Happy birthday, Tad

Today marks the birthday of a great friend.  This blog knows him as Chet, Tad, or Barton Keyes.  As usual, he has decided to celebrate in seclusion, but at least this year he gave me fair warning that he was going into hiding.  I kind of wonder what he's afraid would happen if we were to actually celebrate his birth in person.  Perhaps he turns into some sort of werewolf of golem once a year and goes into his secret lair to protect his friends.  Or maybe it's just a massive coke bender.  Who knows?  Only the mysterious cadre he's going out of town with.

  

I kid, I kid!  Happy birthday, man.  Where would Baby and I be without you?  Stuck with nobody to help us move, is where.  Also, my addiction to trucker speed would have surely spiraled out of control by now, and there would be no fine whiskey in my liquor cabinet.  

Don't break anything on the slopes.  

UPDATE: Apparently Tad killed the bottle of Dickel's last time he was at my house.  Damn!  At least some people are easy to shop for.

Potpourri for $500

1. Doppelgänger.

I've found my evil twin. His name is BJ Warshaw and apparently he is some kind of musician or something.  It's kind of weird.  My apologies to people who don't know what I look like, but I'm more or less like a fatter version of him.  Also, I'd never grow my beard quite that long.

Photo credit: Some guy

2. White Winter Hymnal cover.

Check out this amusing Fleet Foxes cover.  I found it on this promising-looking blog I stumbled upon this evening.

3. Nanerpus.

You can call me Nanerpus.  This is another "song" I get stuck in my head on a near-daily basis now, owing largely to Alia's heroic intake of bananas.  She only weighs 28 lbs. but eats two bananas for breakfast and a couple more throughout the day usually.  That's the equivalent of me eating over 250 bananas.  I mean, because I'm allergic to bananas.  That's what makes the math come out so weird.

Skipping work Monday

This weekend I performed a wedding for a very good friend of mine. It was small and elegant, and the groom said "I love you" to me during the vows.  It was that kind of shindig.

Today Baby was studying all day, so I skipped work and went on a bike ride, pulling the kids in our bike trailer.  It was good times.  It was also the first time I've successfully (a) patched a bike tire and (b) used a tire spoon without pinching the tube.  Baby refused to believe that "pinching a tube" wasn't a scatological reference, even when I explained that it's what happens when a "tube" gets stuck on the "rim."  If I go any further with this, I could really up my Google keyword hits, but I don't want to take the easy way out.  

Horseballs

Despite the imminent project deadline, Baby and I decided to make it a date night and called Baby's generous aunt Pam for some babysitting.  We walked to Korea House for pork bulgogi, bibimbap, and "Sexy Girl" sushi rolls.  The waiter thought less of me for ordering the "Sexy Girl" rolls -- for a second it seemed like he was going to tell me I wasn't allowed to order that or something -- but they were very good, once the trachea-swelling avocado was removed.

Overall, it was an A- day -- not too bad for a Monday -- and my older daughter asked me if "God has a wand."  This is not the first theological question she's asked me, but it's definitely the first I feel my MA hadn't prepared me to answer.

A letter to my wife

From the Time Travel Bureau:

Who knew she had such antipathy towards Percy Shelley?  Although her hatred has been seething for quite some time, this comic seems to have acted as a lightning bolt to animate the monster of her rage, sewn together from various elements including the reading of Shelley's terrible poetry, Baby's belief in the superiority of Mary Shelley's writing, and P.B.'s misogyny.  

What a nerd!

Mysteries of my crotch: coffee edition

So I slept through my bus ride home today.  This is not an unusual occurrence.  What was unusual, however, was the fact that when I woke up my crotch and the lower part of my shirt were covered in coffee.  I had a quarter-full travel coffee cup in my bag, but it showed no signs of leakage whatsoever.  The bag was dry, the cup was dry, nothing in the bag even has coffee stains on it.

I have to imagine I would notice if my seatmate or another bus rider spilled coffee on me.  I am forced to conclude it was either a case of spontaneous generation or some new kind of stigmata.

Wednesday, February 12, 2009

Mark that date on your calendars.  That's the day Mustafa said "Ohhhh, you put the slashes AFTER the H-T-T-P!" after trying to start web address "\\http:".  This man's title is "Microcomputer Applications Specialist, Ph.D."

Also, it's the day I discovered that the most common Google searches leading to this blog are: 

1. mcdonalds radio "ex-hipster"

2. dochvammey lodpu' 'oh li'be'

3. slippery when wet tour attendance

4. snakedercowboy.de

Dave says I need to write for my base, which is apparently line-dancing German Bon Jovi-fan hipsters who speak Klingon.  I'll get back with you as soon as I figure out what I might say to that theoretical person.

UPDATE: I am stupid.  The title of this post is supposed to be the current date.  Whatever.

On the pulling of one's card

Recently I was in a local sandwich shop inquiring about off-menu items* when the conversation turned to card catalogs.  The sandwich shop employee pointed out that with the extinction of card catalogs, kids will have no idea what Eazy E means when he threatens to "pull ya card" in Boyz N Tha Hood** (do I really need to say NSFW?).  That statement surprised me, because it never even occurred to me that Eazy could be making a reference to circulation management.  

 Eazy E asks a librarian for help locating the reference card for a certain trash talking motherfucker.

I thought it referred to something like drawing playing cards to determine who was going to die, or even to the death card of the Vietnam war, but I have to conclude that the sandwich-making man was right.  Eazy is threatening to take trash-talkers out of circulation like a library book.  It kind of makes the whole thing rather quaint, as if he had said he was going to degauss your VHS collection or scrape your palimpsest.

Tomorrow -- the eternal hardness of boys in the hood: macho swagger or priapistic disfunction?

* I was asking about a mythical sandwich with two veggie burger patties and salsa, which the employee had never heard of.  He did inform me that "back in the day" at "certain locations" one could order the Veggie Delite with meat and recieve a side of marijuana.  There was no report on what happened if you ordered "extra anchovies."

** Funny story: I actually saw Dynamite Hack (most famous for their singer-songwriter style cover of "Boyz N Tha Hood") open for the Polyphonic Spree.  Weirdest double bill ever?  They apparently have the same producer.