I'm Leavin' On A Jet Plane

Don't know when I'll be back again.

Oh, wait, it says right here on the ticket. Back next Tuesday. Taking a guys only trip to Kansas City to see the Red Sox play Opening Day, which to my mind should be a national holiday. Even though I'm a Yankees fan and will be rooting for the Royals, I can't pass up a trip like this. Even if it does involve getting up at 4:30 am to make the flight out. I am not looking forward to that. Besdies I think once you factor in airfare, the hotel, and the price of the ticket, I am still paying considerably less than I would to get similar tickets to Opening Day at Fenway, and way less than I would for Yankee Stadium. Seriously, I compared them. I'm that anal.

Speaking of anal, here's some lesbian erotica I found in Dan Savage's column, Savage Love.

By Dan Savage

Longtime reader with a vanilla question: What to do about differing libidos? We're a straight couple together 20-plus years, and we've aged well. No weight gain, no radical changes in appearance. We are open and loving, and I am cognizant of her needs and feelings. Yesterday, I read an interview with Joan Sewell, author of I'd Rather Eat Chocolate: Learning to Love My Low Libido, and handed it to my wife and observed that this is the new ideal: women laughing at their male partners and shrugging their shoulders about women's general lack of desire. My spouse can now point at this book and say, "You see, I'm normal, and so are all of my friends, ha ha ha, live with it…"

While I want sex daily, I get it maybe five to 20 times a year—and I am lucky compared to some straight married men! Where are the women you hear about who want sex constantly?

Not Giving Up



I haven't had a chance to read Ms. Sewell's book, NGU, but I devoured Sandra Tsing Loh's review of I'd Rather Eat Chocolate in the current Atlantic Monthly. (Loh's book reviews are worth the price of a subscription.) And I'm saddened to report that, according to Sewell and Loh, there's no such thing as a woman who wants sex constantly. They don't exist—never did.

All that yammering about women with voracious sexual appetites during Sex And The City's long reign of terror? A cruel hoax. A figment of the straight-male imagination, a Big Lie picked up on and promoted by self-serving female "sexperts" eager to tell straight men what they wanted to hear. Women have naturally lower sex drives, Sewell writes. It's a hormonal thing. Testosterone makes humans horny, men have lots more than women, so men are hornier—and all the Sex And The City repeats in the world aren't going to change that.

"So if straight women don't want sex—or as much sex—what do they want? Chocolate, says Sewell, or a good book. Massive amounts of carbs, says Loh, who approvingly writes of a lesbian couple she knows. With no men around demanding sex, Loh's lesbian friends are livin' the dream: "Teri and Pat have had a special Monday-night ritual. They order an extra-large cheese pizza," writes Loh. While they wait for their pizza, "they settle in on the couch with large twin bags of Doritos. Each chip is dipped first in cream cheese and then in salsa. Cream cheese, salsa. Cream cheese, salsa… The Doritos are finished to the last crumb, and then, upon arrival, the pizza as well." (No dessert is mentioned—I imagine it's just one wafer-thin mint.) Teri and Pat are 50 pounds overweight and suffer from "lesbian bed death," but for them, pizza-and-Doritos night is "better than sex." Loh, who has a sex-starved husband at home, is green with envy."

OK, maybe that wasn't the most erotic thing you've ever read. Nor do I particularly beleive that most women have lower libidos than men. In fact, I don't care. No I just mentioned this so that in the event that I ever get to the point that "pizza-and-Doritos night is 'better than sex'", I want one of you people to track me down and kill me.

And for those of you who feel compelled to argue about the sad story of Teri and Pat and their affair with the Dominos guy, (bowm-chicka-bow-wow), you can save yourself the trouble and click here and read the entries from everyone else who already has.

I think at least two of those responses are from Maggie.

Gosh I Love Starbucks

Maggie bitched me out for taking so long between posts, so here's another one. Here's a tip folks, if I'm not posting it's because I can't think of anything that would meet the high quality you've come to expect here in the bomb shelter. Or, and this is far more likely, I'm just drunk. Also, our computer at home is having some problems. I believe that the technical term is "shitting the bed", and as a result, among other things, I cannot post from home, nor read comments. I also can't access my 401K, although I think this blog might actually be worth more. Consequently, we're in the market for a new computer. Suggestions?

