Coffee Table Eviction Notice

I’ve been thinking about getting rid of the coffee table that is in my family room. It is too large for the area around my couch and comfy chair. It’s 38.62% too big. Yes, I did the math. I suppose I could move my couch back a little. But then how would I be able to change channels on the television with my feet? (I lost the remote control a few months ago.) Also, if I moved the couch back, I would have to turn the desk. If I turned the desk I would I have to move the poker table. If I moved the poker table, I’d have to move the bar. If I moved the bar, I’d run into it every time I came home drunk. Moving the bar would require construction. We’ll have none of that. Plus, if I moved the bar, I would have to put the trampoline on the ceiling. Trampolines aren’t as much fun when you jump up into them with your head and then crash to the ground. Maybe at first, but after a while, pain sets in, and then the bleeding. Once the trampoline is on the ceiling, it will get in the way of my archery lessons. I would have to find a new hobby. Rock tumbling, maybe? Naaaah.

It would be easier if I just got rid of the coffee table. I don’t put coffee on it. I don’t drink coffee. It tastes like dirt. My kids don’t drink coffee, either. To them, the table is a “I’m gonna put this crap here until Dad puts it away” table. Little do they know that to me, it’s a “After a few weeks of sitting there, I’m gonna throw that crap out” table. Dad, where are my Pokémon cards? (Are kids even still into Pokémon? I don’t even know. Even.) To the dogs, it’s a sanctuary hide out for when they indignify my carpet. They know my shin always hits the table before my foot can hit their ass when they're under there. I don’t allow people who drink coffee into my house. They are too sophisticated for me. Basically, the coffee table is a useless piece of luxury for me.

Yup, I’m going to toss it to the curb tonight. If anybody needs a coffee table, it’ll be out in front of my house. Better nab it before Barry comes around with his pick up truck. He usually gets here around 4 am on garbage days. I think I’ll replace the table with a garbage can. It’ll save me some time.

The Squirrel Maimer

I am living with a cold blooded murderer. She has a hairy face, and a hairy ass, and hairy feet and a hairy belly and a hairy back and can lick her own ass. She has milky brown eyes, pointy teeth, a cold wet nose and eight nipples. I am referring, of course, to my wife. I’m kidding. I don’t have a wife. But, if I did, she would have to be able to lick her own ass, and be limited to two nipples. OK, maybe three.

I’m talking about my dog, Cammie, who is twenty-eight pounds of muttish killing machine. That is, if you are a small rodent. I’ve known for a long time that she is a schooled mouser. One time, she and I caught a mouse together. She herded the mouse into a corner, batted it around a few times with paws of fury, and then paralyzed it in fear with a vicious snarl (vicious from the mouse's perspective. I thought it was kind of cute). I moved in and stepped on the incapacitated fur ball. Have you ever stepped on a mouse? It is not as fun as it looks. As soon as your foot makes contact with it and you start applying pressure, you can tell you are stepping on a living thing. It’s not like stepping on a jelly doughnut like they portray it in the movies. Then, when you feel the bones start cracking under your foot (note: you feel the bones cracking before you hear them crack because the speed of feel is faster than the speed of sound. Just like when you get hit in the head with a baseball bat, you feel the pain before you hear your skull crack. It’s a scientific fact – look it up. Jeez, this is the most violent essay I’ve ever written. I think it’s because I recently started lifting weights, and the eight molecules of testosterone I have left are raging through my body right now. It feels like they split up into two teams of four and are having a relay race. And, I am unbelievably sore from the weight lifting. I think I ruptured some of my back fat. I don’t know how ruptured back fat causes you to write violently. I’m not a doctor. Don’t let the smell of my fingers fool you. Also, I’ve been eating a lot of steak tartare.) you start to feel bad, which is what I did. So I quickly removed my pending foot of death from the cute little thing. The mouse was still alive. Cammie took over, and with a faster than feel nip, she broke its neck. She glanced up at me and called me a pussy with her eyes. I stood there in shock. How do you even aim for a mouse neck? It would have taken me at least six times to hit the mouse’s neck with one of my bites. No wonder DeVry’s School of Vampire Technology keeps rejecting me. The mouse would have been mutilated, not to mention embarrassed. Death by multiple badly aimed human bites is not a dignified way to go, even for a mouse.

