matthearn.com

You know you’ve had one hell of a good weekend when, within 24 hours, you get harrassed by a bobcat, and charge the field at a football game.

Perhaps a bit of background is in order. Jared and I, being insane, decided it might be fun to go camping. In December. On a night during which temperatures were expected to get down to 25 degrees. As our friend Courtney put it: “White people have issues.” So I reserved a campsite at Killen’s Pond, one of the few, and possibly only, campgrounds in Delaware that stays open year round. (There might be one at the beach that’s open, but I’m WAAAAAY too lazy to actually look that up.)

Meanwhile, The University of Delaware Fightin’ Blue Hens ™ have been steadily marching through the playoffs, blowing out teams left and right. We went to the NCAA I-AA quarterfinals LAST weekend and had a great time watching the Hens win, so we had Craig pick us up tickets for Saturday’s semifinal match.

Anyway, the plan for this past weekend: load up the truck, drive about an hour downstate, get drunk at a campsite while eating smores, and then awake the following morning, hang out for a while, and drive to the game. That’s largely what happened . . . but like any story, the fun is in the details.

We left on Friday around 5pm, so traffic SUH-UCKED. More annoyingly, we got past all the significant traffic and were on route 1 and cruising when Jared remembered he forgot his drill. (The tent we intended to use was of a civil war style, and consisted of nothing but canvas, wood, rope, and some short metal pins; he needed to be able to drill into the wood to install the pins.) So we turned around, fetched the drill, and only lost about an hour of time.

Which would be fine, if the drill had functioned. The battery was almost dead, so Jared couldn’t drill everything that needed drilling, so we had no tent. For sleeping outdoors. In below-freezing temperatures. Clearly, to survive the night, I was going to have to drink most of the large bottle of Dewar’s I brought. (Note to impressionable young viewers: alcohol is bad for you.)

So we busied ourselves unloading equipment from the truck, assisted by a handy wheelbarrow we found, and trying to start a fire. The wood we had was some that I brought from my house, and which unfortunately was both incredibly hard and fairly wet. So getting a strong fire going required chopping the wood into smaller chunks, which was incredibly hard because it apparently was from a type of tree named “Oakus Titaniumus.”

Nevertheless, with some attention, a fire could be maintained. So we started cooking some sirloins that Jared brought up from DC. After a few minutes of cooking, we heard some weird noises in the trees; being outdoors, we figured it was the wind.

Until it growled.

Loudly.

Jared and I assumed a defensive posture that consisted mostly of holding each other and screaming. Then we remembered we had multiple knives and hatchets lying around, so we picked them up and tried to figure out exactly what kind of critter we were going to have to kill, since there was absolutely NO way we would be sleeping outdoors, with no tent, and some feral predator wandering around.

Luckily, we had brought a couple of air pistols that we could use to scare our foe off. Unluckily, we had left them in the truck. As an added bonus, we couldn’t actually SEE what we were facing. We would hear it shuffle around a bit, but couldn’t see exactly where it was. We assumed that it wouldn’t come near the fire, so we sort of huddled around it, our hatchets never far from our sides, and waited to see what happened. Jared also took the opportunity to cry a little bit.

After a bit, it started moving around, so we saw it; Jared loaded some film in his camera and took a picture in hopes that the flash might scare it off. He took a few snaps of it, but it stayed put, though at least we got to see sort of what it was. It was very dark in color; in fact, after we’d spotted it, we could see it moving around because it was darker than its surroundings. It also appeared to be very fuzzy. If anybody knows what kind of animal might be black, very fuzzy, and growls like a bobcat, I’d be interested to know what on earth it was.

After that bit of excitement, I went out to the truck to fetch my air pistols so if it returned and decided to come closer, we could frighten it off with a hail of slow-moving lead pellets. Jared, of course, took the opportunity to make weird cat noises while I was walking back, making my heart skip a few beats until I realized it was him. (I got my vengeance later, though, by farting on him while he slept.)

