Caption Contest: The Thinker

I thought I'd mix things up a bit with this week's caption contest. Normally I post a photo of myself with some iconic figure, and this week's photo is no exception. The difference is that this time it's an actual, unaltered photo. One of the unexpected bonuses of our trip to Michigan a few weeks ago was a chance to see a cast of Rodin's The Thinker, which was visiting Grand Rapids.

I couldn't resist posing next to the big lug. So here we are:



Submit your captions in the comments by Monday evening. Then I'll see what captions I can come up with, and Mrs. Diesel will pick her favorites. The top ten will be posted in a poll for you to vote on.

Have fun and good luck!

Listed on humor-blogs.com.

Thursday Shout-Out: New Adjutant Inspectors!

Yes, it's time once again to promote a handful of bloggers who have outdone their peers in their efforts to make me forget that time in 7th grade when the girls ranked all the boys in the class from 1 to 10, and I was given an 'L'.

The Adjutant Inspectors are listed to the left. No, your other left. There they are! The latest additions are:

• Jocelyn from O Mighty Crisis
• Monika, teh Ice Queen!
• Howard from The Web Pen Blog
• Carol from Shrink Wrapped Scream
• Cathouse Teri from The Road Lester Traveled

Your uniforms will arrive shortly after you -- ahem -- order them.

Tomorrow: A caption contest with a special twist!

Antisocial Commentary Preview!

Since the positive response I got regarding my idea of publishing an compilation of my writings called Antisocial Commentary: From the Secret Files of the Mattress Police, I've been working on selecting and editing some of my better posts for the book. I've also been organizing the posts into chapters by different themes (Family, pop culture, religion, etc.) and writing introductions to each of the chapters. I wanted the introductions to be sort of a "bonus" feature, so that even if you've been a loyal reader of this blog since the beginning, there will still be some material you haven't seen. But as I was working on one of the introductions last night, I thought, "But how will anyone know about these bonus features?" And then I thought, "I know, I'll post them to my blog!" And then I thought, "Wow, I can't believe I'm allowed to feed myself."

Anyway, I'm not going to post all of the introductions, but here's one of them, just to show you what you'll be missing if you don't buy the book. Or, more accurately, what you'd be missing if you didn't buy the book and I wasn't an idiot.

Chapter 3: The Internet

There’s an old story about 3 blind men who are attempting to describe an elephant. One man feels the elephant’s trunk and theorizes that an elephant is like a snake. Another feels the elephant’s tail and asserts that an elephant is like a rope. The third man feels the elephant’s rough hide and concludes an elephant is like a boulder.

In many ways, the internet is like that elephant. The fact is, if you’re blind and retarded, you’re not going to get much out of it. On the other hand, why would you be trying to get something out of an elephant? Let me tell you, you’re not going to get anything out of an elephant that didn’t first go into the elephant, and few things are improved by a journey through an elephant. If you lost something near an elephant, you should probably just get another of whatever it is. But you would know that if you would have just looked it up on the internet rather than reading this drivel. And really, that’s my point.

The internet is a phenomenal resource. So phenomenal, in fact, that for the first several years that the World Wide Web was around, nobody knew quite what it was for. Maybe it’s for selling pet food and furniture, we thought. When that turned out to be incorrect, we theorized that it was for getting your groceries delivered to your doorstep. Unfortunately, we were wrong about that too. We were pretty sure that it had something to do with productivity and efficiency, and it turned out we were right. What we didn’t realize was that the purpose of the internet was to decrease productivity while increasing the efficiency with which we could disseminate pornography and videos of monkeys sticking their fingers in their bums.

And yet, something was still missing. “How will we know how to find the pornography and monkey bum videos?” we asked. And that’s when someone came up with the idea of blogging. “It will be just like a diary,” someone said. “Except it will be arranged in reverse chronological order in order to reflect the diminishing importance of context in the modern age.” And just like that, a new form of literature was invented. Not that you give a shit, because it happened like three weeks ago and have you seen the new monkey bum video?

Anyway, as a former computer programmer, current blogger, and monkey-bum aficionado, I spend a lot of time on the internet. This results in me writing a lot about the internet, and then posting those writings to the internet. Then I write about writing about the internet, and post that to the internet. Eventually I get bored and go looking for some of those Russian dolls on eBay.



This post exclusively available at humor-blogs.com (and here).

