matthearn.com

I haven’t posted, you may have noticed. I will be back next week, I swear. And I’ll probably even be able to get rid of the Eagles logo which has had no bearing on anyone’s life since early February.

Why I haven’t posted:

CINDERELLA!!!

At Brandywine High School, 3/17-3/19 at 7pm, and a special matinee for the rugrats on Saturday 3/19 at 2pm! Tickets are $8 for adults and $5 for kids. Come one, come all! See the magical costumes! Observe the fantastic dancing (choreographed by the inimitable Hearnwife)! Watch The Hearn wave his arms frantically in an effort to keep the pit band at a consistent tempo!

Next week: updates on life in general, and Why Wendy’s Sucks.

So, I’m not sure what the recovery time for a workout is really supposed to be for a beginner. I figured the chances were slim I’d recover enough to have a workout on Wednesday, but it’s now Thursday, and I hurt just as bad as I did Tuesday morning. In fact, a NEW agony has emerged: my right shoulder.

Tuesday morning I had horrible pain in my triceps muscles, and a certain amount of hurt in my pecs. It was fairly manageable. But now my right shoulder has joined the fray and it feels like someone was beating me in my sleep. HW does have a tendency to do that, but she’s out of town at the moment, and the cats aren’t strong enough. (They do more damage with their teeth, claws, and constant insistence that they be petted.)

I’m hoping that in the future I’ll recover more quickly from a workout, as right now I’m not entirely sure I’ll ever be able to move my right arm again. In order that I might continue shedding unsightly wrinkly fat from my hips, I’m considering buying an inexpensive bicycle, probably at Walmart, because I need to lose a sizeable amount of weight very rapidly.

Auditions for the Brandywiners’ production of South Pacific are April 17th, and the part I would like to audition for requires a degree of shirtlessness. So at the audition they want to have all the guys remove their shirts so they might be checked for rippitude. I’m not seeing myself having a lot of that, so I plan to lose as much weight as possible in the next month (luckily, I’m already through the induction part of the Atkins diet, so I should be shedding pounds already) and then invest in an Ab-Abber 3000.

I suppose I could do crunches, but that’s just not how I roll.

My arms hurt. A lot. And it’s not ’cause I just flew in from Albuquerque or anything, although that would be AWESOME, ’cause it’s warm down there, and even I’ve had about enough of winter at this point. (Sarah’s flying to Florida tomorrow. I hate her.)

No, my arms hurt because I realized that I had ballooned up to my pre-diet weight of last spring, and that if I wanted to stop going back and forth like some mutant child of Oprah and John Kerry, I needed to start working out. This also has the side benefit of making me really chiseled and cut, so I can stop the bigger kids from beating me up all the time.

So yesterday afternoon, I dragged my weary carcass to the gym, where I warmed up a bit on an exercise bike, and then launched into a flurry of stretching, lifting, pulling, throwing, punching, humpty-dancing, drinking roughly 40 gallons of water, and having as many as three heart attacks, depending on whether that last one was just acid reflux from all the cheese I ate with lunch. Apparently I need to figure out a way of stretching my triceps muscles after the workout, because right now they are in agonizing pain. I can barely move them. I woke up in the middle of the night to use the john and thought I’d dislocated something. (In my arms, you perv.)

I was hoping to start a regular Monday, Wednesday, and Friday workout schedule, but I may never be able to make my arms work again, which would make it difficult to exercise. Oh well. Perhaps I’ll take up yoga. Except that it involves stretching and breathing, and I hate stretching almost as much as I hate breathing. WHY, OH WHY CAN I NOT GET MY OXYGEN THROUGH ALVEOLI ON THE SURFACE OF MY HEAD!!! The chicks would totally dig it.

Ooh…yeah…that’s it…here comes the random spouts of crap:

• Go here. The first one is pretty good, but definitely listen to the second one. I peed my pants repeatedly. Seriously, man, my ergonomic chair is sopping.
• I was reading the other day where some folks were arguing that the high gas prices we’re currently experiencing indicate that we are in need of a “regime change,” meaning, they think if we take Dubya out of office, gas prices will go back down?

