Saturday Morning in the Bedroom of Good and Evil

ow the Red Vine was more tempting than any of the other candies which the parents had bought. And the Red Vine said to the girl, Yea, hath your parents said, Ye shall not eat of any candy in the pantry? And the girl said unto the Red Vine, We may eat of the candy in the pantry, but only after a healthy dinner and with parental approval. The parents have said, Ye shall not eat candy, neither shall ye touch it, before your mother and father get up on Saturday morning, lest ye die. And the Red Vine said unto the girl, Ye shall not surely die: For your parents know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the girl saw that the Red Vine was sugary and laced with artificial flavors and colors that were pleasant to the eyes and nose, and a candy to be desired to make one wise, she took of the Red Vine, and did eat, and gave also unto her brother with her; and he did eat. And they gorged themselves on Red Vines, but learned nothing to speak of, for the Red Vine lied to them about that part.

And they heard their mother making coffee: and the boy and the girl hid themselves from the presence of their mother amongst the toys in their room. And their mother opened the door to the children’s room and saw that the boy’s face was smudged in red, for verily he is the messiest eater of all God’s creatures. And she said, Child, what have you been eating? And the boy said, Maybe a Red Vine. And she said, How many did you eat? And he said, Maybe three. And the boy said, The sister whom thou gavest to me, she gave me of the candy, and I did eat. And the mother said unto the girl, What is this that thou hast done? And the girl said, The Red Vine beguiled me, and I did eat.

And the mother said unto the Red Vine, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all candies, and above every snack item and munchie; in the garbage shalt thou go. But then she hid the Red Vines in the back of the pantry, for the mother had nothing against the Red Vines, and was looking forward to having some later.

Unto the children she said, Wait until your father gets up. And then the children’s father got up, and he too was displeased. He looked upon the boy’s face and said, Really? You expected us not to notice this? And then he cast the children out of their room. But then he sent them back to their room and said, Before I cast you out, I want you to clean your room, for your room is a pig sty. After they had cleaned their room, he cast them out again, and made them work outside, moving rocks and doing all sorts of unpleasant tasks that he didn’t feel like doing.

At the end of the day, the children went to bed without dessert. And the mother said, Behold, your children are very naughty. And the father said, My children? The girl started it, and she takes after you. And the mother said, Whatever. Let us forbid them from having any candy or dessert for the next week. And the father agreed.

And once the children were in bed, the parents discussed amongst themselves what candy they would eat that evening.

If you enjoyed this post, may I also recommend: Mixed Fruits and Metaphors | Mrs. Diesel Speaks! If you visit humor-blogs.com, you shall be as gods, knowing what is funny and what is not funny.

Four Months in Pictures

I haven’t posted any pics of my house or family lately, mostly because, well, I lost the little cable thingy that connects the camera to my computer. I still haven’t found it, but I bought a card reader from Best Buy, so now I can finally post some pics. I’ve got quite a backlog, so I thought I’d do a quick photo pictorial, catching you up on what’s been going on over the past few months.

We went to Seaworld for Christmas. That’s a story in itself, but for now I’ll just post this pic that demonstrates once again that I have the most beautiful children on the planet. I know, you think your kids are cute, but my kids are like BAM! PYCHOW! They’re all up in your grill with their cuteness.



We also went up into the mountains to play in the snow. This is what Mrs. Diesel and I look like a few minutes before I’m going to slam into her on a sled at thirty miles an hour and she doesn’t talk to me for the rest of the day.



These photos prove nothing except that I’m the BEST UNCLE EVER.





One time we went to the beach. I always get pensive at the beach. Here I’m thinking, “God must have a HUGE salt shaker.”



Here’s Mrs. Diesel looking sultry at the beach. Here she’s thinking, “I can’t believe you used that picture. I look so ugly in that picture.”



One time I took a bunch of meth and stayed up all night building the Sydney Opera House out of Legos™.



And Mount Rushmore.



And this walrus. I only had enough Legos™ for one tusk.



Our house progressed, largely due to the fact that rather than trying to help with the construction over the past few months, I stuck to my strengths: writing insanely large checks.









