as it was that day, in that dark and funny way. Maybe one day I'll remember it and it will make me laugh and cry. Maybe when I'm older. Right now, a bowl of Fruit Loops sounds pretty good. But damn if little kids can't drive daggers into your heart. He always tells me he misses me and that he worries about me when I'm gone. Feels like he's stealing my lines as the caregiver.

The point is: My kids are cool. A lot of people can't even begin to grasp that concept.

Riding the train down from El Barrio

There is a guy at work who looks like a hispanic version of the "Soup Nazi" from Seinfeld. He is the first generation of his family in the United States and is very proud of his mexican heritage.

He's funny because he likes to have deep, meaningful conversations even when nobody is willing to listen to him ramble. And he chooses to talk about things that most people aren't interested in. Like tortillas. He'll talk for hours about tortillas. He says things like, "It's a sin to cook a tortilla in the microwave." I don't prod him for more information but if that is true than the catholic church is even stricter than I previously believed.

He also talks about "Spanglish" a lot. It sounds like this when someone speaks Spanglish, "Ba la da la ba CAR INSURANCE. Ba la da ba la da BLOCKBUSTER VIDEO." He says that when people speak Spanglish it is because of their own ignorance. He says there are words in the spanish language so you can say practically anything but people aren't willing to learn any words they don't already know and they end up speaking Spanglish. Lazy and ignorant, he says. He tells me, "You will never, EVER hear ME speaking Spanglish."

A little while ago I was working with a temp from Mexico. He spoke very little English and I speak very little Spanish but we still seemed to get along pretty well. When I work with mexicans I try to speak in Spanish and English just to make sure things are getting done right. This temp starting teasing me because he heard me say "kwa-chro" instead of cuatro (which should really be said more like kwa-throw) and he started speaking in ebonics, saying "fo'" instead of four. After that I kept saying kwa-chro on purpose and then adding little touches like saying "Uno-cientos" instead of "cien" (one one-hundreds instead of one hundred).

We saw the Hispanic Soup Naze while we were riding around and I explained how he felt about Spanglish. The temp agreed. He said it is a dumb way of talking. He said he's heard guys on construction sites using words like "truckay" for truck and "rightay" for right (as in, right-handed).

Later, I was still working with that temp and I was yelling out instructions, using words like frente, en medio y atras (front, middle and back) and the Soup Nazi heard me. His face lit up and he yelled, "Emmett! You're learning Spanish. That's great!"

I said, "Yeah. This guy is teaching me all kinds of stuff! He taught me TRUCKAY, he taught me RIGHTAY..."

The Soup Nazi didn't saying anything to that. He just shot me an icy stare with those spanish eyes that seemed to say, "NO BIRRIA PARA USTED!"

We've got to move these refrigerators, we've got to move these color TVS

I move a lot of televisions at work and the pictures used by Samsung on their LCD televisions strike a nerve with me:



This is the main picture but there are others that go with it that show the rest of this ladies ultra-modern bedroom.

First off, why in the world would you spend thousands of dollars on a fancy television and then READ THE NEWSPAPER? Right next to the TV as if to rub the newsprint right in the TV's face? I guess the newspaper thing is to suggest that this lady is smart and on top of things.

While I'm driving around staring at this lady, I wonder what it would be like to hang out with her:

"What are you doing!"

"Uh, I was just setting my car kers on your nightstand here."

"Insolent bug! That isn't a nightstand... nor a bench nor a stool. It's art! And you can't just put your keys where ever you want. You are ruining the effect of the super-sterile and confusing environment I've created here."

"Oh, sorry. Can I eat one of these apples?"

"Noooooooo! Those are ornamental. If you want to eat, you'll have to go out in the hallway."

"Can I have my candybar back? I think you might be sitting on it."

"AAAAaaahhhhhhhh! This is my third pair of white pants destroyed by chocolate this week!"


I imagine something like that anyway and none of it makes me want to hang out with that lady nor buy a TV. But I do want to win peoples respect and if buying expensive crap is the only way to do it then so be it. I will take advantage of my work discount and get that $10,000 Sharp Aquous for the killer price of $6,900.