  Um…wha?

  The people that I read saying these things are, almost to a man, the same people that for the past two years have been saying “We only invaded Iraq for the oil!” Well, if that’s true, wouldn’t we actually be experiencing cheaper oil prices? I’m no Alan Turing, but even my moldy brain can spot hypocrisy of that level. (My own hypocrisies are well known, particularly the one in which no one should be permitted to have a driver’s license but me and the few worth individuals I designate, despite the fact that my own driving record is spottier than a leopard.)

  Interestingly enough, many of the same folks say that we shouldn’t drill for oil in “wildlife preserves,” despite the fact that the only thing that makes them “preserved” is some government entity saying so. Were I Lord and Master of All I Survey, I’d just say, “Okay, well, that part’s no longer preserved. Get to drilling. This other part over here, where there isn’t any oil, is now the preserved area. Good times for all.”

  None of this changes the fact that I’m considering selling my truck because I realized it costs me upwards of $2000 a year to fuel it.

• New washing machine = superw00t. Even better was that we were able to maneuver the washer and dryer in the laundry room to a position that makes more sense. When we arrived at the house, the existing washer was positioned in a way that we couldn’t put the dryer next to it without moving the washer out of the way first, so I could have access to the dryer exhaust vent and stuff. We didn’t feel like doing that, so we just slud the dryer in there sort of catty-corner in such a way that you couldn’t actually stand in the room with a basket to unload and reload things.

  When we moved the old washer out, I moved the dryer to the ideal position, and then the new washer slud in right next to it. Bim, bam, boom, as Percy Faith would say. Now there’s all kinds of room to stand in there, and as a benefit, one of the holes that the cats would crawl through to sneak into the laundry room and throw up on things is now blocked off by the dryer. So those little devils are THWARTED.

• I have had my hair trimmed to look like this:
  
  And HW helped me install some highlights last night. (And I wonder why everyone thinks I’m gay.) I look totally hot, although the hair product I’m using today is kinda lame; it makes my hair all wet-looking and greasy, and it doesn’t clump up like Jesse’s does in the photo. I’ll keep working on that, possibly with some hard core Butch wax type stuff I have left over from when I was spiking my jaunpiece up. What I really need is some Brylcreem . . . I’ve got my overhead lifters and four-barrel quads oh yeah . . .
• I wrote a nasty gram to the OpEd page at the News Journal over this whiny tripe. Seems a bunch of people in North Wilmington are in an uproar over noise from planes flying into Philadelphia Airport, which, last I checked is roughly 20 miles north. Given the small amount I know about aircraft flight paths, that puts them over North Wilmington at a height of several thousand feet.

  My letter basically said, “Stop being whiny punks or I’ll drive to your house and give you something to REALLY cry about.” That’s not a verbatim quote, but I’m hoping I still get published in tomorrow’s paper. It might even be enough to convince me to buy one, although probably not.

I guess I’m going to have to settle in to a “3 posts a week” cycle for a while, since things are just busy busy busy busy beeeee. Various important bits of info:

• Sears is both cool and outrageously sucky. We got a guy to come out and look at our broken washing machine, with the following result: “We no longer make parts for that thing. What is it, like 25 years old? That’ll be $65 please.” Great. Upside: he gave us a coupon for $65 off any appliance at any Sears.

  “Does this work at the outlet over across from University Plaza?” I ask.

  “Should. At least, they told me it does.”

  Ah, they. Someday, I’m going to meet they and kick they right in the jubblies.

  So last night we went to the outlet store and selected a nice Kenmore washer for $329, and discovered that the coupon was useless at the outlet store. Thanks, Sears; thanks a panload. That reminds me, I need to give the pertinent information to Hearnwife so she can call and yell at them. (I’m too meek and mild-mannered, don’t you know.)

• We ripped up all the carpeting, pad, tack strips, and various staples in our bedroom. The floor looks great, except for a few imperfections: the carpeting had covered up a hideous job of installing a marble floor piece in the doorframe to the bathroom, so there’s all kinds of crumbling concrete visible; and the previous owners apparently didn’t like squeaky floors, so throughout the room there’s random nails and SCREWS (freakin’ SCREWS? WTF?) in the floor, some of which stick out a 1/4″ or so.

