The one about nachos

I'm not telling you how to live your life, I'm just giving you pointers on how to make it much more enjoyable and less like an episode of "The Good Wife."  Ok, I haven't actually watched that show, but I assume it's based on a normal, everyday person's life that happens to be pretty boring.

I'm willing to bet a substantial amount of monopoly money that most of you out there get hungry.  I'm willing to bet an even more substantial amount of fake One Million Dollar bills that when you get hungry, you're not really interested in waiting 7-10 days to design, shop for and prepare a 16 course gourmet meal that will surely cure that hunger of yours.

That's where nachos come in.  You take some chips and some cheese and you make your life a whole lot less hungry.  That's all well and good, but let's take a look at what you're using to make these nachos:

Really guys?  That's the choice you make?  I won't pretend like I'm not disappointed, but that's why I'm here.  Let's clean this mess up, ok?

The key to great nachos is superior ingredients*.  First, ditch the generic bag of terrible chips.  I know they look good in the store, but every time you bring them home, they never meet expectations.  We're going to replace those with some Original Flavor Sunchips. You're mouth will thank me later.  Second, please stop buying that Kraft Mystery Cheese™.  It tastes like plastic (because I'm sure that's what it's made of) and I'm reasonably certain that it causes premature hiccups. Let us be very clear on this point, if you're going to hiccup, you want to make sure it's nice and mature when you do.  Also, I hate Kraft.  Instead, pick your favorite cheese and buy several blocks of it from various manufacturers.  Grate up some cheese and find out which brand you like best.  For me, it's Tillimook.  I'll eat whatever they're making and I will like it.  You may have noticed that I said to buy a block of cheese.  Then I said to grate it.  This is an essential step.  Freshly grated cheese is required in order to make your life better.  If you're not grating your own cheese, at least have the decency to pay a small child to do it for you.  You won't regret it.

All you have to do now is sprinkle some cheese on the chips, microwave for about 25 seconds and start feeling superior to everyone around you.  The End and You're Welcome!

*If you're having trouble remembering what kind of ingredients to use, try this helpful little mnemonic:  Simply Using Plain Elderly Rubbish Is Only Rude. Instead Never Go Running Errands Donning Inside Evening Nightgowns Too Soon.

Another Cold Hard Truth brought to you by the Shuck 'N Jive

We have a growing problem in this country.  Belly Itchers.  Nobody wants them.  We seem to prefer pitchers over Belly Itchers almost universally.  From little league all the way up to the major leagues, it seems as if Belly Itchers have no place in this world.

BI's have been around for centuries.  Not a lot of people know this, but prior to 1845, Belly Itchers were a well respected people with a rich history and a lot to offer the various towns and cities that they occupied.  Of course, we all remember what happened in 1845.  The amount of negative Belly Itcher propaganda at that time would be considered excessive even in today's world of 24 hour news cycles and the internet.  Just look at this old anti-Belly Itcher flyer I found in the Shuck 'N Jive Archives:

It boggles the mind how these kinds of hate crimes start, but it's never to late to end the mistreatment of a group of people and prove that the human race is really decent and kind and should not, I repeat NOT, be wiped out by Alien with superior technology/morals.  I'm challenging all of you to be a better person and befriend a Belly Itcher today.  I think you'll find that they aren't as disgusting as you've been led to believe.  Once you've done that, go ahead and print out the picture below, use a safety pin to attach it to your shirt like you're a 2nd grader bringing home a note to your parents and take a photo of yourself wearing said picture in front of a well populated area so that I can see you spreading the word.  Post that picture online somewhere and leave a link in the comments.  I'll chose the best one and give the winner a prize*.  Please don't photoshop the picture unless you're really good at photoshop.  I don't want to look at any poorly photoshopped pictures.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's topic: Broken Ladders and their unacceptable use as a replacement for a batter.


*There's a well above average chance that the prize will consist of a series of "attaboys," virtual high fives and a picture of me giving you the thumbs up, but you never know, if enough people bend to my will, I may actually send you something.

Vices (oddly enough, that's not even what this post is about. I really should have called it Addictions.)

Everyone has vices.  I have surprisingly few.  Actually, I have annoyingly few.  I think that's why people punch me in the kidneys when I walk by.  Something about the way I walk.  Whatever.

