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Archive for February, 2012

Vomitus

February 28th, 2012 No comments

Let me tell you a little secret about Norovirus (AKA Norwalk Virus, AKA “The Old Spew and Spray”): it SUUUUUU-UUUUUUCKS.


It’s Josephine’s fault, as you might expect, she being our youngest school-going child. Last Thursday, we’re all watching a spot of TV before bed, when suddenly she stands up and calmly tosses her cookies all over the living room. Luckily, vomiting for a 2-year-old is gentle; it didn’t affect her much at all, aside from the fact that she was somewhat concerned that she couldn’t actually stop. It just kept a-gushing for a few minutes until her stomach was drained of contents.


We got her cleaned up and prepared for a long night, putting a towel down in her crib. Sure enough, she was up about every 30 minutes from 10pm to 2am to blow chunks, although after a while there wasn’t anything to bring up other than foam. After each session, we’d clean her up as best we could, and she’d immediately fall asleep. I stayed home with her the next day, and she rallied pretty quickly, eating some animal crackers and juice and watching hour upon hour of educational programming. We assumed she had food poisoning, or some kind of stomach bug, and planned our usual weekend of cleaning and odd jobs, complicated somewhat by the fact that I had to work on Saturday.


I then spent much of the early hours of Saturday spraying various substances into the toilet. From both ends. Sarah started soon after, followed in the late morning by Charles. At some point in the middle of the night, Josephine produced a poop so substantial that it went all the way up her back, but didn’t wake her. She felt fine by morning (although, as we later discovered, was still quite contagious) and so Grandma and Grandpa were kind enough to come get her and William. Sarah and I went back to bed, occasionally rising to help Charles throw up, finally passing out for good around 8pm and sleeping straight through until roughly 6am Sunday.


I didn’t think I’d be throwing up again, but my throat was raw from all the stomach acid, so I called out of church, and we spent the morning resting some more. Around noon, Sarah retrieved the younger children, and they and Charles and I sat around the rest of the day while my wife, who is a lovely person but whose work ethic outsmarts her at times, worked on cleaning up the house and organizing all our bills and mail. Heaven forfend she actually rest, you see.


Sunday night, Sarah’s parents reported they were sick, and we suspected everyone might still be contagious, so she stayed home with the kids on Monday. William, meanwhile, hasn’t been throwing up, but his fever goes up and down. Luckily he’s eating like a pig, per his usual.


Norovirus sucks. On the other hand, it gave me the opportunity to watch some TV, since I certainly wasn’t getting off the couch, which is how I got to watch the last forty minutes of “Commando,” which I am proud to report is the gayest movie I have ever watched. I loved it.


John Matrix, played by Ahhhhnold, needs to rescue his daughter from the bad guys, who are played by Dan Hedaya (who you may recognize as Alicia Silverstone’s dad in “Clueless”) and, as near as I can tell, Fat Freddie Mercury: Nice mesh shirt


Yes, that picture is signed “I won’t shoot you between the eyes, I’ll shoot you between the balls,” an actual line from the movie.


Arnie has Rae Dawn Chong (who I believe was cast in the mistaken belief that her name was Ray Don Chong by a casting director who never looked at her picture and thought he was getting a nice bear dude to play Arnie’s love interest) fly him to a location off the coast of LA, and he then, clad in nothing but a small pair of purple skivvies, rows to the island where his daughter is being kept. There is then a brief montage of him painting his body and putting on various weapons, and he sets out to slaughter all the bad guys, which he does, finally catching up to Fat Freddie in a basement and engaging him in a shirtless knife fight and eventually IMPALING HIM IN THE CHEST WITH AN 8-FOOT LENGTH OF 4″ STEEL PIPE, which can’t possibly have had any phallic symbolism at all, wink-wink nudge-nudge.


I’m told it’s Rick Santorum’s favorite movie.

Categories: sickly Tags:

Searchin’

February 20th, 2012 No comments

It’s been a loooooooong-A time since I’ve made fun of the…unique, let’s say, searches that people put into their googlers that lead them to this site, so let’s make the MAGIC happen! (The numbers at the end of each line are the number of searches made with that string, that led people all up ins hurr.) Apparently Dwyane Wade is a popular fellow:


dwyane wade muscle 70
dwyane wade muscles 32
dwyane wade men’s health 14
dwyane wade shirtless 11

Those are just the top 4 of literally dozens of ways of saying “Hey Google, I wanna see naked D-Wade, get on it.” Well, heaven forfend I fail to please my “fans,” so here you go, America: Dwyane’s balls.



