Happy Pi Day!

As a man who has enjoyed a few sugary treats over my forty years of life, I have come to the conclusion that desserts fall into three categories:  cake, ice cream, and pie.  All desserts are just some subset of these three, with pudding being the superfamily over all of them.  See what I did there, Britain?  No angry messages left in the comments.

Bears...always funny.

Each one of these delicious treats has a certain aura and mystique surrounding them.  Cake, for instance, is celebratory.  Marking another successful circuit around the sun on an annual basis after springing forth from your mother's womb?  Have some cake!  Finally shuffling off that employment coil and heading into the sunset of retirement?  Have some cake!  Decided to stick your dick in one vagina for the rest of your life?  Cake me, baby!  Even at bachelor parties, the stripper jumps out of a cake.  Cake is for celebrating.  You're never having sex again?  Let's eat cake! 

Ice cream is fun.  Hot day?  Let's have some ice cream.  Celebrating a birthday?  Well, hell, let's have some ice cream along with that cake (see paragraph 2).  On a date?  Well, we're not quite to the marriage and wedding cake step, so let's have some ice cream!  Even the ice cream man drives around in a fun, festive cart with Pop Goes the Weasel or some other song from your childhood blaring over the loudspeakers while he patrols the neighborhood like some sort of angry, frozen dairy treat bearing predator of the sea.  Sure, he has his victims bound and gagged in the back of his festive refrigerated van, but, man, for a few moments while you're picking out the overpriced, frozen dairy treat from the menu on the side of the truck, the ice cream man sure seems fun!  Who wants a side of chloroform to go with this drumstick knock-off?  Me!!!!!!...zzzZZZzzz...

I went to a dark place again, didn't I?

Pie, however, isn't really celebratory (the stripper doesn't jump out of a giant pie, does she?), nor is it as fun as ice cream (man, this pie just doesn't fit into the sugar cone like I was hoping!).  No, pie is something completely different.

Pie is pure sex.

Pie is a lot of work.  Sex is a lot of work.  When you make pie, you have to make the crust, you have to fill the crust, and then you have to put another crust over the top of the filling.  And the crust?  Yeah, it's so flaky and delicious because it has lots of layers.  There's some sex pun in there, but it's late and I can't be bothered to connect the dots.  When you make cake, you just dump some stuff into a bowl, crack a few eggs, stir, bake, done.  You don't need to frost cake; cake is pretty damned delicious as is.  Frosting is just...well, the icing on the cake!

No, pie is something more, something that is in tune with the deepest seated needs and wants of our psyche.  Eating pie makes us feel good, sure, but it also makes us feel a little naughty after enjoying it.  There's something a little lascivious about enjoying a pie. 

Indeed.

Hell, pie is even used as a euphemism--and I use that term lightly--for sex.  A woman's vagina has been likened to a slice of pie for a long time running.  Maybe it's because the shapes of the two are somewhat similar in appearance.  Maybe it's because they're both delicious.  Maybe it's because your face is a mess when you eat either of them without using your hands.  I'm not sure, but I do know that it does sound a lot nicer to liken a vagina to a pie than it is to describe it as cakey in any way.  When Eugene Levy was encouraging Jason Biggs to shove his dick in a dessert, he didn't tell him to fuck a cake.  No sir.  It was pie!  American Pie!  Yum.  *pukes*

 And, do I really need to mention Warrant and their assault on our early 90's radio experiences?  I didn't think so.  But it tastes so sweet it makes a grown man cry...

I apologize for any and all earworms this spawns.

Even though there's no real relationship between the value pi, which is the ratio of the diameter of a circle to it's circumference, and pie the delicious, salacious treat, we've still come to associate the dessert pie with March 14th, which is 3.14...or the first three digits of pi the mathematical value.  At least in America.  Those silly Europeans write March 14th as 14.3...so they don't celebrate pi day until the 31st of April.

Oh.  Right.

So, join me today in celebrating a unique number, pi, by treating yourself to a lascivious and tasty indulgence, pie the round circle dessert.  Oh, hey!  There's our connection!

Mind.  Blown.  Indeed.

100% Chance of It Happening When You Least Want It To

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Totally Blowing Stuff Up Tuesdays: We're Back!

If you have been a reader of this little slice of the Internet, you know that there are a couple of things that I like.  Well, boobs, yes, and they usually travel in a pair, so good job.  You aced the pop quiz.  Nicely done.

The other things I like are explosions and doing stuff around the house that makes me feel all handy and manly and rawr, I want to feel some boobs now.

