At the doctors office the other day, while I was chasing my little girl around the waiting room, a nice man said to me, "She sure is a blessing." I smiled at him and responded, "She sure is."

I didn't mean it. 

My little girl is the most precious thing on the planet to me. I will stab, kick, slice, rip, murder, or maim anyone that ever aims to cause her harm in any way, and I will love and care for her no matter what decisions she makes until my soul is no more. But I can't bring myself to believe that God was responsible for her showing up here. I believe it was Love and a beautiful act of biology and cosmic fortuitousness that brought her to us.

I never mean it, either, when I habitually say, "God Bless You" when someone sneezes. I feel guilty for saying it because I don't mean it. Nobody says "god bless you" when someone farts, and what's the difference? Oh, right - that's "the devil's hole".

With my daughter being so young, and the prospect of prescribing her a religion for life on the horizon, one could see himself deciding if he wants the same for his children as he had. I've nothing but fond memories of my childhood, and that's what brings me to this crossroad.

Local Man Arrested

Larry O'Callahan was arrested Friday for allegedly throwing his wife from a moving car. According to police, in the process of dropping her off to babysit their only granddaughter, O'Callahan is said to have slowed down only to around 10MPH as he opened the passenger door of the SUV and shoved his wife, Carrie O'Callahan, out of the vehicle. Witnesses say they heard maniacal laughter coming from inside the vehicle as it accelerated away.

Albert Krueger, a neighbor of the granddaughter's parents, witnessed the act. "I couldn't believe it when I looked out the window while having my morning coffee," Bailey said. "Here they came down the road and some blond woman came rolling out of a car down the street. It looked like he ran her leg over with the back wheel and took off running. Couldn't believe it. Thought I was seein' shit."

The son-in-law of O'Callahan came out of the garage to survey the scene. He knew he had to get his mother-in-law off the street immediately, so he immobilized her injured leg with a nearby tomato stake and quickly constructed a makeshift stretcher out of some lumber, duct tape and a tree branch lopper. 

Carrie O'Callahan was happy to be off the street but none too happy with her son-in-law. "He could have just helped me up, but that idiot wanted to build a gurney or a conveyor belt or something to move me five feet", she said. Soon after the incident she was taken to the hospital for some minor cuts and bruises and a high ankle sprain that will only require arthroscopic surgery and a few months of rehabilitation. 

The suspect was reported to be seen at Sheetz in Greensburg shortly thereafter purchasing a giant slushy and a Slim Jim in addition to a Low Rider magazine. He then reportedly went to work and went on with his day as if nothing had happened.

When questioned about the alleged wife-tossing, he became aggravated and hid behind his desk. Later, in an exclusive interview, he told us that something like this was bound to happen. Although he has never reached the point of violence before, in this case he had just "had enough". In a statement, O'Callahan said, "I just couldn't take it anymore. She was giving me shit for being clumsy, falling down a lot, you know, all the stupid things husbands do, and I just didn't want to hear it anymore." He then mumbled something about a take-out grilled shrimp wrap order gone awry and wandered off, mumbling to himself and shaking his head. 

The 14-month-old granddaughter of the couple was taken to daycare that morning where she played and yelled all day, oblivious to the turmoil in the family. 

"There's always been something a little off about Larry," a former neighbor stated in an interview. "He was always nice in a scary uncle kinda way, but I thought he was a good guy at heart. Guess he won't be getting an invitation to the neighborhood cookie bake-off this Christmas."

No word from his wife yet if she will press charges or not, but she was quoted as saying, "That crazy Larry, always fooling around in the car. The Irish Coffee that morning must have made him a little loopy, so I'm not gonna blame him. I think we'd all miss him of we had him locked up. Hey, these pain meds are GREAT! Take me for a drive, Larry!"

How to House-Sit for Cat Owners

Here are the instructions for the house while we are away.

Upon gaining entry to the garage, ignore the loud grinding noises from the screw drive, it will stop eventually. Look out for the pile of stuff on your left that was supposed to be taken to be donated three months ago. It may collapse if you breath on it the wrong way and you will be trapped and die a slow death. Same goes for the garbage can. Do not disturb it as the ecosystem living inside it is quite fragile. The creatures living within the trash mountain survive by eating remnants from soup cans, beer bottles, banana peels, and used diapers. Up ahead on your left you will find the key for the front door sitting on top of the white stand by the cordless drill. 

