The Corporate Games

Every year, the companies in the surrounding area get together and compete against each other in a friendly competition. The event is aptly named The Corporate Games. This is the first year that I’ve been able to participate, so I signed up for the dodge ball team. If you can dodge a stapler, you can dodge a ball!

In order to help me prepare, my wife has been throwing stuff at me at home. Some sort of honing my reflexes thing. There are just two problems with that. One, she was throwing stuff at me long before I signed up for the dodge ball team. And two, if I couldn’t dodge a slow-moving towel ball, what made her think I could dodge a quickly thrown frying pan?

Fifteen stitches later...

Thin Walls

Okay, I was in the restroom today, and I…to put this delicately...passed wind. It was moderately loud...sort of like a brief tuba note. It was followed by someone in the women’s restroom exclaiming, "I heard that!"

Which means that it was one of three things: louder than I thought, the woman in the restroom has bionic ears, or the walls are entirely too thin between the restrooms.

Regardless, I was so embarrassed that I hid out in the bathroom for twenty minutes to make sure I didn’t run into her as she came out.

Gone to the Birds

We have recently been battling a family of barn swallows that decided to take up residence on our front porch. We endured the chittering from the front porch until their babies were old enough to fly. Then, we took action and knocked down the nest…in an effort to persuade them to find other lodgings. Not to be so easily deterred, they started to rebuild the nest again. My wife had been pushed to the breaking point. “It’s our house, not theirs, and I won’t be attacked every time I step out my front door.” And the war began.

It started with some impressive aerial maneuvers on the birds’ parts as they dipped and dodged the aquatic flak that I was sending up from the water hose. I tried several times to shoot them from the sky, but their fighters were always faster and more maneuverable. Then the birds launched a counter attack. As soon as the hose was safely back in the garage, a whole squadron of Sparrow S-54 fighters dive-bombed me, keeping in perfect formation as one after another took turns swooping at my head.

While I attacked the birds directly, my wife attacked their repeated attempts to rebuild the nest with a stool and a broom. This went on for several weeks with neither side backing down, until finally my wife covered the spot on the stone where they like to build their nest with a bleach-soaked rag. The nest attempts stopped, but the birds grew even more hostile.

In an attempt to show their disapproval of our interference with natural order and instinct, the birds launched a massive counter-attack. SR-18 Spy birds were sent in at night to plaster the ‘Welcome’ mat, front porch, front door, and an innocent garden elf statue with poop. G-10 Guerilla birds were seen blatantly pooping on the mailbox in broad daylight while shouting taunts at us through the window. But most disturbing of all was the squadron of B-17 Bomber Sparrows that could be seen flying in slow formation high above our yard.

“Target acquired. The stupid human has stepped foot outside the protection of the fortified nest. On my mark, men. Don’t drop until I do. We’ll only have one chance at this, so let’s make every shot count. Three, two, one…drop! Bombs away!”

“What’s that high-pitched, whistling sound?” I ask as I walk to the mailbox to get the mail. Too late I look up to see the threat. Splat! Splat, splat, splat, splat…splat! “What the crap! It’s in my hair, and my eye, and uck! my mouth. That’s disgusting. I’ll get you, you B-17 Bomber Sparrows!” I scream, shaking the flaming fist of fury at the retreating squadron. “If it’s the last thing I do…right after I wash this crap out of my hair!”

The Siamese Cookie

I had a rare and strange discovery in my bag of animal crackers today. I pulled out a cracker of two crackers attached to each other. This Siamese cookie was strange in its flawless transition from what I can only surmise is a donkey to what looks vaguely like a goat. What is truly disturbing about this cookie, however, is that the donkey’s head is up the goat’s butt. This is not only disturbing for its depiction of an animal impossibility, a donkey and a goat being of vastly different heights, but also for the pure shock of finding such a non-family-friendly cookie in my bag.

I can only guess that some worker in the cookie factory had grown bored with his job and had decided that the creation of such a cookie would help pass the time.

Beauty of the Rain

It was raining again this morning. Of course saying it was raining is an understatement. It was pouring. I really wouldn’t mind so much if I didn’t have to drive in the mess. Although there is a certain beauty to the rain that can only be seen from the inside of a car.

I like to turn my windshield wipers off when I stop at a stoplight and watch as the rain slides down the windshield in wavy, uneven sheets. Colors blur together. Perfect, logical shapes turn into irregular, curving masses. It’s like watching the world slowly going out of focus. And I sit mesmerized as the picture before me takes on an endless array of variations when looked at through my ever-changing lens.

Then the light will turn green, the windshield wipers will be switched back on, and the abstract will be swept away. The lines and perfect angles will be back. Clarity will be restored…at least until the next stoplight.

The Jalapeno

When M.B.’s son was three, he snuck into the kitchen while M.B. was making nachos. M.B. was cutting up some jalapenos when his son unexpectedly reached up over the edge of the counter and snagged a jalapeno slice. Before M.B. could react, his son dashed out of the kitchen, shoving the jalapeno slice into his mouth.

Within seconds, a high-pitched wail could be heard from the next room. M.B. ran into the room to find his son crying and scratching at his tongue. In between sobs, his son cried, “You poisoned me! It hurts!”

M.B. picked him up and carried him into the bathroom. He got a wash cloth, soaked it with cold water, and set about rubbing it over his son’s burning tongue.

The moral of the story is two-fold: If you’re three, don’t stick things in your mouth that you grabbed off the counter. If you’re a three-year old’s father who just grabbed a jalapeno off the counter and shoved it into his mouth, you can either make him drink the water or you can have a little fun with it and scrub his tongue with it.

It's a Boy!

When announcing a new birth, why do people always say that baby, mom, and dad are all doing fine? Dad is doing fine? Why wouldn't he be fine? Did he faint and knock himself out on the edge of the bed? Was his hand pulverized during an extremely bad contraction? Did he stupidly try to give advice to his wife and get stabbed with a wayward scalpel?

I mean what do people think he was doing in there other than standing around uselessly, panicking that he wasn't doing more?

Miles per Fry

With the continued success of bio-diesel cars to turn unwanted restaurant grease and oil into a usable fuel source, it is only a matter of time before McDonald’s capitalizes on this emerging market. Pretty soon you’ll stop at the McDonald’s Food and Fuel. You’ll drive up to the window and order a Number 1, which will now be a Big Mac, medium French fry, medium drink, and 10 gallons of bio-diesel fuel for $25 plus tax.

Of course industry standards will have to change as well. Car fuel ratings will no longer be measured by miles per gallon. The new bio-diesel cars will now have a mpf, or miles per fry, rating. How many miles can you drive on a gallon of French fry oil?

The Prom Date

S.M. was telling me yesterday that he broke up with his girlfriend days before his prom. He had no choice but to ask out a Freshman since all the other good girls were taken. He told me that from the get-go the date did not go well. I asked how bad it got, and he replied by saying that it got so bad that they didn't leave the prom together. Apparently, his date met someone else, and left with her instead.

Tastes Like Chicken

You know how everyone says that things taste like chicken. Well, thanks to my mother's insight, I have a new perspective on that theory. Who decided that chicken ought to be the top of the meat foodchain? As if everything was beneath it and should be compared to it. How do we know that snake isn't really the top meat? Maybe snake doesn't taste like chicken, maybe chicken tastes like snake. Logic would then follow that all other meats that were once compared to chicken would now be compared to snake.

"I had alligator once."
"Oh yeah, what did it taste like?"
"It tasted like snake."
"What does that taste like?"
"Like chicken."
"Ah, gotcha."