Cellar?! I Hardly Knew... the cellar...

Okay, so I haven't really started the new year with a blog-writin' bangeroo, have I? Well, what the fuck do you want from me, goddammit -- I'm a slow ramper-upper. Plus, I've been emptying out the goddamn hellmouth of a basement we have because, yes, the builder fellas start work on the ol' basement redo THIS MONDAY. This mofo is going to be the Taj Mahal of basement rehabs... the Taj Mahellmouth. It's even gonna have walls and a floor and lights and outlets and fancy shit like that. Plus, it'll no longer be so fucking cold that when I descend into it's murky, radon-spore infested nether-regions my nipples'll no longer snap off like a coupla liquid-nitrogen dipped pencil erasers.

I'll be Mister Fancy Basement, I will. With intact nipples! Warm, intact nipples. Mmmmm... intact nipples.

Anywhich, that's also the reason my song-a-week idea has been kiboshed upon 'cuz I had to move all my recording wizardry into my temporary office in the soon-to-be-guestroom. I suppose I could try to record them up here but it'd definitely have some serious pigfuck potential. And I think it's way too early in the year for a pigfuck, don't you?

Oh, and did I mention that the Old Lady leaves tomorrow for a four day jaunt in New Orleans for a "conference," while I'm stuck here in fucking Antfartica with the spawnage? Nothing like a long weekend with a coupla cooped-up spawnages and temperatures so fucking frigid outside that it could freeze a... a... something that's really hot that normally wouldn't freeze very readily.

AND the Old Lady's taking the "good car" to the airport, so we're stuck with the car with the treadless tires that are balder than... I dunno, balder than Howie Mandel's ball-sack. (I'll tell ya, not blogging for awhile has definitely taken a toll on my simile production capabilities. Gotta work on that.)

So, we'll see... maybe this weekend will produce the second song-a-week offering. Or maybe the spawnage will upload a recording of themselves beating me to death with their Dino-Tubulars. Hard to tell.

Stay tuned...

Song #1... 51 more to go...

All right, there's no fucking way I'm gonna crank out a song a week, but I did get the first one done over the weekend, so... one. I think it's a pretty fucking awesome tune with which to kick off the new year, I might add.

It's called "Dino Tubular" and it's a song the spawnage wrote about a mysterious gift they each received over the holidays. The lyrics are pretty self-explanatory, so I'll let them explain it. Oh, and if you like the song, please forward it to five friends. If I'm gonna be recording this shit, I want people to fucking hear it, ya know?

Ready, go.



Dino Tubular
by Mr. Z & Miss O

We got a package that felt like clothes
But what it was, nobody knows

We opened it up and what could it be?
Was it a toy, it was cylindar-y

Then we unrolled it and it had some writing
It said "Dino Tubular," was this for fighting?

Dino Tubular

We couldn't figure out what this thing was for
It had silhouettes of dinosaurs

We called our Gramma and then she shared
How to fill it up with lots and lots of air

And the we blew it up, and up, and up
Until it was the size of a Great Dane pup, yeah!

Dino Tubular

Then we whacked it, smacked, didn't treat it with care
We were bonking each other like two fightin' bears

It's like a light saber that's made of plastic
We hit each other till we got sorta spastic

From that day on Dino Tubular was fun
For mom and dad, zeke, olive and willa, everyone, yeah!

Dino Tubular

Crabby New Year...

That note marked the START of our trip to Chicago, so you can imagine how it fucking went from there. Here's the rest of the hell-voyage:

• Icy fucking roads in western Michigan added a good two hours onto an already rectum-ripping drive. Came close to dying in Paw Paw.
• Miss O had the flu the entire trip -- fever, hacking cough, didn't eat anything, non-stop whine-a-palooza. Which was EXCELLENT.
• The Old Lady and I had to sleep on a futon that was apparently hewn from living rock. That's okay, though... didn't need my pelvis anyway.
• Left a day early to avoid hellish weather but managed to be permanently inscribed in my mom's shitlist for missing the "family" reunion. Thing is, everyone at the reunion was like a fifth cousin many times removed so what the shit was the big fucking deal?! But I'm pretty sure I'm now out of the will forever.