Little Boy Blue and the Man on the Moon

My oldest son just started second grade at the local elementary school. Yesterday I was describing our typical luck in preparation for the first day of school to one of my fellow painters:

I said, "We've bought him new school clothes already but we haven't found any shoes that we like. He still has two pairs of shoes from last year. One pair is old and ratty but the other shoes are still in good condition so we figured he would be okay until we find some new shoes that we like..."

I continued, "...but our two youngest kids have had some kind of walking flu or something lately. They'll throw up and get diarreah for a couple of days and then they'll be fine for a couple of days and then out of nowhere they'll throw up and get diarreah again and then they'll be fine for a couple of days..."

The painter said, "Dude, you totally just described MY life."

Ew. Anyway, I said, "So we come home late Sunday night and I set our two year old on the couch for a second. My oldest son pops his good shoes off in front of the couch. Then the two year old suddenly leans over the edge of the couch and throws up into both shoes...

...so Ethan had to wear the old ratty shoes on his first day of school...

...but there are a couple of trailer parks in our neighborhood, so I doubt anyone will think anything of it but we really need to find him some new shoes today."

I hate to be hard on teachers because I know a couple of teachers may be reading this site, but I think teachers are aware that parents are judging them harshly. When we took Ethan to school in the morning, they had four different classes line up or cluster around one entryway. We know his teachers name but have no other knowledge aside from that. Four teachers came to collect their classes and there was much confusion. The lady that I assume was Ethan's teacher stood in front of the door and said, "My class, come with me." And then she walked inside. She didn't introduce herself. She didn't give us any idea who might be in her class. She just said those words and walked off. But we saw other kids from Ethan's class following her so we sent him in.

It's not a big deal. But in the back of my mind I'm thinking, "Strike one, lady."

And I'm probably polluting Ethan's mind when it comes to school. I keep telling him things like, "If I didn't have to make you go to school, I wouldn't." I tell him that going to school is his responsibility like going to work is my responsibility. Then I ask him if he would rather go to school or stay home and never be a second grader. He told me he wants to finish all the grades so he can be a doctor some day. Or a fry cook.

Last year he got 100%s on almost all of his spelling tests so we started paying him $1 for each test that he aced. This year he has his pet Tiger Salamander, Zonk, and it costs $1 per week to buy the crickets we feed to the amphibian. I told Ethan to tell his new teacher, "If you don't give me 100's on all of my tests my salamander will die!"

Another funny thing about Ethan is that he is already into Heavy Metal. I never tried to teach him that hard rock was the best. Virtually EVERY song that comes on the radio and even most of my CD's are boring to him. We'll be driving in the car and you'll just hear a loud "Booooooooooooring!" float up from the backseat. He only likes stuff like Boston, 3 Days Grace, Megadeth and Linkin Park. If it doesn't have in-your-face guitar shredding then he doesn't like it. I got the new Smashing Pumpkins CD for my birthday and that BARELY got a nod of approval from him. It sounds cool that he likes hard rock but it's difficult to consistently pump out songs with that much energy in them.

After riding in the car with him it's hard for me not to imagine his teacher in front of the class saying, "Okay children, let's all count to 100 by 5's." and then his patent "Boooooooring" comes wafting up from the back of the class and then the teacher sits quietly dreaming of all the ways she's going to mess up his permanent record.

But I told him that his responsibility is to go to school, learn, make friends and have fun. I'll tell you how it goes.

'Cos everybody hates a tourist, especially one who thinks it's all such a laugh

I'm not dead. I'm just working a lot and school is starting and my birthday is this week and my sister-in-law is getting married next week and it's our wedding anniversary and I'm broke as all get out. All I do is work so I'm not interested in talking about work right now. Instead I will talk about the rare and simple moments that I don't work:

Last week we took our lunch break from painting and got some chinese takeout. We went to my wife's aunt Dianne's house to eat it (She is the one I accused of having "noxious breath" when Ethan went to the emergency room last December). Every year my wife's extended family all gets together for a campout in the high Uintah Mountains. We went a couple of weeks ago but I was too busy to blog about it. But here is a picture I took on the way there:



If you are going to have a Nudist Ranch in Utah then you should definitely pick a place with an apt name like Beaver Creek. And you should also have a cool mascot like a bear wearing nothing but chaps, a pistol, a cowboy hat and a grin. If you would like to go, there is a chance that they are no longer "closed due to mosquitos." When I stopped to take the picture I noticed a trampoline behind the main complex so these people seem like they know how to party.