The Scariest Motel Ever

Over the course of our fourteen years of marriage, Mrs. Diesel and I have stayed in some scary motels. Being of Dutch stock, we’re unnaturally frugal, and even now that we could probably afford to shell out an extra $40 for a Best Western, it’s sort of a demented game we play, trying to find the cheapest imaginable motel in a given area.

We stayed in a several crummy motels during our ten-day trek from Michigan to California eleven years ago (some day I’ll blog about that nightmare journey. Suffice to say it took us ten days, three of which were spent in Rapid City, South Dakota). After paying for a room at one place that had delusions of respectability, the clerk noticed that our luggage included a large plastic case with air holes in it. Luther, our big black cat, was traveling with us. “We don’t allow cats,” she said.

“Well, we’ve already paid for the room, and we can’t leave him in the car.” I said.

After some grumbling, she said we could have the cat in the room. “But don’t let him sleep on the bed,” she said.

We spent the night watching tv in bed, with Luther between us. Whenever he would close his eyes, we’d snap, “Hey, wake up! No sleeping on the bed!”

In Reno, we once stayed at a motel that was on top of a convenience store. It was $15 cheaper than the second crummiest motel in town. Then there was the place in Yreka, California with the mismatched bedspreads that clashed with the garish orange wallpaper which, in turn, clashed with the red shag carpet. The surreal climax was when we opened the closet door and found a hidden stash of volleyball trophies. Just go ahead and try to envision a scenario in which six volleyball trophies end up in the closet of a motel room. I’ll meet you in the next paragraph when you get back.

Astoundingly, despite this string of brushes with the low end of the hospitality industry, our worst motel experience occurred just a few days ago, on our way back from Michigan. We were scheduled to fly out of Chicago’s Midway airport at 7:30am, so we drove to Chicago the night before. We pulled in at a suitably crummy motel called the Aloha – presumably because for any sane person pulling into this place, hello would also be goodbye. If there was a Hawaiian theme, I didn’t notice – unless the toilets in Hawaii make a horrific screeching sound that sounds like a hippopotamus gasping for air through a saxophone.

Of course we didn’t know about the screeching hippo at first. Our first sign that something was wrong – other than the fact that the motel had a sign advertising 4 hour “naps” for $20 – was when we opened the door to our room and flipped on the light switch, and no lights came on. This was probably a blessing, because what we could see by the light in the bathroom was not encouraging. I support the hiring of handicapped people as much as the next guy, but blind retarded people really shouldn’t be cleaning motel bathrooms.

Next I tried turning on the TV. That didn’t work either, indicating that maybe a circuit breaker had been tripped. Wires dangled from the smoke alarm, unconnected to a battery -- always a good thing in a room that has electrical problems.

Fortunately the toilet did work – though at the age of 37 I’m no longer so proud of doing my business that I need the toilet to announce it to the folks six doors down from us. Seriously, it was that loud. I don’t know what you have to do to a toilet to cause it to make that noise, but it can’t be healthy for either the perpetrator or the toilet.

My parents ran a motel for ten years, so I know better than to touch a motel bedspread without a hazmat suit, but the sheets at least looked clean. Even the yellow marks around the cigarette burns had been bleached almost white. And really, clean sheets are all I require in a motel room. Well, clean sheets, working lights, a TV and a toilet that isn’t possessed by evil spirits.

I went to the office to ask if we could get a different room. The clerk was a young woman of Iranipakafghanindian descent, so she had a hard time understanding what my problem was. It wasn’t until I managed to communicate, through a variety of complex gesticulations, that our toilet was possessed by Flushscreemi, the Iranipakafghanindian goddess of the maelstrom, that she agreed to have the maintenance guy come and “fix all of the problems.” Five minutes, she said.

Ten minutes later we were still in our room, entertaining ourselves by not watching tv in the dark. I headed back to the office and told the kids to come with me. “We’re going to play a game,” I said. “It’s called ‘Make as Much Noise as You Can.’” The kids happily complied by yelling back and forth to each other in the lobby until the maintenance guy showed up.

After twenty minutes of the maintenance guy calling us periodically on the phone to ask us whether the lights were working yet, we were finally offered another room. The alternate room was right next to the lobby, which would have been a drawback if we could have heard anything over the roar of the traffic. There was no problem with the TV in this room, because there was no TV in this room. One of the two lights worked, and we were blessedly free of the tormented wails of Flushscreami. A massive crack running down the bathroom mirror had been repaired with what looked like strawberry yogurt. We had the maintenance guy move the TV from the other room, not so much because we wanted to watch TV as because we wanted to watch him carry a TV down a flight of stairs.

