Thanksgiving for Dummies

Last night we asked each other the same question we usually ask on Saturday nights: "What are you gonna do tomorrow?

My answer is always the same: "Football."

Jodi's answer changes. This week when I asked her the question, she answered, "I'm gonna start organizing for Thanksgiving."

I'm not kidding. Today my wife will be "organizing for Thanksgiving." And actually, today's not even the start of that. The organizing already started a few weeks ago. The Thanksgiving holiday really begins the moment I first hear the question: "So what should we have for Thanksgiving this year?"

I don't even know why that question comes up. We have the same thing for Thanskgiving every year. It's the same dishes every single year. Because if we don't have the same dishes every year, Jodi's mom's head will explode.

That's okay with me. I don't care what we eat, as long as it has fat and sugar.

This is the big difference between Jodi's family and my family. Jodi's family always designed every single one of their holidays and vacations around one thing: food.

My family, on the other hand, always designed every single one of our holidays and vacations around going to Catholic mass. That's because Catholics have created a patron saint or a patron sinner or a patron mixed drink for every occasion under the sun. And whenever there's a day off, you can damn well bet you're gonna be dragged to church for something. I remember just sitting there in the living room as a little kid and someone would say something like, "C'mon Paul, it's a holy day. We have to go get dirt put on our foreheads." Then one day later, "C'mon Paul, it's Cheesecake Thursday. Gotta go to mass. St. Cheesecake will be waiting." Then the next day, "C'mon Paul, it's Good Friday. Time to go to mass again and eat fishsticks." I swear to God, Catholics can ruin any day off from school or work by making you spend it sitting in a hard wooden pew.

The good thing about being Catholic, though, is that mass only lasts about 45 minutes on average, even though it always seems a lot longer. And not only that, as long as you say certain words and do a few simple things, they release you back into the wild like a catfish and you can do practically anything you want until the next mass. You'll be sitting there in church and it'll be something like:

Priest (in very monotone voice): "Oh God, in your bountiful wisdom, do that one thing."

Congregation: "Lord hear our prayer."

Priest: "Who's on first, What's on second, I Don't Know's on third."

Congregation: "Lord hear our prayer."

Priest: "Now go, get out of here, in the peace of the Lord and junk."

Congregation: "Lord hear our prayer."

And then everyone would race out of there, and they'd all go drink and smoke and fornicate and murder. But it was okay, as long as you went back the next week, said three Hail Mary's, and kept repeating "Lord hear our prayer."

So that's what I was used to growing up. Jodi, on the other hand, lived in this family where everything was about food. And that's the routine I've now had for the last 18 years. And I can tell you exactly how this Thanksgiving is going to go, because it's the same EVERY SINGLE YEAR.

Today Jodi will get out the pad of paper and work out her schedule, her remaining "to do" list, etc.

Then she's taking the entire week off work. To shop and cook.

Let me repeat that. She's taking the entire week off work... To shop... And cook.

For four people.

So this week there will be multiple trips to multiple stores. There will be all kinds of pots filled with all kinds of I don't know what. Hours and hours and hours of preparation.

On Thanksgiving day, Jodi's mom will come over to say that she's going to help cook. But as soon as she gets here, she'll announce that she's tired and will go into the other room to take a nap. She'll sleep for a few hours and magically will wake up about 15 minutes before we eat.

As for me, I'll be in charge of cleaning the house, as if we were expecting the Queen of England to show up. Even though the same four people have seen the house as a mess a million times before, the house MUST be cleaned, sanitized, and fumigated because that's the way the early Americans celebrated Thanksgiving. That, plus they would go out and murder all the Indians. Well, what do you expect? They didn't have football on Thanksgiving in those days, so they had to find some kind of activity. They just happened to choose murdering all the Indians.

Then we'll sit at the table. And Jodi's mom will look at me and say, "Paul, would you like to say grace?"

I haven't said grace at the table in forever, but she'll still ask me, because I have a penis. At least that's the rumor circulating in the family. I have a penis. And she goes to some whacko Baptist church, and that means the prayer is supposed to be said by the person with the oldest penis at the table. And that would be my penis.

But I don't say grace. I don't like to say grace. I don't even know why it's called "grace." I think a person's religious beliefs are a very personal thing between that person and his paranoia.

I've never liked the whole "saying grace" thing. At least in my Catholic family it was quick and dirty. Everyone would say it, not just one person, and we'd say it as fast as we could: "Bless-us-oh-lord-and-these-thy-gifts-which-we-are-about-to-receive-from-thy-bounty-through-christ-our-lord-amen." Beautiful. Four seconds of some rambling words and you're elbows deep in the mashed potatoes.

But Protestants are different. With them, saying grace is like really bad performance art. I swear, I think these people believe that saying grace should have been one of the categories on Star Search, right next to the Spokes Model competition. That's how they treat it anyway. I've seen some really impressive performances by some really crazy Protestants in my time, and it's never pretty. It always goes on and on forever, while all the food on the table starts developing ice crystals...

"Oh dear Lord God Jesus Christ Immanuel Savior Player to Be Named Later, Thanksgiving is a special, wondrous, glorious occasion filled with everlasting blah blah blah blah blah..."

Two hours later...

"And God! Let your manna fall from heaven like the snows of the Rocky Mountains..."

Two hours later...