But back to the real story... When we got to Dianne's house with our chinese takeout she was excited to see me and told me she had the cutest picture of me and my son Jonah. I said something dumb like, "Does that mean it's a cute picture of me and Jonah happens to be in the picture?" and anyway she handed me a bunch of pictures and she did have a cool one of me riding my mountain bike with Jonah riding on the handle bars (which pretty much describes the entire camping trip because 2-yr-old Jonah wanted to ride on my handle bars 24 hours a day). I asked for a copy of the picture but she hasn't given me one yet.

Then I was talking to Dianne's daughter about how she was moving up to Logan, Utah to start college at Utah State. That's where I went to school for a spell. Then I asked the daughter what apartments she would be living in. When she told me the name of the apartments I said, "That's where I lived!" (along with Slimysculpin and Sandskier) when I met her cousin and married her. I told her not to makeout in the hot tub because the apartment manager would kick you out of the hot tub for that. I added, "...and you probably shouldn't mention to anyone around there that you know me."

Dianne told her daughter, "You see... you might meet the boy of your dreams up there." I briefly retold the story of how Eleanor and I met and emphasized that it definitely WASN'T love at first sight. Dianne told me the story of when she met her future and husband and how it WAS love at first sight for her. They were engaged within a month of meeting. And then she added, "... he told me later that part of the reason that he proposed so fast was because he was trying to decide whether or not he should sell his Chevy Caprice and getting married would affect his decision."

See girls?!?! You always THINK you want to know what's going on inside your man's head... it turns out that it's always much stupider than you thought. Uh... yeah, yeah, I could get married or I could not get married but I REALLY NEED to get this cosmic car situation sorted out and fast. I shouldn't knock Uncle Jeff. He is very smart and a great person. I just use that as an example as to why girls should just let guys keep quiet.

By this time, I still had half of my lunch left and my brothers-in-law and their cousin started griping, "This lunch break is taking way too long." Dianne started apologizing, "I'm sorry you guys... I just never get a chance to talk to Emmett and I had this neat picture of him..."

I feigned anger, "YEAH, YOU GUYS! DIANNE AND I NEVER GET ANY QUALITY TIME...!!!" I threw my food away and I said, "We'll come back again for lunch tomorrow, Dianne." We didn't go back, of course.

But that was probably the most fun I had all week. Sound fun to you?

If Prime can't laugh at himself then who can he laugh at?

No time to chit chat. But I thought I would present this tribute to one of the coolest movies of the summer. It's a re-dubbed version of Transformers. It's funny but don't watch it if you don't like trash talkin', potty-mouth robots.

Paralyzer Guitar Rip

I'm sorry, it's a sickness I can't help. It bothers me to see the Finger Eleven song "Paralyzer" at the top of the charts when the soul of the song is ripped off straight from a better band. Here is Paralyzer:



Compared to Led Zeppelin's "Trampled Underfoot":



Yes, all rock is ripped off from old school blues and jazz but Zeppelin at least established themselves as having actual talent for songwriting. I have a very strict rule about avoiding bands that have their first hit song be a cover song or obvious theft.

Paralyzer is as original as the idea of playing on a rooftop. It feels good to have that out of my system.

More Than A Feeling

Everyone knows that ladder makers always place a warning on their products that the top step is NOT A STEP. And, of course, most people think of those words as "just a suggestion." But a few weeks ago we were painting and we were running out of CD's to listen to so I popped my wife's copy of "Boston's Greatest Hits" into the player.