But other than a few games of ‘Make as Much Noise as You Can’ played in the lobby by participants of varying skill levels over the next several hours, and the incessant chirping of a smoke alarm that refused to go quietly into that good night, our stay was relatively undisturbed. And when it comes down to it, all you really need in a motel is clean sheets and a comfortable bed. And at least one light. And a non-screeching toilet. And maybe some twine to tie up the seven year old in bed next to you who seems to be dreaming about falling from trees.

I looked forward to getting some sleep on the plane.


Humor-blogs.com now has hourly rates and volleyball trophy suites.

Caption Contest Winners!

This week Howard from The Web Pen Blog takes home the coveted signed digital photo.

2nd Place:

Kiefer: FOR THE LAST TIME, I say, "Knock, knock ..." and YOU say, "Who's there?"

- wyo from Temporary Digression of the Spotted Kind.

3rd Place:

Jack: Let's get this straight...you put a plastic playhouse on a platform in a tree... your son's nickname is Climber... and you thought WHAT, would happen?

- Robin from Random Observations (sorry Robin, here come more curious visitors.)

Also, a special honorable mention for Crazy Aunt Beatrice for posting the caption that made me giggle like a little schoolgirl, and me for apparently garnering exactly one pity vote. Go me!

In other news, I'll be posting the next three blog reviews at humor-blogs.com this week, starting with The Reasonable Ego tomorrow. Later this week I'll get to Davezilla and Conservathink.

And on Monday, I'll regale you with tales of the much vaunted Scariest Motel Ever.

Mattress Police T-Shirts!

Due to overwhelming demand and free time, I've designed three Mattress Police t-shirts, now available at my online store. The three designs are:

	The classic Mattress Police design. Useful for identifying yourself as a member of the Mattress Police during raids or while you are unconscious. Shirt is bulletproof.* "I'm going to have to pull rank on you. I'm with the mattress police. There are no tags on these mattresses." Get it now!
	Vincent Van Gobot: Self Portrait. The very first work ever produced by the Mattress Police robot mascot, Vincent Van Gobot. Order now, and he'll throw in the antenna that he ripped off to impress some chick.** Get it now!
	And, of course, inspired by our very own Captain Bill, captain of the fastest spacecraft shaped like an overripe banana in our solar system, the shirt that will make your Martian friends green with envy. "What Happens on Jupiter Stays on Jupiter... mostly because of the crushing gravity." Get it now!

So what are you waiting for? The first 100 people who order get a free ziplock bag filled with raisins.*** VISIT MY STORE TO ORDER YOURS TODAY!


*Shirt may not repel bullets propelled by a gun or other projectile device.
**Not really though.
***This is just an outright lie.


Humor-blogs.com would give you the shirt off its back. To wash.

Thursday Cop-Out

I was going to try to promote some more people to Adjutant Inspector rank today, but you wouldn't believe the paperwork that Homeland Security makes me fill out these days. Maybe next week.

Anyway, I'm over at the Snark today with some thoughts about humor books. I'll be back here tomorrow with a special surprise. And, of course, check back on Saturday for the caption contest results.

Diesel out.

Mattress Police News Briefs #3

Belgium: France Keeps Touching Me
In an incident that threatens to upset the delicate balance of power in Europe’s metaphorical backseat, Belgium has once again accused France of unwanted touching.

The site of the alleged touching is an area surrounding the Meuse River, just west of Luxembourg. At a press conference on Tuesday, Belgian Foreign Minister Hans Phillipe showed satellite photos which he insisted “show clearly that France is poking Belgium.”



France’s ambassador to Belgium, Jean-Marie St. Claude characterized Belgium’s claims as “ridiculous.” In a written statement, he said that France was clearly on its side of the Franco-Belgian border.

The other Benelux countries, who asked to remain anonymous, were supportive of Belgium. “This isn’t the first time that France has stuck its finger where it isn’t wanted,” one of the countries said. The other one offered, “I don’t think that’s a finger.” Western Europe responded with a collective “ewwww” and demanded that Paris clean up its act.

The incident immediately set off an outcry in the United States that Paris be sent back to jail where she belongs.

