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The good news is that I'm healthy. The bad news, from your perspective, is that I seem to have stopped blogging. I'm not sure why. Part of it is that I've been focusing on revising the beginning of my novel, Mercury Falls. Truth be told, I was never really happy with the opening chapters. I wrote the first three chapters before I had any idea where the book was going, and then once I got an idea of where things were headed, I just kept writing until I got to the end. But then I still had these shaky first three chapters that seemed to be both integral to the plot and mismatched in tone with the rest of the book. I couldn't remove them without screwing up the plot, but they didn't make a very good introduction to the book either.
Anyway, I believe I have finally come up with a solution. I made some revisions to the opening chapters that I think have vastly improved the book. At this point I think Mercury Falls is about as good as I can possibly make it. If you enjoy this blog, you're definitely going to like Mercury Falls. There are several chapters that I think are as good or better than anything I've posted here and, just as importantly, I believe the book as a whole is more than the sum of its parts. The story arc came together very nicely.
I'm going to start sending the revised version to agents soon; if I don't get any bites by the end of the summer I'll probably just self-publish the thing. I also wanted to say thanks to everybody who has signed up for the interest list and/or displayed the Mercury Falls banner on your blog. 318 people have signed up already! I'm hoping that will carry some weight once I start querying agents again. If you haven't signed up yet, please do. You're under no obligation to buy the book, and I won't spam you or anything (I think I've sent exactly one update to the list so far). You can also become a fan of Mercury Falls on Facebook.
I'm not sure what's in store for Mattress Police. I started this blog on a whim, with the lowest of expectations, as a place where I could post the crazy random stuff that goes through my head. I find that lately, however, I have less and less funny random stuff going on there that I care to post. I'm not sure if that's a temporary effect of channeling my randomness toward Mercury Falls or if it's a more permanent condition. In any case, I wouldn't expect much in the way of posts for a few weeks.
Don't worry, I won't stop writing. Besides Mercury Falls, I've been toying with the idea of a sequel to Antisocial Commentary and/or a semi-autobiographical book to be titled Not Living Up to My Potential. Oh, and some ideas for a sequel to Mercury Falls have already started to scratch at the rear screen door of my mind as well.
Thanks again to all of you who have supported this blog (and me) over the past two+ years. It's been great "meeting" many of you, and you've been a continual source of encouragement and gratification for me.
Diesel out, for now.
Yeah, so after mostly getting over my inexplicable hand injury, I developed a slightly more explicable back injury that caused me to walk stooped over like an old man for three days and then started to wane just as I developed a bad headache that then turned into some kind of sinus thing and a fever and has now left behind only a nagging cough and some impressive chunks of green mucus.
In other words, I'm kind of wiped out. I'm probably going to need a few more days to come up with anything halfway intelligent to post.
My gopher post got quite a reaction.
commented on my observation that establishing a perimiter never seems to do any good on '24': You bring up an interesting point; I don’t think that I’ve ever seen a perimeter work in television or movies. Sometimes it comes close, but it never works. As a matter of fact, the phrase “establish a perimeter” should now be used exclusively as slang for failure. IE; “Wow Mike, you really ‘established a perimeter’ with the ladies at the club last night!” Or, “How’s Karen been doing with her opiate withdrawal?” To which the reply is, “Oh man, she’s ‘established a perimeter’ around the heroin again.”
As for the gophers, maybe you could get them to follow Chevy Chase’s career. They might not die, but at least you’ll never hear from them again! If gophers look at gopher porn, do they get gopher wood?
How's that for an obscure Bible reference? Maybe you can build an ark for when California falls into the Pacific!
(I was going to explain the reference, but then I thought, "Hell, why start now?")
Several people have commented on the odd word verification words that show up on my commenting app.
For example, said: Do you have anything to do with chosing the word verification thingy? Because I swear, it was CLITORIS. Why is my word verification "Reagan?"
You should really think about writing a humorous novel. As a powerhouse literary agent, I can tell you that it would be rejected far slower than some of the other stuff I get in. I have tried to join 5 times but the site won't let me Well,
that's all the information I need to solve the problem. I have pressed the magic
fix-it button. Please try again.
