Is this thing on?
One of the things that sucks about blogging is that it sometimes feels like you’re talking to an empty room. Unless you’re a big-time blogger (imagine the chicks you’d get with that accolade!), you get a few comments here and there, but all in all, it’s like someone broke in to your online diary and scribbled something in what is otherwise a void.
So in addition to asking my readers to keep telling people how awesome I am, to sign up for my newsletter, and to sign their friends up for my newsletter without asking their permission, I’m going to participate in Chuck Westbrook’s experiment to find readers for great content, which this site clearly has in spades.
This is clearly an expedient publicity method for me, because there are already over 40 participants. Since a new blog is chosen every two weeks, I’m thinking I’m going to see a spike in my popularity circa 2010. So badass.
Roommate from the Black Lagoon
I’ve had a lot of interesting roommates in my life. The first was Benny, who I’ve written about before because he used to throw mail down the elevator shaft. I liked Benny and the roommates who followed him very much. But I’ve also had some really bad roommates, and of those, Jesse Lee Baker the Third was the worst.
I went to college at the Ohio State University. For my first two years, I lived in an air conditioned mausoleum known to OSUites as Lincoln Tower. In each room, Lincoln boasts one 2×2 window that cannot be opened and absolutely no intermingling with the outside air. Lincoln and its sister Morrill Tower are identical in all ways but two: First, while the entirety of Morrill is a dorm, the bottom fifteen of Lincoln’s thirty floors are administrative offices staffed by people whom the university deemed deserving of a terrible punishment. And second, while Morrill is basic student housing, Lincoln is one of OSU’s honors dorms.
OSU created honors dorms for people who had been deceived into thinking that the purpose of college was education. In general, the honors dorms had much less noise, much less partying, and much less sex than their plebeian counterparts. While our vending machines were stocked with candy, pop, and over-the-counter stimulants like No-Doz, Morrill’s were stocked with condoms. The one saving grace was that we did have our own nerdy breed of shenanigans. Though I never woke up in a pile of naked sorority girls, I did see a pickle electrocuted more than once.
Life in Honors suited my lifestyle perfectly. I was such a partier that I would occasionally have up to one drink in a row, and I was a devious ladies’ man who had been on more than two dates by the time I turned 18. Some of my roommates managed to be cool and smart at the same time (like the guy who used to roll the 32 gallon bathroom trashcan into his room on Friday nights “just in case,” and often woke up in last night’s clothes and asked us how he got home) but many were more like Henry, who would stand behind people while they were working and mouth-breathe heavily.
The Towers were arranged in suites. Each door off of the hallway led into a wedge-shaped common room walled with what looked like yak hair, and beyond that were four two-person rooms and a shared bathroom. So while I only shared a room with one person, I was essentially living in a group of eight. After the first year, a group of us higher-functioning nerds sifted out the spazes and mouth-breathers and formed a group of seven who would live together in Lincoln again during our sophomore year.
We could not find an eighth, so OSU found one for us. His name was Jesse Lee Baker III.
From the very beginning, Jesse Lee felt like an odd fit. He used to pop his plentiful chest acne and leave pus on the bathroom mirror. He would blow his nose in the shower, without using any sort of tissue. He took Playboys into the common bathroom and would peruse them on the john. On Friday and Saturday nights, he would comb his tiny, ratty mustache and head out to a club, asking his roommate Andy ahead of time if he could sleep elsewhere when Jesse Lee came home with a girl, which never actually happened.
Culturally, he was an enigma to us, but we tried to see past this because he shared one large similarity — he, like us, was apparently an honors student. However, this final bond vanished when we discovered that he wasn’t taking 300-level calculus like the rest of us, or even an underachieving Math 101. He was actually taking Math 050, which was remedial. And he was failing it.
To his credit, Jesse Lee did think he was intelligent. After all, OSU had put him in an honors dorm, and he was surrounded by students who understood things like information technology, political science, and soap. He would hear a discussion about astronomical “red shift” and chime in with, “Oh yeah, I know about that — red light” in an “I totally know what you’re talking about” one-up gesture. When one of the other guys couldn’t figure out how to solve a differential equation, Jesse Lee would sigh and say, “Let me look at that.” And in return, Andy helped him with his own homework by giving him the formula for perimeter: “just add up the sides.”