"And Lord! We're not prejudiced or anything, but the reason we hate black people and Mexicans is..."

Two hours later...

"ShouldacomeonaHonda! ShouldacomeonaHonda! Who here has the intrepretation of the tongues? Please step forward to the microphone and give it please!..."

Two hours later...

"And the Lord also says, Why have your foresaken me, America? Why have you voted for that black guy? Did I tell you to vote for the black guy? Verily nay, I told you to vote for the old senile white guy and the retarded lady with the nice rack. Why have you foresaken me? Don't you know the Lord your God is an angry God?! And the Lord also says, Health reform is bad! Health reform is evil! Why should we have to pay for the health problems of others?! The Lord says, We work hard every day! Those people should have to pay for their own health care! Screw them! For as our Lord said on the Sermon on the Mount, Blessed are the... MINE! MINE! MINE! MINE! MINE! MINE! MINE! MINE!..."

Two hours later...

"So Lord, without further ado, please bless this food and nourish it to our healthy bodies as we now proceed to eat our weight in gravy. Amen."

That's what she wants me to say. But I won't do it. So I say, "No thanks. I don't want to say grace." And that's why she always has to say grace herself. This happens EVERY SINGLE YEAR.

So there it is. It's an absolute frenzy of activity. Weeks and weeks of talking about what foods will be eaten, days and days of planning, preparing, cooking, cleaning, and praying. We'll get out the good dishes and napkins. We'll sit down. All those weeks, days, and hours leading up to this one moment...

And then we'll gorge ourselves mindlessly, and 27 seconds later it'll all be over. A month of planning, organizing, shopping, cooking, praying.... 27 seconds of eating.

EVERY SINGLE YEAR.

And then, because I didn't do any of the cooking, I will have to spend the next few thousand hours doing dishes.

And then if I'm lucky I'll get to watch some football.

And then the planning will begin for what we will eat for Christmas.

"Lord hear our prayer."

Hiking -- The Stupid Recreational Choice

Every time we start to plan for our next family reunion, there it is among the suggestions -- hiking. In the 18,000 family reunions we've had, hiking ALWAYS comes up. Wanna know how many times we've actually gone hiking? Zero. Wanna know why? Because hiking is stupid. It's just another way of saying "work," and nobody wants to work on their vacation.

Don't get me wrong, I've walked among trees before. I've been in wooded areas from time to time. But I've always been there because I'm trying to get my dog to poop. I've never grabbed a walking stick and just meandered around, climbing up and down hills for fun saying things like, "Oh, look at the interesting growth under these leaves! Come, let us forge on and explore the bark over there."

I suppose there are some people who go hiking a lot and enjoy it. People like serial killers and child molesters. "Oh, what interesting patterns on these rocks! Come, that clearing over there looks like an ideal location for a shallow grave."

I guess I just move in different circles than some people. I move around in a certain circle of people where, if I were to say, "Let's go hiking," my circle of people would respond, "No. Let's go into Pottery Barn instead and buy things we don't need."

But if you open a travel brochure, any travel brochure, there it is -- hiking. Right in the middle of all those other recreational activities... "Come to Sunny Valley! Enjoy a relaxing day swimming, sunbathing, golfing, hiking, rafting, or shopping."

Now, of course, not one thing on that list appeals to me personally. I don't want to go swimming, sunbathing, golfing, rafting, or shopping on my vacation. I want to eat, sleep, and sit in a comfortable chair with a drink while I make fun of people who walk by. Then I want to eat and sleep some more. None of that other stuff gets me excited. But I can understand why some people might enjoy swimming, sunbathing, golfing, rafting, or shopping.

But hiking?

Hiking always sticks out in those lists. It just doesn't belong. It's like finding cottage cheese in lasagna. Get that crap outta there!

Here, let's try a little experiment, shall we? See if you can detect the one thing in the following lists of recreational activities that most closely shares the spirit of hiking...

"Come to Sunny Valley! Enjoy a relaxing day swimming, sunbathing, golfing, repairing a roof, rafting, or shopping."

"Come to Sunny Valley! Enjoy a relaxing day swimming, sunbathing, golfing, finding and organizing rusty nails in an old shed, rafting, or shopping."

"Come to Sunny Valley! Enjoy a relaxing day swimming, sunbathing, golfing, sitting around with a bunch of old people you don't know who smell like they need to be changed and trying to think of things to say to them because your wife said you have to while you know your game is on TV in the next room, rafting, or shopping."

"Come to Sunny Valley! Enjoy a relaxing day swimming, sunbathing, golfing, digging a shallow grave for the guy you just killed with piano wire, rafting, or shopping."

"Come to Sunny Valley! Enjoy a relaxing day swimming, sunbathing, golfing, doing your taxes with a migraine, rafting, or shopping."

"Come to Sunny Valley! Enjoy a relaxing day swimming, sunbathing, golfing, putting up 40 miles of barbed wire, rafting, or shopping."

So, how'd you do? Did you spot all of the hidden activities that don't quite fit in?

Still wanna go hiking, dumbass?

Sorry, I didn't mean to call anyone a dumbass. It's just that, if you like to go hiking, well, then you're kind of a... dumbass.

Everything is Falling Apart

Everything is falling apart, nothing works, all my crap is broken, I can't fix any of it... and I want some Skittles.

