As you sit there and read this, slightly lift your right foot off the ground and rotate it in small circles clockwise. Now try to draw a six in mid-air with your right hand. I betcha can’t do it without changing the direction of your foot! HAHAHAHAHAHA!
Well, as if the Minnesota Twins couldn’t suck any more than they already do, they had to go and get swept by the White Sox. They lost by a 4-game combined total of 15 points to the White Sox’s 40 points! I hate seeing them lose to the damn Sox, let alone lose 4 games in a row. In fact, I can’t think of many things that I hate seeing more. I have compiled a short list of some things that I would actually rather see than my Twins sucking this bad. Here they are in no particular order:
1) Roseanne Bar in a ketchup bikini.
2) Marilyn Manson doing a Dwight Yoakam cover.
3) Chris Farley naked in a kiddy pool full of Ramen Noodles.
4) Jaci gaining 65 pounds.
5) My parents making out.
6) Ru Paul in a Victoria’s Secret Commercial.
7) Ball Park Franks Inc. going out of business.
8 ) You Don’t Mess With Zohan winning an Oscar.
9) Poop on the back of the toilet seat.
10) Amy Winehouse as my kids’ kindergarten teacher.
11) Richard Simmons starring in the next Batman movie.
Seriously, I am taking offense to our offense. We gotta pick it up. At least we have the Indians for a series…always an upside, I guess.
Jaci and I have several resident squirrels in my backyard ever since installing the squirrel feeder on the big ol’ Hackberry tree. All I did was screw two 2×4s into an ‘L’ shape and screwed that to the tree trunk. Then I went to Home Depot to get some HUGE nails to impale some corn cobs on. I found some 9 inch ones that were slightly short of railroad ties sitting on a shelf next to the rest of the nails. I asked the kid working there how much they cost, and he looked at me and nearly started hyperventilating. After he came to terms with the fact that his name tag reads “How may I help you” and he couldn’t pretend that he simply hadn’t heard me (being that I nearly shouted the question directly into his ear the third time I asked him), he mumbled something about “…however much it says on the box…”
I informed him that the two nails that I was holding had been separated from the herd.
He blinked at me a couple of times.
I rephrased the statement (for the sake of an obvious lack of neuron responsiveness) and said “They are not in any box. They were just sitting on the shelf. Besides, I only want two. I will pay whatever price you want, just tell me how much they are, buddy!”
Now, this next part of the story (tangent that I have gotten off on) goes out to anyone who owns stock in Home Depot. The kid told me that he doesn’t care how much the nails cost and that I should just put them in my pocket and walk out the door furthest from the registers.
So I did.
Anyway, in the weeks since building my squirrel feeder I have become very fond of the (only) black squirrel that frequents my backyard buffet. I call him “El Negro.” When I was in elementary school we briefly had a kid in our class from Sudan. Now, if this kid closed his eyes in a dark room, we would seriously forget he was there. I mean this kid was black.
El Negro is so black that he makes the Sudanese kid look like a flourescent light bulb made out of marshmallows. I mean, El Negro is ONE…BLACK…SQUIRREL. Seriously, if Omaha, Nebraska was a Mexican border town and Zorro lived amongst us, he would shit his pants if he saw this squirrel.
Getting back to the point…
El Negro is getting so tame that he peeks around the tree at eye level with me while I am changing the corn cobs on the feeder. I keep talking to him every time I am out there and I try not to make sudden and threatening moves. My goal is to be able to feed him out of my hand at the end of the summer without getting rabies.
My nephew totally dropped a bowling ball on his finger and broke it. But he broke it in half vertically. If you are having a hard time grasping that, think of the letter “Y.” As my mother put it, “Bones came right out of the finger and bled like a son of a gun.” Yikes!
He is one tough little man! Definitely didn’t learn that from his uncle!!!
Yeah! The new mutha-effin’ Weezer album! I can’t wait to listen to it all day today and write a review of it. Also, if you are obsessed with viral videos (like myself) and have not seen the new Weezer video for the single Pork and Beans yet, you should check it out.
