Tongue In Check

Let’s talk underwear, shall we?

A few months ago I think that I mentioned that I had made the switch from briefs to boxer shorts. Right about now you are probably thinking–”who really gives a rat’s ass what kind of underwear you wear,” and you would be absolutely right in thinking that because God knows if any of you did a post about what type of underwear you wore I would be thinking “who really gives a rat’s ass what kind of underwear you wear.” Unless it was Phoebe, because then I would really want to know. Anyway, unfortunately, this post is not about Phoebe’s underwear, it’s about mine.

Switching to boxers has been mostly a wonderful thing, but it hasn’t been without its problems. Let me explain. For those of you not familiar with the intricate workings of men’s underwear, let me explain the basic differences between boxers and briefs. Briefs tend to keep “the goods” pretty much under control, while boxers pretty much allow “the goods” to roam at will. Boxers also have another problem that briefs don’t seem to have. It seems the fly in the front has a tendency to “gap.” Apparently, and I learned this the hard way, gapping means that the the little opening in the front has a tendency to pop open when you least expect, or want it to.

So with that in mind, let me set the scene for you. It’s morning and you are standing in your kitchen watching the birds eating from the feeders you have hanging in your yard. You take a sip from your first cup of coffee of the day and you hear your husband walking down the hallway. You turn to greet him but you are horrified at what you see before you.

That’s right, his “goods” have escaped and the doddering old fool is not even aware of it. His old wrinkled goods have become free range old wrinkled goods and all you can think is thank God none of the kids are home to witness his final demise.

The horror. The horror. The horror.

Fear not ladies. Help is on the way, because you are entering……

Researchers from the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research have determined that there are over 70 million blogs world-wide. In some respects, that number seems rather small to me, but hey, who I am to argue with social scientists? Can you actually say social and scientist in the same sentence? I suppose if you can say political and science in the same sentence, you can say social and science in the same sentence.

According to the study, nearly one million of the 70 million blogs world-wide are either abandoned, or rarely used. For those of you who care about such things, that leaves 69 million blogs world-wide.

Nearly 39 million of those blogs are written by people who speak some language other than English. I wonder which category The Joey Polanski Show is in? At any rate, for the purposes of our discussion here and my general sanity, which is very fleeting I might add, I am going to eliminate the non-English speaking blogs.

What? You don’t think I should eliminate foreign language blogs? Well, then go read a blog written entirely in Chinese and come back and tell me what it says.

I’ll wait.

I lied. I won’t wait. I’m going ahead without you, you heartless disbeliever.

That leaves 30 million blogs that are written by people who speak some form of English—American, Australian, Canadian, or that vastly inferior from of English that is spoken by those from the United Kingdom. I am sure I left out some other English speaking country, but they probably aren’t all that important anyway. If someone from one of those other English speaking countries disagrees with me, declare war on me. I don’t mind. I’ll surrender to you and you can take care of me for the rest of my life.

Okay, now that we have eliminated all the blogs that don’t count, let us see how the remaining 30 million blogs break down:

• There are 5 million “Mommy” bloggers. Okay, is it just me, or is that way too many blogs dedicated to the wonderment of babies. Yeah, your baby is great. Freaking wonderful. So were mine. So are all the other babies in the world. Except for those starving in Africa with flies crawling all over them. They aren’t doing so good. but don’t worry, their mommies don’t have access to computers so they can’t bore you to death with the demise of their baby.  
• There are somewhere near 500,000 blogs about cats. Did you hear me people? There are half a million blogs about fucking cats out there. For the love of God, what is wrong with you people?
• There are nearly 3.5 million “spam” blogs out there in blog-land promoting some type of product or service that may or may not be legitimate. My guess, though, is that there is nothing legitimate about any of them. 
• There are about 1 million English speaking blogs out there that call themselves “news” blogs, but honestly, from what I’ve seen, these are mostly “opinion blogs” pretending to be news blogs. I guess it’s all a matter of interpretation.

For those of you keeping track, we are down to about 20 million blogs. Stay with me. For once, this is actually going somewhere. You may not like where it is going, but trust me, it is going somewhere.