Often I’ve come home from work to find a dead mouse on the floor with an invoice from Cammie for hitdog services rendered stapled to its forehead. Cammie never eats the mice she kills. She kills for sport. She will play with her prey before she kills it, smacking it around like a bushel of corrugated spoons before doling the death blow. That is what she did with the Elmo doll I gave her for Christmas a few years ago. She played with it for a while until one day I came home and found it hanging from a noose woven out of dog hair.

Recently, Cammie has moved on to big game hunting – squirrels. So far it’s only one squirrel, but she wrote “squirrels” on her resume’. Everybody lies on their resume’. Both of my dogs were in the backyard patrolling the neighborhood from behind my fence. An adventurous squirrel decided to search for nuts in the yard, which was an easily avoidable mistake since I have a sticker on my front door, right under the Solicitors Go To Hell sticker that clearly reads All Nuts On Premises Are In My Pants (which will soon be on a t-shirt).

I’m not sure what the squirrel did or said to Cammie to set her off, but before long, the squirrel was thrashing for its life under the gription of Cammie’s paws. I watched the tussle through the patio door window, while my other dog, Cailey, who is more than twice the size of Cammie and ten times the wimp, stood on the side barking, “Get him a body bag – YEEAAHHH!!!” like that jerk in Karate Kid. She tossed that squirrel around like it was an Elmo doll. Right before I sensed Cammie was going in for the kill, I stepped out on the patio and called off the dogs. I literally called off the dogs! I’ve never done that before. I felt so powerful. Cammie dropped the squirrel and came running to me. The squirrel was still alive, but hobbled. Once it got its bearings, the squirrel scampered, hobbledly scampered, into the brick wall of the house, rolled over and hid behind the hose. Eventually, it crawled, hobbledly crawled, up the brick wall, to safety, where it remained like Spidersquirrel for about five minutes. Once it determined I wasn’t joking about calling off the dogs, the squirrel hopped in a cab and got the hell out of there.

I was very proud of Cammie – protecting our homestead from evil squirrels and all. But, ever since then, she’s adopted an unconscionable arrogant attitude the likes of which I haven’t seen since George W. boasted “mission accomplished”. She walks around the house with a permanent snarl on her face, as if she’s the canine Billy Idol. Here is a picture of me trying to wipe that snarl off her face:


I was unsuccessful. In fact, she tried dressing up my hand like a squirrel and having her way with it.

One night the kids and I were watching a lion take down a wildebeest on Animal Planet. Cammie started barking at the television set. When I translated the barks, we found out she had said, “That lion is lucky that wildebeest wasn’t me. I would have kicked its ass.” On another night we were enjoying a nice steak dinner. Cammie walked by the dinner table and, again, started barking. Again, I translated the barks: “Eating steak, huh? That cow is lucky I’m not a cattle farmer. I would have kicked its ass.” Finally, we were watching Jurassic Park. Again, she started barking at the television set. Again, I translated: “That T-Rex is lucky I’m not in that movie, I would have kicked her ass.” OK, Cammie, that’s about enough. I went online and ordered the A Clockwork Orange For Dogs training video. It comes with eyelid clamps, eye drops and an eggy weggs squeeze toy. Eventually, we were able to re-condition her to be her old, lying on the couch, getting hair all over the place, barking at noises, rubbing her ass on the carpet mutt.

I haven’t seen any mice in the house or squirrels in the yard since the incident. Word must have gotten out about her. Cammie: a dog so mean, she hobbled a squirrel just to watch it limp up a brick wall.

The Floor and the Dog

There is a dog. There is a floor. Through no choice of the floor, the dog is on it. The floor is under the dog. The floor sustains the dog. The dog burdens the floor. The floor suffers the dog. This is their relationship. It is not the fault of the dog. It is merely following orders.

The floor pushes back, as it also follows orders. The floor hates the dog. The dog does not realize the floor is there. The dog does not consider the option of non-support. The floor considers all other options, but is helpless to choose.

The floor is covered by carpet. The dog is covered by hair. The fibers mingle. There is no contention between the inorganic threads of the carpet and the organic strands of hair. They are happy to congregate. They make room for each other. In the event of separation, some hair will remain guests of the carpet, and some carpet will travel with the hair.

The dog bestows gifts from within to the floor. The floor accepts these gifts with dissent. The dog is relieved. The floor is burdened further. Parts of the gifts meld with the parts of the floor. The floor is slightly weakened. The dog begins to feel a void, unable to fill it until opportunity rings. The floor shares the anticipation of the dog’s portending contingency as it represents a relief for the floor. The dog yawns. The floor sighs.