After we made sure the cat/wolverine/alien left (by spraying pellets into the woods in random directions, like Schwarzenegger in “Predator”), we retired for the night. I wrapped myself in blankets and sleeping bags, and was actually reasonably warm until 5am when Jared awoke me to report that something was eating our food.

Those that know me are probably aware that any creature that takes food from my mouth is risking its life; fortunately for all involved, I had neglected to bring any CO2 powered firearms into my sleeping bag with me. The cat (as it appeared to be for the brief second I saw it) immediately shot off the picnic table and flew off into the woods, probably frightened out of its skin by Jared’s frantic whimpering.

Shortly after that, we got up and tried to get the fire restarted, since it was COLD AS ALL HELL and we wanted to get our blood flowing. We got the fire going, started warming up some bacon, burned much of it, made some truly retarded pancakes, drank some tepid coffee, loaded up the truck, and drove back north. The drive north was uninteresting, except that Jared and I semi-spontaneously started singing “A Penny For Your Thoughts” together, in perfect harmony, as we passed around Dover. This does not make us any less manly, I tell you.

Then we drove to Tubby Raymond Field at Delaware Stadium for the semi-final playoff game of the Wofford Terriers (seriously, Terriers) vs. The Mighty University of Delaware Fightin’ Blue Hens ™. I had the foresight to pack a flask full of whiskey and a plastic bottle of martinis, so by game time I was in top form and ready for some FOOTBALL.

The game itself was largely uneventful, since Wofford was no match for The Blue Hens ™, who won in convincing fashion, 24-9. Amusingly, with The Blue Hens ™ up 24-3 and Wofford holding the ball in UD territory with just a few seconds to go, the student body could hold back no longer and began to charge the field, resulting in a 15 yard penalty against UD. Wofford scored one useless TD, and the students ran onto the field with no time left, and the officials had to waive the extra point.

Jared and I naturally charged down the bleachers and snuck around to find a spot to rush the field. I didn’t get down there in time to help bring down the north goalpost, but I did get there in time to touch Andy Hall.

Let me repeat that.

I touched Andy Hall.
The winning QB. The quarterback who just might lead us to a I-AA national championship. The quarterback who is in the running to win the Walter Payton award, I-AA’s version of the Heisman. And I touched him.

My entire life is now validated.

Clearly, I’m rather pathetic.

It’s list day!

List of Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Matt Hearn (And Will Almost Certainly Wish He Hadn’t Put On The Web For All Of Creation to See)

• The other night, I dreamt I head-butted a nun by accident. Seriously.
• As I type this, I have a Bob Wills tune sung by Willie Nelson and Asleep At The Wheel running through my head.
• Sometimes, I get nasty rashes in deeply personal areas.
• When I type nonsensical UNIX commands, I often have to suppress a giggle. Example: earlier this week I typed touch rar, which does nothing but create an empty file named “rar” in whatever directory I happened to be sitting. For no apparent reason, I almost laughed out loud.
• I’m 75% certain that I’m going to die suddenly in some kind of accident or violent encounter. Why I believe this, I do not know, although it could be that I drive too fast and like to pick fights with midgets.
• In the 2000 elections, I voted a straight Libertarian ticket, except where there was no LP candidate available. For those positions I wrote in Coco Chanel.
• I exfoliate on non-shaving days with Apricot Scrub.
• I have a cat named JD. She is actually not named after Jack Daniel’s, but Jefferson Davis. (This tidbit of info greatly surprises folks that have been to bars with me.)
• Now I have “Milkshake” stuck in my head, thanks to Doug. My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard, and their life is better than yours . . . and now you feel my pain.
• I typed a lengthy column about last Saturday’s football game, and Blogger failed to save it when I hit “Post.” I yelled many bad words at my laptop. (I’m going to the game this weekend too; I’ll write about that next week.)
• I enjoy pinching elbow skin. While this may sound kinky, it’s not sexual at all. I swear. Seriously.
• I own a mullet wig.
• This column sucks.

I love Thanksgiving. Of course, who doesn’t? The only people I know who don’t enjoy Thanksgiving are Canadians, and I think we can all agree they’re a bunch of godless heathen.

