The Origins of Limpy

SoozieQ asked me if it was alright to refer to me as "limpy", as it seemed somewhat emasculating. The short answer is that I use Limpy as my screen name so feel free to go ahead and call it out on these posts. If I felt insulted by it I wouldn't have brought it up for all to see. But thanks for asking.

Limpy is a nickname I picked up in college. That isn't helping any is it? Our dorm had a volleyball net behind it, complete with a sandpit. We would play out there all the time when the weather was good. And generally speaking we weren't exactly sober when we played. Or any other time for that matter. But early in my first year I went up for a spike, which as usual ended unsuccesfully. This time there was an additional problem aside from my general ineptitude at volleyball. The girl playing opposite me, although pretty much the safest person on the court at that point, was intimidated enough by my leap that she bent over at the waist, covered her head, and backed into me. She clipped me on both knees, resulting in my landing awkwardly and severely spraining my ankle. I had a bruise that looked like a sunset for two weeks and was on crutches for pretty much that entire time. A couple of days after getting submarined, I staggered into a party and the host called out "LIMPY!!" The name stuck, as I suppose was inevitable.

While there is a certain downside to going through college with the name limpy, it did act as a pretty good icebreaker and on several occasions, (and by several I mean exactly once), a young woman who should have known better would take the name as a personal challenge and attempt to disprove it. At that time anyway, I was able to rise to the occassion.

But I kept the name.

It's Like I've Discovered Fire

Almost by sheer accident I figured out how to put up links on this little blog o' mine this afternoon. Although accident or not I wouldn't have been able to stumble along if not for SoozieQ sending along an actual picture of what to do once you've found your blog templates. Yep, I needed a picture. I'm that fucking dumb. Then, after doing a few links, I really did accidentally stumble on how to delete things you don't want on your blog. Like when you've accidentally published your plan to kill your mistress's husband and run away to Tahiti with her and her inherited millions. And to be clear, I don't have a rich mistress with whom to run away to Tahiti and live with on a beach drinking rum and watching sunsets, but I wish I did. My wife wishes she did too. But I was also able to delete Nick's entire blog that I'd somehow stuck into one of my posts. Thereby avoiding plagiarism charges.

Anyhoo, thanks to everyone who offered advice, and we now return you to your regular programming.

Oops

I tried to copy a joke from Nick's blog, and somehow wound up with most of his entire blog stuck in as a post. I can't figure out how to delete it yet either. I am a jackass. I wholeheartedly and unreservedly apologize for any confusion.

Going All In

I'm playing poker tonight. At a mansion. For nickels. One of these things doesn't seem to fit. And if you said, "well it's obviously you becuase you're a rotten poker player", well then you're probably closer to the truth than I am.

It's an interesting group. We used to play a lot more regularly, always for low stakes. Then I started to get involved with another group where the stakes were signifciantly higher, and I pulled a couple of guys with me. Now we play two or three times a week for stakes in the hundreds of dollars, (I usually avoid those hands, preferring to take small pots and curling up in a fetal position and sobbing when the pot gets above $20), and we haven't seen the other four people coming tonight, for cards anyway, in several months. I expect that there's going to be a culture clash when someone from the original game makes a "big" raise of $1.00 and then one of the three of us raises $35. Should be interesting. The promise of chaos is more intersting to me than the actual card game.

Powerball Update

I was reading the paper this morning over my usual bowl of cheerios and fresh cut strwaberries mixed with blood from my thumb because I can't be trusted with pointy metal things, and I noticed the lead story was about 8 people coming forward to claim the BIGGEST LOTTERY JACKPOT EVER!!! It seems that there are 8 of them, they all work in the same HAM PROCESSING PLANT, (there's a pattern here, trust me), and everytime the lottery goes over a certain amount they all kick in $5 and buy 40 tickets. Fine. If anyone other than me has to WIN $365 MILLION I'm glad it was the kind of people that work in a HAM PROCESSING PLANT and not an 88 year old person who can only will it to their next of kin or else some richie-rich type who bought $100 worth of tickets on a whim.

Here's the kicker.

