It's over.

Kind of.  But after a contentious meeting at Jamba Juice, a deal has been struck. 

I think that's all I should say.  That's part of the deal. 

And I should also say that the Internet rocks.  Screwing consumers usually gets you a promotion.  NOT THIS TIME BEEEEEYAAATCH!

Done.   

"oh, what's that?  somebody find something funny on The Google?  hmm.  you don't say."

fin mofo

Could someone get me a hammer?  I just dropped mine. 

fin 

The Best Mexican Food You'll Ever Eat is at a Recently Foreclosed House in Aurora

So badly I wanted to turn my head and see if Sarah was following the priest's chanting.  Granted it was in Spanish and Sarah didn't grow up Catholic, but as a kid she went to a few church camps and I thought it might be one of those universal religious mantras sung around the campfire.  Later she would tell me she was like me, looking around the room making sure she wasn't the only one not following the very serious priest in the blessing of her coworker's new home.  At first I tried, but my translation went something like "spanish spanish spanish house spanish spanish spanish house spanish god house spanish.  Amen"  That's all I got.  And to add a degree of difficulty, the Catholics include a lot of arm movement.  Like an idiot my body went ahead without my brain and everybody else moving had me trying to keep up, but I caught myself before the priest could look up and see the white guy doing the YMCA. 

It was a good party.  Sarah and I sitting with the hostess and her family reminded me of a picture from a middle school text book.  And the food...sweet loving lord...the food was amazing.  I ate some kind of grilled steak that was like moist beef jerky.  It was a meat Roll Up and I could have downed it by the square yard.  There were enchiladas, and tortas and burritos and a salad made of cactus--which had me suspicious that "cactus" was Mexican slang for "Gringo Burner" and like the 1993 News Year's Eve party that had me shoving dirt in my mouth to endure what the Puerto Penasco locals called "Little Friend", I'd have to chug the priest's holy water to keep my tongue from melting.  But I think it really was cactus and Sarah said it was good. 

The secret to real honest-to-god Mexican food is lots of frying.  There's less oil at a Jiffy Lube.  And it's wonderful.  The fat, the sodium, the man of god there to help you cross over, it's all designed for maximum pleasure.  You can see why the Siesta is such an important tradition.  After a typical lunch at Subway you might feel a little sluggish, but in Mexico when you've just had a meatsicle, a salt lick and a handful of lard you can't do anything but lie still and pray for your ventricles. 

So thank you Ana and family for the food.  Unlike the crap I typically eat, it makes paying for a bypass totally worth it.  

Teleconference of the Self-Employed

It was a Wednesday at about 11am and I was sitting in my holio (the new shedio but in the basement instead of the shed) and trying to think of someone to call.  I'd earned it, I thought.  Wednesday's are tough days.  Without any specific chore on the schedule, they're wide open mine fields of distraction.  But I'd already accomplished one thing and felt confident in my right to kill some time.  And I'm always hoping whomever is lucky enough to get their digits dialed will say something, I'm not sure what, but something to calibrate my focus and inspire a new, more diligent me.  Rarely do they say the perfect thing, whatever that is.

So I was about to call my wife--who's thankfully at a job--and run past her what I had been doing, and what I thought about doing, and see if she could dissuade me from any of it.   

As I was about to touch tone her extension, in came a second call from my friend, Jason.  He's my good looking, single, idealistic, friend who stands alone against the tide of weddings and babies, yet he's turned his temptation island into a bog of regret and consequence, always letting his personal philosophies and good, moral upbringing get in the way of getting laid.   From atop my mountain of diapers, property deeds and joint tax returns, it's a very hard thing to watch. 

"Hello," I greeted my college buddy.  He also works from home and is on the verge of revealing his much-talked-about website to the public.  

"What's going on?" spoke the now-faded international accent of a man who's far removed from his European childhood.  (Something I'd totally unleash on the babes..."perdoname, senorita--er, exuse me--I speak so many languages I don't know which one is appropriate to ask if you want a drink...")

"Nothing.  You?" Exhaling boredom and frustration about the room.

"Well," he said with a tone that had me sitting up straight awaiting his brainstorm of exactly what I'm supposed to do.

He continued.  "Did you know daddy long-leggers eat other spiders."

I slumped into a "really?"

"Yah, I've been watching them all day, and now I'm wondering if I keep them to get rid of other nasty spiders, or get rid of them because being so well fed they'll eventually breed and I'll have thousands of them crawling all over the place?"

We discussed this at length.  One option was to build for them a little home outside his Oakland apartment.  It seemed a sensible compromise between stomping on them, or the more humane Kleenex squish, and letting them stay.

Jason wasn't sure because he really liked them eating the other, more nasty spiders.  

Fine.  It was agreed.  The daddy long-leggers should stay.  And that he should start a blog about their most interesting life cycle.   

Update on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at 11:37AM by ewy

Man vs Beast

Will opposable thumbs spell defeat for the fierce creature?

To the victor go the spoils! 

And some cheap inoculations.

Pics courtesy of Uncle Daniel and Aunt Ruth Anne.  Special thanks to Zack, the dog-like thing, for his incredible patience.
 

Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay $$$$

Kal Penn and John Cho are back. I love these guys. When I worked at KOSI 101 here in Denver I'd get all kinds of interview opportunities, but many of them weren't suitable to air between Michael Bolton and Amy Grant, so while Cher crooned her love pains, I recorded interviews on an office phone down the hall. You can hear the speaker phone awkwardness.

Their first movie, dedicated to the pursuit of weed and Whitecastle hamburgers, became an instant classic in our household, and we don't even smoke pot. I think it would be better if we did. It's not brilliant humor, but Cho and Penn are very good at just having fun on screen. Like two Seinfelds they smirk their way through lame jokes and off-color references, and in removing any air of actual effort, let the audience know it's OK to turn off their brain and giggle a little.

In this movie, while on their way to Amsterdam, Kumar's smokeless bong is mistaken for a bomb and the two are taken as suspected terrorists to Guantanamo Bay. From there they escape a most awful fate, and the story bounces from bottomless nudity, to racial stereotyping, to a very fine, poetic finish.

Beware: It begins with some stupid gross-out humor. Is a focus group of 9-year-olds running Hollywood?

Who Will Like This: Those who eagerly await 4:20, and the friends who laugh at them.

Secret to Better Enjoyment: Neil Patrick Harris. No one is cooler than NPH.

A sixer of long necks is about right...

After that he becomes an angry drunk. 

Mr. Mobile

We'd been looking for him for days.  

I also found my favorite pen!