Hey Andy! You should embed it in your blog with your new YouTube plugin!
OK!
Get ready Nebraska! And for those of you that aren’t from Nebraska, boy do I feel sorry for you! You are missing an extraordinary event…one in which Nebraskans await nearly as anxiously as the opening season of Husker football. Yes indeed, it is wild Asparagus season! People all across the upside-down-pan-shaped state will be scouring the ditches and railroad tracks in search of the delicacy this week. And in honor of wild Asparagus season, I would like to honor the one thing that makes Asparagus absolutely hilarious: Stinky Pee.
Did you know that your post-Asparagus stinky pee is caused by none other than a chemical called Methanethiol? But don’t be so quick to give Methanethiol such a bad rap! This cousin of sulfur actually helps cleanse your body of toxins. So give it a break!
Wanna know some other foods that have the stinky substance in them? HO-KAY!!
1) Cheddar Cheese
2) Eggs
3) Cabbage
4) Peanuts
5) Coffee
6) Mushrooms
Don’t bother this year, because wild Asparagus is only in season for another couple of days. But, get your friends together for next year’s wild Asparagus season and don’t miss out on the stinky pee excitement!
I know that God tests us everyday of our lives in different ways. These past couple of days he has really gone over the top!!! I didn’t get sick…ALL…WINTER…LONG. That is pretty good considering I share a floor of an office building with 500 some people and this was an extremely cold and miserable Nebraska winter.
However, the day that it hits 80 degrees for the first time, my ear started to ache. And now it has multiplied exponentially and the crud has completely taken over every membrane, gland and organ in my face, throat and chest. I was sitting at work yesterday and the pins and needles took over my face. You know, when you are freezing and sweating at the same time. I felt like I had something that was a cross between the Black Plague and the Ebola Virus.
Here is what I have been doing to treat the sonuvabitch:
1) Drinking English breakfast tea.
2) Having Jaci scratch my head while I lay in her lap and moan and groan.
3) Using throat numbing spray every 10 minutes.
4) Using nasal spray like a black tar heroin addict.
5) Cleaning my ears out nightly with the baby booger sucker outer thingy.
6) Taking generic Sudafed which works about as well on my cold as tomato juice baths do when you get sprayed by a skunk (and by this I mean it does not work worth a crap).
I refuse to call in sick, though. As Martin Luther King, Jr. once said “I have a dream that one day I will put a sweet down payment on a car with the money I make selling my sick days back to the company…”
The most valuable lesson I ever learned from my Father is that calling in sick is for wussies.
I was talking to this lady today about parking in downtown Omaha. She parks in the parking ramp that is connected to the tunnel at work and pays $110 dollars a month for a spot there. For an 8 x 12 parking spot!!! I, on the other hand, park about 8 blocks away on a 10 hour parking meter which costs me 75 cents a day. So, for a month, that’s roughly $15.75.
She just couldn’t get over how insane I was to park that far away. She just could not fathom why I would not buy a parking pass. For me the answer is simple and it is a two part answer: One, because it saves me $94.25 cents a month and two, I really don’t mind the walk. In fact, it only takes me about 8 minutes.
How insane am I??? Lets assume the parking prices never change for the next 35 years of my employment. Lets assume that I were to put that $94.25 into a high interest savings account like an ORANGE ONLINE SAVINGS ACCOUNT from INGDirect. Lets assume that the interest rate on that account will be 3% for the next 35 years, even though 6 months ago it was at almost 5% and I have seen it even higher. So if I put in the $1,131 that I save a year by parking at the parking meter, in 35 years I would have…
$70,434.09
So if you have areas in your life where you cut corners to save money and people make fun of you for being frugal, remind those people of the power of compound interest.
You can check out the official Centennial Bulb website here.