And that was it. Merry fucking Xmas. Oh, and because Miss O was sick, the Old Lady and I couldn't spend a night in the city at the goddamn Sofitel, like we had planned, 'cuz we had to be around to talk her down from the constant NIGHT TERRORS she was having. (And for those who haven't experienced their spawn having a night terror -- holy shitballs, that's some freaky fucking shit. Like Exorcist kinda shit. Scarred me for life, that girl did.)

Oh, and I've been thinking about what to do with this blog for the new year. I think I've come up with the ultimate Bowflex-of-a-resolution idea that, in true Bowflexian style, I'll stick to for about a month and then start hanging my clothes on it. The idea?

Song-a-week.

Simple, right? Record and complete one song a week with the spawnage and post it here. I may not even make it through week one. I dunno. But it's something. I mean, if I can stick to this fucker, I'll have 52 songs by 2010. That's like a quadruple album. Makes "Double Live Gonzo" look like a fucking EP. Full Bluntal Nugity, my ass.

So, yeah, I'll give it a shot.

It'll never work.

See ya next year.

Cur-rap.

A word of advice for all those parentals out there loading up your Netflix queue with nostalgic films from your childhood that you're convinced your spawn will love because movies were fucking awesome back then and the shit they put out today can't hold a fucking candle to the masterpieces of your youth:

If you've got "Benji" in that queue, blast that fucker outta there, immediately.

Holy fuckstain, that is a steaming, worm-studded dog-turd of a film. And I use the word "film" only because watching it left a silty, shit-flavored film on my goddamn teeth. And no amount of brushing can scrub the B.M.-y aftertaste outta my kibble hole.

Here's the actual minute-by-minute breakdown of the movie:

For the first 19 hours, Benji trots down the sidewalk, stopping to see some moron kids, eat shit out of a trash can, visit with a cop in the park and get a bone from Uncle Joe from "Petticoat Junction." (No, Uncle Joe doesn't actually "bone" Benji, but that would've at least spiced this fucker up a bit.)

Then Benji does THE SAME EXACT SHIT AGAIN. Same. Exact. Thing. Kids, shit, cop, bone. It's like that fucking Teletubbies show. Lather, rinse, repeat. Enough to make me wanna cave my skull in with the remote.

Then, the guy who played Eb, from "Green Acres", and this guy who was on four episodes of "Fantasy Island" talk about goddamn PUDDING CUPS for four fucking hours. I shit you not. Pudding!

Cups!

Oh, and in what seemed like the last 30 seconds of the movie, some kids get kidnapped, Benji saves them and they get to keep him.

And after that, I kicked in the TV screen.

The End.

I sure as fuck hope that writer/director Joe Camp was spayed and/or neutered after the first screening of this shitball. God DAMN what a piece of turd.

Can't wait to see the next movie in our queue: "Benji the Hunted."

Road Drip!

Spent Tanksgibbon with the spawnage at my folks' house in suburban Chicago. You'll notice no mention the Old Lady in that sentence -- no, she decided to stay home to "get some work done." Something about "making sure she gets tenure" so she doesn't "lose her job" and force us to "live in my parents' basement" and "only eat Ramen."

So, I'm not gonna go over all the myriad ways in which the trip was a pain in the fucking shitterhole, and how I didn't get any sleep and how the spawnage argued constantly and how my parents keep their house so fucking hot and dry that my skin turned all Slim Jimmy and my lips are so fucking chapped that they resemble what I would imagine William Hickey's anus used to look like.

I will, however, tell you about how I almost pissed my pants. See, I drink a lot of coffee in the morning. I don't necessarily LIKE to... I have to. This, combined with the fact that my bladder can apparently hold only one fluid ounce of liquid at any given time, makes close proximity to a bathroom pretty fucking crucial. So four hour car trips kinda blow donkey balls.

So, I peed before we left, and then I peed again at the BP station about five minutes later, just to make sure I was gonna be golden for at least an hour or so. Ha, golden. Get it? We hit the highway and things were pretty good... that is, until we hit the first toll on the Skyway that was backed up for about a mile. As we sat there, parked, I could feel my ureters filling up like a coupla giant, taut balloon animals, if balloon animals were filled with steaming, water buffalo piss. The spawnage were going nuts in the back seat, asking me for snacks and telling me to change the DVD and I really started to feel like I was gonna piss my fucking nappies.