Open the door to the basement and use your foot to try and keep the cat inside while at the same time reaching around the support beam to close the garage door. This can be a bit tricky since you want to spend as little time in the garage as possible due to the noise of the garage door but you also want to prevent the cat from escaping. If Max does get into the garage, look for him in places like this:

In extreme cases, you may need X-ray night-vision power-scope goggles to search out hiding places like this:

Once inside the house, the light switch is on the right wall. Make your way past the bar stools and proceed to the upstairs where there will be a bevy of cats waiting for their dinner. Both the dry and wet cat food must be locked away in the hallway closet since they would likely eat themselves to death if it were to be left out. 

Eleanor

This book is extremely hard to review since it doesn't truly fit in any one category or genre, but anyone who loves good writing should enjoy this immensely. 

This very original book, which took the author 13 years to write, begins by introducing you to a woman named Eleanor who has a dream of becoming an Olympic swimmer in the 1960's. Her dreams are dashed when she becomes pregnant, but are soon brought back to life after her baby is born. Another series of events then ruin her dream for good and she becomes depressed...

The reader is then transported to the 1980's where the woman's daughter is growing her own young family. She has twin girls and a husband who works hard in a dying town. A horrific tragedy occurs which sets up an amazing voyage through time and dimensions too descriptive and deep to mention here.

This story is about life and death, tragedy, hope, forgiveness, sacrifice and healing. Even though things often appear dark and gray and dire, the feeling persists that there is a greater power at work despite there being no religious overtones whatsoever. Family choices and events obviously have effects on future generations, and this plot takes us on that journey through generations after choices were made and certain fates were sealed. The author then gives us a glimmer of another power at work that could make changing events of the past not out of the realm of possibility. 

While the characters deal with all these emotional, family-life-type events, some strange things start to happen to the characters as the author experiments with alternative theories of dreams, reincarnation and afterlife, and portals and time manipulation. Somehow the author turned awful tragedy into profound experience for characters and readers alike by taking us all on a wonderful adventure through various times and places. 

While reading this you don't realize yourself becoming emotionally connected with the characters and their discoveries. You can't help but be intrigued by the wonderful concepts and the absolutely beautifully descriptive and resonant lyricism.  

It is a very beautiful and deeply powerful story, highly imaginative and indescribable. It is haunting and thought-provoking, hypnotic and fantastic. 

Do yourself a favor and go get it.

Eleanor - Jason Gurley

Nuptial Interchange Obstacles

While I'm working on some new ideas for the blog, some old ideas are still good ones, especially for those of us morons who like pictures in addition to or instead of words.

This is one I did long ago but never posted.

All married couples occasionally have communication breakdowns, or as I like to call them, "nuptial interchange obstacles". 

This phenomenon has been documented a bazillion times. The jokes are old. The research has been done. Something to do with voice frequency or boobies and beer or something. Look it up on the internets if you want. These are just a few accounts of some miscommunication between two people, married but not yet with children. If we're this bad now...

The problem is NOT that she doesn't tell me exactly what I need to hear. The problem is that I hear something completely different than she says. 

Before we were married, and like most engaged couples, we began ironing out some financial details to organize our combined financial structure (or lack thereof). For some damned reason, she seemed to insist that I pay the bills on time. She had been asking me for a few days to pay the mortgage even though it wasn't due quite yet. One day she even texted me during the workday to see if I had done it yet. Of course I hadn't, but I was home from work before her and had just fired up my laptop to lay waste to some bills and emails. 

She walked in the door and said, "Hi. Did you pay the mortgage?" 

I was appalled. What nerve. What audacity she had. Did she think that I was some kind of deadbeat that didn't pay his bills?

I said, "Not yet."

She was irritated with me, but not irate. I paid the mortgage and it was over.

Except that I was shaken. Not because of the threatening nature of her question, but that when she said, "did you pay the mortgage", I heard something different. 

The experience I had was an image of her violently kicking in the front door, throwing her luggage on the floor, knocking me off the couch, putting her heal on my neck, pointing a finger at me and yelling, "Hey, DEADBEAT! Pay the GOD DAMN MORTGAGE!" 

Of course it wasn't that bad, but I am sensitive. Especially when it comes to keeping my wife happy. And under roof.

It's not always about her telling me to do stuff, either. 

One almost too memorable evening I was supposed to cook dinner since I was to be home early. It was simple: Pizza. Add crap to dough, stick in oven. 

But I'm not good at simple, either. 

She left all of the ingredients and the instructions right beside the stove. She even called as I was assembling the pieces to make sure I wasn't screwing it up. 

She said, "Make sure you don't use all of the oil on the crust."

I heard, "Make sure you use all of the oil on the crust."

It's one syllable that almost cost us. A half-hour later the house was filled with smoke from the oil that ran off of the pizza stone onto the oven burners. I did put out the flames and actually saved the pizza, so it could have been worse. 

It's similar to when she says, "Hey, don't drink all that beer."

