The Most Honest Post to Date

Here’s a little known fact about me, I sneeze approximately 1,329 times a day. I’ve tried everything from saying to myself, “self, do not sneeze today” to writing on a chalkboard, “I will not sneeze today” several dozen times. None of those seemingly bullet proof solutions have ever been able to suppress my amazing urges to sneeze though.

It’s gotten to the point where I’ve had to hire two retired mall security officers to carry around a mobile sneeze guard and hold it in front of me wherever I go. The Mall Pigs, as I like to call them, (seriously, it’s a term of endearment…) and I can often be seen walking around town, taking in some fresh air. Awhile back I had an automated system that was mounted on a giant backpack. It was a circular guard that would rotate every 5 minutes. As the shield passed through the backpack, it would be washed off, thus ensuring that I had a newly cleaned sneeze guard every 5 minutes (kind of like the protective shields they have on the tv cameras mounted on Indy cars.). While I loved the automated system, as I am a gadget freak, I missed the human touch. I like having officer Dukowski and officer Schmidt at my sides for every day conversation. I keep the automated sneeze guard in my car though, in case one or both of them call in sick. (for those of you that are dying to know, and I’m sure there’s at least one or two of you out there, officers D. and S. have a squeegee system worked out where in they alternate cleaning off the old fashioned portable sneeze guard. I do not envy them, but they rarely complain about it.)

This brings me to my next topic. All to often, people like to point out to me that when you sneeze, apparently you can’t keep your eyes open. This is false. I can absolutely keep my eyes open while I sneeze. Not only do I have photographic evidence of me in mid sneeze, eyes wide open, but I challenge anyone to stand directly in front of me whilst I sneeze and see if I close my eyes. What 99.95687% of the people I encounter don’t realize when they tell me this is that I have a stamped certificate from my optometrist. It has been notarized by a state representative and states that I possess “Superior Ocular Control.” Or SOC as it’s known in the optometry world. It’s not surprising that they don’t know this Because to my knowledge, I am the only person in the state of California that qualifies for such a prestigious award. I’m not shy about presenting it to them either. When question, I can often be heard explaining to the individual that I have SOC.

I will answer the obvious question now. No, I do not keep my eyes open every time I sneeze. While I do possess this rare ability, I choose not to do it unless called out on a challenge. The reason for this is that the only known side effect of not closing my eyes while I sneeze is that all of my eyebrow hairs fall out. Again, if challenged, I will not back down, but I prefer to keep my eyebrows. While everyone agrees that I don’t look any worse without eyebrows, as a matter of personal preference, I like to have them there. When I put on the prosthetics, everyone can tell and it’s just sad. “Nobody’s eyebrows are that perfect!” people will say. They are right; no one person has eyebrows as magnificent as my little eyebrow toupees. But the three hours it takes every morning to get them to look that way just isn’t worth it for me. Sure, having remarkably perfect eyebrows is nice, but the cost in time is to high. Bear in mind that I have many things to accomplish through out the day and to lose 5 hours to the eyebrows (three to apply, two to remove) is just too much.

While I can see how many people might think that all this sneezing would be a bit of a curse, allow me to enlighten you to one of the many perks it offers. A study was recently conducted by the National Association of Sneezing And Loitering (N.A.S.A.L. for short.) wherein it was determined that given the high totals in everyday sneezing produced by me, (I was second overall in the world. First place when to some Norwegian named Thor. He sneezes an average of 1,700 times a day. I rarely break 1,500 on a good day.) I am the most blessed individual on the face of the planet. (Turns out Thor, the first place guy, is kind of a jerk, so people rarely bless him. He’s actually ranked as the 5,631,326,215 most blessed individual in the world, if that’s any indication of how big of a jerk he is.)

Ahhh… another post in the books. Feels awkwardly unsatisfying, doesn’t it? Don’t worry, maybe next time I’ll post about something that makes sense… maybe not. Hot damn I’m unpredictable!!

New Post Eve

Is everyone excited?

October 31, 1977

Four Forty P.M.

The moment my life started,

Not when it began.

Mostly Useless Inovation

Now, watch in amazement as I proceed to post while totally ignoring the fact that I haven’t done so for nearly one full month! Although I must admit, when I started blogging, I said to my self, “Self, there’s no way in heck you’re going to go one full month without posting, got it?” and I was like, “Yeah me talking to myself, I hear you. Loud and clear.” (It should be noted here that I consider one month to be approximately 32 days, thus I am still inside the set parameters.)