As you know if you're a long time reader of this blog, a) you have low standards for entertainment, and b) I swim for exercise. Sometimes after swimming at night I go across the street to Starbucks for a hot chocolate. I like to go at night because if I went when they were busy, I'd probably just start swinging at people. They're all just so precious there, tapping away at laptops, sipping a drink loosely based on coffee, and debating which co-op gives the fairest prices to the producers of the Ecuadorean yarn that was used to make their sweaters.

I amuse myself by ordering the "large" hot chocolate. Sometimes they ask if I mean the "venti". I usually just glare at them for a hearbeat and then point at the biggest cup and say "I want one of those". Venti my ass. The cups come with quotes nowadays. Not historical quotes, or even very interesting quotes, just random sayings from the kind of pretentious fucks I usually try to avoid by going to Starbucks only late at night.

Last night's was from some guy named Kevin. Kevin started his quote off by saying "The day my son was born I simultaneously died and was reborn". I found myself wondering if his wife was surprised the first time she saw Kevin's vagina. I hate guys who feel compelled to show the world how sensitive they are by making grandiose pronouncements of how their life changed when they became fathers. Thanks Kev. Before I got that hot chocolate I hadn't been able to put my finger on quite how I felt when my son was born. Neither could all of my other friends who have become fathers. Nope, we had no idea. What an original and thought provoking quote you have there. I wish I was that sensitive and emotional.

If I ever put a quote like that on a mass-produced cup and then showed it to my son he would hit me in the nuts for embarrassing him. And when he did, I'd know I was raising him the right way.

I Come To The Crashing Realization That I Am Old

This Saturday I had a few free moments, a rarity with two kids, and I zipped up the street to have my increasingly shaggy locks trimmed. And by that I mean my mother took the kids so I got the rapidly diminishing hair on my head trimmed, although why I bother doing that is beyond me since nature seems to be determined to take care of that on its own anyway. Stupid genetics.

While waiting my turn I picked up a copy of Maxim or Stuff or some other magazine with Christina Aguilear apparently about to have sex with her pillow on the cover. Lucky pillow.



I took the magazine home. Not because I wanted to have a photo spread of Aguilera around for those late nigth lonely moments when Cinemax is scrambled, (although let's not pretend I'd be above that sort of thing), but because the magazine had an article on good scotch, and I wanted to remember one brand in particular, since they have a 40 year old available that sounds really good, and if I can just persuade my wife that the kids don't really need to go to college, I might be able to afford a bottle.





So basically, at the age of 37 I'm taking home semi-porn magazines for the booze, not the poon. Can driving down the road at 35 mph with my left blinker on for 10 miles be far behind? Probably not, especially if I can get my hands on the Scotch.

Information That Could Save You A Turn

My wife and I like to play "Scrabble". Sure it's not as involved as those cool games Phollower plays, but we are able to finish 3-4 games in less than 8 hours, unlike certain games based on German parliamentary maneuvering. Last night I discovered something that anyone else interested in playing Scrabble might want to keep in mind.

"Clit" does not count as a dictionary-recognized word.

I tired to play it, leading to the following:

Me: "I'm pretty sure that counts"

Her: "I'd challenge it, but it's sort of turning me on"

Wanna Teach Your Kids About Death?

Buy them an aquarium.

My daughter got an aquarium for Christmas. A pretty good one too, since conicidentally the week before I hooked up with some loudmouth in a poker game who was convinced I was just lucky. Apparently lucky enough to upgrade the tank we were going to buy to a much nicer version. Even got one of those castles and treasure chests that make fish feel right at home.

And then we added four fish to the tank. My daughter immediately named them. Two of them were called "Zack" and "Cody", after the main characters in some wretched show my kids love about two twins growing up in a hotel. I've seen it a few times, usually after being told that "it's really funny", and I can't wach it without thinking "Wow, when my kids act like that, they learn about physics and force equals velocity times mass and all that good stuff", and then I leave the room.