My old VW bug won't turn over. Won't even try. People tell me, "The good thing about old Bugs is that they're really easy to fix." Yeah, well maybe if you're not a complete moron. But apparently I'm a complete morn. I lift up the thingie to look at the old greasy engine. I have no idea what I'm supposed to be looking at. Not the first clue. I looked online. Someone said to check the starter solnoid. What in the hell is a solnoid and why didn't someone teach me about it in 5th grade if it's so damn important? They were real careful to teach me about fractions, which I've never used in my life. I'm still waiting for the day when I'll use fractions. Never once has anyone asked me to do fractions in a job interview.... So now, because I don't know anything about solnoids, I need to call the drunken hillbillies at the gas station down the block, who are apparently way smarter than I am, and I have to give them a bunch of meth money to fix this old car so it runs for another 2 or 3 weeks before it breaks again. Then I'll rinse and repeat.

I've been through 8,000 virus software thingies in the last year. They all say the same thing. "Install this to get rid of all your problems so your computer runs fast again." None of them do anything useful. NONE. I give each one of them $49.95, spend a day installing the software, run the scan, it tells me it removes stuff, but the computer still reacts to mouse clicks like a mental patient reacts to a game of chess after being hit in the head with a wrench. At the very least, can just one person on this planet please answer this question for me: "Where do all of these viruses come from in the first place, and why can't we hunt down whoever is responsible and kill them with sticks?" Personally I'd like to kill them with sticks AND pee on them. Just once. That's all I ask. Is that too much to ask? Really? Is it?

Our dishwasher doesn't actually clean any dishes. It makes a hell of a noise, but that's about it. On the bright side, it manages to dry the oatmeal onto the sides of the bowl nice and hard. I tell guests it's part of the design.

The dumbshits who built our house decided to install the bathtub on a slant and use some special "1952 ClogPro" pipes for the plumbing. So when you try to take a shower, your left foot has water up to the ankle. Then you use your right foot to kick the shampoo bottle, which always falls from the rickety shelf thing.

Neither radio in either car works. I haven't listened to the radio in ages. I've been singing My Sharona to myself in the car for years because that's the last thing I remember.

My basement is starting to look like an indoor pool when it rains hard. Water comes through the walls. I'm serious. I stand there and watch it trickle down the walls. How does that work? How is that much water getting down 8 feet below the surface of the earth and then penetrating through concrete? There's a disgusting hole in the floor (intentional) with a thing called a "sump pump" that's supposed to pump all of the water off the floor and out to Darfur or someplace like that. But it really wasn't working so I had some plumber dudes replace it. Now it works... 50 percent of the time. The other 50 percent of the time I have to poke at it with a mop handle to get it going when it stops. Then I called in a "basement waterproof expert" to give me an estimate to fix the whole stupid thing. It costs $3200 to fix the whole stupid thing. So I'm now debating whether I want a dry basement or food. The guy brought his little 5-year-old kid with him when he did the estimate for me. The kid was cute, but he had to go to the bathroom. So I took him to our spare bathroom and left him in there to do his thing. That was 2 days ago. I'm still scared to go into that bathroom because I'm envisioning pee spatter on everything. That's okay, Jodi will find it eventually.

My right pinkie hurts for no reason.

Today my "Al Gore Environmentally Conscious Keep the Polar Bears from Drowning" electric mower broke. Well, the motor still works but the metal part on the left handle thing broke off. It just snapped. So I got out the duct tape, and like an idiot I tried taping it back together. That worked for a grand total of 1/2 second before it fell off. I went inside and reported the duct tape solution to Jodi. She said, "That won't work." And I said, "Duh." And she said, "You need a rod." And I said, "Well, that's a little personal." And she said, "You need a bar or something to tape on there to keep the handle in one piece." Well, I couldn't find a "rod," so I grabbed my longest screwdriver and I taped it on there to bridge the two pieces of the metal handle. Jodi came outside and said, "That won't work." And I said, "Well, I gotta try something because the lawn is only half-mowed, and I don't want to buy a new mower because this is probably about the last time I have to mow this year. And my pinkie hurts. So I'm gonna try the screwdriver method." And Jodi said, "Okay, well, good luck with that." And she turned around and went back inside. So I tried the screwdriver method and that worked for a grand total of 5.8 seconds. Then I used my super creative "out-of-the-box, cubicle worker" mental skills to figure out that if I only make right turns, I can push the mower in a somewhat straight line for about 20 feet. It's harder than it sounds. And it looks stupider than it sounds. So I did that, and it worked, kind of. But then the battery thing ran out and I only finished two-thirds of the lawn. Tomorrow I will be attempting to finish the final third of the lawn in the middle of a rainstorm, making right turns only with the screwdriver still taped to the handle, before the battery runs out or the right side of the handle snaps off.

Sorry, I'm ranting now. Didn't mean to do that. You'll have to excuse me.

I'm broken. 

Obvious News

Why do news people keep telling me stuff I already know? Every time I turn on the TV it seems like there's a brand new government report that cost us taxpayers $30 million, and it's always something like, "A new study just out today suggests that more and more Americans are fat." Yeah, I kinda figured that out when I looked out the window.

I wanna know who is coming up with these studies and how I can get that job. That's a career I believe I could really sink my teeth into. Unfortantely I don't remember this even coming up as an option when I met with my high school guidance counselor.

