Separated at birth?

Not sure whether or not this has been noticed yet, but I can't be the only one that sees the resemblance.. is James Lipton actually a Gibb?

Today is my Mom's anniversary of being born!

Today my Mom turns.. um.. I don't know? Good job, Mom! You're the best mother I've ever had, and not only am I incredibly thankful that you rule so much and you're such great phone support when I have a cooking question, but I'm also incredibly thankful that you had such awesome kids.

I ponder what my Mom's pre-husband and kids life must have been like when her birthday rolls around, and it's really bizarre for me to imagine. It's hard to believe that my Mom was freshly born at one time and was not housebroken. At one time in her life, my Mom weighed less than a sack of pataytas and my Grandma was wiping her poopie butt and changing her diapers. I have pictures to prove that she was once that small; but still it's fooking strange to think about my Mom being younger than me.

I remember Mum was driving me around running errands when I was a youngen. I asked her how old she was, and she said 32. I'm 32+1 right now, and I get the heebie jeebies when I think that I'm as old as my Mum was when I asked her that question. She already had gotten married and had kids long before that, and damn.. that's just weird. Kind of like when I was 27 and got a copy of my person receipt (a.k.a. birth certificate) - it said that my Dad was 27 when I was born. (insert Twilight Zone music here)

At any rate, as anyone who has met the lady knows, my Mom toadilly rules. If there were a Best Mom In The World contest, she would win, hands down. You think your Mom is cool? Nah-ah. Outside of her Mom, my Dad's Mom, the Mom of my nephews and niece, and my future Other Mom, all other Moms suck eggs. Lela's Mom is pretty awesome too now that I think about it, so I'll give her Mom immunity as well.

Let's just hope that the less fortunate egg sucking moms are sucking on my Mom's homemade deviled eggs. It will give them an idea of how they should taste next time they try to make 'em.

Enjoy your day of birth, Mom!

Past Blogs of Birthday Mommery:

2005
2004

It's not Bluetooth.. it's StupidlookingEar

I'm starting to see a consumer trend out there when I'm running errands and standing in line at stores. More and more people are popping those little Bluetooth headset doodads into their ears. I recently spotted a run of the mill 40-something mom at Walgreen's, and she somehow managed to look even more absurd than this dork in this photo I found on Google to show you what I'm taking about:

Can we please stop this, people? Do you know how fucking lame you look walking around with these things in your ears? It's like you just came from a Star Trek convention where you were all dressed up in character and then forgot to take that one little piece out of your ear when changing back into your Earthling clothes.

I think we're starting to forget the simple things in life. Call me old fashioned, but here's what I do when my cell phone rings: I take it out of my pocket, unfold it, and guess what I do then? I hold it up to my ear and talk into it! Novel concept, wouldn't you agree? There's no need to stick a plastic beetle on the side of my noggin. Those things at the ends of my arms.. um.. oh yeah, my hands - they're great for doing things like answering phones. Bluetooth users would likely disagree with me: But Micycle. What if I'm doing something with my hands like carrying groceries up the stairs or doing the dishes and my phone rings? Here's what you do: you let it go to voicemail and then call the person back when you're done. It's that easy, mate! Unless it's a matter of life and death, who really needs to have a phone on their head at all times?

It's just like back in the day when pagers were all the rage: I'm sure about 95% of the users really don't need the technology, but buy into it because they saw someone on MTV with it or someone else walking around with it. I saw a young dude walking down Lyndale last night. He had the ear thing in and was yammering away at someone on the other end. People wearing these things have two strikes going against them: 1) They look like dorks because there's a piece of plastic on their head, and 2) They look like even bigger dorks because unless you can see the high tech gadget affixed to their head, it looks like they're talking to an imaginary friend.

It's all further proof that technology owns us instead of us owning technology. I'm really thankful that I grew up in an era without most of this poot, because it learned me real good that my life doesn't have to depend on it. If I forget my phone at home, then so be it.. I'll get to whomever calls me later. Sometimes I'll purposely leave my phone behind and just BE. It feels good - try it sometime! I don't know about other cell phones, but if anyone calls when I'm not near mine, when I come back to it, it says MISSED CALLS and the caller ID tells me who it was and if I have voicemail. Wow, it's almost as if that's why those features are on there!

If you're on the market for the Bluetooth headset, I have a special money saving offer for you. For $10, I'll duct tape your phone to your head, and for an additional $5 if your phone has it, will help you set up the voice recognition so you won't ever have to touch the thing again. Keep those hands free for more important things, such as managing the information on your Blackberry.

Guitar Center Ate My Balls

I loathe Guitar Center. A few years ago I even went so far as to put together a "song" named with the very title of this journal entry. Ever since the late 80s when they opened up a store here and my mullet and I went in to peep the place, I always got a used-car salesman vibe from the place. Remember the scene in Fargo where William H. Macy tells the customer he'll go back and talk to his manager to see what he can do? And then he talks to his manager about the hockey game and runs back out to the customer and closes the deal? Yeah, like that. Some people can deal with that, but personally, I can't stand it. I'd rather pay slightly more and know my money is going to a local shop where everybody knoooows your name. [insert piano ending of Cheers theme here]

If you've never been, GC is a big more-is-more American chain store, which means you're pretty much forced to go there when you need something ASAFP. Reasons being because

1) they can afford to be open when the smaller independent shops can't,
2) they're conveniently located, and
3) they have just about everything under the sun in stock.

Those three factors have pretty much killed off their smaller competitors over the years that I used to support. I still do all of my binnit at smaller stores and only go to GC when I absolutely have to, which is very rarely. Last week I needed a mixer for recording Fish Pudding and ended up scoring a closeout floor model from GC. Got home, plugged it in, and the bastard didn't work.

I called the other location in town to see if they had any left. In the token overly zealous GC duder voice, I was told "Yeah, those are great little mixers! Hold on man, let me check!" Mmm hm… Minutes later, GuitarDude popped back on the phone and said "All right, man, looks like I have one left in stock. I can get you a killer deal on it too 'cause it's a floor model. 10% off!" It's a 15 mile drive to the store and I couldn't afford to pass it up ($30 vs. $70?) so asked him to hold it for me until the next day when I could come in.

"Oh no worries, dude, it'll be here!"
"Great.. but can you set it aside for me?"
"Um – well if you're coming tomorrow, it'll be here. Just ask for [insert boy name here that's likely misspelled on purpose, i.e. "Jaysin"] and I'll hook you up!"
"Well can I give you my credit card number to buy it now and be safe?"
"Nah – just come on in tomorrow!"

Ugh. FINE. I took the chance and hung up.

Goldie and I went in the next day and looked through the clusterfuck of gear in the Pro Audio department for my $30 mixer. No dice. I asked one of the three dozen Pro Audio salesmen on hand where it was. GuitarDude checked, and it was still listed in their inventory. I breathed a sigh of relief as he scurried off to hunt it down. 10 minutes of unbearable Metallica/shitty razor blade distortion two handed tapping riffs later, Dude came up to me and said "Toadilly sorry man, I have no idea where it is… I don't know what to do."

Out the door we went.

Over a beer and pizza lunch a block away from there, I decided to not make the trip a total waste. I'd just go back, buy the expensive mixer and just return it after the couple of hours I needed it for, telling them it wasn't what I needed. It's the least those fuckers could do for me for suckering me into driving out there for nothing.

I ran in, bought a new $70 mixer, and took off like a Bat Out of Hell Part II. When I got home, I carefully opened the box, took out the power supply, and plugged it into my old mixer that didn't work in the first place just for shits and giggles. It lit up like a Christmas tree and worked like a charm.

Today, Guitar Center can and will eat my balls yet again when I return the $70 mixer with the old shoddy power supply for a full refund. After all is said and done, I'm ending up with my original mixer that works again… so that's the glass is half full side of this. Thanks once again for the inconvenience, Guitar Center.

Grand Theft Parking Lot

1 shot in Conn. Playstation waiting line

My darling brother Chuck and I went to Best Buy on Wednesday and there were people already camping out in front of the store with their tents set up waiting to buy PS3s. It was prolly only 40 degrees out, and I'm guessing there were a good 2 dozen folks out there waiting. It looked like they'd been there for a while already and had 2 days to go yet.

EEDIOTS.

Not that I'm in favor of ass cappage, but maybe in this case, it's a blessing in disguise:

1) The situation probably made the people in line realize that maybe life is a little too short to be standing in line for days in a row for a fucking VIDEO GAME CONSOLE.

2) Hopefully at least a fraction of the people's memories were refreshed on the lesson that we're told time and time again by crime experts: just give them what they're asking for, or take the risk of having extra holes put in your person. Give 'em your credit cards; you can cancel those out. And if you're dumb enough to have $400 the thing costs right there in your pockets in the form of cash money, then maybe you deserve to learn the hard way, you stoopid shit.

I dunno. I guess it just makes me sad that people will go this far out of their way for things (both on the camping out side and the ass-capping side.)

Maybe some good will come out of all of this: the first thing that comes to my mind is a shooter game for PS3 called Grand Theft Parking Lot. Just don't get shot while waiting in line to get it.

Okay, can somebody please tell me what the fuck this is supposed to mean?