If you’re like me, and I gather that most of you are, then you like to save money and spend a lot of it at once. I am constantly exploring ways to do both things at the same time. It usually proves to be quite a chore. Saving money and spending a lot at the same time is a lot harder than in sounds. In an effort to accomplish what I call “Speaving” money, I recently stumbled across an ingenious idea. It’s kind of tricky, but see if you can follow along.

Step one is the purchase of a home. The market right now is not very buyer friendly, but I have the feeling that will change soon enough. Give it about 5 years or so, then start looking for a house to buy. There are a few crucial elements to the house that you’ll want to be aware of. One thing you’re going to want is a nice tall tree in the backyard. The bigger the better. Another is to make sure that the power lines lead into the house from the roof. That is a must.

Step two is to immediately stop paying attention to that large tree in the backyard. Treat it almost as if it doesn’t exist. Don’t water it, don’t prune it and certainly do not name it. If anyone suggest that you give it a name, smack them square in the mouth and say, “Don’t you see what I’m trying to accomplish here?!!?” Then stop inviting that friend over, or, if it was a family member, move them into the garage, make them sleep on an old army cot with wobbly legs and feed them through a slot in the door. If the neighbors or the police ask you about why you have that relative locked up in the garage, just say, “Who? Him? Oh, that’s just an animatronic robot I made myself with some parts I bought at radio shack. Yeah, by trade I’m a robot designer. That’s just a little home project I’m working on. I think that someday the market for pretending you have you’re very own prisoner is going to be extremely high, that’s why I’ve programmed him to whine and complain and say things like, ‘Help me! I’m trapped in here!! Won’t somebody please let me out of this hellish dark dungeon?!!?’ Pretty cool, huh?” 99% of the time they will agree with you and give you some suggestions as to what else the prisoner should do, like, scrape at the walls or pound on the door, you know, regular prisoner type things.

Step three is to wait about 10-15 years and then plant some tree killing weed/vine to grow around the tree and choke it to death. This isn’t too complicated. Often times it will grow on its own. If you neglect your yard long enough, you’d be surprised what kinds of odd things spring up. Not to mention a whole new slew of creatures that will move in and make nests. And sometimes you get really lucky and one of those creatures will wander into your garage, make a nest in some plastic bags, suffocate itself, create the most horrific smell your nostrils have ever encountered with its dead and decaying carcass and you won’t be able to figure out what the hell it is for a good 6 or 7 months, then it will go away almost as mysteriously as it came. About a year after that, you will be cleaning your garage and happen across the dead animal. I urge you to resist vomiting on the spot, but it’s almost inevitable that you will. Just remember not to toss your cookies on your mom’s collection of old Elvis\Beatles records. That’s key. Write that down somewhere. At this point in time it would be advantageous of you to actually have animatronic robot building skills as you will have no desire whatsoever to remove the dead animal from the garage. And it will be imperative that you remove all dead things from the garage.

Step four is to wait. This is probably the hardest part. You should be about 17 or 18 years at least into the Speaving process. Make no mistake though, not once single cent has been speaved. That glorious moment has yet to come. It took me almost exactly 20 years to speave as much money as I did, but it was well worth the wait. Basically, you’ve neglected the large tree so much that a good gust of wind is all that it will take to knock it over. You are waiting for that gust of wind to knock the tree over onto the power lines and take them out. Here’s where the speavings begin. If all goes according to plan, the tree will knock out your power, that’s the savings part. And if the tree falls properly, when it takes out the power lines, it will also rip apart the socket where the power enters the house. This is where the spending begins. If you are lucky, the socket located in your house will be an original (and if you did this right, your house was built in the 50’s or earlier) and pretty much nobody will have a replacement for it. We didn’t get that lucky. Unfortunately for us, we found some electrician who happened to have the parts. Had we been lucky, we would have had to go to the city, get a permit for a new meter box and updated socket install, hire a professional to install the new equipment and then get the power company to turn the power back on. That would have meant at least 1 full week without electricity. Imagine the savings!! Not to mention the spending!! Permits aren’t cheap, and neither is the labor it would cost to install all the new equipment. Then there’s the bonus of having half your wall ripped out, I can’t forget to mention that. As it stands, we were only without electricity for 3 days, but all in all, there was some good speaving to be had.