And that’s all I have for now.



See you on Friday for the caption contest.

Listed on humor-blogs.com.

I Think My Cat May Be on Drugs

That's not an expression, like "What has gotten into that cat? It's acting like it's on drugs." I mean, it started out that way, but at this point I seriously think my cat may be abusing a controlled substance. I don't really know how to find out for sure; they don't make public service announcements for this sort of thing.

It started a few days ago, when our normally sedate cat started darting from one end of the living room to the other for no apparent reason. Then she would meow plaintively, as if she needed food or wanted to go outside, but if you followed her to where she seemed to want to go, she would just stop at some arbitrary location and look up at you quizzically, as if to say, "Where to, chief?"

"What is up with Molly?" I would say to Mrs. Diesel. "She's acting like she's on crack." We've had this stupid cat for 11 years now, and she had never acted like this. We weren't exactly worried, but it is a little disconcerting to see an animal experiencing a sudden personality shift. Although maybe that's just because in the movies, animals acting strangely is always a harbinger of something horrible. "Shut up, Duke!" yells Expendable Character #1, just before he gets eviscerated by whatever dreadful corpse-like entity Duke was trying to warn him about.

I have to admit that part of the reason I never talked to my cat about drugs is that I feared being thought of as a hypocrite. You see, everybody in my family except my daughter, Speed Pony, is on drugs. (Speed Pony doesn't need drugs because, well, she's freaking Speed Pony.) I take blood pressure medication so that I won't die of a heart attack and Prozac so that I won't die of a shotgun blast to the head (Take it easy, I'm joking*). Mrs. Diesel has rheumatoid arthritis, so she takes all kinds of drugs for that. And my son, Climber, takes Adderall(R), which is basically a stimulant, because he's a space cadet. I think that's the actual technical medical term: Space cadetism. He can't focus on a task for more than about 2.3 seconds without some kind of medication.**

So I feel a bit hypocritical lecturing my cats on drugs. And who knows, maybe it's really hard to be a cat. Maybe sometimes you just need something to get through the 3 hours of the day that you're awake. But when a cat's behavior starts affecting other people, that's when I have to put my foot down.

As I mentioned, Climber takes Adderall every morning. We usually leave his pill out for him on the kitchen counter so that he'll remember to take it. We have no way of knowing whether he has actually taken it; we just assume that if the pill is gone, he's taken it. I mean, we could ask him if he took it, but there's not much point in that sort of questioning due to the aforementioned space cadetism. So as far as we're concerned, no pill on counter = Climber has taken his pill.

Around the same time that Molly started freaking out, Climber started bringing more homework home. It seems that he was having trouble getting all of his work done at school. Still, we didn't correlate these two behavioral shifts until yesterday morning, when I caught Molly on the counter batting Climber's pill to the floor.

Once she had knocked it to the floor, she leaped down and proceeded to attempt to eat it.

I smacked her and grabbed the pill, which was now wet with cat saliva. "What the hell, Molly?" I yelled, and proceeded to rinse the pill under the faucet. (Those damn things are expensive; no need to waste one on account of a few cat cooties.) I put the pill back on the counter.

Molly immediately leaped back onto the counter and grabbed the pill with her paw. You've probably never seen a cat grab something before, but I swear that she grabbed it. The pill was still damp, so it stuck to her paw. She then lifted the paw to her mouth and tried to pop it in her mouth, like it was a Junior Mint or something.

"Molly!" I yelled again, snatching the pill from her paw. I pushed her to the floor.

By this point the capsule had pretty well deteriorated, so I pulled it open and dumped the contents into Climber's oatmeal. "Try to get that, you stupid cat!"

Now as I mentioned, Adderall is a stimulant. It's a Schedule II controlled substance, meaning that it has high potential for abuse and addiction. And of course the dosage of Climber's pill is meant for a fifty pound child, not a ten pound cat. I'm not sure what the proper dose for a cat would be. I think it would depend on how bored you were.

We have no way of knowing for sure whether Molly got into the Adderall before. All I know is that cat was acting like a freaking drug addict. I can't explain its eagerness to get Climber's pill unless she knew exactly what it was.

