More Teen Hi Jinks

I wasn't planning on doing a series featuring the poor judgment and extreme lack of foresight that teenagers are wont to display. It's just that they (and their parents) keep doing these moronic things that end up in the news. Admittedly, I did some pretty stupid things in high school. But that was a time, long, long ago, when the foolish, dangerous, and sometimes criminal things that high school students did were soon forgotten after graduation. Unless you attended your high school reunions, the fact that you just happened to be trying on your older sister's Maidenform slip when your friends walked into your room* will never again be an issue as you go forward to reinvent yourself in your post high school life. Probably. But things are different now.

Take, for example, two female high school students from Bothell High School in Washington state. These two girls (who, of course, were cheerleaders) were alone together this summer, and decided to use a cell phone to take nude photos of each other. Cue the cheezy porno soundtrack.

A local news station interviewed a mother of one of these girls.

One of the mothers...said the photos were the result of a teenage prank.

Despite a quarter of a century and one concussion, I still have a pretty good memory of what constituted a "prank" when I was in high school. There was putting Vaseline on someone's windshield, or leaving a flaming bag of dogshit on someone's front porch, or having twelve pizzas delivered to some asshole's house. If I had invited Greg over and said "Hey, let's do a prank!", he'd be up for it until I pulled out the Polaroid and asked him to drop trou. And I probably wouldn't have receieved any invites to any reunions.

Apparently this mother thinks that piss poor judgment = prank. The story gets even better. She goes on :

I was like "What were you thinking?" She (my daughter) goes, "I wasn't ; we were just fooling around. I took a picture, I erased it immediately. I wasn't thinking."

Ok, for starters, if mom is using words like "like" and "goes", is it really any surprise that a). her daughter is a cheerleader and b). her daughter wasn't thinking? And why bother taking a picture if you're just going to erase it "immediately" ? Were the photos simply a justification for lezzing out, girls? Really, it's 2008 - you could have played alone together totally nude and no one would have ever known or cared, unless they walked in on you because you were playing "Mama Mia" too loudly.

But the girls soon realized they had forgotten to erase one of the photos. That lone photo, the girls claim, was sent to the entire football team without their knowledge.

So the parade of lousy judgment (oh, sorry, I mean "pranks") rolls on. Let's get naked. Let's take photos of each other. Let's do it with a cell phone. Let's use the same cell phone that has your boyfriend's number on speed dial - the same boyfriend who's on the football team and would likely consider a nude photo of his girlfriend (lezzing out, in all likelihood) as some sort of trophy to be shared with the rest of team. Yeah, even the place kicker.

I'm guessing a lot of things will happen in these girls' lives without their knowledge. How did I end up pregnant? How did my minivan end up in the ditch? How did I reach my credit limit ? How did I get to be a grandmother at 36 ??

It isn't stated outright in the story, but you've got to figure that this photo was making the rounds at the school. In September someone sent school officials a copy of the photo. Having stated in June that "inappropriate photos will not be tolerated", school officials held their ground and suspended the two girls. They weren't suspended from school. They were only suspended from the oh-so-important cheer squad. A tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, right?

(The girl's mother) said the embarrassment her daughter faced was punishment enough.

Yeah, cut her some slack. Shame and embarrassment can be important teaching tools. Perhaps she'll think twice before she takes a digitalized picture of herself, and sends it out to millions of men across the globe via radio waves and internet connections. Without her knowledge.

Deep down, it bothers her.

Uh, no, see she's a cheerleader. She's just not that deep. If there was much "deep down" none of this would have happened. At least the parents realized that the girls were solely responsible for their poor judgment and senseless actions.

The girls' parents soon filed lawsuits accusing the school district and officials of sexual exploitation of children, violation of right to privacy, violation of due process, violation of sexual equality and negligent infliction of emotional distress and outrage.

Well crap. Nevermind. Perhaps those girls aren't idiots because they're teenagers. Perhaps they're idiots because their parents are idiots. Or pranksters. Take your pick.

* because that Abba album was playing way too loud.

LISP (Life Imitates South Park)

Even though I haven't seen every episode, I do have more than a passing interest in South Park. Indeed, South Park has got to be the most culturally insightful programming with cutting-edge satire since the MacNeil/Lehrer Report. If you, gentle readers, are familiar with South Park, then perhaps you'll recall episode 147 entitled Make Love, Not Warcraft .

I won't be a spoiler, but allow me to recap the first part of the plot.

An obsessive gamer (redundant, I know) named Jenkins has spent virtually every hour playing World of Warcraft online for almost a year and a half, reaching levels previously thought unattainable. No one can defeat Jenkins, and he summarily kills the WoW characters belonging to Kyle, Stan, Kenny and Cartman. Yeah. Sad days in South Park.

Cartman convinces Stan, Kyle and Kenny to spend 21 hours a day for two months, simply killing boars in the forest in an attempt to gain enough experience points to eventually mount a simultaneous attack against Jenkins, and defeat him. There's no mention of the boys actually sleeping, or attending school during this period, so there's probably a subtle subtext about homeschooling. Or perhaps parental neglect. South Park is pretty deep and textured like that. I suppose that's why South Park is known as "The Brothers Karamazov of 21st century American animation"*.

After spending weeks of gaming in Cartman's basement, with no real physical activity and subsisting on a diet of Hot Pockets and energy drinks, the boys develop acne and gain considerable weight. The obvious message : too much time on the internet makes you fat and lazy. On the upside, it can expand your vocabulary as you learn words such as "pwned", "r-tard" and "predator".

Now the part of life imitating art. No, really. If this is art, South Park is art.

A 15 year old boy in Sweden recently spent 24 consecutive hours playing World of Warcraft. If he would have taken 3 hours a day for sleeping and/or homeschooling, then he probably would have just developed severe acne and morbid obesity before his precious teenage years morphed into a pathetic lonely young adulthood. Unfortunately, the 24 consecutive hours took their toll, and the teenager had a seizure due to sleep deprivation and lack of food.

According to the story, the teen's dad insists that his son's "Warcraft binging days are over". You can't help but think that this Swedish dad was probably pretty ok with his teenage son spending all those hours playing an online game at first. At least the kid wasn't out doing crack, or driving drunk, or getting some depressed emo chick preggers, or arguing with his parents about all of those things that have such profound significance when you're 15 - like the Cheryl Tiegs poster on your wall**. So after this seizure fiasco, dad had to re-think his laissez-faire parenting strategy.

I could be wrong (again), but I suspect that dad's version of putting his foot down after the seizure fiasco will amount to limiting the 15 year old to "only" 20 hours of WoW a day. He'll just need to get Hot Pockets and energy drinks when he's at the grocery store. And a bedpan.

I'm actually a teeny-weeny*** bit impressed that at least the father seems to be taking some responsible action here. Had this happened in the U.S., the righteously indignant parents would most certainly have filed suit against Blizzard Entertainment before their son's thrashing head hit the keyboard. Then they would have let him play more WoW in the intensive care unit, because they love the kid.

Just wait. It's gonna happen. Although you might see it on South Park first.


* Source : my unfinished Master's thesis.

** So what if you could see some nippling?? Seriously, she was just in a wet bikini - it's not like she was nude or anything!

** a unit of measure, often used by astrophysicists, to describe matter smaller than a quark, but larger than Paris Hilton's social consciousness

More Real Estate Bitching

I promise, no more posts about trying to sell my house for at least a couple of weeks. Just let me have this one for now, ok?


There's a special place in hell for real estate agents who call you on short notice (less than a couple of hours) to ask you if he/she can let some clients see your home.


And in this special place in hell, there's a particularly wobbly and uncomfortable metal folding chair reserved for real estate agents who submit to their client's foolhardy desire to look at houses the day after a major holiday (like the one we had yesterday).


So I'm at home around 3:30 this afternoon, when I get that call. An agent has some clients that want to see the house today. Not only did they want to see it today, but he expressed some sense of urgency, wanting to show the house as soon as possible! I'm wondering why the hell someone would want to shop for houses today when every fucking resident of the United States knows that it is stipulated (somewhere in Scripture, probably Deuteronomy) that the day after Thanksgiving is reserved for retail shopping.


Perhaps the real estate agent's client was in labor, or perhaps they had a plane to catch, or perhaps they shop for homes with the same planning and foresight they use when they shop for ballpoint pens. Or perhaps they're just self-interested narcissistic bastards. It didn't really matter, and I tried to say "no".


Uh, you know the house isn't really clean, and it's not really in condition to be shown today, the fucking day after Thanksgiving!


I didn't say the last part. But I thought it. Then the agent said


But they're really serious about getting a place as soon as possible.


Great. He played the "serious" card. Holy crap, I should hope that they're serious, as they are making you, you poor desperate man with a barely tenable career in this economy, drag them about the city looking for homes when I'm sure you'd rather be home with your family.


They gave me about 20 minutes to clean up the house. The day after Thanksgiving. Alone. My lovely wife, Princess and Brick had gone to the Hobby Lobby. They did so because 1). they like to taunt the scrapbookers, and 2). they "get" what National Retail Day is all about.


With only 20 minutes, I couldn't really clean, I could only do damage control : flush the toilets, make sure all dirty dishes were placed within 3 feet of the kitchen sink, place dirty underwear at the bottom of the dirty clothes pile. Yeah, they're gonna love this place. Then I went into my son's bathroom to let the dog out.