I just received a perplexing spam email this morning and is it me, or is the crux of the message slightly vague? Is there some sort of encryption that I'm missing out on, here? Here.. you read it:

Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2006 16:05:37 +0000From: Joanna Cooke rjvqy@hasilnet.org.my

Subject: turtle protest

Hoy Lunes me ha costado verdaderos esfuerzos. But I'll still fulfill my debt to society with advice: Change your driving habits and save gas.fil-Bitha tat-Teatru Manoel.Can a computer emulate living beings? As advertised, the booster stickers can be shown to work by viewing the signal strength of a cellphone.fil-Bitha tat-Teatru Manoel.Eleven years ago, I knew what it was because I wasn't one. Great for TV junkies, or those who just want something good to watch with a bowl of popcorn.For this event, the German and Spanish. Use this "couch-computer" to watch a DVD: A hidden projector plays video on a recessed, ceiling-mounted projection screen. If so, use these "alternate input devices". com a couple months ago.These special laptops are called "Tablet PCs".Open the couch arm, insert a CD, and listen to music as you browse the Web. "Public key" and "private key" email encryption techniques enable users to hide the contents of any email message, protecting the information with complex, unbreakable mathematical formulas.Difficult and important questions. Often it involves completely changing the way you enter data. These are little stickers advertised to increase the signal strength on your cellphone, giving you clearer calls and fewer dropped conversations. Just because people will buy it doesn't mean it should be sold.So I put the antenna booster stickers to the test. This software may help us find answers. Hoy Lunes me ha costado verdaderos esfuerzos.

Um. Yeah. Beats the living feces out of me. Although it must have some sort of purpose, as I just looked down into my lap and a cartoon bubble popped up telling me I can get Viagra for only pennies a day. There's another cartoon bubble that just popped up over my cell phone telling me I can get a free laptop, iPod, and Palm Pilot if I can click the rapidly moving animated bear wearing a hat and sunglasses.

Holy shit, dude... has my psyche been infected with a spam worm?

Uh oh.. just as I finished typing that question out, the lenses in my glasses turned from clear to now having in intermittent banner that flashes into my eyes informing me that my brain may be infected with viruses and to blink twice for a free 1 month trial of Spyware Doctor.

I better go now.

I demand the use of the word "Dems" to cease immediately.

I don't know why it bugs the shit out of me so much when people abbreviate certain words whilst talking, but it does. During this last election season (thank Gawd it's over with, by the way) I've noticed an incredibly unnecessary instance of this pet peeve of mine. It seems that it's being used a lot, and that it had never previously been used before this week (at least that I know of):

DEMS

Enough!! Please. PLEASE just say "democrat". It's really not that hard. Two more syllables to say, and/or just a few more letters to type. Life isn't that fast paced where we have to start shrinking our everyday words as if we're text messaging someone on a cell phone. I first saw this on YAHOO! News the morning after the erections.. er, pardon me, elections, and now it seems to have caught on like the Macarena. Whomever started this monster deserves a Louisville Slugger to the shins.

Since I'm on this topic, I've got a bone to pick with traffic reporters as well: highway 35W should NOT be referred to as "35 dub" when you're doing your little traffic reports. Say it like the white bread bird chested momma's boy you are. It will take about 2/3 of a second off of your air time, which at very worst means you'll have to trim some of the fat off of your lame, watery jokes you spew when you bounce things back to the news reporters. Repeat after me: Thirty Five Double-You. Dub is by no means a cool and hip way to refer to the letter W. You will not get younger viewers or groupies as a result of using the word "dub". Think of how dang stupid that would sound if you were telling someone about a website: "Yes, you can find us online at dub dub dub dot iced ink dot net." People never feel the need to shorten it to dub in that instance, and better yet they use it three times in a row!

Another one that makes me want to throw my glass of water in restaurants when I hear it: Guac. Is the "amole" part really that much more work to throw in?

If you're typing it out on a wee cell phone with 12 keys, that's cool. By all means abbreviate. But if you're talking or typing, just put in the extra effort, people. Abbreviating words in everyday face to face communications may have been cool at some point... Like 10 years ago when instant messaging really started taking off. But it taint cool no more in my book, nor was it really ever.

"Long.. it's the new short."

True Confessions: Really Stupid Shit I Did When I Was a Kid

Vol. XIV
Chapter VII
pp. 34-41

Todd was a good buddy of mine back in grade school. He was the token cool friend on the block that had an Atari 2600 with my favorite game of all time, PITFALL. He also had the Twisted Sister "Stay Hungry" tape and every Weird Al cassette released up to that time which made him even more incredibly awesome (as if the Atari weren't enough.)

I remember riding the bus home from school with Todd on several occasions to sit and play Atari for hours. His dad had a barbershop quartet-style moustache and preposterous amounts of Playboys lying around in his cluttered basement office. The door to his office was always closed, but we snuck in more often than not to have us a looksie. Most of the pics had black bars over the eyes and "good parts" of the girls which I always found a bit peculiar. Is this how Playboy was made? If so, what was the point? Or did he black bar everything on his own? Did his wife do it? Was he one of those guys that read it for the articles, or did he have some sort of black bar fetish?

Todd was my first trouble making partner in crime during those early years. We did a lot of stupid shit together that probably could have killed us, so needless to say it was always the most fun hanging out alone with him. We did all of the fun stuff that kids weren't supposed to do; experimenting with fire became our forte (this in hindsight was my boot camp for the be-all-end-all almost burn down the entire nature preserve incident a few years later with my buddy Troy.)

We somehow learned that WD40 made fire get really big (don't try this at home, kids.) We'd make blow torches by holding a lighter in a steady stream of WD40. We never really took into consideration the fact that if the flame ever entered the can via the stream coming out of the nozzle, it would toadilly explode and we'd be Stop Drop and Roll poster children with missing appendages and complexions not unlike well done pizza when you peel the cheese off of the top. We would spray WD40 on Star Wars guys, records, firecrackers, coins, capgun caps, and just about anything else we could get our meat hooks on. If there was nothing to burn, we'd spray a big puddle of it on the garage floor and light it up.

When not melting things or snooping through his dad's Playboys, we would get a tape recorder and tape ourselves cussing up a storm and saying naughty X-rated things and listen back with the tape on Chipmunk speed and laugh our asses off. I recall one day being summoned to the living room to discover that my mom had just put one of her dubbed Placido Domingo tapes in to play for my dad and Aunt Cookie and instead heard me and Todd who had taped over it speaking in blue tongue. Let me tell you, it was much less amusing when played on normal speed and heard by my owners.

As I learned, all good things eventually come to an end. Our stupidity reached its pinnacle at the beginning of the 6th Grade school year when we stumbled upon a pack of cigarettes. They were KOOLs that we nabbed from a friend's mom's carton in her Frigidaire. Naughty kids with matches + minty cigarettes = Hells yeah, fire 'em up!

We needed to think of an incredibly private, sequestered, top secret pad that no one knew about to spark up our KOOLs in, so started thinking: The vast, enormous field with the giant street drainage tunnel that we would crawl into? Nope. The ball field dugouts way the hell out behind the high school where no one could see us? Nope. Hmm.

Just then I had a moment of divine brilliance and suggested my Pappy's shed in our back yard 50 feet from our house in plain view from nearly every window. Not only that, but Pappy happened to be home that day.

Out we went. I had the KOOLs, Todd had the matches. We left a slight crack open in the shed door for ventilation (certainly an open shed door with smoke burping out of it wouldn't catch anyone's attention) and got down to business. As Todd lit up, I looked at the dry, yellow grass clippings on the floor from the lawn mower. I gazed up at the ancient green and white garden hose hanging from one of the 8,000 ancient gardening tools which were leaned up against roughly a dozen or so ancient 2x4s, scraps of particle board, and pieces of sheet rock with right angles cut out of them.

It was my turn to fire up. I fearlessly held the match to the end of my KOOL and sucked on it like a straw, storing all of the smoke in my mouth. I heard the delicate sound of the KOOL's paper and toe-backy burning. Without knowing I was supposed to inhale, I let out a nice big puff of smoke. It was similar to when I was allowed to have my first teeny sip of beer (from Grampa who let me try it probably because he knew I'd hate it and make a funny face.) I really didn't see what the big deal was and it tasted like minty ass.

Just then the door to the shed swung open and there stood my Pappy with a look on his face that I'll never forget. I think I remember seeing points forming in his forehead as if horns were about to burst out, but am not entirely sure. I don't remember much after that because I was paralyzed in cold white-knuckled terror. He didn't throw us a beatin', 'cause dad wasn't really the spanking type, although I'm sure I deserved it a lot more than I got it. Todd was sent home, his parents were called and informed, although I'd leaned that he'd immediately come clean to his 'rents when he got home before my Pops had called. Pappy sat me down at the kitchen table telling me I was going to smoke every last got-damned cigarette in that pack before I got up. I sat there in fear, but refused to light up. Not because I'd get sick, because thankfully I didn't know enough to inhale. I just felt like a complete dumbass and that was punishment enough.

After about an hour of holding out, I left the table without having to smoke, and I'm sure was grounded for some time. Things weren't the same between Todd and I after that. We grew apart. Throughout the years, occasionally I'd see him in Jr. High and High School and if anything we'd give each other an awkward "Hi" in passing. That's about all there was to say. I became a metalhead, and Todd took a more conservative route, becoming a permanent fixture in the honor roll and student council. Everything happens for a reason, and the way I look at it is this: I was put on this planet solely to straighten Todd out and steer him from a life of evil and in to a path of wealth and success. Job well done. I'm sure he's an accountant or lawyer somewhere now earning a 6 figure salary and living happily ever after. You're welcome, Todd! *clapping dirt off of hands*

It's hard to believe I'd covered that much ground and was only in the 6th grade. And I had a lot more ground to cover over the years (which I definitely did.) I'm sure it makes Mom and Dad proud!