In any case, we're now keeping better control of our controlled substances, and Molly seems to be back to normal. I think she's coming to grips with the fact that she has a problem. Admitting you have a problem is, of course, the first step to recovery.

And I'm pretty sure that for a cat, the next eleven steps are sleeping.


*I'm really not joking.
**Please don't lecture me on the dangers of medicating my child unless you're also going to deal with the risk factors associated with not being able to finish 3rd grade.


All the cats at humor-blogs.com are on drugs.

Thursday Shout Out: God (A Thanksgiving Photo Essay)

Our front yard in August:


Our front yard today:


The house:


The urchins:


The urchins' mommy:


Thanksgiving reading material (and George):


Have you ordered your copy yet? I haven't read mine yet because Mrs. Diesel wouldn't let go of it. Judging from her chortling, I assume it's pretty gosh-darn funny.

Be sure to check back tomorrow for the caption contest results. And remember, Monday is the launch of Humor-Blogs.com 2.0. Feel the excitement.

This Thanksgiving, curl up with a nice warm cup of Humor-Blogs.com.

Who Wants to Help Daddy?

We spent Saturday packing up copies of Antisocial Commentary to send to you lovely folks. Here's a shot of the labeling team in action:


They were so intent on their assigned tasks that they could barely be bothered to look up, much less smile for the camera.

For my part, I spent most of the day doing two of my least favorite things: Writing with a pen and signing my name. I am -- if you can believe this -- the treasurer for my church, and one of my duties is to sign the staff's paychecks. I hate doing this so much that I once wrote an entire post about it. Here's an excerpt:

Much of my discomfort with signing checks actually has to do with the fact that my signature is kind of embarrassing. I mean, it's like ridiculously bad. It looks like a three year old. No, not like the signature of a three-year-old; it's so bad that it actually looks like a drawing of a small child. Well, you can sort of make out an 'M,' and there's a semi-legible 'L,' but unfortunately neither of those letters is actually present in my name.

My signature is so bad because I try to write my name really fast, partly because it's boring to me since it always ends the same, but mostly because I'm trying to hide the fact that my handwriting, like my table manners, hasn't really progressed since the 4th grade. I blame my dreadful handwriting on the fact that I am left-handed, and the fact that like many left-handers I cleverly conceal this by turning my whole hand completely upside down while I write, so that the letters lean to the right, just like big people's, and I'm in excruciating pain. The result is cursive that looks just like it was written by a person's right hand. Assuming, of course, that the person in question is also left-handed. And probably drunk.

I mention this partly so that you will feel sorry for me, having to sign several dozen books on a single day, but also so that you won't send me nasty emails when you open the book and find that a retarded monkey has vandalized your copy. I'm sorry, the retarded monkey is me. If you want a copy that hasn't been scribbled in, feel free to send that one back and I'll send you a replacement copy. Seriously.

Also, as I mentioned, I'm severely left-handed. So left-handed, in fact, that I found it virtually impossible to sign the first page of the book without bending the cover all to hell. I signed the first copy for my mom, and then signed another copy for her upside down, thanking her for the left-handed gene (the book was upside down, not me). The upside-down way was so much easier that I signed all of the rest of them that way. I've decided that's going to be the mark of authenticity for my signature. That and the retarded monkey thing.

I tried to personalize the inscriptions, but in some cases I resorted to simply transcribing the lyrics of whatever song I was listening to at the time. Hence the comments, "Don't stop believing," and "Dear ______, you truly are More Human Than Human."

Anyway, I'll be heading to the post office as soon as I hit Publish on this post. I'm sending most of them Media Mail, which means it will probably be 5-10 days before it gets to you. Hopefully you'll be so excited by the time you get it that you'll forgive the retarded monkey for screwing up your book.

If you haven't ordered your copy yet, do it now.

Get your captions for the caption contest in by tonight. I'll post the poll tomorrow.

Diesel out.