Three of the eight say that they're going back to work.

IN A HAM PROCESSING PLANT. WHEN THEY EACH HAVE $15.5 MILLION, AFTER TAXES!!

Now the reason for the capitalization becomes apparent. I mean, let's face it, I have a job where, as you might have noticed, I have a fair amount of freedom in deciding what to do at any given moment. I can pretty much come and go as I please. I am pretty much bullet-proof and invisible, but only to myself and only after too much tequila, (i.e., every other day). I have turned down higher paying offers because this job gives me more flexibility and more time with the family, (or, as I call them, "Me First and the Gimme Gimmes), (and yes, I did steal that name from a band. So what?), but I would not heistate for one millisecond to walk away if I won even a third of that kind of money. And I ain't processing ham. I've never done that, but I have worked on a poultry farm, and I gotta believe that turning pig carcasses into something that the rest of us will call ham and cook for our families is the sort of job that most of the world would say sucks ass. And if you're rolling into work each morning at the local ham processing plant in your spanking new Porsche, I have to believe that the other workers, who didn't win, are going to be thinking up ways to process your dumb ass with the ham. And you know what? You're going to deserve it.

I suggest we all avoid the ham for the next few months.

More Musical Suggestions

I heard a great song on the radio this afternoon. So good that I immediately went on Amazon and added to the nation's soaring credit card debt while ordering the CD. On work time. Seriously, it was that good.

What, you want to know what it was? Ok, ok, it was the new Marc Antony CD.

You're not buying that for a second are you?

Actually it was a CD from 1989 by Maria McKee, who some of you old bastards might recall from her days fronting the band Lone Justice. I think they had about two albums and then broke up without achieving the sort of fame that would necessitate a VH-1 "Where the Hell Are They Now" special. My personal favorite is the one where one of the Motley Cure guys confesses to waking up with a heroin needle jammed in his arm. That's when he knew he had a problem. Ya think? That needle dangling from the puss-filled sore on your arm was that strong a clue was it? Ah, well, I'm sure that he's clean and sober now.

This doesn't have anything to do with Maria McKee, who as far as I know never did heroin. Or at least not enough of it to go on TV and talk about the time she woke up with the needle still in her arm.

At any rate, the song is called "Drinking in my Sunday Dress", and contains great lines like "The telephone was by the bottle that was always by my bed", and McKee just belts that sucker out. Made me want to dance around the office. So I did. Thank God for solid doors. I have no idea if the rest of the album is any good or not, but since the CD was like $7, who cares. Although it's probably not a good sign for Maria's career that her CD is going for $7 come to think of it. Maybe she should start doing heroin. On TV. While wearing spandex.

Something I Hate

WARNING: FOUL LANGUAGE WITHIN.

There's nothing I hate more, (obviously with the exceptions of war, pestilence, death, famine and their related friends and cousins), than driving around with the radio set on scan and suddenly coming upon the tail end of a great song. It's even worse if I've missed most of it because I settled for a mediocre song farther down the dial, usually out of sheer desparation to listen to something good on the radio. I need satellite radio or something. I try to avoid changing CDs at 60 mph. But anyway, it not only happened yesterday on my way home from work, when I was already sick, (Gosh I'm a whiny little bitch aren't I?), and this time it added an additional insult.

I've got the radio on scan and it hits an oldies station just as The Beach Boys "Sloop John B." winds down the final few lines. Now, I don't particularly like the Beach Boys, but that song is a great one. Bad enough I miss that, but the next song is a request. And the request is from a male, sounds like he's in his 40's, requesting, and I kid you not, "Let's Get Physical" by Olivia Newton John. The DJ asks his name, and lets call him Dick from Dickville, and then pisses me off by not only saying it's coming up next but by not saying "Thanks for the call you frigging LOSER!!!!!" at the top of his lungs before plugging in same AC/DC. God that's annoying.

Let me be clear. If you're a guy and you're in my age group, there is no reason, no reason at all, to be calling radio stations and requesting "Let's Get Physical." I mean, who in their right mind is sitting at home thinking, "I just gotta hear that song RIGHT FUCKING NOW OR I'M GONNA DIE!!!!" Just buy the CD. I'm sure there's few left in the remainder bin. You can hear it all day long in the privacy of your home and spare the rest of us.