There were also a bunch of things related to fitness, which is hardly surprising since I’ve been rapping on that topic frequently:

how to gain 15 pounds of fat 15
running weight loss before and after pictures 8
south beach diet before and after 6
will love handles ever go away if enough weight is lose 3

The answer to the last one is, of course, “Yes, if you are Dwyane Wade.” Apparently people are fond of tennis, as well:
andrea petcovic 15

I only vaguely remember mentioning Andrea Petkovic in a post from 18 months ago, but apparently it’s enough to get over a dozen hits in the past 3 months from people looking for her. If only someone could have predicted that just dropping the names of attractive women is the way to a high hit-count? Megan Fox, Katharine McPhee, and Kate Upton know what I’m talking about.


I gave away my old Mazda almost 4 years ago, and yet old posts keep bringing the hits.

mazda protege 98 5
1998 mazda protege white 5
1996 mazda protege white 5
98 protege 4

That was a good little car that deserved a better driver than me, and we donated it to some kind of shady agency that I’m sure uses it to transport drugs up and down the eastern seaboard. ::pours out a small bottle of 10-40 oil for his homie::


matt hearn auburn 2

I’m really more of a dirty blonde, really. In that my hair is somewhat blond, and I am personally dirty, and I think you know what I’m talkin’ about. I’m talkin’ DOWNTOWN.


white guy 3

Now you’ve got my number.


running butt before after 2

I really hope this actually belongs up with the fitness-related searches, and isn’t the final google search of two completely separate poor souls whose butts are running.


guy eating guy who looks like a thumb 2

Uh…wh…what?


milrf 2

Mothers I’d Like to…Ridiculously F***? Religiously? Rastafarianly?


the fatness.com 2

That sounds like a decent name for a medium-sized jazz combo, amirite?


souped up tempo 2
hi hat with a souped up tempo 2

I’m on a roll. It’s time to go solo.


transgender elf 2

Somebody get Will Ferrell on the phone RIGHT THE HECK NOW.


fish oil and testicals size 2

I wish they’d specified if the problem was shrinkage or inflation.


vera zvonareva feet 2

Probably pretty stinky, right?


enormus testicles 2

Is this just narrowing down the fish-oil problem?


plumber’s cleavage 1

1) Why would you actually search for this? 2) What have I done wrong that it led you HERE?


how does a woman look if she weigh 150 1

Probably pretty hot, unless she’s only 4 feet tall.


“my father’s perm” 1

This might’ve been me. I need to get my hands on the pictures of my dad from the 70s, his hair was beyond description.


do lips stay small after weight loss? 1

Not to get too gross, but…which ones?


many men has one testicle 1

It sounds like the fish-oil problem led to a serious explosion, and some poor fellow is just trying to reassure himself that everything’s gonna be okay.


college dudes 245 1

Check manhunt.com.


daniel craig duckface 1

He is notorious, isn’t he?


ychromes delaware a cappella songs wacking off 1

I’m proud to admit that 1) I know the song in reference is “Prayin’ For Daylight,” originally by Rascal Flatts, 2) I arranged it, and 3) I sang lead on it when I was still in the group.


how to lose facts in ass in one week 1

I…I guess just kinda lube up an encyclopedia and do the best you can in the time you have?


hands and knees sex elf 1

I feel like manhunt.com could probably help here too?


strict but funny 1

Sounds like my sex life. ::rim shot::


Have a pleasant week, allsayalls!

Categories: tmi, wtf Tags:

Suarez vs. Evra II: Let it go already

February 16th, 2012 No comments

I know that 1) it’s not Monday, so what the H am I doing updating on here, and 2) I’m one of maybe three Americans who care a whit about the English Premier League, but I’ve been hearing a lot of people poop all over Luis Suarez this week, and I wanted to get my tuppence in.


Since you (probably) don’t follow the EPL, here’s the lowdown. Uraguayan Luis Suarez, striker for the Liverpool Football (soccer, you dolt) Club, got into a bit of a heated argument with Patrice Evra of Manchester United a few months back wherein apparently Suarez addressed Evra as “Negrito” or “Negro,” depending on the account you read. He says he only did it once, and, oddly enough, meant it in a non-racial way, as in Uruguay apparently saying something like “Hey, negro” is roughly equivalent to you or me saying “C’mon, bro” or “Hey, man.” I read one account where “someone in the know” said it wouldn’t be particularly surprising to hear a Uruguayan say something like it to his own mother, with no disrespect intended. However, Evra took offense, the powers-that-be got involved, and Suarez was widely accused of being a racist, which Suarez and the Liverpool club protested loudly. Suarez later apologized for causing offense, but was handed an 8 game suspension by the Football Association, which he duly served over the last few months, returning to the lineup last week. Evra, to his credit, said that he was willing to shake Suarez’s hand and put the whole thing behind him.