While I may have few vices, I have a ton of addictions.  Let me list them for you in no particular order: Air, Basketball, Baseball, Football, Tennis, Guitar Hero, not dying, not watching commercials about foot disease, washing my hands, sunflower seeds, good music, love, pens, triangular shaped paper clips, iPhones, cherry swirl coffee cake, television, monetary compensation, learning about nose blowing etiquette, the number 9, puzzles about left handed scissors, custom made earphones and compressed natural sunshine.  That's the short list anyway.

These addictions have had a profound effect on my life, but none more than my addiction to sunflower seeds.  Let me show you a picture I took of my sunflower seed room the other day (yes, I have a room dedicated just to sunflower seeds.  I imagine it's similar to the rooms alligator addicts* have.).

As you can see, I have two giant piles of sunflower seeds.  My love of sunflower seeds is so great that I feel the need to swim around in them Scrooge McDuck style.  The fact that I am unable to resist the urge to swim around in my giant pile of sunflower seeds necessitates a second pile just for eating.  Swimming around in my sunflower seeds means that some of them will touch my feet and that's just gross.  I have a rule about how once something touches my foot, or anyone's foot for that matter, it is no longer eligible to enter my mouth.  If you don't have a problem with that sort of thing though, go ahead and help yourself to the swimming pile.

I know what your thinking.  The answer is 3.  I bring in 3 truckloads of sunflower seeds a week.

*Word to the wise, you do not want to be at an AAA meeting when someone relapses.

Another bad idea brought to you by the Shuck 'N Jive

Some of you may know that awhile back, I took some improv classes.  I cannot recommend this enough to anyone and everyone.  You don't have to want to be a professional improver (in fact, I recommend against that as it doesn't pay jack squat), you just have to have an open mind.  I think the benefits of improv in your everyday life would make it worth your while.  You will spend several hours a week with other people that will create a safe, nurturing environment for you.  You will learn to treat everyone as though they were a genius and in return, everyone will treat you like a genius and you'll feel a sense of support I've never found anywhere else.  You'll also get to make a lot of dick and fart jokes, that's worth the $200-$300 price tag alone!

Ok, now that I'm sure all of my readers have signed up for an intro improv class, I'll move on to tell you about one of my favorite improv books.  It's called Improvise: Scene From the Inside Out by Mick Napier.  There's a lot of improv books out there and they say a lot of different things.  Nobody is right and nobody is wrong.  People are different and some books help certain people more than others.  I happen to do well with this one.  One of the things I like about this book is the exercises it gives you to help you train your mind.  One of my personal favorites is the Dada Monologue.  The basic idea behind it is to not make any sense.  This helps you work on free association.  To get started, just look at something and start talking about it, but don't try to make any sense.  In fact, the second you feel yourself starting to make sense, turn it around and crazy it up a bit.  I find this helps me when I'm in a writing rut.  I almost never do it, but when I do, boy does it work wonders!  Here's an example:

Pine tar is often used in the elaborate recreation of tombstones for monkey lemons.  The best way to fight cats is to use broad words and mannerisms most often tickled by the idea of a sandwich making a hot dog eat frugal mints.  Often lost is the hasty retreat of the television gone shopping at the colloquial benchmark brought to the staple of a timely diet.  Champion telestrators are one of the many philosophical differences between keyboards and typists.  Among all glass fixtures surprised by the lack of intermittent markers is the jump rope of my best friends lost dynamo.  Paper clips seem like harmless hamsters compared to the finite amount of cheddar ice cream in the world of Walt Disney.

Ok, I screwed up.  I feel like the sentence, "Champion telestrators are one of the many philosophical differences between keyboards and typists." actually makes sense.  And if it doesn't, I don't want to hear about it, I just want to draw a picture of what I think that means.

I'm pretty sure that picture will crystallize it for you, but for those of you that don't quite get it, let me explain by saying that keyboards, by there very nature, are logical.  Typists on the other hand, are an extremely sad people.  You'll notice that the typist in the picture above doesn't even have a flat panel monitor.  In this day and age, it's demeaning to be forced to use a CRT monitor.  You can't even give those things away.

I'm glad I could clear that up for you.  I'm going to go play Guitar Hero 5 now.

The Stanky Leg

I have recently been alerted to a threat I believe everyone should know about.  It's called Stanky Leg.  I don't have any idea what it really is, but I do know that there is a song about it that I've never heard.  I have no choice but to make something up and accept it as truth.

