So I was thinking the other day about H. Jackson Brown‘s “Life’s Little Instruction Book,” that nifty little tome filled with helpful, often contradictory tidbits to help you along with life. I realized that I, through my 26-odd years of existence on earth, have learned a great number of things that I am remiss if I don’t pass on to the masses. However, I am unlikely to find a publisher for anything I might put to paper, due to a variety of reasons mostly stemming from a medical imbalance in my brain. Then I remembered, Holy crap! You have a website, you idiot! Put it all online! Then I wondered why my coworkers had stopped their meeting and were all staring at me. Then I noticed I had been saying my internal monologue out loud for the past few minutes.

Anyway, here are my ideas. I plan to update this from time to time. Won’t that be nice!

1. If you are trying to get somewhere, and the elderly man who was lumbering along gamely in front of you decides to STOP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DOORWAY to get his bearings, and you then shove this man aside and cause him to fall and break his hip, YOU will be charged with a crime. This is one of life’s greatest injustices. Be warned.
2. 
   Sarah and Rachel and the Pacific, all three as purty as a posey.

   If you are working on a website post, and your wife instant messages you to say that she has a cute picture to put up, you need to delay the column for a day and just post the picture, or find a way to work the picture into the column.

3. The only time when it is reasonably safe to ask a woman if she is pregnant is when she appears to actually be in labor. Even then, it’s worth tap-dancing around the subject a little bit. “So, do you, um, have any children?” “I’M GIVING BIRTH YOU IDIOT!” “Oh! Really? I hadn’t even noticed! You carry it so well.”
   Note that if you are responsible for the pregnancy in question, the above technique could result in your death. Of course, any man with a pregnant spouse has the Sword of Damocles over his head anyway.
4. John Mayer is the best thing to come out of the American music industry, ever. There are some people around who don’t seem to grasp this. Avoid them at all costs, but if you can’t, and one of them makes fun of you for developing a lengthy interpretive dance to “Neon” or “Split-Screen Sadness,” and you stab them in the ear with a pencil, you will be charged with a crime. Be warned.
5. Trust no one that prefers Pepsi to Coke. Also, trust no one who prefers Diet Coke to Diet Pepsi.
6. You should always leave comments on people’s blogs. Everybody likes to be appreciated.
7. The left lane is for passing. Keep right. Or I will kill you. And then I will probably be charged with a crime.
8. If you see me walking by, and the tears are in my eyes, look away, baby, look away. If we meet on the street some day, and I don’t know what to say, look away, baby, look away. Don’t look at me . . .

   I don’t want you to see me this way.

9. Running from the police is always easier if you’re clothed, but much more fun if you’re nude. Make your own decisions.
10. Humankind’s greatest accomplishment has little to do with medicine, or computers, or the printing press; all that stuff is just convenience. The one invention that has changed the world for the better in almost every way: pie. I mean, seriously, what problem could you possibly have that isn’t helped at least a LITTLE bit by a piece of pie?
    Close second: donuts.
11. If you are very tall, you will never be able to find clothes that fit properly without having them custom sized. This is just something you will have to grow to accept. Try to marry a good seamstress so you can buy shirts with the 18″ neck and 36″ sleeves that you need, and have her remove the extra yard of fabric around the belly. Then use that fabric to strangle whoever it is that decided that anybody with an 18″ neck must also, by nature, have a 48″ waist. (Not that I wasn’t getting disturbingly close, for a while there.)
12. Try to avoid stabbing someone until you are reasonably certain he or she isn’t a police officer or important politician, unless you live in a state that doesn’t have the death penalty, in which case carve away at will!
13. Stereotypes were developed over hundreds of years of consistent behavior. Ignoring them is like playing Russian roulette with a semi-automatic pistol.

Okay, that’s what I’ve got for you so far. I intend to add to this list, assuming I can figure out certain technical difficulties with the numbering scheme. Until tomorrow: stay loose, killers!

This column originally started out: What is it about Tuesdays, people? Yesterday was the second Tuesday in a row I had to make an emergency run to the data center to deal with something.

Then on Wednesday, the same thing happened, so I didn’t get to post.

Thursday: also found myself at the data center frantically putting out fires. Not literally, though, as I am ill-equipped for heat, what with my total lack of training and my bizarre preference for highly flammable fabrics.

It’s been a long week, and it’s not getting much shorter; I have to do some minor work tonight, plus some work in the morning, plus spending all of tomorrow night working the monthly outage for one of our clients. Plus I couldn’t get out of church on Sunday morning because Darryl is desperate.

Plus, Hearnwife is going out of town, so I have to be very careful not to let the house become a wasteland of fast-food wrappers, unopened mail, and other various detritus, since if the house isn’t spotless when she returns on Tuesday, I will be killed.

But you didn’t come here to listen to me whine about how busy my life is. (At least, I hope not. That would be kinda scary, and moderately stalkerish. Of course, that’s most of the internet for you.) You came for humor, for giggles, for pictures of me in a skirt. And because I feel your love all over my face, I give those things to you freely.

I say “freely” only because there are no ads on my site. And there are no ads on my site only because no marketing agencies have offered to put any up. Rest assured, however, that I feel your love. And I love you back. Maybe not in a “sharing fluids” kind of way, but it is definitely love.

Except, possibly, for Kyle; with him it’s more of a lust thing.

