Clearly, I Am 'Father of the Year' Material

Did you know kids are impressionable? It's true. Like, if you tell them something, no matter how outrageous it sounds originally, they'll believe you? And someone thought it'd be a good idea to let me raise not one but TWO of them? (Three, if my aim was off the other night...)

The other night, I was out in the yard with the kids. Now, my yard consists mostly of a hill in the front and a floodplain in the back. It's the kind of thing that would make my cities in Civ III rich, but for me, it's a pain in the ass to mow. That's not the point; I just felt like bitching.

There's a stream at the back of my property and woods all around, which means my back yard is cool, sometimes damp, and shaded. This is a perfect mushroom/toadstool growing environment, apparently. To that end, my son, Tank, had discovered a couple of toadstools in one section of the yard, and so he and I went looking for more. We found quite a few in a variety of colors--browns, whites, oranges--but since I'm not a mycologist, I can't really identify any of them. Plus, thanks to Tori Amos, I think mushrooms look like peezers, so I'm not really inclined to study them intensely.

So, there Tank and I am, wandering around the yard, searching for mushrooms, when I'm struck by a bit of inspiration to joke and kid. What can I say? I'm a fun guy! *rimshot*

Ahem.

While I wore a younger man's clothes, I spent, maybe a few hundred hours playing Super Mario Brothers on the original Nintendo system. This, of course, clouded my mind while we were searching for mushrooms and toadstools, and so I turned to Tank and said:

"You know, you really gotta watch out for those mushroom people. If you're not careful, they'll get you."

To this, he responded, wide eyed, with a gasp. "Really, daddy?" he asked.

Because I'm not above lying to a child to amuse myself, I responded with, "Oh yeah, and if they get you, it's all over. They're poisonous, so when the first one hits you, you'll shrink. If the second one gets you, it's game over."

Another gasp. Had I ended it there, things might have been alright.

"Normally, they travel in groups of two or three, so you've always got to watch out." Now he's getting a little frantic, so I figure it's time to tell him how to defend himself. "However, if you just jump on their heads, you'll be fine. They squish down and don't bother you anymore. If there's too many of them, just find some Italian guy to do the job for you. Ask for Mario."

All of this latter bit of advice went sailing over his head. All he took from the lesson was "Mushroom people...attack...poisonous...all over..."

Fast forward a couple of days. My wife is in the backyard with us. Tank finds some mushrooms and is terrified. He climbs into my wife's lap, frantic, telling of how the mushroom people will get him. She looks at me, unadulterated fury seething in her gaze.

"This is your fault, isn't it?" she asked.

Feigning innocence, I splay my fingers across my chest and with an angellically pure voice, I ask "Oh, why would you ever assume that?" A second later, I espy two more mushrooms growing up next to one of his toys.

"Oh no, Tank," I say aloud, "looks like they're going to get your banana car. Look there's two of them there." This sends him in to an apoplectic frenzy of fear. He tries to climb higher on my wife's lap, apparently satisfied to throw her to the ravages of the evil mushroom people in order to save himself (I've taught him well). The mushrooms, as they are wont to do, simply stand there, digesting the organic material at the base of their stems...menacingly!!!

My wife then tries to calm Tank, explaining that I'm being an asshole a jerk. I feel at this point that I should try to rectify the situation, so I walk over to a pair of mushrooms. They continue to do nothing.

"See, Tank, there's nothing wrong here. They're not attacking me. Come on over. You'll be fine." After several minutes of coaxing, he finally climbs down off my wife's lap and timidly crosses the grass, but won't get any closer than two feet away. "No, see, they're fine. They're not moving. They're just sitting here. You'll be okay."

He takes a step toward the mushrooms...and that's when I scream "OH MY GOD, TANK, HERE THEY COME!!!" and I kick the mushrooms at him. Screaming and crying, he dives back onto my wife's lap, climbs up her body, and sits on her head. I am, of course, hysterical with laughter, partly because of his reaction, but mostly because of my wife's reaction to the scene.

Finally, I talk him down and I find another pair of mushrooms, which I stomp. "See, that's how easy it is to take care of these things!" We spent another ten minutes stomping everything even remotely fungal.

After having rid the yard of those dastardly mushrooms, I sat back down, Tank on my lap now, my wife in the chair beside me. "See Tank," she says, "you don't need to be afraid of the mushrooms. They can't move."

"Yeah," I agreed, "you shouldn't be afraid of the mushrooms. However, you've really got to watch out for slime molds."

Does anyone know if the health care reform covers therapy for traumatic childhood experiences?

