Second Effort

Yesterday the wife and I had the . . . honor, I guess, of being part of the local community college’s career day/job fair. Not only was this weird because we are married and sat together talking to kids about our profession, but it was made completely pointless when we realized that the event was attended, mostly, by high school freshmen.

With the fair taking place at the comm college, Sara and I were treated to full-screen visages of each other’s fan bases. For Sara, it was middle-aged women, many of which work at the college or were in our position at the fair, pseudo academics who listen to her on the radio every morning or recognize her name from front page bylines in the TC.

For me, it was 14 year-olds who want their pictures in the sports section and refer to me as “the picture guy.”

Maddening.

Thankfully, there were some college students in attendance to make our time there somewhat worthwhile. But seven lines of shorthand notes I took should make it worthwhile for you, too.

Line 1- Vaseline Industry
I jotted this down because of a kid who stopped by seemingly just to tell us he had no interest in newspapers at all. But I know him from the tennis team and actually had him in mind a week or so ago when reading this post about a local friend’s craving for more gays in IF. Sadly, this young man the only person that sprang to mind and I thought I should introduce the two of them. Sara, of course, insisted I explain how I know that this kid is gay (right after he got through telling us he was looking to go into music or art as a profession). Listen, I’m not saying I can pick every gay guy out of a crowd, but when a certain confluence of circumstances come together, I think it is possible to notice a person is gay even if, on the odd chance, they don’t have semen gushing from their eyes. For this kid we have the following telltale signs: a prominent lisp, he plays for the tennis team, he is surrounded by fairly attractive high school girls, is wearing a tight pink T-shirt, and, as the most recently aquired evidence, he wants to go into art or music. My response to this was, “Sara, the only thing that could make him more gay was if he said he were going into the vaseline industry.”

Line 2- Flirt
One of the freshmen boys who hung around our table occasionally talking about track season and more regularly talking about how he should set up his own table with a sign that said, simply, Ladies Man. Admittedly, his sense of humor was not quite developed. But he did make one joke I found hilarious, and at my expense. Sara and I were trying to encourage these little turds to get involved with their yearbook class or student newspaper by telling them they would get to hang around with a lot of girls. Which is true. Then Sara volunteered, “That’s how we met.” It took a minute to process, but the kid then realized we were married and didn’t hesitate… “So why were you flirting with that girl at the meet the other day?” he said to me.

Line 3- Pimp/Ho
This came about when a scrubby looking little punk was walking around arm in arm with what you might guess was his 200 lb. freshman girlfriend. Until he switched off to another girl, and then another. Sara was confused by this, but I recognized this kid from my own high school days and he serves a very important purpose. He is the decent enough looking kid with absolutely no standards. He is the kid that doesn’t have any self esteem himself so he will give the fat girls with no self esteem all the loving they can handle. Usually more. He will end up being a teen father.

Line 4- Mid 90’s kid
As I am accustomed to the variety of appearances these kids are willing to put forth, I didn’t notice this kid right away and Sara had to point him out. He had a weird Flock of Seagulls haircut without the hairspray and supported instead by a bandana. He was wearing long Bermuda shorts of a red/pink variety with a long-sleeve gray T-shirt. When Sara pointed him out she said, something to the effect of,  “Geez, Kurt Cobain died like 15 years ago.”

Line 5- Online Private College
We knew this woman was destined for disaster when she walked through the door. She took more than the allotted half an hour to set up her display while Sara and I plopped down a pile of newspapers and went to town on the free juice and cinnamon rolls. Worse yet, she was representing the University of Pheonix, one of the biggest online jokes in the free world. This is the site where you pay to take online classes to get a “degree” through the mail. I noticed several kids I know, one of whom had asked Sara and I if Ellsworth had a class to teach him to blow things up with his mind, relentlessly giving this woman a hard time. I felt bad for her and pointed it out to Sara. Her response: “She works for an online private college, she deserves it.”

Line 6- Sharp Devil Teeth
There was a girl there with sharp devil teeth. We thought this was hilarious at the time.

Line 7- Sara stretches seductively- cinnamon roll
There were several what I would call student ambassadors (that’s what they were called at UNI . . . ambassadors or Panther Nazis) who helped to oversee the event. We both noticed at one point when two of them walked by and seemed to be really getting an eyeful of my lovely bride. While she happened to be pounding a quarterpound cinnamon roll down her throat. She made up for this later by stretching and thrusting her heaving bosom in their general direction. At which point semen gushed from their eye sockets.

I’ve had several topics, most of them short but sweet, that I’ve been dying to purge since last weekend. Most notably, I think, was the one that occurred in the middle of the night in the wee hours of Sunday morning.

