The day before New Year’s Eve I was at home making a fire to try and bring some warmth to our little apartment in the ‘burbs, a task which I take on even though I don’t really have any special qualifications for firemaking.  In fact, they only turn out as well as they do because I cheat and start them all off with a Duraflame log, piling extra wood on once most of it has caught and started to crumble.  Anyway, I was poking around in this fire with the sawed-off end of a two-by-four, wanting to move some of the logs around to improve airflow and burn rate and other things  I like to pretend I know about before adding said end of a two-by-four to the fire.  I decided abruptly that a certain burning log should be moved, so I jammed the wood I was holding into it and started to lever it up, which meant my hand went down and because I didn’t plan this one out too well ahead of time I put my fingers down directly into the flames.

Fun fact!  The pain signal doesn’t have to make it all the way back to your brain before you react — it makes it to the spinal cord, which has no problem cutting in and moving your hand for you, which begs the question why it allowed you to use your hand in the first place since you were just going to go around doing things like sticking it into open flames.  Perhaps someone more versed in the sciences than myself knows the answer to that one, but my guess is that your autonomic nervous system is taking the tough love route with you, reasoning that if it always keeps you from sticking your hands into things that hurt you are just never going to keep them out on your own.

Anyway!  In the event that you put your hand directly into a fire like some sort of idiot, local control kicks in before the sensation of burning makes it very far at all, and your hand yanks itself away from the fireplace and back.  In some cases, you may find that your hand has also reacted by releasing the sawed-off end of two-by-four that you were holding.  I don’t imagine these sort of situations are very common at all, but I am willing to bet that in only one case in a million do the commands from the spine come through that dictate that the hand should hurl the piece of wood directly into one’s big toe.

Stubbing your toe is pretty bad, sure, but I can tell you that throwing a piece of wood at it and hitting it dead on is a lot worse, though it’s less that pain that makes you yell than the indignation that hitting something so small should hurt so bad.  ”ARRRGGHH!” I shouted, dropping to all fours and kicking my wounded foot back and up because I don’t know why.  Moving it away from the pain?  Trying to elevate it?  I raised it up behind me into the air, pressed my head against the cool tile in front of the fireplace, and yelled, “I SMASHED MY BIG LADY TOE!”

Lady toe?

Something you should know about me is that I have two younger sisters, and what they can tell you is what any younger sister anywhere in the world can tell you about older brothers: they are really, really annoying.  A few days before I was over at my mother’s place for Christmas, and my baby sister was over, too, and I guess she’s going to be twenty-three here before long but some things never change, and anyway we were taking a break from the game we’d been playing all morning of trying to catch one another unawares with a swift kick to the butt, and sat down at the dinner table to have cookies.  She took advantage of the break as an opportunity to start painting her toenails, a task from which I tried to distract her by poking her in the ribs with my foot.  She’s old enough now that she can just ignore me when she’s tired of my nonsense, so when I saw that my foot-poking tactics weren’t working, I plopped my foot down in her lap and said, “Paint my toes!”  She called my bluff and did so without missing a beat, painting three toes on my left foot a bright pink while I munched on my cookies.

I forgot all about the decorated toes of my left foot as soon as I put my slippers back on, chuckling when I switched out of slippers and into socks and shoes for the drive home, laughing in surprise when I took my socks off later, giggling when I looked down in the shower the next morning and discovered I had pink toes.  If you can imagine sitting the dude from “Memento” down in front of a computer and having him laugh fifty times in a row as you hit repeat on that “Charlie bit me” video on YouTube, you pretty much have my cycle over the next few days of forgetting about my pink toe nails, seeing them, and finding them hysterical all over again.  After a while I took to calling them my lady toes.

Here we are back at the fireplace, and since no one was there but me you’ll have to picture it: a fat guy dressed only in boxers and a T-shirt, head and hands pressed against the tile, one foot on the ground and the other up in the air as if I were trying to kick up into a headstand, bellowing about the pretty pink princess toes I had pointed at the ceiling.

If I had a destiny, ladies and gentlemen, that image pretty much sums it up:  I am a completely ridiculous person, to whom any number of completely ridiculous things occur on a regular basis.  It’s almost constant.  The very next day I was out for Korean barbecue and opened the wrapper on my chopsticks to find I only had one.  I’ve never heard of someone getting only one chopstick in one of those things before.  I’m pretty certain it didn’t happen to anyone else at that restaurant, since from what I could see I was the only one sitting around with a pitiful look on his face, holding a single chopstick in the air to try and get the attention of the waitstaff.