Sparta, my son's dog, is supposed to be an outdoor dog. Since he's never had small children, he has a very low tolerance for whining - so when Sparta whines, he puts her in his bathroom. So I go to let her out, and I notice that he's put some dog food in the bathroom for her. Now the bathroom smells like dog and dog food, and there are little bits of solid dog food scattered across the floor. Yeah, I'm so sure they recommend this on HGTV.


I try to sweep up the dog food, but most of it adheres to the floor. As I'm using the broom as a scraper, I'm wondering whether it's doggy drool, or doggy urine, or perhaps something even more unimaginably disgusting that's making the kibble stick to the floor. I make a mental note to go ballistic later on when I've got more time.


About 10 minutes into this, my lovely wife, Princess and Brick return from their retail duties. Awesome. Six more hands. I told my kids to pick up their rooms, and they actually did! It's a shame that they only do things promptly when they think I'm totally pissed off, but it's even more of a shame that I can't maintain being totally pissed off for more than about 15 minutes at a time. More would get done around here, my blood pressure be damned.


We actually managed to get the house in halfway decent shape (no noticeable floor stains, or smells you can't quite identify), and we were pretty much walking out the back door as the agent and his clients were coming in the front door. I hope they liked the place. I realize that odds are against them actually making us an offer - but if they do, I'm pretty sure it'll be on Christmas Eve, and they'll want to move in the day after Christmas. Bastards.

Thanksgiving Daze

Thanksgiving Day isn't over yet, but this may be the only chance I'll have to recap the events of the day (so far). It's a service for those international readers of the Taunt Vortex who are considering relocating to the U.S., and may require a blueprint for the "typical" American Thanksgiving.


I was up sort of late light night, so I didn't roll out of bed until about 9:45. Of course my lovely wife was up about 3 hours before that, to resume the food preparation process that she actually started about 3 days ago. She wasn't quiet about getting out of bed though, and it took me a while to get back to sleep. How rude.


Once I was up, I did brush my teeth and take a shower, because here in the States hygiene never takes a holiday. Although I'm waiting to trim my toenails until someone actually says something. After I was dressed, I was ready to take up the all-important job of watching football. Because there wasn't a game on yet, it was then my job to bitch and whine about how there wasn't even a pre-game show on at 10:30. I channel surfed for a while, and of course I came across the most boring programming known to man : parades.








Parades are dreadfully boring in person, but to attempt to watch one on TV is like reading about a chess tournament. I think the only people that actually watch Thanksgiving day parades are small children (who are confused as to why the cartoon characters aren't animated and just float about listlessly, like mommy after her wine and Zoloft). Because the TV was royally failing to relieve my holiday ennui, I decided to resort to the internet. Before you criticize, I think that if the Pilgrims had access to the world wide web, they would have been found in "the Church of England sucks" chatrooms while the Native Americans slaved over the food preparation for everyone.




Before you connect the obvious dots and call me out for being on the internet while my lovely wife was fixin' * Thanksgiving Dinner, be aware that I came across a tutorial on YouTube that taught me how to play the opening riff to "Sweet Home Alabama". To the untrained eye, it may have looked like I was just screwing around, but knowing how to play this might prove life-saving, should I ever find myself in a sticky situation in an Alabama bar. Just give me a guitar, and I'll tame the slackjawed southerners. It worked for Pee Wee. It would work for me.






Finally, there was football. Usually the Thanksgiving tradition consists of overeating followed by the postprandial nap, then waking up just as the football game starts. Because the powers-that-be at the NFL decided to pit the 0 - 11 Lions against the 10 - 1 Titans, I suspect that millions of Americans napped before dinner this year.



We planned to eat around 1:00. Brick and Princess got up a little after I did, and Moose and my mother-in-law got here shortly thereafter. I think we actually sat down to eat right at 1:00. It was lovely. The food was great. Everyone was wearing a shirt. There was no fire or water damage. There were no major arguments, and no one broke into tears. So, not really your typically Thanksgiving, but it was enjoyable nonetheless.



After dinner, the tryptophan from the turkey kicked in, and I was comatose for a couple of hours. When I got up, the Dallas Cowboy game was on. Even though I'm from Texas, I usually find it difficult to support the Cowboys - at least until they have an owner who isn't the spawn of Satan. But today Dallas is playing the Seattle Seahawks, and it's my fantasy, nay, dream that the Cowboys will deliver such a thorough and humiliating defeat to the Seahawks that quarterback Matt Hasselbeck will go home and put a pillow over Elizabeth's head. Talk about a perfect Thanksgiving.


My sister called from Houston to wish us a happy Thanksgiving. She's six years older than I am, with two grown kids. Her oldest is getting married in May. My wife and I are quite thankful for this, as it significantly increases the odds that my sister will become a grandparent before we will.



My mother-in-law just left, and Brick is gone as he's doing that pedicab thing downtown. He'll get a lot of business from the UT - A&M game. Princess is napping - a good thing, since she's been a bit grumpy. The lovely wife and Moose are watching TV. They are missing me horribly, I'm sure, so I need to wrap things up. Besides, the University of Texas - Texas A&M games starts soon. Since all things in the universe are evolving back to the good and truthful since November 4th, UT should handily defeat the unworthy from College Station.


That's pretty much the traditional American Thanksgiving, although admittedly there was less outdoor urination, fewer arguments, and zero emergency room visits - so far. We've either got some catching up to do tonight, or we'll make it up come Christmas.



* fixin' : a southern U.S. colloquialism, meaning "to prepare". Not to be confused with "fixin's"




Thanksgiving would be much different if the Pilgrims had had Humor-blogs.com

We Met at The River

I met my lovely wife in the Fall of 1980. I was in my first semester of college, and she was working in a record store. Because the internets (or CDs for that matter) hadn't been invented yet, I spent a fair amount of time shopping for these things called "albums". Albums were large, usually black in color, disc shaped, and when you dragged a needle (or "stylus" as the condescending prick at the stereo shop would say to correct me ) across it music came out of your speakers. After you played any particular song about a dozen times, you would be rewarded with additional value added sounds, like pops, skips, and the phenomenon of "getting stuck". This is where you could listen to that same 4-second riff in that Steve Miller song over and over (in theory until they shut your electricity off) without having to lift a finger.

It was in this environment that I met my wife-to-be. Well, to be honest, I saw her well before we formally met. We were in that record store of destiny, and she just happened to be on a ladder, putting up a promotional poster for Bruce Springsteen's album "The River". You can cue the visual aid at this point by tilting your head up a little to look at the top of this post. It was at this point that I realized two things :

1). Springsteen has a new album out
2). My wife-to-be sure looks hot in those tight white pants

I was mesmerized. Not just an album, but a double album. Despite the scenario that I was an 18 year old in 1980, I was drug free. Despite this fact, Bruce seemed to be speaking to me.

"She's The One" he said.

I had a hungry heart, so after a week or so I got up the nerve to ask her out. She said "yes" because she was as naive as she was pretty*. The rest, as they say on VH1, is rock history. She seemed to like me, and me - well, I was pretty much blinded by the light. She gave me a reason to believe. We dated about 3 months, and I was thinking that two hearts are better than one, so I proposed. Marriage. She said "yes". The fact that I'd had a few glasses of wine had nothing to do with my proposing to her that night (probably), nor did it seem to alleviate my shock when she agreed to spend the rest of her life with some guy she'd known for 3 months who didn't even have a job. What kind of woman does that?? What the hell was she thinking??

We were engaged for almost four years. I wanted to finish college before we got married. We were married the summer that "Born in the U.S.A." was released - which just happens to be the first mass produced album to be released on that cutting-edge technology format of the compact disc (CD). Over the years our marriage has been sort of like the Springsteen discography, with some low points (Human Touch), but more high points (Darkness of the Edge of Town, Born to Run, Nebraska, Magic), no nasty divorce (i.e., Van Halen), and no crappy sleep-inducing material that should have never seen the light of day (yeah, I'm talking to you Journey).

There were some who said it wouldn't work - my therapist**, her parole office. Just kidding kids. But we proved we were tougher than the rest, and celebrated our 24th anniversary this summer. And now the children are grown. Glory days.

We made a promise we swore we'd always remember
No retreat, baby, no surrender.


* She's still pretty, but that naive ship has sailed.

** My therapist was actually ok with it.



I think most of the bloggers over at Humor-blogs are younger than my marriage.

Harley Davidson Tried to Kill My Son

If you read this then you'll recall how a couple of months ago my son Brick was planning to buy a scooter to meet his commuting needs. Apparently when you go to a Vespa showroom, they do a blood test, and if your testosterone levels are too high they are legally required to refer you to the Harley-Davidson dealership. Yeah, girls too.

Brick is 20, and works, so he really didn't need my permission to buy a motorcycle. Actually, he doesn't really need my permission to do anything, but we try to maintain the illusion. In this instance he was nice enough to ask me anyway. Since I figured he'd get one no matter what I said, I told him that I wasn't saying "no", but I wasn't really saying "yes" either. I did insist on some ground rules: helmet at all times, no drinking and riding, no riding indoors or upside-down. I know, I'm a hardass. So now he has a Harley Sportster 883.

