Archive for July, 2006

Yes, just the even rows.

In what appears to be an attempt to ignore the fact that I went on a honeymoon in Scotland, or the notion that I was ever even married at all, I will yet again not be writing about the aforementioned subjects. I realize, at this point, you probably want to take a swing at my head with a linen sack stuffed with moistened poo, but I can assure you (honest, no fingers crossed, cross my heart, bff) that at some point before I die I will possibly blog about the wedding and/or honeymoon. If I feel like it.

Right now I’m stuck at work, contemplating which of the four interviewees I’ve seen so far should be hired for our front desk position, and swatting tiny flies. My wife is currently plopped within farting distance of the Atlantic Ocean, with nothing to keep her company but a mountain of books, beers, and blistering heat tempered by dips in the waves, and awaiting my return with the completion of a to-do list so long it makes Santa’s good-child/bad-child list look like the champion in a short-dicking contest.

So, let’s see, where to start with all that?

1) Despite my boss’s best attempts to make me work at any point during the month of July, I have thwarted her at nearly every turn. I was to drive to the ocean this past weekend and return to work Tuesday morning, taking one final day off today until 2007. Then I learned that we had more candidates coming in to interview today, and in a move that can only be described as “sitcomesque” I convinced my boss that my attendance on Monday was worth two days off at the end of this week. So I drove to the ocean on Saturday morning with Mrs. ACW, and returned last night, leaving Mrs. ACW in the capable hands of my family. I will return to the ocean on Wednesday evening, where we shall remain until Saturday morning. Check and mate.

2) My office has recently suffered from the outbreak of tiny flies. They swarm my mammoth monitor (20 inches diagonal, thank you very much), and generally serve no other purpose than to annoy the hot holy fuck out of me. I have no idea from whence they came, nor do I care. I just want the fuckers gone, and no amount of inspection has revealed their source. I fear I must either remove all my plants, or release a variety-pack of spiders to search hand destroy in my absence. I only hope the spiders don’t spend all their time on the web. (I’m sorry.)

3) Upon learning that I was leaving the ocean, only to return a few days later, I was treated by my family as some sort of magical Sherpa, available to retrieve every item from the just even rows in Walmart, and bring those items back with me. For many reasons, this stymies me, not least of all the minor inconvenience it causes them to live without these items, and the major inconvenience it causes me to have to deal with such requests. For example, my father isn’t satisfied with the size of the coffee cups available in their apartment at the ocean, so he has asked that I bring back one of his own coffee cups from his home, ignoring that he could simply REFILL HIS FUCKING COFFEE CUP IF HE WANTED MORE COFFEE. I have a hundred more equally insipid tasks to complete and objects to obtain before I return to the beach. I suppose a vacation’s efficacy is diluted if one hasn’t made someone else miserable.

Today, bitching. Tomorrow, the honeymoon! (But probably not.)

Stick a needle in my eye

I totally SWEAR that I was going to write something about the wedding, or the honeymoon, or something today, but I just haven’t gotten around to it. Mrs. ACW (or, alternatively, ACWW, or My Old Lady) and I kept a journal during the trip, and I wanted to grab that to make sure I didn’t miss any details while relating our HILARIOUS and SEXY adventures. Like the fact that during our flight from Baltimore to Rekjavik we were seated in front of three kids who seemed to be having a contest to see which one of them could convert their seat-back kicking into a full cranial/rectal inversion, compliments of me.

And I’ve been meaning to post some pictures too, but I keep forgetting to bring the camera into work, and I’m not exactly sure how many pictures of me in a saddle while Mrs. ACW drops hot wax onto my ass (we hired a Scottish local to take the pictures (yes, he kept his kilt on the whole time (no, we didn’t “see his bagpipes”))) you’d want to see, so it’s going to take some time to get those pictures up.

In the mean time, I will say this: If you can find a way to get large quantities of Irn Bru into this country, Mrs. ACW would pay you handsomely, as she is now hooked on the junk.

Awesome!

I see myself as floating somewhere in the murky area between Luddite and geek, so when I got back from my honeymoon to find a new iMac on my desk, I was both thrilled and terrified.