It’s fate, right?  Might as well have a sense of humor about it.

If this happens early in the morning (as it frequently does) I mumble one of my Favorite Words to Say Before 9 AM, like “Fuck” or “Goddamn’t” or “Meh.”  If this famous bug in my operating system should happen to occur in front of witnesses, which is more common when I’m out at happy hour, I’ll just go right to dabbing up the spilled liquid off my shirt with a napkin and explain, “Sorry ’bout that.  It’s part of my condition.”

While talking, if I find I can’t recall a word or the name of something, be it a movie or a restaurant or whatever, I will pause and make a weird noise.  A lot of the time it is a clucking noise I make with my tongue.  Other times it’s a low two-note whistle, which is often accompanied by a back and forth eye roll.  This usually does the trick and causes the thing I was trying to recollect to jump to the top of my mind.

My right leg is the one with all the trouble, and after sleeping through the night it manages to swell up a bit, and then refuses to wake up along with the rest of me.  For the first forty minutes or so after getting out of bed, I walk around the way that most of us imagine a zombie to walk: rather lopsided, dragging my right leg behind me.

When trying to solve a problem, it’s not too unusual for me to mumble to myself.  Sometimes this is accompanied by tugging on my right earlobe, which is also something I do when trying to remember what the hell it was I was supposed to pick up at the grocery store.

There is a certain point at which I have consumed enough alcohol that the dam just bursts  and I just start talking, leaping from topic to loosely connected topic, all of it incredibly ridiculous.  People tend to find it incredibly amusing when this happens.  If no one else is talking I will sometimes make up dialog for them and start speaking it, occasionally using a new voice I have just made up to indicate that these are actually your lines that I’m saying, but sometimes just moving my arms back and forth in a robot like fashion, which I seem to think is the universal sign for “This is actually someone other than myself drunkenly holding forth discourse on this subject.”

My furiously churning brain will sometimes bring up something particularly funny that I read or saw anywhere from a few days to a a few years before, and if it’s something particularly hilarious I will start laughing.  Obviously no one else is privy to the endlessly playing movie in my mind, so I imagine it just looks like I’m laughing at nothing.  I suppose that’s how crazy people must look.

What about you?  Anything especially odd that you do that can only be described as being part of your condition?

If you don’t have time to watch it, here’s a brief synopsis of the song for you:  the protagonist is in love with a woman, and in an attempt to prove the extent of this love he lists a number of unlikely situations to which he would willingly subject himself.  In no particular order, these include:

• Catching a grenade.
• Putting his hand on a blade.
• Jump in front of a train.
• Take a bullet through the brain.
• Be run through by a rabid unicorn’s horn.
• Get hammered by the Norse god, Thor.
• Eat his weight in chicken feet.
• Listen to Train’s “Hey, Soul Sister” on repeat.

I am probably making at least some of those up, as I did not listen to the song too carefully or bother to look up the lyrics prior to writing this post — people, I’m a blogger, which means I’m practically a journalist, so don’t expect me to do things like check facts or verify accuracy on something before hitting publish.  ANYWAY, I think you get the point.

What I am left wondering is how the hell he thought any of this was going to impress his girl, or win her back.  I mean, anyone can promise a bunch of things that sound really impressive because you probably won’t have to deliver on any of them.  I can only imagine the response from Bruno’s beloved to all of his promises.

BRUNO: I would catch a grenade for you, baby!

LADY FRIEND: We live in the O.C., not the Gaza Strip.  Who’s even throwing grenades around here?  UNIMPRESSED FACE.

BRUNO: Well, I would…I would put my hand on a blade for you.

LADY FRIEND: What does that even mean?  You don’t know how to use power tools.  You don’t even own a good socket wrench set!

BRUNO: Listen, I would jump in front of a train for you…

LADY FRIEND: It’s more like, “I would wander out into traffic because I was texting and wasn’t paying attention to where I was walking.”  AMIRITE?

(At this point, no doubt, you can imagine our protagonist getting a little riled up at being called on his bullshit.  So, he switches tactics.)

BRUNO: I don’t understand.  I would go through all this pain.  What do I need to do to prove my love to you?