  I’m hoping to cover up the nasty concrete jaunt by the bathroom door by shaping a piece of wood to act as a small ramp (so I’ll stop kicking the marble as I go over it), and hopefully I’ll be able to get some of the screws out (many of the heads are stripped). Still, it looks totally awesome. Pictures to come, I hopes.

• I haven’t been to the high school for rehearsal in over a week ’cause it keep snowing me out. I’m going on Thursday to work the pit band over a little more; hopefully they won’t be sucking. The chorus should be fine, their stuff is easy, they’ve known it for weeks. Bless my father for agreeing to play piano for this show . . . anyway, come see “Cinderella” at Brandywine High School, 3/17-19 at 7pm, with a 2pm matinee on 3/19. Tickets are 8 bucks, I’m told.

Sorry to disappear for 3 days last week, but I’m sure you know by know that I am about neither quantity OR quality. Things were really hitting the proverbial fan at work last week, even considering the fact that I got out of work early on Thursday and worked from home on Friday. The bigwigs were having a monstrous meeting today for which they needed information, so we’ve spent roughly three weeks gathering it, and last week was a fire drill while we tied up loose ends (not that the hem isn’t still fraying just a bit).

ANYWEG. Here are the various updates in our lives:

• My foot: still aches a bit, but functions reasonably normally for walking. I twinged it a bit at church yesterday, so I’m back to limping a bit today, but it’s not bad.
• Cinderella: really coming along. Since school let out early last Thursday, I didn’t get to rehearse with the pit band, which was VERY annoying, but we’ve gotten through most everything at least once. I should be able to spend the next couple rehearsals fine tuning various jaunpiece. The chorus has known most of their parts for weeks now, since there ain’t much to learn. The soloists sound great too. Oughta be a hell of good show.
• Annoying Item: the last few weeks we’d been planning to meet some friends on Saturday night to see Cabaret at the New Candlelight Dinner Theatre up in Arden. However due to some issues, we weren’t sure if we were going to be in town until the last minute, so we couldn’t order tickets until last week; we called, and they were sold out. We tried to pull some strings via friends of a friend, but to no avail. So we said oh well darn, and on Saturday made plans for dinner with Kyle (of Kyle’s New Girlfriend fame) and Kristy and some other friends. While we were enjoying dinner? Our friend calls. Two seats opened up.

  Dammit.

• Inspired by Jeff Kay, we were hoping that we might rip out our carpeting and put in nice wood flooring, or, even better, find EXISTING hardwood floors underneath. So just now, after I got home from work (short day due to blizzard conditions), we handled some stuff, and I went into my bedroom closet with a pair of pliers.

  I am so happy I may have to do the Humpty Dance.

  Beautiful oak hardwood underneath our hideous carpeting. It won’t even need much work; it’s in gorgeous condition, probably won’t need sanding or anything, maybe a coat of polyurethane and some wax. We are so excited we can barely keep ourselves from peeing.

  Now, to figure out how to move the piano so I can get the carpet out from underneath it . . .

My problems with modern technology continue unabated.

I broke down and took the truck to the dealership on Monday morning. Of course, on the way, the check-engine light turned itself back OFF, as the truck did its best to make sure that by the time it rolled into the garage, nothing would actually be wrong. It almost made it, but they were able to deduce that the problem was a burned-up ignition coil, which they repaired, and for which I was charged $316.

I won’t go into the nagging feeling I have that Ford only makes their cars difficult to work on so that they can prop up their service industry. I’m just gonna say that I could have changed the spark plugs AND the ignition coil on my ’96 Saturn with a few hours of effort and a lot of cursing and probably saved myself $200. Then I’m going to move on to our washing machine, which currently looks like this:

It won’t agitate, for some reason. At first we thought it wasn’t spinning OR agitating, but I’ve been able to make it spin. That may, however, be because I tightened up the belt. It still won’t slosh the soapy water around like it should, even though some little doohickey (I think it might be part of the transmission) underneath is definitely twisting back and forth. I have a query in to some website that apparently is full of answers about these kinds of things, so we’ll see what they say. Of course, our home warranty, through which I could have gotten this repaired for something like $50, expired 2 months ago.

