What the Shemp?!

There's no way to convey just how fried my brain is, of late. Nay, there's one way. This is what has been playing on an endless loop in my head all day:



Please, someone konk me on the head and snap me the shit out of it.

Don't Bother...

I have absolutely nothing to say tonight. I think my one still-firing synapse was pushed to its limit, yesterday, during Miss O's party at the paint-your-own pottery place. I suppose it's not a bad place for a party -- the kids get to slap paint on some cheap-ass ceramic dogs and penguins and we don't have to worry about our house getting trashed. But A) the pottery ends up looking like shit and everyone would probably be a fuck of a lot happier if they just picked out an already painted piece, and 2) everyone has to wait a week while they throw the shit in a kiln and and make it still shitty but shiny.

It's like, "Hey, kids! Let's paint some pottery!! Okay, you're done? Great! Give it to me and then get the hell outta here. Go on home empty-handed, and then we'll call Miss O's parents to pick up all your ugly-ass pottery, and it's pretty much up to them to drive it to your fucking houses like the delivery lackeys that they are. Oh, and that reminds us -- Miss O's parents, you can write us that check for assloads of money now."

So yeah, forgive me if tonight's oh-so-witty repartee is more like repartain't.

Oh yeah, on Saturday we took the spawnage out to dinner for Miss O's birthday, and we finally bit the bullet and supped at "P.F. Chang's." What the shit is up with that place?! Six o'clock on a Saturday night and the place was moo-shu packed. Bizarre.

And it's not like the food was anything special -- it's like a T.G.I Changigan's. But the people kept pouring in the fucking door. It's official -- P.F. Chang's is where all the people we never see anywhere... ARE! It was downright creepy.

Though not as creepy as the desserts we ordered. One plate had these fucking fried eggroll wrappers stuffed with chocolate and, I don't know... mayo?, with a caramel-peanut-butter-toffee-bacon? dipping sauce. I felt like walking to the bathroom and dumping that fucker directly into the crapper. The other dessert, known as the "Great Wall of Chocolate," looked like a 5 pound cow's liver floating in a pool of clotted blood. Just fucking foul. Of course, Miss O, who up until then had eaten maybe "a" piece of sweet and sour chicken, proceeded to pretty much inhale 7/8ths of "the wall." It was quite a sight. We all sat there watching and waiting for her heart to explode or her kidneys to crystallize, but the just kept on spooning it in.

Of course, when we got home, she waltzed to the shitter and fuzzy-pumpered out her own Great Wall of 'Chocolate.' Talk about your cables to China! Made her old man proud.

All right, I'm done. I told you I had nothing to say. I'm going to sleep. Nighty night.

Alert! Alert! Alert!

Okay, I just received a much anticipated CD in the mail today and it's so mind-blowing incredi-fucking-ble, it has driven me to temporarily put aside my no-blogging-on-the-weekend restriction.

Click here to listen and then buy the fucker.

If you like ELO or XTC or Wings or Jason Falkner or even The Royal Guardsmen, buy the disk. Holy shitstain, it's tits.

Oh, and holy crapass, I forgot about this other in-fucking-credible disk I got -- the new duet CD by Alison Krauss and Robert Plant. I know, I know... weird pairing. Get over it -- it totally fucking works. Get it, too.



==> End temporary no-blogging-on-the-weekend allowance.<==

Our Baby's Done Growed Up!

Miss O thanks all of you for your warm birthday wishes. I said to her:

ME: Miss O, some people who you don't know... actually people who I don't know either but who I like to pretend I know, wanted to wish you a really happy birthday today!

MISS O: Uh... okay.

Trust me, she was thrilled.

The birthday was a smashing success, and all it cost the Old Lady and I was all of our money. But it was worth it -- she loved everything she got. The highlights were her new orange Vtech camera (that I'm sure will break right about... now!), her "Enchanted Fairy Village" (with pieces even PUNIER than Polly Pocket footwear, if you can fucking imagine), and a really cool erasable, magnetic calendar from Miss O's cousin, Miss W.