The gifts of the dog interrupt the camaraderie between the community of carpet and hair. The gifts incite some of the carpet threads to retreat and compact. Most, however, continue to socialize. Those directly affected by the gifts are unable to convince the others to support their cause. A wall has been built that only time can destroy. The hair does not notice the absence of the missing fibers. It makes no attempt to penetrate the separation. The influenced portion of the carpet is drawn closer to the floor and adopts its resentment towards the dog. Together they will fester until the effects of the dog’s gifts have evaporated.

There is an overweight boy wearing muddy baseball cleats and carrying a pitchfork, a box of matches and a tap dance instructional manual. The floor is having a bad day, but realizes that the dog isn’t so bad.

Tell Tale Dad

I intended to watch this season’s inaugural episode of The Apprentice so as to begin a string of season long reviews of the show. However, my objective was interrupted by a rapping at my chamber door. It was my son standing with the decomposed remains of Edgar
Allan Poe interrogating it for clues as to what the hell The Tell Tale Heart was all about.

Son, I asked (he was named after blues legend, Son House), are you reading The Tell Tale Heart in school? Yes, they had read it together in class that day. Being the über-dad that I am, I feigned interest in his schooling and asked him what he thought of the story. After about fifteen minutes of word fragments, you-know’s and um’s, I figured he didn’t comprehend much of the plot. I asked him if he was actually in the classroom when they read the story. He was there physically, but I’m guessing, mentally, he was wandering around the girls’ locker room handing out towels. Luckily, I was wearing my über-dad utility belt, which contained duct tape, a butter knife, two cans of beer, one paper towel, a golf score card, a roll of Lifesavers and the Unabridged Edgar Allan Poe. I suggested we read the story together, thinking it would be easier than me explaining the it to him, seeing that all I could remember about it were the car chases and the nude scenes.

We took turns reading paragraphs, crossing out the words neither of us knew, with me providing explanatory commentary along the way. As we delved, he became more and more stoic as I immersed myself in the story, enthralled by Poe’s dazzling imagery and effortless flow. Before long, I had a set built out of the couch and entertainment center, and I was acting out the story using the dog as the old man with the "evil eye". I may have been a little over enthusiastic with my portrayal, as the dog is now dismembered and buried underneath the house. Not to worry, we have another dog, who is more of a writer than an actor. So, she’s safe.

After my Tony Award winning performance, Son continued to wallow in Poe bewilderment. He still didn’t comprehend the gist of the story. Again, I tried to explain and retell the story to him in words he could understand. I even offered to kill the other dog. Eventually, I gave up. I don’t know, Son, let’s ask the rotted corpse of Edgar Allan Poe. It was lying on the floor next to a stuffed Sponge Bob doll. "‘Gar", I asked, "can you please explain to the boy what The Tell Tale Heart is all about?" To which he replied, "I’m not sure, I was drunk when I wrote it. In fact, I don’t even remember writing it. Do you have any cheese?"

Son and I looked at each other for a moment. Then, simultaneously, we both bust out laughing, holding each other’s spleens. "Dad," he said, wiping a jovial tear from his eye, "I guess drunk people just write weird stuff sometimes." That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you for the past two hours! The important thing is that he finally got it, and he is now a big fan of Poe. It was one of the most satisfying moments of my dadhood. A feat right up there with the time ex-Mrs. Rub left me alone with the kids for the first time and neither of them died. To celebrate, I unhooked the two cans of beer from my über-dad utility belt and let my son watch me drink them. We hung Poe on a hanger and put him in the closet, in case either of us is ever required to read The Murders in the Rue Morgue or listen to the Iron Maiden song of the same name.

Spend a Day with Moist Rub

I awoke this morning to the sound of my daughter’s foot smacking me in the face. Maybe it wasn’t the sound of it as much as it was the slap I felt. She knows I get scared at night when it rains, so she sacrifices her comfortable solo slumber to sleep in my bed in order to soothe my fears. I believe she uses her body to keep time during the night, as she constantly rotates in bed like the second hand of a clock.

After hygienically preparing myself for a day’s exhibition, I entreated the boy to do the same. If I don’t instruct him to do this, he has no problem oozing his bodily effects on those who share the day with him. Come to think of it, I don’t have a problem doing that, either, if it didn’t make me feel so icky. Yes, I’m man enough to admit to an aversion to ickiness. By this time, the daughter had dressed, having showered the night before, and requested a hearty bowl of Fruit Loops for breakfast. I donned my chef’s hat and went to work in the kitchen, not only preparing breakfast, but three healthy lunches - peanut butter and jelly in a ziplock bag (no bread - I was out), beer nuts and a half eaten an apple split three ways. By the time I fed the dogs, ex-Mrs. Rub had arrived to take the kids to school, and I departed, with a breakfast of a single banana in hand.