So that’s how you speave money. I look forward to hearing if anyone else has some good ways to speave money or if they want to try out my technique. I’d love to hear how it works for someone else.

*note from the author: Ok, so this happened at my parents house, so I guess I should give them proper recognition for their part in helping me to develop this great way to speave money. Without them, none of this would have been possible.

Well, here we are near the end of the post… funny, I thought there would be more trumpets sounding and wild cheering… it looks like my fortune cookie was wrong. I would also like to say thanks to everyone that continues to stop by here, hoping that I’ll post something new, useless and almost completely unfunny. You guys are troopers and deserve some recognition. Virtual high fives all around!!

Injury Time Out

Well, I’ve really done it this time. I currently have a severely sprained left ankle. (my right ankle is fine, for all of you right ankle fans out there.) Softball is once again the culprit. Or more specifically, those two giant pits that right handed batters dug out in the batters box are the culprits. I was sliding into home on a close play at the plate and my left ankle got caught in one of the aforementioned pits and I jack-knifed over the plate. There was a popping sound and immediate pain. I was able to connect the two and determine that something not so good had just happened. I know what you’re thinking though, and don’t worry, I made sure I touched the plate. I was safe and the run counted. We only lost by 12 runs. Could have been 13…

I make ludicrous decisions all the time. There was no reason to change my ways the other night, so I drove myself home after the game. For those of you that don’t know, I drive a manual transmission vehicle. The left foot is kind of key in that it operates the clutch. Let me just say that the ride home was not the most fun I’ve ever had driving my car. Though no one recorded me on my drive home, every time I shifted, I would not deny screaming such obscenities as, “Paul Walker is a good actor!!” or, “I like the musical stylings of Kenny G.!!!”

When I got home, I could at least hobble inside. The next morning, well that was a slightly different story. Putting weight on it was not really an option. I mean, sure, I could have put some weight on it, but that would just mean more obscenities and a lot more pain. I was brought up to be extremely pious, not that I am, but since I’m living at home, I like to give my parents the illusion that they did something right. Therefore I try to make sure they don’t catch me saying things like, “Monday is my favorite day of the week!” or, “The WNBA Rules!!” They put a lot of hard work into raising me and I don’t want to disappoint them.

I made a somewhat baffling maneuver that day by calling my doctor to make an appointment. They were able to fit me in at 2:45. Of course, that’s really just something they put down on paper to make people feel like they matter. I sat in a room by myself for a good 35 minutes before anyone came to see me. After about a minute and 3 seconds of tests, they determined that it was severely sprained and that they would need x-rays. I was then instructed to hobble down the hall to the x-ray technician. I did so and was lucky enough to fill out a second set of paperwork before the x-rays were taken. The x-ray lab is not associated with the medical clinic I go to, they just happen to be in the same building, conveniently located right by all the doctor’s offices. I find this to be an amazing coincidence.

They have a fancy new x-ray machine, or more specifically, they got rid of those archaic film slides that they developed and it’s all digital now. Much faster to get the results. However, you still have to wait another 45 minutes to an hour for the doctor to come in and say, “Well, the good news is there are no fractures or breaks. Put this aircast on for a few days and here’s a prescription for some anti-inflammatorys and pain killers.”

My favorite part about the x-rays was when the technician threw the heavy lead blanket over my crotch. I felt really good about medical technology at that moment and half expected her to wink at me and say, “For the kids.” She was a fairly old woman, but very nice. She walked me all the way back to the examination room.

So far, this story has me spending the majority of the past two days in bed with my ankle elevated. I haven’t gone to work. Not that I could drive myself even if I wanted to. But it’s really weird, as much as I’d like to wake up at 6 a.m. and head out to a day of misery and boredom at work, I haven’t really missed it the last two days. Who saw that coming?

I am also forced to officially acknowledge Softball as the devil’s game as it has wrecked my shoulder, torn my hamstring and now severely sprained my ankle all in the span of a few months. 2005 has not been a good year for my softball career. I’m out for at least a week or two with this one… probably longer. But knowing me, it will be shorter, then re-injured and consequently longer. I seem to have very selective learning.

