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Yay! DelDOT (The Delaware Department O’ Transportation) is finally going to do something about the hellish I-95 traffic!
Wait…crap. They’re doing the wrong bloody thing! Boo!
Everybody agrees that traffic on I-95, particularly southbound in the afternoons, is ridiculous; apparently the bone of contention is what the actual cause is. DelDOT seems to be of the opinion that the problem is 95 itself not being wide enough, which would appear to be the obvious issue. However, what they are overlooking is the fact that where the worst of the backup on 95 occurs in a three mile stretch where 295 and 495 (souhtbound) rejoin the main interstate, and storied Route 1 exits. And as anyone who has recently driven through there during a high traffic situation, the number of cars decreases dramatically after you pass Route 1. What this says to me is that maybe, just maybe, you might eliminate some traffic on 95 if there was more than a single-lane exit for 1, which is of course the main artery to Middletown and points south, also known as the FASTEST FREAKING GROWING AREA IN THE STATE? Don’t you think maybe this warrants an improvement of that particular junction?
Don’t believe me? Try going north on Route 1 to 95 north some morning, around 8:15am. You can’t. I mean, eventually you’ll get through, but it’ll be closer to 9am before you’re actually on the interstate. Might it perhaps be time to upgrade this route to look more like the 495 exit, which features three lanes for traffic and even during the worst of the rush hour is never clogged up, except by idiots driving in the left lane? Perhaps!
But nay, the State has decided to just add a 5th lane to each side of 95, the biggest waste of money since Paris Hilton got her sex change. (I refuse to believe that she wasn’t once a dude. Her jaw is squarer than a ceramic floor tile and her boobs are smaller than mine.)
Argh.
o hai fren ha ha its link day lets all enjoy the links
- First off, link to my own stuff: Some photos I took at the Ychromes concert last Friday. Some are good; some are not so good. None are hilarious, but they’re at least mostly pretty.
- For those of you that love yourselves some lolcat (and if you don’t, you need to reevaluate your sense of humor, ’cause it is teh suxz), you need to visit I Can Has Cheezburger, the premier lolcat resource on the internets. My favorite: Snakecat has bited before!
- Your dad, your mom, and your cat. (I shouldn’t joke; apparently the “woman” was mostly eaten by a tiger this week. Still…your mom.)
- AAAAAA! AAAAAAAAA! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
- Getting divorced? Let these folks help.
- Connected to the internets? Want to waste about 8 hours? Go here and browse through 70 years of newspaper photographs from the LA Times and LA Daily News. There’s lots of hippie beatings!
Woo!
I have a problem. Namely, I have a TRULY GIGUNDOUS HEAD. Being a totally hep (hip) guy, I like to make sure that my hairstyle is up-to-date and super-duper stylish. This is hard when one’s cranium affects tides, for a variety of reasons. Number 1, any short haircut, which was the style from about 1995 to 2003, looks ridiculous on me because you can see my scalp, which leads most folks to comment “Holy crap, look how much skull that guy has!” It’s depressing and said. And number 2, long haircuts make me look like a goddamn hippie, because clothes aren’t made to fit my frame, and I hate to iron, so I end up dressed like a 1992 fat chick, all hiding my frame with baggy sweaters and loose jeans and with a mop of unkempt hair.
This is just NOT cutting the mustard, people.
So, I’ve made a study (I ran “fat head” through Google Image Search) to get a sense of what other nogginly-blessed folks are doing with their hair. The following is the result of that study.
Here we have Alan, who is getting in some early combover practice in case he starts to bald, which is pretty smart planning, when you think about it. It’s not something I’d wear out of my bathroom, but then I wouldn’t do a combover outside my bathroom. In fact, if I ever go bald, I’m going to spend the rest of my days lying in the tub, having HW bring me bon-bons and cognac. 
I like to think Ray here went to his hairdresser and said, “Listen, I’m starting to develop a little lazy eye problem here, is there anything you can do to cover that up?” And the hairdresser replied, “Oh honey, if I can hide the fact that Mrs. Nelson lost an ear to a rabid Great Dane, this’ll be easier than finding love at Club Fist.”
And Ray slowly sat down in the chair, and Ray prayed. 