Seven Awe-Sum Ways to Die

A while ago, Cora gifted me with this Awesome Award and told me to tell her seven awesome things. Well, actually, she told me to tell her seven times I've crapped by drawers, so here goes:

Monday.

Well, that was effing boring.


In lieu of yarns spun about self-defecation, I thought I'd put up something even better: Seven Awesome Ways I'm Terrified of Dying.

As a mortal, I think about death. I can't help it. What will I see when I'm going down that long, dark tube with the light at the end? A thousand Carl Carlson's, beckoning to me with open arms? I certainly hope so. Hopefully he'll have boxes of Nutty Bars waiting for me. Mmmmmm. I love you, Carl.

To that end, let me present the Seven Awesome Ways For Me to Shuffle Off This Mortal Coil:

7. Being Crushed by an Animal Carcass While Driving on the Interstate: Right away, I can hear you laughing, but I know a guy who knows a guy who knows someone who was killed this way. It's frightening to think that you can be sailing down the road, rocking out to some P!nk cranked WAY up in your car, when suddenly--BAM--a dead deer comes flying down out of the sky and crushes your widdle skull and it's all over. I guarantee you're not going to want all the free jerky you can eat in the hereafter if that's the way it ends for you. And, apparently, this happens somewhat often, when a semi or a large truck of some kind collides with an animal and throws the carcass into the air and it lands on a car going in the opposite direction. Now you're going to be watching the road AND the sky while you're driving along, aren't you?


6. Death by Cosmic Rays: Again, here's something that happens all the time, but no amount of defensive driving will save your soul. More frightening than an asteroid or comet impact--only because something will most likely survive after that--a burst of cosmic rays from some where else in the universe could be hurtling toward us right now. And nothing, not even Galactus, will stop them. These things occur when stars or masses of stars or whole galaxies just suddenly decide they no longer wish to live and they...explode...sending out all manner of high energy rays that would reduce the Earth to one bigass charcoal briquette. Good news for the environmentalists: the heat will be enough that it will burn off the atmosphere and all those pesky greenhouse gasses, and after heating up to a million degrees, the Earth can only cool down afterwards. Hooray for silver linings.


5. Being Gored to Death by Some Animal: Again, I'm looking at deer for this one, since I have ten thousand of them living in my yard and the woods adjacent to it. I figure it'd be my luck that I'll take the trash out some night, blundering along in my typically oblivious fashion, and I'll inadvertently disturb some horny buck in mid-coitus. I would totally understand it if he were to go all Pamplona on my ass and eviscerate me as payback for interrupting his special time with the Mrs. I'd do the same. Being that my ribs will be crushed from the impact, thus puncturing my lungs, I'll lay there in the grass, gasping for breath to call for help, but I won't be able to form the words. To add insult to injury, I'm sure a squirrel will bite my testicles off, just for spite. If not a deer, then there's a chance it could be a wild boar. If that happens, please refer to me only as King Baratheon at my wake.


4. Septic Anal Fissure: As much time as I spend on the toilet, I'm surprised this hasn't happened yet. Or something close to it. Although, anal fissures usually are a side effect of straining too hard to push the poo out through the poop chute (I swear to you, I did get an A in Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy). Being that this occurs where poop is constantly sliding out, the crack can get infected with all sorts of nasties, which can then run rampant through your body, eating things they shouldn't...like my liver and my soul. The thing is, the lower GI tract is filled to bursting with these little beasties that can seriously fuck you up if they escape from the intestines and get into your body. Coupled with what Mike Perry told me about how lots and lots of people die on the toilet, and this all adds up to be rather worrisome. I can see the coroner's report, too: Cause of Death: Infected lesion in the ass.


3. Poisonous Spider Bite...While Asleep: You know how, statistically, the Average American eats five spiders a year while they sleep? Fuck you, I don't care if it's an internet rumor and urban legend. Five of the little bastards go crawling over our faces and fall into our mouths, being swallowed down to oblivion. Well, in North By God Carolina, we have both of the poisonous types of spiders. It would be my luck that one of them would decide to strike his revenge on the way down my windpipe, taking me with him to the big old web in the sky. You can bet your sweet ass that I'll be writing Some Pig in that thing...and then the next week I'll write Some Bacon in the web.


2. While Doing the Nasty: I've always joked that it would awesome to die during sex, that way I could cum and go at the same time! Tiddy-boom! Thank you, I'll be here all week. Try the veal. But, seriously. I can't imagine the ignoble notoriety that I would garner for firing off some sweet release and then giving up the ghost. Now, I won't lie; I'm a man of ample proportions, and I can only imagine that it would do my partner no good to suddenly have my bulk crushing down on top of her. Not only that, but I like to drink a lot of coffee and eat a lot of bacon, so you can imagine what ELSE would come shooting out of me shortly after I began sleeping the sleep of eternity. Yeah, no one's going to forget--or forgive--that, should it happen. Although, it would be awesome to go all rigor mortis with a stiffie. Maybe if this does happen, they can prop me up in a public restroom somewhere and flick off the lights.