Bill Cosby said that parents will say "Some day you're going to have a kid, and they're going to behave JUST LIKE YOU!" I recall my Dad saying that to me and my sister at times when we were misbehaving, and I listened closely to that. Thinking back on everything I'd done prior to moving out on my own, it clearly explains why I'm 33 and still only have a cat. If I had a kid in my 20s, by now it would be in the prime shenanigan years and I would be well on my way into my paranoid schizophrenic years... Sitting and waiting for the house to blow up, the feds to come seize the family computer, or just from wondering what the other 9 things my sneaky little kid was doing behind my back for every 1 thing was he getting caught for.

Here's everything good I can think of about having bronchitis:

I went to the doc on Monday after being sick for 3 weeks. Survey SAYS: Bronchitis.

That said, here's everything good I can think of about having bronchitis:

.

Politicians are dumb stupid idoit fart booger-butt dumby dootie heads

I've had it up to here [holding hand high above head] with the relentless political advertising on television. It's the same thing every voting season, and every voting season that passes, it pushes me one step closer to Andy Rooney-dom. Politicians sitting on benches in parks with old people who read their scripted lines poorly. Politicians in schools. In factories. Holding babies.

Sigh.

If your opinion is swayed by a 30 second spot where someone with a bad hairdo and Dockers pulled up to their man-titties slams their opponent and then turns around and talks about how bitchin' they themselves are, you've got diarrhea in your head.

In an ideal world, I would like to take all of these buffoons and tie them all to chairs in a stuffy, non-ventilated room. I'd set the mood by cranking my Barry Manilow's Greatest Hits CD. Then what I would do is assemble a team of big meat-and-potatoes construction workers and feed them the biggest, spiciest meal they've ever had in their lives, and I'd make damn sure everyone downed at least 2 servings of baked beans.

Then an hour later, once that meal starts to wreak havoc on their digestive tracts, I'd have them all file into the room full of politicians strapped to chairs, put their big beefy asses right in the politician's faces, and let them squeeze out as many hot, sweltering silent farts as they could muster. It's only right to violate the fuckers right back for all the years of violating me when I'm just trying to watch Entertainment Tonight. I'd have movie cameras filming all of this, and gladly provide masks and toilet paper for the construction workers. The politician who would make the funniest throw-up face would then MAYBE win my vote.

These days if the remote is close by, I instantly mute the telly when one of these ads comes on. Televisions now have that V-Chip dealie bopper in them which makes television viewing an even more edited and sanitary experience than it already is, sucking all of the awesome sex and violence out of the programming. To Hell with that.. I want a muh-fuggin P-chip in my teevee, knowumsayin? The Politician Chip. Every time a political figure is on teevee spewing the same mundane cookie-cutter drivel, The Jeffersons will pop on instead. And hopefully it will be the one where George is running in place on the bed having a total spaz attack. You know, the clip that they show during the opening credits.. I've never been fortunate enough to catch that episode, so that would rule ass.

My name is Micycle Tricycle, and Hells yes, I most certainly approve of this message.

Spontaneous combustion of a moist towelette

Recently the Misses and I were vacationing in a lovely little small town in Southern Minnesota.

I brought my Taylor acoustic guitar along as I like to do when away for a few days. Even if I don't play it, it's nice to know I've got it on hand should musical inspiration unexpectedly pop up. Plus it's a rather spendy chunk of wood that I saved up a long time in order to buy, and separation anxiety starts to set in if I don't see it over extended periods of time.

I had the guitar safely (or so I thought) in its hardshell case sitting on the hotel bed. I was getting ready to play and wiping my grubby hands down with a handy dandy moist towelette as I like to do. That's when the weirdest thing happened: Suddenly the damned towelette burst into flames right in my very own hands. I was like, all, what the hell, man? and felt my hands telling my brain that they would start to burn if I didn't let go. I threw the towel and it landed on the bed next to my guitar case, shook the pain off of my hands, and then watched in horror as the case started on fire. Well gawd damn.

I stood there watching the case start to melt and wondered how it could melt, because it was made of wood.. and last I heard, wood doesn't melt. I grabbed a pillow and smothered the flames, opening the case in cold panic making sure my guitar was okay. It seemed fine, and I was a little freaked out wondering how a moist towelette could burst into flames like that. They aren't made to do that; they're made to smell like Froot Loops and make my hands all nice and clean.

I picked up my guitar and played it for a minute. Something didn't seem right, so I checked the Yella Pages in the hotel room for a music store in town to have a looksie and get a professional opinion.

We walked down to the music shop I found in the phone book and I took my guitar in to see if someone would take a look at it. Behind the counter was Mike, the owner of Eclipse Concert Systems in West St. Paul! I wasn't sure what he was doing working at this other store smack dab in the middle of nowhere, but left my guitar with him to look at. I trust the guy and it was cool to see him again, as I was an avid Eclipse customer for a good 10 years back when I lived over there.

We left for lunch and stopped back in a bit later to see if Mike had a chance to look at my geetar, only to find him sitting with a really weird vintage looking instrument jamming with a band up at the front counter. Not missing a single note, he nodded his head sideways, sort of motioning me back behind the counter as if to say "I'm jammin', man. Your guitar is back there... you can go grab it."

I stepped through the band behind the counter to my semi-melted guitar case and opened it up. It looked fine to me. I ran my fingers across the edge of the body and my heart dropped.. on the front bottom side of the guitar, a good 2" chunk had been taken out of it. Even though acoustic guitar bodies are hollow, the newly damaged area was solid. It almost looked as if it was made of cheese and somebody had taken a huge bite out of it.

I hated myself. I'd had this guitar for almost 5 years and managed to keep it as well as the case in immaculate condition (the wooden Taylor guitar cases aren't made anymore and are highly coveted by Taylor guitar owners.) I'd saved up so long for this thing. It was my first "real" acoustic guitar after years of playing cheap knock-offs, and I was always took such pride in owning such a beautiful, nice playing instrument. But now I was standing there with tears welling up in my eyes.. looking at a melted case and a rather expensive guitar with a big eyesore of a chunk missing from the body.

My mind was racing. If only my dumb ass would have washed my hands at the sink with soap and water instead of using that moist towelette. If only I could go back in time and throw it somewhere other than the bed when it burst into flames. It's going to take me a few years to save up for a new one.

At that precise moment, I blinked a few times and couldn't see a thing... everything went pitch black. I heard a clock ticking. I reached down to my right and felt my cat Frank sleeping at my side. Goldie was on my left sleeping as well. My heart was writhing in disgust over what happened to my guitar, and I ran my fingers through my hair to try and calm myself down. It's just a guitar, I kept thinking.

I got out of bed, walked to the fridge, and pulled a big ol' refreshing gulp of orange juice from the carton. Temporarily blinded by the fridge light, I stumbled back into bed and let out a sigh of relief.. I wondered why I just can't just for once have a really awesome dream. Something along the lines of winning a lifetime supply of uber-soft Sour Patch Kids, or if my Pinto was made out of delicious milk chocolate that regenerated itself every time someone took a bite.

And back to sleep I went.

Clyders vs. The Pumpkin Innards

I ain't carved a jack-o-lantern in at least a good 5-6 years, and last weekend we had the rare opportunity to hollow out and carve us some punkins at our friend Marie's birthday party.

Every time I carve punkins, a charming little Halloween memory comes back to me and gives me the warm fuzzies. No, not the one in 6th grade where I was a punk rocker and put Vaseline in my hair hold my a mohawk (FYI: Vaseline really adheres to your follicles once it has been smeared onto them. We had to warsh it out with kerosene per doctor's orders and poof - my hair was back to normal and I got a free day out of school without even having to fake a cold.) I digress.

The memory that I speak of takes us back to 1985. I was in high demand as a babysitter on our block back in the day; mainly with my next door neighbor Jason. Jason and his owners lived in a white rambler with an enormous garage which basically left them with all of about 4 square feet of lawn once it was all built. Every Tuesday I would hang with Jason while his parents bowled, and it was 3 hours of as many blissful shenanigans as I figured I could let us get away with without him yapping any of it to his parents when they got home.

One Tuesday in October, his mum and dad left us 2 huge punkins to convert into jack-o-lanterns. They left to get to their bowling game as Jason and I started scooping out punkin guts into a large silver bowl. Enter: Clyders, the family English Bulldog.

Clyders was creepy, odoriferous, and would "slime" everything his cheeks would come in contact with. He hated basketballs. If Jason ever left them out in the yard, Clyde would run out and attack, pop, and lock his jaws onto them. Even if we left one in our backyard, Clyde would sit at the fence and aggressively run to and fro barking at the fucker as if it were making fun of him.

Clyders and his little happy boy-dog lipstick humped the couch cushions and throw-pillows all of the time, and because of that (and lord knows what else he did to them) they reeked of dried urine. We would often toss the pillows on the floor and point and laugh as he would approach them, sniff out the one he was most attracted to at the time, and engage in a passionate lovemaking session.

Clyde often was a key element in our shenaniganry (we made sure he never got hurt.) As Jason and I sat in the kitchen on the newspaper covered linoleum carving away at our huge punkins, the silver bowl overflowethed with slimy orange seedy innards. Being the incredibly smart and delicate creature of God he always was, Clyde moseyed on up, took one sniff, and parked it in front of the bowl. He started eating, and Jason laughed. Having learned from past ground-level encounters with Clyders, I got up off the floor and sat on a chair in lieu of getting a crusty dog spit stain on my grey corduroys, continuing to watch.