It hasn’t taken too long to get used to things, but there are little details that have been slowing me down.

For example, it took about 20 minutes for me to figure out how to import my Sage feeds.

And I’m still not exactly sure why the “End” key doesn’t take the cursor to the end of a line of text, or how to make it do that.

But, I’m slowly getting the hang of it.

How’s that for a thrilling return to blogging after two weeks of absence?

Anonymous Coworker’s Dairy Challenge, originally published 24 Nov 2004

At one point in my life I served as a student mover for a university. We responded to the most ridiculous whims of various departments. From moving 1 half-sized file cabinet a few feet to the left, to playing husband for a finicky admin who couldn’t make up her mind about how her employees’ offices were to be arranged, it wasn’t a very nice job. We moved the contents of an entire building (5 floor academic building being renovated to remove asbestos) and moved it back in again in the course of one summer.

We moved everything, and anything you could think of. A display case full of confiscated weapons from the on-campus police department? Check. Cabinets full of rare butterfly specimen? Check. A gross of beakers that read “urine specimen”? Check. A 4,000 pound electromagnet? Check. And these are just the ones that stood out in my mind. We also packed up hundreds of boxes of things like books and papers. Moved equally as many desks, chair, bookshelves, computers, and furniture.

The weird thing is, this sounds like extremely tedious work, right? But we always worked as hard and as fast as we could, and sometimes, if the work orders lined up right, we could manage a 2 hour lunch.

One of the few times we managed a 2 hour lunch, we had planned it from the day before. Someone had heard on the radio that it was impossible to drink a gallon of milk in an hour, without throwing up. I thought I could do it, so I said so. One guy, Matt, said that we should make it interesting. He said that if I could finish the milk, they’d all give me money, but if I couldn’t do it, then I’d have to buy beer, spending the same amount of my own money. Another guy jumped in for the challenge too. If we both finished, we’d split the money. If we both lost, we’d split the cost of beer. If one of us lost, and one of us finished, to the victor would go the spoils, and the loser would buy the beer.

So, during our 2 hour lunch, we stopped by the store and picked up some 1% milk. They wanted us to drink whole milk, we thought skim would be sufficient. We settled on 1%.

We both started strong, and made a small contest of seeing who would stop drinking first. After about a minute, we both stopped taking our drink at the same time, but I had consumed more milk than my co-competitor. We proceeded to drink at our own pace, and I pulled way out in front. I was down to half a gallon, and only 15 minutes had passed. I decide to pace myself, and the challenger was able to catch up.

As the hour continued on, and as I got closer to finishing the bottle, my stomach became tight, and I was feeling kind of woozy. I got up to walk it off, but it wasn’t happening. I went upstairs to go to the bathroom, and they sent someone after me to make sure I wasn’t cheating by throwing up early. Because at this point, we were both sure we were going to throw up.

At five minutes short of the hour, I finished off the bottle. I thought I’d be able to wait the last five minutes, but it was a terrible idea. I could feel the milk at the back of my throat. I was literally full. I tried to not think about throwing up, which made me think about it more. And, without about 4 minutes left in the hour, I rushed outside. You might think holding on for another 4 minutes must have been possible, but not if you had seen the way the milk left my body.

As soon as I stepped outside I opened my mouth and the milk came back out. All of it, all at once. It wasn’t painful at all. It was if I was supposed to naturally produce milk this way.

A little girl riding by on her bike was watching me from the moment I came outside. She couldn’t have been older than 7 or so. She was lazily riding her bike around in circles, watching me over her shoulders the whole time. When I had finished, moments after I walked out the door, she rode a little closer to the porch and said, “I think you drank to much milk.” Then she rode away.

I ventured back inside, and saw that my challenger had developed his own plan. He was going to wait until the last few seconds, down the remains of the bottle, and immediately go outside and follow my lead. In retrospect, this was a much smarter idea.

He finished the bottle, headed out side, and made to lean over the rail. Another of our coworkers started counting backwards from ten. This must have confused my challenger, as the rest of us had already said his time was done. He whipped his head around, as if to question why he still had 10 seconds left. I believe he managed to get out, “Wh-” before a fire hose of milk, Exorcist style, rocketed out of his mouth. This was 6 to 7 feet projectile. It was filthy, and we loved it.