If I can’t figure it out any time soon, I’ll probably just buy a new one. The existing one may be older than I am, so it may be time. Oh well. Since I’m not being very funny today (it’s been a long couple of days, and things show no signs of letting up any time soon), I’m going to send you to a couple of amusing links:

Paris Hilton’s Phonebook. I’ll give you a dollar if you can get through to Lindsay Lohan and post what she says somewhere, preferably in my comments.

No, you can’t have a pony. I’m hoping to put this on business cards and hand them out to whiny people at work.

I’m sure you’re all familiar with the original Numa Numa Dance, which I’m proud to say I linked here a few days before it went all buckwildfire on the web and news media. Now, see the parodies. I’m particularly partial to Jiggling Mario, but they’re all good, from the gratuitous use of Bob Ross, to the trio of retarded, head-banging, nipple flashing teen boys, to the silly hats. Check ’em all out, and feel free to pee.

P.S. – Is that Roger Clemens with a lightsaber?

Sorry for the late post today, and the rather high possibility of no post at all tomorrow. Things at work are pretty hectic, so I haven’t had a lot of time to do all the brain-storming and research that goes into each word I write. (For example, today’s post was written only after a staff of 14 people spent about 3 solid days apiece looking up Jack Parr’s middle name, only to be told that I didn’t need it after all. They all quit. My help never lasts long.)

Anyway, I’ve decided I should be on TV. I mean, honestly, how can I NOT be on TV at this point. I’m hilarious! Ask anybody! I haven’t entirely decided on a format, but I figure it’ll be a cross between a regular talk show, and “Chappelle’s Show.” Funny sketches involving making fun of African Americans when they get slave reparations, that kind of thing, but occasional interviews with Jon Stewart and Charo.

Here are some of my [brilliant] ideas so far:

• Sidekick. I’d definitely have a totally awesome sidekick. Way better than Ed McMahon. What the hell was that, anyway? Did he have any redeeming qualities other than the ability to agree with everything Johnny said? I’d prefer a show where the chemistry of the players involved was better than that of the Bush administration, thanks.

  I’m thinking along the lines of Jon Stewart or my sister, Liz. Jon’s funny; Liz has a big rack. Jon might try to steal the show, and then I’d have to hide his body in the desert, so we can’t have that.

• The best in comedy. What I will do, is hire away all the current SNL writers. Then, I will shoot them all in the face and hire people that are funny, like Al Franken. Liberal radio channel . . . har! That was hilarious.
• I imagine I’ll have to have a live studio audience, which will be great ’cause I’ll just make sure they’re all drunk or stoned or both. I’ll get HUGE laughs for anything from farting to periodically showing pictures of what Bob Marley might have looked like at age 50 if he went bald. And if the crowd starts to turn on me, I have Liz flash a nipple. It’ll be great. So long as I personally don’t have actually see
  my sister’s nipple, ’cause that’s just NASTY. I definitely just threw up in
  my mouth.
• Once a week, I will take a day off and let a monkey host an episode. That’ll be AWESOME.
• Speaking of drinking, I’ll definitely make sure all the guests are loaded. Unless of course they are alcoholics. Then they get all the methamphetamines they can take.
• Periodic dance breaks, a la Ellen DeGeneres, will be encouraged. Metal stripper poles will be provided for this purpose.
• The guest list would be an absolute who’s-who of modern pop culture:
  • Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam (musical performance)
  • Ian Ziering
  • Pat Sajak (and Vanna, if she’s willing to dance on the pole)
  • Urkel

I can’t imagine some major media outlet isn’t falling all over itself to pick this idea up. C’mon, people! Me! Liz’s breast! Urkel! A MONKEY!

Anyway, there may be an update tomorrow, or it might not happen until Wednesday. WE SHALL SEE.