Jason picked a huge, gnarly glob of punkin guts out of the bowl and held it up in the air for Clyders to covet. I still have the visual in my head as if it were yesterday: His arm outstretched and silver ID bracelet shimmering in the light, and Clyde standing and gazing up at the glob of slime, huffing and trying to bounce his fat hammy body up to get a piece of it, never losing eye contact. His front paws even hit the bowl a few times.

Jason lowered his arm and Clyde nabbed the entire glob in one fell swoop. He stood over the newspaper chomping, and his cheeks made the most disgusting intermittent slobbery flapping noise trying to keep the mass contained in his giant basketball-slaying yap. He had that determined look in his eyes to keep it all in, looking at us as if to say No WAY you motherfuckers are getting any of this precious delight back! Jason let one of those raspy 5 second long out of breath exhale laughs, and continued to feed Clyde a great deal more of what was in the bowl.

That night I gathered my babysitting dues and left wondering what would become of Clyde. A cold wave of fear washed over me.. what if Clyde died from a punkin O.D.? Al and Avis would be at our doorstep in a second ready to tell my parents and throw me in jail.

As fate would have it, nothing really happened to him other than shitting like a fire hydrant for the next few days. I remember going back the next week to get all the gory details. Once the driveway was empty and the coast was clear, Jason told me that they couldn't figure out for the life of them what Clyde had eaten that would make him dump so many bushels of Squand out in the yard. They even thought about switching his food on them, but waited it out and forgot about it once his poo was of scooping consistency once again.

We had a good laugh over that. And all the while, Clyde was somewhere off in the distance happily making sweet love to his favorite olive green throw pillow.

Man, I sure as shit can tell that it's Friday the 13th.

It's been one thing after another today.

First, I woke up at 6:02am when my alarm was set to go off. When I got out of bed, the wood floors were slightly colder on my feet than the nice cozy warm temperature they were under the blankies. I was all like, what the fuck is this, man?

Once I was all dolled up and ready for work, I went out to my car and it was cold out. And worse yet, the door to my car was locked, so I had to unlock it. The sonofabitch wasn't already running and heated up for me like it would be in an ideal world, either. Talk about bad luck.

And now I'm at work, and I have to be here until the end of my shift, which is 3:45. I'm not very superstitious, but geez. I should have just stayed in bed today.

Pocket Water, Bob Dylan's severed head, Ruth, and 27 TVs

1. How tall are you barefoot?
Approximately 25.4 millimeters shorter than when my Chucks are affixed to the walking apparati located at the end of my legs.

2. Have you ever smoked heroin?
No, but I live with a heroine and she rules toadill ass.

3. Do you own a gun?
Yes, a purple Zero Blaster. You break in to our place or piss me off, I'll put a cap of incredibly slow moving dissipating fog in your ass, bitch.

4. Who's your best friend?
Aside from the obvious female one, I'd have to say whomever sells me a winning Powerball ticket. Any day now, SuperAmerica clerks; no need to take your time (preferably the one on Lyndale and 22nd, as that is most convenient for us.)

5. Do you get nervous before "meeting the parents?
"No. I have my own set of those that I've known all of my life, so I've had a lot of practice being around them and studying their behavior.

6. What do you think of hot dogs?
It's like when I try new stuff at Indian restaurants: Chances are as long as I don't know what's in it, bring that shit ON.

7. What's your favorite Christmas song?
That Menards jingle. It's basically the same ball of cheese it been for the last 20 years, just with some sleighbells thrown in for good measure. It goes something like "Warm Seasons Greetings from us all... at... Menards!" It's over in 5 seconds - short but sweet.

8. What do you prefer to drink in the morning?
Ice cubes.. or "pocket water" as I like to call it when I'm on the go.

9. Can you do push ups?
I'm very good at doing them upside-down. "It's much easier to push air than to push floor" as I always tried telling the gym teacher.

10. Is your bathroom clean?
Define "clean".. you mean, like, no poop on the walls and fixtures?
If so, probably not.

11. What's your favorite piece of jewelry?
The skin watch that I shaved into my arm hair. Hoo ha! I even got most of the numbers to be pretty legible.

12. Do you like painkillers?
Although it's good population control, killing is not polite in this day and age and could influence the user to think that killing is ok. Let's start calling them painreducers, please.

13. What is your secret weapon to lure in the opposite sex?
A nice fake orange tan, lots of cologne, the latest Sean John apparel and bling bling from head to toe, and leaving several copies of bodybuilding magazines around the house. That's pretty much how I won Goldie's heart.

14. Do you have A.D.D.?
Is that one of those new flatscreen high definition TV sets?


16. Middle Name?
The one in between my first and last. It has 2 vowels and 3 consonants in it.

17. Name 3 thoughts at this exact moment?
1. (something explicit) 2. I like music and food3. (something explicit again)

18. Name the last 3 things you have bought:1. 1 Kaki King ticket2. another Kaki King ticket3. 3 hours of parking next to the Varsity Theater, wherein the Kaki King tickets were redeemed.

19. Name 3 drinks you regularly drink:1. Hummingbird blood2. Antifreeze (the blue Toyota kind)3. Gravy

22. Current worry?
Where did questions 20-21 go?
Are they okay?


23. Current hate?
The wind we've been having lately. Wind seriously pisses me off.

24. Favorite place to be?
Curled up in the fetal position drunk and smoking in a dark, musty basement wearing a stained wifebeater and tighty whiteys... wondering why Ruth and I had so many children. She couldn't even hold a god damned job back then, and now she's put on so much weight that she's out of breath just going out to check the mail to get our welfare check. And me?
I'm helpless on account of my back injury I got while trying out for professional rassling. I digress..

25. Least favorite place to be?
In bed at 4am while Ruth is in the living room watching QVC and chain smoking her generic cigarettes. What happened to my Baby Ruth I knew in high school?


26. Where would you like to go?
The basement of the Alamo, where the theif is evidently hiding my tricycle. Sounds like the perfect honeymoon, doesn't it Goldie?


27. Do you own slippers?
Yes, 2 Kleenex boxes that fit my feet perfectly (I leave some in the box for a little extra cushion)

28. What shirt are you wearing?
My hypercolor shirt.. always nice and dark in the pits and chest hair areas.

29. Do you burn or tan?
I wear a specially formulated lotion that actually makes me lighter when exposed to sun for extended periods of time.

30. Favorite color(s)?
Earwax orange.

31. Would you be a pirate?
No, pirates are the new cool thing to be thanks to Johnny Depp. Pirate-ism has now become Hollywood, therefore it is now lame. I'll start the next trend and be a Menshevik. I'm bringing Mensheviki back. (I guess I DID listen back in history class!)

33. What songs do you sing in the shower?
I play my theremin. The Misses accompanies me on wax paper and comb on weekends. Where did question 32 go?


34. What did you fear was going to get you at night as a child?
Bob Dylan's severed head. Not a lie (hm.. good subject matter for my Hollerween blog!)

35. What's in your pockets right now?
My slingshot, a piece of twine, my pocketknife, some chaw, and a 17 year old rubber that I hope I get to use someday. The wrapper is pretty much deteriorated and the expiration date is 07/89, but I'm not giving up hope.

36. Last thing that made you laugh?
The movie of Owen wiggling his finger on John's neat cell phone that looks like a high tech hybrid harmonica with accordion buttons on it.

37. Best bed sheets as a child?
Good ol' tinfoil (dull side up.)

38. Worst injury you've ever had?
Back when I had really long hair, if I left it in a ponytail for too long and took it out, my scalp would hurt like a motherfucker.

40. How many TVs do you have in your house?
27. Rather than changing channels all of the time, we got a TV for each channel we like and just flip them all on at once.

41. Who is your loudeend?
To be honest with you, I have no idea what the hell that means. I'm guessing it means 4th grade teacher, and that would be Mr. Casey. He looked like Ric Ocasek of The Cars until he got a perm. Then he looked like a really scary tree.

42. Who is your most silent friend?
Tony. He's my friend that lives inside my mouth.

43. Does someone have a crush on you?
The Misses tries to crush me, but she's too skinny to do any sort of damage.

44. Do you wish on shooting stars?
No, I wish when I SEE one, for I am incapable (as far as I know) of being "on" one. Those things are going way too fast and I'd be dead before even being able to think about wishing for anything.

45. What is your favorite book?
Anything with lots of neat pictures of kids with bowl cuts playing with toys. MAN I miss being a kid and mining through the Sears and Pennys catalogs.

46. What is your favorite candy?
Dried up toothpaste from the bathroom sink (especially if it has shaving residue on it)

47. What song do/did you want played at your wedding?
We were talking about "Endless Love", complete with afro wigs and huge phallic 1970s microphones.

48. What song do you want played at your funeral?
"Everybody Have FUn Tonight" by Wang Chung (seriously.) That or Fish Pudding's version of the Taxi theme song.

49. What were you doing 12 AM last night?
Not sure - I was sleeping at the time. I didn't wake up with a dull, bloody knife in my hands this time, so that's always a good sign.