This year our Thanksgiving extravaganza involved driving down to the Outer Banks (the beaches of North Carolina) for a week of eating, drinking, and lounging about in hot tubs. My parents go down almost every year, but this was the first time Sarah and I had made the trip in a while.

My father takes Thanksgiving very seriously; it is his favorite holiday. He enjoys Christmas about equally, but I think he feels particularly moved that one day a year is dedicated to nothing but preparing and eating a massive feast without distractions such as church services or gifts. (This is a man that detailed a list of his favorite foods over breakfast; 4 of the top 10 were varieties of pie.)

My mother cooked up a truly magnificent repast, consisting of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, Copes’ corn, broccoli, and God knows what else I forgot. If I’d had any sense, I’d’ve taken pictures of my plate (like my uncles do). It was piled 3-4″ high with food, and lasted me about 3 minutes. (I could’ve probably eaten it faster, but I had to pause to drink 3 or 4 glasses of wine.)

I, of course, gained 12 pounds. In one week. That’s 5% of my mass. If I did that every week I would double in size in just over 3 months. Why can’t I lose 5% of my mass in one week? Well, I guess I could, but I’d like to avoid chemotherapy unless I actually had cancer.

I could write endlessly about the trip, but I think it’s easier and more amusing to share some pictures. So here are some photos from the entire month of November (a very good month, it was a very good month):

http://www.matthearn.com/November2003/

Enjoy!

If you’re a video game fan, then you know that the purchase of a new game often delivers a rush similar to that induced by high grade heroin. Hopefully, actually playing the game is as much fun as the anticipation of it; unfortunately, that’s often not true. A few months back I purchased a game entitled “Stuntman;” if you haven’t played it, then you are living a fuller, happier life than I. That game, um, SUH–UCKED. The basic idea: you drive cars in stunt scenes for movies, flipping the car through the air and doing power turns and stuff. Here’s the short list of things that pissed me off about that damn game:

• Too hard! This probably sounds whiny, but I’m used to games where you get a few easy levels before the game gets really difficult. This game just started out hard; it took me something like 21 tries to complete the first level. This brings me to:
• The game doesn’t save often enough. I was going insane, because completing the first level required me to drive for like 3 minutes, go through 20+ checkpoints, and not screw up. So I’d be doing fine, get about 15 check points in, and then accidentally spin out and lose so much time that I’d fail. I would then fling my controller across the room and kick one of the cats in the head. Important note to all game makers: if the game precipitates animal cruelty, it is probably not a good game. This is why “Mary Kay’s Interactive Cosmetic Testing Lab (featuring Baldy the Bunny)” didn’t take off.

I played for about an hour, probably and turned it off. I have no intention of playing it again. I guess I probably should’ve been warned off from the game, considering I got it used for like $8.

Anyway, I bring this all up because I have purchased a new game. I picked up Max Payne on sale at the mall for $20. I know, I know, that game is SO last year. Which is why it was only $20. What, you think I’m gonna shell out $50 for a NEW game? Remember, I’m cheap. Before I go into detail about how cool this game is, I’ll just quote one line from it:

He had a baseball bat and I was tied a chair. Pissing him off was the smart thing to do.

Okay, in retrospect, it’s probably funnier if you’ve been playing the game for 3 straight hours. And are drunk. Nevertheless, the game is one of the best shoot-’em-ups I’ve played in a long time, mainly because it includes the one thing I’ve always missed from regular games: the ability to dive while blasting away at your enemies. Max Payne does it one better, throwing you into slow motion when you do it; they call it “bullet time.” Bullet time is the greatest invention to hit 3D shooters since B.J. Blazkowicz broke out of Castle Wolfenstein. (Note: I have just downloaded Castle Wolfenstein 3D so I can play it. I’m such an easily distracted dork.)