Traffic finally got moving after the toll booth, but there's really nowhere to exit on the Skyway and I started thinking about pulling over onto the shoulder and draining it right then and there. But it was starting to snow pretty fucking hard and it was getting pretty slick and, frankly, sliding into a ditch is bad enough without pee-soaked trousers, so that was a no-go.

I decided to tough it out and get to the 94. I floored it and we started hydroplaning eastward. While the pain in my schvantz-sphincter was becoming unbearable, I was fairly confident it would remain pinched-shut for at least another 20 minutes, or so. And, to make things even more exciting, Miss O was now screaming that she had to pee, too. I plowed forward, the tinkle practically gurgling in the back of my throat by now.

Finally, just as a fine, misty pre-pee was starting to dribble outta my dingus, I spied the first exit with a gas station sign. It was in a town called Chesterton, and we were barely gonna make it. Now remember, the Old Lady wasn't with us, so I had to take Mr. Z and Miss O into the men's room with me, which is always a fucking joy. We skidded off the highway, slammed into the parking space, ran into Speedway, threw open the men's room door and there we stood, face to face, with the nastiest fucking shit-sprayed, hellmouth I've ever seen. Seriously, it was spattered with so much shit and random effluvia that is looked like a giant, 3-D Jackson Poo-llock painting. And the smell? Well, I'm imagining it's what walking into Dom DeLuise's transverse colon might smell like. But worse.

But it didn't matter, 'cuz we had work to do. I yelled to Mr. Z, "Go pee but DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING!!!!" Then I ran Miss O into the single stall that HAD NO DOOR ON IT, and stared into the hellmouth portal. It was truly a work o' fart. The outside of the bowl was caked in B.M. and the seat had about 3 gallons of piss puddled upon it. Miss O shouted, "I'M NOT SITTING ON THAT!!!!" I agreed. So I pulled out an entire roll's worth of toilet paper, wrapped it around my hand like a fucking boxing glove and wiped that fucker down. Then I piled another entire roll's worth on top of the seat and had her sit upon it. She ended up sitting about two feet above the rim with all the padding underneath her.

Now, if you've been following closely, you'll realize that I still haven't peed yet. My eyes were bulging outta my urine-filled head at this point and I danced around, waiting for Miss O to finish. She finally did, I told her to run to the middle of the room and stand next to her brother and to "NOT TOUCH A FUCKING THING!!!!" as I bolted to the urinal and unleashed a raging torrent of steaming bladder juice that would've had a fucking elephant cowering in fear. Steam poured outta that urinal like a fucking bathhouse.

Twenty minutes later, I was done.

After we scrubbed every nook and/or cranny of our bodies with paint thinner, shaved our heads and burned our clothing, we were ready to get back in the car and continue the trip home.

So, despite your crap-spackled nastiness, Chesterton, the crabbyfamily thanks you from the bottom of our farts.

Or, as Mr. Z likes to call you, "Ches-turd-ton."

[SFX: toilet flush]

It's Like Taking A Bite Outta Uranus!

Holy fuckstain, is 28 bucks too much to spend on a chance to take a choco-rubbery chomp out of my childhood?!

I'm leaning toward "it ain't."

Ice Holes...

There's a fucking two hour delay to the start of the spawanges' school, today, because of "ice on the roads." How did I find out about this fact? Did I receive a phone call this morning? Was there a message on the school's answering machine? Did I see some sort of notice on the local cable access channel? Did I look out the window and realize it would be impossible to drive under such (apparently) brutal conditions?

No, I found out when I drove Mr. Z, on roads with NO FUCKING ICE ANYWHERE, to his darkened school that had absolutely no goddamn cars in the parking lot. That's the equivalent of a phone-tree in this fucking town.

Seriously, all I need, at this point, is for Mr. Haney to show up to try to sell me a faulty tractor and I'll have officially become Oliver Wendell Douglas.

When Hack Turns to Hork...

I just cleaned up barf from Mr. Z's floor. He's been home from school for a couple of days with some sort of hacking phlegm-plague and, up until a few minutes ago, has only been spraying the house with horked up sputum. Apparently, he was just coughing so hard that, well, that he fucking yooked... which is just what I needed, right about now, as the Old Lady has conveniently had meetings for the last three afternoon/nights and it's been a non-stop, brain-hemorrhage-inducing spawn-o-palooz-shit.

