Dear Sharon Osborne,

Happy Average Birthday To Me

June 27th! The most special of all days, the day before my actual birthday and the day after what Lizett believes to be my actual birthday. She got me Firefly: The Complete Series, two tubes of lip balm, and Special Birthday Sex which consisted of a peck on the cheek in addition to our standard light palm rubbing. Baby it blew my mind.

You were a foolish fool to laugh at Mal's suspenders

Gloriously enough, I sort of get tomorrow and Friday off because the other guys in my office are going to a conference in Canadia. Driving in to sit alone in a dark, windowless office is too depressing for me to contemplate, so I think I'll just stay home in my underoos gnawing on the various blocks of cheese piling up in our fridge. We do love cheese.

Liotta-bot-narc-sac-box...dar

I had a horrible nightmare last night where Robot Ray Liotta and his robot cronies kept killing me and various people I know at Threesome's Putt Putt Golf & Games. Either I too was a robot or I was stuck in some sort of time loop because every time they killed me, I'd be back to the beginning again. The only way to even get a head start on the Liotta-bots was to sink a hole-in-one, known as a Threesome, I think because if I managed to do that only Ray and two cronie-bots would chase me down the steps, and then if I got away from them there'd be a new robot threesome shooting at me on every successive floor. It was a winding staircase and the only way to beat the bullets was to just jump down the middle, and then I'd break my legs. If I managed to get outside to the ally, they'd inevitably blow up my car--the Ford POS from Men In Black--before I got in. It sounds ludicrous but it was freaking scary and I apparently whipped around and kicked Lizett right in the ass at 3:30 in the morning. She was pissed. Real pissed.

There Is Two Of Them?

Are you kidding me? From IGN:

June 15, 2007 - When Scrubs producer Bill Lawrence killed off supporting character Nurse Roberts, he told the actress who plays her that he would find a way for her to return if the show got another season. According to Variety, Lawrence is proving to be a man of his word and he will be bringing Aloma Wright back to the show in its seventh season. She will play Nurse Roberts' twin sister Shirley, who is not only an alcoholic, but holds none of the deep religious beliefs of her sister.

Worst. Season. Ever.

Bandidas

It was with high hopes and erect nipples that I sat down with Lizett to watch Bandidas. Just look at this DVD cover:

Can you fathom a world, based on the available information, in which this is not going to be a mind-blowing experience? Salma Hayek...and Penélope Cruz...as turn-of-the-century Mexican bank robbers.

Their entire function in the movie is to be hot, have hilariously thick accents, and whoop ass--which they did. And I'm no Steve Zahn expert, but based on Sahara and Saving Silverman alone I must conclude that the man is hilarious, and he did just fine too. The main villain was was none other than Dwight Yoakam, who in addition to being a graduate of my own alma mater, Northland High School, had a SWEET villain moustache which on its own merit should have made the movie. And finally, it had a horse climbing a ladder.

It sucked though. It sucked more than 1,000 Dysons running over 1,000 lint covered oriental rugs at 15,000 feet when there is a sudden loss of cabin pressure and everything is sucked out of the plane. And not like Walking Tall 2 sucked. I enjoy a bad movie as much as anyone, probably much more. I love to mock their sucktitude. I've seen Wing Commander 4 times! But with Bandidas, there was simply nothing to mock. None of the characters were in any way believable as human beings. They were pod people, and I hate them.

You had everything, Joachim Roenning, and you threw it all away. God save you if your junk ever comes within range of my foot.

Four "Beers"

I recently switched over to non-alcoholic beer because I kept punching cops and I have no desire to find out the hard way that I'm too pretty for jail. Which reminds me, the first time I ever visited Lizett we were strolling down 6th Street and this drunk idiot was brawling it up with like 8 or 9 cops. It was surreal. There was no crowd gathering, just people going about their business as some chump got destroyed in the middle of the street. How wasted do you have to be to think it's a good idea to fight off 8 or 9 cops all by your lonesome? Anyway, I've been sampling non-alcoholic alternatives to my favorite frosty brews--here are my findings:

Kaliber

From the makers of Guinness. The lice hate the sugar--it's delicious. I wish it were winter so I could freeze it into ice blocks and skate on it...and melt it in the springtime and drink it! I could switch to this exclusively. It goes down ridiculously smooth, with a light, malty/coffee aftertaste, kind of like a cross between BrewCo Founder's Stout and Belhaven St. Andrew's Ale, which Me-aficionados may recognize as my favorite brew of all time. In fact, it's kind of like a bad St. Andrew's clone, which is like saying some chick looks kind of like Salma Hayek. Not the real thing, but she's still way hotter than everyone else around.