I hear, "Drink all the beer." Even if I didn't have the intention to drink all that beer, now she has planted the seed in my head to try and get away with it. CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!


She says, "Make sure you put the laundry in the dryer so it doesn't turn into a 30 pound lump of mold in the washer."

I hear, "Be sure to forget that laundry in the washer so we have to burn it because it smells so bad."

Like a good friend of mine says, "It could always be worse. There could be fire."

Just Kidding

I would never really leave this blog or start another one. Self deprecation and overwhelming humility would never permit me to strike out on my own. Not to mention that I have few ideas at this point and would just flounder out there and disappear into the cavernous interwebs.

Truth be told I've always wanted to have a blog, but convincing Terry to play along with me was key. I wanted him to be the anchor while I explored my own ideas, and it has been beneficial for both parties to this point, although I have been afraid to disrupt my co-author's literary style with my wacky, new-age ideas. Besides, I've always relied on a good bit of collaboration and truly enjoy the camaraderie.

The problem is that it's scary out here. To share ideas or your own private thoughts or memories or opinions is terrifying. Every time I hit publish I'm nervous. And the problem with that is that I'm always worried about what readers will think. When you worry about what readers will think you try to cater to them, and the second that happens you're not in your own head anymore, you're in theirs. Your ideas will never really come out and you will never find out if they are any good.

But camaraderie or a sense of uniformity on this blog be damned. It's time for some new stuff.

Stage Fright

It's hard to go on stage after Terry on this blog because my life has not been as eventful as his has yet, and not nearly as tragic. I'm not really a fiction writer, at least not yet, as I have no imagination. All of my ideas are ones I've picked up from some movie or book or some other person. I have never really found my own rhythm in writing.

I fell victim to some scam years ago and bought some book about concentration. While most of it was drivel, there was some truth to it. An affliction of mine has always been a lack of concentration. I like many things. I like reading. Camping. Drinking. Learning. Tinkering. Writing. Talking. Sitting. Listening. Playing. Music. Boobs. Chairs. Sleep. Beer. Food. Boobs.

The problem with these hobbies is not the hobbies themselves. It's that you can't get good at one thing while doing all the things. 

A podcast of some kind I tuned into months ago was talking about success and careers. One of the interviewees said something along the lines of, "you can't be good at everything because you don't have enough time. For example, if you want to climb the corporate ladder at work, it takes all of your time and energy and you must sacrifice time with your family, probably making you a worse parent. And in order to be a good parent you must leave work at work and become just another middle-of-the-road employee. You can have one or the other, but not both." 

Of course I'm paraphrasing there but the concept rang true to me. I have coworkers that work 80 hours a week and get promoted every year or so. That probably happens in most corporate environments. At 80 hours a week you barely have time to eat and sleep let alone be a good parent or spouse. 

I don't want that. I wanna do my job and be with my family. I wanna do all that other stuff on my hobby list. Unfortunately, I'll never get good at any of it unless I concentrate. 

But as I already said, I'm not good at concentrating. Look at that squirrel! 

You know what that means? If I wanna write for this blog it's gonna have to be my own way. The posts may be short. They may be incomprehensible. They may be disturbing or stupid. I don't care. 

Here's a thought I just had the other day:

I used the restroom at a high-profile nuclear energy company's headquarters today. They used to have paper towel dispensers and I witnessed pretty much everyone wash their hands. Since then, however, they have removed the paper towels in favor of the hand blowers. You know - to save the planet and stuff. When we wash our hands only to discover that the only way to dry them is the stupid blower thingy that takes forever, how often do we just wave our hands around under them, get impatient, wipe our hands on our pants and move on with life. Even further, how often do we know we are going to have to go through this silliness and just skip the hand washing altogether? If people are simply skipping the hand washing to eliminate the hassle of the dryers, has this effected germ control? I have waited patiently at a urinal and watched people do this, then I realize that everything they touch after that is with cock hands. Great. I sure hope they immediately go to a meeting and shake hands with a bunch of big-shot suits. 

So are we then spreading more germs than before? I'm sure I gave someone SARS or mad bird disease because of this little charade. One could follow this pattern through linearly and deduce that the elimination of paper towels could result in a flu epidemic. The conservation movement could be responsible for an increased spread of disease. 

I have no problem with the conservation movement. Just sayin'. 

So now that I got that outta my brain, maybe I should let Terry continue this good blog and start my own. 

I might call mine "the thought-fart experience" or something like that since my brain seems to fart out a lot of simple thoughts. Like farts, some hang around longer than others, some are just air and they're gone forever. Some are messy and need a little cleanup, and some peel paint. Some aren't all bad, though, and may lead to other things. 