Sara and I had driven down to Cedar Rapids early Saturday morning for a couple reasons. First, we hadn’t spent a weekend there since Christmas. Second, I needed to be in town on Sunday to help my sister move out of her apartment on Sunday into a new apartment that made me jealous. The apartment was both awesome and didn’t contain a deadbeat boyfriend or little dog that pissed on everything in sight, like her previous dwelling. Third, I had a professional meeting of sorts at which I was given the opportunity to be the editor of a small weekly newspaper. We can get back to that.

After attending my meeting in Marion, I walked across the street to visit a friend’s mother and look for cool shit in her art gallery. Alas, I found plenty of cool shit but could afford none of it. After meeting back up with the wife and in-laws, we went to Iowa City for an amazing lunch  including the best goddamn crab cake sandwich in the midwest. You may think that isn’t saying much, but I just creamed my jeans thinking about it. I also stopped by John’s to restock my fridge.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, but culminated in a nice dinner at the Radkon’s and me kicking Sara’s ass in a game of Scrabble. That brings us to 1:30 in the morning, me thoroughly crashed in my undies (thankfully) when I wake up to a screeching sound and my mom in-law scurrying into our room. When it happened, I didn’t wake up and Sara simply didn’t know what to do. the wife was just running around like a decapitated chicken and I can only assume I continued to snore.

It seems the carbon monoxide alarm was sounding…loudly…with a digital display that read only one word:

GAS!

The Radkons say I had my bag and clothes stacked too close to the device. I know better. I had so thoroughly blasted that small room with methane that, with doors and windows shut and little need for circulation from the furnace on a warm night, it had officially become hazardous to our health.

I nearly farted my wife and I to death.

The only thing I can add is this, quite sincerely, is a great source of pride to me.

Aside from taking a tailgate to the balls, the move wasn’t especially noteworthy. Got to spend an afternoon with the Ski clan, had some Wendy’s value-menu food to reload for the drive home and spent the rest of the week sore from carrying my sister’s shit up three flights of stairs.

Other happenings this week included the following voicemail message from my uncle Brian:

(Note…Must be read with thick Minnesota accent)

LT (I am still “Little Tony” to he and most others in my family. To a select few, I am known as “Fuckstick”), hey its the Texas connection here, man. Sorry I missed your call, we were outside puttsin’. No we weren’t at the saloon or Billy Bob’s or anything exciting. Gotta take Monday night off after a big weekend, kinda my routine test of sobriety on Monday night. One tidbit of information in case I don’t connect with you. Yesterday we went to the horse races, big thing here in Texas, right? And I bet on you; I bet on a horse call Drunken Nephew. And it… freakin’… crashed. I don’t even know if it made it across the finish line. Good thing I only bet two dollars.

That was a bit of levity I needed this week while contemplating my future. Yeah, getting back to that job thing, I had to take a pass. While it was a good chance to go in a different direction career-wise and get closer to a city I love, I just couldn’t get excited about working even more hours than I do now, not to mention the headache of dealing with the idiots on school boards and city councils that have my wife constantly walking the tightrope that is sanity. Still waiting for ESPN to call, I guess.

Finally on this fine Friday, Sara and I will be headed to Des Moines for the evening for what I’m sure will be more blog-worthy food. Uncle Drake and Aunt Cathy are hosting us for a dinner that prompted this e-mail…

YEAH – TOMORROW NIGHT WOULD BE COOL, I WILL FIGURE OUT SOMETHING COOL TO DO WITH SPAM AND PICK UP A FRESH BOTTLE OF MUSCATEL (NOT SURE IF I SPELLED THAT RIGHT).   HAVE ANYTHING IN PARTICULAR YOU WOULD LIKE ME TO DO?
FRIED SPAM?
BOILED SPAM?
SPAM ON A STICK OR IN A CUP?
GRILLED SPAM?
POACHED SPAM?
BROILED SPAM?
FONDUED SPAM?
SPAM TAR-TAR?
PICKLED SPAM?

YOU PICK,  I AM A WIZARD WITH THAT SHIT.

SO, IT IS A GO THEN?  – CATHY WILL WET HERSELF WHEN SHE THINKS SHE CAN VACUUM WITH PURPOSE.

I asked for broasted spam. Does anybdy know what the fuck broasted actually means? Drake uses ALL CAPS because he is old and can’t see. feel free to mock him in the comments section. Or suggest another way to cook us up some SPAM!

I don’t have a lot of commentary for this post other than to point out the following quotes from this news story:

Witnesses described how the flaming chorizo sausage dish burnt out of control when a waiter topped it up with rum at a table packed with people.
At this point burning liquid escaped and spilled over the victim. One friend said it looked like a “big ball of fire”.
She has also suffered from flash-backs, panic attacks, anxiety and depression.

When you see the scarring, you can’t help but feel for the woman and I can totally relate to sausage-inspired depression. But flashbacks? The question I have to ask myself is, if this were to happen to me, would I develop a phobia of rum, sausage or fire?

One of life’s great questions.