Of course, if that's the worst thing that ever happens to me I fully recognize I should just shut up. But I won't. Because then I wouldn't have anything to write about.

One Quick Thing

I don't live anywhere near Nebraska. I've never been there. I don't know anyone who does live there. In short, I do not have the winning Powerball ticket, I do not have $365 million, and if anyone out there was counting on getting $1 million from me, (I'm looking at you Merry Widow), well, you should just go back to work right now.

I Have A Bomb Shelter And You Can't Use It

On Sunday night I had about four things to write about. Four things that I was ure would elevate me to the head of the class, that would make me a required stop for all of the folks out there reading blogs. So naturally I put it off til today and at the moment I can't remember a single one of them. I suspect, quite strongly, that this will not be the last time this happens.

I would like to thank SoozieQ for trying to help me establish some links here in the Bomb Shelter. I cannot, however, find the templates section for this blog, and therefore cannot follow what seem to be very clear and easy instructions. As you can see, however, I did figure out how to link to things in the text section of these little musings of mine. Look, here's one to LouLaughlin, the first person ever to comment on this travesty of a blog. I figure that's enough for one day.

If I remember anything I'll pop back in here. Who am I kidding? If I get bored at work I'll be back through here, which means I'll wander back here at least five more times in the next hour.

A Very Swiss Miracle

I just wanted to let everyone who didn't watch the game on CNCBC, (in other words, most of the known world), that Switzerland today beat Canada 2-0 in Men's Olympic hockey. For those of you who don't follow hockey, (and judging by the ratings, that would be all of you), this is roughly the same as me and my three inch vertical leap going up to Kobe Bryant, calling him a pussy and then whipping him in a game of HORSE.

Somebody Help Me

I would like to set up a couple of links for the other blogs that I cruise around on. Unfortunately, I have the computer skills of a drunken macaque, and do not know quite how to go about doing so. SoozieQ suggested I start by going to the templates section of the blog. Dutifully, I looked for that and could not find it. Did I mention that my navigating skills rival my computer skills? Anyway, I would appreciate any guidance anyone out there could provide. I can't promise anything other than my eternal gratitude, but dammit, that should be enough. Also, I would link to your blog, which should get you 1-2 more readers. One of them would be me. At least once or twice.

School Stuff

I went into work late this morning. Well, later than usual anyway. The reason was that I went to my son's school for what was billed as a reading exhibition by his class. I figured that each of the little tykes would get up and read a few lines of Bar-Bar Stampedes A Village or something like that. Instead we listened to the teacher, (who I'd always just assumed could read), read a few pages of a story that I think was about a giant that ate girls. After that the teacher told us that we would each meet with our kids and they would read to us individually. Well, I already know my son can read. He does it all the time. Sometimes things I'd rather he didn't read. But we got together in the corner and he read a story and then we had to make a bookmark. I asked what he wanted to make and he said "a duck with a flamethrower." So being the responsible Dad I am I said "Great!!, gimme the red markers", and set about drawing one. Son says that he's going to get in trouble for that and I said no you're not, because I drew it. And I was thinking the whole time that he'd sure as hell better not get in trouble after the teacher read the whole class a story about child-eating giants. After that we drew more bookmarks ripping off Calvin & Hobbes, which is simply The Greatest Comic Strip Ever, and called it a day. To her credit, his teacher seemed quite pleased with our efforts, although I lost a few points for drawing out of the lines.

Afterwards I was remarking at work that it seemed kind of silly to go to class to have your kids read to you, when you do that with them at home. One of my co-workers pointed out, unfortunately probably correctly, that most kids probably don't do that at home.

The moral of the story is that if you have kids, go out and either read to them or have them read to you. Because I don't want to have to make more bookmarks.