Brick did all of the right things. He arranged for insurance, and he took a motorcycle riding safety class, which he aced like Kevin Trudeau aced lyinfuckinbastardishness. As I mentioned earlier, I asked him to wear a helmet at all times. We eventually compromised on that - he's agreed to wear a helmet whenever he's riding the motorcycle. So he did all of the right things to prevent getting hurt - or worse. But then today my lovely wife got the phone call.

He started off by going over the damage to the bike (because that's what any good American mother would want to know first, right?). He itemized the damage - bent handlebars, some scratches, a busted light. But how is Brick?? she's wondering, as she's picturing images of Noah Wylie in a white coat ordering important blood tests and complicated sounding procedures that involve ionizing radiation, finishing it all off with STAT! She does that all of the time though, because she has a thing about Noah Wylie.

Brick said that he hurt his leg, had some scratches, and hit his head - but it wasn't too bad since he was wearing his helmet. So had my worst fears materialized?? Did some text-messaging idiot in a minivan pull out in front of him? Did some drunk in an F-150 clip him while recklessly changing lanes? Or did some asshat in a Hummer mistake him for a speed bump?

Uh, no. Apparently after he got off of the bike he tripped on either a peg or the kickstand (much like the Kennedy assassination, details are always fuzzy after a traumatic event**), then he fell to the ground and knocked the bike over at the same time.

There's absolutely no chance that we will ever change his nickname from Brick to Grace. Reflecting on Brick's gross motor* skills, I'm thinking that perhaps he's actually safer riding a motorcycle than, say, walking, or taking a shower, or sleeping.

I've decided to renegotiate my agreement with Brick. He can ride the Harley without a helmet, but at all other times he's got to have it on. I'll leave it to him to sort out the shampooing problem.



* as in relating to muscular movement, and not having to do with internal combustion engines.

** I'm sure we'll be negotiating with Oliver Stone regarding a movie deal about this event.

Humor-blogs.com thinks I made this up.

Second Look Cynicism

When searching Google images for "home for sale signs" I got a lot of results, with many photos of signs like the one above. Don't you think the word "house" is a little superfluous there? I mean really, if you've got a "For Sale" sign in your front yard, if someone can't figure out that it's the house for sale (and not the sidewalk, or toys in the yard, or nearby oak), I'm not sure I really want them wandering around inside of my home unsupervised. Google images will also pull up a fair number of "For Sale" signs that also have "Sold" on top of them. How quaint. Those particular photos must be from the late 1990s archives - back when some of the homes that were for sale actually ended up selling. Good times.

All of the above was a preface to the fact that on Friday, a real estate agent showed our home to a family that wanted to see it. Early Saturday, the same agent called and said that this family wanted to take a second look "today". So we rushed to get the house presentable (picked up empties from Friday night, flushed toilets, uh...that was pretty much it) so they could take a second look.

We haven't heard anything back yet. At first I was feeling a little optimistic, but then my imagination started to entertain all sorts of possibilities. I strive to be a realist (just ask Steve, my imaginary friend in my fantasy football league) so I wrote down the possible reasons why this family might want to look at our house again.

Good reasons:

1). They liked it, and think they might want to make an offer, but want to take another look before they do.

Not so good reasons:

1). Someone dropped an earring, or contact lens.

2). Our 7 year old Dell that freezes up whenever our air conditioner turns on (or off) must have caught their eye. They were returning to case the house for the "big job". Boy, are they gonna be disappointed.

3). They have a history of head trauma resulting in a severe short-term memory defect, or perhaps Alzheimer's, and they had simply forgotten that they've already looked at the house. (This could actually be moved into the "good reasons" category if they make an offer, and we end up negotiating the price).

4). They like our floor plan - so much so that they want to copy it for the new home that they're having built.

5). They've become bored with past hobbies (pilates, scrapbooking) and have taken up faux house shopping to fill those sad, empty hours.

6). They're fucking sadists. "Let's make someone get up early on a Saturday, clean house, then leave for an hour-and-a-half while we pretend to be interested in buying their home when we actually have made an offer on another place." Jerks. You're not getting that earring back.

So the realist in me sees that there is only one good reason why someone would want to take a second look, but 6 not-so-good reasons why they would return. That sort of sucks. Steve says I should try to be more optimistic. Maybe - but what the hell does he know? He picked Daunte Culpepper for QB this season.

Visit Humor-blogs.com. What they hell, make them an offer while you're there.

Morning with My Mechanic

The lovely wife and I were headed out for brunch late this morning when she mentioned that my rear passenger-side tire looked low. Again.

"You've got a slow leak," she said, because she has the gift of common sense.

"I just put air in it a couple of weeks ago."

That was supposed to be some sort of argument on my part, when it really just confirmed her original position. ( When they were choosing sides for the debate team on the playground, I was always the last one picked.)

"I don't really feel like going to the auto shop right now," I said, because I thought that might be a stronger argument.

"I don't really want to change a tire on the side of the road," she countered.

That was pretty convincing, because a). I didn't really feel like changing a tire on the side of the road and 2). I really didn't want her to change it either, and have to hear about it for the remainder of my marriedness. So we went to the auto shop.

Fortunately is was a slow morning, so my mechanic had me back my car up to the bay, and took a look at my tire.

"Yeah, when it gets colder, the tire looks lower because the air inside contracts," he said. "But not that low."

Smartass.

So he jacked up that side, removed the wheel, and took it in the back. This is always the part that concerns me - like when you're buying a car, and the salesman has to leave to "discuss" your entirely reasonable offer with the sales manager, and you just know they're doing something nefarious like tacking on that damned undercoating, or adding 12 months to your payment schedule.

While he was doing that, I got to check out this red '91 Lamborghini Diablo that was up on a lift for repairs. The guy working on it showed me the repair bill, so far. Needless to say, I'm always impressed when a car has a repair bill that's greater than the total value of my car. And I'm not kidding.

Finally my mechanic returns holding the wheel, and points to a shiny silver spot flush with the surface of the tire.

"Yeah, you've got a leak."

I'm pretty sure they keep a supply of screws and nails in the back, so if your particular tire doesn't have one, they offer the convenience of providing one.

"I put that there, for traction in the snow," I told him, in a little- to- obvious lie. I'll be damned if I'm going to have some mechanic make me feel bad about my tire nurturing skills.

"Snow spikes aren't legal in Texas."

"That's why I just put one in. It's singular. Snow spike."

"Oh yeah. That's a good idea. Slip - traction - slip - traction."

He aced that smartass elective in mechanic school, I'm totally sure. Anyway, he patches my tire, inflates it appropriately, and puts the wheel back on my car. Then he hands me the headless screw as a keepsake.

"Thanks," I said. "Hope you have a good day. And we'll see you Thursday for Thanksgiving dinner."

"Okay."

"Love you."

"Love you too."

It totally rocks having a mechanic in the family. Even if he's a smartass. I have no idea how that happened.

I'm not naming names, but there are a ton of entertaining smartasses at Humor-blogs.com

The Day I Thought My Daughter Joined a Terrorist Organization

My daughter (Princess, if you bothered to read the last post) started her freshman year in college this Fall. Things seemed to be going well at first - she'd call me or her mother just about every day. Then one day, after my wife had finished talking to her on the cell, she turned to me and said


Princess has joined Hamas.


So, of course, I immediately pictured this :





What the hell? Sure, you kind of expect some college kids to experiment, to try new things, to explore new horizons when they're finally away from home. That usually involves wearing a beret, reading some Sartre, or binge drinking if you didn't get over that phase in high school. But to join a Palestinian paramilitary organization?

I was incredulous. First, I wondered why on earth Hamas would have a student organization in west Texas ? That's about as red state as you can get without resorting to some sort of inbreeding. (No, West Virginia, I'm not talking about you. Why would you think that?) I mean, perhaps you'd expect to see a Hamas student organization at U.C. Berkeley, or perhaps even Columbia, but at Angelo State U. ?

Second, it just didn't seem like something Princess would do. She took a quiz in Cosmo once, and as I recall, camo really isn't her color. Plus, Hamas members are really partial to headwear (stocking caps, headbands, helmets, etc.) and everyone knows that that's just hell on your hair.

Turns out I just misunderstood. Imagine that. Princess joined AMAS. That's the Association of Mexican-American Students.




Still, it's kind of weird, since she's not Hispanic. But they asked her to join, and she doesn't have to wear camouflage, or change her hair, so it's all good. I think perhaps my wife and I did something right as parents, where our daughter could be accepting and open minded enough to join an organization made up of students from a different race and culture. On the other hand, they probably told her they had really great parties, so it was a no-brainer. Either way, we're cool with it - I mean, it's not like my Princess is hanging out with a bunch of West Virginians.


Join Humor-blogs. It beats the poetry club and the debate team to smithereens. Literally.

Princess - Last of My Fav

Princess is our 18 year old daughter. No, I won't send you photos. She's a freshman in college this year, and though it's still a little early to get my hopes up, I'm thinking that she's going to be the child that eventually gets a four-year degree (in maybe 5 or 6 years).

She's doing well in college, but she hasn't particularly enjoyed her first semester. First, there was the roommate from Hell. Then there's the fact that she's going to school in San Angelo. "It's soooooo boring," says the Princess. I thought that the easy availability of "nothing-the-fuck-to-do" would keep her focused on her studies, but apparently the boredom is getting a little overwhelming. In the Spring she's transferring to a school closer to home.