I may have mentioned that the repairs to the support beams here on the first floor of The Mill at White Clay Creek continue. They have now finished the drywall enclosure very close to my desk, so I can report the following amusements:

• A great deal of welding. I can see the light reflecting through cracks in the drywall. I’m assuming it won’t blind me if I’m not seeing directly. Either way, I’ve contacted a lawyer.
• Enough banging and bashing of metal objects to cause me to start twitching like my Ritalin ran out.
• The sound of very loud drilling, followed by someone saying, “Just keep pressure on it,” which could mean either they are having difficulty getting into the concrete, or that someone has managed to run the drill bit through their own foot and are trying to stem the flow of blood with a flannel shirt.
• Someone behind the wall spontaneously bursting into song: “I’m in the Mood for love . . . simply because you’re near me!!!” I swear to you, this really just happened.
• Okay, he just did it again. I’m getting kinda scared.
• Additionally, there is a heated discussion going on involving Murphy Brown. Something involving Kramer being a secretary. I don’t know what it means, but now I’m truly terrified.
• Someone behind the wall has apparently dropped an entire bag of either screws, tuna cans, or 3rd century Roman coins all over the floor. They’re doing it again. And now they seem to be dancing on the detritus. I’m both frightened and confused.
• Uh-oh…a mistake has apparently been made. There are hushed tones, periodic “oops”es, and a complete lack of audible work.
• Now it sounds as if someone is crying…I’m not sure what’s going on, but I need to get out of here. Oh, there goes another bag of Roman coins.
• It occurs to me that someone may have been injured inside that little drywall room, and they are currently chopping the body up and hiding it in the concrete. Note to self: don’t ask any questions.

I think it would probably be best if I closed this up and snuck the hell out of here before someone comes out of the walled-off-area and asks me what I may or may not have seen and/or heard today. If nothing appears in this space over the next few weeks, tell Carl that we have a love that will transcend death.

Sorry for leaving everybody hanging yesterday; my normal workday of periodically checking my tickets, answering email, not responding to voicemails, and working frantically to staunch the flow of blood from my coworker’s ravaged neck was interrupted by a nice fellow who needed to watch me work on tickets and things all afternoon. So I had postpone anything fun, like watching the exit polls, or updating this dreck, until I went home.

Then a server broke and I was stuck at the data center until 7:30pm, and by the time I got home, pork chops and beer took priority over updates. Mmmm…pork chops.

As I write this, it looks like President Bush is going to continue to be President until 2009, and I can’t say I care either way, really. Neither candidate really had anything to say that I care about, so it matters little to me which of those idiots is in office. The only thing that scares me is that 11 states banned gay marriage, but I just won’t go to those states for my gay marriage needs.

What topics DO I care about? Gee, I’m glad you asked! Although you won’t be.

• Gun Control – Statistics prove that gun control prevents crime. Unfortunately, statistics also prove that gun control causes crime. So clearly you can trust statistics about as far as you can throw them (not very far, if the book is long and thick). So if gun control can’t be proven to prevent crime, then basically it restricts a right based on the fact that many Americans, usually Democrats, are scared of guns. Many Americans, usually Republicans, are scared of gay people. We shouldn’t control either.
• Abortion – What a woman does with her body is pretty much her affair. I don’t think a handful of cells in a uterus is a child any more than I think that the large hairy growth I just burned off my ass with a soldering iron is a child.
• Morality – Anyone who feels that “morality” is the primary issue when selecting a FREAKING POLITICIAN should be prevented from voting ever again. Why? Because morals are the most subjective thing ever. Your morals may say that homosexuality is wrong, and black people should stop being so uppity. My morals seem to follow along the lines of “do whatever you want, as long as you don’t prevent me from greasing up and wearing leather gimp outfits to work.”
• Education – I’m starting to think I should homeschool. Not because I necessarily think the public schools offer a bad education; I went to public school and I learned as much there as I did in college. But unfortunately, the government schools have a slight tendency to turn people awfully liberal, and I don’t need my kids coming home and telling me “Daddy, it’s wrong that you own guns!” because the teacher browbeat it into them. True, not all teachers are like that, but it’s not as if I can pick and choose.
• Porn – Porn should be legal. And if you want to show nudity on TV, do it on HBO. And tell Paris Hilton to cover up, because girlfriend is nasty skinny. It’s foul.
• Drugs – If I’m snorting cocaine in the comfort of my own home, how exactly does that harm anyone else? And if you say, “Drug gang violence blah blah blah,” then slap yourself upside the head. Right now. There wouldn’t be any drug violence if the Drug War didn’t make drug violence so lucrative.

I think that’s enough political manifesto type stuff. Moving on. I have a bunch of pictures from the Halloween party last Saturday, but I haven’t found time to edit and put them up; I’ll try and get to that soon. In the meantime, I leave you with this bit of wisdom, courtesy of The Family Guy:

“Hey Americans, you like movies? I’ve got ‘Dude, My Car Is Not Where I Parked It But Praise Allah We Are Not Hurt!'”

My buddy Doug sent me this earlier today and it made me giggleth, so I’m sharing it with all o’ y’alls:

Sacrilege rules.

Tonight: Game 3!
Tomorrow: I talk about why I hate fantasy football!

UPDATE: The above is not sacrilege. I know sacrilege, sir, and that is not him.

This is him:

Props to Embly for sending that over.