The biggest hit, though, was the kimono the Old Lady and I got for her:



She's wanted one ever since she read this book that she's completely obsessed with called "Suki's Kimono," and we finally found a cool one in this hippie/nerdarino catalog, "Magic Cabin." It's the kind of place where Deadheads and Trekkies walk hand in hemp-y hand, in perfect harmonerd. Oh, and she also loves the Jan Brady locket we got her -- complete with a tiny picture of the whole crabbyfamily wedged inside.

Anywhich, it was a great day that has managed to render my crabby-powers completely useless. Even Mr. Z's inevitable meltdown before bedtime barely registered on the ol'crab-o-metre. I won't even attempt to shoehorn a "motherfucker" or "what the shit?!" into this post -- my heart's just not in it.

Oh well... tomorrow's another day. As a matter of fact, it's a day when the spawnage have the day off school... FOR NO APPARENT REASON WHAT-THE-FUCK-SOEVER!!!

Uh-oh... my crabby-senses are a-tinglin'...

I Think I'm Gonna Be Six...

Miss O will be six years old in one hour. Holy carp. It was like only yesterday that she was sobbing uncontrollably because I wouldn't let her throw the beach ball in the living room. Wait... that was yesterday.

Like the crabbyspawnage that she is, Miss O is a true individual. A) She's fucking hilarious. Case in point, tonight I told her that we were just going to get her a roll of toilet paper for her birthday. Her response? "Great! Make it white. I'll color it myself!"

2) She's a musical genius. Case in point:


"A Cool Pair of Shoes (Is All I Need)" by THE MISS O BEAT


And III) Aside from her mother, she still has the greatest laugh in the world:



Happy Birthday, Miss O! Without you and Mr. Z, I'd just be plain ol' "crabby."

Now if you'll excuse me, I've gotta go wrap your roll of toilet paper.

Right! What's All This, Then?!

I'm tellin' ya, British people are so damn fancy, even when they're searching online for porn. Statcounter informed me that someone performed a Google.uk search for "unclad hairy old ladies," and wouldn't you know it, crabbydad.blogspot.com was the number one result!

A tip-o'-the-hat to all you snaggle-toothed, kidney-eatin', UK pervs out there! I'm afraid the only hirsute old lady you're gonna see 'round these parts is me, but you're more than welcome to stick around -- you never know when my bangers and mash might become accidentally unclad. Pip-Pip!

Anywhich, the toilet, remember? The thing that was fixed a couple weeks by a real purfeshinull? Yeah, it's broken again. Running all night like a motherfucker. I had to shut the water valve off just to get some sleep. (The water valve attached to the toilet, not the one attached to me.) I got up at 3 a.m. to shut it off and i guess I woke up too much, so I couldn't get back to sleep until 5:30. Fucking toilets. I'm THIS CLOSE to just renting a goddamn Port-o-Let and just sticking it in the corner of the bedroom. Sure, it might make the room smell like ass (at least more than usual), but I could always dress it up real purty-like and you probably wouldn't even notice it was there:



All I know is, port-o-let or no port-o-let, I need some fucking sleep. I think I'll go upstairs now, snuggle up next to the unclad hairy Old Lady and see what happens.

Infernal Equinox...

'Twas all about the spawnjamins this weekend. We hauled our asses over to the "Country Mill" in Charlotte for a pumpkin-gettin', cider-swillin', apple-pickin' good time. We used to go to a place called "Uncle Jon's," but last time we passed it, we noticed a shitload of Dick DeVos signs out front and we decided we just can't cotton to supporting that Amway douchebag, even indirectly through over-priced apple juice and greezy donuts.

So we drove all the way out to farmblefuck and instantly knew we had chosen the perfect place, as we looked to the crisp blue skies above the Country Mill and saw the traditional autumn helicopter rides:



You know when the helicopters are a-flyin' that Indian corn and pumpkin pie are right around the corner. Or should that be Native American corn? Indigenous peoples' corn? Wait... maize?