Tomorrow I head back to work, fully hoping that the drugs make me all kinds of drowsy and I sleep through half the day at work. Here’s to drooling on my keyboard!!

Cue The Somber Music…

It is with great disappointment that I post today. As many of you may know, or at the very least, have forgotten, one of my many goals in life is to become a millionaire playboy. I’ve taken several personality and aptitude tests, and they all say the same thing, I don’t like to work, but I love vacations and spending money, so all I’m really qualified to do is be a millionaire playboy. Well, tonight, they mega millions lottery jackpot is 150 million. I don’t know about you, but that certainly sounds like the makings of the millionaire portion of the millionaire playboy.

Here’s where things get kind of fuzzy. Some of my critics out there would argue that I made a somewhat crucial error when I failed to actually buy a lottery ticket. Of course, we won’t really know if that’s true or not for several weeks as there is currently a cluster of 32 supercomputers crunching the numbers to verify that my lack of purchasing a ticket has directly affected my ability to obtain those 150 million dollars. Plus, I still have to wait until tomorrow morning when the state lottery commission may or may not give me a call informing me of their decision to just bequeath the money to me. I submitted my aptitude tests to them several weeks ago, so it really wouldn’t surprise me at all if and when they call me with the good news.

In the mean time, I will have to occupy my time with some of the more unsavory activities in life. I have great confidence that I will receive a call in the morning, but I suppose just to humor fate a little, I will still get up and prepare for work, just as I do every weekday morning. Yes, I agree with every single one of you that it is an unnecessary thing to do, I really should just let the sweet sound of my phone ringing wake me rather than the heinous sound of my alarm clock, but what can I say? I’m a glutton for pleasure. Besides, I’d much rather answer the phone showered and ready for the ensuing press conference rather than be all crusty eyed and groggy… The last thing I want to do is say something foolish in the press conference like, “I’m going to donate all of my winnings to Bill Gates, because I think he offers the public top notch products at fair prices and he should be rewarded for that.” I’m prone to that kind of chicanery when I’m groggy…

If, in the highly unlikely event, I do not receive such a call (ludicrous, I know.) I will consider alternative means of obtaining millions of dollars, including but not limited to: Begging my mom and dad for it; buying it on eBay for a greatly reduced price; becoming a professional athlete; selling my secret to happiness; or blackmailing France with some fairly incriminating photos.

So that’s pretty much all I have to say about that. But that leaves this post a bit shorter than I’d like. Don’t think for one second that I’m going to let a little something like lack of content or substance shorten up my post though. Oh no. I am unscrupulous when it comes to this sort of thing. You can expect that the next few paragraphs will be completely unnecessary, but they will be padding this post. And in the end, I’m all about the padding.

So I spent most of my three day weekend trying to get this to work. If it doesn’t work for you now, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised because it turns out, I was a bit of a failure this weekend. If it does work, enjoy because it took me entirely too long to do it. I’d also like to say that if you’ve got a computer that’s working pretty well and you’re not really into that kind of care free living, just give it to me and I’ll take care of that nagging little problem. If nothing else, I learned this weekend that I’m awesome at making computers slow down and freeze up a lot. It’s a gift and I shouldn’t waste it.

I also changed the oil in my car. I’ve gone all synthetic. None of that petroleum based garbage for me anymore. No sir, I’ll pay a lot more for some stuff grown in a lab. Basically, the theory is that I’ll have to change it less because full synthetic is supposed to last a lot longer. My aunt and uncle change the oil in their car once a year. It should be noted that I think they are stupid and have grossly over estimated the abilities of this synthetic oil, but their engine hasn’t seized up yet, so maybe their still stupid, but right about the oil. I have to be honest, the car felt good today… I don’t know that I actually possess the ability to detect more or less friction between the pistons and the cylinder wall, but if I do, then I think this synthetic oil reduced the friction making the engine feel silky smooth and dare I say even peppier than normal. When I hit the freeway onramp at 145 and launched myself, literally, into traffic this morning, I distinctly remember thinking to myself that it felt easier than usual.

Ok, enough padding.

In the beginning…

Often times, nobody on the street stops me and asks how I got started in this crazy blog business. I often feel obliged to reply though. It is a tale far less harrowing than you might think, but I feel at this point in my career, I owe it to my readers to explain how this utterly pathetic blog raised itself to almost complete mediocrity in a mostly unreasonable amount of time.