Paula Abdul Has Been Replaced by a Box of Mewing Kittens
In a stunning announcement, executives at the Fox network admitted that several months ago Paul Abdul was replaced in her role as an American Idol judge by a box of mewing kittens. “We intended to say something at the time, but we kind of forgot,” said Karen Ngyen, Fox’s Vice President for Reality Programming. “And then when nobody noticed….” Ngyen shrugged.

Abdul’s co-judge Randy Jackson admitted that he suspected something in January, when all he heard from Abdul’s chair regarding a particularly dreadful performance by Sanjaya Malakar was some barely audible mewing. “I thought maybe she was having a problem with her mike,” Jackson said.

Simon Cowell insisted he knew about the replacement almost from the beginning. “One night I found myself having a particularly scintillating conversation with Paula about the state of the Balkans, and I just sensed that something was different about her. When I began to feel oddly attracted to her, I knew something was wrong. I took her home with me and when she drank an entire bowl of warm milk I realized that she was, in fact, a cardboard box of kittens."



Fox executives insisted that there was mutual agreement that replacing Paula with a box of kittens was the best thing for everyone. “It started when Paula locked herself inside her car twenty minutes before showtime and she called us to send someone to get her. The page we sent to retrieve her picked up a box of abandoned kittens by the side of the road by mistake. No one realized what had happened until the wardrobe people commented that none of Paula’s outfits seemed to fit her. The kittens were real troopers about the whole ordeal, and agreed to go on with just the box.”

Abdul’s whereabouts are unknown.

Death of Man Who Used the Word ‘Libary’ Ruled Justifiable Homicide
In what could be a precedent-setting case, the killing of a 26 year old man in Ripon, California was ruled to be justified. David Simons, 38, never denied pummeling Cody McDonnell to death with a heavy glass paperweight.

“Oh, I killed him alright,” said Simons.

Simon’s defense rested on his claim that McDonnell repeatedly pronounced the word 'library' without the first ‘r’ moments before the attack.

“He was all like, ‘Hey, let’s go down to the libary. College chicks hang out at the libary. Libary, libary, libary.’ I just snapped and grabbed the paperweight.”

The jury deliberated for twenty minutes before concluding that McDonnell had it coming. “I think we can all empathize with David Simons,” said jury foreman Ed Smit. “But then, I once shot a man for putting an apostrophe in the possessive form of its.”


This just in: humor-blogs.com now has a higher population than Canada.

Vote!

Yes, it's that time again. Mrs. Diesel has picked her favorites, and now you must vote for the caption you like best. Just like last time, I threw a dozen or so of my own captions into the ring, and one of them made it into the finals. The winner gets a signed digital copy of the photo, unless the winner is me, in which case I get all of your souls and a copy of the Beatles' White Album. Get your vote in by this Friday, and I'll post the results on Saturday.

"Diesel, I want you to live your life. I want you to be happy. That's all I've ever wanted. I want you to try and grow up to be the kind of person that would've made your mom proud. Okay?"

-Theresa

Keifer: "It's on Monday nights. Won a ton of Emmys. One of Fox's top rated shows..."
Diesel: "Huh... Nope, never heard of it."

- Howard

Jack: Repeat after me, "No more fountains until the indoor plumbing is installed!"

- Michelle

"It's like I'm looking in a mirror", thought Diesel.
"It's like he's looking in a mirror", thought Jack.

- neva

"Ok, ok, I'm sorry I called Audrey a googly-eyed monkey baby!"

- Diesel

" I don't want to tell you how to do your job, but I'm pretty sure the jumper cables you clamped on to my nuts are supposed to be hooked up to a car battery."

- The Drive-by Blogger

Look, I don't have time to go out and get another. The bag was marked with my name, hidden way in the back of the 'fridge... by God, you're going to tell me, who ate my sandwich!

- Keith Burgin

Jack: Let's get this straight...you put a plastic playhouse on a platform in a tree... your son's nickname is Climber... and you thought WHAT, would happen?

- Robin

Kiefer: FOR THE LAST TIME, I say, "Knock, knock ..." and YOU say, "Who's there?"

- wyo

Kiefer: "OK - let's go over it one more time: Only when I put the paper towel over your nose and say 'Blow'. THEN you blow your nose."

- Jami

Opinion Polls & Market Research

Listed on humor-blogs.com.