This story begins on Valentine's Day. I was preparing to take a shower ere heading off to the grocery to get something to cook for dinner.  I turned the water on and left it run so that I could climb in and enjoy the warmth of the wet water running down my tortured and aching muscles.  However, when I stuck my hand in to check the temperature, it was like feeling ice pelting down on me. 

There's some kind of Eskimo fetish
going on out there...apparently

Huh.

So, I let it run for a little while longer.  Still cold.  Then I turned on the sink's hot water faucet.  Call Manny and Sid, cause we got another Ice Age on our hands.

At which point, I uttered many a swear word, almost all of them beginning with "fuck."

Fortunately, I have a brother who is a plumber and an electrician.  Unfortunately, my brother the plumber and electrician lives four states and approximately 13 hours away.  Fortunately, there is this website called Facebook, where you can stalk your old high school crushes AND ask your handyman siblings for assistance when needed. 

He told me to press the reset button.  Reset button?  I didn't know there was such a thing.

There is.  It's usually hidden under the top panel and it's big and bright red and you can't miss it, even if you think you can.  You will immediately hear the water heater switch on, too, upon pressing it.  Neat.  Sexy AND informative, this blog.

So, I crawled into the darkened depths of the crawlspace and pressed the reset button.  Everything was Jim Dandy, Hunky Dory...for about 36 hours.  On Tuesday, I had to reset the water heater four or five times.  All the mind-numbing cold water pouring out of the shower...numbed...my mind...and so I lost count.  But it was definitely a whole number and it was more than three and less than seventy five.

Anyway, I decided to act.  Coming home early on Wednesday afternoon, I drained the water heater and rushed off to buy a replacement kit for the water heater elements--those things which do the yeoman's work of heating the water in the tank.  It set me back about $40.  Not a problem.  The problem was, though, that I began to worry just a bit, because in order to heat all that water inside the tank, it requires electricity.  A LOT of electricity.  So, I was fearful of electrocuting myself under the house with no one around to notice that the lights went dim for a few moments and that the lovely smell coming from under the floorboards was not dinner, but it was, instead, roast Dad.

Precisely what I was trying
to avoid doing...

Spoilers:  I'm savvy enough to have found the correct switch to throw on the breaker box, AND I double-checked the flow of electricity through the machine.  Multiple times. There was none.  Cool.  Let's do this.

Switching out elements on a water heater is actually fairly easy.  I'm here to attest to this.  For real.  It took me all of fifteen minutes to get the top element switched out.  I was pretty proud of myself.  I was going to get this done in an hour and a half (an hour of the project being the draining and the shutting off of power) and we would have hot water by dinner time.

Eh, not so fast, my friend.

The bottom element...was a bitch.  To put it kindly.  I sliced the living hell out of my knuckles trying to get the beast to move.  I laid on the wrench, pushed, sprayed it with all manner of lubricant, tapped on it.  Nothing.  It would not move.

After two hours, I decided to call in professional help.  Enter Kevin, the friendly guy from Roto-Rooter some national chain who laid on the wrench, pushed, sprayed it with all manner of lubricant, tapped on it, nothing.  He even put a hex nut head on the element and stood on the wrench.  It. Would. Not. Budge.

Well, fuck me running. 

There's a little back story to fill in here, as well:  the water heater was easily 30 years old.  I'm shocked that it lasted this long.  It was not up to code, and since I'm looking to sell this money pit house in the near-ish future, I made the decision to get a new water heater installed.  Again, I relied on the professional.  Mostly because there was a SECOND fear lurking in the back of my mind while dealing with maintenance on a water heater.  Namely, that it would build up pressure and burst, shooting through my house like a rocket.

Seem far-fetched?  Again, not so fast, my friend.



I know I give Mythbusters some shit for their "scientific" claims for all their experiments, but there is some serious proof in the pudding here.  That video should set you up with another video to watch from Mythbusters where they destroy a small house by having a water heater shoot THROUGH the entire structure.  It's pretty impressive.  For real.  Watch it.

Science

Oh...the explanation.  Right!  When the pressure builds up inside the inner chamber of the water heater, the water begins to get really pissed off.  It wants to expand, to turn to steam, something--anything!--to relieve that pressure (which is why there is a pressure release valve on water heaters).  These water heaters are engineered to release out the bottom in just such a scenario (rather than rupturing and shooting shrapnel everywhere, which is actually a lot worse than what you just watched), which unfortunately turns them into rockets.  Rockets that fly 500 feet in the air, gushing superhot water, but rockets nonetheless.

Ah, science!