Princess is about 5'9", with long dark hair and beautiful brown eyes. Apparently the immature, shiftless, idiot, dirtball teenage boys at the mall think she's hot. I can tell by the way they look at her - just before they notice me squinting at them, baring my teeth, and making "pulling the trigger on my Glock**" gestures with my hand. It's fun being a dad.

"Poor guy. If she's that pretty, she's probably dumber than a Steven Baldwin/Rachel Ray love child," you say to yourself, because you read the tabloids a little more than you care to admit. Well, Princess isn't Asian-chick-who-graduated-from-Dartmouth-at-16 smart, but she is making A's and B's in her first semester. More importantly, she has a lot a common sense. In the span of under one semester, she's already dumped two lying unworthy boyfriends. I'll take a daughter with that kind of good sense over one that gets an 800 math score on the SAT. Probably. It just sucks that you can't get scholarships for having great common sense.

Princess also has a healthy sense of humor. Sadly, it's often at my expense. Once, when she was about seven, my wife went somewhere and left me to babysit Princess. Long story short, the game must have been pretty boring, and I fell asleep on the sofa. My wife returned, and I awoke just as she opened the door. She was annoyed that I had been sleeping, but was quite amused to see me, because my hair was filled with these :

Yeah, busted. I've made it a point to start losing my hair, so that sort of thing doesn't happen again.

Princess doesn't quite know what she wants to do just yet, but she's considered fields as diverse and social work, criminal justice and marketing. Whatever she decides to do, I think she will do well and be happy. She's got a decent amount of self-esteem, and doesn't seem to have this needy compulsion to have a boyfriend that a lot of girls her age (and Madonna) have.


Obviously, we're very proud of her. Princess is very close to her older brothers, and she talks to her mother almost every day. She talks to me too, but if she's wrecked the car, she prefers her mother. No, she's not perfect - but I'll save her driving misadventures for future embarrassing posts. Hey, after that hair clip incident, I owe her.


** I don't really own a Glock. It's a Baretta.



Over at Humor-blogs, they're probably glad I don't have any more children to write about.

Brick - Another One of My Favorite

I'm writing about my second child today, Brick. There's Moose (remember, yesterday's post? Please keep up), Brick, and Princess. NO, those aren't their real names. What, did you think there was a "Palin's Best Names for Babies" published about 20 years ago? Fortunately for all Americans, there wasn't. No, my children should be provided some degree of anonymity, because of all the embarrassing things I have yet to reveal about them. So we're sticking to the nicknames.


Brick, our middle child, is 20, about 6'4", and girls think he's cute. You're probably thinking "Oh, Brick! He probably got that nickname because he's tough, maybe a little dense, and has 'Acme' stamped somewhere on his body." Well, one of those is correct, but that doesn't really have anything to do with his nickname. But how he got his nickname tells you a little bit about him.


Do you remember the first day of class when you started back to school with a new teacher? They would call out your name, and then ask what you preferred to be called. For example, a Cynthia might want to be called "Cindy" in the classroom. Well, the teacher asked my second child what he wanted to be called. Yeah, he said "Brick".


He's independent, hates pretense, is more mechanically adept than I am, and might just be smarter than I am too - although that's a pretty low bar. He graduated from high school, and he's planning to take some community college courses in the Spring. "Aw, he's raising a slacker," you're thinking to yourself, because that's just how your nephew started out, and now he's 35, living in a garage apartment in Trenton, and spends his waking hours (all nine of them a day) playing WoW. No, that's not Brick.


Brick is bright, works hard, and despite his counterculture appearance, he has a healthy entrepreneurial spirit. I'm pretty sure he's going to end up running his own business some day, and be awesome at it too. He already has more job experience that a lot of 40 year olds that I know. He's worked as an auto electronics tech (certified), cook, bartender, insurance adjuster, house painter, pizza delivery driver (no fatalities!) and even a septic system inspector (no fatalities!!). If you're thinking that that is the resume of someone who has a touch of ADHD, you'd be right. But he uses it to his advantage. He currently works as a pedicab driver in Austin. Lance Armstrong? What a poser. Let me see Lance haul some 300 pound drunk chick up the mountains in stage 6 of the Tour de France, then I'll be impressed.


I'm a bit envious of Brick, because he's a good musician too. He plays the guitar, something I tried to do over and over when I was younger, but could never quite get past that "oh god you really suck" stage. He's been in bands that have played club gigs here in Austin. Being his roadie sort of sucked, but I always got a kick out of watching Brick play guitar live (with Moose on drums).




I want to be the minority
I don't need your authority
Down with the moral majority
'Cause I want to be the minority

One last thing. I don't think you'll ever have the opportunity to see Brick's ass, but if you do, you'll know it's Brick because he has your name tattooed on his butt. Sorry, it should read - he has "your name" tattooed on his butt. That's a great conversation starter, no? He can say to any chick in a bar, or any priest or police officer "Hey, did you know I've got 'Your Name' on my butt?"

And you thought that he had "Acme" stamped somewhere. Silly person.

Ah, Humor-blogs. Still funny after all of these months.

Moose - Just One of My Favorite*

I've got three children, all more-or-less grown. If you've got children, and acquaintances with third-world manners, eventually someone will ask you "which one's your favorite?" That is such an unfair question. It's like asking someone "Which is your favorite Beatles album?" I'll usually say "The White One". No, seriously, all of my children are white. And I'd have to go with Abbey Road.

Moose is my oldest son. He's now almost 22, and works as a mechanic. He's got tattoos that are larger than some of my childhood pets, but he's kind-hearted and even tempered. I'm not sure how the hell that happened.

We had Moose when I was in graduate school, and even though he was born with red hair, we decided to keep him. It worked out ok, because as he got older his hair turned blonde. But it was awkward there for a while. He sort of went through this dark Goth phase during middle- and high school. The doctor said it was because my wife and I were still married and had a good relationship, above-average income, and something called "expectations". He wrote us a prescription(for ExpectaRid), and while it did lower our expectations, it didn't completely eliminate them. Eventually Moose grew out of that Goth stage. Mostly. But I expected that he would.

Moose has been an auto mechanic for about two years. I'm very proud of him, because he works hard, and he's a great mechanic. I know this, because he just works a couple of miles from where we live, and I almost never see stray transmission or engine parts scattered about the roadway. In fact, the only cars you ever see parked on the shoulder are those with flat tires - because, well, see sometimes business gets a little slow, and they have this box of roofing nails...

I'm amazed that he ended up becoming a mechanic, because I have no mechanical aptitude whatsoever. I took a mechanical aptitude test in high school, and after they graded it they told me never to approach metal shop, and to try to avoid using the classroom pencil sharpeners too. There was a time when I was a little disappointed that Moose didn't get a four-year degree, but he loves what he's doing, and he's good at it too. That's what's really important, and that's why I'm very proud of him. Now if I could only get him to stop listening to that Slipknot crap, and convert him to some real music, like Led Zeppelin or the Stones. Damn, now where did I put that ExpectaRid ?

* My apologies to any Alaskan readers who thought that this was going to be a recipe post.

I confess. My favorite humor blogs site is Humor-blogs.

Gentrification - The Upside

That title is a bit misleading. I'm not going to try to defend the "big" concept of gentrification. I'm well aware that just like telling your children to be completely honest, sometimes it can be a good thing, and sometimes it can be a disaster of unimaginable proportions. My goal is simply to argue that in my individual circumstance, moving from suburban hell to an urban condo not only benefits me and my family, but my city too.

After we move, I'll be less than two miles from where I work. Weather permitting, I plan on biking to work most days. "God, I'm glad I don't have to sit next to you at work," you're saying, because you're one of those people with an overly sensitive olfactory gizmo. Not to worry. There are showers at work.

Not only will we be located closer to work, but much closer to the places we like to go for fun : the park, the movies, restaurants, live music venues, art car parades, tattoo shops... the list goes on. The point is, less driving means less gasoline burned, less pollution and a smaller (God I'm sick of this term) carbon footprint. There will also be less wear and tear on the city's infrastructure.

Let me go off on a bit of a tangent here. There's this cool web site at Walkscore.com. You can plug in your address, and it will tell you (on a score of 0 to 100) how "walkable" your neighborhood is. If you're within easy walking distance to schools, grocery stores, shopping, and entertainment, you'll have a higher score. I plugged in my current address in the suburban wasteland, and my score was 2 . Yeah, a fuckin' two. There are probably farmers with scores of 3. They call that a "car dependent" neighborhood. I loathe being dependent on anything, especially something as mechanical (and hence, unpredictable) as a car. So that just won't do. When I plug in my future urban address, the score is 83. And not like you really care, but if I walk more, I'll probably be healthier too. Ok, tangent over.


When I say "New York City" it probably triggers dozens of different ideas and images in your head. It might even make some of my red-state readers' eyelids twitch a little bit. (Breathe deeply and go to your happy place.) You probably don't think of NYC being "green", but in fact it is one of the most (if not the most) energy efficient cities in the country. Most New Yorkers walk to work, or take public transportation. And when they heat their individual apartments, it also helps to heat the apartment just above them, and the apartment above that one, and the...well, you get the idea.