I dutifully paid for a 2 cases of beer, and the winner collected about 25 bucks. We had a cookout during lunch the next day to celebrate, and everyone had a few beers… except me. I figured I’d paid for it, so I was due as many as I wanted. When we got back to work, I told everyone I was going to drive the pickup that we were allowed to use to move things around on campus.

When they convinced me that drinking and driving was a bad idea, especially on the campus where I was enrolled, and from where I was drawing a paycheck, I convinced them to just let me turn it around so we could put our next load in the back from the warehouse more easily. They agreed. I put the truck in drive, and drove the truck 2 feet into the warehouse dock in front of me. I put the truck in park, left the keys in the ignition and got out.

I looked at the truck as if it had done something to ME, turned to the guys, shrugged and said, “Well, shit. I can’t drive,” and proceeded to stumble my way into the warehouse to load the back of the truck. Once someone turned it around properly, that is.

I want to kill those monkeys and eat THEIR brains, originally published 8 Feb 2006

Currently, and much to my dismay, there are, and have been for the past few hours, two howler-monkeys hate-fucking the bejesus out of the backs of my eyeballs.

They spent their time earlier in the back position of my skull behind my right ear. Screaming and humping, abusively throwing shit at one another when the orgasms never came.

I tried to drown them with water, but apparently it just made them horny, and if you had seen me at about 2 o’clock, I would have been squinting and saying, “eh?” as the monkeys strapped on steel-tipped dildos of doom, and straight jungle-fucked my skull until I passed out from the pain.

I’m pretty sure they’re trying to give me a brain tumor. The good news is, two angry howler monkeys could hump my brain into mush before I developed a tumor. That’s also the bad news.

I sent three Bayer in after the monkeys, but I think the monkeys may have captured them, dug a pit, shoved them into it, and then pissed on their heads. I wouldn’t be surprised if a undigested Bayer was forced out of my tear duct with a message written on it by the monkeys. “Evict this you pantywaist piece of shit,” it would probably say. Then they’d pound me until the seizures started.

Maybe they’d leave after the seizures caused me to release the contents of my bladder and anus into the inside of my suitpants, but who can guess what those crazy monkeys would do or not do?

Shootin’ the poop, originally published 12 Jan 2006

I’m not the type that likes to talk while going to the bathroom. I think that when your body is in the midst of excreting a substance, all attention should be paid to that task, lest that substance end up somewhere it does not belong.

Apparently, my coworker does not agree with me. We, unfortunately, entered the bathroom at the same time and he made a bee-line for the stall while I headed for the urinal for a little target practice. At first everything was fine, but then he started talking about a PTA meeting he had recently attended

*PLOP*

and he went on at length about the regulations that were brought up

*THHBBBBT PLOP*

and how they would effect students enrolling at a local high school for the next six years if they were allowed to be put into action. He said he had signed up to comment at the meeting

*PLOP PLOP*

but too many people before him spoke for too long and he didn’t get a chance to speak

*GRUNT*
*THBT PLOP KERPLUNK PLOP*

so he would have to write a letter to the school board instead.

By this time I had already washed and dried my hands and was ready to be done with the whole ordeal, but he started talking about RAKING LEAVES! I wasn’t sure how long I had to humor him, but I was having trouble keeping from falling on the ground laughing or throwing up. It was at this point that someone else walked into the bathroom while he was a gruntin’ and a talkin’ and I used the opportunity to escape. I hope the other guy that came in was ready for a conversation, because old squat-and-plop was ready to do some talking.

Got Milk?, originally published 18 Jan 2006

Before I start this post, I must remark that I can’t believe I haven’t posted this story before. I feel like I posted it before, but I couldn’t find it in the archives, and it may just seem familiar because of how frequently I’ve told it. It’s one of my favorite stories of all time, and it’s also been published by Cosmo in one of those Cosmo Confessions sections. Of course, they removed all of the funny and interesting bits, which I have restored painstakingly here.