So, we get there and Mr. Z starts a-pesterin' me about going into the Haunted Cider Mill. Now, this is the kid whose hair practically turned white when he saw two bugs mating on the window up in Traverse City, so he'd probably pull a "Scanners" head 'splosion if he saw something really scary. But he kept bugging me about it and saying "No, really, I totally want to go! Please! I won't be scared! PLEEEAAASSSE!!!!!"

And, just as I went ahead and painted the brick on the house when I knew damn well that is was a fucking big-ass mistake, I ignored the "not recommended for children under 10" sign and paid the 14 bucks for the two of us to go get the shit scared out of us.

Big-ass mistake.

The minute we stepped through the fucking door, the boy clamped a death grip around my waist/neck and didn't let go for the next horrifyingly painful 15 minutes. It was pitch-fucking-black in there and I had to feel around to find our way through it. It was like wall... wall... cobwebs... wall... someone's flannel shirt... AAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! Mr. Z was fucking PETRIFIED -- screaming, crying, begging to get the fuck out of there, and all we could do was continue through the blackness. I'm pretty sure there was only one dude who would scare the shit out of us, then run ahead to the next door, switch masks, and then scare the fuck out of us again. After about the 10th scare, I kinda called out to the darkness, "Um... there's a REALLY terrified nine-year-old in here and so, uh, if any of you ghoulies want to take a break for the rest of our trip through your oh-so-spooky house, you go right ahead! [pause] Seriously." After about three more scares, the asshole finally figured out my subtle hint and we made it through the last few minutes BOO-free.

Oh, and Mr. Z's hair turned white.

We met up with the Old Lady and Miss O, both of them chomping merrily away on some donuts and suckin' down some cider. After about 10 minutes, Mr. Z finally loosened his steel grip on my arm, and we walked through the corn maze, which technically isn't really a maze if I'm able to see over the top of the corn and figure out the right path, we picked out a few punkins and then, as we were walking back from the punkin patch, Miss O started whining that her stomach hurt. We figured that she just had a cramp from walking, since she and Mr. Z are "indoor kids" and never really get any fucking exercise. But she kept whining and then started crying and that's when we realized that the oily donuts and the almost-turned cider were causing a chemical 'rrhea-action in her puny colon and she was about to have an ass-plosion. The Old Lady ran her to the crapper and, sure enough, Mt. Crack-a-toa let loose, and the cider was no longer in-cider.

After that, we quickly dragged Mr. Z, who was still catatonic from the fright-fest, and the now completely voided and pale Miss O back to the car, so we could get the fuck out of there with our lives intact. But not before the nice folks at the Country Mill fired one last parting shot our way in the form of the Headless Horseman who came galloping up behind us:



Guess they could tell Mr. Z still had one heart ventricle left that hadn't completely seized up and they wanted to make it four for four.

No wonder the spawnage are indoor kids. Outside fucking sucks.

Torna-D'OH!

Right in the middle of the season-fucking-finale of "Mad Men," last night, there was a goddamn tornado warning and we were right in the fucker's path. We reluctantly chose to save the spawnage over seeing what fate was in store for Don Draper, and we carried them down, a-snoozin', to the basement, or what I like to call: where-spend-every-goddamn-moment-of-my-life. We waited the requisite half hour, and then lugged them back upstairs.

We settled back in to see how the fuck Peggy gave birth to a full-term baby, when she seemed to have only had a potential gestational period of about three months, when ANOTHER fucking warning flashed across the screen. This was getting tornadiculous! We dragged the now wide-awake and lid-flipping spawnage back downstairs and decided to just have them sleep there until the morning. Miss O seemed mildly annoyed by the whole ordeal, but Mr. Z, being Mr. Z, lost his shit. It probably didn't help that the tornado sirens were going non-stop. The Old Lady and I had a very "Tell Me You Love Me" moment where were each rubbing the back of a spawnage, trying to get them to chill the fuck out, our arms cramping up as we wondered what the shit happened to our lives.