Most Exciting Week Ever

Summary of our 14th anniversary: I put a chicken casserole from Costco in the oven. Mrs. Diesel gets home from work and lies down because she's exhausted from her first day teaching. She gets up and walks back into the kitchen, where I am busy at my laptop. She notices there are roses in a pitcher on the counter. "Where did these come from?" she asks.

"Oh," I said, having completely forgotten that I bought her roses. "Those are for you." I add, with a flourish, "SURPRISE!"

She kisses me on my absentminded head and we eat dinner. Then she leaves for "back to school night," and is gone until 8:30. She's exhausted. We watch TV for an hour, then go to bed.

And as if that weren't enough excitement for one week, today is my daughter Speed Pony's sixth birthday! That's right, we got married one day (and 8 years) before she was born.

Speed Pony is completely insane, and too smart for her own good. A sampling of her wit:

She asked my wife why our cat, Phoebe, is so furry. "She's a mammal," Mrs. Diesel says. "Mammals have fur or hair on their bodies."

Speed Pony stroked the cat's thick fur and said, "Phoebe is WAY a mammal."

Another time, she came out of her room at about 10pm, to find me eating a bowl of cereal. "What are you eating?" she asked. "Cereal," I said.

She turned to my wife and said, "Man, is he nocturnal or what?"

I don't know where she gets this stuff. Anyway, more excitement tonight as we get to go to Speed Pony's fine dining establishment of choice for dinner: McDonald's.

I leave you with the photo stylings of my eight year old, Climber. Enjoy.


"How do you work this thing?"



"Hey, look up here!"



"Going to my happy place..."



"Having fun?"



Mr. Finger



Mr. Pillow



"I want my money!"



"I'm going in after the cat. PLEASE don't take a picture of me."



"I won't."


Listed on humor-blogs.com.

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.

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.

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?

House Update

It's time for another house update. Over the past few weeks we've almost finished the framing and the plywood sheeting. It took a little longer than expected because we added four dormers (you can see them sticking out on either side of the new construction in the pic below) to the second story. We figured it made sense to put them in, since it adds a lot of useable space and makes it possible to put windows in on the second floor. Now, of course, the house is going to be even bigger than planned, which was already bigger than we needed. I think we're going to rent out the upstairs. In fact, we may have to rent out the downstairs too with what this is costing us.



The other reason things are taking a little longer than planned is that I get bored with cutting 2x4s and find other fun projects to work on. A while back I decided to put in a circular driveway with some plants in the middle. Simple, right? But then I thought, what would be really cool is to use that old trailer as a planter. And maybe use that old well pump as a fountain. And hook up that old pool pump to make the water flow. And have a series of wine barrels for the water to cascade through. And end up in a little pond, with a nice little fountain. So the circular driveway project turns into this (note that there's still no actual driveway).



Here's another pic of my glorious accomplishment. Sure, it doesn't really serve any useful purpose, but that bubbling sound is so soothing, and it sure looks good. In fact, the same could be said of the fountain. The other interesting thing about this pic is that Climber is hiding in it somewhere. Can you find him?



Here's one of Mrs. Diesel, expressing how she feels about me taking pictures from our roof. Have you ever seen someone express disdain so effectively from a range of 200 yards?



And another one of the fountain. Dammit, how did those loafers get in the pic again? I need to invest in some leg irons.



And finally one of the infamous treehouse. I decided it wasn't quite dangerous enough, so I added a slide.



That's all I've got for now. Remember to vote in the caption contest, if you haven't already. I'll be announcing the winners tomorrow!


Humor-blogs.com is dangerous enough even without a slide.

Mrs. Diesel Speaks!

You did it! You convinced Mrs. Diesel to do a post! And to not kill me! Although she did say that the picture was "horrible." Anyway, without further ado here's my -- ahem -- sweetheart blogging about my favorite topic: me!

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Well, first let me say thanks for faking all that enthusiasm about having me post something. I know most of you probably died a little inside each time you forced yourself to leave yet another comment in the hopes of reaching 100. Your sacrifice doesn’t go unnoticed.