Traffic was average as I switched partners on the radio dial dance floor - sports radio, Howard Stern, NPR and any tolerable music I could find. I heard nothing worth remembering. Before I knew it, I was at work; ten minutes late. My boss was happy to see that I was early.

As usual, I docked my laptop, unlocked my desk and braved my phone messages - all personal. That’s a good start. There is nothing worse than having a client or co-worker harassing you from the voice mail grave before you even have a chance to check your personal email or your fantasy football message boards, which I proceeded to do after I logged into the network . Some people are so inconsiderate. Normally, I like to spend about an hour and a half getting my personal chores out of the way before I delve into work, but today I had to conduct a training session at nine am regarding some new system magic we’re moving in at month end. My company has streamlined itself out of a training staff. Luckily, they chose me to fill the void.

I’m not much of a trainer. It’s not that I don’t have patience for ignorant people, I just don’t have patience for ignorant people. The only reason they are ignorant is because I hadn’t yet told them what not to be ignorant about. And, the only way I can unignorantate them is by putting up with their ignorance until I can train them, and I don’t have the patience for that. I don’t mind, for the most part, the actual presentation of the training. It’s the preparation that brains me. In order to train a group of people, or multiple groups of people, it helps to write down what you know in an organized, meaningful and comprehensive manner. Seeing that usually, by the time training is required, the programmer hasn’t finished programming and changing the design specifications to accommodate his incompetence, it’s difficult to be comprehensive. After the new programming is moved into production, I make it a habit to ask the programming staff, "So, how does it really work?" In the training session I’d rather give them the basics and let them figure out the rest, as in, "Hey, we have some new system functionality moving in this weekend. Let me know if you have any questions. I'll be on vacation next week." This is the way I’d prefer to train since it is also how I learn - give me the skeleton and I’ll figure out where the spleen goes. And, if I happen to connect the sigmoid colon to the lung, you can bet your reversed flow circulatory system I’ll learn to never do that again. The worst part of training people, especially people you work with, is some of them like to use training sessions as bitchfests for all the other stuff that is messed up in the workplace (which will soon include this new stuff I’m telling you about). They don’t realize that if the technology worked the way it was intended, the company wouldn’t need half the employees, and they’d probably get rid of the whiners first. They realize it now, because I told them that. In fact, that is how I now start all of my training sessions, and then I throw head cheese at them to keep them on their toes. The company might want to train me in tact.

After the training session, I was famished. Breakfast bananas aren’t as filling as they appear. I dragged my brittle body to the vending machine only to find a holocaustic sign affixed to it: Out of Order. First, a one and a half percent raise, and now this! And Mother Teresa thought she had it rough. Actually, I have no idea what Mother Teresa thought, although I assume, once in a while, she thought, "golly, I need to go to the bathroom". Which is what I was thinking, but not before running out to 7-11 to buy a Coke and two 99 cent bags of barbecued Jays potato chips. After scarfing them down, I really had to go to the bathroom to read Sid’s last installment of the new television season. I recommend reading Sid’s work in the bathroom. It’ll give you an entire new appreciation for his work, especially if you have one of those "loud" people sitting next to you. They’re not as bad as the "splashers". And, nothing’s worse than those few that seem like they’re bowling in there - look out. How did I get on the bathroom subject? Thanks a lot Mother Teresa!

To build a bridge to the oasis that is lunch, I fended off a vendor, two clients and a project manager by giving them portions of what they needed. I’ll finish them off later. Or maybe tomorrow. You can’t give people everything they want immediately. It’s like feeding a stray cat - it’ll keep them coming back for more and telling its friends and, all of a sudden, you’re running a tabby half-way house, and your dogs have hired a lawyer.

Finally, lunch - the only reason I go to work. It’s no different than high school. All morning you long for lunch, and when you get to it, you cling to it like a bag of peanut butter and jelly, beer nuts and a third of a half eaten apple. I spent my lunch hour and fifteen minutes parked at a park watching the Canadian Geese walk around as if they owned the place. These geese have no fear of unarmed, non-charging humans. They come up to your car looking for handouts. They are the vagrants of nature. I tell them I have no cash, only credit cards. Suspiciously, they waddle away. I don’t think these geese can tell by sight what is food and what is a rock. They’ll pick up just about anything in their bill. If it tastes good, they eat it. If not, they drop it so the next goose can do the same thing. They don’t like onions, that’s for sure.

