06.15.08
Posted in Humor at 10:02 pm by Buffman
Going to Medieval Times is kinda like going through puberty. It’s awkward, but it seems to be part of the essential human experience.
When you show up at the big castle-shaped building, you pay a very decent-sized chunk of money to people wearing corsets and typing on computers, and then you’re cattle-corralled into a big waiting area. One of the first things I noticed was that there are two bars in the waiting area, only 30 yards apart. Gathered all around the bars were people slamming drinkypoos. I wondered at first if the kinds of people who came to Medieval Times just coincidentally happened to be the types to chug large amounts of dragon-named drinks out of little plastic knight helmets. Only later would I realize why some people would choose to include just a wee bit of inebriation with their Medieval Times experience. I’d realize later that these people were the veterans – they were getting prepared for all the silliness on the other side of those doors.
A guy showed up with a long trumpet thing, held it to his mouth while speakers blared out recorded music from several trumpets, and a guy ushered us into our appropriate sections. My group happened to be seated the Green Knight section, which meant that for the duration of the evening, we were supposed to support the Green Knight unconditionally, even if he fell off his horse or turned out to be the bad guy in the plot or if he was caught hosting dogfights.
With the other people seated in the Green Knight area, we shouted our heads off to support him, along with derogatory shouts against the other knights. “The Green Knight rules! The Yellow Knight drives slowly in the fast lane! The Black and White Knight doesn’t fold his laundry until several days after it comes out of the dryer!”
I’m not afraid to admit here that I’m apprehensive around horses. It is not because of their huge size or because they can kick your head right off, but rather because they’re so smart. My previous run-ins with horses have been some negative experiences. They can tell I’m a bit shy, so they follow me around and mess with me, biting at my neck and trying to steal my wallet. I tried to explain to this one horse that I’m supposed to be the more-intelligent species, and he bit off a little bushel of weeds from next to my truck and plopped them down on top of my head, just to be a jerk.
About half of the Medieval Times entertainment was watching horses do tricks. Horses would come out, strafe sideways, walk in crisscross patterns, dance in little circles, and do jumping kicks. The crowd loved it, but not me. While they politely clapped, I sat in my chair in the fetal position and covered my eyes.
Then the falcon guy came out. Unlike the horsemen and other assorted cast, the falconer guy seemed disturbingly genuine, like this was his whole life. You could picture this guy sitting in a chicken coop after the show and feeding birds out of his bellybutton.
There are two kinds of plot actors in the Medieval Times cast – the Ponytail Guys and everybody else. Apparently, to be one of the knights, you have to have a certain “look”: skinny arms and legs, sporting a ponytail, able to ride a horse, and walk with a certain heroic swagger. The other guys with shorter hair, or chubby, or who run like my wife with her arms out front, like she’s about to slide into second base – they’re the flag carriers and other miscellaneous cast.
The Ponytail Guys came out swinging. I wondered if it would be like old-school WWF wrestling, where the manager pulls them aside at the last minute and says “Okay, listen up guys. Red Knight wins today. Make it convincing.” But instead, it was more like the newer WWE wrestling, with very intricate plots. Luckily for the crowd, the plot was centered around constant violence – it was a friendly arena event, which thanks to the “bad guy” being the organizer, turned into a non-friendly battle. Each colored-knight had some kind of victory throughout the day. They kept the excitement pretty balanced between the colored groups so that one wouldn’t get heckled in the parking lot on the way out. “Hey Blue Knight, way to go on dying in the first round there. Next time we’ll make sure not to sit in your section. You ought to hit the medieval gym sometime.”
For the next two hours, the Ponytail Guys swung swords and axes in dramatic paths that would connect with shields and other weapons from other Ponytail Guys, making loud clanging noises. At times, the choreography seemed pretty convincing, but as the skirmishes rotated around to side-views, you could see that they never swung the swords in a path that would hit the opponent. There were some moments that it was very clear they weren’t even really trying to kill each other. Whenever there was a fight centered around a major plot element, the other fights would dissipate. You’d see the good guys and bad guys, who were previously supposed to be fighting to the death, lean on their swords and talk about something they saw on YouTube. Or a guy would drop his sword with his opponent closing in on him… and instead of killing him, the attacker would back off, making dramatic poses until the first guy could pick up his weapon to go back to clanging.
I secretly found myself rooting not for the Green Knight, but instead for an accidental stabbing.
Overall, it was a fun experience, and the food was surprisingly tasty. But after a couple hours of these shenanigans, we found ourselves peeking at our watches, wondering when what medieval-time this thing was going to end. At this one table near us, however, in the opposing Red-and-Yellow Knight section, the group kept up their intensity throughout the night. Everytime something would happen, they’d be on their feet, roaring with applause, occasionally doing fist pumps, and high-fiving each other quite impressively. It was then that I realized that these were the earlier folks from the bar. They had gotten sufficiently liquored up to the point that they didn’t notice or care that some parts were silly and unrealistic. I envied their drunkenness and promised to do the same if I ever returned. That should be their slogan: “Medieval Times – Better If You’re Loaded.”
We completed our awkward essential human experience and drove home from the big castle-shaped building. Like the majority of the other patrons did, I’m positive, my friends went home afterwards, drank too much wine, and duked it out in the backyard with rakes and shovels.