Bar-Ob promises "swift closure" of extradimensional prison.
KRYPTONOPOLIS - Ratcheting up the rhetoric in the race for Supreme Leader of Krypton, Demokryptic candidate Bar-Ob has promised to "close once and for all" the controversial extradimensional prison known as the Phantom Zone.
 "How can we hold ourselves up as a model for other planets, such as... well, the only one I know of is Earth," said Bar-Ob, "while maintaining an illegal prison in a dimension just 90 miles outside our own space-time continuum? It's unconscionable."
A spokesperson for Jor-El, the scientist who discovered the Phantom Zone, called Bar-Ob's promises "irresponsible and unrealistic." Jor-El, known for his controversial claim that the core of Krypton is radioactive and due to explode "any day now," is running as the Republiton candidate for Supreme Leader.
Demokrypts have accused Jor-El of "fear-mongering." Bar-Ob recently noted recently that "Every time Jor-El's polls are down, they bump up the Planetary Core Explosion Threat Level."
Jor-El's spokespersons have denied any connection between the campaign and the PCECTL, pronounced puh-KEK-tul. They countered the Demokrypt accusations with allegations that Bar-Ob is pandering to voters. "Where is Bar-Ob going to put these dangerous criminals when he closes the Phantom Zone? Where does he suggest housing the likes of General Zod and Doctor Xadu? All this planet needs is another Wil-Hor debacle." 
Jor-El has also argued that Bar-Ob lacks the interstellar experience to be Supreme Leader of Krypton. "It's frankly embarrassing that Bar-Ob cannot name a single alien planet other than Earth. What about the lava world of Moo-Zarak-Ghukkenstemph? What about the ice planet Sha-hah-aaahanssstugl? I mean, how can one lead Krypton into the 49th century when one is ignorant of the giant snow-worms of Sha-hah-aaahanssstugl?"
In response, Bar-Ob accused the Republitons of "clouding the issue" and "making up planets." He called the current administration's record regarding the Phantom Zone "shameful," claiming that inmates of the extradimensional prison were routinely denied food and water for "centuries at a time."
Jor-El pointed to these accusations as further evidence that Bar-Ob lacks the experience needed to be Supreme Leader. Jor-El claimed that "Anyone who knows anything about the Phantom Zone knows that its occupants do not age or require sustenance. They reside in a featureless existence from which they can observe, but cannot interact with, the regular universe; furthermore, they are telepathic and mutually insubstantial."
In response to these statements, Bar-Ob said, "I call B.S. on the 'telepathic and mutually insubstantial' stuff."
Jor-El later admitted that he had no idea what that phrase meant, and was simply repeating something he had found on Kryptopedia.
About six years ago, my wife and I purchased ten acres of farmland just outside of Ripon, California. Eight acres of the property are still orchard, while the front two acres serve as home to my wife and me, our two children, my father-in-law, and a varying number of gophers.
If you're one of those people who can't stand the thought of any living creature -- no matter how ugly and annoying -- being harmed, I'd suggest you stop reading here, because the fact is that gophers are evil creatures that deserve to die a painful, horrifying death. I feel nothing but joy when I club a gopher over the head with a shovel and then toss his lifeless carcass into the orchard as a warning to the other gophers. I've even been known, while in the throes of a gopher-killing frenzy, to cackle evilly and make dire but nonsensical pronouncements such as, "Oh, I'm AFRAID the deflector shield will be QUITE operational when your friends arrive...."
Here's a second disclaimer, before I go any further: the only thing worse than being terrorized by gophers is to have one's incessant whining about said gophers constantly being met with tired, predictable references to Caddyshack. PLEASE STOP, people. That movie is funny to me in the same way that M*A*S*H is funny to someone who lost all four limbs to a wise-cracking alcoholic surgeon in the Korean War. Oh that irrepressible Hawkeye and his lack of attention to proper hygiene!