But we weren't killed by the tornado, so there's that.

By about 1:00 in the a-fucking-m, we decided that we should probably try to sleep, as well. The Old Lady had to get up early for a meeting, so I, being me, told her that she could sleep upstairs in our COMFY BED, while I would hang out in the basement and sleep in Mr. Z's sleeping bag atop the cold, hard concrete. She weighed the options for a moment -- get a good sleep but potentially die in a twister vs. sleeping in the basement -- and took me up on the offer. She got a good sleep and I... well, you read this fucking shitfuck of a post and figure it out.

I woke up at 5:30 with a neck as stiff as the neck of Dickie, the kid from the "Little Rascals," in that episode where Stymie heals his neck and says, "Oh, I just gave it a twist."



I miss Stymie. Holy crap, this is a shitty post. So, yeah, woke up all sore and shit after probably ingesting a mouthful of silverfish and earwigs all night, and started the goddamn day. And now, 12 hours later, I'm ready to take an earwig-studded dump and call it a day.

If there's another tornado tonight, I'm just gonna sleep out on the fucking roof and let it whisk me away. Maybe it'll at least give my neck a little twist.

A Nows for Science...

Apparently, Miss O has been studying anatomy in her 1st grade science class, of late. Based on the detailed anatomical schematics I found in her backpack, they have been dissecting ducks:



... and dogs:



When she got home from school, we all sang a rousing rendition of:

Head, shoulders, lage and fot -- lage and fot!
Head, shoulders, lage and fot -- lage and fot!
Eyes and erues and mouth and nows,
Head, shoulders, lage and fot -- lage and fot!

Best. Drawings. Ever.

I'm seriously contemplating making one of these a tattoo. But Miss O would have to do it to properly convey her true pert insouciance. Hmm... I wonder if Fisher-Price sells a kid's home tattooing kit?

Shotgun Wetting...

Now, I'm not a religious man by any stretch, but today, my friends... today I have been saved. I have accepted a personal relationship with my new god -- THE WATER-FUCKING-SHOTGUN!!!!



Holy fuckstain, this machine is THEE SHIT!!! Oh my crap, I can barely move my arms up to the keyboard to type because this beast ripped me a new one SO WIDE that when I sit around the house, I sit AROUND THE HOUSE with an ass that has been ripped clean off.

The whole experience is a blur, actually. I know that I rented the fucker from A,C & E Rentals this morning, they delivered it because of its behemoth-ness, I plugged in the hose, pulled the rip-cord and then... hm... I can't really remember anything after that. I have a vague memory of BLASTING THE SHIT out of all that toxic crap that was adhered to the brick and I remember basically ingesting about 1/2 a pound of said crap as it hurled forth, into my gasping maw at the speed of wet sound. I remember thinking about halfway through it, "Shit, I probably should be wearing a hat... and goggles... and I should really stop eating these toxic paint-stripper flakes, but damn if they aren't paint-stripperiffic!!!"

Of course I didn't have the foresight to video the whole thing because I'm a fucking moron, but the Old Lady did snap one pic early on in the proceedings:



Isn't it beautiful? It's like Christmas, but the snowflakes are poisonous and I'm eating them.

And the brick is fucking pristine now. Exactly like it was before we decided to shove our heads up our asses and stain the bricks in the first place. But see, if we never stained the brick, then I would've never rented THE WATER SHOTGUN, and if I hadn't rented THE WATER SHOTGUN, then I would have never realized the joy of blasting the shit out of things with 3000 psi of water, and then every man on that transport would've died because Harry Bailey wasn't there to save them, because I wasn't there to save Harry, and can't you see George, you've really had a wonderful life. Don't you see what a mistake it would be to just throw it away?

Wait... where was I? Oh yeah... Attaboy, Clarence!

Crabbydad & the Strippers...

Well, I've been quite the negli-gentleman, of late, with regards to the ol' bloggy blog. Sorry, we've been busy breaking our house.