He was loud and he was brash. His habits mystified us in an anthropological sense, the way gorilla behavior would mystify us. One time Andy heard a hairdryer and entered the room to a shout of, “Dude, knock first!” Andy had assumed that there was no need to knock because Jesse Lee was just drying his hair. However, his assumption was only partially correct. Andy found Jesse Lee naked, with one foot up on the bed, blowdrying his undercarriage.
It didn’t make sense — and to be honest, it made us mad. We weren’t getting drunk; we weren’t getting laid. All we asked in exchange for our monastic college existence was to be sequestered away from the Jesse Lee Baker III’s of the world.
The riddle demanded investigation. Luckily, all good nerds have an inappropriately cordial relationship with the local authorities, which in this case took the form of our ostentatious 250-pound hall director, LaTisha. Andy pumped her for information and found out that Jesse Lee was in fact part of a sociological experiment that the university was conducting. The idea was to fill vacant spots in honors dormitories with low- to no-ability students in an attempt to better their academic standing. That might not be the exact wording, but I know for sure that “low- to no-ability” is verbatim because I have never heard a more accurate description of anything, ever.
We were definitely not supposed to know this, and we didn’t tell Jesse Lee. We did tell each other, as an act of self defense. Because what OSU failed to consider was that beyond the possibilities of Jesse Lee’s academic betterment or stagnation (it ended up being the latter), there was a third possible outcome to the experiment. Rather than us buoying Jesse Lee, he might well have dragged us down.
I loved my time at OSU. I paid them, and they gave me an education and some fun times. It was a fair trade, yet the university keeps calling me today, asking for donations. But what they don’t realize is that I remember the Jesse Lee Baker III experiment.
It will always be my opinion that they owe me.
Photobombers
Ah, the beauty of someone’s photo ruined by some jackass in the background…
More photobombers
My wife's pain is annoying
On Wednesday, my wife had the anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee repaired. Since that time, the pain and inconvenience has been terrible. But don’t worry, I suppose I’ll get used to it.
What you don’t realize is that in a household of two adults, a four year old, a baby, two dogs, three cats, and three horses, there are a lot of tasks. What you don’t realize is that when you’re the only responsible party in that house, you have to be constantly in motion or else you will be killed. Literally killed by your own children and eaten by your dogs. True story.
Friday night, the baby fought going to sleep and then woke me twice. Then she peed through her sleeper. Then my son woke up at 4am and announced that his pajamas and sheets were wet too. It was like some sort of urine free-for-all, where rules need not apply. So 8am Saturday morning, I was dragging out of bed.
I went to my office for five minutes. Robin was soon up, and I knew this because I could hear her mechanized approach on the crutches, sounding like an Imperial Walker from Star Wars. Then my son got up. I knew this because I heard crying and assumed the baby was awake, then realized it was just the boy’s theatrics. I ignored him. Then the baby started to cry for real, and the fun began.
Change the baby. Bring her to the table. Get a bottle for the baby. Get a bowl of cereal for the wife. Get bib for the baby. Ask the boy what he wants to eat. He decides on cereal, so deliver cereal. Get juice for the wife. Push in the boy’s chair. Attempt to get my own breakfast. Fail.
“Daddy, I’m done,” said my son. “I want another bowl of cereal.”
But the boy had already had one bowl, so he was going to the end of the queue.
“Your request is very important to us,” I told him. “Please wait, and it will be answered in the order in which it was received.”
Let the dogs out. Feed the dogs. Let the dogs back in. Realize they’ve been outside for fifteen seconds; let dogs back out.
“Daddy, I need my vitamin.”
What the hell. I’m headed that way anyway.
Get his vitamin. Get Robin’s vitamin. Get that second bowl of cereal while I’m at it. Notice the yogurt in the fridge; remove it to begin making my breakfast shake. Fail. Instead, deliver vitamins.
“Did you feed the horses?” Robin asks.
“Their request is very important to us,” I tell her. Then, to my son, “Do you want juice to drink?”
“I want milk.”
“We’re out of milk. I used the last on your cereal. Do you want juice?”