Stanky Leg, or the get-away-from-me-your-leg-smells disease as it's known on the street, is an illness affecting more than 17 billion people today.  You may not have it yourself, but chances are everyone you know and/or are related to is infected.  There is no known cure, but there is an intern with a C+ average that has been assigned the task of creating a chart to track the average lifespan of those currently engulfed by this disease.  He's at lunch right now, but I'm sure as soon as he gets back, he'll be all over it.  Until then, we'll just have to wait and hope for the best.

Symptoms of Stanky Leg include foul odors emanating from the leg area, crazy bad arthritis in the shoulder, left handedness, ankle bearding, Chinese checkers infatuation and purple burps.  It can affect either leg, but not both at the same time.  It has a one leg Stank rule.  You may notice your friends walking away from you and pointing at your leg as they cover their mouths with any available gas masks or bandit style handkerchiefs they may be wearing around their neck.  It is most commonly transfered through diaper sharing, but you may also catch it from shaking hands or open mouth talking.

Please distribute the flyer below to help spread awareness.  It's up to us as a community to stomp out this vicious disease.  I'm counting on you.

The Unavoidable Truth

So last night I was with my fiance heading out for dinner when we saw a group of people in costumes walking down the street.  I wish I could say that it was to be expected due to the Halloween holiday, but sadly, it was to be expected because that's what people in downtown Chicago do.  Every day I go to work, I see people dressed up as "business men/women" and "students" and "homeless people."  It's fun for the first few months, but after awhile, you think to yourself, give it up!  Especially all those homeless people.  They lay it on thick.  Always asking for change for food/bus fair/clothes/investing.  I get it guys.  Nice costume, but leave me alone, I have to go tend to a blind lady.

Last night was different though, there was a lot more variety.  I will attribute that to Halloween.  Most of it was pretty standard fare, girls dressed as nuns/various-other-uptight-prudish-women, guys dressed up as women dressed as women who don't know how to dress like women because they're really men.  The usual.  But then there was Death.  Normally Death is a standard outfit, but this guy took it a step further.  He was on stilts.  This made him approximately 10 feet tall.  Awesome.  Or so I thought.

Sure, a 10 foot tall Death costume is great, but really, where are you going with this thing?  Outside works out well, but as soon as you get to your destination, you're screwed.  The best part of the costume is towering over everyone.  As soon as you lose that, you're just another guy in a Death costume, only you're tripping over your pants because they're way too long.  Then there's the stilts.  What are you going to do with these?  You can't just leave them in the corner, they'll get stolen.  I know that because I was looking into stilts a few years ago as an alternate means of transportation (I figured if I got long enough stilts, I could cut my work commute down to three steps*.  Who wouldn't want their commute to work to be three steps?!?!?) but I stopped looking when I saw the cost of insurance would be five times more than owning a private moonship used only for recreation and the occasional escape from interplanetary apocalyptic collapses.  The theft rate is nearly 95%.  It's almost impossible to hold onto stilts.  They're difficult to store and a giant pain in the butt to carry around.  You ever see anyone carrying around their stilts while not using them?  Exactly.

* I saw this ad in the paper a few years ago.  Looking back on it now, I don't know why the poor craftsmanship of the ad didn't tip me off to the "too good to be true-ness" of it.

32nd Anniversary

For thousands of years I have struggled with the same question. How can I tell people that it's my birthday without actually using audible words or sock puppet miming?

The fact that I haven't answered this question in thousands of years is a little on the pathetic side, but maybe that's all in my head since I'm only 32 years old. That's what all the legal documents say anyway.

As of today, this is no longer an issue. My oldest sister, the one with the PhD, has given me the solution to end my misery. Enjoy!





I'll be sporting this fine new fashion accessory every Halloween. It is ok to be jealous.

-- Posted From My birthday iPhone. Birthday checks welcome!

Dinner

I made a sandwich for dinner tonight. It was simple in its construction. Bread, black forest ham, Cajun turkey, mustard, mayo and pepper jack cheese. It was toasted and delicious. As you can see below, I did have to take one unusual step in order to complete this mouthful of happy sunshine.



First of all, yes, I do have amazing arm strength. Second, no, this was not dangerous. The photograph clearly shows that I am holding my iPhone. It has a built in accelerometer. There's no conceivable way my iPhone allows me to make a mistake without alerting me with a vibration, text message or custom ring tone. Third, false, the cheese is not on the ground, that is gross. In reality, I am about to slice down with such force that I am actually hovering above the ground at countertop height.