The most popular topic requests seem to be “What is Diesel really like?” and “How the heck do you put up with him all the time?” As for the first question, c’mon people! If you’re a faithful reader of this blog, you already know exactly what Diesel is like: really smart, a little self-centered, funnier than should be legal. He sees the humor in everything, which is a lot of fun. More than once he’s sent me into fits of giggles in church because of some comment or other. He takes perverse pleasure in doing that. The downside to this, of course, is that he can’t take anything seriously. When we went through a Lamaze class before Climber was born, he spent the whole time trying to make me laugh. When the instructor told everyone to choose a tranquil place to think about, Diesel leans over to me and whispers, “Racetrack.” All the other couples are obligingly going to their happy places while I’m giggling helplessly on the floor. I have lots of examples of that kind of stuff, but that’s enough for now. Suffice it to say that we can’t join any group where we’re supposed to discuss stuff seriously.

Another thing about this guy you know as Diesel is that he can’t remember anything. I’m not talking about important stuff like who directed Bladerunner or what was the name of the guy who coined the term “rock and roll.” Those things he remembers no problem. It’s the mundane things in life that he can’t keep track of. He posted once about my superhuman ability to remember where everything is, and he wasn’t exaggerating. That’s probably why we’re still married after 14 years—he wouldn’t be able to find shoes if I wasn’t around. But to be fair, I knew what I was getting into. On our first date we spent half an hour wandering around downtown Grand Rapids looking for his car. He said to me, “If you want to hang out with me, you’d better get used to this.” At least he was honest. Well that’s all I can think of right now in the “What’s Diesel really like?” department. If you have a specific question you want answered, just ask. More than likely I’ll answer it for you.

As for the second question, I was forced to develop a thick skin very early in our relationship. When we were dating, he never did the cutesy nickname thing. He’s never called me “babe” or “sweetheart” or anything remotely positive. He’s always called me the first thing that comes into his head, like “lumpy” or “squiggles”. I’ve chosen to find it endearing. His guiding principal in life is that if something is at least twice as funny as it is mean, then it’s okay to say. You suspected as much, right? Also, he has a hard time feigning interest in things he doesn’t care about. One time I was telling him a story about my day, and he told me I needed to "punch up the middle a bit." Make no mistake, living with Diesel isn’t always easy, but it’s never boring. So yeah, he can be kind of a jerk, but I’ve been cracking myself up writing this, so I guess I can’t complain. What are you going to do, I love the guy. Once in a while, though, I’d like him to take an interest in me rather than in this blog. I guess that’s what this whole thing was about. His attempt to show me he cares. Sweet, huh? Or maybe he could just buy me a nice piece of jewelry like normal husbands.

At least humor-blogs.com cares.

Happy Mother's Day!

Since I don't normally post on Sundays, I'm doing my Mother's Day post today. I've also updated Central Booking with my thoughts on Godel, Escher, Bach.

A couple quick reminders first:

• Today is the last day to vote in the caption contest. I will post the results tomorrow! Who will win the coveted autographed picture of me and Cary Grant?
• Also, it's not too late to beg my wife to do a guest post. Please? She hasn't seen the post yet, so it would be hella cool to get up to 100 comments by tonight. I'm hoping that affirmation from dozens of strangers will make up for the fact that I posted a picture of her without her consent. Post your comment here. Thanks!

And now, a joke that I came up with while riding around on the tractor, and two limericks I wrote for Mad Kane's Mother's Day Limerick Contest. Enjoy!

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Jethro and his wife Enid are home watching TV one night when Enid unexpectedly goes into labor. Jethro grabs his car keys and helps Enid to the door. As they get to the door, Enid howls in pain.

Jethro says, "Come on, Enid. We gots to git you to the hospital."
"Ah cain't," says Enid, and sits back down on the couch. When the labor pains subside, Jethro helps her up again and they walk to the door. But once again, just when they get to the door, Enid screams. "Jethro, ah cain't!"

Jethro calls 911. "What is your emergency?" says the dispatcher.

"Mah wife is havin' a baby," Jethro says. "We's tryin' to get to the hospital, but ah can't git her to the car."

"Ok, don't panic," says the dispatcher. "How far apart are the contractions?"

Just then Enid screams again.

"They's real close together," says Jethro.