1. Being struck in the head by a meteorite: You might think it's a freak thing that a chunk of space rock makes it all the way to the ground. Most of them burn up in the upper atmosphere, leaving dust trails glowing across the sky and causing people to ooh and aah over their majestic beauty. However, some 10,000 to 20,000 meteorites actually make to the surface each year! Most of these land in the oceans and we never see them again, but sometimes, they will hurtle through a house, punching a hole in the roof, stairs, chairs, beds, and curious bystanders wondering "What the hell is that racket?" If this happens to me, I will, of course, be sitting at my computer, and most likely will be doing something lascivious. The coroner will come and find me, and there on the screen with be Teutonic Beauties wearing See-Through Nipple-less Lederhosen and spanking each other with wooden paddles in a tub of whipped cream. Naturally, I'll be sitting there, without pants, dick in hand, a beatific smile on my face, and a meteor lodged in my skull.


So there you have it, my Seven Awesome, Irrational Fears about how I'm going to die. I hope this satisfies your curiosity, Cora, and makes up for the fact that I only crapped myself once in those seven.

What Do You People Want from Me?

I'm certainly no stranger to door-to-door religion salesmen. We used to be plagued by Jehovah's Witnesses all the time up in Bumblefuck, IN. Most of the time, when these young men dressed in their spiffy white shirts, black pants, and ties would knock upon the front door, my mother would ignore them. Even if my brother and I would be standing in the front window where the God-peddlers could see that the house was, indeed, occupied, she'd just ignore them. They'd knock and knock and, eventually, would traipse away without getting to spread the joy of the gospels to us.

But, alas, my mother would have already been on the neighborhood watch line--also known as the telephone--informing the neighbors that there were Jehovah's Witnesses in the town and that they should lock their doors and ignore them. Also, that Christi Tiegland was pregnant again. Can you believe it? What a whore.

Now that I've moved to the South, we don't get Jehovah's Witnesses so much, but we get a far worse kind of plague: Baptists. The first time they came, they tricked me. Two rather attractive young ladies dressed in short skirts and sleeveless shirts were standing on the step out front ringing my doorbell. Thinking that their car had broken down in front of my house and if I helped them to repair it or call for help, they'd repay me in true porno movie style they were selling cookies, I threw the door open. To my horror, they had neither automotive problems nor delicious snacks to sell.

Ladies: Good afternoon, sir. We're with Liberty Baptist Church, and we'd like to invite you to come worship the Lord with us.
Me: I'm Catholic.
Ladies: We want to extend the invitation to worship the Lord to all God's children.
Me: I'm Catholic.
Ladies: The table of the Lord is set for anyone willing to be born again in His glory and righteousness.
Me: *blatantly staring at their breasts*
Ladies: Sir?
Me: *still staring at their chests* Thank you, Jesus!

Eventually, they left. Since the initial confrontation, I had become wary of their religious guile. Another time, I was sitting at home and I had ordered a pizza for me and the kids to enjoy. The doorbell rang. Expecting a big round slice of Italian heaven, instead, I once again got invited to join Jesus at his banquet table--apparently, all that walking everywhere made him hungry. Again, it was two attractive teenage girls peddling the Lord's wares and not delivering me with a pizza nor offering to massage my sins away.

Finally, a third time they arrived. I wasn't expecting anyone this time, so I didn't immediately throw the door open. The kids were running back and forth, screaming that someone was at the front door. Undeterred, my uninvited guests continued knocking and ringing the bell. Finally, the football game had gone to halftime I had had enough, and so I decided to end this little charade here and now.

That, of course, meant dropping my pants. I kicked off my shoes, ripped off my socks and dropped trou. My daughter asked what I was doing. I just nodded to her and said, "Answerin' the door, honey."