Our condo won't have quite that kind of population density, but the square footage that we're going to be heating and cooling will be less than 1/3 of the space we're currently heating and cooling. We'll be sucking up much less of our planet's resources. That's a good thing, right? I don't know, perhaps you've got the date of the Rapture circled on your calendar, so you think all of this is moot. Either way, it's more fuel for your chrome Jesus-fish emblazoned white Escalade.
Well, those are my points. Perhaps you're a fiery-eyed anti-gentrification activist, and you see this post (as well as the previous one) as just one big lame rationalization on my part. Meh, perhaps you're right to some degree. But if you are criticizing me from within the cozy borders of the continental United States, just keep in mind that you're enjoying the benefits of one of the grandest* gentrification projects of all time :





* By "grandest" I simply mean grand in scope, not grand in the sense of good or correct.


Crap. Am I getting too heavy for Humor-blogs ?

Gentrification - Things Change, Wear a Cup

Reading an essay that starts off by defining a word is usually about as much fun as starting a long drive to Vegas with severe stomach cramps and a colicky baby. But, much like going to Vegas, sometimes you just gotta do it. When the subject matter is controversial, starting off by defining your terms provides a foundation from which arguments, counter arguments, and different points of view can be discussed. So...

Gentrification : the process of renewal and rebuilding accompanying the influx of middle class or affluent people into deteriorating areas that often displaces poorer residents.

When I was discussing the virtues of living in Austin, I had mentioned gentrification as one issue that concerned me. One commenter called me out on it, saying that I was engaging in gentrification by planning to move into a condo in central Austin after my wife and I sell our house in the 'burbs. "Guilty," I said, because even though I wasn't raised Catholic, my Sunday school teachers still did a damned good job of making me feel moderately guilty for just about anything and everything. Kudos, Mrs. Armstrong!

For the sake of argument, I'm going to agree to participating in the gentrification of Austin on at least some level. It's sort of titillating to envision me invading an inner-city tenement, flushing out the impoverished minority residents with automatic weapons and concussion grenades. Khaki doesn't really flatter me, so picture me in camo. In the meantime, my wife has hot-wired the Caterpillar D6R bulldozer. She proceeds to collapse that eyesore into a dusty pile of concrete and metal while the residents watch from the sidewalk. (She's raised three teenagers, so don't think that she couldn't do it.) We're feeling super-duper evil, so we make the newly homeless load the broken fragments of their last known address into the dump truck.

Okay, still got that image? That's pretty much what happened. Except instead of an inner-city tenement, it was a trailer park. And instead of my wife and I clearing the property, the actual property owner did. And I'm not certain, but I'm fairly sure that most of the residents weren't minorities. And though they weren't Forbes-listers most of them would have kicked your ass, with relish, had you called them "impoverished". Just to muddy the issue even more, one of the trailer park residents was none other than Matt McConaughey. Let's all hope he can pick up the pieces of his shattered life and move on. To one of his other two or three homes.

Sure, you can flex and twist and contort that scenario to fit our initial definition of gentrification, but your spindly little arms are going to get tired. The property owner was going to develop that property and build those condos out of his own self-interest, whether I bought one or not. Sure, that's not just a big fat rationalization, but a morbidly obese one, trolling the buffet at the Golden Corral. But what's a day without a rationalization? It's damned impossible, unless you're in a coma - and I'm not even completely sure about that.

"You know, I would spend more time with the kids, if it weren't for this crappy comatose state."

The property owner obtained prior approval from the neighborhood homeowners' association to develop the condos. He also agreed to try to preserve many of the native Pecan trees (some almost 200 years old), although some trees will be lost with the construction. Many of those protesting this development have done so in the name of preservation of these ancient native Pecan trees. That's well and good, but that's not a gentrification issue (see above), that's a save-the-whales-and-don't-club-baby-seals-and-stop-clearcutting-rainforests-and-here's-your-Sierra-Club-membership-renewal-card type issue. It's sort of like protesting slavery, when what you really hate is just the cotton industry.

Still other protesters throw out the word "gentrification", when what they are really protesting is change. They like the trailer park. They like the Pecan trees. They like Austin before Dell. They like Austin before California moved here. They like the Austin the way it was twenty years ago, and they adopt this constant inconsolable whine because they are completely unable to get their cerebral cortexes around the concept that if someplace is exciting and nice and cool and prosperous, it will naturally attract others to live there, resulting in the unavoidable change.

Change happens in our lives. It's inevitable. Try to deny it, but to do so just makes you look sad and pathetic, like a 24 year old who spends his waking hours in his parents' garage apartment, daydreaming about how totally perfect and awesome things were when he was 6 years old. Grow up. When I was a teenager, the Texas Highway Department decided that they needed the property my family's home was sitting on to widen the interstate highway. It's called "eminent domain", and there wasn't a fucking thing we could do about it. It wasn't easy to have our home taken like that, but it teaches you to deal with and to expect change - unpredictable, capricious, inconvenient, and sometimes barbaric change. And it also taught me that when I finally bought a house of my own, not to get one next to a highway.

The condo development we'll be moving to could be called unwanted change, or perhaps a travesty against nature, but I think it's a stretch to call it gentrification. But let's say that I concede this point. I still think the positives outweigh the negatives. I make those arguments in "Gentrification - The Upside".


I know, this is a bit heavier than usual, but you can lighten up over at Humor-blogs.

Oh Please Oh Please Oh Please - Part III

This is the last in a series of posts, where we attempt to convince a potential buyer of our home to move to Austin. ( If you light some Vanilla candles, it will cover up the smell of desperation.) The staff here at the Taunt Vortex highly recommends reading at least part II before diving right into part III. But if you're one of those short-attention span non-linear thinking types, then go right ahead and read this one first. Or not at all. What do we care, it's a free blogosphere.

5. Crime - for a major city, Austin actually has relatively little crime. Personally, I've cut down considerably on my criminal activity since moving here. If you venture over to the East side of Austin, you might see evidence of gang activity. But the gangs here are really "gang lite", and nothing like the gangsta thugs you'll find on the East or West coasts. In Austin, the primary gang activities consist of making graffiti and lowering standardized test scores.

6. Schools - if you buy our home, you'll be in a school district that has a great reputation. In fact, the high school in our district is so superior, that two of my children didn't even feel worthy enough to finish their educations there. One of my sons finished his last two years by home schooling, and my daughter transferred to another out-of-district school to complete her senior year. What else did we get for our outrageously high property taxes? One high school counselor (in her most condescending tone) told my daughter that she'd never get into a four-year university if she took algebra in summer school. (She did, and she did). So if you ask around, most everyone will tell you that the schools in this district are great. Just don't put us on the spot, ok? Thanks.

7. The Economy - Austin is the state capital, as well as a major college town, and this provides a relatively stable base for the economy. Over the last couple of decades Austin has also become a tech mecca of sorts. Up until recently, you could stand in my front yard and throw a rock into the yard of at least a couple employees of the computer company that shall remain unnamed (but with customer service straight from the bowels of hell). When they finally got a restraining order I had to stop with the rock throwing thing.

But the fact is, Austin has a great economy, and continues to grow, even with the general economic downturn nationally. Of course, many here are concerned about the consequences of growth (more traffic, gentrification, stresses on social services and the infrastructure). Admittedly, these issues concern me too, and poorly planned growth could threaten the great quality of life in the Austin I love. So here's my growth plan for Austin : after you guys move here, and buy my house, we're closing the gates. No one moves in unless somebody moves out.

8. Religion - Austin is a cosmopolitan city, with residents from all over the country, and all over the world. You're certainly welcome to practice your religion here, be you Protestant, Jew, Hindu, Catholic, Buddhist, Mormon...heck, even Episcopalian. There's even a couple of "megachurches" if you prefer your religion depersonalized. And if you're atheist, there's a fairly large atheist coalition here, so you can get together and talk about how much you really don't believe in anything. Austin is cool with that.




While you're free to attend the church of your choice here, be aware that there's no pressure to do so. In fact, the majority of Austin residents don't attend church regularly. Of course, most other Texans think we're all going straight to Hell, and that living in Austin is just a small step above living in New York City or San Francisco. We've decided to take that as a compliment.

We've lived in places - and by places I mean a small little shit hole town in Texas that had nothing really going for it other than sanitary drinking water and roads to get you the fuck out of there - where you were looked down upon if you didn't attend church regularly. That would be followed by flat tires on your car, missing pets, and the mysterious absence of mail for 2 or 3 weeks at a time. Indeed, the Lord does work in mysterious, and apparently criminal, ways. In Austin, there's no pressure like that. Go to church on Sunday if you like, but most of us are going to be sleeping late, then watching football.


So there you have it. Eight good reasons for you to move to Austin and buy my house. But don't think that's all that there is. I could easily write "Oh Please Oh Please Oh Please" parts IV to numbers so high that I don't honestly know how to write them in Roman numerals. Keep in mind that if you do decide to move here, we must immediately stop with the "Austin rules" talk, and instead recommend other fine cities like Denver, Pocatello, or Iowa City. That's just part of the deal.


Visit Humor-blogs. But you don't want to live there.

Oh Please Oh Please Oh Please - Part II

Just like in the "Green Hornet" series, I'll recap events from the last post to get you up to speed. Heaven forbid you take the two minutes to read "Oh Please Oh Please Oh Please - Part I". In short, we're trying to sell our house, and the family that's interested in buying our house is on the fence about moving to the best fucking city in the world that's not in the Netherlands*. This post is an embarrassingly obvious attempt to push them off of that fence with the literary equivalent of 8 burly and not-so-fresh smelling lumberjacks.