But at any rate for the last three months Zack and Cody have been swimming in small cricles and eating food and, of course, admiring the view from the castle battlements. Until Sunday.

Sunday morning I wake up and wander into the bathroom to get ready to shower.

Really, try to contain your excitement out there.

I am interrupted by a piercing shriek, which I recognize as the one my daughter uses when she's in real pain, as opposed to the one shes uses the 95% of the time she's being a drama queen. Honestly, she stubs her toe and we used to get ready to go to the ER. Now we just tell her to put some butter on it. That usually confuses her enough to get her quiet, although one of these days she probably will get out the butter and then we're screwed.

But this shriek was one of real pain, so I started to dash downstairs and heard her finally piece together a coherent sentence "Zack's dead!!"

And he was, although unfortunately it was the fish and not the TV character. Which would have been great. Nope, Zack the fish was doing the upside down float, and his three cohorts seemed not to care. We scooped him out and held a nice little service over the toilet, then sent him off to his eteral reward, which apparently was a trip to our septic tank.

That night we went out to dinner and when I asked my son what he was getting he looked at his sister and then muttered to me "Not the fish."

The March Of Folly

Is actually a really good book by now dead historian Barbara Tuchman, and you should all go out and read it. But just read it in the bookstore. It's not like Barbara needs the royalties now anyway.

Of course, that's not what this is about, because if I were to write a blog about history and good books to read about history and how history continues to repeat itself and how we can all learn from it, my readership would consist of two or three pipe-smoking shut-ins with tweed jackets and patched elbows, rather than the current mix of all around degenerates and heavily armed lesbians. And of the two groups, guess which one is more fun?

No, this is for March Madness and my final four picks. Unfortunately, this year I did it too late to make much difference for you, because if history is any guide, (like how I worked that in? You can take the history major out of school, but you can't get him laid in a two-bit whorehouse with 50 cents, because he's still a huge nerd), my final four will have little or nothing in common with the four teams that actually make it.

So, with apologies to all those with routing interests in these teams, here are four teams who should be back on campus within the next week or so. Kansas, Florida, Ohio State and Texas, with Texas beating Kansas to win it all. Now if anyone needs me, I'll be at the bottom of the pool with the only kind of wood that doesn't float...Natalie Wood.

That was for Soozie.

You Know What I Hate?

Yes, Ann Coulter, but that was obvious from the last post, and therefore if you guessed that you were just being lazy and receive no points.

No, what I hate at the moment is Daylight Savings Time. Never mind the fact that its three weeks early this year on the dubious proposition that it will save energy. I had read some estimates that it would save up to a million barrels of oil a day becuase we wouldn't have to turn the lights on until later, but when I was awakned by my wife's alarm clock, (which I have to remember to throw through a wall), at the ungodly hour of 6 am this morning, (and it's her day off!!!), I noticed that it was pretty damn dark and I'm reasonably sure that she turned on lights when she went downstairs.

Now, unlike Zoe, who hates DST becuase apparently she's from Indiana and they never had DST until a couple of years ago, (Yes, I could put a link in here, but Zoe's already on my list of links over on the right and you can just click on her name to get her take on DST and honest to Christ how lazy are you people anyway?), I hate DST every year, because it gyps me out of an hour of sleep. The day it changes I find myself up until 1 or 2 am, because, goddammit, it's really only midnight, and the next morning I'm up at 7, which is really six to me, and I've had four hours of sleep and I feel like shit so I roll over and fall back to sleep and then wake up at 8 becuase the dog just jumped on me and now I'm late and I skip my lifting and dash off to work only to find that my client meeting guy came in 40 minutes early, because apparently he's from Indiana or something and can't tell ANY kind of time, let alone Daylight Savings Time, and now it's almost 3, but I think it's 2 and it's going to take me a good week or so to get used to this.

But when we roll the clocks back, I'll get that great 1-2 weeks where I wake up at my usual time and then look at the clock and realize I can sleep another hour without fear of reprecussion. And that's something to look forward to.