He said no, so I went about getting Robin’s fish oil supplement. She can’t swallow pills, so it’s a liquid — mixed with Crystal Light to make it palatable. Pour. Mix. Deliver. Return to the counter to make my own food. Fail.
“Daddy, I want juice.”
“You said you didn’t want juice.”
“I want mommy’s juice.” Meaning the Crystal Light.
Whatever.
Pour Crystal Light. Deliver. Look longingly at yogurt for my breakfast shake. The boy announces he’d like a third bowl of cereal. Pour cereal, add water because we’re out of milk. First everyone pees the bed, now we’re putting water on cereal. This household is crazier than a car dealer.
Realize the baby needs her rice cereal. Make it; deliver it. Get bib again, because what I grabbed last time turned out to be a pair of socks.
“Can you get me some ibuprofin?” Robin asks. She’s supposed to start taking it today, so I look up the doctor’s instructions. 200mg. Two tablets. Three times a day. So is that 200mg three times a day, or two tablets twice a day? Or are the tablets 200mg? Do they make different doses?
“Daddy, more cereal!”
But the kid has had enough; he’s going to barf and then I’ll have another task. So I deliver the ibuprofin. Refill water glass; deny first-born. Pick up dishes and return them to the sink. Open the dishwasher to get a spoon to make my shake; realize all of the dishes are covered with strange white detritus. Re-run dishwasher. Realize we’re out of milk for the shake anyway. Attempt to think around the problem. Fail.
“Daddy, because I ate three bowls of cereal, can I have that green sucker?” He indicates the “get well” bouquet of candy that my mother sent to my wife. He’s been harvesting it since it arrived.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because breakfast isn’t the time for suckers,” I said. But I knew I was kidding myself.
Robin rises and begins Imperial Walking out to the living room. I know that if a small fighter dragging a wire were to fly around her four ground-touching limbs at this point, she’d fall forward and the rebellion would rejoice. I do not point this out.
“It’s cold in here,” she says.
Walk to a vent. Feel cold air. Go downstairs, touch flue. It’s warm, not hot. Change furnace filter, which is thick with the hair of five animals, three of which are yelling at me. Feed cats. Go upstairs, re-check vents. Better.
“Could you bring my pillows from the bed?” Robin says. And on my return, she adds, “…and my pills and water?”
Return to kitchen. Down my own fish oil supplement, my own vitamins. Begin making my food. Pained grunting comes from the front room at this exact moment. It’s not my wife. It’s my daughter. And there is only one time at which she grunts like that.
Change baby’s diaper. Realize furnace is now working too well; turn it off. Suddenly it’s 9:45, but at least suddenly, I’m able to make my own breakfast. The boy is watching SpongeBob SquarePants, so I sit down with my shake to watch it with him. Fifteen minutes pass. Then a half hour.
At 10:30, I realize the horses are surely getting impatient.
I had a double-urine extravaganza last night. It took me nearly two hours to make my breakfast.
And now, the horses are hungry.
I realize I don’t give a shit.
Beef in ice cream: still unpopular
I used to work at this ice cream store that was owned by a crotchety old guy named Mr. P. Mr P’s real name was Ted Pardel, but that’s not how the mailman knew him.
The subscription to Out magazine was addressed to Theodore L. Douchebag, which according to the person who ordered it for him is Bulgarian and is pronounced “dow-CHEB-egg.”
Bound & Gagged came to Theodore L. Ballsack.
And the regular issues of Black Inches were delivered to Theodore L. “KOH-soo-KAY” – a French name with a proud heritage, spelled “Cocksucker.”
“What the hell is this?” he’d grumble, then march out to the dumpster. And then my friend Chuck would lock him outside.
Mr. P was famous for being an ass. For real. He opened an ice cream store, yet didn’t like kids. He certainly didn’t like the teenagers that he employed, which was probably fair turnabout anyway because most of said teens robbed him blind and used to experiment with his food instead of serving it to customers.
Case study: If you microwave a hot dog for a very long time, it will blacken and the skin will wrinkle into a tough leather. We called these “leather dogs.”
Further exploration: If you microwave a leather dog beyond the leather stage, it will eventually catch on fire and explode. Mr. P will not be pleased with the aftermath. So the only thing you can do is to scrape the detritus into a sundae cup, cover it with soft-serve, and put it in the freezer as a Mistake.