Two posts in the span of an hour? It’s true, and a product of having no pointless tennis meets to write about. Why, you ask? Well, here’s the view out my office window.

The weather of the last two weeks, including today’s snow, has pretty much fucked up my working life. The worst part is right now I just sit and look out the window or stare the other direction at my computer knowing that because of all these postponements, the next month is going to absolutely fucking blow goats. Two months of spring sports will be crammed into one and I will spend every night of the week being pelted by tennis balls, watching kids trip over hurdles and miss three-foot putts.

But in the meantime, the view of my pubicle brings a smile to my face. You can see why:

Spur of the moment post. Sara just pointed out this link to me, one that has a recipe on how to build a three-layer meat cake with mashed taters for frosting and gravy betwixt each layer.

It sounds delicious and looks deliciouser, but it reminded me of some college hijinks.

As a pair of friends, Dirrty and Hammer, prepared to celebrate their 21st brithdays at the same party, a few of us got together at our friend Dal’s apartment. I should note, I have never actually known Dal, Dirrty or Hammer’s real names. Dal’s apartment was chosen for the strategic reason that it had the only kitchen hygenic enough in which to bake a cake. Ours was infested with fruit flies that we tried to kill be leaving bottles of Black Velvet open in several corners of the room. Not that it especially mattered for this project.

We made two giant yellow sheet cakes died with red food coloring and hollowed out a hole in the middle of the two layers for our secret ingredient. After finishing off the cake with black frosting and an inscription that read, “Dirrty and Hammer, two hearts as one.”

You see where this is going?

It was a kegger, so the hideous cake wasn’t exactly popular, but about an hour later someone was trying to saw off a bite when their knife hit paydirt.

A raw, fresh cow heart in the middle of the cake. I’ve had a hand in inducing a lot of vomit in my life, but it was never so satisfying as that night.

I have pictures of the cake, but can’t scan them at work. Here’s a meatcake gallery for your enjoyment.

I’m not pinning blame on anyone,  but the decline in the frequency of regular posts on some of my favorite blogs, I think, led directly to my recent two year hiatus from even semi-regular posting of my own. To avoid that kind of dry spell again, I am trying to build a new blogosphere (a word I despise and will never use again) for myself.

The old bag has really taken to the blog world in recent months and has built a decent list that she frequents. You already see Dooce on my blogroll, a site that Sara discovered and has me completely hooked. Not only is the married mother of one and “recovering Mormon” a good writer, but I’m enamored with the things she’s able to do with her site. You’ll notice the banner right away, which she managed to change and top every single month, but she is a brilliant photog and has found a way to make a good living off this shit.

Sara has had another site linked for quite some time, one that I always recognized as good, but hadn’t really sunk its teeth into me yet. Until today, when I came upon this post and started perusing her archives. This girl is hilarious and she came up with an original and intriguing theme for her blog.

But that post also got me thinking. I haven’t actually watched any of the Dateline NBC “exposés” except one that I stopped on briefly that they referred to as the greatest hits. It featured catching the same guy for the second time and one guy that was actually telling “undercover host” Chris Hansen about how you have to be careful of Dateline if you’re going to be an online perv these days . . . right before being arrested. It was funny and quite entertaining. And while I agree with ToWhom that Dateline has taken this a bit too far, it was this comment that had me perplexed:

“I don’t know what makes me more upset – that you keep showing the same show over and over with different alleged offenders, or that it seems like there is an endless supply of offenders.”

I mean, I couldn’t be less surprised that there is an endless supply of dudes who want to poke 15 year-olds. In fact, every guy wants to poke a 15 year old of one sex or the other, most of us just realize that we are inherently disgusting and aren’t ever supposed to ever admit it.

Let me be clear, these guys are absolutely in the wrong, and for a couple different reasons. First, they shouldn’t actually be pursuing minors on the internet because its against the law and freaky. Second, they shouldn’t be so optimistic as to expect to find a chick who isn’t going to be waiting with a pair of handcuffs, sans velvet lining. In other words, the guys you see chatting it up with Hansen are not only warped, but really fucking stupid.

Still, I can’t help but have a bleeding-heart, blue-balled male response to the show that has me feeling sorry for them whilst I laugh uncontrollably. I mean, we’ve all been really desperate to touch a boobie or two. I can think of a few that I wish I hadn’t touched. Like this one girl from the Hawkeye swim team my first month at college. I thank jesus every day that I couldn’t figure out her belt in the dark and passed out from too much vodka and Ruby Red Squirt.

So now that I’ve treaded dangerously close to alienating most of my audience, let me just say that the purpose of this post was, initially, to point a couple of my regular faves and new links. Obviously, To Whom it May Concern has been added. Soon to make the cut are Nick the Traveller, composed by Sara’s cousin who is seemingly on a perpetual vacation, and Eye Run, a blog I will claim as a direct result of my inspiration.

What? It’s not that hard to believe.