Of the 20 million blogs left,

• Nearly 2 million blogs are entertainment/gossip blogs.
• Another 2.6 million blogs are categorized as “alternative life-style blogs.” Alternative life-style blog? What the hell is that? I mean you either have a life-style or you don’t, and if you don’t, you are dead. So are these alternative life style blogs about death?
• There are nearly 2.2 million blogs that are devoted to photography.
• Almost 400,000 blogs deal with some form of religious worship. 
• Another 1.1 million blogs are what I lovingly call soap opera blogs and they are written by either a husband or wife who is unhappy in his or her relationship. (I lied about the whole "lovingly call" thing. Fact is, I fucking hate these things. If you have a problem with your spouse, talk to your spouse about it but don’t dump all over him or her on the Internet. That just sucks.)
• Nearly 800,000 blogs are written by someone under the age of 18. This number seems incredibly low to me. I wonder if these stats take into account My Space and Facebook?
• Almost 2.9 million blogs are devoted to sex. Is that all?
• Another 3.5 million blogs are devoted to pornography other than conventional sex (whatever the hell that means).
• Another 1.2 million blogs are written about blogging.
• Another 2.9 million blogs are what the researchers call “general purpose” blogs. I think most of us fall into that category. 

For those of you still keeping track, that leaves nearly 400,000 blogs.

Of those blogs left,

• Approximately 300,000 are “Craft Blogs.” This is where you would go if you ever wanted to learn how to build a house out of granola bars or old socks.
• Another 50,000 or so are blogs are dedicated to clipping and trading coupons. Some people have way too much time on their hands.
• Another49,999 blogs are called “professional blogs.” These are blogs that actually earn money.
• And last but certainly not least, there is one measly ass little blog out there that routinely makes up statistics about other blogs and attributes those bullshit numbers to the  University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.

Wow. I wonder which blog that is?

Naturally, the only thing my blog could possibly want for its birthday is a stripper.


Of course to be fair, I am not sure if my blog is a male or a female, so I guess I better cover all the bases. How does one tell if one’s blog is male or female? Is there something we lift up and look under?
I don’t know if my blog likes skinny strippers of heavy strippers, so again, I best cover all bases.

Should I buy my blog a cake, and if so, should it be a small one?

Or a big one?

And even though I can’t drink anymore, that doesn’t mean my blog can’t drink.

Maybe my blog likes the same strippers Malach likes?

Or maybe my blog likes the same kind of strippers as Angryman?

I hate all this second guessing. For all I know, my blog doesn’t even like strippers. Screw it, I’ll just get a stripper for myself and let my blog find its own entertainment.

Not that anyone really cares about this stuff, but statistically speaking:

• Tongue In Check turns 2 years old (in human years) on June 27th, 2008. Not sure how old that makes it in blog years.
• According to SiteMeter, that dependable bastion of website stats, this blog has had over 110,000 visitors. Of course I have had to remove SiteMeter numerous times because it just quit working, but like blogger, it is free, so I guess you get what you pay for.
  
• I have posted 573 posts on this blog. There were actually more posts than that, but I have quietly removed some older posts that were maybe a little too personal, painful, or alcohol inspired.
  
• There have been 13,039 reader comments on this blog. Most of them nice. There have been assholes, but they usually post anonymously and never come back again.
  
• On average, each post gets something like 22.75 comments.
• About 25% of the comments are my own.
  
• Some days I wonder why I do this.
  
• Some days I don’t.

Happy Birthday Blog!

I have spent the last few months running from my demons with all of my heart and soul and the worst part about it is that the better I feel, the harder and faster I have to run.

An almost daily discussion with myself goes something like this:

Me: Goddamn, I feel great.

Me: Boy, I sure do. I think I’ll have a drink.

Me: Shit. Better not.

Me: Dammit.

A few days before we went to Utah, I decided to start working out in my garage again. It’s one of those places that if you need to stay busy in an effort to keep your mind off of your demons, it’s a pretty good place to be because there are enough projects out there to last someone a lifetime.

Over the course of the last couple of weeks, I have torn down walls, taken out windows, removed doors, cleaned up any number of messes, rewired outlets and switches, installed new lights and rebuilt a couple of rickety ass old work benches.

I get up in the morning, grab a cup of coffee (one of the few vices that hasn’t been yanked away from me yet) and head for the garage. It has been wonderful therapy, but today was maybe the best day ever. You see, today, my lovely wife came to help me.

She is great at doing the grunt work. I am like the skilled laborer operating all the power tools and making all the “high-level” decisions, and my wife is like the illegal Mexican getting paid less than minimum wage to do all the real work.

I only wish I would have had a camera to capture the events that I am about to attempt to describe to you because it was one of the funniest things I have ever seen in my life. I just don’t think I can adequately describe it, but I have to try.