Oh, how I hate modern technology. Wait…hate? That might not be the right word. Perhaps it’s love. The two are so intertwined, and I’m of such a brilliantly paradoxical nature, it’s hard to tell. Anyway, today’s topic is modern technology, and why it is awesome and/or pisses me off.

Exhibit A: The XM Satellite Radio. I purchased one for Hearnwife for Christmas, got it all installed and actimavigated, and I am here to tell you it is so awesome that riding in HW’s car is a joy. (Before, it was rather painful; her car is very slow.) It has something like 150 channels, including weather and traffic for most major cities, three classical channels, three comedy channels, a bluegrass channel, a broadway channel, news, sports, and, most importantly, the “decades” channels. You get a channel each for every decade from the 40s to the 90s, so you can listen to Glenn Miller get his ‘bone on, and then immediately switch to the 80s station to catch “I Think We’re Alone Now” and “Funky Col’ Medina.” It goes without saying that this is pr0niffic.

Exhibit B: modern automobiles. My truck is running poorly, and the check engine light has come on, so I said to myself, “You know, I don’t think the spark plugs have ever been change on this thing. Might be time to do that.” So I stopped by Pep Boys and picked up 8 plugs.

This morning before work, I figured I’d spend an hour wrenching them out of there and then be done. So I gathered my tools, popped the hood, and started rooting around among the various cables and pipes and things, looking for plug wires. But they were not to be found. Anywhere. I crawled underneath the engine compartment, and still found nothing. Apparently I’ve been driving a diesel all these years and not known it.

So I went inside and sat at the computer, and did a little investigating. Apparently, instead of having one ignition coil that powers 8 spark plugs, each plug has its own coil. Which is inside what appear to be the valve covers. So replacing spark plugs, which on my old Saturn was a 10 minute job, becomes a 2-8 hour workstravaganza. This is not thrilling to me.

I threw all the stuff back in the garage, and then grabbed my laptop and my diagnostics code reader. I plugged all that stuff in to get the problem code that generated the “check engine” light, and sure enough, the system is detecting misfires on cylinder 2, which if I guess properly is the cylinder all the way at the front on the passenger side. One guy online had had a problem where something, probably a chunk of loosened carbon deposits, had gotten into the cylinder and bent the spark plug, so I’m hoping that’s my issue as well. This weekend, I get to pick up a Chilton or Haynes manual and try to figure out exactly how I get the spark plugs out, and probably have to buy a torque wrench to do so.

It occurred to me today, that having a vehicle that currently is not under any warranty, that I can’t do simple work on like change the spark plugs, is going to be costly down the road when, say, a fuel pump needs to be replaced and it turns out you have to completely disassemble the front half of the truck to get at it.

My plan “going forward” (ooh! Business office cliches! Life is good!) is that HW and I should always have one nice car, preferably leased and warranted, so that when it has problems requiring complete disassembly we can just take it to the dealer and have them fix it. HW can drive that car around, and I’ll buy a 1982 Toyota Corona or something equivalent to that so I can get to work, and that when it breaks, it’s simple enough that I can easily fix it, or just torch the car and spend $500 on another one.

I predict that within the next year, the truck will be traded in on a 2005 Camry, and I’ll be tooling around in a 1977 Caprice station wagon. And all will be gravy.

Ooh, tough news. My aunt sent me one of those “answer all these mildly idiotic questions about yourself and send it on to everyone” emails. You know what that means: I answer all the questions on here and force you all to read them! (Seriously. Read this, or I will show up at your house with a German Shepherd and a tall Dane named “Svikaak.”) Also, there will be some study questions at the end that you’ll want to answer if you want to do well on next week’s test.

1. What was the last movie you saw in a theater?

Jackass, like 3 years ago. Hey, I don’t go to movies. I don’t see the point in paying $9 a ticket to go be deafened by drivel that’s going to be out in a year on HBO. (Movies are too loud. Also, you drive too fast, I can’t believe stamps no longer cost 22 cents, and what’s with all this long hair? Damn kids.)