Coors

Coors Light has been my standby beer since that fateful day we first brought Frosty into our lives. Sure, there was idle talk of somehow locating a keg of Highlife and popping it in for old times sake, but every time we went to Belmont somehow we'd come home with our standard. From the pitchers at Senior Bar/Coaches to the Big Dawgs at Chili's to Thursday night Corby's, I have railed against mainstream opinion that Coors Light is only slightly better than juice squeezed from a can of sixty year old cat food and left to fester 6 hours in the sun, and I'm proud to say that Coors Non-Alcoholic does not disappoint. It has a stronger flavor than Coors light (similar to Budweiser), with a slightly less pleasant aftertaste (similar to Miller Lite), but overall I could drink it every day with no complaints. I have a new bulk beer.

Beck's

This is where things start to get a little ugly. I believe I've had Beck's standard, but I'm not really familiar enough with it to remember if I particularly liked it. The non-alcoholic version is still drinkable, but it's more of a I'll Finish These Off Because There's Five Left In The Fridge situation than anything else. Going down it just tastes like a moderate german beer, which is to say more "beery" than any mainstream domestics--and that's a plus--but then the aftertaste can only be described as swampy. Like you just licked a frog or something. I have never licked a frog myself, but if I did and it tasted like the trail-end of Beck's Non-Alcoholic, I would not even be mildly surprised. Then I would vomit.

O'Douls

It is a complete mystery to me how this became the only non-alcoholic beer widely available in restaurants. There is simply no excuse for this to enjoy the popularity that it does. It's like a weak version of Natty Light. Going down it's just carbonated water, with a light LIGHT LIGHT beer aftertaste on the trail end. I have recently learned of the existence of O'Douls Amber, so I'll give that a shot before forever damning the brewer to hell for forcing me to drink this flavorless abomination in popular chain restaurants, but my hopes are not high. Why order it all all? No other options--and there really is nothing like a tall beer with your steak. And I eat a lot of steak.

Five Things I Want To Buy

There was a time, long ago before I started dating Lizett, that I lived like a king. I had a job that paid too much for too little work and virtually no expenses. I bought 5 iPods. I ate out every night. Sometimes I'd withdrawal thousands of dollars in ones and roll around like a dog.

It's over. I have left a privately funded school and gone public. I have abandoned Mothball subsidized rent for a Big Boy apartment. I have to buy gas. Lizett consumes $950 each week in meat products alone. In short, I can no longer simply spend as if the money will never run out. Here are the ways in which I would buy happiness if I could:

Apple iPhone

Don't tell me this isn't going to live up to the hype. I myself am a bit skeptical of the touch screen keyboard, but in my opinion there is virtually no chance of this thing getting anything less than stellar reviews and widespread adoption. Smart phones are already well established as being indispensably awesome, and apple never fails to blow minds. I would hunt and consume an adorable kitten for the google maps integration alone.

Digital Piano

I played the piano for years growing up, and although I was never nearly so good as I was on the Euph, I wasn't terrible. I tried to fiddle around a little while I was in NC for Babyfest, and it was pretty embarrassing. I can still sight read well enough, and my fingers know where to go, I just can't do it with reasonable speed or coordination. I'd like to get back into it because, unlike the Euph or any of the other brass I've picked up over the years, you can sit down and start playing piano wherever pianos are found.

LCD HDTV

We actually already have an HDTV. Lizett bought an Insignia CRT which has pretty much the best picture quality one can get. In fact, being a 4:3 CRT, for the vast majority of available programming it's probably much more watchable than what I would upgrade to. Still, it's not huge and it's not flat. Why do I care if it's flat? Because. And at 27", that's bumped down to like...24" (?) in 16:9--after living with Mothballvision, there really is no substitute for the 4x life-size pockmarked face of Edward James Olmos.

Wrinkle Free Shirts

As I type I am wearing a blue and white striped wrinkle free button-up that was originally intended to be a birthday present for my father. The sleeves are way too short so I've got to roll them up, but this is pretty much the only button-up I wear anymore because I am too lazy to iron and this is the extent of my wrinkle free selections. After working in the dome for 3+ years, the rest of my wardrobe consists almost entirely of solid button-ups and polos, but since moving to Austin I've grown lazy and have busted out the iron exactly zero times. I don't love looking like slob, however, so some new hassle free gear would be huge. Also I'd love it if my sleeves reached my hands. 15 1/2 35-36.