LADY FRIEND: Instead of telling me you’re going to “take a bullet right through the brain,” how about that you’ll “unclog that slow bathroom drain?”

BRUNO: What?  That’s crazy talk.

LADY FRIEND:   How about you pick up your dirty socks off the floor?  Or if you remember not to slam the door?

BRUNO: I don’t really see what you’re getting at…

LADY FRIEND: Hey, here’s a good one: Don’t dribble on the toilet seat.  Ooh!  Keep off the carpet with your dirty feet.

BRUNO: Man, this is some bullshit right here.  Did I mention the part about how I would catch a grenade….?

LADY FRIEND:  Yeah, yeah.

Sorry, Bruno.  It’s not as terribly glamorous to say that you’ll clean up around the house for your girl, but it’s a lot more believable than a lot of the stuff you put in your song, and will probably even get you laid.

I finally got around to cleaning out some old filing cabinets (read: throwing away large volumes of crap I had been carrying around for years) when I discovered that for one reason or another the proofs from my senior photo shoot had been stuffed in a folder with some old tax documents and a random birthday card.  I tweeted about the discovery, and then a few people totally wanted evidence so I snapped a quick picture with my phone and uploaded it to the Flickr.  For those of you out there who aren’t stalking me on either of those other networks I might as well throw the photo up here along with a quick post about it.

Kerri asked why I was wearing a tux in one of them, and the answer is this: I don’t know how senior photos worked for all y’alls, but at my high school we were sent the name of a photo studio in the mail and a date and time on when we were expected to show up.  You were supposed to wear something sort of nice, and the photographer would snap a few pictures of you doing some unnatural silly things like sitting on a chair backwards and looking all serene or whatever, and then everyone had to get a few shots in with this silly half-tuxedo shirt with the tie already attached and a jacket thrown on over it.  These were the photos that ended up being used in the yearbook.  I really don’t know who decided these things.

It’s funny, looking back — I remember being the pudgy kid all through middle school and high school, but looking now at the sixteen year old version of me I don’t think I was fat at all.  If anything, fleshing out over the course of the years has meant that I’ve “grown into” my super-sized head, and finally coming to terms with having curly hair and letting it grow out longer than an inch has worked wonders for camouflaging my massive forehead.

I realize some designer was trying to get a little cute with some of the ideograms on the sign and make them look like a man and a woman, but don’t you think the end result is more than a little…well…suggestive?

“Ha!  I love it!  Hold out that box, I need to get a picture of this.”   I whipped out my iPhone and snapped a shot of the well-known breakfast cereal in a Canadian box, knowing full well that I was going to post it to my Flickr account as soon as I had a chance.  Moments later, I had the thought that Canadians probably didn’t visit America and walk through grocery stores, giggling madly as they found familiar products with slightly different packaging.  The hilarity!

What can I say?  It was a crounchifique moment.  Anyway, I’ll try to be good for the rest of the time I’m here.

Nothing ends, Adrian.  Nothing ever ends.

This made me think back a bit to a link that Neil Gaiman posted on the Twitter, to this story about a man who has a quote from Death: The High Cost of Living tattooed on his arm.  The slant on this quote is a bit different:

It always ends.  That’s what gives it value.

I don’t know why I drew the mental connection between these quotes, other than the arbitrary end of this year by those of us using the Gregorian calendar was rapidly approaching.  Also, I probably spend entirely too much time living in imaginary places.

It’s easy enough in the the hectic holiday season and the ridiculous pressure at work to GET EVERYTHING DONE to turn around and write off the entire year as a complete wash, but honestly I had a good year, and I think I’ve laid the foundations for some better times ahead.  Anyway, I did this silly thing with pictures last year because I was lazy, but I think I liked it enough afterward that I’ll do it again.  Here’s my 2009, in photos:

It’s been an awesome year, and here’s to the next one, and they’re boarding my flight so I guess I better wrap this up omg see you all next year!

(via Pomplamoose Music, via Truth and Beauty Bombs)

Happy Friday, everyone!

He looked up at me.  ”Ah, yes!  Come in!  Sit down.”

I walked into his office and casually plopped down in the chair.  ”Some weather we’ve been having, huh?  I can’t believe how–”

“SHUT UP!” he barked, bringing his fist down solidly against his desk.  ”None of your smooth talking!  We’re gonna talk about what I brought you here to talk about: your blog!”