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06.14.08
Posted in Humor at 10:51 pm by Buffman
How to take the perfect nap
A good nap is an amazing thing. The like-minded among you already know that a perfect one-and-a-half-hour snooze can be more restful than 12 hours of sleep, if successful. As a connoisseur of all things nap-related, I have compiled some of the must-have features for the Perfect Nap.
1) Location, location, location
The setting has to be just right. You can’t just go crawl in your bed in the afternoon and call that a nap. For one thing, you’re snoozing in the same place you just woke up a few hours ago, which isn’t special at all. And perhaps more importantly, this has some potentially negative side effects. You’re likely to break off into Nap Outerworld Territory, where you wake up disoriented and sweaty at 4 a.m., wondering what day of the week it is.
2) Ambiance
The nap has to take place in a cool, dark location. If you try to crush a few z’s in a hammock on a hot day or curled up next to a sunny window, you might wake up with an ear full of sweat. The last thing you need is to have your skin sweating and sticking to yourself at unfortunate places on your body. For some reason, if I try to nap in a hot room, I’ll end up with my arm stuck to my face, my pants turned around half-sideways, and pooled sweat on my neck. I wake up looking and feeling like I got urinated on in an alley.
A heavy fan in the room or a football game on TV are the ideal ambiance. Your wife in labor, yelling about needing a ride or something, is not good ambiance.
3) Accessories
Two couch pillows are ideal, one to lay your head on and another to squeeze an arm around. If you’re the type of guy who puts a third pillow between your legs, I’m not going to criticize. If I happen to be that kind of guy, I’m not admitting it here.
Another critical feature of the perfect nap, if you have them, are two snugglin’ pups. One pup is like an awkward wiggly extra pillow who might walk around and step on your face, but if you have two pups, their snuggles will take your nap experience to a new level. One curls up behind your feet and the second one curls up behind your knees, essentially locking your legs into an immovable, snuggly state. Then, if you happen to look down their direction, one of them is likely to poke a groggy head up, look at you with one sleepy open eye, and then put her head back down. That alone is enough to send you into deep hypnosis.
You can push the limits of nap nirvana by pursuing the Snugglin’ Trifecta, in which you include a third pup, but I’ve never successfully accomplished this. The closest I’ve ever gotten was two snugglin’ pups and a cat. He didn’t add to the nap experience at all — instead, I woke up to him repeatedly bonking my forehead with his paw while he licked his rear aggressively.
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Posted in Humor at 10:51 pm by Buffman
When we brought our baby home from the hospital, the pets of the house crowded around to see what the new basket of smells was all about. Until this moment, the cat and two dogs were the only babies of the house, so you can imagine how hacked they were to see that we had not only brought home a new dog, but one that was smelly and bald like us.
Taking turns, each of our pets leaned their furry heads way into the car seat to get a good look at the tiny new family addition. Emily (our mentally challenged, diabetic, elderly chihuahua mix) turned her head sideways in confusion. Shelby (our long-haired, skittish hummingbird of a Chihuahua) jerked her head back when Jules moved. Diablo (our mountain-lion-sized, crabby orange tabby) rubbed the bottom of his chin along the handle of the carseat, which was his way of saying “I hereby claim this bald dog in the name of me.”
In the months that followed, Jules and the pets grew to learn much about each other. Now Diablo knows to stay 3 feet away from Jules at all times or he might he lose two tiny handfuls of belly fur. Shelby knows that if she paces underneath the high chair, Jules will sometimes say “Uh oh!” and then “accidentally” drop a snack or two from above. Emily endures being propped up like a little couch to be sat upon. She really just likes being noticed by anybody at this point – as Jules climbs on her, Emily will give the biggest, goofiest open-mouth doggie smile you’ve ever seen.
Even before Jules started walking, each of the pets treated Jules with an understood level of caution – She is the one thing in the house that they seem to respect as special property. This even includes Diablo, who has enough attacks on his record that, if officially reported, he would have been banned from living within city limits. Somehow, without having it explained, each of the pets oddly behaves like little guardians for her. The same dog Shelby, who I still can’t get to stop yelping like a car alarm for five minutes every time I walk in the door, used to stand on top of the couch like a quiet sentry for hours while Jules slept in her baby hammock.
Now Jules is a loud toddlin’ kid. She occasionally points a tiny finger at Shelby, shouts “Dog!”, and then hands over the contents of whatever foodstuffs she is currently gripping. Then she comes back to the table with a wide-eyed, concerned expression, jibbering to say This dog is clearly starving and I’m the one who is going to feed her! If you hand her a nibble of tortilla or biscuit, she’ll race back across the room frantically and stuff it in Shelby’s face like it’s the antidote. Then Jules puts her tiny hands on her hips and nods her head in satisfaction while she watches Shelby scarf it down.
We’ll do this repeatedly until we decide the cuteness of the moment no longer outweighs our previous policy of not giving table food to the pets, and we say “Sorry, Jules, no more.” Then all the pets simultaneously look at me, with their variety of furry faces all saying the same thing: We had a good thing going here, ya big jerk.
We’re not sure what the future holds for Jules and the pets. I’m hoping that Diablo keeps up his policy of self-restraint – he has endured 10 times more pain and indignation from Jules than he’s ever allowed another person to commit without injuring them. And poor aging Emily … I’m hoping Jules isn’t the one who finds her on the couch one morning, paws in the air, on her way to Doggie Heaven. Our luck has it that Shelby, the wiry basketcase dog we’ve been “temporarily keeping until we can find a home” for 3 years now, will be the one who grows old with Jules.