Hard as it is to believe, there was a time in the Shuck N Jive history when nobody commented. No, not even myself. While I make no great claims to be above that kind of behavior, the fact is, the thought just never occurred to me that I could create pseudonyms and carry on largely uninteresting comment conversations with myself. These are the types of things we learn in hindsight. The truth of my life is often far less interesting than the fiction of it. The truth is, I started the blog with no intention of telling anyone about it, and I was to wait and see what fate would make of it. I find it’s best in these types of situations to just let fate take a crack at it, then if fate sucks, I can always step in and show fate a thing or two about how to suck at stuff.

Well, as fate would have it, I received my first comment from Jack Safety. I had only been blogging for a couple of weeks, but it sure felt like it had been several weeks. Up until that point, I had not truly grasped the power of comments. I had seen them elsewhere, mocked them in my head but had yet to do any commenting of my own. Shortly after replying to my first comment, I had an epiphany: What if I went out and actually commented on other blogs? I was pretty sure no one in the history of western civilization had ever even considered thinking about such a thing, but why would they, blogging has only been around for like a couple months, right? I knew I was on to something big. Probably the biggest and most profoundly important thing in the world, so I didn’t want to screw it up. I knew that I had to comment, but where, and how?

Legend has it that there was once a great blog about an intern in New York. So great was his blog that it was linked on the blogger home page and I can only imagine it garnered as many as 2 or 3 hits a day. (well above my meager totals of –21,365,468,161. That’s right, I was actually negatively page loading the internet and consequently making the internet shrink unnecessarily.) People would visit this great blog and glow in it’s majesty. Of the few lucky ones to be linked on this great and wondrous blog was the lovely Jasmine. (however, at this time she was not yet known far and wide for her glorious rack.) Through the intern, many came to play with Jasmine. I was not one of them. Though it was naturally assumed, in fact, my path to Jasmine was much more fateful. As is my want to do, I kept clicking “next blog” up in the top right corner, passing through the insurance ads and the foreign languages I had no chance of understanding (hard to do, I know. Much as I’d like to say I understand Sanskrit, truth is, I just don’t. What can I say? I had a below average kindergarten teacher.). I clicked away until I landed upon a long list. My first “100 things” list I had come across on a blog. The magnitude of it sucked me in. I read, I laughed, I cried, I drank some Gatorade, I read some more, I took a nap, I read some more, I resurfaced the driveway, I read some more, I planted some tomato plants, cared for them, nurtured them to full adult hood, enjoyed their bountiful fruits, and eventually I finished reading the list. It was a long list. (The true irony of it all is that Jasmine is notorious for complaining about the length of my posts. Can you say, “hypocrite?” I can, only I pronounce it, “Jasmine.” (at this point I’m hoping Jasmine knows I love her and that I’m only kidding, but should I die in my sleep tonight, we’ll all know that I had it coming.))

Um…. Where the heck was I? Oh yeah, so after finishing that enormous list, I notice that 5 separate and distinct people had taken the time out of their day to say things to Jasmine. Mostly regarding her post. I couldn’t help myself. (I often can’t.) So I read the comments. Having read them, I felt like I had nothing valid to say, so I decided to instead just make fun of the comments themselves. (it was really just the first comment that made me want to do it, but then I didn’t want to leave anyone out.) What transpired is now Shuck N Jive lore. I’ll let it speak for itself. Click here to be bored by yet another instance of my under-whelming maturity. For this reason, and also because Jasmine’s hellfire was not thrust upon me, she has now officially been elected into the Shuck N Jive Hall of Fame and also her ninja call sign has been changed for reasons I cannot explain at this time. It has also been retired and bronzed and some other cool stuff too. (this time though, it’s not that I don’t have any totally sweet pictures of everything, I do, I got loads of them, big, giant, truck loads of them. It’s just that we decided that no media be allowed inside those hallowed halls, so no one gets to see. Except those that have been elected. So, you know, get elected or something… good luck with that.)

That was the first, but certainly not the last, time I made an ass out of myself in the blog world. In spite of that, I somehow managed to make a few friends. Now I have links of my own on the right and I can honestly say that each and every one of those blogs are worth reading, plus their authors comment a plenty on my blog. That’s part of the deal too. I don’t link otherwise. I’m too lazy. Don’t think you can comment once and then get linked. Not going to happen.

