Not much news around here...

...except I almost arranged for a printing job that would have cost 1100 dollars, but my co-worker saved me. Shout-Out, D! Boo-hiss, Kinko's; your two color printing rate is extortionate.

I missed my blood donation appointment this week and when they called today they said "This is Janie from your American Red Cross. Is everything okay?!" I think that is adorable. I know its hard to tell with me sometimes, but I'm not being sarcastic; that is such a cute way to shame someone.

Sorry I haven't been in touch

Higgins has been at home, sick in the bed with some sinus-y, upper respiratory/bronchial thing. You'd think Higgins really was a bassett hound what with all the snuffling I've been doing, but Higgins is not. Higgins is an ex-smoker who is pissed off because I quit and it sucked and I was never supposed to get sick again, certainly not sick in the same way smoking made me sick.

Balls.

Anyway, all I did for four days was lay around on the couch watching summer TV at all hours of the day and night, so here it is: Higgins' Bullet Point Television Review!!!

• Man, there is a lot of TV. A solid 85% of it is pretty bad, but you can usually find something on.
• I have recently discovered and become enchanted by Eureka on the Sci-Fi channel.
• Why would Turner Classic Movies show Citizen Kane at 2:00 in the morning? And I have to say that AMC has vastly lowered its definition of what is a classic (I'm talking to you, Children of the Corn II)
• Here are some commercial actors who are good in their commercials:
• -The red headed chick who doesn't know how much to pay for a deductible (State Farm)
• -The black dude who revokes your ticket to the High Life (For 13 dollars I'll be a macademia nut)
• -All those yahoos at the Holiday Inn breakfast bar
• -The restaurant pirate for Free Credit Report.com
• The Closer stays good.
• VH-1 as an entity should be arrested and put in jail.
• Shark Week gets better every year. There is some craaaaazy shit going down on Shark Week.

Although I am distressed by the growing number of shark apologists. I do not wish to feel that these misunderstood creatures of the deep have gotten a bad rap; I wish to fear and loathe them. Although, quite comically, I did hear one nature filmographer very clearly yell "Go, little guy!" in the midst of a horrifying seal chase.

Also, I am waiting for the interview where someone says "Well, yes, actually, it kinda has ruined surfing for me. I will never get in any body of water again unless it has a drain and a soapdish. For further details, I invite you to consult the teeth marks in my back. What a stupid question!"

In somewhat related news, I am waiting for the lottery press conference where the winner says "Fuck yeah, I'm gonna quit my job! This is my 2 minutes notice! What a stupid question!"

Also...

Add to list:

• "Hot Aspartame's the name of my new band."
• "My clothes won't talk to you if you don't talk to me."
• "Go make me a sandwich, Icy-Hand-Of-Death!"
• " 'For thirteen dollars, I'll be a macademia nut.' "
• "Ghost in the Machine! Ghooooost...."
• "Bitching or Non-?"
• "L'chaim!"

All day long I'd beedle-beedle-bum...

Things I have said aloud today:

• "Why do I have Fiddler in the Roof stuck in my head?"
• "Is it a fresh fruit day or a penguin day?"
• "E's on vacation...D's home sick...A's at the bank and everyone else is in a staff meeting...I am the last worker on Earth."
• "I'm a feeling a little gangster myself."
• "What's that supposed to be, charm?"
• "Allow me to present Exhibit Go Fuck Yourself."

Things I have thought to myself today:

• If I were a rich man
• Ah ya-ha-dee-dah-dee-dah
• die-dull-dee-dull-die-da-dee-da-dum

It's weird

Kangaroo tastes like a mix of venison and liver. Much more like organ meat in taste, although the cut and texture were just exactly like any other loin. Not my cup of tea, but I'm glad I tried it.

Two conversations:

Scene. The telephone, talking to a girlfriend with whom I am trying to lose some weight.

P: Did you do the Yogi Booty Ballet ?
Me: No, I busted out the Billy Blanks Tae-Bo.
P: How come?
Me: I was pretending to be a kangaroo all afternoon at work so I was already in a punching and kicking mood.
P(pause): Where do you work?


Scene. A Bar, trying to make conversation on the "I'm not gonna meet and fall in love with someone without leaving the house" principle. Maybe forty seconds into the conversation I reference kangaroo.

Me: I tried something for the first time tonight.
Him: Anal?


And this is exactly why I no longer bother.

Kangaroo: its what's for dinner!

Seriously.

Tonight's Chef Special is "Chili Rubbed Kangaroo Loin: Grilled Medium Rare with a Black Bean Cake and Grilled Corn, Tomato and Avocado Salad."

G'day, mate!

So on the one hand I'd be really really offended if I knew an Australian was serving Bald Eagle, but on the other hand I am dying to know what kangaroo tastes like. I'm going to try it in just a while; I shall keep you posted.

Side Note: These people are spoiled rotten. We are serving kangaroo, for Chrissake's, which I think you will agree is hard to get at say, Chili's, and we have exactly zero reservations for dinner. Which is okay, because I in my role as Resident Comedy Genius have determined what we should do with the leftovers.