First I have to try to set the scene a little. In addition to the area for the cars, there are four half-assed rooms out in our garage. There is the half-ass workshop room (where I spend most of my time), the dead raccoon room (site of the now famous poisoning of a mother raccoon and her babies), the canoe room (where I built some really nice racks for the canoes and kayaks but nobody uses them because they would rather leave the canoes and kayaks all over the driveway so it looks like a family of water bound hillbillies lives here), and the living raccoon room. For the purposes of clarity, we were working in the living raccoon room which is now part of the canoe room because we tore down the wall between the two rooms.

So there we are with a shit load of torn-down wall construction debris we need to get rid of. My wife (remember, she does the grunt work while I make all the high level decisions and operate the tools requiring skill and precision), was filling one of those curbside dumpsters with all of the junk we had torn down. For those of you not familiar with those curbside dumpsters, here is what they look like.

Please pay particular attention to the lid and the wheels on the little curbside dumpster as they play a prominent role in the ensuing hilarity. Allow me to point out those features for you.

In our case, we had so much junk, that once we filled the little dumpster up, we couldn’t close the lid. This meant that the hinged lid was hanging over the back covering the handle. So in order for my wife to move the dumpster, she had to stick her little hands up under the lid to grab the handle and then she could tilt the entire container back toward her and roll it around on its wheels.

In a perfect world where all women are 6 foot tall Swedish models with blond hair and blue eyes, this would have worked out wonderfully. But in the real world where some women are actually short and Polish, things sometimes go horribly horribly awry.

Let’s review, shall we?

The dumpster is quite full and heavy. My wife, the short Polish woman masquerading as an illegal Mexican doing grunt work, reaches her hands up under the hinged lid to grab the handle so she can tilt the container back towards her. This way she can wheel it around as needed in order to pick up more trash.

Now this is where it gets complicated. Remember earlier when I said that the container was so full that we couldn’t close the lid? Well, I did say it and if you don’t remember it, you are not paying attention. Please, this is difficult enough as it is so please pay attention.

Perhaps this diagram will help.

Okay, so now maybe you get the general idea. See how close that lid is to the ground? It is pretty close, isn’t it? I mean even for a normal person, that lid is pretty close to the ground, but if you are a short little Polish person, well hell, that fucking lid might as well be right under your feet.

See, here’s what happened:

Step 1. My wife with her hands up under that lid and her short little legs planted firmly on the ground decided that she needed to move that little container full of construction debris.

Step 2. In order to move the little container full of construction debris, she tilts it back towards her to the point where it looks just like the diagram above. In your mind, just erase the words ground, lid, and handle, and stick my short little Polish wife in there with her hands up under the lid firmly holding onto the handle.

Step 3. My wife raises one of her feet off the ground in an effort to take a step forward. She moves the foot forward and begins to lower her foot towards the ground in order to complete the forward motion.

Step 4. Before my wife’s little Polish foot makes contact with the ground, it makes contact with the lid hanging off the tilted dumpster. Of course my wife’s foot, being Polish and all, doesn’t have sense enough to realize that it has made contact with the dumpster lid and not the ground so it keeps on going just like nothing horrible is about to happen.

Step 5. My wife lifts her other foot off the ground and begins the whole process again. Only this time physics, gravity, the laws of motion, and genetics are about to conspire against her in a most diabolical fashion.

Step 6. This isn’t really a “step” but I didn’t know where else to put this part. The next thing I hear is my lovely little wife shouting out the phrase “Oh Fuck!” Only when she says it, it kind of sounds like she has her head stuck inside a can or something. It sounds this way because she does indeed have her head stuck inside a can or something, except that it is not a can, it is a dumpster.

Step 7. Again, not really a step, but I like the way this whole “step” thing is flowing and I hate to break up the rhythm.

Step 8. Hey, what the fuck? Rhythm doesn’t have an vowels in it. Unless you count the “Y” but I never count “Y” because they used to say “and sometimes Y” so I figure “and sometimes Y not.” As far as I am concerned, you are either a vowel, or you aren’t. So Y is just going to have to choose sides. I am not making the decision for him or her.

Step 9. Sorry, I digressed. Dammit.

Step 10. So at this point, I look over to see the dumpster on the ground with my wife’s head in it and her feet feet sticking out of it and kind of flailing around like some long forgotten cartoon character.

Step 11. Also at this point, I am holding my breath trying to figure out if I can laugh out loud right then and there, or if, God forbid, she was actually hurt and I would have to run to the other side of the garage to laugh.

Fortunately she is alright. I mean physically she is fine.

Mentally I am not so sure. I mean what can you say about someone’s mental state after they manage to “step headfirst into a dumpster?”