MacBook

Two Apple products on one five-item list? Suck it, I'm a MacHead. Further, I am a computer guy without a computer. It's embarrassing. I sold my own machine years ago to help finance ring #1, and have been fortunate enough to blunder into work-issued PowerBook G4s since that time. My current state-issued machine, however, is old, clunky, slow, lasts about 20 minutes on battery power and, I swear, appears to have been chewed on by someone's dog. The new MacBooks are cheap, sleek, light, Core 2 Duo, and can run OSX and Windows in parallel--genuinely, I cannot fathom why anyone would buy another machine.

Bonus item: Krispy Kremes. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

My Eyes! The Goggles Do Nothing! II

Though popularized by Rainier Wolfcastle, to me that line will always be singularly Mothball's. Carrey's Oh Billy? Mothball's. Farley's Let's drink some beers? Mothball's. Myers' ERRRMM, I love you son? Mothball's. Lizett's I love you Billy? Frosty's. To get back to the point, my eyes are meeeeeeessed up. I don't know if I scratched my cornea, or have an eye infection, or if Lizett stabbed me in the eye as a practical joke, but I was driving to work Monday morning and out of nowhere, BAM! Keeping my eyes open was abruptly no longer an option.

Being the pale, fair haired, blue eyed MacDaddy/DaddyMac that I am, I've always been abnormally sensitive to light, but normally I can sunglass/car shade/squint my way through it. Not so Monday. I could barely keep my right eye open enough to pull off the road, my left eye was sealed shut, tears were streaming down both sides of my face, and though I was in the car alone I swear I heard someone screaming like a woman. It was glorious. What could I do? I was already halfway to work. I covered up old lefty with my hand, screamed YAAAAARRR! and tally-ho'd it the rest of the way to the sweet release of my conveniently unlit office.

Even my desk lamp was too much. I turned it off, cranked my monitor brightness down to minimum, and then quietly resolved not to go see a doctor about this. Don't worry mom, I will if it persists. It's been getting steadily better since. I managed to drive to work this morning without any sun-induced weeping at all! I cried a little when I saw litter on the highway. And then again when Lizett shattered all my windows with a maglite as a practical joke. And when the media started covering the media's over-coverage of Paris Hilton. If any news outlet so much as hints at covering the media's over-coverage of the media's over-coverage of Paris Hilton, I...I don't know what I'll do. I don't.

Babyfest 2007

I flew down to North Carolina this weekend for my nephew Andrew's baptism. I've got to see him while I can, because being unbaptized myself, we're going to be spending eternity in entirely different places. Thanks, mom. The whole fam went down for the occasion, and of course the entire function of the adult family members is now to ooh and ahh over the babies. There was a lot of cuteness going on.

Andrew has got to be the most placid baby ever. I barely heard him cry all weekend, and when he did it was just ridiculously cute because his I'm-Sad face is exactly the face an adult would make trying to ridiculously overact a caricature of a sad baby. Claire is pretty placid too, only 600,000 pounds heavier. She's a perfect sphere. If her face weren't so adorable it'd be impossible to determine her spatial orientation. She enjoys breast milk, long walks on the beach, and having her tummy eaten.

Gwen and Natalie together was pretty awesome. The first day was pretty calm, just two toddlers playing together in mind-blowingly adorable ways. Day 2: Thunderdome. Two babies enter, one baby leaves. Then the other baby leaves, but without some coveted toy. These clashes were like nothing I can describe. There exists no amount of italics, capitalizations, font sizes, and bolds to accurately represent the high-pitched mess of screams and shrieks coming from the melee. Did anyone ever play the old Archon, where the banshee's scream would kill anyone foolish enough to blunder into range? It was like that without the sweet release of death. I'd write about all the cute things they did too but now I've just distracted myself reminiscing about the awesomeness of Archon. BONG:

Crazy Mexican Update Tres

I've received independent confirmation from multiple anonymous sources that Lizett is, in fact, batshit insane. No word on the number of people living above us.