"You know, Paul, graduation is just around the corner. Any thoughts on what you'd like to do for the rest of your life."

"Well, what I'd really like to do is sit around all day and think up obvious shit."

Hey it's pretty clear somebody's got that job. Why not me? I could crank out 40 or 50 of those reports per hour.

Here are some of my favorite obvious news stories that I have actually heard or read about. I swear I'm not making these up.

Dirty air is bad. The report says that if the air is so bad that you can see it, you shouldn't breathe it. That's a great tip, but I'm not sure how far I can walk or run while holding my breath. When I was a kid I was able to tread water in public pee-infested swimming pool for several minutes. I wonder if that kind of training would come in handy for this type of situation. I wonder if treading water in several gallons of pee while simultaneously breathing in smog is bad for you too. The study didn't say.

Cheap beer encourages college students to drink more. And to throw stuff off of balconies more. And to barf on your neighbor more. And to sleep with gutter trolls more. And to hook your nipples up to car batteries more. And to wake up naked at the zoo more.....

Objects that are farther away are harder to see. And they actually paid someone to point that out, can you believe that? I once pointed out to my dad that the rosary makes people want to go to sleep and I didn't get paid nothin for that.

Your memory gets worse as you get... Um... How did that one go again?

Texting while driving is dangerous. But they didn't say anything about painting with watercolors or clipping your toenails while driving. So that's a huge relief.

There is a negative relationship between methamphetamine and risky sexual behavior. So if you and your partner(s) are planning on tying yourselves to bungee cords and rutting over a busy freeway during a lightning storm, it's best not to smoke any crystal meth beforehand. It's much better to have a Red Bull instead.

Illegal immigrants don't have as much insurance as the rest of us. Hard to believe this one is true. 'Cause I always pictured two guys hiding behind a bush saying, "Okay, we made it across the border. Now the first thing we gotta do is get a dental plan."

The End of My Manhood

I've never really had much manhood to speak of. In my whole life, I've never felt the need to get into fist fights like a lot of other guys do. I never wanted to drive a Camaro and peel out in the parking lot of The Rusty Bucket to impress a crowd of drunken skanky hos. And I never learned how to change the oil in a car.

Well, that last one is not entirely true; somebody did once try to show me how to do it, but I didn't pay any attention. I figured, why change your own oil when you can pay somebody lower in the caste system to do it for you?

Whatever gene it is that makes guys try to be really manly and "out-manly" the other men, I'm fairly certain that my gene was damaged at the moment of conception. And sadly, I'm pretty sure that whatever amount of manhood I did have up until now was completely removed from me today.

Three reasons. I'll work backwards chronologically.

First, I just finished watching the movie Mamma Mia! with my wife. That movie was so incredibly gay that my right testicle just whithered and fell onto the floor in the first 10 minutes.

Before that, I watched another movie. It has been 25 years since I saw the movie Footloose. Either I must be absolutely brain damaged or I must have a really bad memory because I thought, Hey, let's watch this thing again. You wanna talk about extraordinarily gay movies, that's one for the ages. When I saw Kevin Bacon storm out of his house, drive to some farm warehouse, and start doing this Broadway dance stuff in an effort to alleviate his burning rage... well, that was when my left testicle plopped onto the floor and rolled under the TV cabinet where it now lives with many neglected dust bunnies.

But the biggie today was my first colonoscopy.

Here's what everybody told me who supposedly knew anything about colonoscopies: Oh, it's no big deal. The preparation is the worst part, where you have to drink that stuff. You won't even be awake during the actual procedure.

Liars. All of them, liars. I was conscious and wide awake for the whole thing.

But first things first. Yes, the preparation part is pretty bad. Here's the deal...

First, you can't eat anything the entire day before the colonoscopy. So the second that I finished dinner the other night, I became hellishly hungry, and it stayed that way for the next 36 hours. Jodi was watching that Bizarre Foods show on TV and I was even getting hungry and jealous when the guy was eating the eyeballs from something (probably from one of the billions of missing orphans in Manilla) and a donkey's butt skin.

Second, they make you go to the pharmacy and buy this big gallon jug with some powder stuff in it. They won't tell you what is in this powder, but I suspect that it's Satan's soul. You have to add water to the Satan powder, mix it up, and drink a bunch of it every 10 seconds until it's gone. This vile elixir is designed to "clean you out" (i.e., make you pee out your butt until you cry). And by the way, Satan's soul tastes nothing like chicken. It tastes like the bottom of the boots from a city sanitation worker.

Then you have to go to the doctor place to do the actual deed. This is where they're supposed to give you a magic pill or magic shot that will zonk you out. And then when you wake up, they're supposed to say, "There's nothing wrong with you. We made you drink Satan's soul for nothing."

But it wasn't like that for me. After getting undressed and putting on my giant napkin, they wheeled me into the colon room. They hooked me up to some stuff and made me turn on my side. This is when I thought I would be falling asleep. But noooooooooooo.

After a little small talk, the doctor starts putting the really long bendy straw thing up my yoo hoo. Well, I felt it at first, but then I didn't feel anything. This means that either my colon has no nerve endings that are supposed to tell my brain, "Hey! Get this thing outta here!" or they did in fact give me something that made me not feel anything, but allowed me to stay awake to enjoy the delightful matinee.