Afterwards, we’ll be sure to remind her of the furry posse who ran with her during her younger, balder years.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/city/collin/opinion/stories/DN-west_young_13edi.ART.West.Edition1.4710eb0.html
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Posted in Humor at 10:49 pm by Buffman
Stanley Cup season is upon us! For the real hockey fans out there, you already know what that means. To anybody else out there who understands hockey about as much as you understand the mechanics of how a flux capacitor works, that means that right now they’re having their 6-month-long playoff series. Stanley was the first hockey player. He designed the game using sticks and a frozen burrito on a frozen pond in his backyard.
I’ll state up front that I don’t claim to understand as much hockey as some of the genuine fans out there. My hockey experience is limited to attending my first Stars game last year, playing Blades of Steel on Nintendo, and watching the Mighty Ducks movie, and one of the sequels. But I’m eager to share with you…
Everything I Know About Hockey
Fighting: Hockey has a weird take on player interaction. In basketball, you’ll get fouled or ejected out of a game for even nudging your opponent. Because of this, the players are ready at all times to throw themselves on the court and slide backwards 17 feet with their feet in the air if somebody runs into them to “draw a foul”. Hockey is the polar opposite – they encourage fighting. You can hold a guy’s shirt with one hand, punch him in the face 20 or 30 times with your free hand, and then skate along as if it didn’t happen. The refs will even stand there and watch, and then hand you back your stick afterwards. “Here you go, big fella. Way to hang in there.”
Icing: This is a complicated penalty that nobody seems to fully understand. My best interpretation so far is that if you ask too many people in the crowd to explain it, they may try to lift you over the glass and toss you out onto the ice… hence the term.
Goalie: The goalie gets to wear a different color mask than the other team. He also hs huge square-shaped pads, which is terrific from the point of view of keeping the puck out of the net, but terrible from the point of view that you can watch an hour straight with no pucks going in. If a goalie’s team is losing at the end of the game, sometimes he’ll get bored and wander away from guarding his net and try to score on the other side.
NHL: The NHL stands for National Hockey League, but some of the teams are not based in this nation. Rather, they are from Canada, which you might be surprised to hear is not part of this country. NHL teams are comprised heavily of Canadians, Swedes, Russians, and interestingly enough, Puerto Ricans.
Face shields: The puck goes crazy fast. Professional hockey guys can crack that sucker down the ice at the speed of sound – so by the time you hear it, it’s already knocked 13 teeth out of your head. I’m glad to see that some hockey players have started wearing face shields to ricochet that puck away when it hits them in the mug. But the only troubling thing is, the glass at the hockey stadium doesn’t go up very far. Occasionally, it will bounce down the plexiglass (tak-tak-tak-tak-tak-tak!) just inches below the top of the glass, and the people in the crowd don’t seem to mind. Maybe their reflexes are sharper than mine, or muuuuch slower.
Power play: I’m not really sure what this means, but it sounds awesome! Every sport needs a POWER PLAY. “Okay guys, I know we’re down 3 points, but I just had a crazy idea: Let’s do the power play.” From my limited experience, I can only assume it’s when you skate all your guys down the ice together in a Flying V Shape and win the game with a dramatic slow motion shot while Emilio Estevez cheers you on.
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Posted in Humor at 10:48 pm by Buffman
My 13-month-old daughter and I share a secret. Every once in a while, Jules will look at me and smile with a little nod in my direction, confirming that we are conspirators to some unseen knowledge. But I have no idea what the secret is. I nod and smile back, wondering what in the heck all the winking and nodding is about. I’m out of the loop, but I play along so she doesn’t think Da-da is dense.
My wife and I have watched her transform into quite an expressive little person. She jibbers long unintelligible sentences with very concerned eyes and dramatic hand gestures, then she’ll switch to a fit of thrown-back-head laughing, and slap her little knee. Then she leans her arm on something to lean in close and tell you something serious in low tones, with serious eyebrows and serious jibbery words.
My wife has become excited about the parenting fad Love and Logic. I’ve wondered who out there would have enough common sense to buy a book that teaches common sense, but apparently my wife is in that small margin of people. It’s kinda like a book called “Here’s how to earn a million bucks,” but it costs a million dollars to buy – who buys that book?
The Love and Logic premise seems to be that instead of shouting at your kids like they’re deaf monkeys, you’re supposed to stay calm and give them choices. It seems like a pretty simple approach to me. Surely, if you say “We are not yelling right now. We are deciding between waffles and pancakes,” that would be more effective than “Stop screaming about breakfast or I’ll freak out and give you a whoopin, you little chimpanzee!”
But Jules is too smart for Love and Logic. When we offer choices, she doesn’t consider this to be the end of the story … instead, you can see her eyes calculate: I see what’s going on here. I will briefly entertain these two options and then present a third. Last night at Rosa’s, Jules gave us the waving-hand-sign (which was another briefly explored and quickly forgotten parenting fad) that meant she wanted out of her high chair. So I sat her on my lap, at which time she began the maneuver where she locks her body into a straight line and wiggles to slither out of my grips, undoubtedly intending to toddle around and greet each of the other Rosa’s patrons with expressive jibber and gestures and to ask for chunks of their sopapillas.