Today I Am A Man

Lizett and I are going to start trying for a baby. Holy crap wouldn't that be the most glorious 180 of all time? We've decided that despite the fact that we're not married and have no immediate plans to become so, Lizett is still in school, and I have insufficient income to start a family, I am nevertheless officially ready for fatherhood now that I've got a Louisville Slugger under our bed. It's such a quintessential dad thing to have. As much as I'd love to fantasize that my two large, soft, hairless fists are a sufficient defense against whatever may come our way, I'm not sure me getting my ass kicked is Lizett's best option for protection against another home intruder. So I have--

Haha! I just got a call from a detective (they assign detectives to home break-ins?) at APD and he goes "Stephen? You're not going to believe this but my key works in your lock too!" Then just before my head exploded he says "Heh, kidding! Seriously though, what's going on?" Sweet Mary I just got Gotcha'd by the Austin Police.

--so I have piggybacked onto the ranks of generations of Concerned Dads and purchased a large hunk of Whompin' Stick at my local Sports Authority. My plan, should anyone break in again, is to hand it to Lizett and have her crack me over the head so I don't have to go through the shame of soiling myself while conscious. Good luck with the Bad Man, I'll say--and then the supple, comforting bosom of oblivion. That's love.

Crazy Mexican Update Dos

It has recently been suggested, and the movement is gaining a foothold, that there are NOT, in fact, 16 Mexicans living above us--that all the guys walking by who I assumed were the same two people actually are the same two people. This, of course, would mean Lizett is batshit insane. Updates as the story develops.

So Long, Suckers!

I couldn't ask for too much more from our apartment management. Not only are they evicting the Chumpersons, they are relocating us to a new unit elsewhere in the complex to forestall any fear of reprisal for the outrageous offense of reporting the crime. I guess the manager talked to the "boy" as she called him, and the convo essentially went:

Manager: Did you enter another apartment through a locked door?
Boy: Yeah, my own key worked.
Manager: That's impossible.
Boy: Oh...then it was unlocked.
Manager: You already said it was locked.
Boy: He tried to punch my son!

Which is fair, because it's obvious to anyone who knows me that I respond to pretty much every situation by punching a 3 year old child in the face. Desperation is a stinky cologne, friend.

911 Lady Yelled At Me!

We decided to call the police on Friday just so later no one could say "Well why didn't you call the police?" It wasn't exactly an emergency situation so we just called our local department and left a message. They called back today and gave me a number I could call to file a report, and for some reason those people transferred me to 911, and let me tell you the 911 dispatcher was NOT happy.

Lady: 911 are you in an emergency?
Me: No, I'd like to file a police report. 311 transferred me.
Lady: Alright sir and what happened?
Me: Someone came into my apartment. Door was locked.
Lady: And when did this happen sir?
Me: Friday night, 7, 7:30.
Lady: <irritated> Sir why did you wait this long to call??
Me: I called our local police station that night, they just got back to me today.
Lady: <enraged> You don't DO that sir, someone breaks in, you call US!
Me: Well I didn't think it was an emergency, we know the guy, he's our neighbor.
Lady: <fuming> I don't care WHO it was, that happens again, you call 911!

Ahh!! Why are you yelling at me!! I'm getting very tense!! Anyway, the report is filed. Apparently it counts as a home burglary even though nothing was taken because he broke in. Lizett talked to one of the cops from the local department and he said nothing would come of it because we can't prove he came in intentionally (his story is that he thought it was his apartment and his own key worked; management says that's impossible...comforting) but at least it's documented, so now...something.

In better news, I'm all decked out in my new monkey outfit today, which is awesome. My shirt says "It's Hard Out There For A Chimp" and it has a picture of a wizened old chimpanzee with deep knowledge and sadness in his eyes. My underoos have a picture of an angry gorilla on the front with the words "Its Monkey Time" [sic] emblazoned across the derriere. As a primate enthusiast this offends me--a gorilla is a great ape, not a monkey--but as a lover of monkeys I'm just flat out PUMPED about how freaking HARD my boxers rock. If anyone caught the irony that I called it a monkey outfit and chimps aren't monkeys either, you're a huge nerd. I'm looking at you, Haines'.

Do You Smell. What The Rock. IS COOKING??

Stinks like sex in here.

Crazy Mexican Update

Oh God, one of them just broke into our place. Okay, more strolled in. WHY DO THE CRAZY MEXICANS HAVE THE KEY TO OUR PLACE?? For reals. I heard the door unlock, he strolls in. He started walking down the hall for the bedroom. I made a noise from the living room and he turns around and goes "Oh...sorry man" and leaves. Didn't give the key back, didn't explain himself, just skipped off to his car and drove into the distance.

I feel like I should have a chat with this fine gentleman, but I also don't want to get stabbed, so I think I'll just let the apartment management deal with it tomorrow. On the plus side, breaking and entering has GOT to be grounds for eviction. Adios, amigos!