Trippin'

My vacation couldn’t have come at a better time, blogging-wise, because frankly I was running out of material. One thing about being a man of leisure is that not very much interesting happens to me on a given day. Generally this is good thing, because interesting usually means unexpected, which usually means bad news. An ancient Chinese curse goes, “May you live in interesting times.” I’ve been blessed to have avoided many interesting times lately. Even my vacation went basically as expected, which is always nice. Fortunately for my blogging career, cross-country travel continues to get more interesting, in a sort of surreal Kafkaesque way.

Diesel's Travel Log

11:59 PM (Pacific Time)
We depart from the Oakland airport for Chicago/Midway. Remember when “red eye” meant a nearly intolerable trip aboard an excruciatingly cramped 737 with lousy food and laughably inadequate pillows and blankets? Well, those days are over. They no longer give you food, pillows or blankets.

12:18 PM (Pacific Time)
A couple next to us begins conversing in Spanish. Judging by the volume, they are used to having these conversations just outside the plane. Climber and Speed Pony fall asleep.

6:24 AM (Central Time)
La terminacion de la conversacion!

6:31 AM (Central Time)
Great news: Our plane is getting into Chicago early! Got about six minutes of sleep on the plane, so I feel refreshed if slightly disoriented.

6:42 AM (Central Time)
Even better news: Midway airport is so efficient that sometimes they close runways for construction until three minutes before a plane is scheduled to land! We run out of fuel while waiting for the runway to open and take a nice little detour to scenic Rockford, Illinois. I am a little disappointed there are no T-shirts available that read, “I refueled in Rockford, IL and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.”

7:47 AM (Central Time)
This time we land in Chicago. We retrieve our luggage and head for the rental counter, where we’re offered a PT Cruiser! The excitement is almost too much for me, and I nod off a little and drool on the counter. They ask if I’m going to be the only driver. I say yes, if you don’t include the purple monkey that taunts me when I close my eyes. They give me two identical keys, on a keychain whose ends have been crimped together so that the keys are impossible to remove. “Ah,” I say. “In case I lose one of them.”

8:09 AM (Central Time)
We find our PT Cruiser in the lot. On the dash is a placard informing us that the car was “serviced” by a Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson is evidently a blind chain smoker. As I peel around corners, jeered on by the purple monkeys, the placard slides wildly about the dash, and Mrs. Diesel and I amuse ourselves by chastising it. “Mr. Wilson!” we chide. “Sit still!”

1:02 PM (Eastern Time)
After 3 hours of driving, we pull over to rest. We are taken in by an elderly couple who turn out to be my parents. Mrs. Diesel and I stumble inside and fall asleep on the nearest pieces of furniture while Climber and Speed Pony entertain their grandparents.

Fortunately, the return trip was somewhat less interesting. There was, of course, the Scariest Motel Ever, but that will have to wait for another time….

Humor-blogs.com has all the laughably inadequate pillows you could ever want.

Caption Contest: 24

I was planning on posting this before the season finale, but I ran out of time before my vacation. So anyway, here's me with what's-his-name from 24. You know the drill: Submit your caption in the comments. Get them in by Monday night, and on Tuesday I'll post Mrs. Diesel's favorites for you to vote on. Have fun, and good luck!



Listed on humor-blogs.com.

Hello, I'm Sorry

So I’m sitting in my parents’ living room on Friday, feeling the kind of vague unease that creeps up on me when I can't remember what hot stocks I should buy or where to get discount V1@gr@and I think to myself, “I should check my email.” My parents have DSL but no wireless, so I have to go unplug my mom’s computer and plug mine in to get on AGISH (Al Gore's Information Superhighway) -- which is asking a bit much of a man on holiday. While I’m waiting for my email to download, I decide to check the traffic on MattressPolice.com to see how many readers I’ve lost after not posting for several days. Here’s the handy dandy graph offered by Statcounter.com:



As you can see, my absence has been a big hit. People just can’t get enough of me not being around.

I’ve tried a lot of traffic-building stunts, but few of them have been the immediate and unqualified success that leaving has been. By my reckoning, my most successful posts/stunts are:

1. My Mixed Fruits and Metaphors post.
2. The Mattress Police caption contests.
3. Not posting anything.
4. My Harry Potter post.
5. The Lamest Contest Ever.

