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...

The eye of a tye-gurrrrh

Image via WikipediaSo you want to put your game face on today?  You want to roll out in the streets and let everybody know--Imma get mine!  Well that's the way to play it.  If you've got the stones to build some crazy hard-core game plan (while you're staring at yourself in the mirror) and you follow through, you might be a force to reckon with.  Every night before I go to bed I have this brilliant game plan for the next day.  No need to write it down--I tell myself.  This is where we come across a few problems.

First, I must explain the current state of the inorganic power house that runs my body.  I'd say on any given day, I eat more candy than 10 "normal" adults.  I know you may be surprised to hear this, but this doesn't really aid in the stability of my blood sugar level.  I'll be working my butt off then without warning, I start shaking and I get real dizzy.  Of course I don't think--if I could get a decent protein right now it would help me out.  To make matters worse, since the beginning of the year there's always someone around me dieting.  I get 175 calories per meal--they say--I'm doing the HCG diet.  To which I reply--you get?  They say it like it's some kind of privilege to only eat a side items worth of a meal.  This isn't some third world country, this is America.  We are the most obese nation.  I hate to break this to you, but in this country food is privilege.

So why should I care if people want to go on outrageous unhealthy diets?  I don't care, but the more you tell me about it the more my belly growls back at you.  You've got me worried about a food surplus.  So now because you can't do your part in society, I have to eat up an extra 2,000 calories.  That's quite a burden for me.  I've got sores in my mouth that may never heal, because I can't quit shoveling down the candy.  Laugh away, but once you're done with your diet and you're craving something good you'll thank me.

That's right, while you're screwing around with our economy I'm keeping a steady supply and demand.  What if one of these days when I remember that my plan is to eat a little healthier?  Not scared yet?  What if I follow through?  Who's going to keep supply and demand in balance?  Keep laughing, right up until you show up for that late night craving and you can't find your Reese's.  Many stores have already taken away my cinnamon bears, how many more candies have to perish before you people learn?

Your diets don't work.  Eat more candy...

I guess it doesn't have to make cents...

Time is a commodity, be careful what you trade it for.  I can't wait until the day that time no longer has meaning, it is a poor measurement.  Does it really matter how many hours are spent in the office?  No my friend it does not and any employer who argues the contrary is an ignorant Stalin impersonator.  How did we become a civilization so desperate for a means to measure productivity, that we completely threw quality into the wind?  Our entire economy has been slowly spinning in a whirlpool right down the toilet.

Look around it didn't fall because we got more lazy physically.  The crapper ate us up, because of our mental laziness.  All because we put everything in a box.  We stopped checking the basics.  It was decided that productivity should have a more comparable unit of measurement.  If you spend 12 hours in the office you must be accomplishing more than you would in 8.  It's that type of reasoning that has landed so many empty headed fools a position of leadership.

So Wall Street decided to put all their crap in a box and mark it "premium".  They decided that trading items of value just didn't seem to make much sense.  So they started to trade theory.  Congress points the finger, but they too have determined theory to be far more valuable than actually doing something.  So while people talk and argue everyone gets to sit and watch the free entertainment.  We're all wondering how this all happened, but we know the truth.  We just didn't care anymore.  The sad part is that it has all evolved into some form of alien excretion, and we don't know what to care about.  

If I sell you some lemonade at 25 cents a cup, is it profitable?  After I pay the neighborhood kids for dodging traffic and swirling signs, then settle my recurring bill at the grocery store, I can see if my net is black or red.  I could work 12 hrs or 12 min, in the end all I care for is profit.

Next time you tell me to hurry, just know I'm not listening.  The rambling above is what's running through my head.  So I'll take my time and do it right.

And that, my friends is your country in a hand-basket.  Where are you going?

To infinity...

Dear Humble Followers,

Oh how you've grown in numbers!  Your support has inspired me.  

My dream of becoming a novelist is underway.  When I say novelist I'm talking famous, I'm talking one book all or nothing.  That's why I'm fine tuning my skills.  Because I don't want to produce that Stephen King thriller crap.  Oh no... one of those paperbacks could barely pay off his yacht.  What I need is something that will integrate every genre into one sensation.  It will rip out the hearts of the young and old, while simultaneously falling to their knees in laughter.  Families will reunite, and world peace will finally be measurable.  People will travel miles to hear a book reading and to get my autograph.  They'll buy hundreds of books and spread them around their house, just to feel the presence of greatness.

And that's the key, sell a googol of books.  Why such high hopes?  So that I can ride that baby all the way to retirement.  Because if there is one thing I've learned about being sick the past few days, it's that there is nothing more satisfying than dominating the TV remote.

So thank you for reading and please don't steal my idea.  Maybe one day we can all come up with creative ways to avoid work.  I'm sure it will lead to an eventual takeover by machines, but they can have it.  World domination is exhausting...

Trivial is proportionate to time...

Image via WikipediaYuck.  There is a clever mischief stirring about the homefront.   Children conspiring, a bittersweet act, is not what's worrying me.  Maybe I've just lost my mind, maybe it's the 100W (rated) light bulb that I used to replace the 60 over the kitchen table.  So I wondered all around the house all day fidgeting and tweaking.

Then finally, I realized a couple things:
1.  It's time to pimp my garage.
2.  These compact flourecent light bulbs take a while to warm up and put on a good shine just like there older strip light siblings.  Therefore using them in the garage is somewhat impractical, since you only turn it on for a brief moment when you go out there and 85% of the time you're back in before it reaches full brightness.  Yet at the same time not using them could be quite detrimental, since the garage is the number 1 place where the light gets left on with out noticing.

At this point there's a little anxiety and panic setting in as I face my first GREAT dilemma of the day.  So I sat on the couch pondering deeply, while nervously tapping my foot.  What to do... What to do... Do I put in an incandescent light bulb and risk leaving it on at night, burning about 3 times as much energy, or add additional compact flurescent?  After about an hour of running numbers (while simultaneously telling myself "this can't be right, I didn't carry enough significant digits after the decimal..." recalculating...) and yelling and the kids to stop running in circles and looking up to try to see their hair(see they're just as crazy as me), I came up with the conclusion.  I would add another CFL bulb.

Now over the years I've come to be a little bit of, what some people might call, a pack rat.  I swore it would never happen to me, but it's contagious.  When your on a construction site and your cheap boss says, "you better find a way to reuse those, they run a buck-fifty a piece, and I'll be damned 'f I'm buyin' a nother."  After a while he's got you believing that a buck-fifty is a lot of money.  You're paradigm has shifted.  There's something about using the word "Buck" or "One" dollar that makes it sound so much more valuable than "a" dollar.  And since I don't have a job right now, that adds to the blow...

So anyways I'm looking through my box of electrical goods.  I have enough material to interconnect every audio system in the home, but no bulb socket.

Back to the couch....
Kid's running and screaming (it's too cold outside)...

After hours of drafting clever plans to fabricate my own bulb socket I scrap them all and decide to solder directly to the bulb.  I have to cook dinner now...

Hot dogs on the stovetop.  Meanwhile oldest daughter helps me solder, since my hands won't quit shaking.  I believe it's due to the fact that I've had to cut back on cinammon bears, by buying the 16 oz rather than the 5 lb. bags.

So here I am pondering all the things I was going to get done today, and this is what I have to show-

Want me to pimp your garage too?  Just share this with all your facebook homies and you'll receive a coupon for 15% off of your pimped out garage.  What?  That's not tempting enough?  I'll double it if you twitter as well.





And this is why my wife keeps a close eye on me.  So it goes...