Sloppy Joeys.

Because I enjoy their toast and their kissing, that's why

Normally I celebrate by cutting the heads off paper dolls, but turns out Monday was Bastille Day and I totally missed it. C'est la vie.

Bullet Points!

• Marine is a capitonym, so I guess navy has to be also. Also China.
• It is fun to roll your R s! We have a Dennis Pro who has about four sets of double Rs in his name and whenever he comes in the door I announce him like a baseball guy: "Andrrrrrres Gallarrrrrrrraga!" (not his real name. Well, not the Dennis Pro's real name. It is, in fact, Andres Gallaraga's real name.)
• I can totally touch my toes now. Trust me, this is a big damn deal.
• Do you ever just think something super-mean? I mean just breath-takingly mean; if-you-read-it-in-a-script-you-would-not-believe-someone-could-actually-say-that mean? A girl came in yesterday to apply for a job whose previous experience was Hooters where she "served and created a fun invirenment." My thought bubble said "I hope you suck dick better than you spell, because you're not getting a job." I know; sometimes my thought bubbles even disconcert me.
• Here is joke from a five-year old: What do you get when you cross a pig and a centipede?
• Give up?
• Bacon and Legs.

I do not care to discuss the All Star Game

Okay, I'm not going to say anything, except I will say this: why, why does the National League always pick the All-Star game to suck on the national stage? I knew Brad Lidge was going to blow that hold, I knew it, because the Atlanta Braves can't get a hit off him for love or money, and the aces are aces against us and asshats against the AL All Star team. Just like I knew Trevor Hoffman was gonna blow it in 2006 (and frankly he has not been the same since).

Dan Uggla eats our regular season pitching up and steals hits from my guys with his defense at second. He has never had a three error game in his life, but he had one last night!

Damn it, dammit, dammit; I really thought I the NL had a chance last night/early this morning; I had even picked my headline: Dog Bites Man.

But I'm not talking about it.

Except I will say this: Russell Martin made two of the shittiest throws to second base I have ever seen in my life, and yet Brian McCann didn't get in the game until the fifteenth frigging inning and never even got to swing the bat. Clint Hurdle is kind of a fucktard. And our All Star manager's team is like 8.5 games back.

But I don't want to talk about it.

Let's talk about this: I am now certified as a first responder. If you fell down hurt or heart attacky or strokey or on fire or bleeding or in diabetic shock I would totally try to help you.

They are pretty much straight up telling us now that you will not save anyone's life with CPR, though. The defibrillators will save your life, but here's kind of a funny story. He asked if I could go get one of the Wub's four AEDs, and it was locked in someones office and when I finally found someone with a key to get it for me, the box was empty of everything but the pads. Which expired two years ago. So my guy died. But, if I had the equipment I would totally save his life.

When I was in middle school my all-time go-to daydream fantasy was that I would push Simon LeBon's kid out of the path of a speeding car and completely save Simon LeBon's kids' life, and therefore become the Queen of Duran Duran and get to go to all the concerts and private plane rides and only let girls who were nice to me hang out and maybe, just maybe get Frenched by John Taylor.

Now my new daydream fantasy is that I will completely save the life of some old rich decrepit fart who has a heart attack in the Fitness Center, and reap serious rewards for heroism and for not watching a millionaire die for the fun of it (can you tell I'm thinking of a particular person?). The best part of this mature daydream fantasy is that it might happen! Probably, even!

So that's my retirement plan; what's yours?

"It's toasted!"

I'm looking at vintage tobacco ads and there's this one starring Marlene Dietrich for Lucky Strike in 1950. It actually says "so round, so firm, so fully packed...so free and easy on the draw."
Why does that sound filthy?
"There's never a rough puff in a Lucky."
Now that's just gay.

This moment of pure evil is brought to you by State Farm

So everyone knows that the (State Farm) Home Run Derby is very fun and very bad for you. Guess who has said they are going to play this year? Division rivals Dan Uggla and Chase Utley! And also Lance Berkman, who threatens Chipper for the batting title.
It is very, very wrong of me to hope they all hit about 45 home runs that night, but I hope they all hit about 45 home runs that night.
The only thing that could fill me with more Montgomery-Burns-style anticipation (eeeexcellent) would be if Pat Burrell was in.
Ooh, and Nate McLouth.
Who?, you may ask.
I Know! It's crazy!!! Who? WHO? At my age I suddenly have to worry about some person named Nate McLouth?!!!? He's a PIRATE, for Christ's Sake!!
Jeez.

The four types of people

• People who enjoy Journey genuinely
• People who enjoy Journey ironically
• People who say they don't enjoy Journey but they are lying
• Journey

(Faithfully was on the XM radio at lunch today. We enjoyed that song.)

This entry has no title

A short list of things that would have been better if people would just listen to me in the first place, including who should have listened and when they should have listened:

• My computer; Tech Support; early yesterday morning
• bottom of the 6th inning in last Tuesday's game; Bobby Cox; top of the 6th inning
• Middle East; Palestine; 1994
• Friends' marriage; both friends; 1992
• Democratic Party; all of 'em; 1988 to present
• the size of my ass; my own brain; May 28th to present

Iwish there was some sort of euphemism for a flashy show-off...