1. Air Quality - the air here in Austin is, unlike in Houston or L.A., almost always invisible. We will occasionally have "ozone action days" in the Summer, but on those days you can ride the bus for free! Yeah, you read that right. Fuckin' free!


2. Refreshing absence of natural disasters - earthquakes? Nada. Hurricanes? Nope. Landslides? Zilch. Blizzards? Don't make me laugh. Floods? Just the occasional flash flood that resolves rather quickly. If you're smart enough to move here, then you're probably smart enough not to drive your car into a flooded roadway. So no real problem there. Wildfires? Not really. Every year when things get a bit dry, the fire Marshalls will warn everyone that the potential for suburban wildfires exists, but I've never seen it happen in almost 10 years. Not to get all biology-ish on you, but the vegetation here doesn't have the terpenes that the plants have in Southern California. What that basically means is that their homes are surrounded by millions of "mother nature's gasoline cans", and ours here in Austin aren't.


3. Traffic - Austin does have some traffic during rush hour, but nothing like you see in Houston, Dallas, L.A. or Atlanta. One thing you do have to watch for are the deer. They get horny from about November through January, and tend to wander into the roadway oblivious to the pickup trucks, Hummers, and SUVs**. Sure, it's sort of messy, but it can also give you a great "out". Let's say you're speeding along in your 5-series BMW, and you lose control while attempting to text your broker while trying to negotiate a rather sharp turn. No problemo. "A deer ran out in front of me" are words that auto insurance agents hear every day in Austin.


4. Live Music - Austin is known as "The Live Music Capital of the World". Okay, maybe that is a bit of hyperbole. But you can find a wide variety of great music here, seven days a week. You can find rock, blues, country, folk, punk - just about anything. Austin is also home to major music festivals (Austin City Limits, SXSW), but the real treasures are the local musician that you can listen to on a weekly basis. What other city has a statue to commemorate a popular musician?


"Lubbock's got a Buddy Holly statue!" you say. Puhhhleeezzz. We've got a fuckin' Stevie Ray Vaughn statue!!


There is some concern that with rising real estate costs***, that the local musicians will get priced out of Austin, leaving us not with the Live Music Capital of the World, but the city with the Best Live Music Museums in the world. Hey, we're doing our part to keep the live music here. We've dropped the price on our home twice. Seriously, we're asking less than the low ball "zestimate" you'll find on our house on that Ebay whore of real estate, Zillow.

Yeah, Austin rocks. You should soooo move here - and buy our house.

We're not done yet, but we're well aware of the attention span of most blog readers. So there will be an Oh Please Oh Please Oh Please - Part III.


* If you adhere to the conventional global warming scenario, Holland will be under 12 feet of water in the not-to-distant future, while Austin might end up with some lovely beachfront homes.

** SUVs/trucks/Hummers comprise 78% of the vehicles on the road in Austin. But it's really ok to drive something else. Just don't get in their way.

*** Seriously, there was a time when real estate prices here were actually appreciating!

You can access Humor-blogs in Austin from the amazing internet!

Oh Please Oh Please Oh Please - Part I

Occasionally my wife and I will do really edgy, unpredictable and potentially dangerous things, like get married, have children, give said children car keys, etc. Our latest foray into the realm of questionable activity is putting our house up for sale.

Our timing is exquisite, no? What can I say, it's a gift. Would you like to purchase some Enron shares? I can hook you up. Here's a conversation we might have had earlier this year:

"You know, we actually have a decent amount of equity in our home now."

"Yeah, but I just have this feeling that we're waaayy overdue for a major recession, or perhaps even a depression. Wouldn't it be interesting to try to sell a house in that type of economic environment? Oh, the stories we could tell our grandkids!!"

So we've had our house on the market for about three months now, not only in one of the worst markets in decades, but we're now also in the worst season of the year for selling. But yesterday, we got an email from our real estate agent saying something vague about another agent having "good news" for her (us). I suspect our real estate agent communicated to us via email because she's quite busy looking (or training) for a career that might actually provide income in the future.

It turns out that the "good news" isn't quite good news yet, it's only "potentially" good news. It's sort of the difference between saying "Good news! You won the lotto!!" and "Good news! Here's $5 to buy lotto tickets. You might win!!" The potentially good news is that the other real estate agent has some clients that like our house, but the deciding factor is their decision whether or not to move to Austin.

As you can see, there is a virtual minefield where this "good news" could get blown to shreds, and end up like Lieutenant Dan, in a wheelchair, working a shrimp boat. Treasury Secretary Paulson could issue a statement saying "Just kidding!!" about that 700 billion to prop up financial institutions. Or perhaps this wonderful family won't be able to get a mortgage to buy our home (although our real estate agent reassures us, as she's updating her resume, that mortgages are still easily obtained in Austin). There's always that chance of a global viral pandemic, or a Tucson-sized asteroid crashing into the Pacific. Those things could certainly put a damper on the housing market. It's even possible that this family could decide to move and be able to obtain financing, but then because of cutbacks at the airlines (again, due to the sucky economy) poor maintenance results in their plane plunging to the Earth in a ball of flames somewhere in Oklahoma. That would be just my luck.

I know things are tough, so I'm not going to get my hopes up. But potentially good news is better than no potentially good news, right? I don't want to leave the matter entirely up to fate, either, so in "Oh Please Oh Please Oh Please - Part II", I'm going to give those potential buyers every good reason I can think to move to the best city in the world, Austin. Uh, no - not Austin, Indiana. Austin, Texas. No offense, Indiana.


If you're depressed, economically or otherwise, try Humor-blogs.

Memo To Russia: Lighten Up!

You're Russian. You've got breadlines, you've got fashion that makes Barbara Bush look chic, it always seems to be damned cold, and the closest thing you've got to comedy is Yakov Smirnov. And the traffic always sucks, because there's always these oversized military vehicles carrying nuclear warheads, driving around the square, making it a bitch to get to the breadline. It would be even worse if you could afford a car and had to deal with that.


Granted, living in Russia is no trip to the Playboy mansion*. When words like "dismal", "bleak" and "depressing" are the only choices to describe your lifestyle on the census questionnaire, you know things are tough. We here at the Taunt Vortex want to help.


The other day, we just happened to click on to the ClustrMaps icon (see, there in the sidebar ?) to see where are global visitors hale from. As expected, most of our visitors are from English speaking locales, such as the United States, Canada, England, Australia and New Zealand. We get some visitors from Europe, fewer still from South America, but Asia is fairly well represented (India, Indonesia, Japan).


What struck the geography and demographics department here at the Taunt Vortex was the conspicuous absence of visitors from certain countries. Unless you count Hong Kong, there are no visitors from China. That's understandable though. The Chinese are all busy growing the economy at 9% in order to kick the economic ass of the U.S. If the Chinese all started surfing the web, I'm pretty sure they're looking at maybe 2% growth at best.


There's also a paucity of visitor from Africa. After thinking about this for a while and actually doing some research, we figured out that this is because approximately 87% of internet usage in Africa is dedicated (by law) to global email scams. In Nigeria, the law sets the email scam requirement at 98%.


No North Korean has ever visited the Taunt Vortex. Again, this is somewhat understandable, considering the state of their State, the lackluster economy, and their slow adaptation to technology. In fact, North Koreans are still awaiting their first shipment of Commodore 64s.


Then there's Russia. There's this ginormous swath of real estate north of China, India and the Middle East with no red dots whatsoever! What the Hell is up with that? I know the Russians have technology - they've got astronauts and ballistic missiles. Certainly there must be some internet access somewhere. While I'm sure that most Russian households don't have PCs and internet access, I bet there are a fair number of internet cafes in the larger cities. Sure, there's probably a line. But just wait a few minutes until the guy that's Googling "freedom" and "democracy" gets hauled off to the gulag (which doesn't exist anymore, wink wink) and eventually you'll be able to surf the web.


Sure, we here at the Taunt Vortex would be honored if you, as a Russian (even though you can't read this now) decided to visit our humble humor web site. But if you don't visit our website, at least visit some humor website! You guys definitely need a few laughs, and deserve better than what you're getting. We're thinking that if you guys had better access to quality humor, it would probably prevent things like that messy South Ossetia misunderstanding.


Here's a challenge to Russia from the Taunt Vortex : if, over the next twelve months, the Taunt Vortex gets more visits from Russia than from Arkansas (see, we're setting the bar pretty low), I will personally send a copy of "Cruel Shoes" by Steve Martin to Vladimir Putin.


Good luck.


* actually, nothing else in the entire world is like a visit to the Playboy mansion, I'm guessing.




As a resource, dear Russians, you can find a lot of quality humor blogs at Humor-blogs. So no more excuses!

Pop Quiz Answer Key

First the good news - everyone that submitted answers provided some pretty decent humorous answers, so no one failed. The bad news - the most any one person got correct was three out of fifteen answers. So Shieldmaiden messed up the grading curve for the entire class. Feel free to vandalize her locker or shoe polish her car's windshield in the parking lot.



Honestly, though, it was a fairly tough test. There's really no way anyone could have known the answers, so it was a guessing contest - much like being CEO of a bank. My wife even took the pop quiz, and despite the fact that she's known me over 28 years, she only got nine correct.



In the end, it doesn't really matter, because you know what you can get with a degree from Taunt Vortex U.? Diddly. Squat. Nada. Zilch. Oh, sure, you might be the funniest guy in the office, but you won't be able to use a spread sheet or figure out Power Point.