I attended a funeral lately for my uncle’s best friend Sam. He died at the ripe age of 48 from a blood clot that went to his heart like KER-BLAM! He was fine one second and then got to feeling kind of sick, and less than an hour later he was with God. Let me tell you what, when I go, I hope it is as quickly as Sam. I don’t want anything long and drawn out. But, anyway, that’s not my point…
What got me thinking was his actual funeral ceremony. Talk about a celebration of life! Here are some of the details in a list…because, well…I like to make lists:
1) Sam wore shorts 365 days a year. No matter what the weather was, he would never put pants on. His legs were literally immune to the Nebraska winters. So, his pallbearers all wore shorts and t-shirts instead of formal-wear of any kind. My uncle was wearing jean shorts and a Bob Segar T-shirt, while another guy was wearing some hideous Hawaiian shorts with a Styx T-shirt.
2) Speaking of Styx, they read the lyrics of “Come Sail Away” instead of any generic and dime-a-dozen bible verse.
3) The minister compared life to a dart game. Sam loved darts. If Sam and I were a carnival act, I would trust him to tie me to a wall and throw darts at an apple on my head without thinking twice.
4) Sam totally loved his nieces and they talked about how he would kiss them with “Raspberry Kisses” or, in other words, make farting noises against their cheeks.
5) A common phrase that could be heard by everyone speaking at the funeral was “This Sucks Rocks.” Sam has been saying that for years and years and years.
6) Sam loved to eat…he definitely didn’t enjoy delaying that pleasure in the slightest. They talked about how his favorite prayer was short and sweet: “Rub-a-dub dub, thanks for the grub…YAY GOD!”
7) And the coolest part of all was honoring Sam’s love for fireworks. As they carried the casket out of the church, people threw black cats around it. Also, at the end of the burial service at the cemetery there was an ear-shattering fireworks display that gave me an “inbetweener.” For those of you that don’t know what an “inbetweener” is, it’s one of those emotions that is unlike any other. It’s when you are in between being mad and happy, or mad and sad. Or in my case, when they set off those fireworks, I laughed hysterically while crying and blubbering like I haven’t in a long time.
The whole thing got me thinking about MY funeral. I hope that my pallbearers will wear grass stained jeans with Minnesota Vikings T-shirts or Iowa Hawkeye hooded sweatshirts. I hope that my dog will be at my funeral in Jaci’s lap. I hope they use the phrase “Holy Mother-Effing Crap” to remember me. I hope that they eat hot dogs after the funeral in remembrance of me. I hope someone sings Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind at my service. I hope they tell stories about me in college. I hope they remember the silly drunken times I’ve had. I hope they recall the time I sang that Whitney Houston song from The Bodyguard at the karaoke bar and MURDERED it! I hope my favorite (only) nephew gets told that he has a brand spankin’ new guardian angel.
Everyone has been to funerals. Maybe not everyone has been to a celebration of life like this one was. It really opens your eyes about how you want to be remembered and how you hope people will celebrate your life on the day that you meet your maker.
So, I thought I would throw my hat in for this sweet little website. Jaci and I weren’t really thrilled about picking just one or two spots to register at for our wedding. And I was not exactly ecstatic about walking around with a little scanner thing all flippin’ day picking out what we want for presents.
Then we stumbled across MyRegistry.com which is totally what we were looking for and what we are going to utilize for our wedding to avoid some hassle and to personalize our gift registry. Also, by using MyRegistry we will pretty much get EXACTLY what we want. Here is how it works:
1. When you mail out your invitations you make sure to add the link to the MyRegistry website along with a personal pass code for folks in your wedding.
2. Then you and your groom/bride-to-be go on the page and you can find pictures of things that you want (or links to certain websites with that item) and put them on your page. You can add little notes…for example, Jaci and I are crazy about Disc Golf. So we put a picture of a disc on our registry and added a note that says “Disc golf is a very fun activity and much more environmentally friendly than regular golf. Jaci and I need some new discs because our current discs have hit their fair share of trees! You can find these discs for around 7 to 15 dollars. We prefer Innova brand. Thanks!”
3. Then your guests go on your registry page and when they find what they would like to purchase for you as a gift, they click on the picture. They have a variety of options: MyRegistry searches for the best deals across the Internet if they would like to purchase the item online. It also searches for any online coupons that your guest can print off. Then your guest can notate if they would like to purchase that item online or they can check the box that says they bought the item at a store and it disappears from your online registry!
