Don't P in my bucket...

Image via WikipediaWell it seems as though I've been able to hush the voices in my head lately, because they haven't highjacked my body and brought me to my venue in a while.  I've actually been hiding all week.  I was really counting on the world to end last week, as predicted.  So I had to perform a few illegal activities in order to check off items on my bucket list.

The first problem with my bucket list: it is designed based on the assumption that I will one day be rich and successful.  I seem to have dominated every critical aspect, with the exception of wealth.  I've come to grips with the fact that every lucrative idea, that I choose to harbor, turns out to be quite the opposite.  People tell me that money doesn't grow on trees, to which I reply–B.S..  Isn't money maid from trees?  I don't want to overanalyze here.

My Point is: in order to meet the demands of a demanding bucket list, I had to come up with some money quick.

FYI-Robbing a 7-11 is a bad idea.  It takes them forever to get out a five dollar bill.  Of course I've realized this once or twice before.  It seems I always get stuck in line behind the one idiot who has to have the exact package of cigarettes, 20 different lotto tickets, and doesn't realize that there're 5 people lined up to kick him in the nuts.

Eventually I made ends meet.  Let's just say I don't have a fool-proof alibi for how I attained the Ferrari in my driveway.

Moral:  Don't wait to start on that bucket list.  If some moron has miscalculated the exact day the world will end, he might screw-up the math again.

Hey ma, happy day...

Dearest Mother, who carried me in her belly for 9 months and assumed full legal responsibility of me clear until the age of 18 (hopefully the 9 months part is true, otherwise I think it's time to confirm my speculations),

Thank you for raising me and laughing at all my jokes, even when they weren't that funny and didn't make any sense.  I also appreciate having someone to go to, that actually falls for my "I'm a martyr routine".  You've done good, except of course with the youngest, but we don't even know how he showed up in our family.  I'm not trying to start any rumors but seriously, could we see some solid DNA evidence? It's not easy taking care of 6 kids, and even more so since none of them could be more like me.  Thanks for challenging me and never telling my siblings that I'm your only REAL favorite.  It would have caused a lot of unnecessary drama had they known.  Thanks for helping my wife and I to continue to be students for life, even though our degrees will clearly NOT represent the countless hours of schooling.  I'm sure it's tough telling people, "yeah, my sons in school again, and no, he's not a doctor.  He's not even in grad school."  It could be worse though, I could have been a dentist.  All that schooling, yet they appear to gain no knowledge.  Sometimes I swear that it is common procedure to give all dental patients a lobotomy.

Thanks for all you do!  The kids are grateful too.  And I'm grateful that they're grateful, because it makes it that much easier to dump them on you.

Love ya,

Your greatest son ever--Lee

hand in the cookie jar...

Image via WikipediaWell folks, I just want to let you know that this amazing source of information has now been viewed over 2,000 times.  Yes I'm talking about this blog.

Many thankses are due to the four of you who have spent countless hours running from computer to computer in the library and visiting my site.  I also want to thank my Mother-In-Law who will tie down anyone she can, to read them my blog.  She's getting desperate to prove that her daughter did not marry a total loser (boy does she have an odd strategy to back that claim, fortunately I don't have much for competition!).  I got caught snagging a pound of bacon out of her deep freeze.  That only made her more determined.  This was all after my wife gets on my case.  I explain to Wifey that the deep freeze and garage fridge are communal storage space (Mom knows this which is why she's cool with it, as long as I don't take all of her specially crushed ice that she gets at Sonic.  Sometimes that's the only thing she's allowed to have on whatever diet she's after).  I know at least once every 2 to 3 months I put a 24-pack of Diet Pepsi in that fridge; and I'm at least 96% sure that I only drink 22 of them.  With everybody on those insane diets around that house, they don't need bacon calling screaming from the garage at 5 am--"Let me out of this freezer.  I'll sizzle for you.  I'm juicy in all the right places."  No wonder they're always starting a new diet.  Man, that's good of me to take on that burden for them.

You've heard of "leave a penny take a penny", right?
Well that's new to me, I always heard it as "leave a penny take a dollar".  That just makes more "cents".  Why would anyone trade a penny for another?  Unless they're some kind of freak coin collector.  And I am no coin collector, I throw that crap out unless it's a quarter.  Coins are for people of a class sooo low that the thought of it makes me feel like I should ring my butler and have him fan me for an hour, just so that I can remember what someone of that class looks like.  (Funny thing is I don't even have a butler but when I'm too good to carry around coins, I feel like I could afford one.)  Besides, I have a hard enough time keeping my pants up, I don't need any insignificant coinage weighing me down.  How many more notches do I have to make in my belt, before it wraps around me twice?