My only complaints about Max Payne are that there’s no multiplayer mode, and loading is slow. What’s the point of a shooter if you can’t shoot your friends? Admittedly, having Bullet Time in 2 player mode would be kinda hard to work out, but just figure something out, dammit. As to loading: every time you die, the game has to take 30-45 seconds to completely reload from the most recent save point. This is annoying, particularly since as the game gets harder, I’m having to take 10-15 attempts to complete a level. (Max Payne also doesn’t save often enough, but that doesn’t trouble me too much in this game for some reason.)

All I know is, you just can’t beat flinging yourself around a corner in slowmotion with an Ingrams in each hand and spray a few hundred rounds into the poor mafia goons standing there. It’s like sex, I’m telling you. If you like sex with guns and Italians, that is.

And who doesn’t?

I’m not sure how many of y’all work on your own cars; I’m assuming all of the guys, at least, because if a guy can’t change his own oil, he probably drinks wine coolers and has seen Yanni in concert. Multiple times. Anyway, this column is for those of my readers who grease their own bearings, enjoy rebuilding carburetors, and know what a U-joint is. (Not that I do.)

This weekend HW and I are going on a road trip, and I was overdue for an oil change, so I went ahead and took care of it. There are many important steps to changing fluids that I have learned and developed over years of practice. Rule One is, wait until the engine has cooled significantly; I discovered this one when I was in a hurry to get the job done once and somehow splashed 190 degree dino-juice into my eye. There is a word to describe the pain I felt, and that word is “AAADKJAKAJJAKFJAKDLKFUCKDJFDALKLAJDFAKJLKJLSKJLFKAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.”

Keeping that agonizing flashback in mind, I got home yesterday around 6:30 and immediately sat down to play a game of NCAA Football 2004 while I waited for the truck to cool. (I whooped Clemson’s ass, 28-7.) When that was done, I watched the Simpsons; then I played another game (barely beating UMD 17-14 to take the ACC championship and an invitation to the Orange Bowl).

Around 8:15, I changed clothes and made my way outside. Rule Two: make sure you have plenty of paper towels handy. This is a rule I learned when I ruined a nice pair of jeans and my wife stuffed me into the washing machine and set it to “hot wash, cold rinse, extended spin cycle.” I grabbed a big roll of towels out of the garage, along with my plastic oil pan, my socket wrench, and a 5/8″ socket (Rule 3: Make sure all your tools are handy), and slid under the truck. I undid the oil bolt and luke-warm fluid came a-streamin’ out.

Then I got up to find a new filter and properly lube it. This when when I developed Rule 4: make sure you have a replacement filter BEFORE draining all the oil from your vehicle. In conjunction with this, I quickly learned rule 4a: also make sure you have actual oil to replace that which you have removed, and 4b: if you are going to forget to do 4 and 4a, at least make sure someone is around that can drive you to Pep Boys.

While walking the half-mile to the store, I learned rule 5: standing in front of the local police station and weeping loudly will get you the attention of the constabulary, who will assume you have escaped from the rehab center next door.

Luckily, PB was still open (Rule 6: Call to make sure of that before leaving the house). I grabbed 6 quarts of oil and the proper filter and headed to the front, where I caught a glimpse of my own reflection in the front windows. With my grubby jeans, worn flannel, and stained work coat, I realized I looked rather insane. Or perhaps it was the muttering and severe facial twitch, I’m not entirely sure.

I walked back home, changed the filter and put oil back in, and went inside to enjoy a tasty beer. Then I realized I had to dispose of the old oil, so I poured it into a couple milk jugs (Rule 7: always save milk jugs to put used oil in), spilling a significant portion of it on the driveway ’cause I have the fine motor control of Formica, and went back inside.

I probably should take the used oil back to Pep Boys this week, but I have a really nice collection of it going in the garage, and I figure the next occupants of the house can find a use for it.

Note to all of my friends: no more scheduling of weddings during important football games.

This weekend we married off Mandy and Speech, aka Mandra and La Mouton Rouge. Unfortunately, while the ceremony was happening, UD was going through multiple overtimes of football against rival UMass. Next week, Jodi and Todd will be getting married during the UD-Villanova showdown to decide the Atlantic 10 championship. I may have a seizure during the service, something upon which the priest would most certainly frown.