4. Guests can also contribute money to larger items such as a furniture set.
Best of all, the service is completely free! If you are thinking about getting married, I would highly, HIGHLY recommend MyRegistry. It’s the greatest thing since Democrats in the White House!
Little guy has some moves, huh?
It is a very simple concept. Chris has a small ball taped up underneath his armpit with athletic tape. All he does is squeeze his arm against his body when he is ready and he cuts off that artery and WHAM! There goes his pulse!!!
You can do the same thing at home. Put a golf ball or a ping pong ball under your armpit and bet somebody five dollars (preferably a registered nurse or doctor for the best effect) that you can stop your pulse! Works every single time!
One of my favorite shows of all time was Cheers. My future mother-in-law reminded me of a classic scene from the show, in which Cliff shared some infinite wisdom with Norm.
“Well you see, Norm, it’s like this . . . A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. When the heard is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members.
In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Now, as we know, excessive intake of alcohol kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. And that, Norm, is why you always feel smarter after a few beers.”
It doesn’t get any funnier than that. Period.
The Minnesota Twins have won 5 out of their last 7 games and have somehow managed by God’s good grace to get themselves into first place in the American League Central. Granted, they are only up by one game (and it probably won’t last long) but STILL!!! The Minnesota Twins are in FIRST PLACE!! If this can hold up until tomorrow night, I will definitely be drinking and toasting to it.
And, if you haven’t already heard…or maybe you just plain don’t give two Henrys about the Twins…but Carlos Gomez hit for the cycle against the White Sox on Wednesday night. If you aren’t familiar, this is when a player gets every single type of hit in one game. One single, one double, one triple and a home run. Four amazing things about Gomez doing it the other night?
1) He’s a ROOKIE (22 years old)
2) The night before the Twins only have 1 HIT in the entire game..as a TEAM!
3) He hit for the cycle BACKWARDS meaning he hit the homer first, the triple second and so on…
4) The last Twins player to hit for the cycle was none other than Kirby Puckett…good ol’ Kirby may he rest in peace. When did Kirby do it? All the way back in 1986.
I was reading MSN and came across an articleabout the 10 worst franchises in pro sports. The particular article mentioned the Twins as one of them. Evidently this Jack-Ass hasn’t checked the standings lately. What a moron…
No, seriously…if you haven’t tried it already, put your thumb on the area from between your eyes to the tip of your nose. It is the same length! Sweet! Here are some other pretty awesome Human Body facts.
-Scientists say the higher your I.Q., the more you dream.
-The largest cell in the human body is the female egg and the smallest is the
male sperm.
-You use 200 muscles to take one step.
-The average woman is 5 inches shorter than the average man.
-Your big toes have two bones each while the rest have three.
-A pair of human feet contains 250,000 sweat glands.
-A full bladder is roughly the size of a soft ball.
-The acid in your stomach is strong enough to dissolve razor blades.
-The human brain cell can hold 5 times as much information as the Encyclopedia
Britannica.
-It takes the food seven seconds to get from your mouth to your stomach.
-The average human dream lasts 2-3 seconds.
-Men without hair on their chests are more likely to get cirrhosis of the liver
than men with hair.
-At the moment of conception, you spent about half an hour as a single cell.
-There are about one trillion bacteria on each of your feet.
-Your body gives off enough heat in 30 minutes to bring half a gallon of water
to a boil.
-The enamel in your teeth is the hardest substance in your body.
-Your teeth start growing 6 months before you are born.
-When you are looking at someone you love, your pupils dilate, and they do the same when you are looking at someone you hate.
I can’t believe I just quoted Oprah Winfrey…
Now that I have managed to get my swearing somewhat under control, I have now begun to do some heavy reflecting on my extreme difficulty (inability, rather) to say what should be one of the most easy words in the English language to say: NO
It has gotten to the point of absurdity. Atrociousness. I simply cannot ever find it in me to say “No” to people. If science ever perfects the art of stem cell growing, the first thing I am signing up for is a back bone. I get walked all over like a doormat because there are many people in my life that are perfectly aware of my condition.