Right in front of my face was a big monitor where we were all watching the bendy straw move through my colon. In case you don't know what my colon looks like, watch the scene about the "Mines of Moria" from The Lord of the Rings. My butt tunnel looks just like the Mines of Moria, minus Frodo and the dwarves. And at one point he came across a polyp, which looked just like Gollum. I watched as he lopped it off. (By the way, he said he didn't think the polyp was anything to worry about. Just that it looked like it was probably filled with Skittles, which we all know are harmless.)

So I'm watching this and my first impulse was to ask the doctor, "And you chose this specialty on purpose? What in the world made you say, 'You know, breast implants are okay, but what I'd really like to do is spend my life inside people's poo holes'"?

And my second impulse was to say, "Hey! I was told I didn't have to be awake for this! I was planning on pretending that it was a bad dream when I woke up! This is killing my manhood!"

After this, they rolled me into what they called the "recovery room," with all of the other people who just had colonoscopies. Recovery room... Right... It's not like the recovery room on M*A*S*H or ER. When you go to a colonoscopy office thingie, a recovery room is the place where they put everybody after their procedures so they can all listen to each other fart. I haven't heard that many humans fart in the same place since the last time I went to a movie theater.

There's just no way to summon any kind of manhood, let alone dignity, after they've explored your butt regions with a bendy straw and then rolled your helpless ass into the big fart room.

I was simply drained from it all.

Really, it was all I could handle for the day.

So then I went home and watched two gay movies that made my balls fall off.

The Feeding of the Children

One day at the recent family reunion, I found myself driving back from the park with two of my sister's youngest kids. How I ended up driving two little kids all by myself, I have no idea. This was not my plan. But that's not unusual. I never have a plan. I don't like plans. But the problem with never having a plan, is that once in a while you end up with two little kids in the car with you. And you're in charge of their welfare. And that's no good. I'm pretty sure I was set up.

The idea is that all of the relatives were supposed to leave the park, go grab whatever they wanted for dinner, and meet back at the hotel around 5:30 to eat. That was the idea. And if I had been all by myself in that car, I would have been the first person to arrive back at the hotel. And I would have finished eating my dinner before anyone else showed up. And I would have been happy.

But I had two little kids to feed.

Unfortuantely, I don't know how to feed kids.

I don't want to feed kids.

But these were my nephews. Two cute little boys, who I love. And I was responsible for them. So I decided I would do my best to feed them.

Now I'm absolutely no good when it comes to anything having to do with kids. I don't even know exactly how old these boys are. I estimate somewhere between 0 and 10. All I know is that one of them is about a year older than the other. But I did learn a few things during this little journey.

First, I learned that you should always tell a kid what he is GOING TO EAT. You should NEVER ask a kid what he WANTS to eat. If I had known about this rule ahead of time, the three of us would have been back at that hotel in about 5 seconds enjoying our dinner of Skittles and Dr. Pepper. But I made the mistake of asking, and they said they wanted pizza. That might not be so bad, but I then asked them what kind of pizza they wanted. It then took the three of us 16 hours to agree on Pizza Hut.

So then I looked up Pizza Hut on the GPS thingie on my phone. Unfortunately, my stupid phone doesn't let me just press something to automatically dial the number. I had to commit the number to memory, switch to the phone part, and then dial the number. But then I figured, Hey, there's three of us here. We can each memorize a few numbers and it'll be easy!

So I memorized the area code. Then I said, "Hey Joseph, here's a number: 345. Can you remember that? 345."

"Uh huh."

"What's your number Joseph?"

"345."

"Good! And Jacob, here's your number: 8672. You got it?"

"8672," he said.

"Good!"

Then I turned off the GPS thingie and got to the phone key pad. I dialed the area code. Then I said, "Okay Joseph, what your number?"

"3."

"Jacob, did you remember your number?"

"4."

It took me 7 minutes and 19 seconds to remember all 10 numbers myself and dial Pizza Hut to place the order.

But Pizza Hut must have ditched all of their phones during the economic downturn, because I couldn't get anybody to answer that number. So I began driving to the restaurant, praying to God the whole way that when we arrived it had not burned down or been turned into a Jiffy Lube.

Ten minutes later we arrived at Pizza Hut. Of course I had to order two different kinds of pizzas because these two little kids insisted on different toppings. I suppose I could have had them split the toppings on one pizza, but I didn't think of that because I'm stupid.

They told me it would be 25 minutes before the pizza was done. This is when I learned another lesson about little kids. For little kids, 25 minutes equals 25 years. I guess there was a time when I was the same way -- years ago when I was a little kid. But now I'm old, so 25 years is like 25 minutes to me.

For the next 17 minutes I kept saying stuff like: "Hey, you guys come sit down over here" ... "Hey leave that alone" ... "Hey stop that" ... "Hey don't do that" ...

At about minute 17, the younger of the two boys had exhausted all possibilities and was now lying face down on the disgusting Pizza Hut floor. I was going to make him get up, because I think that's what my sister would have wanted me to do. But then I decided that's what she gets for sticking me with two kids who, although very cute, cannot memorize numbers or agree on one topping. So I allowed him to continue to explore the goo on the floor until the pizzas were done.

We arrived back at the hotel over an hour late.

Everyone else was already finished eating.

I was exhausted.

Our pizza was greasy.

But I did return both kids in one piece.

Even though Joseph had Pizza Hut's floor on his face.