Nevertheless, the wedding festivities this weekend were highly enjoyable, even though they entrusted Jared (aka Rod, aka Rance, aka Manwhore) with the rings. Jared is reasonably trustworthy, but saying that he is “often tardy” is sort of like saying that “Hitler was a poor role model.” Luckily he rode to the gig with me, so we were on time AND sexy as all hell. (Jared is one of the few people I know who may be prettier than I am; luckily, I have larger pectoral muscles, so all the ladies were up ons.)

I sang “One Hand, One Heart” at the service, which elicited some nice compliments, because I’m the shiznit. Mandy’s brothers handled the readings, and Rev. Connie Cohen gave an amusing speech on how to keep a marriage working (avoid getting caught banging hookers in Reno, let your wife handle all the money, only slap him around when he REALLY deserves it, that kind of thing), and a harpist played some nice tunes to keep us entertained. The only downside was the heat; apparently the thermostat in the place didn’t work, because once we lit all the candles and filled the room with people, it was like being stuck in an elephant’s ass in there. I’m glad the service was short, because my polyester tux was starting to melt into my shirt.

The service was held at the same place (called The Waterfall) as the reception, which simplified things nicely. (When Sarah and I were married, a number of folks trying to get to the reception nearly lost their lives because Andy Wang gave them a lift in his car. Who’d’ve thunk an Asian guy would be such a bad driver?) Several things about the reception were fun:

• Open Bar. Most weddings have these nowadays, or at least free beer and wine, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that free gin and tonics (I drank approximately 9) taste so much better than ones for which you pay.
• Dan Bouda’s Father. Dan was a member of the wedding party, and a highly amusing fellow to boot. He knew Speech from way-back-when up in North Jersey. Also, his father is technically insane. I don’t dance like that until at least the 7th gin-and-tonic, and Mr. Bouda was, from what I understand, stone sober. I believe he learned his moves by watching old Menudo videos.
• Jared’s Speech. It was a little long-winded, but it definitely managed to work in the fact that Speech used to have one hell of a mullet and liked to wear tight black jeans.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get too drunk (as is my custom), because I had to be at work by 11pm Saturday night. To work all night. And then perform a change in the morning. Luckily, they decided they didn’t really need me and sent me home at 12:30am, which worked out nicely because I managed to get 6 hours sleep before I did a four hour job in the morning.

Jodi and Todd’s wedding, on the other hand, will not be interfered with by work, so I’ll probably be able to write a nice coherent column on Sunday morning about how I lost my wallet in a craps game and had to sleep in a pig trough.

When I last left you, I was discussing buying a new home, and we had just had our offer accepted. You, as I recall, thought that the process was complete, and I laughed at you like a rabid hyena. The process continues! Here are the remaining steps to owning your own home:

1. Schedule a home inspection. This is where you take a few hours out of your busy workday and tour the house with a professional home inspector, who is clearly the type of guy that knows what a “mitre joint” is and built his own refrigerator out of an old intake manifold, using his own frigid breath as the freon substitute. He will get out a large checklist of things to examine, and will reveal to you things like “Hey, the spokes on that bannister are too far apart, a kid could get his head caught in ’em,” or “You may notice that your kitchen appears to be missing a floor.”

   Luckily, the only serious issue that we found in our future home was discovered by me; when we entered the room with the furnace and water heater, I said I smelled gas. The home inspector didn’t smell it, but sure enough when he held his little detector up to the pipes by my head, it screamed like an unanesthetized appendectomy patient. Of course, by this time, I had inhaled enough natural gas that I believed I could fix the problem by coating the affected pipe joint with my own saliva, but luckily Sarah and Melissa (our realtor) got me outside before I developed any kind of cancer.