So, not only was I glad to not have electrocuted myself, but I also am glad that I had the professional install the water heater so that it was up to code AND installed correctly.  Even if my $40 fix-it-yourself project suddenly turned into something that cost over $1000.  I'm up to code, and there's nothing firing off through the two floors of my house and the roof.

Oh, and the showers?  Yeah, they're nice and hot now.  And I don't have to crawl under the house in order to press the reset button on the water heater.  Now I can save all that energy for pushing better, more sexy buttons.

Yeah, I'm not sure what that means, either.

Some Things Haven't Changed...

I was looking at my stats the other day, for giggles (and shits), now that I've decided to make a concerted effort toward blogging again.  I will probably never get back to the level of 2009, when I was writing something new nearly every single day...and sometimes two a day.  Wow.  That's something akin to actual effort.

*shudders*

I know the last few years have been...sparse...to say the least.  Some shit went down--some of it I'll talk about, some of it I was legally bound not to speak about.  Some of it, well, it's just better left unsaid.

However, there are things that don't change...such as the shitty weather forecasting around these parts.

This is not exactly what I was looking for, Google.

In North By God Carolina, the weather and--more specifically--the snow predictions have been right once over the past ten years.  Well, maybe twice--there was a ten inches plus forecast last year that ended up around 8, so I'll give them some leeway there.  Although my power was out for two days, which meant I couldn't make coffee, and I had a tremendous headache, which filled me with even more murderous rage, but I couldn't do anything about it because I had a terrible headache.  So, maybe I shouldn't give them a pass. 

Today was another one of those swing-and-a-miss forecasts.  We were supposed to have a weather system move in, but we were assured to worry not our pretty little heads about accumulations.  It wouldn't be an issue.

My son walked into the dining--or the room that serves as my office--and announced, "It's snowing!" last night right before he went to bed.  Sure enough, I looked out and we had an inch on the ground, easily.  It was dry, powdery stuff, because the air temperature was cold enough that the water droplets didn't have time to properly expand before they changed to ice.  How's that for science? (it's a little more complicated than that, but whatever).  Had it not been so dry, it might have been three or four or maybe six inches.

I stepped outside and it was that beautiful, heavy snow-falling kind of night.  There was a muffled quiet that had spread through the darkness, and the silence and solitude was magnificent.  I loved it.  It reminded me of so many snow events of my youth.  It was the kind of snow that reminded my why I like snow so much.

However, the forecast also didn't really call for snow.  Just freezing rain.  Or sleet.  But not a lot of snow.  Maybe some mixed in with the rain.  That's all.  Don't worry at all.  No accumulations, kids!

Or do worry...because they told us not to.

The only reason I'm complaining is because I had everything set up to work from home today, and it was going to be glorious.  It would be quiet.  There would be solitude.  I could drink coffee as often and as much as I wanted.  I didn't have to wear pants!!!

I guess it's boot season...

And then they cancelled school.

I don't blame them.  It's gross out there.  Cold and wet and snowy and icy.  It's all the reasons that I don't like snow, now that I'm an adult...or at least pretending to be one.

So, the quiet is out the window as every neighborhood kid screams while riding a sled down my frozen driveway.  And, since the children are home with me, I have to wear pants. 

*grumbles*

At least the coffee is still hot and flowing.  For now.  I don't want to say anything TOO loudly, else the Universe might decide to intercede.  Again.

I hear more screaming that might be slightly less than joyous.  I better go and make sure no one's body parts are mangled.  At least, not on my property.

Friday Morning Latin Lesson, Vol CXI

I swore that I wouldn't fall back into the same traps of rehashing ancient legends, tales and history when I fired this thing back up, but then I trotted out the falling down the stairs story that I had already told about Betsy Hagar.  I guess this is just lazy writing.  Welcome to the rest of the Internet, Jenks!

I know that today isn't Valentine's day, but it's this weekend and no one reads a this blog ever on the weekends, so I thought I'd also fall into the old habits of writing about saints on their feast day.  I mean, when it comes to lazy writing, go big or go home.

Or just don't write at all.  Looking at you, 2015!!!

Anyway, on Sunday, the calendar page flips over to a gigantic pink heart and a box of chocolates and a giant Vermont teddy bear--no, NOT Bernie Sanders.  We're talking about an ungodly huge stuffed bear that is sure to get your female counterpart to cross her legs at the knees forever while she stares icy daggers at you with every chance she gets.

Speaking of ungodly...