My question is how many people are waiting anxiously each day for my latest blog post, but aren't sharing it with your friends?
So it's not just that the in-laws give freely of their bacon, or their Lexus SUVs for some 4-by when they're out of town (I can't believe that superglue has held the bumper on this long!), or their country club membership when I want to go somewhere where I can feel like a pimp and slap around the staff with my golf gloves (I feel like a true nobleman), or Ol' man's golf clubs (I knew that glue wouldn't hold, but Ol' Man gets pissed and throws his clubs so much that they're bound to brake soon), or their basement to host chicken fights (Silly Michael Vick used his own place--what a tool!), or their condo for hosting raves and charging $20 a head (It's so cute when Mom pretends that she doesn't know why she's getting a $2,000 cleaning charge.  I hope they never turn on a black light in that place), or their "missing" furniture that I'm constantly selling on craigslist (I tell people that it was owned by some movie star--suckers!)...
...it's that Mom reads my blog and shares the love--that's what counts.  That's how she wins over my heart, every day.

So for the rest of you, that have been taking well over a dollars worth of advise, who are you to not spread the love?  I bet you don't even have your membership to the quiet-ramblings.com fan-site in your will.  Don't you want to leave your offspring a gift that keeps on giving?

Pass it on, so I don't have to enter another self-promotion campaign...

pump your fist and resist...

Image by Robert Goodwin via Flickr

Redemption has been a long time and running.  There is no excuses for last place, ever!  The embarrassment I speak of is a pinewood derby race.  I've been helping my wife's cousin prepare for the pinewood derby, last year we had some scheduling issues, and let's just say it did not go well.  It also doesn't help that current cub scout politics are modeled after the girl scout organization.

Talk about red tape.  They've got this race so locked up these days, either there is an underground conspiracy or it has been determined that critical thinking/engineering skills are no longer important in the Cub Scouts of America.  You have to turn in your car three days before the race, you can't touch it from then til after the race, no tweaking, no adjustments, no scientific process, and no trial and error.  My only question--Cub Scouts of what America?  This is a direct threat against the competitive nature, that drives social dynamics in our country.

When I was a cub scout, we started sanding, painting, sanding, painting, over and over weeks prior to the event.  We each made five cars.  Body style was where autonomy was permitted by Dad.  When it came to frictionless axles and wheels that could fly straight down the track, parental supervision was required.  Dad had us polish those axles with him for about an hour each.  We set up the track days in advance, and ran trials till the early AM.  In private my brother and I would plot strategies, to destroy other cars that might present a threat.  We couldn't just win, we had to make sure that there wasn't a shadow of doubt that we won.  We stayed up all night before the race, so that our eyes would be blood shot all day.  We dropped by the drama club before leaving school, so they could accent our jaw bones and make our eyes look deeper and more mysterious.  We showed up to the race like 2 vampires, unwilling to leave without drawing blood.  You better not be picturing that pasty guy from twilight.  We'd race our own car to the end of the track.  There was no timing, it was car vs. car.  Tourney style elimination.  We brought it.

At the end of the day victory was ours.  But like I said, times have changed, boys are supposed to be more interested in tea parties now, or something...

By the way bro, happy b-day...

You want it...

Image via WikipediaI was walking around this morning a little overconfident, if you could imagine what that would be like.  You probably know by now that I'm nearly flawless in every aspect.  Of course that's my bias, but I still think it's pretty objective.  Still, I wasn't sure why I felt greater than mankind.  About the same time I was pondering, my stomach started growling.  I remembered I had to bring some of my breakfast with me.  Then it dawned on me that there was a certain bulge in the jewel region, that brought about this new confidence.  I reached into the big pocket of my hoodie and there they were, two of those little easy-to-peel oranges.  Ah... no wonder I felt so confident.  

This discovery would've been deflating, given the oranges' false representation, had I not had many sad experiences with cold water.  I've definitely learned the ability of the balls to hide, when it's cold out. Besides, it was no longer the false bulge.  What was so extraordinary to me, is that confidence clearly has no limits.  This must be some kind of scientific discovery, because I thought it my confidence had reached the highest summit.  I felt like a silly African kid that reached the top of K2 and found a plaque of some type (all imagination, there's no way I would freeze my balls off to climb that high) the plaque tells about Mount Everest.  Every time people were telling me K2 was the highest, they had been fooling me.  So being the silly white boy I am, I sit and ponder what this new level of confidence could be and what it takes to get there. 

I'm surrounded by self-righteous nuts, that constantly try to point out that this confidence I have is false.  They've even gone as far as calling me names like "cocky".  Sure someone trashes a "less fortunate" person, and we throw a PC pep rally in their honor.  If you all love wheelchairs so much, how come you always walk the other way when you see one coming?  I get it we have to cheer for the underdog, but when you think about it, people like me are underdogs too.  Just because I blow competition out of the water, does not mean I don't have any needs.  I do have needs.  I need fans.  I need lots of fans, not so that I can listen to their rhetoric as they stroke my ego.  I need fans so that I can ignore them and pretend that I don't recognize their existence.  Get it?  It's not the cries of worship, it's the idea that there are cries of worship.  Once you have the idea you can use it however you choose.  Don't get all lecturer on me, couples do this all the time.  "This is my husband, he is a programmer, he's the smartest one there is, which is why his boss made him second in command."

People always use other's accomplishments to make themselves look good.  That's a step in the right direction.  However, I want to look good, not because you tell me I do, but because I don't care that you think I'm awesome.  And that's confidence.

Don't hat me because I'm beautiful...