The end.

New Stuff and Fat Hairy Nekked Men

First, as Jimmy Chitwood once said, I got somethin' to say...

Launched my brand new website last night (www.paulstoecklein.com). There are a few short stand-up video clips on there, and more from other shows coming soon. Also got a new Facebook fan page and Twitter page. Those are the best places to find out about my upcoming shows and whatnot. They're also the best place to see that I really don't have any fans, but my Web dude said they're the thing to do, so there ya go.

Now, onto something more important.

Why can't men who go to the gym be more like women? My wife told me that women never walk around the locker room with everything hanging out there, dragging on the floor. She said they always go behind the curtain to get dressed and undressed. In short, they have the common courtesty to be ashamed of their bodies.

Not men.

Every single morning when I go to the gym... Every Single Morning... I walk into that locker room and there's about 15 old, hairy, fat, disgusting men walking around with their enormous swollen bellies bouncing around and their tiny little thingies floppin' back and forth. They just walk around without a care in the world, like they're cruising around from room to room at a cocktail party.

I can barely get to the my locker without accidentally touching somebody. And I try really hard to avoid that. I look like I'm playing Frogger in there.

And these guys always want to talk to me too.

"Looks like it's gonna be another hot one out there today."

I never know what to say in return because my brain freezes in that locker room. When somebody is talking to me and and I know that their penis is only a few feet away, completely uncovered, I start developing a seizure and a severe case of acne.

If man truly is made in God's image, then I really hope if I make it to heaven, that God is at least wearing a towel.

Mowing My Weedgrassdirt

So the other day I went outside to mow my weedgrassdirt. I was raised on weedgrassdirt. My father mowed weedgrassdirt. His father before him mowed weedgrassdirt. It's part of my family heritage. It's in my blood.

Now I've seen lawns that are just grass (no weeds anywhere), and I've often wondered, I wonder what that kind of life is like. I imagine that people who have purely grass lawns must be the same people who actually clean their barbecue grills and buy those expensive cookies on the top shelf at the grocery store. They're really the closest thing that our country has to royalty.

Even if I wanted to turn my weedgrassdirt into pure grass, I couldn't do it. First, it would mean additional manual labor, and that's just not gonna happen. Second, it would mean using deadly poisons to kill the weeds, and Jodi won't let me do that. The reason Jodi won't let me do that is because she likes birds, and she doesn't like the fact that three-quarters of the birds that come into our backyard are blind mutant birds due to other people in the neighborhood using deadly poisons to get rid of their weedgrassdirt.

That's okay. I'm fine with weedgrassdirt. I was never cut out to be royalty anyway.

So I started to mow the first third of my lawn while blind mutant birds from the neighborhood flew helplessly into the side of my garage.

I have to mow my lawn in thirds. Why? Al Gore.

Al Gore made me buy an electric mower instead of gas-powered mower. Unfortunately, modern technology has not advanced to the point where we can create an electric mower that can finish an entire yard in one sweep. So far, our technology only allows us to create blind mutant birds.

Just after mowing a few strips of my weedgrassdirt, our old lady neighbor stopped by to chat for a few moments. Nice lady. Her adult son still lives with her. I wouldn't really go so far as to say he looks after her. In fact, one day, this old lady was sick with the flu. Her son, who does not drive, came over to our house and asked me to drive him to Kentucky Fried Chicken so he could get his mom something to eat. (Note #1: In the south, KFC is considered healthy food for sick people. And gravy is an aphrodisiac.) So he literally squeezed into the passenger seat of my very small old VW Beetle and off we went to KFC. (Note #2: Many people in the south do not fit easily into an old VW Beetle.) He bought the food, we drove back, he thanked me, and he returned to his house to nurse his mom back to health with some extra crispy, extra greasy chicken and a tub of mashed potatoes... The next week, the old lady was feeling better and thanked me for driving her son to KFC so he could get himself something to eat.

The old lady and I talked for a minute or two, and then down the street came an elderly guy on a little motor scooter. Helmet, goggles, stickers -- the whole shabang. I have no idea if this guy was drunk, high, crazy, or all of the above. But apparently, as he was driving down the road, he had been having a conversation with himself and the voices in his head told him to stop and merge our conversation with his. He pulled over, stopped right next to us, slipped off his helmet, and continued with the conversation he'd been having with himself for God only knows how long. I had trouble making out most of the words, although I think some of them were English. Some of it had to do with how old people should be treated in rest homes. I think he might have been an escapee. He was probably the Steve McQueen of Shady Acres Nursing Home or something.

You see, the good thing about living in the south is that sometimes people just stop to chat. And the bad thing about living in the south is that sometimes people just stop to chat.

Well, this guy finally finished his verbal manifesto after about 10 minutes, and just as suddenly as he arrived, he slipped on his helmet and rode off into the sunset. As he drove away, I noticed that the license plate on his scooter was a Bible scripture. I don't remember which scripture it was, but it was probably from one of the gospels, where Jesus says to the apostles, "Take this bread and git 'r done! Just git 'r done I tell ya! Just git 'r done for Jesus! WOOOOOOOO! Nascar rocks! WOOOOOOO!"

Even the old lady thought he was nuts. There was really nothing left to say, so she went back to her deep fried domicile, I finished mowing the first third of my weedgrassdirt, and the blind mutant birds continued flying into the side of my garage.