One of the symbols of Valentine's Day is Cupid, the Roman god of erotic love.  He is the son of Venus, and depending on who you ask in Rome, you will get a different answer as to his father's identity.  If we follow the Greek tradition, Eros (Cupid's "Greek counterpart) just sort of arose from the Chaos at the beginning of it all.  Some people will tell you that Mercury is the father (hence the wings), others insist Vulcan is the father because he was, after all, married to Venus.  Still others prefer to insist that Mars is the father, because there is a certain beauty in describing love as being both erotic and warlike.

Kinky.

In Roman traditions, Cupid is a beautiful youth with a quiver of arrows at his belt and a bow at his side.  He's deadly accurate with those arrows, too:  one shot of his golden-tipped arrow and you're doing things you never thought you would ever do.  Cupid's arrows are very much like tequila.

However, Cupid gives and Cupid taketh away.  In addition to his golden-tipped love darts, Cupid could also fire off lead-tipped projectiles that would turn you from being a wanton and love-filled youth and into Grumpy Cat, but with less personality and more bitterness.  Essentially, me.

Cupid's most famous myth is the one where he is sent to destroy the beautiful Psyche, but in a somewhat ironic twist, Cupid falls in love with the mortal and ends up not killing her.  Psyche is pretty fucking hot, and this makes Cupid's mom, Venus, upset and thus dispatches her son to do her dirty work.  Instead, once Cupid sees Psyche, he wants her immediately and we get, as is usually the case, a case of divine kidnapping. Nothing says love like stealing your girlfriend from her home and locking her in a dark room (no, seriously...don't do this).  According to the legend, Cupid spirits Psyche off to his palace where he keeps her in a dark room...no mention of whether he lured her into his chariot first with candy or went strait to the chloroform.  At night, he comes to her (and probably on her), telling her of his love for her, but she can't be allowed to see him (because then the jig will be up as she would instantly recognize him as Cupid).  Concerned--and here is where her sisters, jealous that Psyche is getting some godly dick--Psyche sneaks a lamp into the room while Cupid is asleep and she lights it, discovering that her lover is Cupid.  In her excitement, she spills some oil on him, burning him awake (I'm sure he would have preferred a blow job), and, seeing that Psyche now knows his godly identity, Cupid flees.

No. Psyche. With an 'e' on the end!

Psyche goes off to search the world in order to find Cupid, but she can't, so she implores his mother--the one who wanted her dead in the first place--to help.  Yeah.  This is going to end well.  Being that she's a psycho jealous bitch, Venus tortures Psyche, sending her on impossible tasks that she somehow manages to complete.  Finally fed up, Venus sends Psyche into the Underworld to retrieve some of Porserpina's beauty with the instructions not to look at it.  As Admiral Ackbar once said:  IT'S A TRAP!  Curious to see what this beauty is, and perhaps to use a little for herself, Psyche does not heed Ackbar's warning and instead peeks in the box and is condemned to eternal sleep.  Cupid "stumbles" on her in the wild while she is out cold and feels her up revives her, sealing the sleep back in the box.

Impressed by her perseverance, Jupiter decides to deify Psyche, that way she can wed Cupid as an equal and not have that whole immortal/mortal dynamic that plagues so many other couples in mythology and tragic literature.

Wait.  What?  Jupiter didn't just say, "Nice job, kid?  Here's my dick!"  Huh.  Will wonders never cease?

Anyway, this is a story about how love conquers all.  Or maybe it's a story about how we kind of lose our minds when we're faced with love.  Or just a nice set of boobs (you know who you are).

With that in mind, here's this week's Latin phrase:

Amare et sapere vix deo conceditur.
"Ah-mar-aye et sah-pair-aye wicks day-o con-kay-dee-tour."

Even a god finds it hard to love and be wise at the same time.

It wasn't until some time after Alexander the Great died and before the Roman Empire rose to power in the Mediterranean world that Cupid went from being a handsome youth to the chubby little spanker we know him as today.  As his symbolism for both Heavenly and Earthly love began to be translated over into Christian mythology, Cupid became more of a cherub type image, and that's how he persists today, morphing into a more cartoonish caricature of himself.  If that's possible.  Unfortunately, Psyche hasn't followed along with him, and so Cupid has become associated with a sort of cruel prankster who enjoys seeing people fall in love with the wrong partner.  His most famous modern namesake is the "dating" site OKCupid, whose abbreviation (OKC) always makes me think of the Thunder and Kevin Durant.

Wait a minute...Kevin Durant is deadly accurate shooting, as well.  Holy shit, guys!  Kevin Durant is Cupid!!!

Happy Valentine's Day!