50. What was the first thing you thought of when you woke up this morning?
Thank Gawd I'm still here and they haven't found me yet.. I always sleep with one eye open. They wanted me back at the Mothership with samples no later than July, however I broke the golden rule and fell in love with an Earthling. If they want me to leave Earth with them now, it's going to have to be in a body bag. Or as we refer to it in my native language, a "Rz__+PLLK}}$$)-=*".

Creative uses for tampon wrappers

As I was stumbling into work this morning feeling half dead, I noticed a tampon wrapper on the ground. It was not really near any secluded areas in which one would go to discreetly install a tampon, which I found to be a bit peculiar as well as a wee bit grody. I'm hoping that it just blew out of somebody's trash receptacle from the residential sector about a half a mile away and ended up there on the sidewalk due to the crazy-ass winds we've been having around here lately.

Back when I was oh, 4 or 5, tampons were amongst the many unknown wonders of the world to me. There was always a secret stash of Tampax in the back of the bathroom cupboard, and I never really knew what they were for or why they were there. I even referred to the fold-out instructions showing poor line drawings of chicks putting them in their slots, but never put 2 and 2 together. When you're a kid, you don't know a pachina from a hole in the ground.

I loved snooping around in the bathroom and always knew there were fresh tampons waiting there for me to dissect. I'd play "telescope" with the 2 piece tube and spy on our neighbors. I'd put it up to the faucet and run water through it. I always wanted to do something fun with the stuffing, but never really got too far with that. I had visions of putting googley eyes on the end of the string/cotton wad to make a pet mouse, but never found any googley eyes in Mum's sewing boxes.

Anyhow, I digress. Back to present time:

I sort of reverted back to my 5 year old self seeing this wrapper on the ground. I didn't pick it up and play with it, but sometimes when you see something out of its element like that, it gets the creative juices flowing (no pun intended.)

My first thought was: You know... that's sorta the same size of the packs of RainBlo gumballs I used to get when I was a kid. I wonder how many I could fit in there? I had a few blocks to go, so my mind started to take this a bit further. Tampon wrappers would indeed make great gumball holders. What else would they be good for?

They'd make great protective disposable covers for flushing levers on men's room wall urinals (and conventional lever-equipped terlits as well.) For those of you who like smoking doobies, you could stuff the things full of grass and twist the end shut. Instant Wonder Joint a la Booger in Revenge of the Nerds. They'd also be great cigar protectors. Or you could stuff the empty wrappers full of cotton balls and put the tube back in your purse.

They'd be great portable incense stick holders, covering the fragile "dipped" end as to not contaminate anything in your purse or backpack if you ever wanted incense on-the-go. They'd make great sparkler holders for that matter. I've always wanted to secretly replace someone's incense with sparklers, but will save that idea for my future Fun Things I Want To Do To Get My Ass Kicked entry I've been working on for some time.

If you had 10, you could paint them the color of your skin, put some LEE(TM) Press-On Nails at the ends, and wear them on your hands like long fake monster fingers. That's a great tip, as Halloween is right around the corner.

Hm, what else. AH! You know those new teeny Crystal Light powder pouches you dump into your bottled water? What if you're like me and like the bigger bottles of water? Problem solved - empty 2 or 3 of those pouches into an empty tampon wrapper, staple it shut, and you're all set when you need that extra flavor kick in your water.

Most of the time you see those huge bubble tea straws at coffee joints, they're unwrapped. Why not slip a tampon wrapper over them to keep off germs and dust? Give the bubble tea drinkers a piece of mind knowing that their straws are safe.

I'm sure I'm missing some other great uses for these thin little paper tubes - so please share if you feel inspired to do so. Millions of perfectly good tampon wrappers are going to waste every day and I think we need to stand up and do something about it! I'll keep my thinking cap on as well, and if there's enough material, heck.. maybe I'll submit them all to Heloise's Helpful Hints column in the newspaper.

My iPod favors the Brady Bunch.

I've used the "shuffle all songs" feature on my Pod a zillion times now, as it seems to always be the best way to listen to mine toons. I've got over 5,000 to choose from and counting, and it gets to be a bit overwhelming. Sometimes the best thing to do is to just let my little ebony 60G Pod do the thinking for me. I have to give credit where credit is due.. it does a great job of shuffling, as I don't think I've heard the same song twice yet.

Except for one.

"Time To Change" by the Brady Bunch.

I haven't heard it just twice; I hear it almost every time I tell my Pod to shuffle the songs! This is not a complaint.. I like the tune, otherwise it wouldn't be on my Pod in the first place.

But how interesting that out of all of the musics available for my Pod to pick from, it almost always throws that one into the mix, and usually within the first 20 songs to boot. This morning on my way to work I selected SHUFFLE SONGS and pressed the "go" button.

BANG! "SHA NA NA NA NAAA NA NA NA NAAAA... SHA-NANA-NA-NA!"

There I was, fresh out of the starting gates of my day at 6:20am being pumped full of cheerful, wholesome Brady goodness. It was pretty dern loud, too, as I must have inadvertently knocked the volume up out of the safety zone I usually keep it at (I don't want to be any more deef than I already am.) The guitars were going YEOW chickka YEOW-WOW, tambourines doin' the chingy changy chingy changy, crispy trumpets, and best of all, the sonic massage of Barry Williams and Maureen McCormick carrying me through the verses. For my fellow Brady enthusiasts, no, sadly Peter isn't in the recording doing his mid-pubescent "SHA NA NA NA NAaaaaaaaa!" I know. Bummer, man. I still see him in my mind, though, making that kooky, zany, wacky face of his with the headphones on in the isolation booth of the recording studio.

Is my iPod trying to tell me something? Does it want me to put my old Brady Bunch Top 8 list back on my MySpace page? I see the repeated plays of this tune as much more than just a coinky-dinky. Come on - this one song out of the some fitty two hunnit I have on there? You can "rate" songs as they play on your Pod and tell it to play only the ones you rate highest, however I have never dialed up the rating screen on this one (although it does deserve 5 stars.)

Is it time for me to change and rearrange?Because gah-dammit, you iPod, don't you know that's what I just spent the whole summer doing? I need a break from the change/rearrange thing, please. I just want to kick back and watch some fuckin' TV, man. Leave me alone!

Maybe my iPod just likes that song. That's cool, I guess. It is pretty groovy and all, and it gives us all a great message. Listening to the lyrics, they really don't make any sense at all to me, but I'm sure there's a good message in there somewhere. Save the trees, love yourself and everyone else, know that the weird smelling fur that's starting to grow in your nether regions is perfectly normal and just roll with it, and so on. Did anything ever make sense on that show? That is why I love it so. Cheers to you, iPod, for picking this tune to beat to death over, say, Cannibal Corpse's "A Skull Full of Maggots".

sha na na na, na na na na, sha na na na na!
sha na na na, na na na na, sha na na na na!

Autumn turns to winter and then winter turns to spring,
its not just a season to know its goes for everything.
clouds can turn to rain and then it just might snow
You gotta take lesson from mother nature and if you do you'll know.

[chorus]
Well its time to change
then its time to change
move by the time come along for the ride, dont you see
when its time to change you've got to rearrange
move your heart to what your gonnabe.
sha na na na na na na sha na na na na na

day by day its hard to see the changes you've been through
a little bit of living a little bit of growing all adds up to you
every boys a man inside
a girls a women too
and if you wanna reach your destiny its what you've got to do

[chorus]
Well its time to change
when its time to change
move by the time come along for the ride, dont you see
when its time to change you've got to rearrange
move your heart to what your gonna be.
sha na na na na na na na, sha na na na na na

[chorus]
Well its time to change
when its time to change you've got to rearrange
move your heart to what your gonna be.
sha na na na na na na na, sha na na na na

Oh, Wikipedia, how I love thee.

I can type pert near anything into you and you spew out copius amounts of useless informations that my brain thrives on. I wanted to read about my favorite candy bar ever in the whole world, Twix, and I'll be damned, you delivered the goods. Hey, Wikipedia, I'd like to know about Skittles. Wow, look at that! I've always wanted to know what happened to Stompers. Damn, I loved those things. Want to know more about meatballs? Wikipedia has got you covered.

This morning I challenged Wiki to learn me about one of my childhood heroes, Mr. Rogers. Needless to say, it definitely Wikied my Pedia. While reading about Fred, I was shocked to learn that "McFeely", the last name of the white haired Speedy Delivery dude, came from Fred's very own name. Assuming it's a last name, does this mean Fred was a name hyphenater in real life? If so, I suppose he shortened things up as to not give the impression that he and the Speedy Delivery man were shackin' up. That ain't how a mild-mannered Reverend wants to be represented, know what I'm sayin?

What I found to be most interesting was that before he was the big mac daddy at PBS, Fred went to Canada with an understudy who went on to become known up dare in Canada as Mr. Dressup. Evidently Mr. D was a Canadian version of Mr. Rogers, and rather popular with the young canadian chillens to boot.

Mmm... nice! Mr. Dressup? I'll say! Look at those snappy duds he's sportin'. We all know that Canada is a smoldering hotbed of comic genius embers, so I wonder if this guy was a goofball. I wonder if he spoke with a thick Canadian dialect like the one I loved so when watching You Can't Do That on Television and Mr. Wizard's World on Nickelodeon in the 80s (hmm, there's more stuff to look up!) I need to go find me some Mr. Dressup footage on YouTube or something to check this guy out.