It was December 2001, and it was the first time ACWF had ever met my family. We were at my aunt and uncle’s house, and we were celebrating Christmas early for the benefit of my cousin’s kid, who lives in West Virginia. My uncle had made a big pot of chili for dinner, and everyone had finished eating by the time we arrived. It was probably about 6:30 or so.

This was the first time ACWF had met my extended family, and because I’m a horrible person, it was also her first time meeting my immediate family as well. What can I say? I’m a douchebag.

Because my dad’s a nice guy, he helped relieve some tension by doing shots of Maker’s Mark and Knob Creek with ACWF and my uncle. After about 30 minutes they were all pretty well lubricated, and ACWF was developing quite a case of the munchies. In fact, I think her exact words were, “Dude! You know what would be good right now? Food!”

My uncle served us some chili, and as a joke he brought over a bottle of Dave’s Insanity Sauce. (At that time, Dave’s Insanity Sauce was the hottest hot sauce on the market. Since then Dave has made 2 or 3 sauces that are even hotter.) ACWF and I are fans of spicy food, but I knew from tales of my uncle how hot this sauce could be, so I approached the matter with great care and concern, and let a few small drops fall from the bottle into the chili. ACWF, drunk as an Irishman on “National Irish Drinking Day” (or Tuesday, as they like to call it) shook the hot sauce on like it was ketchup.

“Uh, that stuff’s pretty hot. I’d be careful with it,” says I.
“Meh. I like hot stuff, and I can’t take it out of the chili now,” slurs she.

We stirred up our chili and took a bite. I waited for the steam to burst from my ears and the fire to shoot from her mouth, but it never came. It wasn’t bad, actually, so we each went back for another bite. Apparently the Insanity sauce has some sort of prankster’s artificial intelligence, because after the second bite we noticed a change in our demeanor. I can’t speak for ACWF, but I can say honestly that I was in such pain from the sauce that stomach actually tried to leap sideways from my body, and I could momentarily see through time.

My uncle was laughing hysterically like some type of maniac leprechaun, “I can’t believe you ate that much hot sauce! I only use one drop for an entire pot of chili!”

Everybody gathered around to offer their ideas for a cure. We ate bread and crackers, tried ice and water, even went so far as to eat huge chunks of cheese. Nothing was working, and 20 minutes later my mouth hurt as much as it did initially. I was contemplating going through life as a sweaty, red-faced freak until I remembered that milk can been used to cool the heat of hot sauce. Something about acids and bases. We each swigged (swug?) a glass of milk and the pain diminished slightly. It was as if the grip of the hot sauce on our tongues and throats had weakened, and suddenly the crackers began to work as well. Crackers & cheese were our only companions for the next hour or so, unless you also count pain, loss of vision, vertigo, lactating nipples, and hallucinations.

After a while the party began to wrap up, the pain had subsided considerably, and we could taste some basic flavors again. We decided to head back to ACWF’s house. When we got there we brushed our teeth to get rid of any lingering traces of hot sauce, and then made a run to the liquor store in order to numb what pain remained. It was probably about 10pm.

We got back to ACWF’s house and broke into the beers. We settled into comfortable positions and whiled away the time watching bad horror movies and cartoons. After the beers were gone we were both feeling “romantically inclined” so we started fooling around. ACWF, never one to disappoint, started with some oral sex, and everything was again right with the world. Sort of. After a few moments something didn’t feel right, so I suggested that we just switch to regular old intercourse.

After a few minutes of that ACWF looked at me and said, “This feels weird.” Typically if a woman said that, I’d be insulted. Up until that point I had pleased hundreds of thousands of women (or, two) and I’d never had any complaints of thing feeling weird. However, this time I agreed. We stopped for a moment while trying to figure out what could be the issue when the burning suddenly became so intense that I felt like my wang was being plasma-welded to her hoohah. I leaped from her bed and made a dash to the bathroom.

It was while I was rinsing my dangly bits in the sink that the pain cleared my drunken fog, and I realized that my current schlong-frying experiencing was quite similar to the pain I’d had on my tongue a few hours before.