I’m not sure what it is about my not being around that strikes such a chord with people. Is it the sort of anxious excitement and hope that accompanies an event like cancer going into remission or the Berlin Wall coming down? Is it the kind of exhausted relief that one experiences with the series finale of Friends or Paris Hilton going to jail? Is it the kind of guilty curiosity that comes with the death of a celebrity that one had thought died in 1987?

As popular as my disappearance has proven to be, however, I’ve decided to return before the novelty wears off. There’s nothing worse than dragging out a good thing. At first it would be like:

Unique Visitor 1: Hey, did you hear about that blogger who stopped posting?
Unique Visitor 2: No! For how long?
UV1: Going on five days now.
UV2: Wow. I need to check that out. What’s the internet address thingy?

But after a while it will be like:

UV1: Hey, remember that guy that I told you about who stopped posting?
UV2: Oh, yeah! That was hilarious. What’s he up to now?
UV1: That’s the thing, he’s still not posting.
UV2: What? Geez, get some new material already. What a waste of an internet address thingy.

I thought about returning Gandalf-style, with a white robe and the air of superiority that comes with facing down a balrog, but then if my town was ever terrorized by a balrog, everybody would expect me to take care of it, and I don’t need that kind of pressure. Then I considered coming back with a different name, like “The Hoff.” The great thing about giving yourself a nickname like that is that it sounds really cool, but it’s so lame to give yourself your own nickname that people will end up calling you it as sort of a joke, and then keep calling you it even after they’ve forgotten they were originally making fun of you. But I think you have to be a world class dork to pull off something like that.

So here I am, returning with a whimper rather than a bang. I wish I could come up with something more exciting, but I think I’ve given up trying to figure out what stunts are going to generate a lot of traffic. After all, if a post bombs, I can always disappear.

(Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere. I'll be back on Friday with a new caption contest pic. And next week I'll regale you with stories about the irrepressible Mr. Wilson, the Scariest Motel Ever, and other unverifiable tales of my vacation. Oh, and tomorrow I'll do my best to catch up on the blog reviews at humor-blogs.com. See you back here on Friday!)

Would You Buy This Book?

At the urging of certain of my more enthusiastic fans, I've started consolidating some of my better writings into a collection tentatively titled Antisocial Commentary: From the Secret Files of the Mattress Police. Believe it or not, in the eight months since I started this blog I've written over 250 pages of semi-coherent drivel. When I realized just how much I had written, I exclaimed to my wife, "I could make this into a book!"

And she beheld me with a look of pride and admiration and responded, "Not a very good book."

To be fair, she thought I meant a novel, and it's true that a novel based on this blog would make about as much sense as Gravity's Rainbow.

When I explained to her that it would be just a random collection of humorous essays, she warmed to the idea.

"Why would anyone buy it if they can just read your blog?" she asked.

Why indeed? I mean, don't get me wrong. The book wouldn't just be a hard copy version of this blog. I'd pick and choose from the better posts, organize them, expand some of them and pare down others, and I'd write some new material as well -- but the book would still be mostly recycled material. For example, I'd include Harry Potter and the Slide Into Satanism, The Force is Middling in this One, WTF? and all your other classic favorites. So my question to you is, would you buy such a book? Don't worry about offending me; I chafe at the thought of paying more than $6 for a book by Hemingway or Twain, and they're like famous and stuff. I'd just like to have some indication, before I get too far on this project, how many of you might actually be interested in buying it. I'm figuring it will be around 180 pages and cost about $12-14 in paperback (I'm assuming at this point that I'll self-publish it, but I may shop it around a bit first).

For that matter, what if I wrote a book that was in the same vein as the stuff I write here, but it was all original content? Or if it was 50/50? Or let's say that I've also been working on a novel about an angel who is supposed to be helping out with the apocalypse but feels that he has better things to do. Should I, theoretically, focus on that instead?

I'm easy, just tell me what I can do to make you pay me for something I write. So that I don't have to get a job.

Anyway, post a comment or send me an email with your thoughts. Something for you to think about while I'm away on vacation this week.

In other news, I've posted the reviews of Florid Organum Straight from the South Side, Dan's Blah Blah Blog, and Copacetic City at the humor-blogs.com review blog. Enjoy!

See you in a week or so!

Diesel out.


I've got two tickets to humor-blogs.com. Because we've waited so long. Waited so long.

This is My Brain Without Drugs

Occasionally when I write a post that gets a strong reaction, I feel the need to write a counter-balancing post a few days later. I'm the kind of guy who will argue like crazy for a particular point of view until people start agreeing with me, and then I'll switch to the other side where it's not so crowded.