Need some money? Ask Andy.
Need a ride? Ask Andy.
Need some work done for free? Ask Andy.
Need someone to work overtime? Ask Andy.
Are you a struggling salesman? You could sell Andy a ketchup Popsicle if he was wearing a white suit.
Need your husband killed to collect the insurance money? Just ask Andy!!!
Got girl scout cookies you want to sell? Hit up Andy 18 different times!
Have an animal you can’t take care of anymore? Just ask Andy to take it off your hands!
All jokes aside, I really feel like I am struggling with this lately. Where does it stem from? Maybe it came from my childhood which begs the question: Is it more important to teach your kids to be nice and polite all the time or teach them to stick up for themselves? I was obviously not taught the latter very well.
It comes down to three things…actually three personal fears:
1) Fear of somebody becoming angry because of me: I fear conflict and all I want is peace whether it be on a micro-level between two people or on a macro-level in the world as a whole. But when I really think about it, me giving into them so that they don’t get angry is only empowering them! In a way, I am simply training them to treat me this way in the future. They learn that they can get anything from me by threat of anger and conflict and they use it to their advantage!!!
2) Fear of losing a relationship: I’m human…I need friends and people that love me. Sometimes I talk myself into thinking that if I say no to someone, I will lose all or a part of our relationship to one another.
3) Fear of hurting people: A lot of times I will say “Yes” to something because I am afraid to hurt someones feelings. But once again, this is self-destructive. Take Jaci for instance…she can read me like a book. If she asks me to go along somewhere with her and I say “Yes” so that I don’t hurt her feelings, later on she will be able to tell by my not-so-jubilant attitude that I don’t want to be doing what we are doing. This will upset her and hurt her feelings because I did not tell her in the first place. So by not saying “No” in the first place because I feared hurting her feelings, I manage to hurt them anyway which is exactly what I did not want to do. PHEW!
I have decided that it is time for me to start empowering myself with the word “No.” Now that Jaci and I have bought a house and we are getting married, I am officially the man of the house. I am the Alpha male, no question about it. Jaci doesn’t want to be with a sap…with a wuss…she wants someone that will not only protect his own interests but somebody that will stick up for his family, too.
Every day I am going to work on saying “No” to at least one person. Today my Aunt asked if we wanted these two old white leather chairs for our new house. Not only were they not white anymore (they were yellow), but the leather was cracked and torn and hideous. The old Andy (and by old I mean about 3 days ago) would have taken those old chairs off her hands, lugged them home and had nowhere to put these nasty excuses for furniture. I would have beat myself up over it and hated myself for these two new additions to our already ancient furniture (I literally had my diapers changed on our bedroom dresser at one point).
Instead, I told her thanks but no thanks.
You may say “Big Deal.”
Well, it was a HUGE DEAL. It felt good. It wasn’t that bad. In fact, I want to do it again. I’m not saying that I want to lose my God-given compassion and empathy for others. I just want to gain a little self-respect that I think is long overdue.
Well, I have decided to conclude my Potty Mouth campaign quite early in the wake of a charitable donation that needs to be in quite soon. For anyone that is unfamiliar or gives a hoot, I began to monitor my use of swear words a couple of months ago and I intended to donate 50 cents for every swear word that I used to a charity of a reader’s choice. That reader ended up being AxsDeny from the Vax Cave. One interesting bit about AxsDeny is that I used to think his name was Janice. I still feel bad about that to this day. But I really do appreciate your readership and feedback on my posts.