Since my wife is a Love and Logic Parent (for the moment), she calmly explained, “Jules, you can sit in the high chair or on Daddy’s lap. Those are your choices.” In an instant, Jules figured it out. Before my mind could even think I wonder which of the two she will choose … Jules was already pointing to my other leg. Ah ha, a break in the system! If you can sneak in an acceptable Option #3, then you are no longer bound to the first two! And then you’re no longer bound to the system at all! What a sneaky little genius, I thought, as I bounced her up and down on the other knee.
I’ve decided to play along with the Love and Logic, absorbing this parenting fad through osmosis until the next one comes up. The next fad is going to be to greet your kids at their bedside each morning with a bushel of asparagus, or to only talk to them in beeps and clicks when they don’t brush their teeth. Or maybe we explain to them that we’re all robots except your kid, who is the last real human in the world, so that’s why he can’t play in the street.
Despite my common sense paradox theory, Love and Logic seems to be flying off the shelf. Maybe I’ll cash in my own book of extreme common sense. “The 365-Day Reminder to Feed Your Children Calendar,” or “101 Good Reasons Not to Throw a Baby Out a Window,” or “Safe and Sound: A Parental Guide on Not Letting Your Kids Surf on the Roof of Your Van Like in Teen Wolf.”
As each new fad rolls through my household, I figure Jules will find ways around them, and I’ll pretend to play along. But Jules and I know that there is no replacement for good common sense, a nod, and a wink at Da-da. Maybe that’s our secret.
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Posted in Humor at 10:46 pm by Buffman
first year reflections
I used to know a tiny sweet pink person who would snuggle up on my chest in a little ball and coo while she played with my ear. As I was reminiscing about this yesterday, I was suddenly interrupted when she roared around the corner, chasing the dog with our remote control in one hand and a squished banana in the other. Our dog made a wrong turn in her panicked state and got cornered at a dead end near the front door, allowing my daughter time to catch up. After Jules cracked the dog on the head with the remote, she yelled “dog!”, cocked her head back and laughed like a crazyperson, and then ran over to me to hand me the remote and offer a tonguey kiss.
I’ve only been a Dad for a year now, but somehow I have a hard time remembering what my life was like before her arrival. I vaguely remember all the “things I’m gonna do one day when I’m a Dad,” but that list seems to change with time. In my plans, I worked off the assumption that kids started off with no real persona, like a pizza with no toppings, and then we’d add toppings through time and experience. I was very wrong. My tiny sweet bald person quickly became a loud, funny, independent bald person. Her pizza started off more interesting than mine.
Jules loves music. Long before she could talk, and even before she could really hold her head up, she’d rock her head to the music. Now when she hears music, she’s likely to swing her shoulders back and forth and headbang to the song. She looks at you expectantly, waiting for you to headbang with her, then she’ll resume her dancing. Music is in her soul. She already understands how to play the drums, she dances and toots on her flute recorder in interesting little rhythms, and understands how my guitar works. She wants to pluck each string, and while I play, her eyes dart back and forth to my strumming hand and the fretboard hand. If you look closely, you can see her tiny fingers occasionally twitch as she watches, like she’s memorizing chords.
My daughter has always been interested in how things and people work. As an infant, she was so fixated on our ceiling fan that we named it “Samuel,” and we referred to Samuel in casual conversation. “Hey Jules – time for bed. Say goodnight to Samuel.” Over time, her attention was increasingly focused on the pets, our keys and mobile phones, the remote control… anything interactive. She’ll thoughtfully look at the remote control, push different buttons, and then look up to see if the TV has changed. Or sometimes she’ll position the dog … reposition, reposition, ah yes, just right… and then lean back and stretch her arms out on her like she’s a furry couch.
Whereas other kids might be briefly interested in something shiny, only to quickly abandon it for something else, Jules has an incredibly focused memory. At a Christmas party we attended, Jules was only 9 months old, so she still needed a held hand to walk around (if only barely – she started walking solo a short time later). She was interested in a specific red Christmas ornament and wanted to grab it, but it was fragile and made of glass so I dragged her away in hopes of distracting her by mingling with other guests and kids. Jules complied, but twenty minutes later, as soon as Jules got the opportunity to hold somebody else’s hand, she led my wife’s friend back to the tree in the other room to grab that same ornament. It was an amazing combination of her memory of the layout of the house to get back to the tree, the position on the tree where to find it, the time and distractions that had occurred since, and her sheer willpower. I think if we went back to that house today, she’d point to where the tree once stood and give us a questioning look.
People who talk out loud end up exposing a bit of themselves. In Jules’ version of this, she reveals a great depth of memory and character. You can show her something she’s not supposed to touch, like the stove, and the next day she’ll casually sing “no no” to herself as passes by it.
In Jules’ mind, she is in a movie where she is the star and we are all bit players. She seems to have endless independence – while other kids at birthday parties break down in tears when their moms turn their backs, Jules will instead walk around a new house without fear, explore every hallway, try to open doors that she’s never seen, and yell at strangers. Then she’ll pass through the living room and briefly acknowledge us, but she plays it cool so that nobody knows we’re her folks.
There is no greater joy in my life than hearing her say “Da-da”. She said it first, she says it often, she shouts it when she sees me, and sometimes she even sings it while she bobs her head. I have had many achievements in my life, but Da-da is the greatest title that I’ve ever held.
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03.12.08
Posted in Humor at 3:31 pm by Buffman
They say the pen is mightier than the sword, but do you know what’s mightier than either one? A pen and a sword. Boo yah.