When they sell copies of Boston's Greatest Hits they should include a warning that air-guitaring is immenent when played at a loud volume. Anyway, based on my experience, I think ladder makers should take things a step further and include this type of warning on their products as well:



You might be thinking I'm wrong about Boston but you don't have to take my word for it:

Burning in a lake of fire

It finally feels like summer is kicking in for me. I haven't been doing much blogging but I've been out enjoying life now and again. For instance, we took our kids to Lagoon (Utah's sufficient arcade/zoo/theme park/roller coaster park/waterslide/historic site and purveyor of pioneer history). The furniture store gave us free tickets but we weren't going to go because we thought it would be torture standing in lines in crazy heat watching our kids have all the fun. But at the last minute we went anyhow and we all had a good time. So much fun, the kids all pitched a fit and cried the whole way home when we made them leave. For being a local gig, Lagoon is pretty impressive. It has decent rides with a lot of quiet areas tucked around. We went and found a quiet place to hang out in Pioneer Village and didn't see a soul around. When we bought some corn-on-the-cob we ate it while watching a family playing make-shift baseball in a small field of grass. I've decided I like Lagoon. It's a lot more relaxed than DisneyHell and all those others.

I've been dying to get back to Flaming Gorge and I missed my chance at the 4th of July because I thought my dad was coming to visit (he didn't), so we headed out there for the 24th of July, Utah's "Pioneer Day," a celebration of mormon's thinking they finally found a place where they wouldn't be run out of town. It's pretty much just a second 4th of July with more girls than usual walking around in bonnets.

I called up my old friend Geppetto to see if we could stay at his house. He said we could and that he also had full access to a Lotus Elise. And I had thought my trip would be cool because I was vacationing in Chaco sandals with a back up pair of Tevas.



I told my wife how I would love to move back to the Gorge. She said MAYBE should would consider moving to Vernal. What the...? Don't even compare the two. They are a world apart.

I have always felt like a superstar at the gorge. I am on familiar terms with all the local business owners, sheriffs, bishop and other members of the faculty. I show up and people hug and kiss me. They tell me they love me. Everyone wants to meet my kids and know how my family is doing. Every spot has a memory tied to it. I know as much about the dam as nearly any tour guide. I get invited to fish with river guides for free. I helped the Forest Service fix up the Swett Ranch. Like Butch Cassidy, I've been to Brown's Park 1.5 million times. I've caught frogs and snakes along the Green River. I've rafted to the islands and camped on them at night. I've sat at the top of the Cart Creek bridge in the moonlight. I've stared down and rappelled into more of those canyons than I can name. I know what many of the trails look like by mountain bike and cross country skis. I've watched the Kokanee salmon head up Sheepcreek Bay to spawn and die on more than one occassion. The list goes on and on...

My wife thinks all of that is nice, if those are your priorities in life. The real problem is... if she lived in Flaming Gorge she couldn't go to Target everyday. She couldn't buy 5 pairs of shoes and then return 4. It just isn't realistic.

I also got to go to Mustang Ridge and jump off the cliffs. This picture is of my favorite cliff in the world.



This picture was taken several years ago. That cliff no longer exists. It was smashed off the face of the earth. So now I have to settle for jumping off the next highest cliff. It's still fun and gets your blood pumping pretty good. I haven't been to the gorge since our latest kid was born and then we were in drought for years before that and these cliffs became SUPER high with the low water levels, so it's been a LOOOONG time since I've had this chance. Everyone says there are strict new rules about cliff jumping, something like you can't jump off anything over 12 feet high, but I think I should be grandfathered into higher cliff jumping rights because I've been doing it all my life. And those laws are only in place so big pussies don't have to make excuses for not jumping anyway.

I told my wife that as long as I am physically able to haul my carcass to the top of the cliffs and toss it off, I will continue to do so. She's glad the tallest cliff is gone.

It's been a good week.

I am a snake head eating the head on the opposite side

My son has a way with words. I hope that he gets it from me because it makes me laugh.

Ethan: "Here Olivia, I'll take the trash out of your monkey's ear."

(Translation: "I will remove the pricetag from your stuffed animal.")

So what if you can see the darker side of me

I've had an ongoing struggle with that 18 yr old guy from work. He tells me I'm the only person he can stand to be around. He says, "I'm an asshole, but this is the NICE me at work. I'm worse when I'm not here."