My First Milestone…

…worth mentioning. I’ve hit several milestones along the way, but up until now, none of them were worth mentioning. I mean, does anyone really care that my blog single handedly ended the thirty year civil war that plagued Konshciszistan? I certainly didn’t. Or maybe when I cracked the 100 spam comments in a 24 hour period… hardly something to be proud of.

No, we are here today to honor one of the Shuck N Jive’s 37 commentators. The milestone that was reached quite recently, in spite of the fact that many critics said the blog would fold in the first month due to its utter lack of anything worth reading, is the 500^th comment. That’s right, 500 times someone other than myself was unable to restrain themselves and inwardly motivated to leave a comment that was 10 times more interesting than the actual post it was commenting on. (I had to remove myself from the count because otherwise we would be celebrating the 40,000^th comment right now. Seriously, I think I have comment Tourrete’s )

This commentator has been here from the start. In fact, according to my records, their first comment was made on 3/2/04. Now, for those of you who are thinking, “But Jon… you didn’t start blogging until March of ’05?” Well, that’s what makes this commentator so special. They were commenting almost a year before I even HAD a blog. That’s dedication. And I refuse to believe that it's simply a time stamp error by a rogue email server. No, that's just not possible. I believe whole heartedly that this commentator was simply well ahead of their time. After crunching the numbers, I found that this person makes up 28% of all the non-me comments. No one else is even close.

If you haven’t figured it out by now, the 500^th comment came from the lovely and talented Cadiz 12. And given the aforementioned statistics… it really isn’t a surprise. (Seriously, you might think that you comment a lot, but you got nothing on Cadiz… trust me. She practically doubles up the next closest person to her. Don’t be ashamed or embarrassed by that. There’s a reason she’s been inducted into the Hall.)

So Cadiz 12, we here at the Shuck N Jive institute solute you and your efforts and look forward to more of the same!

Given your heavy hitter status, The Green Ninja moniker will be forever retired and will never be worn by another blogger. A bronzed Green Ninja statuette will be placed in the Shuck N Jive Hall of Fame along with a with a short 5 hour movie detailing the growth and comments of Cadiz 12.

(at this point, were I a skilled magician of some sort, there would be a sweet graphic photo here of all kinds of Cadiz 12 Hall of Fame type stuff, but what do you think this is? omarphillips.net? No sir, no bandaids required here, we aren’t that cutting edge.)

I apologize for the brevity of this post, but it was mostly unplanned.

A Waste of Time in Two Convoluted Parts

Part 1.

Ok, so this is going to sound so cliché, but I was abducted by aliens the other day and when they finally let me go, a freaking dog ate my blog post!! Can you believe that? I mean, what are the odds? I didn’t even write out my post on a piece of paper or anything, and the dog still somehow managed to ingest it. I tell you, science today… amazing.

So back to the aliens… a little over a week ago, like say, the day after my last post? Yeah, that sounds good. The day after my last post, I’m out for my evening constitutional, right? I mean, this fabulous 5’6” 120 lbs body doesn’t just happen on it’s own*, I kind of almost have to think about it a little to maintain my boyish figure. So I’m out walking right, and I could just feel the alien ship hovering behind me, and I thought, “just don’t look back, if you make eye contact, they’ll think you’re interested, just keep your head down and pick up the pace.” It was at this point in time that I wished I hadn’t brought the megaphone with me and decided to do an outer monologue for the rest of the neighborhood to hear because the aliens obviously heard it too. Why did I turn the volume up to 10? I still don’t know the answer to that question.

After a serious of awkward moments where I tried to avoid eye contact and just step around the aliens, they finally “wrangled me up” as they put it. They put me in a room with some equipment and I just rolled my eyes. How many times can they do this whole probing thing I said to myself. I decided to ask the obvious, “So are you guys going to like, probe me and stuff?” When they said no I was more than just a little shocked. I was offended. “What, I’m not good enough for you to probe? You don’t think I have valuable information hidden within my pancreas?” They just shook their heads and said they were tired of that nonsense. Instead they had prepared a questionnaire for me to answer. The room was full of recording equipment. As a glanced around the room a second time, I couldn’t believe I thought they were going to probe me with an 8 track. Or that they could even use an 8 track to record me with. These aliens were indeed good with the electronics. Especially the out of date unpopular electronics…

I was starting to feel better about this whole abduction thing, and then they started in with the questions… I don’t remember anything beyond the first question. All they said was, “Do you feel like you have a lot of stress in your life?” My heart sank… what have I gotten myself into I thought. These aliens were Scientologists. There was no doubt about it. That giant poster** of Tom Cruise hanging on the wall should have been a dead give away, but I’ve never been known for my astute observations.