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02.29.08
Posted in Humor at 3:45 am by Buffman
So you’ve decided to move to another address? There is nothing like a change of residence that puts you in the mood to call in a favor from your closest friends and family and ruin their weekend. This is also the perfect opportunity to publicly exhibit your lack of planning and self-discipline!
How to be a Terrible Mover
1. Don’t have anything packed ahead of time
When your movers show up early on moving day, they’ve already given up time on their precious free day off… so why not take the whole day? The best way to do this is to appear surprised and frantic as they ring on your doorbell. If you plan it just right, you might not have to take a single thing out of the building.
While they’re developing hernias dragging your junk across your front yard, you should casually sit on the carpet behind your desk and roll up computer cables.
2. The less the merrier
Although it would be faster and easier on everybody if you also commissioned your able-bodied significant other, large hunky brothers, or well-meaning neighbors, inviting them won’t give your one mover friend the attention they deserve. Instead, let your mover show up alone and then move your whole house by themselves.
Or even better, while they drag your crap out to the truck, you should hang out on the phone with other people who aren’t there. This will tell your mover that, Hey, my friendship options are wide open, but I want to spend this special day with you and only you.
3. Plan everything at the last minute
People love spontaneity. If you already had the key to the new place in your pocket, that would send a bad message to your mover friend – that you are a boring, responsible person. Instead, after a day of packing and heavy lifting, casually mention to them on the way over that you’re not really sure if there is going to be an open door to be able to unload this stuff. You can either leave the key to the new place at the old place or leave some loose details open (like signing the lease – oopsie). They will respect your impulsiveness and you can have a nice laugh together.
To add a little spice to the day, let them hold your angry dog on the way over to the new place.
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Posted in Humor at 3:43 am by Buffman
Before I arrived, I wasn’t sure what to expect at the clothes-optional beach. I’d like to say that I went into it with an open mind, although I’ll be honest to admit here that I considered the possibility that I’d be the only guy in a sea of frolicking, gorgeous humans of the opposite gender. Before I went, I made some personal promises: To not stare awkwardly, to pretend like this wasn’t my first nude beach experience, and most importantly – to remember sunscreen.
As I approached the beach, my mind raced with questions. What is the proper etiquette for taking off one’s clothes? Is it going to ruin somebody’s lunch if I start stripping down in their view of the ocean while they have sandwich in hand? Or what if I’m the only one there and I accidentally strip down at the wrong beach? What if my clothes blow away and I have to drive home nude?
Immediately upon entering, all preconceptions were tossed out the window. Imagine the people you see at the mall near your house… very old people, rolls of fat, moles, stretch marks, hairy rears, scars that tell painful stories – now transport all these imperfect people from the mall to a beach in some kind of Terminator-type travel system that makes you show up naked upon arrival. Those are the people at the nude beach… casually walking around, chatting, merrily toasting their bits in the sun.
It was much like walking into a lamp store. Holy crap, look at all these lamps in one place. There’s another lamp. And another. Okay, this lamp store is boring the bejeepers out of me – where’s my sunscreen?
It was during this initial walkaround through the beach that I experienced one of the most ironic moments of my life. I saw one very lovely-constructed female who had tan lines where she had obviously spent time at one of the regular beaches. As I noticed her tan lines traveling around her skin in the shape of what had previously been a tiny bikini, I thought I bet she looks pretty great in that outfit.
I found the spot on the beach that was the farthest possible place from any other beachgoers, casually and quickly pulled off my clothes, then stacked them into a neat pile under my shoes. Every 3.4 seconds, I checked to make sure they were still there – and in between those moments, I worried about them blowing away. For the first hour, I cleverly hid my manbits by laying on my stomach.
After realizing that I was just as imperfect as all the other folks walking around, I finally felt brave enough to walk around and explore the world of nude community interaction. A pair of cute girls my age approached me and one asked “Is this your first time at one of these places?”
Panicked, I did a quick mental skim — I’ve been making eye contact, right? What have I done to show I’m new at this?! Are all my seat backs and tray tables still in the reclined position?
“Yes. How’d you know?” I casually asked.
She pointed behind me. “Your rear end has obviously never seen sunlight. You should really put on some sunscreen.”
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Posted in Humor at 3:40 am by Buffman
I loudly woo-hooed as I held the Wii console over my head in the Best Buy, happy to have finally found one of the elusive video game units. Through the holiday rush, I had watched as the Wii became the hottest Christmas ticket item and saw the current eBay prices spike to double or triple the normal price. Slowly and secretively, I bought into the hype.
Later, I thought back to that woo hoo moment as I lay on the ground in my brother’s duplex, writhing in pain from my first injuwii.
For those of you who have been living in a cave (implying that caves probably don’t have the Nintendo Wii, but you never know), the system’s remote can sense acceleration in several directions. This means you can wave the wireless controller around in the real world and the game will interact similarly. To the player, it represents an all-new way to interact with the virtual world. To any cats who are watching you, you are simply dancing around in your living room like an idiot, waving around a plastic stick that doesn’t seem edible to them.
Unfortunately, however, the real world has stuff in the way. Your little onscreen tennis guy has plenty of room for a good backswing, but oops, there goes the Christmas tree. Your special blend of bowling may require a good windup, but yikes, sorry dude about your lamp. About 30 minutes after I got the Wii out of the box, I found out exactly how hard my brother can swing a tiny plastic bat. The answer was: Not quite enough force to break my arm, but plenty enough to drop me to the ground.