My Upcoming Millions

The Powerball lottery is slightly more than $300 million. I am confident that the one ticket I bought last night is going to make me extremely wealthy by this time tomorrow. This confirms that I am either incredibly stupid or else that this low grade fever I've been running all day is getting hotter and I should go find some aspirin and tequila and go night-night. If I win everyone who reads this blog gets a million bucks. I wouldn't go quitting any jobs just yet people.

If I did win $300 million, I can gurantee I wouldn't be one of those people who says "I'm not gonna let it change me; I'll be back at work on Monday" No, my interview would probably have to be heavily edited, involve the public consumption of far too much alcohol, embarrass my friends and family, (all of whom could easily be bribed into forgiving me), and include statements like "I never have to get up before noon again!!!"

Hunting With Dick & Harry

I don't particularly want to get bogged down in politics, (I'm sort of a financial conservative and liberal everything else), but I just can't resist this one. As you may know by now, (or not if you live in a cave), our Vice-President managed to shoot one of his hunting partners. Accidentally. I have no problem with that, shit happens, especially when you're a somewhat out of shape, older guy who hunts birds from a car. But here's the stupid part about it. The White House flaks are making all sorts of excuses for Cheney and why his shooting his hunting buddy in the face with a load of bird shot wasn't his fault. And I will concede that either party would do the same thing if their candidate winged a donor, but still, this is just dumb. Mary Matalin was quoted in the paper as saying the Vice-President did nothing wrong. Today they say that it was Harry's fault for not disclosing his location to the other members of the hunting party. Here's the deal: One hunter shot another hunter. THAT'S WRONG!!!! The #1 rule of hunting is that you don't shoot at something until you've identified what that something is. Especially if that something is a 78 year old man wearing blaze orange. There's no arguing that. I'm not saying Cheney should be hauled off to jail, (for this anyway), but sweet Christ, man, own up to an obvious mistake. If the other guy put a bunch of feathers on his head and leapt out of the bushes I could see why it was his fault, but other than that, you pull the trigger, you're the one at fault.

Something I like

This could be a warm and fuzzy post, especially with Valentine's Day right around the corner...Oh shit, it really is right around the corner. You know something that I like?

Strip bars.

Kind of killed the warm and fuzzies right there didn't it?

Yep, I like strip bars. I like going to them and sitting back and watching the general chaos. I like talking to naked women who aren't telling me the truth about anything and have no intention to strat doing so anytime soon. I like hearing how hot I am and what big muscles I have and then two minutes I like hearing the exact same thing said to the 80 year old leper in a wheelchair sitting to my right. I like it when the shot girl tries to rip me off by pretending she can't remember if I gave her a $10 bill or a $20 bill exactly 4.5 seconds ago. I like it when she pretends to get pissed when I call her on that. I like it when we all have a good laugh 3 seconds after that and then I give her the $10 anyway. I like getting the next two rounds on the house because we all know that we're all on to each other and now everyone's just up for a good time. I like going to strip bars with my buddy when he's just cleaned up at the poker tables and has no intention of letting anything as silly as a couple hundred bucks getting in between him and what might have been the best lap dance ever. I like it when it turns out he's, Ahem, "dating" one of the dancers and we get the inside scoop on everything in the club, good, bad and really, really ugly. I like arguing with the strippers about whether or not Nick Cave writes good poetry, all the while never taking my eyes off her see through mesh top. I like getting a lap dance and then getting propositioned for more. I like being smart enough to run at that point, albeit politely. I like telling my buddy, "Hey that girl looks cute in a 'I'm addicted to heroin' sort of way", and five minutes later finding out that he bought you two lap dances from the smack-head.

It was a good weekend.

Trouble At School

I have been informed, by reliable soruces at home, taht my daughter is upstairs packing her bags becuase she doesn't want to live with us anymore. Since she's 5, I'm not worried about her getting much farther than the back fence. It's already dark outside after all. Apparently the little darling came home with a note about being very silly in math class and not using the scissors appropriately. Said note was accompanied by an envelope containing, and I quote, "a chunk" of her hair.