"Alright," says the dispatcher. "I can send an ambulance, but it might take a few minutes. Your best bet is to try to get her in the car and take her to the hospital yourself."

"Ok," says Jethro. "Enid, the man says you need to git in the car and --"

"Jethro, ah cain't!" sobs Enid.

"Ok," says the dispatcher, hearing her distress. "I'll send an ambulance."

"Thank you," says Jethro. "What should we do till then?"

"Just try to keep her comfortable. Tell her to take deep breaths and stay calm. You want to try to slow down those contractions if you can."

"Ok," says Jethro. He turns to his wife. "Enid, the man says you gots to slow down your contractions."

Enid nods, tears streaking down her cheeks. She takes a deep breath and says, as slowly as she can, "Jethro, ah caaaaaaiiiiiiinnnnn't."

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Me mum didn’t raise any dummy
but after 5,000 years in her tummy
it felt less like a womb
and more like a tomb
but she’s still the world’s greatest mummy!

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There once was a man like no other
who had an ape for a surrogate mother
He loved to fling poo
and when asked, "Was that you?"
He'd say, "No, ma, that was my brother."

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I'm sure my mother is particularly proud today. Happy Mother's Day!


Humor-blogs.com is the mother of all humor blog sites.

Did Someone Say "House"?

Recently I've done a treehouse post and a Dr. House post, so I thought it was about time I did a plain old house post. Here's some pics of the addition we're building. "Addition" is kind of a misnomer, since we're adding about 2,000 square feet to a 1,200 square foot house.




Here's a view from another angle. That's the palm tree oasis I just planted in the front. Neat, huh? To the left you can just see the driveway that we just poured that leads to our faux garage door. It's like one of those "drawers" in front of your sink that doesn't actually open. Except that people probably don't sleep in your sink.




This one is just a fabulous shot of the mobile home and above-ground pool next to our house. Also, I thought the sky was kind of cool.




Did I mention that we get some way cool evening skies around these parts in the spring? This was taken facing the opposite direction, toward the orchard behind our house.




And another one of the same cool sky, nicely framed by the opening of a future window. Too bad those troublemakers got in the way again.




I'll be back with more of the usual nonsense on Wednesday. And don't forget, this Friday I'll post the next caption contest pic!

"Are You the Responsible Parent?"

Last week I built a tree house. This week my son broke his arm.

There is, in the inevitable succession of those two statements, some support for a deterministic view of the universe.

Technically I didn't build the treehouse. I took the easy way out: I put a house in a tree. See?



Climber, my seven-year-old son, is not known for taking the easy way out. Let's say, for example, that he needed to get down from said treehouse. One option would be to use the ladder. But using ladders does not earn one the name Climber.

I was grading our future driveway with the tractor when my five year old daughter, Speed Pony, ran over to me and told me that Climber fell and hurt himself. I found Climber lying in the dirt under the tree, crying. His elbow looked strangely flat, as if his forearm had been pulled out of the joint. We hopped in the car and sped to the emergency room, where we then proceeded to wait for an hour while climber moaned and cried, his forearm hanging in a sweatshirt I had tied around his neck.

It's a surreal experience, and wholly incomprehensible to a seven-year-old, to sit in a waiting room with a dislocated elbow while medical professionals meander about on the other side of the glass, drinking coffee, doing paperwork and performing other tasks that could probably wait until after all of your limbs are properly attached. I glanced around the busy waiting room, trying to locate anyone with a condition remotely as severe as Climber's. A big black guy wandered in, having hit his head. "It really hurts," he told the woman behind the desk. There was a kid in soccer getup lying on his side across two chairs. There was an overweight woman who had been wheeled in by an EMT. "Here are your medicines," the EMT said, handing her a plastic grocery bag filled with prescription bottles. A few minutes later I saw her smoking outside, and wondered if the cigarettes had been in the bag. I supposed that if it weren't for the cigarettes, the bag would have been a lot lighter.

Finally we made it in, having been deemed worthy of "prompt care." I can only imagine the kind of dilatory care that was reserved for the "It really hurts" guy. A nurse asked us insanely irrelevant questions and made Climber stand on a scale, presumably to see whether a broken arm weighs more than a regular arm. Then we waited some more.