2. Get your mortgage locked in. You may recall having gotten pre-approved for a mortgage before you began househunting. This is not the same thing. To get final approval for your mortgage, you will need to fill out approximately 3,874 pages of forms, in triplicate, and send them back to the lender. He will then send them back to you with a list of corrections that have to be made (“You forgot to initial here,” “I don’t think your truck is really worth $173,000,” “I wasn’t aware that your name was spelled with that many K’s,” etc.). Later, a woman from the mortgage company will call and request even more information to be faxed to her, and will probably question your ability to pay a $1450/month mortgage AND maintain your “toupee of the month” membership.

   In the end, you will get locked in at a rate; this rate will be higher than anybody else who has bought a home recently has paid, but you will be able to justify it when your parents mention that the rate they got on their first home in 1983 was 47.2%.

3. Contact a lawyer. Having the lawyer serves two purposes: first, they will represent you at settlement, and will be able to tell you exactly how much money you have to pay to everyone that shows up with their hand open. Secondly, after you have to begin robbing convenience stores to pay your mortgage, they will be able to represent you at trial.
4. Arrange for home insurance. I haven’t gotten around to this one yet, because I’m lazy, but I imagine it will involve giving someone a massive check and praying that I hit the lottery.
5. Pack up all your stuff. Although honestly it would be simpler, and probably more cost-effective, to just throw it out and buy all new stuff, the wife is rather attached to some of the things her grandmother left her. The next easiest thing would be to hire a professional moving company to handle this, that costs money, and you’re probably broke. So just throw all your crap into boxes and hope it doesn’t break too much.
6. Go to settlement. This is where you sit down, sign a bunch of papers, have a bunch of things explained to you that you don’t care about, hand over a lot of money, and get the keys to your new crib. This will take an hour or two, during which your thought processes will alternate from “I’m buying a new house! Wheeeee!” to “Holy crap, I’m absolutely mind-numbingly broke!” I recommend grinding up some prozac to snort every few minutes to try and keep yourself balanced.
7. Prepare the house. This means painting, fixing any simple stuff that might need it, etc. In our case, it turns out our new place has some aluminum wiring, so I’m going to have to go through it and make sure none of the wires are loose. We also intend to paint, and build a massive wet bar in the basement.
8. Move. This will require lots of friends, lots of pizza, and lots of beer. If you’re lucky, nothing will get broken. If you’re REALLY lucky, you’ll take the week off and move all the little stuff so that when your friends show up, all they have to do is move furniture and get drunk. Be prepared for having most of your furniture badly scraped up.
9. Sit down with a beer and relax. You now own your own home!

You’ll want to be sure to pick up plenty of dog food. It’s all you can really afford to eat now.

So HW and I are buying a house, which most of you know already. (Pictures of the new place can be found here.) What you probably aren’t familiar with is the entire home buying process, so I figured I’d enlighten you as to what exactly we did to purchase our new home.

Step 1: Find a realtor. I asked my coworker, Mike, what realtor he used when he bought a house about this time last year, and he recommended Melissa. We clicked with her immediately, for three reasons:

1. She’s extremely competent.
2. She’s very tall.
3. She laughs at most of my stupid jokes.

Step 2: Contact a mortgage company and get preapproved for a mortgage. Get pre-approved for a $300,000 loan. Dance with joy. Realize you can only really afford a $180,000 home. Dance with somewhat mitigated mirth.

Step 3: Establish a price limit for your new home. We went with $175,000.

Step 4: Look at some homes. Every day, Melissa would email me a list of homes, and we would go out about once a week to look at the ones that fit our requirements.

Step 5: Realize that none of the homes that fit your requirements are located in areas in which you want to live (defined in our case as “areas where we wouldn’t need to put snipers on the roof to deter serial murderers”), and bump your price limit up by 10 grand or so.

Step 6: Look at more homes.

Step 7: Increase price limit to $190,000. Become extremely concerned about your ability to buy a home outside of the ghetto.

Step 8: Look at more homes. Weep openly in your realtor’s van.

Step 9: Increase price limit to $200,000. Resolve yourself to eating nothing but cat food and ramen noodles for the next 30 years.

Step 10: Find a glorious home, and put in a bid. Find out that the seller is insane, and refuses to bargain at all on the price. (We found out later she dumped her agent, found a new one, and bumped the price up even more.)