I'm not going to contradict my anti-authority stance; I'll remain bitter at my idiot junior high school teachers for pretty much forever. Yeah, you, Mrs. B., who told us that you didn't think anybody should get paid more than the president of the United States. You're an idiot. And you, Mr. P., who asked Glacial Spain, when he wanted to draw pictures in study hall after finishing his homework, "Don't you have anything more constructive to do?" You're an idiot. And you, Mr. B., who marked me down 7 points for writing "Ye Olde Testament" on my (otherwise flawless) list of the books of the Old Testament. You're a big f*#%ing idiot. I was smarter than you then, and guess what? I'm a successful software developer who is building a house and finishing up a Master's degree in the humanities. Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure you've only gotten dumber. If I ever write a book, I'm going to dedicate it to all the jerkwad teachers who would have steered me into selling insurance if they could have. You're all idiots. By the way, I'm coming into town in a week, so if you get a break from peddling mediocrity you should stop by.

I didn't mean for this to turn into a rant on my junior high teachers, but while I'm on the topic, let me clarify that I'm not pissed off at all my teachers. My grade school teachers were pretty cool. And actually my high school teachers were mostly ok. I mean, they gave me lousy grades because I screwed around and didn't do the work, but I can't really blame them for that. And my college professors were almost all good people too. I'm sure a lot of them remember me as a lazy jerk, but that's mostly because I was a lazy jerk, so again, not really their fault.

No, it's just you, my junior high teachers, who wrung your hands over my jokes about leaving the cat on the roof overnight and held special conferences about the Dungeons and Dragons figurines that I brought to school one day, whom I hold in such low regard. You are all a bunch of smug, sorry-ass, close-minded, by-the-book pablum-spewing dullards, and I hope you have a dictionary close by because I want you to look up all those words I just used. I pray none of you are still teaching, but in case you are, give me your address so that I can send you a T-shirt that reads "If you believe everything I tell you, some day you'll turn into me." Then you can die having taught your students something really valuable.

Okaaaayyyyyy. And that's why we generally keep a lid on the bitterness kettle around here. Things got a little ugly there. Sorry about that.

Anyway, the point of this post was to provide a counterbalance to Wednesday's post, in which I went on about my beautiful wife, wonderful children and gigantic house. I was facetiously suggesting some tips for avoiding my "fate," when in fact I'm pretty much the luckiest guy in the world. I mean, it's true that I made some smart decisions along the way (like marrying the first pretty girl who could put up with me, and buying 10 acres of land in California in 2002), but the fact is that I've also been phenomenally blessed beyond anything I deserve. Not five minutes ago Mrs. Diesel and I were eavesdropping on Speed Pony (age 5) "reading" from the Bible to Climber (age 7) about cheese. I'm not sure which epistle covers cheese in such detail, but it made for a good story. There's no way I deserve kids who are that cute. So it's a bit misleading to suggest that I ended up with such a great life because I'm so freaking smart.

It's also true that my life hasn't always been so great. I have a very weird brain, and it's taken me most of my life so far to figure out how to use it. I'm still not really sure what it was designed for. I seem to have a gift for writing, humor, graphic design, software development, and building stuff, among other things. Occasionally I'll meet someone who is a better writer, designer, or programmer than I, but I've never met anybody who can do all of these things even remotely well. I don't say this to brag; I'm certainly not responsible for these abilities. I just have them, and I don't know why.

And on the flip side, I am a complete idiot in many ways. I have a terrible memory for practical details. I can literally put down a hammer, turn around, and think, not five seconds later, "Now where is that damn hammer?" I lose things all the time. It's almost impossible for me to focus on what a person is saying for more than about 18 seconds. I have a horrible sense of direction. On top of that, I take a wrong turn about half the time I drive somewhere, even when I know exactly where I'm going, because I'm thinking about something else. And as if that weren't enough, I've been fighting depression since about fifth grade. My brain is always going a hundred miles an hour, and if I don't give it a problem to solve, it will create one. For example, it might say to me, "Hey Diesel, what's the point? Why not just shoot yourself in the head?" And other than not owning a firearm, I have a hard time coming up with a good answer to that one.