While we were waiting, I had some time to think, which is never a good thing. It occurred to me that an emergency room is like the Bizarro universe version of a car dealership. I know, I'm insane, but stick with me. First, an emergency room is staffed with highly educated professionals who actively ignore you, whereas a car dealership is staffed with high school dropouts who eye-rape you as you step onto the lot. Second, the goal of the car dealership is to sell you something that you don't need and can't afford, right now, before you've had a minute to reconsider your decision, whereas the goal of the emergency room is to make you wait for six hours so you can think about whether it's really worth it to fork over a $50 copay to have a limb reattached. Third, the clientele of a car dealership tends to be made up of yuppies and wealthy retirees, whereas... well, the emergency room's isn't.

But what prompted this comparison was the realization that the doctors and nurses didn't seem to notice that I existed. Every comment and question was directed to my wife, as if I were just an unnecessary appendage dangling by a bit of cartilage. "Is he on any medications?" "How far did he fall?" "Has he had any other injuries?" I had the answers to all these questions too, but their gazes flitted between my wife and my son. I felt like raising my hand. "Me! Pick me! I know this one!" Throw me a bone here, people.

My opportunity to get my participation grade came when Mrs. Diesel left momentarily to take Speed Pony to the bathroom. A nurse began to ask me some questions, and I thought I did an admirable job of demonstrating that I was an involved parent who was only indirectly responsible for his son's deformed elbow. But I got the sense she was asking me easy questions, like you do when you're waiting for a preschooler's mommy to show up. "How old are you?" "Do you like trains?" "When did your mommy say she was going to be back?" And sure enough, as soon as Mrs. Diesel returned, I was once again banished to the realm of child beaters and vestigial appendages. "Were there any men in the vicinity who could have yanked the arm right out of the socket at the time of the injury?" they asked my wife, who nodded knowingly. I went to get some coffee.

I took Speed Pony to Grandma's, and by the time I got back, Climber's arm was in a sling and he was coming out of sedation. "I was sleeping," he complained through a drug-induced haze as the nurses poked and prodded at him. When they finally left him alone, he told us that he had been dreaming about some third graders who were pushing him around.



Apparently they had popped his arm back into place (that would give me nightmares about bullying third graders too!), and all was well except for a chip of bone that had broken off the tip of his elbow. This required an MRI, and depending on the outcome of that, may require surgery. I'm very nearly 37 years old and I've never had an MRI or surgery. I've never even broken a bone. I feel like I've been cheated out of some defining experiences in my life, and I'm not just saying that because my seven year old has tried morphine and I never even got drunk on Natural Light until I was 17.

Anyway, Climber is now wearing a cast and in no apparent pain. We'll see in the next few days what additional treatment, if any, he needs. The other day I caught him trying to climb up to the treehouse, so I guess it's safe to say he's not experiencing any serious psychological trauma.


You can always count on prompt care at humor-blogs.com.

Sock Dispatch

I used to have a separate blog called Mattress Police Dispatches where I would post short random thoughts. I stopped posting to it because I was running low on material, but now I'm finding my list of possible topics for my main blog cluttered with random ideas that can't possibly be stretched into a full post. As a result, lately I've been clumping three or four of these vaguely related notions into a single semi-coherent post. Perhaps you've noticed?

Now my idea list is starting to resemble my sock drawer just before laundry day. It's not that any of the socks are bad, per se. But what are you going to do with five socks, the only matching pair of which apparently once belonged to a guy named Noel who loved candy canes? I'll tell you what: You stitch them together to make a beautiful scarf that you wear boldly to distract people from the fungus factory you've got going in your sneakers. I now present to you the blogging equivalent of a sock-scarf:

---

I think cats must use some kind of point system to determine where they sleep. Every location in a house is given a certain number of points, and they select the location that has the highest score. Points are given for warmth, comfort, etc. Other factors would include:

• Height: +1 point for each foot above the ground
• Is it a new location (new bookshelf, appliance box, etc.)? +5 points
• Is it a nice little bed that you specifically made up for the cat to sleep on? - 20 points

And then there's a random 50 points that the cat assigns at will just to screw with you.