Ok, on to the answers, some with explanations.



1. When I was in high school, a friend of mine threw a party to welcome home Skylab. (It was due to re enter the atmosphere in a fiery ball of glory. I think we were off by a few days).



2. I was lucky enough to be there on each of the three occasions when my wife gave birth. ( Well, as far as I know, it's only been 3 times.)



3. Years ago, I was being transported via ambulance to a hospital in Virginia, when the ambulance had to stop to get gas. (No kidding. I had been in a car wreck. I was in pain. There was already a guy on a stretcher, so I had to sit up for the ride. And then they had to stop for gas. Virginia sucks.)



4. In college, I had a roommate that had the exact same name that I had. (Well, our first and last names were the same. Our middle names were different - his was "douchebag".)



5. The first time I saw an adult woman topless was at the beach. (I was on a trip with my friend and his family, and his dad was driving us down the beach. She was playing volleyball on the beach. That was the point that I realized "Fishing sucks. Topless women rule." )



6. On our honeymoon, my wife and I just happened to stay at the hotel featured in the movie Vacation. (The El Tovar at the Grand Canyon, if you were wondering. And, no, there was no blond in a Ferrari on the highway).



7. When vacationing in Colorado with our 3 children, we just happened to stay in a hotel featured in the movie The Shining. (Scared the kids and pissed my wife off when I broke through the bathroom door with an ax.)



8. Once, back when I was in high school, some friends and I attempted to sell weeds on the street corner. (No, not weed. Not marijuana. Weeds. Someone actually bought some. Only in America.)



9. Once, when a friend and I were walking to a graveside service after a funeral, we both had to keep from laughing when we passed a gravestone that had Titt on it. (Self explanatory.)



10. The last time I was in an emergency room, I made everyone laugh when I said "Luke, I'm your father". (I had on an oxygen mask, and every time I exhaled fog came out. Eh, guess you had to be there.)



11. The last time I was in Alaska, I ran a marathon. (No, I didn't see Sarah Palin. Yes, it was a long time ago.)



12. One of the most memorable and interesting seminars I ever attended in college was about the Rolling Stones. (It was given by a couple of philosophy professors, one who played in a band called "Pico de Gallo and the Backfire Bombers".)



13. My best friend growing up (until he moved away at about age 10) was totally gay. (Seriously, he had streamers on his bike and a white wicker basket in the front when he was 7. Don't tell me it's a choice.)



14. My Sunday school teacher told me that watching Night Gallery was evil. (That was the Rod Serling series that came after "The Twilight Zone". And I've done way worse things since then.)



15. I once had a girlfriend who was afraid to ride escalators. (Seriously. And she ended up joining the Air Force, defending our country. I suppose we'll be ok, unless the enemy decides to attack us with escalators.)

Again, thanks for participating. You may see a lot more of these in the future, especially if I'm feeling lazy and narcissistic - which is more often than I care to admit.

As usual, I implore you to visit Humor-blogs. There's always a substitute teacher over there, so it's all play and no work.

Oh! If any of you actually answered the questions by writing directly onto your monitor, you get an A++ for making me laugh, uh, but you probably shouldn't be attempting to operate motor vehicles or electric can openers.

Pop Quiz

I've got a wicked bad combination of both narcissism and laziness this morning. Instead of providing some humorous and insightful analysis of recent newsworthy events or personal experiences (like I ever do that anyway), you kids get a pop quiz today.

Now I realize that when we first started, I told everyone "no pop quizzes". You fell for that in high school, too, remember?? Sucker.

Don't worry. This will only be 38% of your final grade. And it's fill-in-the blank. See how easy it will be?? I wrote almost all of the words for you - you just have to provide one or two words. Do you ever feel guilty about me doing all of the heavy lifting here? Now with that little guilt trip, let's not waste any more of my time. Good luck. You can either answer by writing directly onto your monitor, or you can leave your answers in the comments section.

1. When I was in high school, a friend of mine threw a party to welcome home ______ .

2. I was lucky enough to be there on each of the three occasions when my wife ____ _____ .

3. Years ago, I was being transported via ambulance to a hospital in Virginia, when the ambulance had to stop to ___ ___ .

4. In college, I had a roommate that had the exact same ____ that I had.

5. The first time I saw an adult woman topless was at the _____ .

6. On our honeymoon, my wife and I just happened to stay at the hotel featured in the movie ________ .

7. When vacationing in Colorado with our 3 children, we just happened to stay a hotel featured in the movie ___ _______ .

8. Once, back when I was in high school, some friends and I attempted to sell _____ on the street corner.

9. Once, when a friend and I were walking to a graveside service after a funeral, we both had to keep from laughing when we passed a gravestone that said ____ on it.

10. The last time I was in an _________ ____ , I made everyone laugh when I said "Luke, I'm your father".

11. The last time I was in Alaska, I ran a ________ .

12. One of the most memorable and interesting seminars I ever attended in college was about the _______ ______ .

13. My best friend growing up (until he moved away at about age 10) was totally ___ .

14. My Sunday school teacher told me that watching _____ _______ was evil.

15. I once had a girlfriend that was afraid to ride __________ .


That wasn't so bad, was it? But be forewarned that I grade on the curve, and there are a lot of Asian kids in your class.

Look for the answers - someday.

Oh, and if you continue to be disruptive in class, I'm sending your ass directly to Humor-blogs .

Farmer's Market : Random Observations

My lovely Taunt Vortex wife and I had a late breakfast/early lunch today. The weather was great, so we decided to stop by one of our local farmer's markets after we ate. Farmer's markets can be great resources for urban dwellers. Where else can you find organically grown vegetables, grass fed beef, hand-made soap, tie dyed shirts and handmade jewelry, all in one place? Ok, right, there is the Wal-Mart. You got me there. But the farmer's market is outdoors!

If the Russians (or Republicans) ever develop a hippie vaporization warhead and need to test it, the farmer's market is going to be ground zero. I suppose it's because of the live folk music, goat's milk and organically grown vegetables and men's clothing, but this place was crawling with hippies. The farmer's market is very pet-friendly too, with at least 1/3 of the patrons walking around with dogs on leashes. So watch where you step. Because some of the dogs poo on the ground too.

Just some random observations from today's visit.

1). There was a booth from a central Texas farm that confirmed the rural legend, most often heard in a childhood rhyme we're all familiar with*. Yes, McDonald's Farm was at the farmer's market. I was mesmerized, and with "E-I-E-I-O" echoing in my head, I didn't even notice what they happened to be selling.

2). There was a booth selling Sgt. Pepper's Sauces. I'm not exactly sure what that was, but I imagine it's something you put on top of your organic pasta right before you take that Magical Mystery Tour. I am the walrus. Goo-goo-ga-joob.

3). There was a booth set up devoted to Boxer rescue. Now I'm all for being humane to animals, especially dogs. But this just struck me as blatant breedism. What about the Dachshunds? Or the Border Collies? Or the Jack Russell Terriers? It made me angry to think about all those other breeds in dire straits while the Boxers get special rescue treatment. That's just not right. Not in my America. Not at my farmer's market! Damn breedists.

We didn't buy anything today. We didn't have cash, and the sandal-wearing, monthly-bathing, hemp shirted entrepreneurs at the farmer's market view debit cards and electronic commerce as tools of the devil. So if the weather's nice, we'll take some cash and visit again next weekend. I had my eye on this pizza stand that was selling this thick crust pizza that looked wonderfully unhealthy and non-organic.

As we were walking out to the parking lot, I overhead a man say something rather loudly that caught my attention. I'm not sure who he was talking too, but I didn't turn to look, because it probably would have been embarrassing for everyone involved. What exactly did he say? (Visual to follow). He said, and I'm dead serious:

Let me know if you do that suppository thing, I want to be there when it happens.

I don't remember every word that I have ever uttered in my 40+ years of life on Earth, but I have never ever ever had the occasion to say that particular sentence. Especially in public. Especially at a farmer's market.

For the entire next week I'm pretty sure that I'll be preoccupied with trying to come up with something to say to outdo that guy when we visit the market next weekend.

* Yes, I know that sentence isn't grammatically correct. But I like the way it sounds. Bite me.


Visit http://humor-blogs.com/. It's the farmer's market of pesticide-free organic locally grown humor.

Angry Seafood Interview

The Taunt Vortex interview with ChrisC over at Angry Seafood is out.

Chris runs a pretty cool shop over at Angry Seafood, and the Humor-blog.com interviews are a nice weekly feature. Check out the older interviews for a primer on both how to ask interesting random questions, and on how to provide unique and amusing answers to interesting random questions. It's good practice for speed dating - so I hear.

I'm sworn to secrecy regarding most of the details, but if you're ever lucky enough to get an interview with Chris, you'll be forced to be blindfolded, then thrown into the back seat of a large black sedan*, driven downtown to a sketchy alley, where after 7 knocks on a door - followed by 3 quick knocks - you'll be brought into a small room and seated for the interview.

Of course being blindfolded, I couldn't see exactly what things looked like, but I staged the interview to the best of my recollection, resulting in the photo you see above. When we were done, they tied my hands behind my back, and drove me to an exit ramp off of I-90 where they dragged me out of the trunk and threw me into the grass. I think that's an Angry Seafood tradition when the interviewee has given an exceptionally good interview. Thanks guys!