The painting is done, and the dickbag who painted it kinda fucked us on the staining of the brick, which he said would cost us an extra grand. Fuck if we were gonna give him any more of our hard-earned simoleons, so we decided to stain it ourselves. You see where this is going, don't you. Yeah, so we glopped the shit on the brick area of our porch and, while the Old Lady didn't really mind the end result, I thought it sucked balls. Big, sweaty, hairy balls.

And here's something I learned -- it's really fucking impossible to get stain off of brick. Between all the toxic stripping products, gels and unguents we've been slathering onto the side of the house, I wouldn't be surprised if a brand new ozone-hole opened up right above our fucking roof. And it's a good thing we're not having any more spawnages, 'cuz the vapors we've been huffing would most likely yield some sort of perfectly spherical flesh-ball tot. The shit that's on there now is called "Peel-Away," because, while it's doing nothing to the stain, it will probably cause all of my skin to peel away from my skeleton and flop down to around my ankles like a fleshy, hairy wetsuit. Here's what the porch looks now, in all its peel-away-y glory:



Anywhich, the shit's still clinging to the brick, so tomorrow morning I'm renting a power-washer. I figure that if I can't blast the shit off the brick with 2000 psi worth of a death-geyser, I can at least blow out a few windows and ruin all the rough cedar siding.

Raise your hand if you think this is all going to end with the stain still clinging to the brick and my left pinkie toe being power-washed right off my foot and into the bushes.

Who Wants Another Roachcicle?

I found this in Miss O's school folder yesterday:



Guess that's what we get for enrolling the spawn at J. Dahmer Elementary.

If that girl asks about a bigger freezer for the basement, she's off to boarding school.

Hut... Hut... HORK!

Well, there's a new fella in the showers over at the Y, and I like to call him "The Hummin' Hocker." Charming gentleman -- he hums as he lathers up his sundries, and every time he gets to the chorus of his tuneless little number, he snargs up some primordial, from-the-toes chest-chum, and then expectorates it out... somewhere.

I've never actually witnessed his lathery-loogie-launch because my back is either turned, or I'm in the process of GETTING THE FUCK OUT OF THE GODDAMN SHOWERS SO I DON'T GET SLIMED!! I'm hoping the shithead at least aims for the drain, but I'm not holding my fucking breath -- I'm thinking of trading my flip-flops in for a pair of moon boots... and hip-waders.

I swear to shit, if I ever plant my foot on one of his motherfucking lung-oysters, I will personally rip his upper-respiratory system from his body (through his ass, mind you) and stuff it down the drain myself. And, of course, this dude's a swimmer, so you know his fucking sputum is floating around in that goddamn cesspit of human excre-mung they pass off as a pool.

Okay... I just threw up in my mouth a little. Good thing I just ordered some new swim/shower togs:

Sounds Like... HEADACHE!

The spawnage were in a bizarrely collective good mood after school today, so, buoyed by their brio, I asked them if they wanted to play a game. They balked at all of my suggestions (Uno, Jenga, "you-guys-do-something-while-I-
lie-on-the-couch"), but then Mr. Z suggested charades. I gave them a "why the fuck not," and off we went. Mr. Z grabbed the paper, I got some pencils and, as I was about to tear off some paper to write down some ideas, Mr. Z informed me that, no, he, and he only, would be crafting the clues. I made a pathetic attempt at disagreement, but then gave in because... well, because that gave me an additional 10 minutes of lying on the couch, so what the shit?

Miss O grabbed a hat and the boy threw in the clues, and off we went. Now, charades is tough enough with one adult and two kids under 10, but it's pretty much fucking impossible when all the clues are written by a nine year old who basically doesn't understand that in charades, the idea is to make it within the realm of possibilities that the other people playing may have an actual chance at GUESSING THE FUCKING CLUES! And who is obsessed with poop.

Here are the four clues I chose in order of non-sequiturness:



By the way, the last one there is, apparently, "a stinky butt." I think the one that gave me the most difficulty was "Kevin's poo." Miming poo is a challenge, but getting across the idea that the poo belongs to Kevin... well, I'm afraid even the late, great Marcel Marceau would've been trapped in a box on that one.