It is for that third reason that I cannot advocate using a knife of this size to cut cheese. Is it cool? Obviously. Is it easy? Not at all. Turns out, cheese posseses an unusually high friction coefficient. It's almost impossible to slice even the smallest block of cheese without summoning the strenght of seven men. Fortunately I took a summer course at the local junior college in order to master that very skill. I'm just not sure everyone will have the same forethought as I did to register for that class. It's an elective, but it fills up fast.

If you've got a normal sized knife though, I highly recommend this sandwich for your next lunch or dinner meal.

-- Posted From My iPhone using the strength of only four men. I save the seven man variety for special occasions and crime fighting.

I Liked it, so I put a ring on it.

-- Posted From My engaged iPhone.

DIY Custom Ear Phones

Section 1: The Back story*

(If you don't care about the back story, go ahead and skip to Section 2: The Reckoning. Don't worry, I won't be offended, I'll probably skip most of this section myself. It's going to be loaded with typos and incomplete sentences as well as long, incongruous soliloquies about the merits of post it notes in an email society. Do yourself a favor and scroll down several paragraphs.)

As all three of my hardcore readers know, I have an iPhone. It does many a wondrous thing for me from perfecting my ability to create as many words as possible out of six letters to allowing me to watch Dodger games from pretty much anywhere I can get a decent 3G signal (not as easy as you'd think in Chicago). But one of the most useful things it does for me is play music. I listen to music pretty much wherever I go. Up until recently, I'd been using the stock headphones that came with the phone when I bought it. Then this happened:

Anyone that's purchased an iPod or iPhone in the past few years is familiar with that scene. I thought I was immune because that sort of thing only happens in the movies, right? Wrong. So I went down to the Apple store find a new set of headphones that would work proper with my iPhone because I also like to use my headset to take phone calls. If I had been in the market to spend a few hundred dollars, I would have been in luck. They offered several choices for millionaires and the like, but pretty much nothing for my $50 budget, save for another pair just like the ones I already had that would also fail in another six months or so. I had a small temper tantrum, cried a lot, then settled on these:

Yes, they are the Apple brand in-ear headphones. My logic was this: They received good reviews, they would be covered under my Apple care policy and they were roughly half the price of the competition. They were still more than I wanted to spend, but I was hoping for something that would last me more than six months. I put them in for the walk home and learned three things:

1. You have to lock that cord down or you will hear every step you take as the cord hits your chest and transfers the sound right up to your ears.

2. After about five minutes, those "soft" ear buds start to hurt my ears.

3. The music I listen to has a melody, lyrics and a healthy amount of base.

I was blown away by the sound quality. I had always heard that the stock headphones sounded like crap, but I just passed that off as audiophiles spreading their nonsense and figured the headphones sounded just fine. I no longer hold that opinion.

The sound was phenomenal, but what to do about the pain? I tried to tough it out for a few days thinking I would get used to it, but like my Grandmother always said, I'm a huge sissy. I couldn't hang, so I started looking into alternatives. I briefly considered having my ears removed and sculpting the remaining sound holes into perfect circles to better accommodate the ear buds, but then I realized I'd have to gouge out my eyes because I wouldn't be able to wear sunglasses anymore and all the squinting would give me a headache, so that was out. Then I accidentally stumbled across a website for custom molded earplugs while googling "custom molded earplugs." Custom headphones seemed like a good idea, but spending another $120 did not. Did I mention that I'm currently 14 months into a game of "Which bill shall I skip this month?" Well I am. So I did some research on do it yourself options and didn't find much. The closest I came was some guy who shoved epoxy in his ear, let it dry, broke open an existing pair of headphones and rewired them to his freshly drilled ear shaped glue blob. I respect the spirit of do-it-yourselfers everywhere, but my Grandmother branded sissy status precluded me from attempting such a thing. So I climbed into my thinking tree, got arrested for trespassing and came up with an alternative while trying to avoid being asked to join a "club" of some sort in lockup. Here's what I came up with:

Section 2: The Reckoning

The first thing I did was order some ear molding kits from here because I'm no chemist and when it comes to sticking things in my ears, I prefer those things to come from a source that purports to know what they're talking about even though I have no way whatsoever of confirming it. Next, I bought a plastic/silicone mold making kit of this variety. After three agonizingly long days, everything showed up in the mail and I was ready to begin.