“Okay.”  I scratched behind my ear, nonplussed.  ”What about my blog?”

“IT SUCKS!”

I looked at my editor for a moment in astonishment, before indignation found me.  ”Dude, what do you mean my-”

“SUCKS!”  He slammed his fist into the desk again for emphasis.

“Hey-”

“SUCKS!” THUMP.  ”You haven’t written a goddamn thing in this blog for the entire month of August.  You’ve got entries two months old on the front page still.  And you have the nerve to call yourself a blogger.”

“Whoah there, dude, I-”

“Enough with the ‘dude’ already!  Who still talks like that?  How old are you, anyway?”

“Dude, I-”

“STOP IT!”

“Okay!”  I held my hand up.  ”Okay, I won’t say it anymore.  Wow.  Look, I know I haven’t touched this blog in a while, but-”

“And just what’s your excuse for slacking off, anyway?” he said, interrupting me yet again.  ”And don’t try to tell me it’s because of pretty girls again.”

“Hey, those pretty girls are out there, dude, and they-”

“WHAT THE HELL DID I JUST SAY?!”

I was starting to get indignant.  ”Okay, you know what, Mr Slave Driver, it’s pretty hard to type out a post when you only have one hand.”  I waved my prosthesis in front of his face for emphasis.

He just stared at it.  ”And what the hell is that?”

“It’s the prosthetic limb they gave me at the hospital.  When they, ah, amputated me.  After my accident, you know.”

“Bullshit.  It’s a plastic hook.”

“Well, that’s what they give you when you’re poor.”

He slammed both fists onto the top of his desk.  ”It’s a goddamn plastic pirate hook!  You bought it at a costume shop!”

“Oh.”  I stared at it, realizing my ruse hadn’t worked.  ”Um, maybe it is.  They told me I had to wear it while I was recuperating, though.  Crazy, huh?”

“SHUT UP!  Stop trying to distract me.  We’re here to talk about your goddamn blog, and what you’re going to do about it, mister!”

“Okay!”  I held up both hands, tossing the plastic pirate hook over my shoulder with a flick of my wrist in hopes that he’d forget I’d tried to pull a fast one on him.  ”Look, I don’t really have much in the way of an excuse.  I’ve got some side projects I’m working on that I can’t really talk about on my blog yet.  Work sucks, but it always does, and I can’t go into too much detail about it in my posts.  Things have been going pretty well for me lately otherwise.  Nothing much going on, other than getting in that bike wreck the other week-”

“Ah ha!”  He squinted at me, pointing one finger directly at my face.  ”That’s what you’re going to write about.  I want you to put together a post about you taking a spill off your bike, and I want it on my desk by this afternoon so we can publish it first thing tomorrow.”

“Okay.”  I scratched my head.  ”Yeah, I can probably do that, unless something comes up between now and-”

My editor turned purple with fury, veins popping out all over his head.  ”You’ll bring me a goddamn post about you wrecking on your bike by this afternoon, or you’re finished here!  Do you understand me?  If you don’t make this deadline, YOU’RE FIRED!”

“What the…?”  I stared at him, my own ire beginning to rise.  ”What the hell are you talking about?  You can’t fire me!  IT’S MY BLOG!”

“Oh, it’s my blog,” he said in his most mocking tone.  ”I got news for you, ace: we’re in the middle of a recession here!  I got a hundred bloggers out here looking to start a blog, able to turn out the same sort of stupid crap that you do, only probably better, and willing to bust their hump to churn that crap out more often than once a month.  So you either get your act together and bring me some posts, or I’ll get someone else to write for this crap pile.”

“Fine!”  I yelled.  ”Fine, I’ll get you your post today.  But you will rue the day you talked to me like this!”  I stood up hastily, catching my leg on the chair and nearly falling over before regaining my footing.  ”You hear me?  You will RUE THE DAY!”

He grunted, waving his hand towards the door in a curt gesture of dismissal.  ”Get the hell out of my office and get to work.”  I was halfway to the door before he called out to me again.  ”One more thing!”

I looked back over my shoulder at him.  ”Yeah?”

He pointed towards the floor of one corner of his office.  ”Get your stupid pirate hook and take it with you.”

I have to wonder about what those two questions are.