To boot up one of the Wii Sports games, you are bombarded with little pictures and screens begging you not to hurt yourself. In simple pictorial language, the diagrams all have the same general theme: PLEASE STOP HURTING YOURSELVES AND BREAKING CRAP IN YOUR HOUSE AND THEN SUING US! HELP US HELP YOU!
I initially scoffed at the wrist strap (because as a basic principle, I’m against safety and I’m known to scoff at things), but I later started asking people to wear theirs after my friend launched one of the Wiimotes high in the air during bowling. As peeved as I was to see her hit my ceiling fan with my precious new toy, I was more irritated that her wacky bowling style always outscores mine. One of my brothers consistently accidentally whacks his own leg while bowling, and his score is even better.
At first I considered the likelihood that Nintendo may have to face litigation for people who will hurt themselves, others, property, family pets, or tiny infants during game play. But then I thought How is this any different than real sports equipment? You don’t sue the manufacturer when you accidentally smash your future sister-in-law in the neck with a tennis racquet. Instead, you blame the genius who was wildly swiping it around the room. I hope the inevitable first personal injuwii lawsuits against Nintendo get laughed out of court.
On the same note, this might be a controversial stance on the topic, but I think the mark of a good toy is if it is somewhat dangerous. If there isn’t some level of danger, those toys are going to collect dust while people seek more intriguing ways to interact with the world. Trust me, when I was a kid, you’d much rather have sent me loose to terrorize the world with a little virtual plastic controller instead of matches and fireworks, or a bicycle and an aluminum bat, or a bag of rocksalt and a fertilizer spreader. I’d share more details, but I’m not sure what the statutes of limitation are on my childhood hooligan shenanigans. If you have nice yard art or manicured landscaping, you might make an investment in buying all the neighborhood teenagers a Wii so they can break stuff in their living room instead of your yard.
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Posted in Humor at 3:39 am by Buffman
When I decided last year that all my New Year’s Resolutions would be for other people, and not for me, I wasn’t sure how it would work out. To my surprise, it was a hit. My next door neighbor read my article about his lunatic habit of leaving his trash bags in my yard, and sure enough, I didn’t have to throw all those bags on his roof like I promised. It was a success!
So as we pass that annual moment when we all start writing the wrong year on our checks, here are my:
2008 New Year’s Resolutions, But Not for Me
- I resolve that nobody gets to join my gym in January. I hate showing up on January 2nd to find the place packed shoulder to shoulder with well-intentioned-but-ultimately-doomed-to-quit newcomers. I love to see all the people stop sitting around watching the Biggest Loser (ironically, while sitting on couches, consuming millions of calories and watching the show) and getting their padded rears to the gym. But come on, people – if you’re going to join and quit, let’s not all do it at once. Get your big butts in there at some other arbitrary time.
- I resolve that nobody is allowed to go under the speed limit in the fast lane. If we’re on Loop 820 and I realize that you’re the bottleneck because you’re texting your best friend about a sale at Kohl’s, I’m going to motion at your car and mouth “There is something wrong with your car! One of your wheels fell off!”. Then, when you pull over to inspect, all the other motorists will happily resume our preferred driving speeds, and you can text your friend all about it.
- I resolve that all the people who try to quit smoking will stop telling about their achievements. You don’t get credit for a habit you shouldn’t have started in the first place.
“It’s been a whole month since I had a cigarette!”
“Whoopty doo. It’s been two years since I poked myself in the eye with a fishing rod.”
- I resolve that restaurants will stop requiring their waiters to do stuff that nobody wants them to do anyway. I don’t want to hear a 10 minute filibuster describing the special of the day. I like that they take the time to use phrases like “succulent crabmeat” and “hint of a spicy glaze” and “nobody sneezed on it,” but we all know you’re describing the most expensive item on the menu. Along the same topic, nobody wants to hear a group of strangers sing badly to their company’s rhyming birthday song. I also resolve that people I know will quit randomly initiating these impromptu choirs throughout the year for me when it’s not my birthday. It was funny the first time.
- And finally, I resolve that the network programmers set limits on the number of times a commercial may air during a program. If I see that Dr Pepper commercial where the guy pulls a DP from his sock and does a front flip bellyflop off the field goal one more time during a football game, I’m going to write a strongly worded letter to the networks. Then, on the way to pick up a stamp, I might accidentally purchase a Dr Pepper.
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Posted in Humor at 3:38 am by Buffman
We aren’t invited to many high-class weddings. I’d like to think it’s out of coincidence, but it also might be because I’m the kind of guy who pages fictional characters at Walmart. “Hamburglar, you are needed in Jewelry. Keep your hands where we can see them.”
We were very excited about being invited by one of my wife’s friends to a fancy wedding with a reception at the Marquis downtown. Because it was Amy’s friend, I left her in charge of our schedule and navigational responsibilities. She didn’t give enough time to get across town, so by the time we got to the mansion where the wedding was held, everybody was already seated, with the bride about to enter the front door. The proper decorum is probably to not enter late, but instead Amy darted for the front door, saying “Let’s run in past the bridesmaids, I see people do this all the time.” Yeah, but that all the time is at weddings where the food is served potluck and the wedding party leaves in a pickup truck decorated with condoms and trailing beer cans behind it. We were kindly diverted away from our attempt to interrupt the wedding party entrance, and instead we found a side door. This allowed us to stumble loudly to our seats in front of the remainder of the crowd that we didn’t draw attention to before.