This is Jimmy. He may or may not be French. Either way, he walked into the stylist hoping for “Gordon Gekko” and walked out with “ Joe Dirt“. On the other hand, he’s wearing an argyle sock as a tie, so his style is clearly rather avant garde. 
Remember when I mentioned I can’t wear my hair short? Yeah, this is why. Also, Paul here appears to be 80% jawbone. I can’t imagine how he talks, let alone chews.
Or perhaps he got jaw implants? Now THAT’s a solution to a self-esteem problem! Here I’ve been considering tasteful liposuction to eliminate the ENORMOUS MASS OF FLESH HANGING OFF MY RIBS and I could just be getting collagen injected into the sides of my face! 
When in doubt: take it back to the 80s. I don’t know what kind of band this guy is in, but I GUARANTEE it could have opened for A Flock of Seagulls, or maybe Devo. I also guarantee that it never, ever, EVER ever ever, would have opened for Styx.
This guy is clearly at a Styx concert, meaning he’s wearing a band’s shirt to go see that band, which makes him That Guy, which we can all agree is a bad thing to be. 
Yeah, I dunno. I guess it’s your dad, or something? Search me. 
If you can pull it off, add a gold chain to the mix. A necklace can make all the difference between “mildly overweight guy” to “guy named Tony who could probably make you disappear with a minimum of fuss.” 
Alvin here is totally rocking the “Boring Literature Professor” cut. I say rocking because, as it turns out, Alvin is the largest collector of antique nursemaid rocking chairs in all of Devonshire. He even has a stuffed one that he sleeps with! 
Shaving cool designs into a close-cropped cut is a hip way to show your support for the local football or cricket club, or even give a shout out to a recently imprisoned/murdered homey. Or, as seen here, your favorite walrus down at the inner-city zoo! 
I feel pretty, oh so pretty, I feel pretty, and witty, and HOLY COW AM I WHITE! I think a tanning bed would do more for Pat here than a haircut, so let’s just move on. 
Oh, I’m sure that’s exactly what you want these people to believe. You know something, Bender? You ought to spend a little more time trying to do something with yourself and a little less time trying to impress people. You might be better off. All right, that’s it! I’m going to be right outside those doors. The next time I hafta come in here…I’m cracking skulls! 
Did you think I’d leave out my African-American brothers? Of course not! That would be racist. This is Steve; he sports a classic black man’s cut, cropped tight around the ears, but without the careful trimming of the edges that indicates true sophistication. This haircut says: I’m not paying more than $15 for a haircut, and that $15 is COMING OUT OF YOUR ASS, BOY. 
I know! It’s honestly just 8 hairs! I grew them all out, carefully curled them, and applied them around my face using approximately 3 pounds of spirit gum and enough hairspray to glue my entire head to the ceiling! 
As far as I can tell, no, this is not Lou Diamond Phillips preparing to play Jaime Escalante in a prequel to Stand and Deliver. But I’ve been wrong in the past. Of particular interest here is the old “concealing the weak chin with a beard” trick, which has failed, as it always does. The joke’s on YOU, Lou! 
If you really want to find a good hairstyle, look to professional athletes, right? Um…not so much. But you have to give this guy some serious props for trying to bring about some kind of dreadlocked Jheri curl. 
Speaking of athletes, this fine fellow is Kevin Mench, a professional baseball player. He has what is widely regarded as the largest head in professional baseball, a size 8 (the same as mine!) noggin. He has the enviable sense to just cover it with hats and batting helmets as much as possible, and hope no one notices the fact that he doesn’t technically have a neck. Kevin also hails from Delaware, which basically means there’s something really nasty in our water. 
I feel like I probably shouldn’t really burn this guy, since he’s, you know, the Archbishop of Canterbury and all, but come on, people, what better way to distract from the bald spot on the top of your head than by developing the most AWESOMELY OUTSTANDISHLY RIGHTEOUS pair of eyebrows EVER? If I didn’t know better, and I don’t, I’d think he was planning to grow them out so that he could comb them back over his head, totally putting the Combover Style Establishment out of business. I mean, who could compete with that? 
Finally, we have what is probably the ideal big-head style; simply shave that crap off completely, and make sure there’s a pretty girl in all your pictures.