Oh, and I'm pretty sure I've contracted Mr. Z's goddamn plague, which fucking rocks!

I think the BlogOverlord is punishing me for taking a fucking break from posting... fucking dick. Good thing I'm a atheist.

The only thing that's actually made me crack the faintest of smiles through my humorless, death-mask-like physiognomy was this:



I feel like Turtle Tim but I really wish I were the Eggman. He seems so much happier, that Eggman.

Goo goo ga joob.

One Last Thing...

Okay, time in... for a sec. You know how Miss O has these goddamn warts on two of her toes and she basically won't let anyone touch them without screaming like she's being murdleized? And how, in between traumatic visits to the doctor (traumatic for him, not Miss O), we're supposed to have been putting this Compound W on these monstrosities, but then that shit just cakes up on top of their wartliness, and we have to somehow remove this wart-cake in order to apply some more, so we're not just compounding the Compound W with more Compound W? And when we do this, Miss O screams so fucking loud that the neighbors are SO gonna call the cops, especially since she's screaming shit like, "DON'T DADDY! DON'T DO THAT!!! IT HURTS ME!!! IT HURTS!!! STOP IT DADDY!!!!" Yeah, try explaining THAT one to the fucking cops.

Well, now Miss O's doctor, who is this close to giving up medicine because of Miss O's bi-weekly visits, wants us to use a NAIL FILE and file these mofos down in between appointments! What the shit, doc?! Why don't you just tell me to singe 'em off with an arc-welder. Ya fucking sadistic fuckshit.

Anywhich, we told Miss O that we're going to file them this afternoon, instead of tonight, because when we do try to do it at night, she gets so fucking worked up, as do we, that no one can get to fucking sleep when it's all over. So, we told her we're firing up the emery board as soon as she's done with her homework. She was just furiously writing, and I thought she was working on said homework. Instead, she handed me this:



I wonder if a belt-sander would be quicker?

SLAM!

Okay, I've hit my wall. There's nothing left in the ol' tankeroo. I'm spent. Finito. Zip. Zally. Zilch. The train has left the station. Toot toot. I'm done.

I mean, what, 624 posts is pretty good, right? And I've seriously tried to write something over the last coupla days, honest. We had this huge fucking birthday party for Miss O this weekend with 10 screaming girls and a limbo contest and a craft project and bobbing for apples and did I mention screaming and tears and fucking blood spurting from my eye sockets, and shit, you know, I sat down to write about it and nothing came out except air. Nada. After a goddamn birthday party! Bupkus!

So I'm taking a break. Probably not forever, just until the searing pains that shoot through my puny brain every time I stare at this goddamn blank rectangle begin to subside. I'll probably post every now and then... when I have something to whine about or when one of the spawnages writes a new ditty. In fact, I'm going to try to spend more time recording with them. I'd like to finish that fucking albatross of a CD of theirs that's hanging around my neck like a goddamn... well, albatross. When that's done, I'll post it here. I promise. And I'll send off those free copies I promised to all of you who ordered shitty wrapping paper and whimsical trinkets from Mr. Z last year.

So, this isn't really goodbye... it's more of a TTFN. It'll give you an opportunity to use that minute you used to piddle away here reading my insufferable pablum for something more constructive. Take up a hobby, or something. Might I suggest glass-blowing?

And, then, there you go.

Sounds Like Someone Needs to Empty Their Spit Valve...

Tonight, Mr. Z, Miss O and yours crabbily made an impromptu recording of a little "musical" number we crapped out while waiting for the Old Lady to get home from professorin'. It was a round, of sorts -- a rhythmic round. Rhythms produced using only our cupped hands and our armpits. You heard me -- an armpit fart round.

I started with quarter notes, Miss O "played" eighth notes, and then Mr. Z joined in with 16th notes produced not with his armpits, but with his behind-the-knee pits. But enough 'splainin' -- here 'tis:


Fartin': A Round by the Crabbyfamily

Z-Wrex...