Oh, and since Mr. Z wrote all the clues, I was acting this shit out solely for Miss O, whose stock answer was "[whining] I don't knooowwwww! Dad! Just tell me!!!!"

All I know is, tomorrow we play Jenga.

Gum on Over and Play...

Overheard conversation between the heathen, Miss O, and her parochial school buddy, Miss A...

MISS A: I have to wear a dress to school on Thursdays because that's when we have Mass.

MISS O: That's weird... we have math EVERY day.

I already called the Bazooka Joe people and they've guaranteed that the above exchange will be on the next batch of comics, along with the fortune: He who eats ice cream in a car is a sundae driver.

Stand Back! He's Got a Line of Code in His Hand!!!

So I put together a little FLASH music player thingy over to the right there with some of the spawnages tuneages on it. It's frankensteined together with junk ripped off from hither and thither, so let me know if it works okay, or if it's as half-assed as everything else I do (see: toilet post). I'll try to put the newer tunes on there soon.

Speaking of tunes, when I was at my parents' house a coupla weeks ago, I borrowed my dad's old turntable with the intention of digitizing a few of the 400 plus albums I have littered all over the fucking basement. I pretty much hate all my goddamn CDs at this point, so I figured I could find one or two songs I'm not sick of on vinyl.

I started looking through the boxes last night and I'm starting to piece together a most excellent, if not COMPLETELY random, mix of olde tymee songees. I kinda wanted to start featuring a song every week or so on the blog, but I'm wondering about the legal issues of uploading the shit to Internet Archive, where I've dumped all the spawnages' tunes. Plus, it seems like kind of a hassle.

For example, tonight I was going to offer up "Money's No Good" by Off Broadway, circa 1979. They were like the poor man's Cheap Trick, but more skinny-tie-y and paint splatter-y. I think I saw them play at Loopfest when I was 15 or so. I found a video of one of their recent shows on youtube and, frankly, it's depressing as shit, so I won't post it. They sounded okay, but it just reminded me that, at my age, it's really not a good idea to be in a band that plays in front of, you know, people. No one needs to see that shit.

So, until I figure out how to post this shit the right way, I'll offer up a video of one of the tunes I transferred from vinyl. Actually, this band's kinda like the poor man's "Off Broadway," if that's possible. Get a load of me -- I'm Dick fucking Clark. Spin that wax and 23 skiddoo, kids, it's "The Jags"...

Curse You Chuck Taylor!

Lesson 732: How to Make a 42 Year Old Man Feel Like a Creep with Two Words

First, hold a recycling event in the parking lot of a corporate office park. Then, wait for said 42 year old man to drive up with a trunk full of cardboard and box-board. Then, as he is getting out to retrieve the items from the trunk, send two approximately 16 year old girls over to help him and have them say, "Cool shoes!"

Congratulations! You've just made a 42 year old man feel like a complete, perv-y douche for doing absolutely nothing.

R.I.P. Mr. Poopie...

The spawnage were farting around in the family room after school today, when I heard Miss O let out an anguished cry:

MISS O: OH NO! MR. POOPIE!!!!

One kind of has to steel oneself when something like that is shouted, especially when there's a nice carpet nearby, but I relaxed a bit when I saw what had actually happened. One of the mainstays in their bizarre revolving cast of disturbing characters had a horrible arm stretching accident that resulted in complete forearm amputation:



They asked if I could fix poor Mr. Poopie, but alas, there was nothing to be done. Besides, I think the missing arm was the least of his problems. He's had some sort of amphibian colostomy going on for quite some time, and he's been shitting out these little white styrofoam beads that I've been finding all over the fucking house. Perhaps that's why he's named "Mr. Poopie."

Anywhich, they took the news of his pending trip to the "great trashcan in the garage" quite well, and returned to find a proper replacement for their frog-no-more friend. I'm pretty sure they settled on the Siamese twins from Guatemala: Pee & Poo...