I dashed from the bathroom and grabbed a wash cloth on my way out. I stopped in the kitchen long enough to pour myself a cup of milk, and then I went back downstairs to ACWF’s room. I soaked her wash cloth in the milk, handed it to her, and then dunked my fiery bits into the cool, refreshing liquid. I’ve been told that the wash cloth was quite soothing.

We’ve never had sex after eating hot food since then.

Epilogue: Approximately five hours had passed since we’d eaten the hot sauce, ACWF had brushed her teeth, we had eaten lots of food, and we had drank lots of liquids. Even after all of that, ACWF was still able to burn herself with two degrees of separation from the original hot sauce (sauce to mouth = no separation; mouth to wang= 1 degree separation; wang to hoohah = 2 degrees separation). So be careful out there ladies and gentlemen. You never know when what you have for dinner will crawl into your coochie and start a campfire. A white-hot campfire blazing with the intensity of a thousand suns.

P.S. Tea works incredibly well at reducing the burn of hot foods. Something about the tea helps lift the oil off the tongue and thusly reduce the heat. Try it.

P.P.S. When Cosmo published this story (August 2004, I think), it read like this:

“One time my beau and I were having some spicy chili for dinner. We were so hot for each other that during dinner we couldn’t control ourselves, so we headed straight for the bedroom. I started to go down on him when he yelped and ran to the bathroom. Apparently my mouth was still hot from the chili.”

Yes, this is how they condensed the story I just told you. What the fuck? If there was ever any evidence that the writers and editors at Cosmo are retarded sea-monkeys, you now have your proof.

Kitten Update, originally published 13 September 2005

Okay. I get it. You want to know how my kitten, Sherlock, is doing after I stepped on him.

At first we thought he was getting better. He’d limp less and less as the days went on, and eventually it got to the point where he was walking normally again, showing no signs of any injury. A few days after that we noticed that Sherlock was spending most of his time sitting on his butt and licking the previously injured leg. We just figured that he had missed it as a fully functioning body part and he wanted to show his leg how much he loved it. So he licked it, and licked it, and licked it.

We went to sleep that night and the next morning Sherlock bounded onto our bed, as he is wont to do, and started fighting with our feet beneath the covers. We groggily laughed at his hijinks before I realized that his leg looked funny. I whistled for him to come over to me, and when he turned to trot towards me I saw that his right leg, the previously injured one, was completely hairless and covered in brownish-green spots. I gently grabbed his leg and pushed on the spot and it was kind of tender, so I figured it wasn’t good.

ACWF and I tried to figure out who would take him to the vet. ACWF was teaching all day, and I had a seriously important meeting in the early afternoon that I needed to prep for. I figured his leg wouldn’t get any worse in a few hours, so I said that I’d knock off early and take Sherlock to the vet to get his now spotted and hairless leg checked out.

I got home from work at about 2:45pm and was surprised to not hear Sherlock and his jingle-bell collar running toward the door. He’s just like a puppy. He always greets us when we come home. This was strange behavior for him. I found him a few minutes later in his litter-box with a swollen and almost fully-green right leg. I scooped him up quickly and didn’t even bother to get the carrier, lock the front door, or obey the laws regulating the speed of automobiles.

The vet took one look at Sherlock’s leg and said, “Gangrene.” They rushed him into surgery and had him resting and sedated in about 5 hours. I the meantime I had called ACWF and asked her to meet me at the animal hospital where I had taken him. The vet explained to us that Sherlock had gangrene compounded with an horrible infestation of maggots inside his leg. That’s what had made it so swollen. I thought I was going to throw up.

We went to the recovery room in the back of the hospital to check Sherlock out and to see how he was doing and we were both shocked at what we saw. Apparently the vet had neglected to inform us that he had to amputate Sherlock’s leg because the gangrene and maggots were so bad. Our poor, little cat now had a bandaged stump where his right leg used to be.

It took him a while to get accustomed to that, but now he runs around on all three legs at top speed, and we were talking about getting him fitted for a tiny peg-leg in time for Halloween. He’s going to be our little pirate kitten! Though we might have to give him a more piratical name.

I’m still pretty upset that I’m the one who caused him all this trouble, and all this pain, but he seems to be fine now. The vet just said we have to check him daily to be sure none of the gangrene spread to any other part of him body or else there might be more surgery in his near future.

