A Shiv Poem

On the outside the shiv concept may seem moot but I must disagree.
Sometimes in the home you ought to have one see.
Sometimes you need to stand up straight fo yo self.
Sometimes you need to drop the belligerent like a giant drops an elf.
I've fashioned shivs out of branches and forks.
I've fashioned them using games pieces carried by dorks.
I've used a shiv handle made out of a hundred sided dice.
I've made shivs out of dried up mice.
I've held a shiv aloft while I double dutched.
I've balanced one behind my ear while I ate too much.
The shiv is so sharp and deadly.
"oh shiv, oh shiv, keep away from my belly"
I once give my kid a shiv as a toy
but then my dearest told me shivs can be dangerous - specially for a boy.
Shiv you help me keep away the madness.
Shiv you can lead to so much sadness.

Don't Listen to me because...

I can't get my act together enough to get my kids to flush the toilet.

We're not hardcore environmentalists at our house which might explain the flushlessness.
We're not into "earthy" odors that promote digestion or deep sleep or meditative states.
We're not even conservators, instead using what seems like multiple rolls per visit.
We don't manufacture our own aggressive waste ingesting microbes in a makeshift basement laboratory/kitchen so we don't have to flush and thus save on the water bill.

We water the grass for Pete's sake.

What is wrong with me? With us? With them?

Hoarding Vacations

I've come up with a fantastic new business venture and I'm looking for some seed money.

You, like I, have become fascinated with reality television. I love storage wars, and pawn stars, and top gear, and flipper. Clearly the most interesting show on the tele is the hoarding show. It is kind of like watching someone be sick on the side of the interstate - a short, grotesque, must.

So based on that I'm starting a line of reality show based destination vacations. The flagship vacation/experience will be the hoarding themed week-long survival based event that pits you against The Hoard. The beauty of my business model is that, from my understanding, hoarding is in vogue and so you can often find a hoarder within a 30 minutes drive from every person in America. Hoarders love the possibility of more hoarding so we will offer them an all expenses paid trip to a clean tidy home where they can hoard anew.

My new company, "Pleasure is Deplorable" places travelers into the hoarders now vacant home to vacation in misery. Here are some upsides: travel costs are significantly reduced due to the close proximity. Also the vacationer/participant will spend the entire week in The Hoard trying to find edible food and somewhere to sleep so there aren't any comfort costs. And last but not least you can't leave until the week is over so you save on entertainment expenses. So you're gonna live by your wits, spend very little money, and lose a couple of pounds - the exact opposite of a normal vacation.

I want to free us from the pressure of taking an expensive and relaxing vacation. I want people to come home and feel like home is their vacation. That they have a lot of be thankful for. That when you arise in a semi-clean, semi-warm, semi-stocked refrigerator and your pets are living that you'll give thanks. You'll know that hoarding isn't all that's is cracked up to be, no matter how great they make it look on television, and that today is a day of wonderful possibility.

Unplanned Spontaneous Time Travel

(Dr. Who would be considered planned traveling)

Perhaps you haven't paused lately to consider the ill affects of unplanned, spontaneous time travel - but I have.

During a recent near hallucinatory episode, that occurred whilst traveling through the night from sunny Florida to drab uncommitted winter Virginia, I was struck by how inconvenient it would be to participate in unplanned spontaneous time travel.

I find that some of my most lucid thoughts occur after little sleep and on a full bladder.

No one wants unplanned, spontaneous time travel to happen to them. Surely we all like the idea of time travel for the obvious advantages, but not having the ability to control said travel would be truly disconcerting. In a recent film, "The Time Travelers Wife", this topic is explored to a degree but also includes an aspect of teleportation that I just can't buy into. Its either one or the other folks. You can have teleportation or you can have time travel but you can't have both. It seemed to me that spending all that money to make a movie about those two fascinating albeit mutually exclusive topics was a real waste... but I digress.