Dear Gardens of Doom,

As you know, we have had an agreement for many years now regarding your existence. The agreement, as written, basically states that you stay on your side of the yard and I will stay on my side of the yard.

I have made numerous sacrifices over the years to try to accommodate all of your many many needs. My God garden, you are a needy one. I have learned to operate the string trimmer with a very gentle touch to avoid killing any of your Black-Eyed-Susans, Lambs Ears, or Daisies. I have even gone out and bought a mower that is practically satellite guided and so precise that it will allow me to mow the pubic hair from a gnat’s ass while drinking Gin straight from the bottle and reciting Homer’s “The Iliad” from memory. ¹

Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that

Sorry, I seem to have digressed from the subject at hand. Now, where were we? Oh yes, our agreement. It would seem that lately you have not been holding up your end of the bargain as I have noticed many of your residents, particularly the Lamb’s Ears, have jumped the borders and have taken up residence in my yard.

As I have told you many times before, such transgressions can be deadly.

This was a young one. If I could do this to one of your young without batting an eye, imagine what I will do to you. Stay on your side of the fucking border.

You’ve been warned.

There will be consequences.

¹ I lied. I only knew that because I thought it was Homer SIMPSON and not that faggy writer guy. D’Oh!

I was going to become an AT&T High Speed Internet technician, but I decided to finish the 3rd grade instead. After 5 days without any reliable connectivity, I am not sure I even remember what the internet is for.

Oh yeah. I remember now.

Porn.

So regarding my last post. I got hate mail. More than one, actually. One in particular though, really bothered me because it was from a longtime reader. I didn’t realize that some of my long-time readers were hypocrites, but apparently they are. I guess it is okay to make fun of King George the Idiot, but apparently saying anything bad about a democratic candidate (who is likely going to be president) is “in poor taste.” So just in case you are worried about how you need to act in the future, here are some guidelines:

Mike says: John McCain is an old white man & old white men have fucked up everything.

Your Reaction: HaHaHaHaHaHaHa

Mike Says: John McCain is just as stupid as George Bush.

Your Reaction: HaHaHaHaHaHaHa

Mike Says: John McCain smells like a dead fish.

Your Reaction: HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa

Mike Says: Barack Obama has big ears.

Your Reaction: You are a racist and you are not funny.

In other news:

So for almost 8 years now, we have seen countless images like these:

Who could possibly deny these pictures are funny as hell? Certainly not me.

But those days are over with my friends. The Anti-Racism Fascists have spoken and we must obey lest we be labeled racist.

Oh wait. I am white and over 50 , so in America that means I am already a racist.

So, what the fuck.

The Obama Sock Monkey

Look, I like Obama as much as the next free-thinking man, and as it currently stands, he is the only logical choice for president, but if poking fun of him or criticizing him for any reason is going to be labeled racist by the Anti-Racism Fascists well then I guess they are going to have to

Here’s the thing. Black folks are just going to have to toughen up a little in the coming years. We make fun of presidents and we criticize presidents because we have that right. We have that right whether the president is black, white, or otherwise, so the NAACP needs to

If we treated Barack any other way, then we just wouldn’t be treating him equally, now would we?

We left my house at 4:00 AM Sunday morning to head off to the lovely Detroit International Airport. Really, it’s lovely. They’ve got a whole 1970’s Crack house theme going on there. You should visit it sometime–especially if you want to get a preview of post-apocalypse-America.

The thing is, I didn’t really need to leave Detroit that early, but I mis-read the schedule when I booked the flight and thought that I had somehow miraculously discovered a direct flight from Detroit to Salt Lake City. Of course I didn’t make the discovery that I had mis-read the schedule until a few days before my flight, and by then it was too late to change things.

While sitting at the airport pounding down Starbuck’s coffee like it was worth every freaking cent I paid for it, I noticed a lovely young lady sporting a T-Shirt that said “I Love Lesbians” only it didn’t actually say “love” because in place of the word love, it had that little red heart thing that has come to mean love.

Naturally every guy in the place was looking at little miss “I heart lesbians” and having fantasies that some of their wives wouldn’t approve of. How do I know this? Well, I know this because I was traveling with my wife and she saw me staring at that hot little thing with the I heart lesbians T-shirt on and she beat me half to death with her knitting bag and threw her stewed prunes all over my “I heart Viagra” T-Shirt.

Maybe she wanted her all for herself.

Honestly, I have nothing against lesbians and I think that I have made it quite clear on this blog and in real life that if I was a woman, I would be a lesbian. Since I am not a woman (although I do have more than 3 pairs of shoes), I guess I’ll just have to wear another T-Shirt.