The graphic atop this here page sure is grim, ain’t it? It’s been up since winter, and I intend to put something more spring/summery up ons, but sadly my time at home with the computer has been SEVERELY curtailed by the fact that my wife is working on some kind of paper, and hasn’t let the laptop out of her grasp for 3 weeks. (I suppose it’s also possible that she’s developed a life-altering addiction to Teh Pr0n, but I don’t think so.)
It’s kinda sad, really, ’cause I have like 8 tons of totally hott photos I took with my camera over the last few months, featuring flowers and trees and geese and whatnot, that would be hella rad up there, but sadly I have not been able to edit and upload and make the necessary template modifications. Which is sad, really. Totally sad.
What is also sad is that, despite not having posted in roughly 9 days, I don’t have much interesting to say. I thought I did; I had in fact written four or five paragraphs of something that I thought was totally AWESOME when it was rattling around in my head, which of course turned into absolute pap when neatly typed into El Computador. So, I beg your forgiveness. I’ll give you a hint: it described my boy Kyle as “the fastest human being I personally know.” So, you know, HILARIOUS stuff there.
The weekend was pretty busy; I helped my dad move a piano to my sister’s house AND some of my grandmother’s stuff OUT of hers before she moves to Florida, and managed to do it without exploding my spine. We saw “Chicago” at the New Candlelight Dinner Theatre (it’s New!), which was outstanding. We went to a birthday party for our friend John, who is Old (not New!). Sarah went to the beach for a fun overnight with friends, and Charles and I joined her on Sunday morning because I was singing an evensong in Lewes that afternoon; it was windy and cold and I about froze my nads off. BOO TO THAT. We did get Nicobolis, though. Can’t beat ’em!
I’ve been keeping up with my jogging, although I haven’t been SUPER good about it; I try and get out three times a week, but sometimes it’s just one or two. I’ve basically been eating everything in sight, justifying this by saying “Hey, I’m jogging like ALL THE TIME!” As a result, I’m getting fatter and fatter, so now I’m back to my “eating nothing but vegetables and small amounts of meat with no sugar” diet, along with drinking buttloads of water. Great times! Not really.
Wow, I’m sure typing up the hilarity today. I’ll try and do better later in the week, really I will.
I love the farmer’s market. Other than Walmart, there’s simply no place you can go to get that warm, fuzzy feeling of smug superiority, and Walmart doesn’t feature Amish folks exhibiting their own special brand of eccentricity. At least, the Walmart in New Castle, Delaware doesn’t. (That particular Walmart is a true hotbed of intellectualism; did you graduate high school? 60% of the other shoppers didn’t, and as far as I can tell none of the employees. Also, it’s a good place to get shot, which every neighborhood SORELY needs.1)
The farmer’s market is great because it’s always “THE farmer’s market,” not “A farmer’s market,” even if it’s not entirely clear which one you mean. It’s as if the place has such gravitas that it ALWAYS warrants the definite article (because you’re DEFINITELY going to see some shiznit up ins). We have two major ones available to us: the one in New Castle, only a few miles from our house, and one in Boothwyn, PA, which is all the way up 495 and through some backroads. Getting to the one in New Castle requires you to go through the intersection of routes 273 and 13, which takes a minimum of 10 minutes, plus another 15 fighting your way through the parking lot because most of the folks who go to the farmer’s market are no smarter than the average sea anemone and have no concept of “not getting in the way.” (More on this in a bit.) As a result, it’s actually faster to get to the one in Boothwyn, particularly if you know the sneaky back way in that avoids the bulk of the parking lot idiots. Also the one in Boothwyn (namely, the Booth’s Corner Farmer’s Market) has an “Amish BBQ” (whatever that is) featuring good rotisserie chicken and a potato soup that we’re fond of that they haven’t served the last 4 freaking times we’ve gone.
We went on Saturday, and oh man the fat emphysemics were out in force. I haven’t seen that many oxygen tanks since I helped bury Natalee Holloway behind a scuba shop in Barcadera. (Too soon?) It’s always fun to wade your way through the sea of inhumanity and see someone you know (we ran into a friend from church), or someone who clearly is as overwhelmed by morons as we are (anyone with a college sweatshirt usually fits the bill). We got food at the BBQ (Rotisserie chicken, enjoyed by all) and I found a place selling Phils paraphernalia so I coughed up $16.99 for a Mike Schmidt tshirt in the totally hideous 80s uniform color scheme.