Mr. Z wiped out on his bike, Friday, on the way home from school. He was apparently "popping a wheelie" when he came down on a rock and, subsequently, bit it. I got a call from him at about 3:10 and he said, very matter-of-factly, "I just totally wiped out on my bike and I busted my elbow." I almost shat my nappies, but then I remembered it was Mr. Z, who has a tendency to, oh, "oversell" a situation from time to time. So I asked him to clarify.

I asked him if he thought his elbow was really broken and he said, "No, but it's gonna need like 10 bandages. It's totally bloody." I then asked him if he wanted me to come and get him and he said he'd be okay and he could ride home.

Yobbita-yobbita-WHUH?!

At that point, I was pretty convinced that Mr. Z hadn't wiped out, but had rather been abducted by aliens, and replaced with a cyborg Mr. Z. There's NO FUCKING WAY that that calm, cool and chillaxin' "person" on the other end of the phone was the Mr. Z I knew.

But, sure enough, 10 minutes later, in walked the boy, bloodied elbow in tow, sans tears and cool as a crabcumber. As I bandaged his wound, he filled me in on the details of the wreck -- there were a lot of kids around when it happened, he got up and dusted himself off, he DIDN'T CRY, and the kicker, an 8th grade boy saw the whole thing happen and proclaimed, "Dude, you totally took that like a man!"

Now, I'm not one for reinforcing sexist declarations of "manlihood" but, FUCK YEAH HE DID! I explained to Mr. Z that if word of his face-plant flintiness got around school, he could well be on his way to gaining some serious middle-schooler "cred." He smiled, stood up a little taller, and then confidently strode into the other room... to play Webkinz with his six year old sister.

(Baby steps to manlihood.)

Gotta Hand It to Him....

So... So... tired. I've got nothin' for you, tonight. Nothing except this drawing that Mr. Z brought home from his art class today:



I can't decide which of the three is the most awesome. The one on the left, or "hand," is great because it's got that auto-peace-sign thing going on, and all the fingers look like French baguettes. The one on the right, or "hand? big," is like some sort of Lynda Barry-esque claw-hand. And then there's "cartoon hand." I have a feeling that one wasn't part of the assignment.

Mr. Z also came home declaring, "Today was the greatest day ever for three reasons! One, no homework! Two, I found a quarter! And three... B (the dickhead bully who's been tormenting the shit outta Z since 2nd grade) MOVED!!! He's gone! FOREVER!!!! Can you believe it?!?!"

Woo-hoo! Three deformed-hand high-fives for Mr. Z!

The Wart of the Toeses...

Quick update on the wart-sitch. As I drove Miss O to the doc after school, she was in fantastic spirits. We were laughing and singing and just having the grandest of wart-removal-fretting-free times imaginable. I had a backpack full of candy, stuffed animals and magazines, and like the knob that I am, I figured there was nothing to warty about.

Even in the examination room, while we were waiting for Dr. Death to enter, she was laughing and boppin' around and cutting armpit farts like there was no tomorrowart. Then, the doc and the nurse burst in and kicked off World Wart III. Now, to her credit, Miss O didn't scream this time. Instead, she somehow hooked her warty foot behind her "good" foot and refused to extend it toward the doc. At first I tried reasoning with her -- I pulled out the "Spongebob Halloween" magazine and offered her some Smarties, but she wouldn't fucking budge. It was as if she had sunk her horny, warty talons into her Achilles tendon and was hunkered down for the long haul.

Finally, I managed to wrassle her foot free and hold it in front of Dr. Feelgood, as he first sliced off some of the dead skin and then proceeded to burn those fuckers with the liquid nitrogen dipped Q-Tips. It was intense -- each time he touched the Q-Tip to the wart, there was a little "sizzle" noise and then wisps of vaporized wart-smoke would waft upwards, occasionally curling their smokey viral tendrils up my flared nares. And you haven't tripped until you've huffed wart-smoke, my friends. A heady brew, indeed.

But there was no screaming. There were one or two tears, and I could actually hear her teeth grinding down to nubs as she gritted them throughout the entire process. But she, more or less, held it together throughout. I think I'm gonna chalk it up in the win column.

Granted, the warts are still there and the doc informed me that there'll be one, maybe two more visits until those fuckers are permanently vaporized. As he put it, "Warts are like swimming upstream -- you have to make it all the way to the end, or the current will carry you all the way back down and you have to start over from scratch."