We rented a car in Salt Lake City and when I got in it, I noticed something odd about the gear shift. Most automatics use the designations P-R-N-D-L to designate the gears Park, Reverse, Neutral, Drive, and Low. The car we rented was different though. It said P-R-N-D-M. What the hell does the M stand for?

I asked my wife, “What the hell does the M stand for?”

She looked over at the gearshift and pointed to each letter and said–”Park, Reverse, Neutral, Drive, & MORMON.”

At that exact moment in time, I remembered why I married her. I put that thing in Mormon and drove on down to Happy Valley.

Okay, I’m about as sorry as the next guy that Tim Russert is dead, but MSNBC has got to stop referring to him as some kind of great journalist. I mean seriously, did he ever do a hard hitting award winning interview with Britney Spears?

Tim: So Britney, tell us what your favorite color is.

Britney: Ice Cream is my favorite color.

Tim: But Britney, ice cream is not a color.

Britney: I like trees.

Tim: Great.

Or did he ever do an award winning interview with Lindsay Lohan?

Tim: So Lindsay, tell us what your favorite color is?

Lindsay: Wanna fuck?

Tim: What?

Lindsay: Got any blow?

Tim: Thank you Miss Lohan.

So come on MSNBC, let’s get with the fucking program. Just because someone can do incredibly insightful in-depth reporting about political crap that no one in their right mind gives a shit about, doesn’t mean they have earned the right to be called a journalist. “America needs more fluff and less stuff.

I just noticed today that I am down to my last two weeks of nicotine patches. The damn program takes forever but I am not deviating from it one bit. The recommended usage is as follows:

6 weeks – 21 mg/day patch.
2 weeks – 14 mg/day patch.
2 weeks – 7 mg/day patch.

I figure the first 6 weeks helps get you off cigarettes and the next 4 weeks help get you off the patch.

I still don’t miss cigarettes one bit and if I could give back 10 years of smoking for a few more years of drinking, I would do it in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, the universe doesn’t work that way–yet.

The Dr. told me a while ago that I could never drink again like I used to. According to him, those days are over for good. I have to dig a little deeper into this because I just read a recent report that says that a couple of drinks a day may actually may help to prevent kidney cancer. Apparently a 5th every couple of days is a bit of overkill?

He also told me that I could have a drink every now and then on special occasions. Thank God for spell check because I can never spell occasion. Or recurrence. Anyway, I digress. The problem is, I am not a one drink kind of guy. I drink until I get drunk and then I quit. Or pass out. So I guess the thing is, I need to learn how to have one drink, or I need to do without.

The prospect of doing without forever is boggling my mind.

If I ever do learn how to have one drink on special occasions (thank God for spell check again), here is the recipe I am going to use:

• 2 1/2 ounces Bombay Sapphire Gin
• 1 1/2 ounces of Dry Vermouth

In a mixing glass filled with ice cubes, pour in 1 1/2 ounces of Dry Vermouth and swish it around so that it completely covers the inside of the glass and the ice cubes. Once the glass and ice have been thoroughly coated with the Dry Vermouth, pour the Dry Vermouth down the drain quickly. Add the 2 1/2 ounces of Bombay Sapphire Gin to the glass and then pour in another couple of ounces of Bombay Sapphire Gin for good measure. Strain the ingredients into a really cool looking glass and add an Olive and/or lemon peel and a few more splashes of Bombay Sapphire Gin.

Once the drink is made, drink the remainder of the 5th straight from the bottle and pour the stuff from the glass down the drain.

I have a lot of scrap wood in my garage that I have never been able to figure out what to do with it. Somehow it seems a shame to burn it or throw it away, so I decided to start looking around for something to do with it. So the other day while standing there staring at the pile of scrap wood and wishing I could have a drink, I decided that I would make my wife a planter box to hang off the deck.

That went pretty well. The only problem I had was figuring out the spacing for the rails. Thank God Jackie was here and was able to put all of that college learning to good use.

So I finished that project and, believe it or not, I still wanted a drink, so I went back to the scrap pile and started scrounging around until I had another idea. This one didn’t require Jackie’s big brain to help me figure out anything. I did it all by myself.

So I finished that box and hadn’t cut off any vital parts and still wanted a drink, so I made another one. We didn’t have a plant for this box though, but that’s okay because “someone” found a use for it.

Carmen in a box.

Scar Update:

Sorry, I probably shouldn’t leave you with an image like that should I?

Well, I always did have a thing for diamonds, so how about this?