2. What book are you reading now?

This unbelievably horrible novel entitled “The Golden U-boat.” I can’t even begin to describe how bad it is. I don’t have it in front of me, so I can’t quote the dialogue, but it couldn’t be more forced if the author was holding a gun to his characters’ heads. Made-up example:

“But Chief, you know as well as I do that the sonar won’t pick up a surface ship amongst this awful surface noise! Think ye not that we should head to The Great Depths of which our venerable underwater craft is capable and thereby increase the effectiveness of our listening devices? I daresay, the captain may be daft! BARKING daft, were you to ask my person.”

You may think I’m joking. Perhaps I will lend you this book. I can’t even figure out why I keep reading it; I’m roughly 60% through it, and the Nazis still haven’t tried to build their nuclear weapon. In year 1990. Yes, I know. Let’s just move on.

3. What is your favorite board game?

Oh, I dunno. I’m partial to Cranium, of course, but I always seem to win. That, my friends, is because I’m smarter than everybody else on the planet. It’s nothing personal, it’s just true.

Of course, I couldn’t beat a horse at chess. No patience, you see.

4. What is your favorite magazine?

Hm. I don’t really read a lot of magazines. I get “Men’s Journal,” although what I actually ordered was “Men’s Health,” and I should tell you that Men’s Journal is a pretty crappy magazine. There’s usually one decent article about something, and then 80 pages of advertisements for adventure vacations, expensive diving watches, and interviews with professional ski instructors. As if I give a crap what Bodhi LeMange says about life paralleling a ski slope.

Short answer: Modern Drunkard.

5. What are your favorite smells?

Oh, this could go a number of different ways. I mean, you could go gross (along the lines of “Smell my finger!”), super gross (“Now guess where my finger’s BEEN!”), and relatively tame (“saffron”).

I’m going with: bacon. Because bacon is mankind’s greatest discovery after adultery.

(Haha! Just kidding! Adultery is TOTALLY bad.)

6. What are your favorite foods?

Was it once an animal? Then there’s a pretty good chance it is one of my favorite foods. I haven’t yet met fauna I won’t grub up ons. Specific faves include pig and cow.

7. What is the worst feeling in the world?

It’s a toss-up between getting kicked in the nuts, and getting your scrotum caught in a table-saw.

(And all the guys just threw up in their mouths. Hey, that’s what I’m here for, folks.)

9. What is the first thing you think of when you wake up?

“Dammit, why do I keep dreaming about Brad Pitt and Menudo having an orgy at Hunter S. Thompson’s house? 2 weeks in a row now! What the hell!”

10. What is your favorite fast food place?

I’d have to go Wendy’s on this one. Jr. Bacon Cheeseburgers, 99 cents. I usually get between 5 and 8 and peel the buns off and go Atkins BUCK WILD on themses. Totally balicious.

11. What names have you picked for future children?

I haven’t quite convinced Hearnwife of this year, but I’m fairly certain my first-born is going to be named “The Right Reverend.” Regardless of gender. Plus, you can abbreviate it a bit, and “The Rt. Rev’d Hearn” just looks so awesome on paper. And it’s not like anybody in my family is likely to earn a bishopric.

I’m also partial to the name “Levert.”

12. Finish this statement: “If I had a lot of money, I would . . .”

Quit my job and spend a lot more time on the toilet.

Then I would spread the wealth around a little bit to some worth charities, and then I’d go to England to see if the toilets there are as awesome as I remember.

13. Do you drive fast?

Depends on my mood, and whom you might ask. Honestly, unless I’m stressed, I don’t go more than 10mph above the limit. However, I tend to frighten passengers because I don’t put up with things like people driving slow in the left lane without getting about 15 inches from their bumper and flashing my lights.

14. Do you sleep with a stuffed animal?

Four, if you count obese cats.

15. What’s your opinion of storms: cool or scary?

Pretty much cool. I’d much rather have a totally righteous thunderstorm than just boring old rain. I dislike rain, but if I have to have it, make it entertaining. I mean, is it too much to ask for some fun lightning to strike the neighbor down the street with the damn dogs? That would be so awesome.