I started giving the least stressful answers I could to every question so I could get out of there as soon as possible. They kept assuring me that this little survey was completely free of charge, but I was having none of it, I just wanted to get out of there. Finally I just told them that I thought Scientology was bunk and that horticulture was where it was at. That confused them long enough for me to make a quick exit.

Once I got of the ship, the sense of relief was great, however, it was fairly short lived. Any time you encounter a dog that has the ability to eat objects of yours that don’t actually exist in the physical world, you know you’re in for a bad day. I thought that look of satisfaction on the dogs face was both odd and out of place as he passed by, but when I got home and realized what had happened, that this dog had actually eaten my post, I wept a great deal. I’m not too proud to admit that. I’m a crier, that’s just how it is. A kid hits me square in the eye with a tomato from the back of the room, I cry. When a dog eats a blog post from my computer through telekinetic digital powers, I cry. When Ed and Carol finally got together on ED, well, 3 full boxes of tissues, that’s all I’m saying.

Ok, I’m going to go cry now.

Part 2.

There’s a few other things I’d like to discuss at this point in time, but I was totally unable to fit them into any normal part of the blog***.

Item number 1. The Tragedy of the House of Duke.

Does anyone else see the tragedy in three cousins living with their uncle? We have a lot of mothers absent from the picture. Was this normal in Hazzard? What kind of effects does moonshine really have? It seems to me that these folks are pretty happy considering there’s a well above average chance that there is an awful lot of death or deserting in that family.

Also on a DoH note, I did of course see the movie. In fact, I saw it opening night… by myself. If you are a fan of the show, the movie makes almost no effort whatsoever to be like the show. It should really be taken as a separate entity. I cannot recommend that anyone go see it unless they want to see some kick ass car stunts. They were pretty solid in my opinion, and they made it worth it for me. Only the General Lee remains true to the original from the TV show. Luckily for me that was my favorite character. I did a few highly unnecessary E-Break slides on the way home from the theater. I love it when a movie pumps me up like that.

Item number 2. Working sucks.

I’ve decided that work is just too time consuming. I’m going to petition for a 3 day work week and 4 day weekends all year round. The fact of the matter is, computers have made us faster. Quite simply, we can get more done in one day than we used to. And I say that rather than do more work, we do the same amount of work in less time and use the free time for relaxing and badminton. I’ll need as much support as I can get on this one guys, so don’t be a wimp, sign my petition several times under various names. Try and mix up the ink you use too, you know, make it look legit. I think I’m going to need approximately 7 billion signatures to pull this off, so if each of my readers can come up with a little over 3 billion signatures each, we should be golden.

Item number 3. Milestones.

Well, I’ve got a few milestones**** coming up. After only 6 months of slightly below average service, I’m about to hit 100 visitors. I know, pretty impressive. That is topped only by the milestone of using asterisks for the very first time. That milestone is actually being bronzed and displayed in the Shuck N Jive Hall of Fame. Right next to a picture of me eating some donuts. Some say the Hall is a weak exhibit, I say, give it some time and I’ll show you how much it can really suck.

Well that about wraps it up for this post. Thanks for joining us and I hope to see you again soon. Any bets on how long it’ll be before my next post? I’ll put the line at 8 days…

*Yeah, actually it does. I’m a genetic freak. I can eat whatever I want, whenever I want and it has no effect on me. I sit at a desk all day too, and I don’t exercise. I know, I hate me too.

** Seriously, this thing was like several stories high. It was a big room. I was the size of one of Tom’s crooked teeth. (it was clearly an older picture)

*** Normal part of the blog??? Have I lost my mind. Indeed. Basically this would be more accurately translated as, “stuff I just want to say but don’t want to make up much of an elaborate back story for.”

**** Not really, I’m just trying to make myself feel more important. These milestones pale in comparison to the true geniuses out there. All of which are linked on the right side there under ninjas.