I'm hoping this leads to more interview opportunities. Seriously, if you can survive an AngrySeafood interview, sitting down with Katie Couric or Charlie Gibson should be a breeze. By the way, I have read all of the newspapers, and the Bush Doctorin' has something to do with a medicated powder that kills crabs.

AngrySeafood is just one of the many great humor blogs at Humor-blogs.

* Of course I was blindfolded, so I don't know for certain, but as I was getting into the car they said "We're putting you in the back seat of a large black sedan". So I'm taking them at their word.

There Will Be No Cat Presidents

America has certainly embraced change and the idea of racial equality with the election of an African-American to the Presidency. It's easy to imagine a woman becoming President in the not-too-distant future as well. But - mark my words - we will never have a president that is a "cat" person.

Sure, just about every U.S. President has had a pet in the White House. There's been some variety, but by and large, U.S. Presidents favor dogs as pets. The American people just aren't ready for a "cat" president, who would most likely be seen as aloof, not particularly loyal, and prone to wandering around the neighborhood at night. That just won't do.

Even our President-elect is keenly aware of this. He promised his girls a dog if he got into the White House, not a cat. If the Obama family attempted to waltz into the Oval Office with a Tabby, I'm pretty sure impeachment papers would be drawn up within the hour.

"But what about Socks?" you ask, because not only are you a cat person, but you still harbor warm fuzzy memories of the Clinton administration. The fact that it was Bill Clinton almost proves my point, but be aware that the Clintons also had a dog, Buddy. So the pets cancelled each other out. Besides, I suspect that Socks was probably Hillary's or Chelsea's idea.

Heads up, Republicans. You can use this to your advantage in future elections. No, not in 2012 - we've already established that Obama is a dog person. That boat has sailed. But in 2016, make sure that your party sends a gift of at least one (or better, 2 or 3) cats to the winner of the Democratic Presidential primary. All you need is one photo of the Democratic candidate nuzzling the Tabby (not a euphemism), and circulate said photo to every household in the country.

The Republican party could nominate a recovering crystal meth addict with an eighth grade education, four failed marriages, a lisp, bad hygiene, a complete collection of bootleg Celine Dion albums, and whose first name is "Abdul" - but give him a Golden Retriever at every photo op, and he'll win the Presidential election against the "cat" Democratic nominee by a landslide.

As a disclaimer, I have nothing against cats. It's just that cat ownership is a marker for many many personality disorders and psychiatric conditions. Sort of like that gun rack and the "Calvin" peeing on a Chevy logo sticker on that Ford F-150 is a marker for an infrequent visitor to MOMA. You'd know this was true if you had read "Cat Owners: definitely not quite right" in the March 2002 issue of "The Journal of Mental Illness Rumors and Review of Midwestern Beer Gardens". Oh, and I recommend the Great Dane Brew Pub in Madison.

There are actually some very nice and funny cat people over at Humor-blogs. Well, at least they were nice to me until I wrote this.

On This Historic and Momentous Occasion

We all knew it was coming. Now that it's here, it's almost surreal. On occasions of great historical significance, I often get choked up and become somewhat at a loss for words. Last night I tried to find the right words to put this event into perspective, but let's face it, I'm no Jack Kennedy. So, I'll just be brief and to the point.

This is my 109 th post here at the Taunt Vortex.

It just seems like yesterday that I was getting an account at Blogger, trying to find just the right template, and then trying to come up with a name for this beast that would attract interest, but not draw undue attention from law enforcement officials. And now, on November 5th 2008, I'm marking my 109th post.

Now some of you who are hung-up with the base-ten numbering system may not appreciate the significance of 109. But 109 has profound implications, not just for me personally, but also on a global and historic basis. For example, in the ancient Aztec culture, there were 109 months in each year of their calendar. And in Aztec temples, the total number of steps was always divisible by 109. Don't believe me? Go ahead and count.

Have you read the U.S. Constitution lately? The 109th word in the Constitution is "the". That's a pretty damned important word. Just try writing a constitution, or a novel, or instructions on how to assemble Ikea furniture without it. Okay, well, maybe that last one isn't a good example.


"How about 109 in math and science?", you ask because you wore black horned-rim glasses and had a pocket protector in high school. If you check out the periodic table, you'll see that the element with the atomic number of 109 is Meitnerium. Never heard of it? Doesn't matter - in 1998 it was voted "element most likely to cause mutant human zombies" by Popular Physicist Magazine.

In mathematics,109 is the 29th prime number and a Chen prime number. I know! Right? It's also the smallest factor of one more than the product of the first twenty-three terms of the Euclid-Mullin sequence, making it the twenty fourth term. If you understand that, you need to put down the slide rule and get out more.

If you're a military buff, you'll know that the Messerschmitt 109 was a German fighter plane, and that John Kennedy commanded PT - 109, before it was so tragically sunk by a Messerschmitt 109 near the Solomon islands.

In sports, Barry Sanders rushed for 109 career touchdowns. And earlier this year, a poll from "Soothsayers, Fortune Tellers and Clairvoyants Quarterly" predicted that it would be 109 years before the Texas Rangers win a pennant. Of course, respected baseball analysts scoffed that this prediction is off by at least 212 years.

Shakespeare wrote exactly 109 Sonnets. And then he went on to write another 45 or so. "Loaded", the 1970 album by The Velvet Underground, was selected as the 109th greatest album of all time by Rolling Stone magazine. And get this - if you read the lyrics for all of the songs, the 109th word from the beginning is "taunt", and the 109th word from the end is "vortex".

That would be utterly amazing if it was true.

Lastly (and this part is really true), there was this Presidential election yesterday. You may have heard something about it, or perhaps you heard Sean Hannity weeping openly. But it turns out that a 109 year old black woman from Bastrop (near Austin), the daughter of a man born into slavery, voted early*, and voted for Barack Obama. There's probably no way to know for certain, but I suspect she may have been the oldest voter in the 2008 elections.

Oh, and senator Obama won. And my wife started her new job on Monday. So forgive me if my future posts are a little less cynical and snarky.

* Rule of thumb : if you're over 90, do that "vote early" thing.


Stop by Humor-blogs, where you can vote on the blog of your choice. I don't really care if you vote for the Taunt Vortex or not. I have a feeling that Lobo from Predator Press is going to get busted for something, then I'll just appoint myself #1.

Dude Bikes Like a Lady

My son currently works for a pedicab company here in Austin. "What the hell's a pedicab?" you might remark if you're like me, and the only thing you remember from your New York City trip 30 years ago is the Statue of Liberty and those really friendly women in Times Square that wore a bit too much make-up.

Because the Taunt Vortex is here to edify, be informed that a pedicab is basically a bicycle taxi, like the one in the photo. Coincidentally, the guy pedaling the pedicab looks a lot like my son, except that he's white, about 6'4", has a pinkish mohawk, and a Green Day tattoo on one arm. So the resemblance is striking.

I have a feeling I may be writing at least a few posts about his passengers in the near future because 1). many of them have been drinking and 2). the majority of us here in Austin do our best to live up to our tag line "Keep Austin Weird". There's some potential for some serious humor there. Here's just one story.

A few days ago, my son gave a ride to an out-of-town visitor who had a very heavy accent. My son wasn't exactly sure where this guy was from, but he needed a ride, and had cash, so off they went. After they had travelled a couple of blocks, the pedicab was passed by another bicycle rider who happened to be wearing a thong*. Apparently, this titillated the young male pedicab passenger.

Ooooooh, follow the pretty lady!

He said this with a bit of glee and humor in his voice, until my son broke the news to him.

Uh, dude. That's a GUY.

To which the foreign passenger responded, reprising the role of Fergus in "The Crying Game",

Oooooohhhh, noooooo, nooooooooo,nooooooooooooo!

My son eventually arrived at the destination, dropping off the revulsed young man. We're not sure, but we suspect he spent 30 or 40 minutes showering shortly thereafter. Poor guy.

Austin isn't exactly New York City, or San Fran, but we do have our share of weirdness and those citizens who revel in, well, let's say a "non-traditional" lifestyle. For instance, one of our regular candidates for mayor is Leslie Cochran. Don't let the first name fool you. Leslie is our local homeless crossdresser. In 2000, he garnered over 7 % of the mayoral vote. I would have voted for him, but we had differences over some critical urban development issues. If you do a little research, it's easy to discover that Austin is replete with folks that buck the stereotype of your Red-State Joe-the-Plumbers. Leslie even has his own Wikipedia entry. "Now you tell me," says the still shaken pedicab passenger.

Unless you're really uptight, Leslie is mostly harmless. But like wolves can smell fear in their prey, Leslie can smell uptightedness in Southern Baptists. So if you gawk or try to play the righteous indignation card, be prepared for a mooning. Or worse.

Here's a photo of Leslie practicing his civil rights. While doing so, he's sporting a nifty pair of black heels, and a bold white sports bra that contrasts nicely with the traditional black thong. And Tim, is that a scrunchy headband he's wearing? Tre Cool.

Welcome to Austin!!

* wearing a thong while riding a bicycle is roundly discouraged by the League of American Bicyclists. Unless you're a hot chick.

Tomorrow is November the 4th, so don't forget to vote. More importantly, visit Humor-blogs and vote for this post. With one humor blog, we can change the world! Maybe. It could happen.