Okay, I admit it. Even Mr. Ass gets in trouble now and then. For the past few weeks, I’ve felt like there’s a gerbil in my butt. And when I finally broke the news to my wife that my ass hurts and I might have colon cancer and what will she do after I’m gone, she laughed at me! Only hemorrhoids, my ass! I asked her to keep quiet about it and she kindly went out for me the next day and bought a box …Read the Rest
Sung loosely to the tune of Leavin’ on a Jet Plane: Well our girl’s knocked up, in San Diego Her due date’s past, we’re ready to go We’ve been waiting for the panicked phone call, for endless weeeeks The truck’s all packed, the gas tank’s topped Aside from peeing, there won’t be stops I’m hoping my new fuzz-buster, can get us there quiiick Cause we’re leeevin, to San Diego We’re not sure when we’ll be back again I hope …Read the Rest
I just finished reading Nicholas Evan’s “The Horse Whisperer.” And even though I didn’t much enjoy his writing style, big chunks of it came through splendidly and I recommend the book. The ending was unexpected, but fitting (I won’t reveal it here). I offered it to my wife, but she has a big stack of Danielle Steele to get through (good luck with that, dear). I don’t know if horse whispering is real, but apparently dog whispering is, because that bearded queer is on TV taming …Read the Rest
Phillip Katz, the inventor of the software PKZIP (at least now we know what PK stands for) died ten years ago this week, on 14-April 2000. Just think of all the exciting crap he’s missed in the last ten years! He was born on November 11, 1962, exactly one month after Mr. Ass was born, so now you know when to buy me a gift. According to Wiki, Phillip was born on the day that the term “personal computer” was first used by the media. …Read the Rest
Speaking of war, the War between the States began 149 years ago this week. Woohoo! And what a war it was. Lasting four years and claiming over one million people, the American Civil War killed 3% of the total population. To put it in perspective, if there were a comparable war today, we’d be talking about 9 million people dead. And for what? Slavery? Well, Abraham Lincoln said free the slaves in his Emancipation Proclamation, and surely, it was the right thing to do. But the …Read the Rest
Well, there goes the atmosphere. Some yahoo spilled 1000 gallons of liquid chlorine on the road last night. I had to detour in order to get home to my family. And when I came to work this morning, the cops were still there, watching over the poor saps who were assigned to clean up the mess. Nasty stuff. Some enterprising German first came up with the idea of using it to gas enemy troops during World War I, thus inventing chemical weapons. It probably would …Read the Rest
Kurt Vonnegut – soldier, author, humanist, American prisoner of war and survivor of the Dresden fire bombings – died three years ago today on April 11th. I’ve always loved his writing. He invented ice-nine and the religion Bokononism in Cat’s Cradle, the characters Billy Pilgrim and Kilgore Trout in Slaughterhouse Five, and Trout’s son Leon watched the evolution of the human species over one-million years in Galapagos. Also on April 11th, troops belonging to the US 9th Armored Infantry Battalion led by Captain Frederic …Read the Rest
Americans love pickup trucks. When I get visitors from Germany (I work for a German company) we sometimes go out for a beer or dinner after work and the Germans always think it’s funny how Americans need such big trucks. I guess it’s because Americans have a lot of crap. And sometimes we have to haul all that crap around town, or go out and buy new crap (like last weekend when we went futon shopping), or sometimes we have …Read the Rest
I’ve always tried to buy American. Except for a brief flirtation with a Mitsubishi Montero back in the early 80s (it died three months shy of the final payment), all of my cars have been American-made, even after the engine on my 1971 AMC Matador burst into flames and melted the accelerator cable into the 2/3 full position, nearly killing me and my future wife before we’d even had a chance to reproduce (see “The Towing”). But when the US …Read the Rest
It was Good Friday, so what did my wife and I do with our relaxing day off? We went shopping, of course! And judging by the traffic, half of Tucson had the same idea. We left the house at 9A, planning on just a quick trip to look for a futon for the new guest room (the ex-Bird Room…long story) and took the yellow pickup just in case we found something. We stopped at the dry cleaner first, where the nice Chinese ladies in back perform alterations and hemming. I needed …Read the Rest