I’m pretty sure most of the people who shop or work there have rusty above-ground pools and/or trampolines in their backyards.
Footnote 1: In the 3.5 years that we’ve lived in our current location, we’ve had the wife of a university professor get STABBED TO DEATH a few blocks away (by the professor’s mistress and former student, who then went to a Jewish cemetery in north Wilmington and attempted to burn the knife and her clothes on the ground there), and another resident rape someone and then walk out onto the Delaware Memorial Bridge with the intent of ending his woes. We’re, um, hoping to move soon.
I’m working one of those ridiculous jobs in which I’m up all night, sleeping all day, and drinking the blood of hookers I dump in the woods of South Jersey. I mean…well, dang. Anyway, the gist of this is that I have little time for such frivolities as “blog posts” or “pooping,” but because I’m a nice guy, I’m throwing this up on here as a sign unto you that I am rad and care deeply about your personal feelings towards, I dunno, stuff.
Anyway, I thought I’d talk about Old vs. New. Some people are what I call “conservative fuddy duddies” and prefer only the old; some people are what I call “liberal hippie forward-thinking types” and have an endless drive for All That Is New And Rad. Like most people, I fall somewhere in the middle, as evidenced by the following, um, evidence:
- In sports, old is better, like WHOA. The Designated Hitter: bad. Juiced baseballs: hella bad. Umpires wearing some kind of green shirt that makes them look like park rangers: craptastic. NASCAR’s “Car Of Tomorrow”: the stupidest idea since I started cutting myself to stop the crying. Football teams passing on 65% of downs: BOORRRRRIIINNNNNGGGGG.
- Technology: Dell Latitude D410 (my new work lappy) > Packard Bell Pentium 133. XM Radio > cassette tapes. PS2 > Ms. Pacman. The internets > libraries. CDs > vinyl LPs, despite the audiofreaks who say things like “digital recordings are just missing something.” They are, of course; they’re missing tape hiss. This is a good thing. Dorks.
- Women: modern sorority skanks dressing like 7th Avenue streetwalkers are a pretty solid improvement over the grunge-y sweater-wearing style of the early to mid-90s. Unless you have a 14 year old daughter, in which case I suggest you chain her to a radiator. On the other hand, apparently the 70s was the decade for hot chicks getting busy with no repercussions, so who knows. (I was, sadly, like 2 then.)
- Modern hotel keys suck, because invariably they are encoded to deactivate while I’m at work, such that when I return, completely exhausted, they don’t work and I have to take like 8 elevator rides back to the main desk to have them fix things. Argh. (It’s happened twice to me this month.)
In short, I’ve been awake for something like 32 of the past 36 hours and probably need to stop drinking caffeinated sodas because I haven’t blinked in a few minutes.
Welcome to Spring! It couldn’t have come soon enough, as far as I’m concerned. You may recall last week we had SNOW, and just 4 days ago the wind and rain and temperatures were that of a normal January day. And it sucked. Like whoa.
Now we’re going to get a week of warm temperatures, which is nice because most of next week I’ll be working nights, enabling me to rest and relax outside during the day. Which I will undoubtedly spend sleeping. Come on, summer!
The warmer weather does enable me to exercise more; I ran twice this week in the cold and was very unhappy about it, although I did set personal bests for 3.3 miles and 1.1 miles. Yesterday I ran a mile in 8 minutes 27 seconds, which is the fastest I’ve run a mile since 8th grade, when I managed a 7:45 once. At the time, I weighed maybe 130 pounds. I, uh, don’t weigh that little anymore.
Since I hate lifting weights, but want to exercise my arms and abs and back, I decided to supplement my running with some batting cage fun. I have the interesting problem of throwing left-handed but batting right; this is the result of teaching myself to hit when I was little by throwing the ball in the air with my left hand and swinging across my body at it. The end result of this is that I’ve always been next to useless from a baseball/softball perspective, since left-handers can’t play 2nd or 3rd base or shortstop (because a left hander throwing to first has to turn his body around before whipping the ball over, which takes extra time), and right-handed batters are as common as pigeons. (Not that this makes much difference in softball.)