16. What was your first car?

A 1972 Pontiac Grand Ville. I believe it to be the largest production car ever built. It was AWESOME. I miss it. I didn’t appreciate it at the time. Now I’m getting verklempt.

17. What’s your favorite drink?

I’m partial to both orange soda and scotch, though not mixed together, as that would be nasty.

I’ll also admit a certain affinity for pureed bat guano.

18. Finish this statement: “If I had more time, I would . . .”

Probably get more sleep. This 8 hours a night thing just isn’t working out, really. It’s only 10am, and I’m already ready for a nap.

19. Do you eat the stems on broccoli?

Of course. I’ll eat anything that I can dip in mayonnaise.

20. If you could dye your hair any color, what would be your choice?

That’s sort of an absurd question. I can dye my hair any color. I just buy the dye, and get to coloring. That’s silly.

(Blond.)

21. Name all of the different cities or towns where you have lived:

• Media, PA: I don’t remember it, but my parents assure me I lived there, in an apartment in which they may or may not have had to throw a couch from the balcony because it was on fire. During the Super Bowl. I dunno.
• Wilmington, DE: A long, long time, potapatie, potapahoney. This is where my formative years were spent, which explains why I’m so boring.
• Baltimore, MD: Ah, what a great two years. What with the cutting class, hanging around liquor stores, occasionally going to court with my buddy Mike when he had to testify to put some poor slob in jail for assaulting him . . . definitely the most productive years of my life.
• Newark, DE: I was in college, so therefore I remember little of these years.
• New Castle, DE: I’ve been here about a year so far, and all I can tell you is that we’re happy to find out that the woman in our neighborhood that was stabbed to death in her home wasn’t a random victim.

22. Glass – half empty or half full?

Half full. Probably with booze.

23. Favorite sport to watch?

Curling, and let me tell you it is a travesty that it is only on during the Winter Olympics! 2006 can’t get here soon enough for me, I tell you.

24. One nice thing about the person who sent this to you:

She has had her picture taken with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

25. What is under your bed?

A skittish grey cat and a gimp suit.

26. Toilet paper: over or under?

I believe I’ve talked about this before; people that put toilet paper on such that it is dispensed from the bottom of the roll should be harvested for organs.

27. Morning person, or night owl?

More night owl, really. I hate waking up. But then, I also hate falling asleep. I wish I only needed like 2 hours of sleep a day. Paradoxically, SLEEP IS AWESOME.

28. Eggs over easy, or sunny side up?

Oh man, now I’m totally hungry. Over easy is my style, since sunny side up is just silly. You get one side that’s over cooked and hard, and one side that’s runny and gross. It’s like eating a burnt booger.

29. Favorite place to relax?

In front of a TV in a comfortable chair. Mmm…chair.

30. Favorite pie?

Now my stomach is really starting to hurt. I’m partial to blueberry and Shoo Fly. Mmmm….pie. Man, I’m hungry. I better go get some afore I implode. I shall rap at all y’alls later.

STUDY QUESTIONS:

1) Matt totally made up the Scandinavian sounding name “Svikaak.” Is it not totally awesome?

2) How many of his responses are completely untrue? How many are just semi-true? Are there any in which you can tell he’s just yanking your chain to get a giggle? Does this make him a depressing loser?

3) If you were 17, and were driving a car the size of an industrial park, would you get any dates? Do you think Matt did?

4) Does having recurring dreams about Brad Pitt and Menudo getting on make Matt homosexual? Or just “a lil fruity?”

5) Is it silly for Matt to make fun of popular culture when he hasn’t even been to a movie theater for over 3 years? Is it silly for you to complain about the business of government if you didn’t even vote? Does George Bush strike you as someone who you would never, EVER, EVEREVEREVER buy a car from? Does John Kerry strike you as someone who couldn’t sell Cheetos to a stoner? Is it about 3 months too late to be making these kinds of jokes?

6) The name of Matt and Sarah’s gray cat is “J.D.” Matt insists she’s named after Jefferson Davis because she has a “grey coat.” Others think she’s named after Jack Daniels. Is Matt a big drunk liar?