During the wedding, my wife spent the time waving at people and loudly asking “What did he say?” I was able to stop her from opening a noisy tissue wrapper during the prayer, but I couldn’t stop her from motioning to the people outside the window near where we sat. She was waving them in, showing them open seats near us, trying to get them to be the new Last People to Show Up instead of us. The outsiders kept their distance outside of the building and seemed to be scared of us.
The wedding was beautiful and classy, and our unfashionably late entrance was soon forgotten. We made our way over to the Marquis on a secret-coded invitation paper. The directions were printed in gold on dark brown paper, making them nearly illegible at night. This may have been designed to deter any riffraff from showing up, but somehow I made it through the barrier.
The reception was brilliantly decorated and catered, and it had a fun casino-theme with an open bar. Throughout the night, as my designated driver/ wife looked on with alarm, I managed to outdo her previous embarrassing indiscretions. At one point, the wife’s brother sang a sentimental song from a musical, and everybody clapped politely and got back to the festivities. Later, I said “You know what would crank this wedding up a notch? Another song from Fiddler on the Roof — Where’s that guy from earlier?” not realizing that he was seated right behind us.
I tipped the casino employees with funny money, flirted shamelessly with my wife’s girlfriends, and while the best man was up there, I said “Wow, this is the longest toast ever” and got an elbow in the ribs from Amy. I didn’t compute that only specific portions of the plate she handed me were for me, and after enduring a long lecture about how she doesn’t like strawberries, I responded sassy with “You know what? You should throw a big fit about it right here in front of everybody.” By the end of the night, I had enough glasses of wine that when the DJ stood on the stage to give announcements, I went up there and stood next to him. As I smiled at the crowd, I thought, wow, this is a classy wedding. Except that I’m here.
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Posted in Humor at 3:44 pm by Buffman
There is something special about the late-night rendezvous with the baby. It’s like a bonus stage on a video game, an extra little bit of time doing something you didn’t expect. Of course all new parents complain about the awakenings – they’re part of the standard set of questions that every acquaintance will use to torture you. “Getting any sleep?!? Eh?!?” (followed by an elbow to your side and a forced chuckle) “Eh?!?”. People are turds. But truly, I love the chance to see my 8-month-old unexpectedly.
When I get up to 2am yelps from the nursery, I get one of three kinds of receptions from her:
The sweetie: She grabs both my ears and plants a huge slobbery gummy kiss on the mouth, then wants to be cuddled and given a bottle.
The party animal: She headbangs her little bald head and laughs, bouncing around, indicating that she’s in no mood to sleep. We’ll have a 30-minute impromptu playtime, then she’ll suddenly fall over asleep on the carpet like a tranquilized bear.
The Stinky One: She points at her diaper and gives me the Something is amiss face, indicating that something is indeed amiss under the Huggies. We’re lucky if the Huggies are the only place we find it.
I’ll back up and explain that Mommy, or as she is called these days, “Nuh-nuh,” is the usual latenight caretaker. I have awoken many a bright and sunny morning to her explaining how Jules got up every 17 minutes all night, managed to sneak out of her crib and catch the house on fire, and somehow crapped a whole elephant. I always feel a mixed sense of Yikes, good thing she was here - I would have slept right through all that and Thank God I slept right through all that.
But occasionally, I’ll either wake up on my own or the wife will plop down next to me, face grimacing, and say “Go… get the girl… up all night…. She’s dead to me now.”
Then “Dah-dah” springs into action. Last night, as I watched Jules yank the bottle out of my hand and feed herself (I didn’t have the angle right – when I went to try to hold the bottle again, she swatted at my hand with hers), I reflected on my own development from tiny bald person to large person with hair.
I look forward to the years ahead with Jules, and I wonder if my childhood will be anything like that of my parents. You see, I didn’t have any late-night spells of climbing into bed with Mom and Dad. This was because I wasn’t nearly scared of the boogeyman as I was of Mom. She used to take separate cars when we went places, just so when we got back, she could drive ahead and then leap out of the bushes and scare the bejeezus out of us.
The word on the playground was that some kids saw a monster under their bed. They seemed very serious about this, and I gave the kids some credibility because they had much cooler shoes. I contemplated it for the remainder of recess, thought about it through the rest of the schoolday, then through dinner and bathtime. By the time that bedtime rolled around, I had worked my 6-year-old brain into an absolute tizzy about the possibility of there being some sort of monstrous creature under my bed. After the lights went out, I called out to the folks, who poked their heads back in reluctantly while buttoning shirts and pants back up, interrupted from late night shenanigans.
“What?”
“There’s a monster under my bed. I think.”
My parents shared a knowing glance. Then my Dad crawled down to his hands and knees to inspect under the bed. “Let’s see if there are any…. Holy crap!” He yelled, “There IS a monster under here! Run for it!” He scrambled past my mom and they both raced down the hall and slammed the door to their room. After I sat on the bed in a paralyzing moment of fear, they came back, crying from laughing so hard. “That was fun, Jeff – Let’s do that every night.”
And I never bugged them again.
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10.21.07
Posted in Humor at 1:24 am by Buffman
I was selected as a Dallas Morning News “Voices” columnist this week. I’ll keep you updated with links to stories as they are published.