My brother once asked me to post a video of me trying to kill a gopher to see if I'm funnier than Bill Murray. I told him that I once shot such a video, but that it was "more horrific than funny, like Caddyshack 2." (it consisted mainly of me kicking the gopher until I got bored and then whacking it with a shovel). He suggested that the gophers wouldn't be as much of a problem if I didn't insist on growing a golf course in my backyard. He's got a point -- I probably don't need 50,000 square feet of lawn. But here's the problem: it's not like I can say to the gophers, "Hey, I decided I only need 25,000 square feet of lawn, so you guys can keep the other half." I mean, I could say it, but the gophers wouldn't listen. You see, gophers are greedy, mean-spirited bastards who exist primarily to spite me. They wouldn't be content with their half of the lawn. They'd use it as a training ground for new cadets to be sent out en masse to enemy territory. Trust me, I've tried establishing a perimeter like they do on 24, but so far it's worked, well, about as well as it does on 24.* F---ing Tony Almeida.
Big deal, you say. So they dig a few holes in your yard. No. They dig a gigantic network of tunnels under my yard. It's like the freaking Paris Metro down there, but with gophers instead of Frogs -- a marginal improvement, at best. I've had three garden hoses going for an hour in one of those holes, and the water never comes out. I'm pretty sure there are Fremen in caverns down there nodding with approval.** And the tunnels eventually collapse, and the gophers dig more tunnels, and those collapse, and on and on, until the ground is more wildly uneven than a Jim Carrey movie. There are areas of my property that are so riddled with mounds of dirt and collapsed tunnels that I have to down a handful of Dramamine before my annual weed-mowing on the riding mower.
And that's not all. They also eat your plants. I have actually seen entire plants sucked underground like that girl at the beginning of Jaws. And they know, they somehow KNOW which plants you'd really they rather not eat, and they specifically target them. A gopher will tunnel under a whole bed of carrots or begonias just to chew up the roots of that Japanese Maple that you've been watching grow to the perfect size over the past sixteen years. Because they are EVIL.
Recently I killed a gopher that had been tunneling under the foundation of my house. You might ask why a gopher would tunnel under my house. The answer is simple: because it is trying to destroy my house. There's nothing a gopher might possibly be interested in under my house. There's no food or water, or, uh... gopher porn, or whatever else gophers surf the web searching for.*** The only reason for a gopher to be under my house is to set C4 charges under my house. EVIL.
So, given that gophers are inherently evil, there is only one appropriate response: KILL THEM ALL. Recently I was browsing a message board, looking for suggestions on how to kill gophers. Nestled amongst opinions on the relative merits of traps, poisons, F&W (flooding and whacking), I found this little treatise:
I am working at an organic school garden and have noticed some gopher mounds near our plants. I came to garden forums to see what solutions were available to me. My predecessor at the garden used quick death traps which I have witnessed in action. Although effective, I felt it was a waste of life, considering I did not make any use of the dead gopher. I am also not completely in relationship to gopher ecology. There is a suburban neighborhood around the garden, as well as some open space in which the soil has been destroyed for fire protection by discing. There are no plants left alive in these zones really. So how am I contributing to the demise of the gopher population (which are major contributors to a healthy ecology in the region) by killing them? These questions would probably at least require a year of observation to get at, and I'm concerned about the annuals I have planted for this season.
The posts I have read on this subject at this forum have left me unsettled. I read mostly war metaphors, dualistic and violent, creating an enemy "other" which is put into deragaotry language and creates rationalizations for small scale genocides. I do not think this attitude is healthy for the survival not only of the human species, but countless others.
I may still trap the gophers but I will not hate them or demonize them. I open the forum up for further discussion on a deeper questioning of the problem of gophers.
Are you KIDDING me? How are you contributing to the demise of the gopher population by killing them? Well, if you're doing it right, you're reducing it. Which is an inherently good thing, because gophers are EVIL. There is no need to demonize them; that was taken care of by SATAN when he CREATED THEM TO TORMENT ME. Sorry for the deragaotry language.
I still haven't found the best method for killing them. Traps work sometimes, although trapping isn't as gratifying as flooding and whacking. Attempts at asphyxiation via exhaust pipe and garden hose have thus far been unsuccessful. And to those of you who keep suggesting putting Juicy Fruit in the holes -- I'm pretty sure that was a rumor started by a couple of gophers with a taste for chewing gum. One wiseguy on the forum suggested, in response to this idea, "chewing the gum while setting traps."