You see, out front, Mr. P had a sign that read, “Mistakes half price!” This was supposed to mean that when a customer ordered a Turtle sundae without caramel but the employee accidentally added caramel, a later customer could buy that incorrect Turtle for $1.25 instead of $2.50. What it actually meant was that Mr. P’s shop hosted a kind of cruel and inhumane Freezer of Doctor Moreau – where buying a mistake was a breed of Russian roulette.
A customer came to the window, angry that she had found bits of aged hot dog in the Mistake she had purchased. Luckily, Chuck knew how to respond to this complaint.
“Yes, putting burnt hot dog in a sundae was indeed a mistake,” he’d say.
Other mistakes: Barbecued beef whipped with soft-serve to make a BBQ Cyclone. Slushies made with ketchup. Sundaes with bread in the middle.
“Yes, I understand. The customer who ordered it didn’t like it either,” Chuck said when a woman brought back a Mistake shake filled with mustard. “It was clearly an error on our part.”
To serve a soft-serve ice cream cone, you hold the cone under the dispenser as the ice cream is coming out and make a small circle with the cone hand, lowering as the cone gets taller. This creates the swirl effect. If you do this with a large-sized cone, the diameter of the swirl is large enough that until you top the cone, there is actually a large hole down through the center of the ice cream. Chuck would sometimes slide a hot dog down into this void and then top the cone, then set the cone in a sundae cup and put it in with the Mistakes.
A woman came to the window shortly thereafter and asked what Mistakes we had. Mr. P showed her a few sundaes and a large vanilla cone. She chose the cone and was back shortly afterward. This time Chuck waited on her.
“There’s a hot dog in here!” she said.
Chuck peered over the counter and inspected the pink interloper amidst the white ice cream. “Yes, looks like it,” he said.
“Well, what the hell?”
“Ma’am,” he said, “there is a hot dog in that ice cream cone. That is clearly a Mistake. Had that cone been made properly, there would be no hot dog in it.”
You learn things when you work around ice cream for long enough. For one thing, you learn that a large cone can generally be sixteen inches tall before the lower swirls are no longer able to support its weight and it topples, then skates under the Slushie machine. Whipped cream, being lighter, appears to have no such limit as long as the base is wide enough.
Case study: A lady at the drive-thru asks for extra whipped cream.
“Extra?” you say, “or EXTRA?”
If the customer replies with an enthusiastic “EXTRA!” then congratulations, you’ve just been given a license to steal.
From an assembler’s standpoint, you can easily make the whipped cream on top of a sundae exceed the height of a standard car window. The customer will generally try to tip the sundae into his car and drop most of the whipped cream onto the pavement, but every once in a while someone simply hauls it into the car, knocking the cap off and into his lap.
Customers pulled away from the drive-thru very hesitantly, balancing giant cones or sundaes. And once they were three feet from the window, Chuck would yell, “WAIT!”
Abrupt stop. Cone goes into windshield.
“You forgot your napkins.”
Mr. P missed most of this. Half the time he had been locked out, and the rest of the time he’d be in the back room watching game shows or fishing shows. The worst thing that could happen during a shift was for Mr. P to come up and work with the crew. Usually, when he did this, he’d eventually throw his apron on the floor and quit. He’d then march out to the corner and stand facing away from the shop with his arms crossed. Cars would honk at him.
And for Mr. P, the worst thing he could do during a shift would be to quit. More leather dogs and outrageous Mistakes occurred during these times than any other. And it was always sad when Mr. P un-quit, having realized that not only did he both own and live at his shop, but that his employees would burn it down if he stayed outside for too long.
Some very few lucky times, Mr. P, Theodore L. Cocksucker, would leave the shop entirely to run errands or to ride his bike. Those times were like paradise. And they probably were for Mr. P too, until his bike was hit by a car. Following that incident, Mr. P, shaken but miraculously unharmed, bought an orange helmet, orange reflective vest, orange tire reflectors, and a giant orange flag on a post for behind the bike’s seat.
Before realizing the identity of this new safety rider, Chuck’s mother saw him riding and noted his keen look.
“Poor man,” she said. “He must be retarded.”