I tell him that he's an angry loner. And he says, "What's wrong with Angry Loners?"

And I say, "Well... they're angry. And they're loners..."

One night he pulled out a light-up keychain and said, "Check this thing out. It's cool."

I said, "Where did you get that?"

He said, "Walmart. Lastnight. At 3am."

I said, "Why were you at Walmart at 3 am?"

He said, "Because my life sucks. There is nothing to do." Later he explained it this way, "I'm 18 and I can't do anything except go to strip clubs." He is actually trying to spend his time doing worthwhile things but he can't figure anything out in that falls in that category. He doesn't want to spend all his time drinking like his friends and he already quit playing World of Warcraft.

I told him, "You really need to ask that girl out from the restaurant we go to for lunch."

Did I mention he hates girls? And kids? And pretty much everyone? But he especially hates girls. And kids. He sees them as financial death and endless nagging. It's hard to pose an argument against that. But he seems to be incapable of seeing an upside to hanging out with girls.

He asked, "Why would I want to do that?"

I said, "I don't know. Because you hang out at Walmart at 3 am FOR FUN. If you asked her out, she might at least hang out at Walmart with you."

I told him, "You two kind of look alike and they say people are often attracted to other people who have similar traits." I said, "You're both tall and skinny, you have the same kind of nose, you both seem to like wearing baseball hats..." (the girl has to wear a work hat)

He said, "We both have the same size of boobs."

I said, "So what about boobs?"

He said, "If a girl doesn't have boobs its like having sex with a man."

I said, "Don't worry about boobs. At some point in time, EVERY girl asks her boyfriend if he likes her boob-size. When she asks you that, you just say HERE ARE SOME PAMPHLETS YOU CAN READ ABOUT BREAST AUGMENTATION."

I told him that having a cool personality is much more important than boobs. He was just using boobs as an excuse. And I knew I was breaking through his shell when he asked me how much boob surgery costs. I told him that he should just ask her if she has seen "Clerks II" (one of his favorite movies) and if the answer was YES then he should ask her out.

But then he sprang back at me... "Why would people be attracted themselves? Would YOU want to have sex with someone who looked just like you?"

And I reminded him about that "Silence of the Lambs/Clerks II" line:

"I'd F*** me. I'd F*** me hard."

But then I told him that my features are much too masculine for me to ever pitch woo to my own twin.

Anyway. I'm still trying to get him to ask a girl out. So he won't be so angry. And alone.

Pnutz

I saw this on someone else's blog and thought it was worth copying.

Would you hold it against me?

I've been painting the ceiling at a big house all week. There is a girl who lives in the house who looks 16 but she's actually 21 and trying to become a nurse. I pretty much haven't talked to her at all until today...

Me: "Hey, if you were a booger I would pick you first."

Girl: "..."

Me: "Have you heard that line before?"

Girl: "No."

Me: "Is it doing anything for you?"

Girl: "Mmmm, not really."

Me: "A guy at work told me about that line lastnight. He said it works EVERY TIME."

Girl: "It's funny..."

Me: "Yeah. It actually sounds like a line that would work a lot better on a guy than a girl. I bet a guy would like that line. You should try it. But, then again, maybe not because that guy was giving me questionable advice on how to pick up girls."

Girl: "Like what?"

Me: "Well, he also told me it's best to pick up drunk girls. He said if you go up to a girl who's been drinking and ask her, 'what's your name?' and she answers, 'Huh?' then she's good to go. It might be good advice. I don't know. I probably wouldn't recommend doing that."



And just for all those people who freak out about it, YES! I TOLD HER I WAS MARRIED... but only after I used the line on her because I wanted her response to be genuine.

Use this advice at your own risk.

THE BLOG ISN'T LETTING ME LEAVE TITLES FOR SOME REASON. STUPID BLOG.

Lastweek I went to lunch with one of my fellow painters. The cashier asked me for a name so they could call me when my food was ready. I gave her the name Chase. She said, "What?" And as loudly and clearly as I could, I said Chase again. I watched her write it down: S-H-A-N-C-E. I don't think I have a speech impediment but I could be wrong.