The charity is the Multiple Schelorosis Society, in particular his brother(-in-law??) Daniel Decker will be riding in the ”Escape to the Lake [Erie] MS Bike Tour” and is accepting donations as we speak in hopes to reach his goal of $1500.00. I ended up rounding my swearing fund up to an even 20 dollars. MS is a heartbreaking and nasty disease. My 3rd grade teacher was diagnosed years ago and I can remember crying to my mother when I came home from school because it scared me to see her in so much pain throughout the school day. From what little reading up I did on the subject matter prior to my donation, it appears that researchers are making leaps and bounds on the way to a cure. If any of my handful of readers are interested in supporting Dan in his bike ride, please, please PLEASE have a look at his website here. And, let me type out the URL:
I would like to give myself a pat on the back in my efforts to dramatically reduce my swearing. I have exceeded my personal expectations by a long-shot. I think that reducing my use of swear words has had a direct effect on the control of my temper. It was easy to express my frustration before by dropping and F-Bomb here or there and calling the driver ahead of me an S.O.B. Now, I am forced to really think about what I am getting angry or frustrated about and I must make the decision if it is truly worth it to let it get the best of me. By replacing a swear word with a couple deep breaths and some rational thoughts, I have noticed that I really do feel better. I am not sweating the small stuff as often and even Jaci has noticed a rather large change in how I handle things that don’t go my way.
Now that I have chosen to end my anti-swearing campaign early, I am now focused on my inability to say “No” to people when they ask me to do things that I don’t really want to do. I need to be assertive and grow a back bone. I need to stick up for myself and what makes me happy rather than let people walk all over me. This is my next personal wellness campaign for myself and I may throw a blog out there about it in the coming days. As of right now, I am working on saying “No” to someone at least once a day.
I was driving home the other day from Cedar Falls, IA when I stopped at a little gas station off the I-80 to grab a cup of coffee. I was absolutely ecstatic at what I came across! No, not the coffee…it was your typical watered down gas station coffee. However, as my fingertips touched the coffee cup, I felt a sensation like no other before. This was no ordinary cup. I rushed to the counter in excitement and pleaded for the cigarette smoking attendant to tell me what in the world this cup is made out of! She shrugged her shoulders and mumbled something about corn.
You see, this cup felt strange. It didn’t feel like paper. It didn’t feel like styrofoam. There was something absolutely extraordinary about this 24-oz-liquid-holding-magnificent-piece-of-engineering. Its texture felt bubbly and furry to the touch.
The second I got home I began my research. What I found was an absolute delight for someone as worried about the environment and the landfill crisis as myself. The cup that I had stumbled across is an “EcoCup.” This cup is developed from corn byproducts such as cobs and stalks and is completely biodegradable. Why is this such a delight for hippies like me?
You see…
Here is the scary part…
Of the 100 billion cups of coffee that America drinks every year, approximately 14 billion of those cups are served in good ol’ disposable cups. That is enough cups to wrap around the planet 55 times. Big deal though, right? I mean, at least the paper cups that are used are biodegradable, right? Everybody knows paper is biodegradable. It comes from trees. Duh!!
Wrong! Every paper coffee cup or any other paper cup designed to hold a hot beverage has a plastic lining made from a petrochemical. This lining takes thousands and thousands and thousands of years to break down in a landfill.
Notice I did not say biodegrade. When something biodegrades, the microbes in the soil eat it and digest it and it basically becomes dirt and organic matter. These plastic liners, along with things like plastic bags and bottles do not biodegrade; they simply break down meaning they just keep breaking up into smaller and smaller pieces until they are pretty much microscopic and end up back in our ground water and drinking water as flavor enhancers. On top of that, if we saved the petro chemicals used in the lining of coffee cups and used them instead as an energy source, we could heat the entire city of Newtown, Connecticut (8,300 residents) for an entire year. If we stopped using plastic shopping bags we could probably heat the entire state if not the entire Northeast part of the country. But instead, they end up blowing around landfill sites and choking kittens and puppies and the occasional bird or two.
The cool thing about this EcoCup that I found out is that the plastic in its lining is made of CORN! This makes it completely and 100 percent BIODEGRADEBALE. Well, I shouldn’t say 100 percent…there is that dang plastic lid. But anyway, I just think it is wonderful that we are developing more and more eco-friendly products like this.
That’s all I really had to say. I am gong to go watch SportsCenter now and after that, me and my new EcoCup are going to go for a walk and we might even go shopping at Gordman’s or Home Depot together if time permits.
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