Before stumbling into software development, I worked at a succession of low-skilled jobs with minimal success. My first job was delivering newspapers. I would get a call nearly every evening from someone who didn't get their paper. You wouldn't think it would be that difficult to deliver newspapers to the same 80 houses every day, but somehow I almost always missed somebody.

After that I bagged groceries. I was ok at the bagging part, but I refused to engage in small talk with the customers. One guy actually seemed worried about me. "What's wrong?" he asked. "Nothing," I said, a little surprised. Nothing except for the fact that I feel like I'm leaving a little bit of my soul in every bag of groceries. I eventually put in my notice because the management pissed me off. "Why are you quitting?" asked one of the managers, as I bagged her groceries. "Because the management here sucks," I said. I only had four days left to work, and they fired me.

At another grocery store, I worked my way up to stocking the shelves. I was constantly getting yelled at because I was so slow. Everyone was convinced I was screwing around, when in fact I was working as fast as I could. Eventually the stress got to me and I quit.

In college I worked at a Christian bookstore. I was bad at that too. One time a guy told me he wanted to buy a Bible, and I asked him what kind of cover he wanted. To me, Bibles were categorized in several different ways (translation, print size, etc.), one of which was the type of cover. I had planned to narrow down the options based on his answers regarding the various categories. I didn't realize how gauche it was to start with the cover. I went home for the summer and when I came back the store didn't need me any more.

I got a job at a store in the mall that sold things like luggage and those little clacking balls on a string that people put on their desks. I was terrible at that job, because I hated that crap and I hated the people that bought that crap. To be fair, I pretty much hated people at that point, although people who bought little clacking balls for their desks were a particularly annoying subset. After Christmas my name wasn't on the schedule any more.

I worked at the job service on campus for about three years after that. That was a pretty good job, and I wasn't all that bad at it. But this was during the peak of my depression so I started showing up later and later for work and would have gotten fired if I hadn't been rendered ineligible for on-campus employment by graduating.

After college I continued to prove my incompetence at a wide variety of simple tasks. I delivered pizza for three weeks. I worked at Blockbuster for 6 months. I worked for a moving company for 3 weeks.

I once loaded trucks at Amway (they're headquartered in my home town) for 2 weeks. I was particularly bad at that, because the packages were all different sizes and had to be loaded onto the truck really quickly. It was like playing Tetris in 3D. I have no sense for spatial relations. People were always having to come over and help me out because my line was backed up for like fifty yards. I went to the office to ask for a transfer to a different job, but they said there had been no complaints about my performance. I told them that there would be if I kept working there, but they said there were no other positions open. I went home at lunch and didn't come back.

Then I got a job cataloging documents that were being subpoenaed in lawsuits. I was bad at that too, but made friends with a manager and got promoted to a position where I was monitoring other employees' work. I did ok at that, but I had a tendency to get in trouble for showing up five minutes late. Because you see, if you showed up five minutes late the previous shift would have just left, so you could get a much better parking spot. They warned me not to show up late any more, and the next day I got stuck in construction traffic. They fired me.

So here I was, the kid who scored five grade levels ahead of his class on standardized tests, and I couldn't hold down a job loading trucks. Even when I got a job that I could manage to do, I was so enveloped by depression and self-doubt that I convinced myself I was going to screw up eventually, and anyway it was a pointless, stultifying job that made me want to hit myself in the head with a hammer if I could only remember where I put it.

Things eventually turned out ok. I got to thinking that it might do me some good to larn some 'bout those newfangled computers. So I studied a little, moved to California and managed to get a job doing technical support for a company in the Bay Area. From there, I moved on to web development, which I turned out to be really good at. I worked as a web developer for most of the past ten years. I still had problems with depression, but eventually got treatment for that. After three days on Prozac, I felt like I hadn't felt since fourth grade. I felt happy.

Eventually I got tired of software development, and when my job dissatisfaction and home equity both reached a critical point, I quit. I tell people that I'm retired. In truth, I still work pretty hard, building my house, landscaping, and yes, "wasting time" drawing pictures and writing silly stories.

I'm still not really sure what this brain was designed to do. I keep trying different things, and I find that it's true that I can do whatever I set my mind to. Of course, setting my mind is a little like programming a VCR with a soup ladle in the dark, but still.

Anyway, I'm having fun. Some day I'll probably run out of money and have to get another real job, and that will be ok too.

Maybe I'll teach junior high. I understand any idiot can do that.



Now where did I put humor-blogs.com again?