And now the crux of the matter. Unplanned, spontaneous time travel is so difficult because you can't plan for it and it is instant. For example what if the traveling occurred while you were in a hot air balloon. Or on a ladder. Or riding a pony. What if it happened while your were using the rest room in an old factory turned trendy brewery. I'm sure the laborers on their lunch break wouldn't appreciate your sudden and inappropriate appearance. What if you were in your home taking a shower and traveled back in time 100 years. It is possible you'd be staring at a farmer in his fields and farming would be far from his mind.

What if you traveled forward in time. What if through some turn of events the only way to move was using a hovercraft... and you didn't have one. What if machines had over taken the world and turned all the humans into battery's and the first human you set free was named Morpheus and looked an awful lot like Lawrence Fishburn.

Avoid unplanned spontaneous time travel by keeping your eye out for it and being careful. Being really really careful.

John Boehner will never be President

During the most recent State of the Union address I decided that John Boehner will never be president. I don't know if he has aspirations to become the leader of the free world but he will most certainly not be.

Boehner is the current Speaker of the House of Representatives and has been both the minority and majority leader of the House. His role as speaker also means that he is second in line to the presidency of the United States following the Vice President in accordance with the Presidential Succession Act.

In the event he were sworn in as the President I predict mass chaos would ensue. Boehner is a representative from Ohio. I have spent time in Ohio during the winter months and the deep level of tan that Boehner sports during ALL months of the year is unnatural and disturbing. He clearly has a love affair with politics and leisure. He has shunned the SPF for the RNC.

I have observed that people get uneasy around the deeply tan. This is particularly true during the winter. And when someone is from Ohio. And when that person is into politics and participating in the gridlocked dysfunctional government.

War against the unnatural tan. Vote no.

The Frosty Death Wish

Perhaps you have seen the frosty death wish. Perhaps you have the frosty death wish. I think I might have the frosty death wish. Even wishes.

I have made a habit of rising early in the morning and it is in the morning that the frosty death wish is most apparent. One morning recently I came upon perhaps that most egregious offender. The biggest wisher. The frostiest. In the darkness I was passing another vehicle but I could only see the drivers eyes. And the reason is simple. They were in too great a hurry to be bothered with the scraping of the windshield. Or any other glass for that matter. The only clear area was a credit card width sized scrapping approximately 18 inches long. Two eyes pressed closely behind it. Hoping for safe passage. Deserving it not.

At what point do we decide that it is a good idea to drive blindly. To drive with disdain. To drive like a blindfolded texting teenager handling their first cigarette.

Listen I've been there. I've done it. I've walked out into the darkness and discovered the cold work before me. I've done it half way. Driving too early. Driving and Praying.

Of all the things to be an inconvenience perhaps we should pick something else. Perhaps we could adjust our morning routine - teeth brushing or the towel hanging. Perhaps we could wash ourselves but forget the cream rinse. We could save some time in these others areas so that we could do the scraping that might allow us to live.

So that at our funeral those that love us might not have to say,

"He lived well, but died poorly".
"His life counted, but He is dead because he couldn't scrape"
"If he had made more money and/or used his garage he'd be on vacation today... but instead we are here and he is dead"
"Death comes for us all, but it comes more quickly to those that are cold and lazy"
"He blogged about the importance of winter windshield maintenance... and yet"


Live another day. Run from the frosty sarcophagus. Touch the Thunder.

A New Tradition

This year we've started a new tradition.

The post Christmas clean-up is a bit of a bummer so I've decided to spice things up a bit. Instead of simply hand mulching our organically grown Fraser Fur like we usually do, we're going to push the tree disposal boundaries a little bit.

Back when I was in university my college chums and I went through a brief period of time when throwing things off the roof our our house was a grand form of entertainment. It was this memory that inspired the activities of tonight.

With the family gathered a safe distance away from the landing area, I pulled the now thoroughly dry tree up onto the roof of our home. There I doused it with kerosene using a small hand-held sprayer and lit it ablaze.

Its glowing arc through the cold night sky was something our family will cherish in our hearts forever... or until next year.