---

I hear that there's some tainted cat food out there that could be fatal to a cat that eats it. I almost bought some, but the guy at the pet food store said there's no guarantee.

---

I had to fog our house for fleas the other day, thanks to our cats. On the label it says to make sure that any pets are out of the room before starting the fogger. I don't know; that sounds like a temporary solution to me.

---

This reminds me of the time I locked my keys in my car. I had no money to pay a locksmith, and somebody suggested the police might be able to help. I called the police, but they said they couldn't help open the door unless there was a child trapped inside. "Damn," I said. "If only I had that kind of foresight."

---

Please don't send letters about how terrible I am for hating children and animals. I'm not serious. In fact, I have an almost pathological inability to take anything seriously. It's like that saying, "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." Actually, that's kind of a stupid saying. Unless you're planning on asking life if you can borrow a cup of sugar, you're still pretty much screwed.

---

I do have a gift for seeing the bright side of any situation. The other day I was talking to my wife on the phone. She's a teacher, and she was telling me how she was going to leave right after school because she had a 101 degree temperature. "Ooh!" I said. "This is the perfect chance for you to give all your students F's. When they ask why, you can tell them you have a low grade fever."

---

My wife and I often see things differently. Lately we've been planning the landscaping for our property. "I want some crepe mytle and bougainvillea," My wife says. "Oh, and I need a nice spot for my roses. Now where did you say the cypresses are going to be?"

"Over there," I said. "Behind center field."

---

Well, that's seven fewer mismatched socks in the drawer. Now I just hope I find a nice new post in the laundry basket on Friday. The stupid cat will probably be sleeping on it -- unless it decides to sleep on humor-blogs.com again.

6 More Weeks of What?

For Neva and Gawpo. Some pictures of my "backyard" and my beautiful new concrete slab. Click to enlarge.

Don't you wish you lived here? Well too bad, you can't.





A view of the house from the orchard. Facing west.




The slab. Facing southeast.




A view of the orchard from the slab at sunrise. That's the water tower and the Flying J sign in the background.




Basically the same view during the day.




A view of the orchard, facing east/southeast (turned just slightly left from the last two pics). That's water tower #2 in the distance. Ripon loves water towers.




A view of the orchard and water tower #2 from the slab. Facing east.




Same view. Cool rain in the distance.




How'd that one get in there? Get those loafers out of the frame!

Only 12 Shopping Days Until Inappropriate Card Day!

I'm a hopeless romantic.

I'm also hopeless as a gymnast and harpsichord player, if you must know.

I met my future wife at a college basketball game in January of 1992. I was playing center, and she was the captain of the cheerleading team. That's a ridiculous lie. I'm also hopeless as a basketball player. And while my future wife certainly had has the looks of a cheerleader, she's about as coordinated as... well, as I am.

We were both ushers. We worked the front door together. We bonded by reciting dialog from the Saturday Night Live 15th anniversary special, which we'd both seen far too many times. As things wrapped up, I asked her what she was doing after the game.* "Going home," she replied tersely. Ah, young love.

Fortunately (for me, at least), I persisted, stopping by her dorm room repeatedly over the next few days. She was friendly but a little cold. Her story is that I made her "nervous." Nerves don't explain the pepper spray though, do they? No, they do not.

Our first date was the week before Valentine's Day. This put me in an awkward position. I had been trying to ingratiate myself with this girl for a couple weeks now, and I wasn't entirely sure that she wasn't just humoring me. I wanted to do something for Valentine's Day that indicated I liked her without scaring her off.

I honestly don't remember what I ended up doing. I may have just called her, or gotten her some lame-ass card. But I remember feeling cheated by circumstances. I was in love with this girl, and I felt constrained not to demonstrate it on the one day that I should have been able to go crazy. Not that I'm a big fan of Valentine's Day; as a rule I don't like having my behavior dictated by the Hallmark corporation. But I would have made an exception for her, if I didn't think that I'd have scared the bejesus out of her.

My solution was to say