The Chronicles of Lancelot Phillip Tragglethorp the Eighth

Ok, so I have nothing to back that title up. I just like the way it sounds. Maybe one day I’ll write something that all the Shuck N Jive scholars will look back on one day and say, “Yes, you can see it quite clearly in this work here, it was most definitely the beginning of the end.” Then again, perhaps I overestimate myself… perhaps that day passed many moons ago, or as I like to say, three posts ago. For all I know, I’ve jumped the shark backwards, forwards, with one leg and even once while balancing a tray of fine exotic china on the tip of my nose… I’ll have to go back and watch the reruns to be sure.

It now occurs to me that I have done little if anything to answer the questions of why I’m blogging so little these days. Fortunately, I have a solution to that problem as I don’t really care to address it.

Begin distraction…

Ok, at this point in time, there should be a clown juggling chainsaws while riding a unicycle just behind you… no, on your left… yeah, that’s him, right there. Ok, first, try and figure out how I managed to do that… the logistics alone should have you contemplating it for hours. I mean, did I really hire 3 separate chainsaw juggling clowns to stalk all of my readers until they accidentally stumbled across my blog again? You just don’t know, do you? And that’s why they call it magic my friends. Second, those are freaking 5 hp chainsaws! How in the blazes did they sneak up on you like that? Are you really that absent minded? I hope not. I’m sans mind right now, and too many people like that in connection can only lead to bad things. Things like walkie talkie cell phones… seriously, it was bad enough when I had to hear only half the conversation, but now that I’m privy to all of it, I’m positive I didn’t need to hear it at all.

So what were we talking about? Oh yeah, what a superb blogger I am and how much everyone wishes they were me. Oddly enough, this is one of my favorite blog topics.

Today lets explore how I manage to turn paragraph after paragraph of absolute drivel into a mildly readable (at a 2^nd grade level of course) post. It’s really a lot simpler than you might imagine. First, I take my monitor and turn it upside down. This completely disorients me and makes it hard for me to clearly see what I’m typing. This allows me to misuse words, not punctuate things properly and in general improves the over all coherence level of my otherwise nonsensical gibberish. Once I’ve successfully mashed the keys on the keyboard for a good 25 to 35 minutes, my masterpiece is completely finished. No need to edit or proof read as that would only impinge upon the artistic integrity that I hold so dear.

Well that was quick… seems as though I’ve still got some time here to fill. Well let’s catch you up on what’s going on in my world. As you may know, I’m an avid slow pitch softball player. I’ll let this little story here tell you what kind of a player I am. I was on first base after cranking out yet another one of my trademark line drive base hits. The batter behind me hit the ball hard, but right at the shortstop. I had taken a few leadoff steps and was walking back to the bag after the catch. I did not see the shortstop rifle the ball to the waiting first baseman, and thus I was doubled up for the third out of the inning. Their shortstop was a girl. And while most guys may have found this to be humiliating, I found it sexy as hell. Sadly though, that is not where my softball stories end. I have noticed an increasing amount of pain in my shoulder when I throw the ball. So much though that I have scheduled and appointment with my doctor to have it checked out. For those of you that remember the horrific bruising from when I tore my hamstring, and also remember that that did not make me go to a doctor, then you may know how seriously I take this injury. Let’s not kid ourselves though, I have not stopped playing just because I may have a torn rotator cuff. I am not a sissy, and more importantly, I am an idiot, so really, it makes perfect sense.

Aside from that, moving back home to my parent’s house has reunited me with a lost love. I have a mini basketball hoop like you might find in an arcade. It has electronic scoring and everything. You get a 30 second clock. First 20 seconds each shot is worth 2 points, last 10 seconds shots are worth 3 points. It comes with 3 mini basketballs. My sister likes to play against me and we have developed several different categories. There is the traditional 3 ball game, and we also play a 2 ball game and a 1 ball game. I currently hold the house record for 1 ball with 36 points, 2 ball with 54 points and 3 ball with 66 points. The average 3 ball score is around 40 points. We also play a game called rafter ball, wherein we shoot the ball over the rafters in the garage and into the hoop. I think the high game on that one is like 12 points. It’s not easy. We also differentiate between right hand and left hand. Left handed (I’m a natural righty) rafterball is not for the squeamish.

Ok, let’s see what those critics over at the Times have to say about this post…