More From My Favorite Horse-Toothed Braying Jackass

I read in today's paper that Ann Coulter has stirred up controversy by referring, somewhat indirectly, to John Edwards as a "faggot". I'm not sure why she felt compelled to do so when she could have more accurately just called him an animated Ken-doll, but since Ann and coherent thought-processes seem to be two wildly divergent things anyway, I guess that wasn't to be.

Now, if you've been here in the past and noted my desire to see Ann Coulter raped to death by rabid Tibetan yaks, (and they have to be rabid, mind you), you may have picked up that I don't like her. So be it. Her calling anyone a faggot really isn't something I'd pay attention to at this point. I think she does it to get attnetion when her vibrator batteries die and she can't get any human company. But then she went on some other show and said that the term "faggot" wasn't offensive in the gay community. Which, you know, Ann is totally down with a'ight? I know my gay friends really dig the term. Can't get enough of it. A party isn;t a party until I've referred to them 2-3 times as a bunch of mincing faggots.

So in the same spirit...

Oh Ann, you're such a cunt.

I hear that term isn't offensive either.

I'm In A Rut

With really nothing going on and nothing to write about excpet home repairs. And we all know how exciting those are. I suspect its because we've entrred that time of the year when the snow, what little there was of it, has melted, leaving the yard little more than a frozen bog of mud, dead grass and piles of dog-shit, but at the same time it's still too cold to want to go outside and do anything. I hate this time of year. I love the cold, love the snow. Love the spring, love the sun. I hate this goddamn mud season in between the two. If it were up to me, and for reasons that should be obvious to anyone who's spent any time here, nothing important is up to me, there would be 2' of snow on the ground every day between Thanksgiving and St. Patrick's Day, then on 3/18 it would become sunny and 72 until we got to summer. These next three weeks just drive me batshit.

More Home Improvement

Because you can't get enough of Casa De Limpy, and because I'm coming up empty on anything good to write. This weekend we finished up some work we had done on our ceilings. Basically we have an older house and some of the cracks in the ceiling are starting to look a little ominous, so we hired a guy to come in and fix them. That way someone else has to sit under all the plaster dust, and not me.

And while we were doing that, my wife suggested that we could use some new light fixtures, because I had made the mistake of telling her exactly how much I'd won playing poker the other week, so I agreed. Thanks to my poker abilities, we were able to pay cash for the Batman night-lite, but the rest went on the credit card. But we did get a few new lights and got the same guy to put them up.

Then we started to paint the ceilings. Took us three nights, two sniping arguments about paint splatter and what exactly certain people could do with that roller, and a sprained neck or two, (and not in a good way either), and we still had the upstairs rooms to do. And then I remember that one of my poker friends is a professional painter. So I call him up, he comes over this morning, and within two hours has two rooms and a hallway done. Son of a bitch!

I hope he knows I'm paying him with poker chips.

And How Was Your Morning?

It's nearly 3 pm and I just got to work. I'm not the most timely of people under the most normal circumstances, but today even I called in and said "I'll be later than usual"

We had rain this morning. A lot of it. And the yard is frozen solid. And it sort of slopes towards the house. And water runs downhill. And we just finished the basement last year. All factors that point towards yours truly losing a battle with nature and spending a fun few weeks filling out insurance papers. But nature forgot to factor in one factor looming above all of the other issues, up to and including the immutable laws of physics.

My wife.

There was no way that HER basement was getting flooded. Oh no. I was rousted from bed at an ungodly hour of the morning. (Hey, 7:30 IS ungoldy the morning after your weekly poker game. Or, to be more accurate, the morning "of" your weekly poker game). While she chopped a hole through 4" of ice by the backdoor to open a drain, I was put in charge of lugging the sump pump out into the middle of the yard. Then getting 150' of extension cord and plugging it in while standing in 4" of water. Then getting an extra length of house and attaching it to the pump so we could reach the street.

Once that was done, we drained the whole side yard out across the street and into a field. The basement is bone dry. That rain never stood a chance.