Mr. Living in Harmony with Gophers may not hate them, but I do. Accuse me of using "war metaphors" if you want, but know this: it's not a metaphor. I am at war with the gophers. I will kill them all, by any means necessary. And since I seem to be making a lot of obscure pop culture references in this post, here's one more for you:
I came here to chew Juicy Fruit and kick ass. And I'm all out of Juicy Fruit.
*Have you noticed that no episode of 24 has ever ended with Jack Bauer saying, "Thank God we established that perimiter! Now let's all go home and get some sleep!" **If you get this reference, you are a huge geek.
***Gophers don't actually surf the web, as they are still bitter about http becoming the de facto standard Internet protocol. Wow, what is up with the obscure references in this post?
Crummy Joel took top honors this week. I think that makes what, five wins for Joel? Time to update my sidebar.
"Maybe you didn't hear me...I said my kid is selling candy for her school. How many boxes can I put you down for? And Aaron took third, with: I'm not going to ask you again: "Turn back into that hot girl!"
In case you don't get Joel's caption, I've written a novel, see. It's called Mercury Falls. I've been trying to find an agent to represent it. Read more here. Make sure you sign up for the Mercury Falls interest list while you're over there.
Sorry for being so lame this week. Somehow I injured my hand last week and it's made typing rather difficult. It's also made me a little grumpy, which makes it hard to be funny. Well, watching me try to put on my socks probably would have been pretty funny, but as you can imagine, trying to capture that on camera wouldn't have made the task any easier.
You might argue that even with one hand tied behind my back, I'm still funnier than 99% of the bloggers out there, and you'd be right. For example, I can type this without using my right hand at all:
Fred was a fat retard
Damn, you kill me, Lefty.
Still, I couldn't help but feel handicapped by my inability to use such words as "poon" and "hiny."
Anway, both of my hands will, with any luck, be back with a poonariffic post on Monday.
Have a swell weekend!
Mercury Falls is being featured over at the Book Roast blog today! Read an excerpt and leave a comment for a chance to win a $15 Amazon gift certificate. And make sure to sign up for the Mercury Falls interest list when you're done.
I inexplicably injured my middle finger a few days ago, so you may not hear much more from me this week, because I'm trying not to use it. At the very least, I will be avoiding words with the letters K, I and M in them. Sorry, Kim!
Diesel out.
You know the rules. Submit your captions in the comments. I'll post the best ten in a poll on Tuesday. Have a swell weekend!
It must be about time for a post that doesn't require much effort on my part. That's right, it's time for a Google Analytics search term post!
Here are some of the phrases that people have used to get to this site over the past month:
funny monkey videos
anal probing
10 thousand dollar mattress
Have I mentioned lately that sponsors can contact me at diesel -at- mattresspolice.com regarding my rates?
average human swallows spiders
(opens envelope) Name three stupid animals in order from largest to smallest.
can i join the police if i'm fat
Well... just how fat are you planning on getting?
can you urine while erecte
Yes, but not while I'm also trying to type.
contact number of god matress
Let me get this straight. You're trying to get a hold of God's mattress? You Catholics are wacky.
cool stuff to do with a mattress
Well, there's sleep. That's pretty cool. Let's see here... build a fort, maybe? There was something else, but I can't quite think of it.
knob jobs
Oh, I remember now.
cost of rutherfordium per gram
dig trench time
Boy, you've come to the wrong place if you want an accurate benchmark for that.
don't say retard book
retard book retard book retard book!
how was jesus bornis there a hell
The short answer to your question is magicyes.
how to build a continuity tester for mobile homes
Don't even try it! You need special equipment! Like batteries, a light bulb, and a piece of aluminum foil. Special equipment!
porn vagina like a mattres
Easy, big fella. Take a deep breath and try again.
wristwatch caught in lawn mower
...typing with one hand... please send help...
you tube help me buying a mattress
...and please watch over grandma, amen.
my dream guy
Sorry, ladies, I'm taken.
infidelity mattress test
Well, you're going to need some special equipment....
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