Step 11: Look at more homes. Consider moving in with your parents and spiking their eggs with strychnine so that you can inherit.

Step 12: Find another nice home, and put in a bid. Haggle back and forth for a week. Meet your realtor at a supermarket (Zingo’s, in our case) to sign the papers.

What, you think you’re done? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Now the work just begins!

Having finally settled on a home, you have to make mortgage arrangements (you thought you did that already; you were wrong), find a lawyer, bribe civic officials, and sleep with the zoning commissioner. These, and other issues (somehow I found myself owing a favor to the Godfather) will be covered in the next column.

This is it! I’m finally completing the process of puberty. Or at least I’m past the midway point. I now have to shave every day.

That may not seem like an accomplishment in and of itself, but when coupled with the fact that I now have a pretty nice collection of chest hairs (even if 70% are congregated around, for some reason, my right nipple), and recently I’ve had to spend a LOT more time yanking at nosehairs during meetings, I think I’m advancing towards manhood pretty quickly now.

This is great! I’ll be able to ask out all those hot high school girls that would never come near me before I developed the ability to grow 11pm shadow. And then, after I’m convicted of statutory rape (17 year old girls don’t keep quiet about that as much as they used to), I’ll be able to grow a really cool goatee in prison to go along with the “I be chuckie’s bitch” tattoo on my cheek.

Of course, I still can’t grow a moustachio; the hair there consists mostly of fine white hairs. I think one of my aunts has more upper lip growth. And my sideburns don’t actually connect my cheek whiskers to my hairline. I imagine these things will come in due course, and I should be able to grow a nice handlebar just in time for them to fit me for a coffin.

Queries? Problems? Your brain leaking from your nose? I don’t care. Ah, just kidding. Shoot an email to spam(at)matthearn(dot)com.

Is it just me, or are people wearing a lot more perfume recently? Perhaps I’m just sensitive to it because I’m a singer. There’s nothing quite like taking a deep breath just as an old lady walks by wearing two gallons of Eckerd’s new scent “Intransigence”, followed by your throat snapping shut and your nose flinging itself from your face, sliding across the floor, leaving a trail of boogery slime.

I find it happens a lot at church, which of course is where I do most of my singing. The choir, luckily, has to deal with the same issues I do, so they mostly don’t wear any stinkum. Unfortunately, I usually find myself sitting within a few seats of the acolytes and communion helpers, none of whom are singers, and at least one of whom seems to have a vat of CK1 in her backyard into which she dips herself after bathing. People that don’t sing never seem to get why it’s so bad, either; if you ask them to maybe tone down the Eau de Nasal Searing, their usual response is, “I smell just fine!” I think I should be allowed to stab them.

It’s even worse when you go out to a party or a club. Apparently the best way to attract women these days is to spray Drakkar Noir onto yourself until you get a nice crusty layer of it dried onto your shirt. Around here, some folks call it a Puerto Rican Shower, which is of course highly insulting and racist, and therefore never fails to make me laugh myself hoarse.

It happens at work as well. We have a woman here who is very nice, but luckily is not someone I have to deal with very often. It’s difficult to talk to someone while holding your breath to avoid passing out. I fail to understand why you need perfume at work. The purpose of smell, last I checked, was to attract potential lovers. Not something you particularly want to do at work.

I can’t even escape it at home! I’ll be on the throne, having some nice quiet time before showering and driving to work. Suddenly Sarah bursts into the room, and fills the air with some kind of cross between daisies, honeysuckle, and wild boar sweat. She then vacates as abruptly as she arrived, leaving me with my head between my legs, trying to breathe whatever fresh air might be left in the toilet bowl beneath me.

I often get my revenge, however. I’ve developed my own scent, which I call Essence of Stench. All you need to make your own batch of it is a large vat of refried beans, and it’s guaranteed to clear the room of odorous individuals.

Queries? Problems? Your brain leaking from your nose? I don’t care. Ah, just kidding. Shoot an email to spam(at)matthearn(dot)com.