This just in: America retains the competetive eating crown with an unprecedented dog-off in the Nathan's Hotdog Eating Championship!

U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

I am much like Bill Pullman

Well, Happy Fourth of July, kids. I'm working today and the only car in the parking lot at the moment. I shall celebrate Independence Day by working independently.

So I'm a patriot. No irony here, y'all; I don't mean that I drink Miller instead of Amstel or that I hope the USA kicks Chinese ass this month in Beijing or that I support my troops, though all of that is true.

I mean that I love this fractured, flawed, fierce and funny country with everything I've got. I look forward to putting the current administration, with its disgraceful policies of torture and wiretapping and naked contempt for the constitution on the garbage heap where it belongs, because I believe that being an American makes me part of something that is unique and honorable and good.

Also, baseball.

Have you read David McCullough's 1776? If you have not, boy are you lucky with that to look forward to. If you have, you must have been awed and humbled by the central theme of that amazing history: the moment to moment fragility of the revolution. Any battle could have gone either way. General Washington made decisions time and time again that kept the young country from winning decisive victories. We sneaked away at night as often as we charged the enemy. Literally, if the wind changes directions at the Battle of Brooklyn the revolution is defeated utterly and our Founding Fathers are hanged.

But, shockingly, we win. The revolution, miraculously, against all odds survived and created something that no one had ever seen before: a government "instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

How amazing is that?

When Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, he dated it "In the Year of Our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty two and of the Independence of the United States the eighty seventh."

Is that not incredible?

Years of looking for a peaceful response to the threat of secession. Years of trying to preserve the union. Years of speeches becoming more inflammatory, protests becoming more violent, ideological schisms becoming more irreparable. Years of watching the young country teeter on the brink until it finally fell. Then, years of bloodshed and terror and turmoil.

Knowing the terrible cost at which this war had been and would continue to be fought, knowing the dreadful loss of life and treasure, knowing that "brother against brother" was a literal fact and not a poetic device, he knew also that the Civil War was about this one thing only, a truth that kind of slipped past the Framers: that a country cannot survive half slave and half free.

And he dated the document that released the slaves with the date of the birth of the Lord and with the date of the birth of our country. The wonder of that; that in 1862 Lincoln saw the date of our independence at least as significant a start of something great.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."

Lincoln recognized his great responsibility in the fulfilling the promise of that amazing document. May we all do the same.

Have a happy fourth.

P.S. Don't drive drunk; cops have no sense sense of patriotism or humor.

Staying pretty busy here at work, obviously

Here are the some of the things Wikihow says on the subject of How to Find a Hobby:

• "Sell the items you have created in your hobby. Make sure you're good at it first."
• "Do not start a new expensive hobby with money you have budgeted for a college fund."
• "Maybe in summer you love to cycle and in winter you love to make matchstick castles."
• "This will make you a more interesting person than a person that is addicted to MySpace or watching TV or doing other time-wasting and unhealthy tasks, such as stuffing your gut."

In other related searches, How to Cope With Boredom: "Make your own armwarmers".

I don't even know what that is.

Oh, leave me alone, Sis...

My apologies. Higgins has been out fighting crime.

So, in the many days since last we spoke, here are some of the things that happened:

• I began a workout class. Just once a week. It is free, provided by my employer which means either I have a great employer, or he thinks we're all getting a might meaty in the drumsticks. It isn't easy, but in only four classes I have gone from 2 push-ups to ten. Why, sometimes I even lift a five pound barbell over my head at home. So that's where my triceps are. I shall call off the search party.
• Had the birthday. I had a surprisingly enjoyable day (large steak, bowling and beer, baseball game on TV). My sister sent me a card saying "I'm sorry the obsessing about your birthday is taking even more years off your life." Har-dee-fucking-har.
• Had my computer go bad, then get fixed. Man, do I not like it when the tech guys start remotely controlling my computer. They are so snotty about knowing how to do cool stuff like that. I just want to point at the sky and scream "Auughhh! IRON BIRD!!!"
• I have now, as of today, been a non-smoker for five weeks.
• In unrelated news, I have gained 11 pounds in the past five weeks.

Let me tell you though, I am really enjoying being a non-smoker. I am saving so much money, I can walk up the extremely mild grade in my neighborhood and have enough breath to bitch about being out of shape, and it has been too damn hot to smoke anyway.

Also, I am unbelievably, extremely secretly smug. I disguise it by saying things like "If you don't want to quit, you won't. When you're ready you will." But secretly I AM STRONG AND YOU ARE WEAK! BWAHH-HHAHHH-HAHHHHH!!!

My only current complaint is, where is the "elation"? All my supportive websites say that my serotonin levels will even out and I will experience "mild elation". I can expect to feel this in "three weeks to nine months".

Three weeks to nine months? What the hell? Is waiting for elation like waiting for the cable company?

Oh, shit. Maybe that maniacal laugh two paragraphs ago was the elation! You don't think I missed it, do you?