The dude's a regular Wart Whitman.

So, I scheduled the next appointment for two weeks from now and, wouldn't you know it, it just happens to fall on one of the Old Lady's afternoons. Doggone it all to heck. She gets all the fun. Doesn't matter, though... she'll schedule the one after that on one of my days. It's a regular tug-o-wart between us.

Oh well, until we wart again...

Wart's Happening Now!!

For those of you who've inexplicably been dropping by here for a while, you'll recall the joy that was had during Mr. Z's Wart-tastic Foot-a-Palooza of Winter 2006. Multiple trips to the family doc, with the freezing and the slicing and blood-curdling screaming... wait, am I still talking about warts or have I shifted to some sort of Bill-Kurtis-hosted Jeffrey Dahmer news magazine on the Biography channel?

Anywart, flash-forward a coupla years and, surprise, we find young Miss O following in her brother's papillomavirus-infested footsteps. Two mongo wartzillas growing on the tips of her tiny toes, like a couple of plantar-unicorns... shoe-nicorns, if you will. We've been futilely battling them for a few months, with those fucking worthless Dr. Scholl's wart pads, but the good doctor must've gotten his goddamn degree in Grenada, 'cuz theose fuckers ain't doing shizzle.

Miss O has been to the real doc once, so far, and the Old Lady was the lucky chaperone the first time. It was, apparently, a "fucking nightmare," what with the girl screaming bloody murder and the Old Lady and the nurse having to physically restrain her during the freezing procedure (which also didn't do shit, by the way.)

Well, guess who gets to take her to visit number two, tomorrow? Give up? I'll give you a hint -- it rhymes with "crabbydab." Yep, after school tomorrow, it's round two in the battle of "Miss O vs. Anyone-who-tries-to-get-near-her-fucking-toes"... and their tympanic membranes. That girl can fucking scream with the best of 'em. If Sammy Hagar had been an almost-seven year old girl who had warts on his toes, he wouldn't even come close to out-screaming her. (But he'd still grow up to, one day, sing on Van Halen's album OUWART12.)

The thing is, she used be fucking fearless when she was younger. She'd wipe out, get up and dust herself off, and then run off to wipe-the-fuck out again. (Remember, the crabbykids aren't the most agile of spawnages.) But she had a shitty experience when she got her ears pierced last winter -- one of the earrings was ripped out by an overzealous towel-drying once -- and things rocketed down the ol' shitter after that.

And nothing really helps. I try reasoning, bargaining, BRIBING... nada. I can get her nice and calm... have her laughing and joking around, and then the doc walks in the room and it's like the goddamn Texas Chainsaw Massacre in there. And the thing that kills me is, after it's all over, she's fine. She's like, "Oh, gee... that didn't hurt." Meanwhile, there's blood spouting out of my fucking earholes, the nurse is catatonic and weeping in the corner and the doc is injecting lidocaine into his own jugular.

But, we've gotta go tomorrow just to ensure that her foot doesn't end up looking like the Elephant Man's head. Although I could always just slip a burlap sack over the thing and rent her out to the circus. Money is tight in our troubled economy, but people always love them a good freakshow.

Hmm. Another one of them parental dilemmas I always seem to find myself in...

The Spawnish Inquisition...

I don't know what further Guantanamo-style torture sessions the spawnage have in store for me, but they've been recently engaging me in some sort of nefarious sleep-deprivation experiment that has me ready to fess up to whatever crime I may or may not have committed.

Monday night-- 1:00 AM: Mr. Z awakens me from deeeeeeep R.E.M. sleep by walking into the hallway and pronouncing, in his I-sound-like-I'm-awake-but-I'm-SO-not voice, that he "wants to talk about the astronauts" and that "he's worried about what the martians are doing." I walk him back to bed where he goes back to, er, continues sleeping, while I'm awake for a good 20 minutes.

Tuesday night -- 1:30 AM: Miss O's Tamagotchi-style "Fairy Magic Electronic Pet" starts beeping this incessant brain-drilling digital beep in her room and she wakes both the Old Lady and I up shouting for us to do something about it. In a rare move, the Old Lady attends to it, while I fall back asleep... only to be awakened moments later when said Old Lady gruffly pushes my arm off her pillow.