I awoke from my lunchtime nap disoriented, but oriented enough to know I had to conduct another training session at 2:30. I raced back to the office, hurdled over some cubicle walls, trampled Agatha, our token octegenarian, and made it to the training room in time to turn on the projector before the first trainee arrived. I arrived in time because my next training session wasn’t until 2:30 - TOMORROW. I guess I was more disoriented than I thought. Skillfully, I waited a half hour before I figured it out. This was a valuable waste of time. The art of wasting time effectively is not covered in most time management tutorials. Maybe there’s a book opportunity there. I’ll do that later.

When I returned to my office, I retrieved a voice message from Larry. You know Larry, right? He asked me to call him back, so I did. He told me he’d stop by the office in the morning to drop off the disk with the test data on it. He couldn’t have told me that in the voice mail? He had to make me call him back? What about voice mail etiquette? If you have information to give somebody, leave it all on the voice mail. If you need to discuss the information with somebody, then, and only then, do you ask that person to call you back. It’s the first thing they teach you when you get a phone. I think he was just lonely. He’s a sensitive dude, that Larry. I hear he makes his own pillows out of lint.

To bide my time until the end of the work day, I consoled a programmer, mushed around a database, took a few walks around the office and helped my boss reset her AOL email password so her husband could no longer read her emails. (I don’t’ know what’s going on there, and I don’t want to know.) Just like Fred Flinstone at the sound of the time-to-go-home horn, I slid down my dinosaur and jumped into my car at 4:30.

The rain was a bastard today, a bastard that transformed my usual 40 minute drive into an hour long drive. But, I didn’t mind. Frank Black helped me along the way. He helped me so much, at one point I realized I wasn’t paying attention to the road and almost slid off a cliff, which surprised me since the nearest cliff to me is in the Isle of Wight. If you’ve never gotten lost in a Frank Black album, I recommend it. But use an older album. He’s become an emulsion in his work with the Catholics. It happens to most of us with age. I’m an emulsion of crushed spirit and societal badgering, as you can tell by this essay. But, I try to make it work for me.

When I arrived home I was greeted by the boy and ex-Mrs. Rub, who were hanging out waiting to pick up the daughter from CCD. For those non-believers out there, CCD is Catholic schooling for children lucky enough not to have to go to a Catholic school, but unlucky enough to have at least one parent believing the Catholic religion is an important myth to understand. I lost religion in the divorce. But, I got to keep my guitar. They were sheltering at my house since it is closer to the church than ex-Mrs. Rub’s abode is. She was nice enough to buy me a Quarter Pounder value meal for dinner. I think she’s trying to kill me slowly since she knows I haven’t taken her out of my will yet, and she’s looking forward to getting the hundred and twenty-nine dollars I have saved in my bank account. I guess I’ll start my diet tomorrow. I was also greeted by the sight of some torn up dry wall. The dogs were on a mouse hunting expedition today. It was only a temporary piece of dry wall I put up until I get around to redoing the entire wall. Does seven years count as temporary? Is there a statute of limitations on temporariness?

I cleaned up the dry wall mess, and the boy and ex-Mrs. Rub left. While preparing to continue writing one of the three blog articles I’ve been working on, I happened to catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. It’s easy to catch a glimpse of yourself when you stand naked in front of a full length mirror plucking the gray hairs from your body with your teeth (the chest hairs are killers). I’m not concerned with the appearance of the gray hairs. You don’t need to see those to tell I’m old - my pants pulled up over my bellybutton give that away. I don’t like they way they feel against my skin. They’re abrasive. I think gray hairs are made out of molted cat tongues. So, I noticed I’ve put on a little bit of weight over the past twenty years. I decided to positively procrastinate the writing by working out, which is something I hadn’t done for two months. Positive procrastination is how I accomplish most things in life. I play two or more tasks against one another, and choose the least arduous to execute, while avoiding the others. This works out well, since I am able to accomplish something, while still satisfying my blowing-off instinct. It took me about two hours to clear off the dirty clothes, unused sporting equipment, beer cans and hamburger wrappers from my weight bench. I was wiped out after that. I sat down to rest at my computer, and this essay was magically typed out on the screen. So I pasted it to Leper Pop. I think the dogs wrote it to get me to forgive them for destroying my wall. Now, I’ll go to bed and do it all again tomorrow. Groundhog Day, starring Bill Murray, was no joke.