Step 1: Read the instructions.

Step 2: Put the junk in your ears. For this step, I recommend having a partner help you out unless you're prone to giggle fits, then just do it yourself. It's a lot harder to do on your own, but not as hard as coming back from the dead because the person that's trying to put this in your ears will kill you if you move around too much. Not because this stuff is that dangerous, but because your moving around will be so annoying that death will be the only option available to the person formerly known as your assistant. Wait about 10 minutes and see if it's ready to take out. The instructions that come with the ear impression kit tell how you'll know when it's ready. Yeah, I could tell you right now, but then you might not read the instructions and I could never forgive myself if that were to happen.

Step 3: Prepare to make a negative of your new ear impression. For this step, I utilized the latest in paper cup and paper clip technology to suspend the ear impression. I thought this would be the easiest way to make a proper negative. It worked on my first try, so if there's a better way to do this, I didn't have to find it. Feel free to try out something new, but this worked for me.

Step 4: Mix and pour the plastic. I was probably a bit impatient at this point and I didn't really read the instructions for the plastic. You might want to do that and see if they give you any tips on how to measure out equal amounts of the two liquids you'll be mixing. I spilled a little bit more than I'd care to admit. Just be careful not to fill up the mold cup past the part of the impression that would be considered outside of the ear, otherwise you might not be able to remove the impression from the plastic once it hardens.

Step 5: Once the plastic hardens (about 15 minutes), you can pull the impression out. After I finished pouring in the plastic, I was 95% sure I had made a horrific mistake and I would never be able to get the impression back out, but I was wrong. It took a little doing, but I got it out completely intact and it's only gotten easier to do since. I've made impressions for my girlfriend as well and the second time around, everything was much easier.

Step 6: Prepare the headphone adapter. For this step, I first took the existing soft ear bud (most headphones of this type come with at least three different sizes: small, medium and large. I recommend using one of the sizes that doesn't fit you at all in case you screw up completely and just want to use your headphones the way they came in the package.) and cut away almost all of the outer portion leaving behind just a little bit on the bottom to help serve as an anchor inside the silicone once you pour that in and around your new "adapter." Then I took a small section of coat hanger and wrapped it in scotch tape until the ear bud fit snugly on it. Then I took a drill bit the size of the coat hanger sans tape and drilled a small hole in the center of the ear canal on the mold that will help keep everything in place when the silicone is poured in. I then made a small notch in the paper cup on the other side to help steady the headphone adapter contraption doohickey as well.

Step 7: Mix and pour the silicone. It takes a very small amount to actually fill the earphone mold. I found it impossible to mix just a tiny bit, so be prepared to pour the excess into whatever you deem appropriate so that you don't feel like you're wasting it. I seem to find half a plastic egg worthy of such a thing. (Yes, silicone bounces) Fair warning, once you start, you might find that there's almost nothing that you don't want to pour this stuff on. It takes about 6 hours to properly cure, so consider doing this at night before you go to bed so you can wake up to a nice treat.

Step 8: You're pretty much done now. Just carefully remove the new ear buds from the mold and shave off the excess.

Having used these for a little over a week now, I can honestly say that they are the most comfortable thing I've ever put in my ear. Not only do they sound great, but they do a great job of blocking out background noise. I walk under the trains as they go around the loop here in Chicago and I can still enjoy my music and better yet, I can still hear what someone is saying to me if I'm on a phone call. When I made a pair for my girlfriend, I used a pair of Sony MDR-EX36V headphones, and they sound every bit as good as my Apple set (in some ways, they are even better because they really lock into the ear bud. Not that mine are falling out, but hers are much less likely to slip off). They go for $30 at Best Buy, but lack the phone functionality that I need. From the mold making kit I bought, I'd gather you could make 4 or 5 pairs of headphones easily enough, so get some friends together and you can probably bring the price down to about $50/pair (Sony buds, molding kit and impressions kit included) for headphones that will sound phenomenal and feel even better.

I probably missed something in there, so if you have a question, leave a comment and I'll try my best to answer it. I realize this is a pretty short post, so I apologize for not taking up more of your time. Here's some additional pictures if anyone is interested:

earphone project

*Some of this back story is probably true, most of it is probably not.