Chiropractors and Cervical Cancer and I Don't Know What All

About 28 years ago, I had to go see a chiropractor because Robb Karlin dropped me on my head on a gymnasium floor. It wasn't a fight, just an innocent experiment gone awry. I still think that if we would have gotten a little more torque it would have worked.

And now, I find myself back in a chiropractor's office after all these years. No, Jodi did not drop me on my head. In fact, there's no good reason for this. Something strange happens each time you pass each decade marker, and that's what happened to me, causing me to seek out a chiropractor.

When I passed the 20-year-old marker, I finally developed shoulders. Before that, my neck just continued in a straight line all the way down to my feet. They weren't great shoulders, but I was thrilled to finally get some. I really could have used them during puberty, I can tell you that.

When I passed the 30-year-old marker, my body suddenly began to tell me that yes, in fact it does matter if you eat cheeseburgers, french fries, and other assorted crap for every single meal. Because at age 30, I began to notice a new set of shoulders growing at my waist.

Then I passed the 40-year-old marker. At that age, stuff started to hurt for no good reason at all. You don't have to do nothin! You just wake up. That's all you have to do. You wake up. You lie there motionless in bed and voila! There's pain somewhere. The one that sent me to the chiropractor was a sharp pain in one of my shoulders that felt like I had been shot at some point and the bullet was still in there. It must be God's way of punishing me for never making good use of the shoulders that he gave me when I was 20.

I'm scared to death to find out what's ahead for me at age 50, 60, 70, etc. I suppose that at age 50 my shoulders will just develop gangrene and fall off. Then at age 60 I'll grow another shoulder in my prostate. Then at age 70 I'll forget that I ever had shoulders anywhere and will just stand there in the middle of Old Country Buffet and pee.

After a 28-year absence, I've discovered that chiropractors have developed new devices of torture. My chiropractor has one bizarre tool that feels like a cross between a woodpecker and a jack hammer whacking away at what's left of my shoulder, back, and neck region. It's like something that my brothers would have invented in our shed to torment neighborhood cats.

So yesterday I'm lying face down on the iron maiden torture table and all of a sudden she says to me, "How do you feel about a few dozen needles stuck in your back?"

Exactly how many correct answers are there to that question? That's what I want to know.

Now, the needles in the back didn't hurt physically. What hurt is that I was lying there thinking, I can't believe it's come to this. I'm going to have to pay her $50 to do something that I could do myself by simply falling backwards into a rose bush. But it's amazing what you'll agree to when you're in pain. I know the Chinese are supposed to be really good at herbs and whacky medicine and checkers and all that stuff, but it just seems weird to me.

I mean, really, who was the first guy to even think of acupuncture anyway? You're squatting there in the mud with your best friend waiting for electricity to be invented and he suddenly says, "Hey! I just remembered! I turned 40 today!... Ow! What's that pain in my shoulder?!!!"

And so you say, "I don't know. I'm only 39. Hold on a second. Let me go grab a stick out of that big pile of dinosaur dung and jab it into your back. Maybe that will help."

This is why I'm so skeptical of any kind of doctor and any kind of medicine. Hell, it wasn't that long ago that doctors thought that the way to cure everything was to cut someone open and bleed them into a bowl. What makes us think that doctors today aren't still guessing? I bet radiation therapy doesn't do anything but give you a bit of a tan.

And God help you if you get cervical cancer. To tell you the truth, I'm not exactly sure what a cervix is anyway. I think the cervix might be the main control panel in women. I think it's where you specify a woman's resolution, enable the firewall, and determine the TCP/IP settings. Of course, I'm just guessing, but then so are all the doctors. And I figure my guess is as good as theirs.

But I'm thinking that cervical cancer has got to be the WORST kind of cancer that anyone can get. Because I've seen the commercials for that Gardosil stuff that women are supposed to take in order to avoid cervical cancer. The problem is that 95 percent of the commercial time is spent listing all of the side effects that you can get if you take Gardosil. Side effects like blood pouring out of the eyes and permanent explosive diarrhea. There are 8,500 side effects that you can get by taking Gardosil and the most appealing one on the list is death. And this is why cervical cancer has got to be the worst disease anyone can get. Because you've got to be pretty darn motivated to start taking Gardosil.

Hey, I wonder if Gardosil works on shoulder pain.

Hobbies - Uniting the World Through Stupidity

Tim Burton collects false teeth.

Yes, you heard me right. Tim Burton collects false teeth. That's what I've been told anyway. I don't know what he does with all the old people he gets them from, but Tim Burton collects false teeth.

Johnny Depp plays with dolls. Again, not kidding. That's his hobby. Okay, maybe I heard wrong and he doesn't play with them, but merely collects them. But either way... ewww.

Tiger Woods likes to go spear fishing. That's correct. He likes to go underwater and shoot fish with spears. Imagine that. You're a little fish, just swimming around, minding your own business, chewing on some kelp, and SLICE! Your head's gone! Why? Because the billionaire was bored.

Sarah Jessica Parker likes to knit. So does my sister-in-law and my mother-in-law. I can't even mention the word without falling asleep... Knit... If you were a doctor about to perform surgery on me, you wouldn't even need to use any anesthesia. You could just stand over me and say, "Knitting... Knitting... Knitting." That's all it would take. But hey, some people like it. That's their thing, and they're able to stay awake while they do it. More power to them.