I explained to the guy I was with that I give my last name, Chase, because it causes all sorts of problems when I try to leave my first name, Emmett.

Pretty soon, I heard an old man behind the counter calling a customer to come get their lunch. He yelled, "Shawn-say! SHAWN-SAY!"

I asked him, "Is it possible that that food is for Chase?"

The old man (who I believe was the owner of the restaurant) glared at the girl behind the cash register. He said, "Damn you, you had me over here thinking I was looking for a woman!"

I sure am glad I didn't try to give them my first name. I would probably be better off to revert to my teen-aged ways and leave names like Iceman, Uncle Fester or Monkmeyer.

Once I was in a fancy store and tried to leave the name Iacocca on a whim. Then the lady asked me to spell it and totally busted me. It's quite unconvincing when someone asks you to spell your name and you respond, "I...um...A...uh...C........I think."

I mentioned earlier that I have to do testing for a job I'm trying to get. I probably don't need to study but I am anyway because I want the job. After doing some studying I've found that I still rock at algebra. I do find little things that I never seemed to have learned before, like how to turn a repeating decimal into a fraction. So that's good.

The other part of the test is Reading Comprehension. I have to say that there isn't really a way to study Reading Comprehension. And, in my opinion, the questions they ask don't actually test your comprehension, rather, they test your ability to feign interest and hang on every word of a boring, boring story.

Here's an example:

Pretend I have just told you a long, tedious anecdote about a week I spent at my Aunt Alice's farmhouse last summer. Now answer these questions...


Q. What were the names of the four kittens living in the barn?
A. Ruffles, Whiskers, Socks and Puff Catty. Okay, that was an easy one.

Q. On what night were the cats fed fresh entrails?
A. Tuesday nights, because Aunt Alice makes fresh kidney pie to serve at the local VFW hall every Wednesday. Duh!

Q. What brand of tractor does uncle Remis use on the farm?
A. Trick question. Uncle Remis only uses mules.

Q. What day did Uncle Remis plan to harvest his crop?
A. Normally, it would be under September's full moon BUT THIS YEAR Mars would be in the night sky two days previous on the same weekend Remis Jr. would be in town, plus Uncle Remis was due for surgery on his bunyon on the night of the full moon, so the answer is... September 12.

What? You didn't absorb all of those details in the 5 minutes you were allotted to read about the most exciting week of my life? You don't care?!?! Sir, if this were the 1800's I would challenge you to pistols at dawn!

So boring. They could try to spice it up a little...

What satanic cult did Aunt Alice regularly attend?
Which visitor slept with the farmer's daughter?
Which organ did the farmer remove as punishment?

Reading Comprehension is more like a test of tolerance and one's ability to pretend to care.

Glistening white, triangular tooth, open up a can of tomato juice

I can't afford a monstrous playground for the kids to put in the backyard, but on the 4th of July we did buy them a tire swing to hang from our apricot tree. The ropes that came with the swing were short, so I bought an extra 12 feet of rope so we could hang the swing from a high branch.

When I got the swing all put together we had one of those rare moments where my wife is impressed with my abilities as a dude.

She asked, "Where did you learn how to tie these knots?"

And I got to give a manly response, "That's a rock climbing knot."

The sweet, innocent Utah-girl in my wife goaded her to ask, "You didn't learn that knot in the Boy Scouts?"

And I got to give the super-manly response, "No. I got kicked out of the Cub Scouts when I was a kid, remember?"

They said it was because I missed too many den meetings but I like to believe they kicked me out because I looked sooooooooooo bad.

I like what you've done with the place

We were painting an office building the other day:

Adam (my brother-in-law): "Have you been in the bathroom here? It's awesome."

Me: "Really? What's so great about it?"

Adam: "They have a toilet plunger and a can of air freshener... anything you can think of. They thought of everything."

Me: "Either that or they've just learned from experience."

So the people have spoken. Why is it so hard to find a stainless steel or jewel-encrusted plunger THAT WORKS?