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Posted in Humor at 1:23 am by Buffman
Among the many parenting mistakes I’ve already made or am sure to make in the coming years, I realized the hard way that you’re supposed to start the baby out on vegetables first, then go to fruits. Somehow we ended up with a ton of mango baby food, so we started Jules on that, and that’s all she had for a month. Life was good, and she was a mango-lovin’ kid. She’d yank that spoon out of your hand and jab herself in the eye when she could, she’d hop up and down in her little seat with a huge grin and sling mango bits on you, or she’d glance over your shoulder, only to make a lunge for the bowl when you were fooled into looking backwards … all kinds of mango love.
We eventually ran out of the mango, so we considered our other options. The beets looked gross (really… who eats beets?) The carrots are probably good, but had a weird ooky color. The green beans looked like puréed barf. So I decided to give the butternut squash a shot. The little baby food label showed wholesome-looking squashes and an ecstatic baby. I half-considered the possibility that this kid on the label wasn’t laughing like a little gummy hyena after having eaten this exact flavor – they probably use the same picture for all their flavors, even the tragic beets. But being an optimist, I moved forward with the notion that his smile was an endorsement for this particular flavor.
Jules wasn’t as ecstatic as the baby on the label. As I loaded her first spoonful into her mouth, her eyes bugged wide open and she gave me a deeply concerned look to tell me Daddy, there is something seriously wrong with my mango. She opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue to show me the grossness that was still sitting there. I tried to make light of the situation, saying “It’s different, Jules – but look, it’s still good!” taking large mock bites of it and feigning interest. I’m a terrible actor, and she didn’t buy it. She scooped the first spoonful off her tongue with her tiny hand and then shook it wildly, flinging squash bits all over both of us.
As a footnote, I also made a mistake regarding diet sodas. I thought it would be adorable one time to let her have a little sip, and now we have to hide our diet cokes or she crawls over us to lunge at them like a little crackhead. From her point of view, the metallic cans are way more interesting than her boring plastic bottles or mommy’s dispensing units. I’m not sure what kinds of toxic evils reside in diet cokes – perhaps some kind of villainous medical condition that we’ll all find out about in 30 years – and she’ll have started earlier than anybody. If Jules turns out to be as strange as Daddy, I’m blaming it on the diet cokes.
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Posted in Humor at 1:18 am by Buffman
I haven’t yet arrived at the office-with-a-door part of my career, but I love my cubicle area. It’s bigger than my dorm room was in college. I have a variety of plants, a high wall of windows, and a lava lamp to draw me into a slack-jawed, globule-staring episode from time to time.
The open side of the cubicle doesn’t face anybody, but it does face the little hallway where the water cooler resides. This gives me privacy for tunnel-vision productivity immersion at my desk, except of course whenever my coworkers stop by to refill their water containers.
I have found over time that people act pretty strangely when they think nobody’s looking. It has become a fascinating daily study of human behavior. In the average 9.2 seconds it takes to fill up their containers, every person has some kind of water-filling ritual. The R&D director fills his bottle for a while, stops and spaces out while he looks around the office, then fills up the rest. The V.P. of Operations fills up the bottle with one hand while she strikes a runway pose and taps an impatient foot. Our regulatory associate crouches and watches the water-to-bottle dispensing process very closely, from like 4 inches away. A guy from the lab bends sharply at the waist to fill his thermos, pointing his rear directly at me. Our company lawyer looks back over his shoulder while he’s filling his bottle to see what I’m up to. He named me “Twinkletoes” because I ran like a girl one time during an office putting match, so I throw out random new nicknames for him during his 9.2 seconds at the cooler. I’m leaning towards “Z- Licious,” since his name is Zach, or “Mayor of Nosey-town” because he wishes he was omnipotent.
My boss fills up his big thermos cup while he’s directly facing the cooler, puts his other hand on his hip, and relaxes his head back. From my angle, it looks and sounds like he’s peeing.
The V.P. of Scientific Affairs caught on that I was taking notes on everybody’s dispensing rituals and he started changing his routine. One day he put a foot up on a nearby shelf. The next day, he did a hilarious between-the-legs maneuver. I’m waiting on him to one day pull the 5 gallon jug off the top of the cooler and start drinking right out of it.
In addition to my other work duties, my station near the water makes me the waterboy. I’m happy to do it, except people gawk at the operation with much more fascination than it deserves. All I’m doing is taking off the old water jug and tilting the new jug back on top, but people stare at the process like I’m giving birth to a giraffe.
I’ve noticed that people get incredibly thirsty in the last 30 minutes of the regular workday. People crowd the water cooler, draining about half the big Ozarka jug before they head out for the day. Maybe some of my coworkers don’t drink anything all day, and only realize at the end of the day that they’ve become dehydrated. Or maybe my coworkers don’t have water at home. I can picture them bringing home a thermos of water to their families. “Look, kids, I brought home water! Whose turn is it for a shower today?”
At least once a week, somebody will notice the red knob on the cooler for the first time and give it a little burst to see what it does. Every time, they strike a surprised expression, turn to me, and say “Ow, I burned myself! That water is hot!” Since my nearby location implies that I’m the expert on all water dispensing operations, I usually try to offer some kind of explanation. They look at me expectantly while they wave their hand in pain, and I say “I think only the first little bit is super hot. Try it again.”
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