I ripped the door open, fully expecting it to be yet another pair of teenage girls looking for a jump to peddle Jesus to me. Instead, it was a couple of dowdy middle aged women, and you could see by the shock on their faces that they were not expecting me to be standing before them in my underwear and a t-shirt. However, they pushed on with their spiel message:

Women: Good afternoon, sir, we're with Liberty Baptist Church and we wanted to ask you some questions.
Me: Aren't you two supposed to be teenagers?
Women: We have many members of the congregation who do door-to-door missionary services.
Me: Well, I guess I'll just have to 'covet my neighbor's wife' instead of his daughters this time.
Women: Are you familiar with Jesus?
Me: Familiar with? Hell yeah. He's a great guy. Cuts the lawns on Tuesday. He does a good job. I recommend him.
Women: We're talking about our Savior, Jesus Christ.
Me: Oh, yeah. THE Jesus. Yeah, I have a healthy snack of his blood and flesh every...well...once a year, at least. Sometimes twice.
Women: Well...if you were to die today, do you know where you'd go?
Me: Are you selling funeral plots or funeral planning? Cause I'm not interested. I want a Viking funeral.
Women: No, we're talking about your immortal soul.
Me: *reaches down to my balls to scratch...and just keep scratching* Oh, yeah, that. Well, I figure I'd go to Purgatory for a few thousand years or however long it takes. They're a little fuzzy on the details. But I'll eventually make it to the Pearly Gates...unlike those bastards who decided to go nailing stuff to the church's door. I pity those poor souls and their eternal torment. *lifts fingers up to nose and sniffs* Yergh. That smells terrible.
Women: Thank you for your time, sir.

I should probably mention here that I don't really believe that Purgatory stuff, but I had a football game to watch and kids to ignore, so I needed to employ drastic measures. So, if you're a Protestant, don't worry...I know that you won't go to Hell; you'll just keep languishing in Purgatory for a while longer than I will.

Anyway, that was nearly three years ago now, and they haven't been back since. Not at least while I've been home. I don't know, maybe they've visited my wife, but I do like to cling to the notion that I've scared them off and that there's a big red X over my house on their Heathen Map.

A Double Shot of Birthday Wow!

Today is a very special day for the women in my family. In case you don't remember what today is, let me remind you with this bodily-fluid enhanced post from last year, wherein I describe one rather unpleasant day all around.

So, today is my daughter's 8th birthday, which means she can sit in the front seat of the car. Oh, special indeed. It's also a special day in my wife's life, as she turns 29, which is traditionally the last birthday a woman has for the rest of her life. Which is good, because in about three years, I'd have to trade her in for two 16-year olds. What? That's how it works, right?

Anyway, we've got some birthday happiness being slung around the olde Jenksatorium today. There'll be singing and dancing and general debauchery...and then I'll get home and cook some steaks. Yeah, me! Provider of meat.

Oh, wait, I should talk about my wife's birthday present on Thursdays...right, right, right. Sorry about that. Did I mention she likes her steak with Bearnaise? Yeah, she loves a big slab of hot meat to come with a rich, creamy sauce. Mental image time!

That leads me into a little story. You've got time, right? Good.

When we were first married, the wife and I used to like going at it hot and heavy, which is to say that we'd do it like, once a week or something. I know. Animals. That is apparently the image my father-in-law had of us, because whenever he'd call, the conversation would start the exact same every single time. It'd go like this:

Me: Hello.
Father-in-Law: Hi, Matt.
Me: Oh, hey!
F-I-L: Am I interrupting anything?

This went on for months, probably almost a year. It was kind of ridiculous, because who would answer the phone during a Rousting Bout of Hide the Pickle, anyway? Priorities, people!

Anyway, one day I answered the phone while my wife was in the other room, so I decided to have some fun. Here's how the conversation went:

Me: Hello.
F-I-L: Hi, Matt.
Me: Oh, hey!
F-I-L: Am I interrupting anything?
Me: Oh, no. We just finished up. Want to talk to [name redacted] Boudicca? Here.
*I held the phone away from my mouth so that it sounded like I was talking to someone while fully aware that I was speaking into the mouthpiece*
Me: It's your dad. Oh, hey, you missed some. Yeah, it's right there. By your mouth. Wipe that up with a towel, you don't want to get that on the phone. Well, I guess you can lick it up; that works, too!
*back into the mouthpiece*
Me: Okay, here she is.
F-I-L: *horrified silence*

He's never asked again if he was "interrupting anything."

Tune in next week when I tell you how I got the people from Liberty Baptist Church to stop ringing my doorbell to ask me about Jesus.

Oh, and, felix sit natalis dies to My Wife, the Comely and Buxom and Horribly Embarrased by This Story Boudicca. Don't worry, my little mulier pulchra, I remember that you don't like any pink in the middle of your big slab of hot meat.

And, Happy Birthday to wee Cookie. You better damn well enjoy that gaming system that I hunted all over the motherfucking Triangle for yesterday. Oh, and I'm sorry that the people on Craigslist are completely inept. I'll get that bike for you soon, I promise!