Last night (this morning) 5:07 AM: Mr. Z, actually awake this time, opens the door and says, "Dad? I had the all time worst nightmare I've ever had." I walk him back to bed and assure him that he's safe and mumble something like "ssssfine... mmback to sleep... think about... baby monkeys or flommbrrrgnnbrzzz."

I have no idea what's in store for me tonight... maybe bamboo under the fingernails, maybe some caning on the bottoms of my feet, or perhaps some good, old-fashioned waterboarding. All I know is that I'm about to fucking crack and spill the beans about where the Old Lady's secret chocolate bars are stashed.

Saugatuckered...

Back from our mini-vaykeigh and, while it was a great time, I'm now tired as shitfuck. Too shitfucked, in fact, to write anything longer than a sentence or two. So, here's the trip in pics/captions:


It's the famous Saugatuck neon-penis, a tribute to Chief Saugatuck, inventor of... that's right, the neon penis.



The famous Wickwood Inn, where we slept. Little known fact: the inn is run by Julee Rosso, author of the "Silver Palate Cookbook," and owner of several hundreds of Crabbydad's dollars.



The room in which yours crabbily and the Old Lady "slept." It's called the "Kyoto Room," because of its Japanese-influenced design and because, each morning after sleeping on the lumpy feather-bed mattress in the room, I'd wake up saying, "KEE! OH! T'OH, MY BACK!"



This is the nearby beach we walked along -- collected some beach glass, some driftwood and a pocketful of used syringes, condoms and a human ear.



DeMond's grocery store, where we bought the New York Times each morning. This is a mural on the side of the building, depicting the store's founders -- Lindsay Buckingham, Shemp Howard and a potato in overalls.



Believe it or don't -- Beery Field is where they held Octoberfest on Saturday night. Get it? Beery? Field? We didn't go because I get nervous when I'm surrounded by large gatherings of Germans... and kielbasas.



This is a sign at a popular local Saugatuck dry cleaners. After eating the rich fucking breakfasts, drinking shitloads of wine and going out to dinner for every meal, the fudge line pretty much starts (and ends) in everybody's pants.

And there you have it. Saugatuck 2008. It was great while it lasted but now I'm fucking tired, getting a goddamn cold and I'm crabbier than I was before I left. But, hey, at least I don't have any money left!

I Call Time Out!

So, I haven't had a vacation in, like, fuckever. The Old Lady and I were supposed to go away last spring, during the spawnages' break, but, if you'll remember, I spent that time at the goddamn Mayo Clinic, filling up five-gallon jugs of whiz and getting my death-sentence overturned by "real" doctors. And thanks a LOT for bringing up a sore subject.

Anywhich, my folks offered to watch Mr. Z and Miss O for a long weekend sometime and, well, it's about fucking sometime. We're meeting them halfway tomorrow, handing the spawnages over, and then driving up to Saugatuck for a few days of whatever one does in Saugatuck... I dunno, tuckin' in our Saugas, I guess. It doesn't really matter where we're going, though -- I just need a fucking break. My motivation is for shit, my crab-o-meter is off the fucking charts and my brain is floating around in my skull like a loose stool. I SO need a few days of sleeping in, eating good food and, most of all, not hearing a 24-7 running dialogue of who the cutest goddamn Pokemon is. (For the record, it's Diglett.)

And I don't think I'm bringing the laptop, so it's gonna be even duller than usual around here for the next few days. I think we'll all benefit from that. Frankly, posting, lately, has been like pulling teeth... outta my ass. Perhaps I shall find inspiration in Saugatuck, most likely in the form of a commemorative spoon and/or oversized novelty sunglasses.

Carry on.

I Got It, I Got It... KONK!

Oh, the pain that is the middle school gym class for the 6th grade intellectual. Apparently, today in P.E., Mr. Z got hit on the top of the noggin with a football. He said "Someone kicked it really high and then I looked up and it konked me right on the head." I asked him if he thought of maybe, oh I don't know, catching said ball, but he looked at me as if to say, "Why the shit would I want to do that?!" He summed it up by stating, "I'm not the kinda guy to play football... I like cute things. Stuffed animals, Pokemon... cute farts."