Anyway, I thought it might be fun to actually learn to bat left-handed, thinking that as an actual lefty I would be a better hitter from that side, and also give myself the benefit of batting switch, so I can direct softballs to weaker fielders (who are invariably at first base and right field). So I’ve been swinging from the lefty side, and I can report the following: apparently there are muscles in my body, that you only use when batting left-handed, that have completely atrophied. Because I am in Pain.
I went to the cages on Monday and was completely crippled until Wednesday, including bizarre unexplained pain in my NECK muscles, which I had not believed were involved in the act of swinging a softball bat. I thought myself recovered today, so I went back, and within 20 swings I was reminded of why exercise makes Baby Jesus cry. Ow. I’d be in less pain if I had simply handed the bat to someone and told him to go to town on my arms and torso.
The lesson, as I believe I have mentioned: I’m a wuss.
My office has geese. Not, like, indoors; that would probably interfere with our business processes, and Baby Jesus knows we have more than enough problems already. No, the geese are outside, but they are plentiful, and they have distinctive personalities.
I know what you’re thinking; geese are geese, man! Even worse, they’re Canadians! But I tell you truly, these geese all behave completely differently. For example, there’s one that hangs out by the big pond out back, right next to the path I take to get into the building. It seems to have taken up permanent residence there, and has no apparent fear of humans. I walk within 2 feet of it at least twice a day and it barely even takes notice of me, preferring instead to eat pieces of grass and leave nasty green poop on the concrete sidewalk.
However, there are at least two more who see fit to avoid humans as much as they can, so they sit by themselves out by the running track, hissing at all passersby. (A hissing goose is HILARIOUS, if you haven’t seen it happen. They are the least threatening creatures I’ve ever seen.) By the sixth lap on the track, I’m openly yelling at them “Stop hissing at me! I’ve run by here 5 times already and have yet to threaten you!” But they never learn.
Those are the three that seem to be permanently on hand, but sometimes we’ll have entire flocks of them, splashing around in the pond, nearly getting run over in the parking lot, and hissing at the dreaded humans.
I guess I should be glad; my good buddy Kyle works in a place with a significant goose population, and one gander in particular actually started attacking folks because he thought they were fronting on his woman. Yelling “I have no interest in your woman, you feathered freak! Leave me alone!” had no effect. And in case you’re wondering what a goose attack is like, basically they run directly at you with their big wings a-flapping and hoping to maybe nip a bite out of your arm.
Kyle weighed his options: he could kick the bird’s ass, but he would feel guilty about it, and also probably be FOUND guilty of bird abuse by a court of law; he could call animal control, but figured there wasn’t much they could do other than take the bird away and probably kill it; or he could exercise the third option, which was to buy an air horn.
So Kyle went out, wandered up to the gander, which, as was its wont, came at Kyle with murder in his eyes, and Kyle fired off a blast from the air horn as soon as the bird got close. The bird immediately stopped, honked the goose-speak for “My bad, dude, I didn’t realize you were the head gander all up in this peace, I’ll be going now,” and shuffled back to his lady.
I’d give up to $100 to have video of this, btw.
(Speaking of Kyle, and of money, he and a lot of his close friends are Virginia Tech alumni, so this has been a tough week for all of them. I don’t really have anything useful to say that hasn’t been said elsewhere, so I’ll just link to the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund and prevail upon you to donate some small amount of whatever vast cash reserves you may have.)
A Work of Fiction.
Chapter 1
“Jimmy, you know, you should dress for the job you want, not the job you have.” Bob smiled warmly, as if he had just dispensed sage advice on a loving disciple.
I hated my job, and Bob Roop was a big reason why. He was only five years older than me, but he insisted upon treating me (the whole team, really) like we were children. I can’t remember how many times I had sworn to myself, “If he calls me ‘Jimmy’ one more time, I’m going to drop a monitor on his head.” Luckily for him, I’m very non-confrontational, or as my ex-wife liked to call me, “a pussy.”
“Bobby,” I replied, “I am dressing for the job I want. I want a job sitting around my apartment drinking beer and chatting online with hot babes, all day.”