I’m just kidding. He’s totally fine.

My brain is named Calvin and my stomach is named Shubert, originally published 28 Feb 2006

Hey!

Hey what?

I’m feeling a little funny down here. What should I do about it?

Hold on, I’ll initiate a fart. … How do you feel now?

Um, kind of worse actually.

Hmm. Maybe you’ve got something bad in you. Do you feel up to ejecting it?

Well, I’d prefer to try to eject it with standard operating procedure first, as opposed to using the emergency procedure.

Sounds reasonable. Go ahead.

… … No dice. It doesn’t seem to be working. Also, I’m very cold, can we turn up the heat in here?

According to our sensors, the exterior heat is at 70 degrees, with the interior at around 98.

Oh. Okay. Well, can we pile on the covers and just go to sleep now?

It’s early, and I’m not tired. I’m going to take some NyQuil.

~one hour later~

Fuck me, it’s hot!

I thought you said you were…

Oh shit! Emergency evacuation procedure has been initiated automatically!

Wait wait wait! Let me alert the legs so we can get to the bathroom! … Okay, go ahead with evacuation.

… … Evacuation comple…. Evacuation com… Evacuatio… Evacuation comp…. Evacu… Evacuation complete. And now I’m cold again.

Well, let’s get in the shower.

… Ah, that’s much better. Back to bed?

Yes, I could use some rest.

I’m cold again, so I’m covering up.

~one hour later~

Is the house on fire? I’m so hot!

Hmm. Sensors are still reporting regular temperatures.

Uh oh, emergency evacuation procedures have been initiated.

Sigh. Hold on, let me wake the legs.

… Evacuation… complete.

Shower?

Nah, let’s just sleep.

~one hour later~

Seriously. Is someone messing with the heat?

Nope. Need to evacuate?

Yeah. … Evacuation complete.

Back to bed?

Yep.

~one hour later~

Hot.

Want to evacuate?

… complete.

~one hour later~

Still hot.

Want to evacuate?

… … … … Um. Emergency evacuation procedures no longer seem to be working.

Hmm. Try standard evacuation procedures again.

Initiating standard evacuation procedu…SWEET MOTHER OF COLON! WE WEREN’T PREPARED FOR SUCH FORCE! THE EXIT FEELS LIKE IT’S BEING RIPPED APART BY THE PRESSURE! WE’RE GOING TO BE PROPELLED OFF THE TOILET!

Just hang on, it should be over soon.

… … Okay. I think we’re all done here.

~one hour later~

Get us out of here before we shit the bed and his fiance never touches him again!

Okay, I’m going. Go ahead with evacuation.

… Okay. We’re good now. Back to bed.

Hey, I was thinking that we not eat questionable bacon anymore.

Sounds like a fantastic plan.

~the next day~

Wow. I feel like when he’s hungover.

I do as well. I can’t think straight, but there’s not anywhere near as much pain in my region as when he’s hungover.

More than enough pain in my region to make up for that I would hazard to guess. What are you going to give me to eat?

Three bottles of Gatorade.

Delicious. What are you going to do while I’m re-hydrating?

Try and remember the word for being splayed out on a sofa at 7 am watching Dirty Harry after a long night of overseeing the evacuation all solids and liquids.

Sorry, can’t help you there. You’re the one that’s good with words. I just turn food into poo.

Ooh ooh! It’s surreal.

Turning food into poo? Nah, it’s just my job.

No, watching Dirty Harry under these circumstances. Surreal.

Good for you! You’ll be in good shape in no time. What comes on after Dirty Harry?

The Outlaw Josie Wales, The Hulk, and National Lampoon’s European Vacation.

Doesn’t look like you’re going to be doing much thinking today.

Nope. Not a damn bit. Don’t process that Gatorade too fast. I don’t want to achieve complete mental function until after The Hulk is over.

Want to know what infuriates me?

The shitbaggers at Merriam-Webster choosing to include “unibrow” as some kind of new word when any sane person - obviously using their brain for something other than growing hair, unlike the rest of the mongoloid populace - knows that true scholars call it a monobrow.




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