Of course, I explained to him that that sort of information is best kept on the D.L. while actually IN gym class.

I then reminded him that, while he may not particularly care for football, he is hardly "non-athletic." He likes to ride his bike and run around, he hikes at camp all summer, and he loves swimming. Like it or not, Mr. Z, you're actually kinda sporty, dude.

We're trying to break him of the "it's me vs. the jocks" attitude he's been cultivating, of late. But it's really fucking hard to do when his neanderthal gym teacher keeps reinforcing the boneheaded us vs. them gym class environment. He picks all the athletic kids as captains and then they pick and pick until they're left with the nerdarino dregs. You'd think by 2008 these chuckleheads would've come up with a more equitable sorting method.

Attention, Coach Nutsack, here's an idea: how 'bout counting off by twos, ya fuck!

Anywhich, we've assured Mr. Z that he's only gotta suffer through about seven more years of gym class and then he can trade in his jockstrap for a life of the mind. In the meantime, I think I'll send him to school tomorrow in a helmet.

Volun-tearing Me a New One...

Mr. Z and I volunteered our services to the Obama campaign headquarters in Lansing yesterday and it turned out to be a surprisingly great experience. They called last week and asked if I wanted to help out, saying I could do things like canvassing, calling people and/or STUFFING ENVELOPES. "YES!" I said. "I CAN HANDLE STUFFING ENVELOPES! SIGN ME UP!!!!" What better way to support the campaign and teach my son the importance of participating in the democratic process than by folding paper and licking glue. (And it was just a bonus that I wouldn't have to come in contact with any actual PEOPLE.)

So, after getting lost for about a 1/2 hour, the boy and I finally pulled up to the headquarters and bopped on in to start a-lickin' paper. But as soon as I talked to the man-boy in charge there (who I'm pretty sure was about 15 1/2), I learned that there would be no envelope stuffing. No sir... I was handed a clipboard, pen and a stack of voter registration sheets and told "Now get on out there and get some people registered!"

Son of a shitfuck.

I am SO not a clipboard-holdin', voter-registerin', stranger-going-up-to-in' kinda dude. I'm really not into "dealing" with "people." I'm not a "go-getter." I don't like "humans." But there I was, clipboard in hand, heading on over to the goddamn Frandor mall to walk the parking lot, trolling for victims.

And it did kinda suck. Basically, everyone we went up to was already registered -- it was mostly families heading over to the Halloween USA temporarium, or polyester sweatsuit-wearin' grannies shuffling over to Jo-Ann fabrics, or polyester sweatsuit-wearin' moms checking out Michaels Crafts-n-Which, or polyester sweatsuit-wearin' families heading over to Sears to buy more polyester sweatsuits. Everyone was very pleasant, though, and a lot of people asked where they could get an Obama shirt like mine, and it was heartening to realize that everyone seemed to be registered (and supporting Obama)... which is a good thing.

But it was hot as shit and when Mr. Z said, "Dad, this really isn't as fun as I thought it was going to be," I realized we needed to switch locales, and quick. So, I checked our list of "hot spots" and I thought we'd do better closer to downtown, so we loaded up the car and headed on over to the Rite-Aid on MLK Boulevard.

Bingo!

And by bingo, I mean that we signed up ONE person, instead of ZERO. But hey, one is good, goddammit! That woman could very well be the deciding vote! And it'd all be thanks to crabbydad and Mr. Z! You're welcome, future!

So, yeah, one person registered in three hours. But shit, it was probably more than you did for the country this weekend, by gum. It did feel good to finally get off my pointy ass and do something, though, instead of just complaining about things and just thinking that I should really get off my pointy ass and do something. And it kinda demystified the whole volunteering thing and showed me that three hours out of a whole weekend is not a lot of time if you feel like you're actually doing something positive, even if it's only in a kinda puny way. And I think it was good to show Mr. Z that it's important to get involved in causes that are bigger than you or your family or your video games and that if a whole shitload of people get out there and just do a puny bit, it can actually end up having a huge fucking impact.

But most of all, I realized that, if you're going to go out with a clipboard in your hand and interrupt strangers on their relaxing Saturday afternoon by talking politics at them, it's very wise to bring along your 10 year old kid with you if you don't want to get punched in the head.