This brings up a valid chicken/egg question. It mentions that Rogers and Dressup were homies, but whose show was first? It's unclear to me, and it only makes me wonder even more. Why did Dressup stay in Canada? Did he and Fred have a torrid love affair and break up? Why are the shows so similar (it mentions some of Dressup's songs were later used by Rogers.) Why did he pick "Dressup" as a name? Did he start the show by dressing up, unlike Fred who would come in and dress down into a thin colorful sweater and pair of blue and white sneakers? Judging from Mr. D's pic, if that's his version of "dressing up" I'd love to see what he looked like prior to that.

My inquiring mind wants to know. It's time to scour the internet for some answers and Mr. Dressup footage. I hope I'm not disappointed with my findings. I mean, I hope we weren't just fed a load of recycled Mr. Dressup crap when watching Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. GAAAHD that would suck.

But before looking into this, I need to get back to Wikipedia and see what there is to read about cheese food.

My newest internet pet peeve

Those fucking semi-translucent Flash advertisements that ever so inconveniently slide themselves on top of the page I'm trying to read. By instinct, I try and scroll down past 'em, but the little bitches follow right along, bouncing all the way down until I find the miniature "x" box to click and close 'em.

Whomever created this mess deserves to have a pack of jumbo Oscar Meyer all-beef franks forcefully inserted into their number two area, and then bashed in the skull with a pillowcase full of soda pop cans (a la Sean Penn in the epic masterpiece Bad Boys.)
I just don't like being force-fed ads like that, especially when 99.9999% of them are for shit I could care less about. If someone would please invent a program that prevents these from interfering with my web browsing fun time, that would be terrific. I'll give you a $5 McDonald's gift card.

Okay, my advertising rant is over now. Move along, move along...

I, Micycle Tricycle, am hanging up my fart belt for good.

Goldie and I had a fantastic "little" (some fifty plus folks came) party over the weekend to celebrate our bitchin' new pad we moved into over the summer as well as a belated engagement party of sorts. I would like to take a moment to thank everyone reading this who:

• stopped over and Wang Chunged with us
• put a dent in the keg and the wading pool of food that everyone brought
• signed the wall of shame
• took the chance to mingle with total strangers
• listened to my bandmates and I slosh through a few tunes (and even applauded afterwards.. wow)
• Thank you so much for all of the bottles of wine. Not too many people labeled them, so we're not sure who half of them are from. Great googley moogley - there's prolly more than a dozen bottles there. And we'll be sure to put them to good use.

There is a select group of those who couldn't make it out and said they would... hey man, it's your funeral. You missed the Doodie The Clown, famous for twisting inflated condoms into lifelike sloths. You also missed The Great Zamboni, the world renouned poodle trainer and his 5 dogs who jump through flaming hoops whilst blindfolded and barking the theme to Sanford and Son. One dog caught fire, and she tasted hella delicious - "Zeese eese why I allvays breeng 5 doags," he said. "Eef vun burns, choo haff a decent meal for zee crowd and zaire's steel 4 doags left!"

This was the first time that direct family members from her side and mine got to meet in person. Everyone got along just peachy and laughed and had a good time.

Now onto the rest of my story.

Anyone who knows me well enough knows that I seem to be incapable of farting. I try and I try, but to no avail, it just doesn't happen. I want to fart. Seriously. Farting is funny. To me, there's nothing more comical than a well-timed and executed fart. Oh, what I would give if I could simply just float an air biscuit while waiting in line somewhere or at Blockbuster video when somebody was kneeling down at 2nd shelf level reading the back of a DVD box.

To kick things off at the party, my mum brought over a bubbling cauldron full of her delishish shloppy joe meat. There it sat in her electric pan: oodles of perfectly browned ground beefs swimming in a pool of mysteriously spiced, savory orangish dark-brown liquids. When my sis opened up the door to her car and I reached in to obtain the pot of slops to carry it upstairs, two things crossed my mind: 1) Yum. And 2) Maybe tonight will be the night?

I carefully brought it up, set it on our American Idol tablecloth, and plugged 'er in. Mum then brought up yet another cauldron, this one full of homemade baked beans. Oooh yes. Tonight was going to be the night, alright. I had my giant bottle of Tabasco sauce slightly chilled and at the ready.

As the evening commenced, I had me some slops completely immersed in Tabaska sauce. And then 2 bowls of baked beans. I warshed it all down with cup after cup of delicious keg beer and waited for divine gaseous intervention. I had a pile of my sister's awesome spinachk dip on the side, and some butt-tayta salad to boot.

Nothing.

An hour or so later, Iced Ink drummer Barry and his wifey-poo Lindsay strutted through the door. Barry brought his incredibly delicious and perfectly almost-too-spicy homemade bean dip, and Lindsay had a jar of her intense cosmic homemade salsa which was so yummy that when combined with Barry's bean dip, I began hallucinating and wanted to break into a frenzy of violent bliss after I ate a plate full. It was that damned good. Those two folks are a spicy condimentary match made in heaven.

I topped it all off with 2 of my mum-in-law-to-be's delectable holier-than-thou Cajun Mary Meatballs. It was the perfect icing on the cake. Everything I needed for the ultimate butt trumpet symphony had been consumed. There were Flavorgasms aplenty. I was certain that trouble was a brewin' downstairs in the walls of me belly, and this really got my hopes up. Tonight's the night, I kept thinking. I began to perspire and became anxious to get a-gassin'.

Nothing.

The party was over, and I put all of the foods away. There was a pretty big serving of baked beans left that didn't fit into the Tupperware, so down my hatch they went in a last ditch effort, complete with a hearty splash of Tabasco. I waited patiently for at least one little toot while nursing my last beer.

Nothing. Not even a mild cramp. I thought maybe I'd wake up in the wee hours with a crazy stomach just ready to blow the roof off of our place, but nope.

Nothing.

And so today, I am officially retiring any hopes of ever farting again. I used to when I was a wee lad, but I seem to have lost the ability over the years. It just wasn't meant to be. Some people can't see, some can't hear... I can't gas.

Next time you've got access to foods that you know will cause a serious ruckus strictly in the farting sense, be sure to have a little extra for me, if you will. And keep your hands off of that damned vial of Bean-O, if you will. If you're going to do it for me, I ask that you do it all the way.
I, Micycle Tricycle, am hanging up my fart belt for good.

Thank you and goodnight.

Suuree, or something like that

Newspapers age to yellow and the tree leaves do the same,
Work time spent a-working, spare time spent on Scrabble games
I ponder where my life is going and things like armpit stains
And what I may have missed when I stopped watching "Growing Pains"

Another bowl of cereal and another sandwich lunch
Another seedless grape is plucked and eaten from the bunch
Life, it carries on and soon the day turns into night
I look up in the sky and see the moon and planes in flight

There's one thing that I know will always be there in the news;
One thing I can count on. One thing that we'll never lose.
It's covered non-stop in the mags and on the internet
More so than the weather report and how rain gets things wet.

This topic that's at hand is weighing talking heads at large,
Everybody knows, even the homeless girl named Marge.
This one thing that I'm talking about involves a girl named Katie,
and the fact that I don't give a shit about her and Tom Cruise's baby.

Word.

tap tap tap.. Is this thing on?

My, how time flies! I took a break from this here Blogspot 'bout 6 months ago to go a little more full time on my MySpace blog. I started to miss my Blogspot page recently and figure it's about time to get back to my roots.

For those of you who haven't hit up other said blog lately, there's been some pretty neat changes in my life since I was last here. I'm getting married to a hot momma next year. She has neat hair, cool glasses, wears Chuck Taylors, and likes to joke about poop and farts. That's pretty cool if I do say so myself. I also put up a website for my acoustic guitar musics... and finally had CDs made to sell. I've been a busy little monkey!

It's good to be back.

What I did for my summer vacation.

In the words of one of my favorite writers out there, Mr. Jim Anchower: "Hola, Amigos. It's been a while since I rapped at ya." Labor Day was yesterday, which tends to signify the end of summer.

And so another fine summer has come to a close. Another State Fair has come and gone. The school buses are back slowly rolling down the side streets once again, lights a-flashing and STOP signs popping out of their sides until the coast is clear and we can drive on without running over children.

We do this out of the goodness of our hearts, so that those children, too, can suffer like we did back in the day when we were serving our 13 years of edjamacation and waiting to grow up. Some day they'll eventually grow up too and get stuck behind school buses on the way home from work not running over the kids getting out of those buses. It's all about keeping the chain of involuntary education unbroken.

Yes... another fine summer has come to a close. The leaves are beginning to turn yellowish and reddish shades of green, a telltale sign that the trees will soon be bald. The mornings are cold and crispy. It's time to put away those all-white outfits for yet another winter, lest you want to be shunned by the fashion savvy folk for sporting such garments after Labor Day. (The double-V in "savvy" is dedicated to you, Scrabble Queen.)