Angelina Jolie is another collector. She collects daggers. That's correct. Angelina Jolie's hobby is collecting daggers... and small brown children. Neither one is a hobby I would choose, but that's okay. 

You see, that's what I love about hobbies: everybody has at least one and all hobbies are stupid. Hobbies are the great equalizer. It's what binds everyone in the human race together.

Forget love. Not everybody has love.

Same with health insurance. Lots of people don't have it.

Thumbs? Unfortunately, not everybody got a full pair.

A soul? Nope. While most humans have a soul, sadly some people were born without one. Sorry non-Catholics.

But everybody has a hobby.

No matter who you are, I can guarantee that you have at least one hobby. And furthermore, I can tell you for a fact that your hobby.................. is stupid.

Oh, I know that you love your hobby. I know that you don't think it's stupid. What I'm telling you is that somewhere in this world, somebody thinks your hobby is the dumbest thing they've ever heard of.

Webster's defines a hobby as "Some dumb thing that you do to kill time until you die."

And it's staggering how many hobbies are out there.

There's collecting. Lots of people are collectors. Stamps, comic books, coins, guns, arrests, paroles, rolling pins, figurines. Just hoarding as much crap as you can find until you die and your family donates it to a landfill. It's clearly stupid. And it makes your undersized hovel look really ridiculous with all of that junk piled everywhere. But hey, we can see that it makes you smile (unless of course Tim Burton has your teeth).

Then there's what I like to call the "bum hobbies."

Things like dumpster diving. I don't know how you first get the impulse to jump into a filthy garbage can to separate the good scum from the bad scum, but God bless ya.

Or metal detecting. These guys who spend 14 hours a day combing a beach to find a Canadian dime. Look man, please, just stop. I'll give you a dollar and the rest of my Slurpee if you'll just stop.

My wife told me there's a hobby called scrapbooking. I've heard of scrapbooks, but I didn't really know it could be a full-time hobby. I mean, don't you just kinda wait around all year until your cow or bucket of jelly gets a ribbon at the county fair 4-H thingie? Then you take your ribbon home, put it into your scrapbook, close it, and start preparing for next year's county fair 4-H thingie? Apparently, there's more goofiness to scrapbooking than I know about.

Some people have hobbies that are of a spiritual nature. Like astrology (a.k.a., making shit up) or religion (a.k.a.,, making shit up while wearing a tie), or scientology (a.k.a., making shit up with celebrities and then suing people).

I'm right there with you people too. My hobbies are just as dumb, if not dumber, than any of yours. In fact, I wasted all of last weekend on one of the dumbest hobbies of all time -- the National Football League Draft.

I know that I'm going to have to explain this draft deal to some of you. In the same way that I would need you to explain your hobby if it were something like that pretend medieval sword fighting thing that you sometimes see groups of overweight virgins playing in the public park.

I love professional football. And every April, they have a list of the best college football players who want to turn professional. All of the pro teams take turns picking players from this list to join their team. The worst team from the previous season picks first, and the best team picks last. It's a big, big deal. There's loads of money that goes into this thing. For months and months people try to guess which team is going to pick which guys, and then it all comes to a climax on a Saturday and Sunday in late April, when the actual draft happens. Idiots just like me sit there in front of their television sets in dark rooms all over the country, while a perfectly beautiful day outside is completely ignored. We sit there and watch this thing unfold hour after hour, following every move simulateously with 8 million browser windows open on our laptops. We can't stand the suspense! Who's gonna be picked next?! Who's it gonna be?! I gotta know now!!!!

Pretty dumb, right? Well, it gets even dumber.

There are so many college football teams all over the country that you can't possibly know all of the players in the draft. Most guys follow only a few teams at most. I, for one, don't even follow college football at all. Probably because I didn't go to a college that had a football team. We barely had cafeteria workers, let alone a football team.

So there's lots of guys like me who don't really know any of the football players who are being drafted. We've never seen them play at all. But we know how tall they are, how much they weigh, how high they can jump, and how fast they can run around orange cones (because, no kidding, they time these guys running around orange cones and then they tell us how fast they were). And yet, we're all just dying to know who our team is going to pick.

I sit there like a dumbass, hour upon hour, and I root for my team to pick certain players. So, you're probably thinking, if I know nothing about any of the players, how do I choose which ones I want my team to pick? I can't speak for any of my other fellow idiots, but personally, I go by the guy's name. I'm not joking.

For example, on Saturday I wanted my team to pick a guy named Alex Mack. Because that just sounds like a big mean guy who will kick someone's ass. Alex Mack. That's who I wanted. And if they didn't get him, I was thinking maybe Phil Loadholt or Eric Wood or Rey Maualuga. They just sound like good football names. Seriously, that's the only criteria I had. I wanted one of those guys. I didn't want the guy named Andy Levitre, because every time I heard his name I thought about all of those commercials with the middle-aged couples who can't get it up. And if Neal Lomax was in the draft, I wouldn't have wanted him because his named would have made me think about those commercials with the middle-aged men who spend all their time together doing "guy things" but they all have to pee every 5 seconds because of their enlarged prostates.

By the way, in the first round my team picked a guy named Ziggy. I'm not sure if that's good or bad.

So yes, I'm a big idiot and I have a really stupid hobby. But then, so do you, you loser.