Just think, in eight years or so, when I'm explaining why she can't date a member of the Jr. Diablos biker gang, I'll look back at this as "the good old days"

My Ancestors Make Me Proud

I am of largely Irish descent. I think there's some German and Danish, (shh, don't tell the Islamic world. I had nothing to do with those cartoons!!), blood in there too, but mostly Irish. Recently, there was a news article saying that scientists have found that the second most fertile male in the history of the world was a 5th century Irish warlord known as, (and I'm not making this up), Niall of the 9 Hostages, who is responsible for 3,000,000 descendants. I guess that's what taking hostages 9 at a time in the 5th century will get you. These days it gets a visit from the FBI. Not that I would know that from personal experience or anything.

My curiosity peaked, I looked up the most fertile male in the world. Save your jokes, I already thought of them. Anyway, through gene mapping, it seems that the late, great Genghis Khan is responsible in some small, (or maybe large), way, for 10-12 million of the people currently wandering about the planet. Not even an Irish Catholic can complete with that sort of fertility. Although lord knows that my former neighbors, the O'Seamus's, (note I changed the name, but trust me, it was that Irish), certainly gave it a shot with the 14 kids.

The end result is that, while most of the time no one remembers who came in second, (pun intended), I raise a glass of Guinness to a guy who could very well be my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-to the 8th degree grandfather, and say "well done, sir, well done indeed."

I am on hold

I'm an attorney. One of the things we occasionally have to do is go to court for things called pre-trials. Both sides meet with a judge and there's a dsicussion about whether or not the case can be resolved. If it can, Yay, everyone goes home. If it can't, everyone picks a trial date and goes home and then the case gets tried. In this case, all three attorneys, (and any time there are more than two attorneys nothing is going to settle at the pre-trial. If it did the universe would implode), have agreed that we aren't going to settle and would like a trial date. The court won't let us do that. So instead we will drive two hours round trip, advise the judge we can't settle, then pick a trial date and drive back. Time marches on. I am bitter. Bitter, bitter, bitter.

I take an Interent Test and am humbled

Apparently, I am an Old Soul. Which is odd since I'm 36. And somewhat depressing. I take solace in the fact that I get easily bored taking these tests and resort to just hitting dots in an effort to speed things along. At my current job I am famous as the guy who took the initial psych test and, when faced with the question "When I don't get my way I...", answered "curl up in a fetal position and sob uncontrollably." Needless to say, I was a little surprised when I got the job. They do seem to put an awful lot of safety scissors in my office though.

Shameless Commerce Division

As near as I can tell, 8 people have checked out this blog. Either that or I've accidentally hit "Check my profile" about seven times. Call it 50-50. One person commented and I'd just like to thank Lou for that. I suspect Lou and I disagree about politics, but that's OK. This blog will not disappear without any readers, and he is responsible for that.

Since I now have this enormous audience of 1-8 people, I'm going to plug my favorite band. The Supersuckers. I have no financial interest in them. I doubt they know I exist. They're from Seattle, where it rains all the time, and their football team is in the Super Bowl. I am in Connecticut where it rains all the time and our hockey team got hijacked to North Friggin' Carolina. Die, Karmanos, die.

Ahem.

Anyway, if you like straight ahead rock 'n roll, (or Rock and/or Roll, as pricelessly described by the good Rev. Lovejoy on The Simpsons), you will love The Supersuckers. They're just that damn good, and I have driven 5 hours round trip to see them. Well worth it. 5 hours may not seem like much to some people, but considering I can be counted on to whine unmercifully about a ten minute trip to buy more milk, it means something to me. So go buy music from The Supersuckers. You'll be glad you did.

In the interest of full disclosure, if you like Christian rock, (hi Lou), you're going to want to avoid this band.

State of the Union

I find it deeply disturbing that the man in charge of the country seems to read at a 7th grade level. I know he doesn't write his own speeches, but couldn't they dumb them down so he's not sputtering through them like that? Yeesh.

About Me

Proving my ignoirance about blogging, it turns out that the "About Me" profile section actually links you to other people with common interests. I did not know this. Which would explain why I put down that my interests included things like necrophilia and bear-baiting, as well as chess. In orer to clear up some confusion, and to preempt any contact from some serious freaks, let me be very clear about this: I do not like chess.