At any rate, I hope you all had a fantastic summer. I know I did, and I'd like to share with you some of the highlights:

• Attempted to train sunfish from Lake Calhoun to re-enact Season 2 of Sex and the City. Sadly, the project was canned after receiving a cease-and-desist order from HBO.
• Ate a lot of ice cream. Whenever we'd go grocery shopping, I'd bring a spoon with and just load up on whatever I had a hankerin' for at the time.One Saturday, Goldie and I ran a lemonade stand! We made $13.22. That's nearly 4 Happy Meals!Cooking tip: during periods of extreme summer heat, frozen pizza is much more cool and refreshing when you skip the part where you bake it.
• Collected flattened, dead, dried up frogs from roads and found creative uses for them (coasters, elbow pads on shirts, coin purses, frog jerky)
• Learned while moving into new apartment that you can't fold a pane of glass
• Stole a Metro Transit bus, gutted it out, and filled it with 4 giant tubes of 4x4-foot saltines.. those always reminded me of cracker boxes and I've always wanted to do that. Next summer I'm stealing a giant satellite dish and filling it with soup for the crackers.
• Challenged a McDonald's employee to sell me a burger patty with cheese on it for 11 cents or just an empty bun for 78 cents. Regular cheeseburger = 89 cents. Double cheeseburger = $1.00. If you do the math, this makes perfect sense.. but that's not how they McOperate.
• Naired the hair out of my nostrils. Not a good idea; those hairs are there for a good reason.
• Developed homemade Etch-a-Sketch out of ant farm. I bought some high tech remote controlled ants at Radio Shack (one x axis and one y axis) and put the two controller knobs on the base of the ant farm.

In all, it was a fantastic summer, and I hope you all had one at least as half as exciting and fulfilling as mine. I would like to thank Goldie, my family, our pizza oven, my bandmates, Rockstar: Supernova, Chef Gordon Ramsey and Hell's Kitchen, and anyone else who helped make the summer of '06 one of the best. I would like to thank the bees and mosquitoes for keeping the annoyance factor to a minimum, although I know you bees are just getting started... so let's put a hold on thanking you just yet.

I would like to NOT thank my job for making me get up early 5 days out of every week this summer. I would like to not thank the Minnesota State Fair Amateur Talent Competition as well for not finding my performance of the Dog Seed Shuffle "Amateur" enough. I have something on a stick for you, and will gladly tell you where you can stick it, if you know what I'm sayin'.

Here's to a kick ass Fall!

I'm Alive and Well... Where the f*&k did I go?

Hey, BlogSnots, it's been a while!

It's too damned much work for me to keep dual-blogging (I post here and on MySpace), and I get hollered at something fierce on the MySpace by some people if I don't post entries over there.

Until further notice (i.e. until I have the extra time and the extra .0005 calories for the engergy to keep up with dual blog postings) I'm moving over solely to my MySpace blog for the time being.

Sorry for the inconvenience.. not yours, but mine for choosing to dual post blogs in two different locations and not being able to keep up with it. I will put a link at the end of this post where the MySpace rendition of Diarrhea of a Madman resides. And sorry ahead of time for the few comment posters here that may not have MySpace accounts.

Go on over and check it out – there’s lots of new stuff. You can even leave your shoes on if you want. Please do - it smells bad enough over there as it is.

Sincerely, Micycle.

All right, fine, take me to the darn MicycleSpace Blog then>>

This just in: If my brain is like that of a grape juice drinking rat, I'm in good shape!

I just read here that grape juice is good for the aging brain. I reckon I've mentioned this piece of Micycle grape juice trivia before, but here goes again for any of you who may not know (this is highly important stuff here):
I happen to looooove grape juice.  However. It only seems to make me perpetually more thirsty for grape juice. And in the end, all I get out of it is a stained empty pitcher, purple lips, and a queasy stomach.
But now I've learned that I'm getting a lot more out of it than that. All these years, my undying thirst for grape juice and then more grape juice has been an insidious, camouflaged augmentation of my well being. My brain's just been trying to do itself a favor all these years!
That said, another round of grape juice, please. My brain is more limber than ALL of yawls. So go have fun with your rigid, barbarian grape juice-deprived think organs, now. I'm going to go off and do some proofs or something.

All of the Bill I can handle and none of the tornadic warnings

So waaaaay back when in 2000-sumpin, some of you may remember a television program called Freaks and Geeks. Many of you prolly don't. This show ruled some serious ass; it was my favorite show ever. Still is. If you were even remotely amused by Wonder Years, do yourself a favor and check this show out. It has that same sort of vibe, but it's more of a high school/burnout crew, and there's no cheesy sentimental narration from Home Alone star Daniel Stern.

When I see something I like on teevee, I can usually tell that it's not going to last long. Why, you axsk? Because usually in order to be a successful television program (note how I say successful, which doesn't really mean good), it has to be something with a high suck factor. Sure, a few good shows slip through the cracks every now and again. But for the most part, teevee shows retain about as much of my interest as a football game.. and anyone who knows me knows that I go from awake to sleep in 30 seconds when "the game" is on.

That said, when I see a show I absolutely love, I religiously tape it to hold onto it and cherish forever. And unlike most people that tape shit, I actually watch it more than once. That's because there's very few things on that I like enough to record, so that makes it easy. The herd is thin and there's not much to choose from. I think all I have are my old Freaks and Geeks tapes, some old 70s KISS television footage, and an episode of SNL that Steve Buscemi hosted.

So yeah, I taped 16 of the 18 episodes of Freaks and Geeks and have watched them at least 2wice a year since then. They're piss poor recordings and many episodes are absolutely bedraggled with KARE 11 NEWS tornado warnings. Every few minutes the screen shrinks, the sound cuts out, and a beeping tornado alert scrolls across the screen. Man that used to piss me off. Not to mention the commercials for Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and Survivor.. yeah, those have been a real treat to fast forward though over the years.

Bill. a.k.a. My heeeeero! *swooooon*

Thanks to the shitstorm of telly-vision DVD box sets that has ensued over the last few years, Freaks made its way to said DVD format. And today I just got the complete set in the mail (thankyouverymuch, Ebay). How sweet it is. Every time my favorite character Bill Haverchuck and his harelip grace the screen, it is now in ultra clear digital quality. You can almost see every little zit, blackhead, and smudge on his glasses. His incredibly hollow and lifeless lines can now be heard again with no more tornado warning beeps. Yaaaaaaaaaay!!

The weird thing, though, is when I'm watching these DVDs now, I keep waiting for the screen to shrink and tornado beeps to take over. I actually sort of miss it in some fucked up kind of way.. just like how I got so used to where all of the skips were on my Gene Simmons solo album and was caught off guard when they weren't on the CD when I bought it. It grew on me after a while, but took some getting used to. To this day when I listen to his tune True Confessions, I still expect the a capella choir at the end to sound like this:

Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa *pop*
aaaaaaah*pop*
aaaaaaah*pop*
aaaaaaah*pop*
aaaaaaah*pop*

...and so on (until I'd bump the record player to get it going again.) I'm thinking maybe there's an easter egg on these here DVDs that will enable me to watch the shows with the KARE 11 tornadic panic attacks every 5 minutes. Just until I get used to it without them, at least. Regardless, these DVDs and the extras kick waaaaay more ass than my VHS tapes, so I'll just do my best to get acclimated with this newfangled high quality format.

But not until after I scour the DVD menu for possible hidden Tornadic Panic Attack-Enhanced versions of the episodes.

I got a haircut!

And quite frankly I'm a little disappointed. My hair reduction agent Mackenzie always does a phenomenal job in contributing to my dapper look I like to go for, but I'm thinking maybe she was a little preoccupied yesterday. I knew it was a little different than usual, but once I got home and was able to take a good look in the mirror, I was a little disappointed.

Peep this pic and give me your honest opinions now.. should I go back and axsk her to trim it up a little free of charge? FYI - I'm the one with the guitar, in case you can't recognize me now.. Attn. Ms. Roar: this pic was taken at a slightly different angle than the one I showed you yesterday, plus my hair has grown out some in the last 12 hours.

The Skin Fold

Every so often I think back to 3rd Grade when I sat next to an orange haired fella named Jim. His last name started with a B, that's alls I remember. I always found him a bit peculiar, because he was one of the first people I'd ever met in real life with orange hair. His hair was so bright orange that even his eyelashes were orange too, and they sorta made his eyes look like venus flytraps. Not unlike the white eyelashes on my grampa's little white dog named Lumpy... for all we know, her eyes could have very well been venus flytraps (Lumpy wasn't the most friendly dog.)

Jim also had asthma, and I found this perplexing as well. I'd never heard of such a thing until we were playing Marco Polo during recess and he started a-coughing and a-whooping like nothing I've ever heard before. The asthmatic-induced noises he made were demonic to say the least. I always wished I could have asthma too, because it always seemed to get him out of running the mile for Phy Ed. Plus I have to admit, I always wondered what those inhalers tasted like.

One morning in class our teacher Mrs. Hauser handed out Physical Fitness cards that we were going to fill out in the week to come. I don't know if they still do this in schools, but during "Physical fitness week" they'd weigh you, measure you, and test your endurance on things like the 100 yard dash, relay races with chalkboard erasers, rope climbing (reeeowwll!), pull ups, and so on. Your basic public school lab rat thing.

While skimming over my Physical Fitness card, I noticed a term I hadn't seen before. The two words SKIN FOLD were on the card next to an empty box that was to be filled in with SKIN FOLD results.

Skin Fold? Says I to myself. What the fuck is that?

My mind started racing. The only thing I could picture in my head was a line of kids at the nurse's office holding their fitness cards and waiting for their turn to sit on a table. The nurse would then peel the skin of our scalps off to look at our brains, and then "fold" it back over to close things up.

Um. No thank you.

I felt a little ill and wished I had it in me to make myself blow chunks so I could go home for the day. But I just couldn't do it. I figured my ol' pally orange haired Jimmy might have some insight on what this skin fold business was all about, because when you have asthma, you must go to the doctor and get tested a lot. So perhaps he'd had a skin fold or two in his day. So I turned around and axsed him.