He laughed. “Who are you kidding? If you had a job like that you wouldn’t even put on pants.”
He had a point.
“Jimbo, technically you’re within the dress code rules. You’ve got on a collared shirt, and you’re not wearing jeans. But look at Steve, for example; pressed shirt, dark slacks, and shoes he didn’t steal from a hobo.”
A hobo? What is this, 1923?
“Yeah, and he spends all day writhing in his chair because he’s wearing wool pants in July and it’s giving his ass a rash. Bob, if I’m uncomfortable, I don’t do my job well. Comfort for me means sneakers and clothes made of unnatural fabrics that don’t make me scratch my junk all afternoon.”
Bob took a long sip from his coffee mug, something he did when he wanted to seem thoughtful. “Fine, but remember; promotions tend to go to guys who dress the part.”
I took a deep breath to prevent myself punching him in the balls. “We’ve been over this. I don’t want a promotion. I want to keep typing away at my computer, getting periodic cost-of-living raises, until someone like you gives me a heart attack by bugging me about my damn collared shirt. Now, I’ve got fifty emails to read and a conference call that starts in one minute. Can I get back to my job?”
Without waiting for an answer, I put on my headset and started dialing into the conference call. Bob stood there for a minute, trying to look intimidating, and walked back to his office.
A chat window popped up on my monitor. It was Steve, being a smart-ass.
S.Albert: u know, it wouldn’t hurt u to buy 1 nice pair of pants!!
J.Graves: Suck it, Steve.
S.Albert: im just sayin, if u wanted to go shopping later i have some time before i meet angela tonite, we could get u a couple shirts and slacks
The last thing I wanted to do was spend any more time with Steve than I already had to. Angela was his latest flame, and every hour you spent in his presence required you to listen to at least 45 minutes of detail about their spectacular sex life.
J.Graves: Hey Steve, you have a pendejo hanging off your mustache again.
S.Albert: a what
J.Graves: Look it up.
I closed the window and logged out of chat, just for a few hours, until my glowing hatred of all humanity had dimmed.
I know nobody really wants to read about the weather; either you’re local to me, and already aware of it, or you’re not, in which case it’s not a concern for you. Nevertheless, what in the ham-handed hell? There was SNOW this morning in North Wilmington, which is like 10 miles north of me. It was sort of sleeting when I left the house this morning, and the wind about caused me to dent my car with my head. As B pointed out, we basically went through a category 2 hurricane. And Al Gore wasn’t anywhere near us!
Anyway, I’m tired of this weather, and I’m tired of being sick, as both are preventing me from exercising, since there’s nothing worse than riding a bicycle in cold weather, and jogging sucks bad enough when it’s dry. I seriously need to exercise, because I keep doing things like making pans of cinnamon rolls and eating the entire batch in a weekend, despite the fact that they kinda sucked because the dough never rose properly (I blame low-fat buttermilk, which I think was acidic enough to kill the yeast before it could get its rise on). I did get a LITTLE exercise on Saturday, mowing the lawn and putting dirt around my patio and whatnot, but the end result of that mess is that my back hurts and I still weigh 240+ pounds.
I am a large devil, I am.
I’d like to get at least some amount of exercise every day, but my legs just can’t take running every day, based on the ankle pain I suffered through last week. So I’ve decided to hit up the batting cages around the corner from my office a couple days a week. Work the core and arms, develop some hand-eye coordination, learn how to switch-hit; it’s win-win-win-triple-X-throwdown-WIN! Plus it helps improve my odds of being called up to AAA.
Yes, I played something like 15 hours of video game baseball over the weekend. Update: you may recall I made myself a switch-hitting catcher. By “mid-June” I was batting around .320, with 11 home runs and 25 or so RBI, so they called me up to the majors, where they made me play first base. I was like, whaaaaaa? I guess they needed a temporary backup for Ryan Howard. Whatever. After 4 games (I was batting a healthy .300 or so, but only had 6 or 7 ABs) they sent me back down to AAA, where I am continuing to play first base for some reason. Argh. I’m going to try and get them to move me to the outfield, where at least I have a chance of platooning with Burrell.
Not that you care about ANY of that. Ha ha! That’s the joy of talking about fantasy and video game sports: nobody cares. It’s just like the weather.
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