We shall see. 

Guest Post - LAUGH!!!

This post is from one of my favorite authors. Outside of this blog, of course. It made me smile today and I wanted to pass it on. If you enjoy, he has plenty more at jamesaltucher.com/. What happened to all the laughter? BY JAMES ALTUCHER Dan Harris, the anchor of the ABC show Nightline, had a total panic attack on TV in 2005 in front of 5 milion people. He simply shut down and couldn't continue while live on the air. Everybody saw it and he thought his career would be over. He wrote a book about it, called "10% Happier" and we talked about it on my podcast. I won't give it away. I hope you listen to it. But I thought of my post the other day about endorphins and one statistic I found: A kid laughs on average 300 times a day. An adult laughs on average....five times a day. What the...!? How did we go from 300 to 5? What the hell happened to us? That's why we start to panic during the day! Did we cross some bridge of crap and tears and now here we are: drones that wake up, go to work, backstab each other in office politics, watch Breaking Bad, and then go to sleep and Die? Every single day? Did someone slip a pill into the Starbucks coffee we drink every day? A no-laughing pill? Laughter is really hard as an adult. It has to be. Else, how did we go from 300 to 5! That's a HUGE gap. There is no arguing that something really bad and scary and sad happened to us between childhood and adulthood. And laughing is so critical. How many times have you heard the story: So-and-so got diagnosed with chronic bad terminal disease XX and was given three months to live so she decided to watch a comedy movie a day for the next three months and now 15 years later she's still alive. Doctors even call laughing, "inner jogging" because it does all sorts of good things for our health, our brain, releases endorphins, and makes us happier, etc etc. So let's go back to 300. I thought about why the gap exists. Here's what I came up with:

How to Order Coffee

That must be the most boring title in history. If I saw that on the internet I would not read it. Although luckily for you, this story is more entertaining than the title.

I was early for work in downtown Pittsburgh the other day. It's nice to be there early before the traffic gets bad and the 9-5ers turn the city into a zoo. On the ground floor of PNC Plaza sits a little coffee shop, almost too small to see if you weren't looking for it. It's called 21st Street Coffee and Tea. It's the stereotypical coffee shop experience. Soft, warm lighting, the latest classical guitar acoustic folk tunes playing, a twenty-something hipster girl working the counter using a soft voice, and probably ten other coffee shop cliches I can't think of now.

I wandered in and looked around. Even though it was small it did really seem like an oasis in a concrete jungle. It smelled wonderful and was quiet and peaceful as cars and people zoomed around just outside the door. As I took a look at the menu I noticed that there didn't seem to be much regular coffee stuff. Now, maybe it's because I didn't grow up in San Francisco or Seattle or some place, but I really did expect to see some dark roast working-man's kinda coffee mixed in with the fancy, pretentious stuff like a Peppermint Lotus Snowflake Boba green tea latte with a shot of Chai caramel eucalyptus lemon grass espresso. 

No regular coffee was to be found, at least not by an amateur coffee shop guest like me. Nonetheless, I was not going to let this ruin a pleasant morning experience, so I stepped up to the counter and asked what they had for regular coffee. 

How to Learn Guitar

When I was five years old, my grandfather bought me a guitar. I thought it was a toy, but it didn't take long to learn otherwise. He was dead serious about teaching me and I didn't want to learn. This was not new to him as he had taught my dad in much the same way. My dad was quoted as saying, "You can make me do it but you can't make me like it." 

Grandpap called me over into his studio, and of course I argued, but admittedly I was a bit curious. He called me "Friend" as he always did. It was one of the funny little eccentricities that made him special. Whenever I showed up at their house for anything, he always proclaimed, "Well, Hiya Friend!" I don't remember my first few lessons, but I remember liking the learning process. Probably because progress comes fast and easy at the beginning. I remember something out of a beginners book called "Two String Polka" being one of my favorite first songs to play. I was gonna be a pro in no time!

Fast forward a couple years and it wasn't so much fun. As I got better at playing, the lessons got harder. So I began plotting to escape them and my grandfather. I began trying to avoid my lesson times and look forward to the day of the week we weren't with that set of grandparents. My sister and I stayed with them after school and over the summers until one of our working parents picked us up at 5:00 PM. My grandfather was done work at 3:00 PM and would wrangle me soon after he got home for my 3:30 lesson. 

My escape strategies grew more complex and kept escalating for a number of years, although I don't ever remember any strategy working. This man had more patience and persistence than Jesus H. Tap-Dancin' Christ. I occasionally resorted to tantrums, and these were serious tantrums. He should have killed me, but he didn't. Like all good parents he waited until I tired myself out and I gave up.