"Jimmy what's a Skin Fold?"

"Wha?"

"Skin Fold. Look it's on our cards."

"Oooh. That's when they slice a piece of skin off your dick." (pardon the French, but that's exactly what he said.)

At that moment my throat felt like it dropped into my stomach, turned into powder, and settled to my feet. Not a gall damn split second later, Mrs. Hauser got up and initiated our daily lifeless and robotic reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance. All I could do was lip synch the words that day, as I was too paralyzed in fear to be 100 percent patriotic.

After a long morning of mentally shitting my drawers, we had lunch. I could only take a few bites out of my salami sandwich because all I could picture in my head was the school nurse holding a big tube of salami and a knife. Recess came and went, and suddenly the hour of the Skin Fold was looming. Sure enough, it was Phy Ed time and the "Skin Fold Line" was formed. I was wondering why the girls were also in line, but fear was overriding taking that thought any further.

About 10 kids ahead of me I saw the nurse holding the Skin Fold apparatus. It was an evil looking thing; a big white hunk of plastic that had what looked like a big nasty ass narrow pair of pliers on the end of it. I was getting dizzy at the thought of undoing my Star Wars belt and dropping my grey corduroys when my turn came. I was so freaked that I wasn't even paying attention to those being skin-folded before me. I just stood there in fear, making baby steps to the front of that line to be re-circumcised.

And so my turn came. I was numb. In a trance. The nurse said "Just lift your shirt up a little, honey. This won't hurt." The Skin Fold gun approached my 3rd grade side flab in slow motion and gave me a mild pinch, she wrote the measurement down on my card, and off I went to shoot hoops with the other kids in the post-skin fold waiting room of the gym.

Jimmy was there, looked at me and asked "How did it go?"

I wanted to tell him that his description of the skin fold procedure wasn't the most accurate, but then thought maybe because he had asthma, perhaps his skin folds were performed differently like that. So I just said "It was okay," and ran off to the drinking fountain to alleviate my cottonmouth.

I sipped the weird tasting school water and felt the writhing tension in my belly that had been there all day finally begin to back off. I thanked my lucky stars that my scalp, wiener, and sanity were somehow still in tact. Which I guess isn't all that different from what I'm thankful for every other day of my life now that I think about it..

Dude, I am TOADILLY going to die

I splurged and bought me a dandy tin of $2 Altoids Sour Chewing Gum the other day, mainly because I'm a sucker for tins, and this one happened to be decorated in my favorite shade of green… Not to mention I like sour things, so it was meant to be, or so I thought.

I burn through gum like little kids use tape when wrapping presents. The second the flava starts to dissipate, down the hatch the ABC goes and a new piece is started. This is why I can never buy Fruit Stripes or Juicy Fruit, because replacing sticks of flavorless gum every 15 seconds could get a little expensive over time. Not to mention: Can you imagine the mess with all of those gum wrappers? I'd need to buy a wrapper rake.

So anyhows, a half a day later towards the 15th or so piece of the "about 20 pieces" the tin claims to have, I noticed something on the side of the tin:

BEST WHEN USED BY 13 FEB 06

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but today is February 22nd. Pardon me while I do some simple math:  22 - 13 = 9.  I've been eating gum NINE DAYS past its prime. I say "eating" because although I chew it, I swallow it as well, which thereby classifies my gum consumption technique under the eating category. I know, it's not healthy to swallow it, but either is fast food or most of the other shit that's 1,000 times worse for you but you put in your face anyways, right? Right.

I figured since I'd already downed most of the tin's contents already, I may as well throw the rest down the hatch, too. What good would throwing them out do now? Sure, I could use them as evidence in court, but what good is a $2 court settlement going to do for me if I'm not around to enjoy it?

I guess it's just a matter of time now before I drop dead. Let this be a warning to all of you gum chewers out there: check the expiration dates on the packages, or you could very well end up in my shoes. It's not a good feeling - I have so much I have yet to accomplish. Life has been great so far, but is this how it's going to end? From expired gum?  

There is, however, a slight glimmer of hope:

In 1987 my brother, bless his little heart, alerted me of an entire box of unopened KISS trading cards from the 1970s that he found sitting at Shinders. This was back when Band Aid-sized sticks of chewing gum came in packs of cards. I bought every last overpriced pack of KISS cards they had, and lo and behold, the gum was still intact (although it had "grown" onto the backs of the cards over its 10 year hibernation.) It was hard as a rock and a little brownish/yellow looking (not quite the bubbagum pink it once was), but you bet your arse I ate some. It's not very often a KISS fan gets to eat 10 year old KISS card gum. It wasn't a choice; it was my duty. It sort of crumbled like chewy sand in my mouth and tasted like trading cards smell, but eventually took on a gum consistency once gnashed on long enough.

I don't know how many sticks of that shit I ingested, but it was at least 6 or 7 and I seemed to live through that just fine. However - the reason I think I lived was because there was no expiration date printed on the KISS card packages. That gum was made to withstand a nu-cu-lar war and still be intact. It was KISS gum and it was so badass that it didn't NEED no stinkin' expiration date.  

Altoids however? I am SO dead. I plan on being cremated. My only request when I die from this tragic gum poisoning incident is that my ashes be placed in the Altoid tin responsible for my demise. I would like it to be mailed to the gas station on 28th and Lyndale Ave. where I bought it from. I will have a handwritten note prepared that I wish to be included with my remains that says "Thanks, I hope you're happy now."

I'll miss you all.

Jack in the Box

As she stood outside, she heard the bustling traffic in the distance. It sounded as if the highway were breathing, save for a horn honk here and there on a nearby busy street which sort of reminded her of the coughing audience members at the concert hall a few nights before.

She opened her purse and shoved her car keys and makeup aside. After finally unearthing her pack of cigarettes, she carefully removed one from the box and maneuvered it past the purse's walls and its contents as to not bend it. She examined the cigarette closely for loose tobacco shards on the filter end and tapped it on the wall to pack it down some more.

She put it into her mouth and felt the filter stick to her lips ever so slightly. *click* went her lighter, and she held the flame to the end of her cigarette to get it started.

The breathing of the highway suddenly became non-existent as her ears focused on the tip of her cigarette beginning to burn. She pulled a nice long drag off of it to ensure that it was lit. She could hear the tobacco and paper fizzle as the filter gave off a barely audible high pitched whistling noise from the air passing through it.

She exhaled slowly as she put her lighter back in her purse. Taking another drag from her cigarette, she did with intentional sex appeal this time, as if she were a sultry 1950s film actress right about to blow smoke in the lead actor's face telling him to take a hike.

She exhaled and watched the smoke float up towards the sky and disappear. The nicotine was starting to work its magic and the inside of her head began to swirl. It was a long day at work and she had been looking forward to this break for almost 5 hours.

She took another drag.
  
BAM!

Suddenly all she could hear was the ringing in her ears. She stood there like a dead tree and felt her chest pounding. She was convinced that if her heart was beating any harder that it would burst out of her and bounce down the street to run away from the ruckus that had just ensued.

The cigarette was still dangling in her mouth, but it was no longer lit and the end was split into about 10 strands. Her face was covered in a layer of black soot. She opened her mouth slightly and let the smoldering remains of her cigarette fall to the ground.

That's it, she thought. Never again am I buying my cigarettes from a Magic Shop.

Happy birthday Chuck!

It's my brother Chuck's birfday today - yaaay! (He's Frensch Flies on me MySpace top 8.)

My brother rules. He plays viola like I like to play geetar. He also does pretty damned good on the recorder, baritone, and the squeeze box if I do say so myself.

He makes very entertaining CDs that you have to hear for yourself.

He played with Trans Siberian Orchestra (in the 'orchestra' section) and said one time that when the guitarist went to play his solo that his amp wasn't on. So guitarist had porno face, but no guitar solo to go with it. THAT is funny. That's payback to that guy for me having to hear that fucking bah badda bah, bah badda bah, bah badda bah song for 3 months straight during the holidays. I'm glad Chuck was there and told me about that.

We've done a lot of smart things together. We used to take his piles of LEGOs and build what we called Torture Towns, comprised of various LEGO sculptures which would either mash or dismember its little LEGO citizens.

We used to open boxes of Jell-O in mom and dad's pantry and eat the powder (if you've never tried and are now contemplating, don't. The gelatin makes it a little chewy.. at least chase with boiling water if you're going to try.)

Once we were kind enough to secretly take my dad's coin collection and cash it in for "real" money. We put it to good use at Walgreen's buying plastic cans of slime and candy. Oh yes, we did. And oh yes, Dad found out and wasn't very happy to say the least.

That's just the tip of the iceberg of the so so many smart things we've done. Chuck is one of the coolest people to hang around with. He's practically like a brother to me! We have so much in common.. such as the same parents and sister.

Have a great birthday, Chuckers! Hopefully be seeing you in a couple o months.

I bought some pot today after work!

It's amazing how easy it is to find the stuff - not even a half a block away from my apartment in the middle of the afternoon, no less. Oh, I'm gonna party tonight, yes I am.

Grandma's pot that I was using was just too old for my taste. It didn't get the job done anymore. Thanks to the Steeple People, I have new pot now and am ready to cook!

See?



Oh, I guess I meant to type POTS. I won't bother changing the blog title though, as I don't think it could really be misinterpreted, could it? I'm just too tired to add the s's where they're supposed to be; it's been a long day at the office.

On that note, it's time to go put my pot over an open flame and get this weekend started.