Over the weekend, Liverpool played ManU again, and during the pre-match introductions, Suarez refused to shake Evra’s hand, and predictably the football (sorry, SOCCER) world lost its collective poop. Eventually Suarez and Liverpool had to issue apologies, and sports reporters the world over are saying that Suarez is an embarrassment and should never be allowed to play soccer for Liverpool ever again.


Okay. Let’s construct a straw man, and call him Don. Let’s say Don is a sportswriter for a major sports magazine. And he’s writing a nice little feature about, say, Matthew Jordin (also a straw person), who is notorious for not passing the basketball. And let’s say Don uses the following sentence in his article:

Jordin is notoriously niggardly with his distribution of the ball.

Now, you and I know that the word “niggardly” has nothing to do with “The N-word.” They are etymologically unrelated. But let’s say Jordin doesn’t know that. And he reads the article and accuses Don of being racist. Don knows he’s not racist, but the sports magazine wants to save face, so they tell him he has to apologize. Wanting to keep his job, he posts something to Jordin’s twitter account about how he’s sorry he used the term, it wasn’t intended to be racist, and he won’t use it in future. But Jordin’s not happy, and continues to rile up the rest of the media, who say that Don should have known better, and maybe he actually IS racist, and he should resign. Eventually Don is called into his editor’s office and told he’s suspended for 3 months. After the news is disseminated, Jordin posts something on Twitter about how justice was done, and he forgives Don, and wants to put the whole thing behind him.


3 months later, Don’s covering a local pro-am tournament because it was the only thing he could convince the editors to let him do after coming back to work. He comes across Matthew Jordin, who’s playing a round that day. Jordin sticks out his hand. Now, because Jordin misunderstood the true meaning of the word that Don used, Don has suffered professionally and his reputation is sullied. If you were Don, would you shake the man’s hand? Don’t you think he has a little bit of a right to be angry and unforgiving?


I’m not saying that Suarez shouldn’t have shaken Evra’s hand. In fact, I think he was being rather stupid not to do so, particularly since before the game he told the team manager Kenny Dalglish that he would. If he couldn’t predict the controversy that would result, he’s an idiot, and sometimes you just have to suck up your feelings for the benefit of your team and your career. What I am saying, however, is that perhaps the media and the fans could be a touch more understanding of a man who honestly feels he was wronged by a player and the Football Association, doesn’t believe he did anything racist, and was severely punished anyway. Let’s let this one go, Planet Earth.

Categories: musings, sporty spice Tags:

Telling ’em “No.”

February 13th, 2012 No comments

I was never what you could describe as a Whitney Houston “fan,” for whatever reason. I’ll stipulate that she had what is probably the most prodigious talent of any pop singer ever, but none of her songs struck a chord with me (get it? lulz). I don’t say this to demean her accomplishments; we all know my taste is ridiculous and absurd. I mean, I have an “Evan and Jaron” mp3 on my phone.


You know what? Let’s come back to this.


Last fall, after William (our latest and last offspring) was born, and HW and I spent much of the day sitting in front of the TV either feeding him or trying to get as much rest as we could while he slept, we watched a fair amount of TV. This is how, for example, we plowed through 4 entire seasons of DVR’d “The Big Bang Theory.” We also spent a lot of time watching “Hoarders” and “Toddlers and Tiaras,” and I’d like to compare and contrast those shows a bit.


We watch them, like everyone else, because they make us feel better about ourselves, as homemakers and parents, respectively. If you’re ever feeling depressed because you don’t have time to keep the house spic and span, spend 15 minutes watching Matt Paxton and his crew bag up dead cats and rotting adult diapers, and you will feel much better about your cleaning skills. If your kids are misbehaving and driving you up the wall and you’re thinking “What the hell am I doing wrong with these maniacs?” then you should spend some time with the crazy-ass moms (and, occasionally, dads) who drag their daughters to pageant “lessons” and makeup artists and dress fittings and you will realize that whatever you may be doing wrong, at least your daughter is about 1/10 as likely to become a streetwalker as the girls on your TV.


America loves both shows (along with similar ones like “Hoarding: Buried Alive” and “Dance Moms”) because Americans love a good train wreck. The feeling you get when the door opens on a bedroom filled to the ceiling with old clothes and rat feces is pretty much the same one you get when you watch a 5-year-old girl stubbornly refuse to try on her new pearly false teeth while her white trash, coffee-can-shaped, and faintly maple-syrup-scented mother says “Now c’mon Pixeelu honey, we need to try these on, and then we’ll go get some sugar donuts.” There is, however, a key difference: enabling.


On Hoarders, you watch people who are clearly at a low point in their lives try to resolve their issues with the help of psychologists, organizers, and professional cleaners provided by the show. It doesn’t always work, but at least there are stabilizing elements there to try and improve the lives of the subjects. “Toddlers and Tiaras” has none of this. Every person that appears on the show is there to add to the insanity, from the “dance instructors” to the pageant officials to the make-up artists to the mothers themselves. Every one of them is either telling the child how perfect she is, or how she’s screwing up royally and has no chance of winning or ever becoming anything and it’s no wonder Daddy left. No one disciplines, no one models good behavior, every activity is carefully (and poorly) designed to get the child to perform on the stage and fulfill her parents’ dreams. Occasionally you’ll see some poor henpecked father, clearly not thrilled about what’s going on and certainly unhappy about his failings as a parent and husband being put on television for the world to mock. For the child, it’s a life of work, expectations, bribery, and the life-or-death world of “pageanting.” What she learns from this is, as long as she’s pretty and performs well, no one will ever tell her “no.”


Which brings us back to Whitney. Once she had established herself as a superstar, how many people do you think ever told her “No?” She was a meal ticket to everyone around her. Who would risk losing that? If Whitney wanted to go party, Whitney got driven to the party. If Whitney wanted to try cocaine, the mirrors and straws were instantly out. Adding Bobby Brown to the mix was like tossing a hand grenade under a propane tank.


Whitney was hardly the first talented person too achieve rapid fame and then burn out, and she won’t be the last. What’s the solution? Hell if I know. As long as there are people who profit from meteoric rise of talent, we’ll watch as talented people slowly kill themselves. Sometimes brilliant folks just need to be told, “No.” Ya know?

Categories: musings Tags:

The Big Game and Ruggers

February 6th, 2012 No comments

I’m becoming less and less of a professional football fan every year, because at heart I am a 77-year-old man that doesn’t like children on his lawn. I don’t like all the celebrating, I don’t like that nobody but Jesus-freaks in Denver run the option anymore, and because I am a complicated fellow, I dislike both the frequent concussions and the complete wussification of the game in the name of eliminating concussions.


Mostly I don’t like that during football season there’s not much baseball on TV.


That being said, I did watch maybe 2/3 of yesterdays Big Game, and have the following comments:

  1. I did not watch the National Anthem, out of protest. I’m told that Kelly Clarkson did an admirable job, but since she’s not a brass band, I don’t care. (This protest does not extend to refusing offers to let me sing the National Anthem at sporting events, because of being a complicated fellow (see above). However, while I am not personally a brass band, I do insist upon performing the entire number with a trumpet impression that I am told sounds remarkably unlike a trumpet.)

  2. Nor did I watch the half-time show, partially out of protest, and partially because I knew Sarah would want to watch it off the DVR later and I didn’t feel the need to subject myself to Madonna twice. I hear she was great. Since she was not a marching band playing music written before 1920, I expect to be all meh up ons. (Translation: I will be indifferent to Ms. Ciccone’s performance.)

  3. The game was pretty rad, though I would have preferred the Pats winning, because I dislike the Giants. (Oh well. At least the Mets still suck.) Also because Eli Manning just has one of those faces that you want to punch over and over to see if you can change it. Unfortuanately, Tom Brady looked pretty dinged up after his left shoulder got slammed into the turf, and The Gronk was clearly about 60% of himself. Also, if you’re Bill Belichick, your receivers drop two passes that hit their hands in the closing seconds of the game, and you’re not breaking clipboards over their heads, I don’t know how great a coach you can really be.

After the game was over, my younger son refused to go to sleep, so I stayed up with him until about 11:15 watching Rugby Sevens. Holy crap. If you’ve been watching football, and said to yourself, “You know, this game is nice, but it’s just not dangerous enough for me,” you might want to look into Rugby. Full contact, no pads, no helmets, cheerleader-style pyramids to block kicks, and a ball shaped somewhat like an enormous whale testicle. Quick comparison; this person is a professional American football player:


Dave Rayner, placekicker for the Buffalo Bills, who suck


This person is a rugby player:


Gareth Thomas, rugby player and fucking subhuman


Which of those two people would you be happier to see at the opposite end of the Octagon? Just looking at the rugby guy picture made me wet my pants just a little bit. I’m gonna go find alternate pantaloons. The football player looks like he might work as a bagger at Shoprite.


Have a pleasant Monday. Try not to dream about rugby players.

Categories: sporty spice Tags: