We have a room where dwells five chinchillas. They are messy as hell. They throw their bedding around and strew their room with turds. The sheer quantity of which astounds me. There are turds 6 feet fron the nearest cage. It is a health hazard. So every Sunday I do a perfuntory vaccuum job in there. I don't even try to get it all up. It's like I've decided there is an acceptable level of chinchilla shit in that room. This is in sharp contrast to the rest of my house, which is dust-free to the max. Each week I dust every surface and vaccuum every nook and cranny. I wipe the baseboards. I also marraud through the house armed with a plethora of germ-fighting sprays. I eliminate stains on the carpet and in the toilet bowls. I scrub the tub clean of our week's worth of bodily grime. I battle nature.

Today it snowed so my wife will trudge out to the driveway with her snow shovel. She'll shovel the driveway and our strip of sidewalk. She's battling nature.

In the Fall leaves fall on the lawn. We make it a family affair, me with the leaf blower and the wife and kid with the old-fashioned rakes. Their rakes actually work better, but like many men I prefer the more complicated power tool approach.

Throughout the Summer our grass grows. My wife and I take turns mowing it each week. There's one family on my block that doesn't mow. Neighbors resent them for it. The other day I chanced to see the couple. Both were in wheelchairs. I resolved to mow their grass next Summer. Not out of pity or largess, but because it is a messy eyesore that might attract vermin.

Vermin are merely animals we've deemed undesirable, unlike dogs, cats, canaries and chinchillas. Iguanas can be pets too. I have one. But in Florida they are considered more pests than anything else. I'd venture that nobody decides to solve their rat or cockroach infestation by declaring the varmints pets. Just as you can't solve your weed problem by calling the weeds desirable plants.

When I first moved to the suburbs a neighbor sauntered up to me and noted the dandelions poking up from my lawn. "You gonna use Weed n Seed or Weed n Feed to get rid of those," he asked. I had no idea what he was talking about. But I soon learned that suburban people don't care for dandelions. He leant me his spreader. I conformed.

The dust always comes back and settles on every surface. The chinchillas will throw their turds and bedding around. The toilet and tub'll grow grimy. The snow will fall on the shoveled driveway and sidewalk. Come Summer the grass will grow anew. In Fall the hated leaves will fall all over the place. Undesirable plants and animals will make their presence known. We'll continue our futile battle against the forces of nature. It's what we homo sapiens were put on this Earth to do. What a waste of time life is.

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There was a disaster in Glendale CA this week. Seems a commuter train hurled into an SUV parked on the tracks, derailed and then collided with another train. 11 persons died and 180 were injured, some severely. The local sheriff called it an "outrage" and promised retribution against the culprit, one Juan Manuel Alvarez.

Parking his car on the railroad tracks was his third botched suicide attempt of the day. Earlier he'd slit his wrists and stabbed himself in the chest, all to no avail. I say botched because just before the train demolished his vehicle, he bailed.

He was definately despondent over something or other, probably a girl.

I think most public suicide attempts are bogus. The jumpers hardly ever jump. The Van Halen song Jump was derived from a jumper incident in LA where onlookers were urging the guy to go ahead and jump. More than anything I think it's a pitiful cry for attention. Most real suicides are done alone in the privacy of your own home.

So anyway, getting back to this Alvarez character, the cops are pissed at him. They've charged him with 11 counts of homicide. Turns out that even though the specific killings weren't premeditated, through sheer quantity alone he qualifies for California's version of the death penalty. Which doesn't entail any actual executions. It's not like Texas, Virginia or Florida, where people on death row can realistically expect to have the state cap them in the foreseeable future. In California the appeals process drags out longer than most criminals' lives. Thus an actual execution is quite rare there.

How's that for a supreme irony? The guy sets out to kill himself, fails three times and now he will get the death penalty but never be executed. Ha!

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Just to clarify, I don’t read the CSM, I came across the article as a link from another story, about how more than US$7 billion has been raised from government, non-government organizations (like the Red Cross and the U.N.), and private donors. That comes out to more than $25,000 to the families of each of the 300,000 dead. Or about $10,000 for each of the million people displaced by the tsunami.

Now, there is no monetary amount that can replace a life, a village, or a family member. But for someone living in Indonesia, where the GNP is ~$700, if there was a number $10,000 would have to be awfully close. Unfortunately, these aid groups take their cut, and will insist on giving the rest of it in goods, things like medicine, lumber, and food, instead of cold, hard cash. If they just handed over a was of bills, I’d imagine you could live for a decade, even after buying new furniture, clothes, and maybe a couple sandbags.

In fact, I’ve read in numerous places that various U.N. and private aid workers have asked that people stop donating to the tsunami. They’ve got more than they know what to do with now, and there are thousands of other worthy causes you could donate your money. For example, you can buy me something from my wishlist. Those tsunami victims have money enough to buy everything they need for a lifetime. Not me, though. Because, remember, you don’t need to get hit by a tsunami to need a helping hand sometimes.

And just to end this all on a positive note, here is this feel-good story. Despite all the horror, at least some good has come of all this. Since the tsunami, pirate attacks have all but ended in South seas. So, if you were planning a trip to the region, rest assured that your booty is safe.

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Which is all the more reason to appreciate the few things that do endure. Take Wheel of Fortune. For what seems like forever Pat Sajak and Vanna Whie have sashayed out on the stage, exchanged pleasantries, waved to the crowd and then separated. She struts over to turn letters. She's the world's only pro letter-turner. He greets his guests and jumps right into another round of glorified Hangman. Is there an S? No sorry, no S...

Yes, he's a grown man sentenced to live out his dwindling days playing a silly child's game. Though you wouldn't know their days are numbered by looking at White and Sajak. Gotta think they've signed some secret pact with the devil.

I remember seeing pix of Vanna in her younger days. She posed for Playboy in that demure way naked girls pose there. Hustler it ain't. Maybe that's why it doesn't appear here. People use words like "tasteful" to describe the spreads. But I recall thinking that she looked flawed, unlike the usual models but just like Madonna when she posed. I wanted both of them to put their clothes back on and get back to letter-turning or vamping on MTV.

Then, of course, there is The Simpsons and with it the eternal debate about who's smarter, Bart or Lisa? Sure she's got the book smarts and the appreciation of fine culture but he's got the street smarts and appreciation of armpit farts. You can probably guess where I come down on this issue. Then there's Homer, who only gets away with his politically incorrect shtick cuz he's a cartoon. The whole family is frozen in time along with their neighbors and friends in Springfield. Somewhere on this site there's a post entitled There's No Body Like Homer Simpson, and I'd have to agree. Anyone else would have been dead after one grueling season of harrowing accidents, swigging Duff Beer and gorging on donuts. Mmmm, donuts. D'oh!

Another constant in my life is the Geese Police. See, my office complex features several man-made lakes and waterfalls. Flocks of Canadian geese have realized that it's a huge waste of time to fly back and forth to Canada every year. So they've taken up permanent residence there. They waddle into traffic and shit all over everything. The bloom is long off the rose as far as we're concerned. We want them back in Canada like we want Avril Lavigne back in Canada. So they hired these stern-looking ladies to chase the geese around and make their lives miserable so they will leave. They employ a variety of tactics, all to no avail. The geese remain and multiply, oblivious to the Geese Police.

Lastly there are zits. Now I am 45 years old. I shouldn't be grappling with the pop or don't pop dilemma anymore. I shouldn't be eying my 14 year old son's zit remedy, but I am. I shouldn't be cleaning the popped zit residue off my bathroom mirror, but I am. Such is life, I guess.

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A couple long stints of unemployment changed all that, and I’d feel safe to say it is time for a new label. I’m nearing thirty, so young isn’t entirely accurate anymore. Neither is gay. And as we are seriously considering a move out to the ‘burbs soon, urban is exactly accurate either (if you even consider Queens to be urban in the first place).

I haven’t been looking for a new label for myself, but one was given to me, just yesterday: “daddie.”

Little Franny has been making noises for months now. I say noises instead of talking, because the sounds she has been making are hardly human. If anything, the high pitch squeaks she’s been making since September sound like a dolphin or a modem. It has only been the last month or so that the squealing has been replaced with vowels and consonants.

She started, like most babies, with “da.” I never got excited about it before because the “dada” would be followed by “dadadadadadadadada *modem connecting* thbbbt!.” She wasn’t saying “dad” just making sounds.

Possibly on Monday, but then again yesterday for sure, she looked at me and said “dada.” The wife wasn’t too happy (“I spend all day with her, and she says daddy first?!”), but it sure made my day. I don’t think I’ve been prouder in my life. There has been no recognition, not a graduation, new job, awards, or anything that has meant more than those two little syllables from that tiny toothless mouth.

So, for anyone keeping score, please cross out “yuppie” next to my name, and write in “daddie.”

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In my case there are also a few genuine friends, people with whom I've spent time outside of work in recent times. One of whom is having a real tough time of it. She's this bubbly, perky ex-cheerleader. She wed her high school sweetheart and they have 1 kid. They live this incredibly affluent lifestyle with a Porsche, a BMW, Gucci stuff for the daughter, a fancy house and frequent dinners at finer restaurants. They drive their RV to racetracks where her husband races. Then, out of the blue, he announces that it's over. There's no single incident, no third party trollop according to him. So she's a soon-to-be single mom facing the prospect of a nasty divorce replete with the hassles of dividing up property and custody issues.

She isn't taking it well. She has started dragging herself into work, but mostly she just mutters in a monotone or sobs and sighs. At first she wouldn't tell anyone what the deal was, but eventually she confided.

I thought if we got away from our busybody office, I could gain some insight and maybe offer some advice or help. I asked her if she wanted to go to lunch on me. She just whimpers, "I'm not very good company these days." So much for that bright idea.

She's taking some kind of anti-anxiety med that further blunts her once-cheery affect. She snoozed through a meeting the other day. If this keeps up her career too will be in jeopardy. I'm at a loss as to what to do about her. So I've taken to ignoring her. I feel bad, but sometimes you're just at a loss. In real life, there's no script.

But I'm pretty sure I don't buy the hubby's story. Though she's put on a few lbs like most folks her age, she's still quite attractive and fun to be around. She supports his expensive car-racing hobby. She lets him go to strip clubs and sometimes goes with him. Perhaps more importantly, he stands to lose a bundle on this midlife crisis, if that's what it indeed is. What do you think? (I happen to know there's 36 of you onsite. Don't be shy, throw caution to the wind...)

He's a nice enough guy, real hard-working and earnest. She is a bit of a neat/control freak. She alphabetizes her spice rack. She makes the bed so tightly he feels like a burrito. She considers him a "messy sleeper." So...

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That is why Giant is waging a mad campaign to get rid of them. First they put in these confounding self-checkout lines. Longtime customers are going to develop carpal tunnel syndrome from all that twisting wrist motion that scanning entails. Maybe that is why the self-checkout lines are almost always deserted while the manned ones have lines that snake all the way back to the dairy case.

They’ve also offered Peapod, which is a delivery option that is ridiculously cheap. For a mere $6 they will bring your groceries to your home and even haul the bags inside for you. You can place your order online. There is no way they are making money on this deal, especially when you consider that the delivery boy is union too. No, it’s all about unloading those high-priced cashiers.

Now grocery shopping is the one chore I refuse to do. The closest I’ll come is restocking my wine rack at Total Wine. So the onus falls on my wife. And she hates shopping for clothes or household items let alone the drudgery of grocery shopping. So for her, Peapod is a godsend.

Of course there are pratfalls. When you go to order fruit, they list the price per pound. Then it prompts you to select the quantity you want. Naturally one assumes it means the number of pounds. But it actually means pieces of fruit.

That is how it came to be that I arrived home from work to find a pear sitting on the counter, ripening. Not an au pair sitting on the counter ripening, mind you, but a pear. One lonesome Bartlett! I’m like, why would anyone buy a single pear? That’s not even enough for fruit salad or a still life painting.

So yeah it was a bit of a letdown that the final phase of our transition to total hermit-hood didn’t go off without a hitch. But it was nothing like the $69 absinthe debacle. You can buy this awful-tasting, greenish liquid all over the net. It’s supposed to be real potent alcohol with a wormwood psychoactive property mixed in. For $69 you get like two pints. There’s an elaborate ritual to prepare it. Then you sit, and wait. It’s reminiscent of times in your youth when you’ve taken a little something and you’re waiting to get off. But with absinthe nothing happens---at least not here at the hermitage. And with the ultra-high alcohol content, I was afraid to resume the usual Merlot-guzzling. Bah.

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So, goodbye. And thanks for shitting on me and everyone who has ever, is currently, or might ever, be a part of the Bad Sam community. Have a nice life.

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But the Okies of the early 30s didn’t know they were grappling with any Depression, Great or otherwise. They just knew there was a prolonged drought that gave rise to the dustbowl and that jobs seemed to dry up overnight. So they did what any reasonable person without a welfare safety net and thus at imminent risk for starving to death would do: Packed up their belongings in Beverly Hillbillies-like trucks and set out to find work.

It’s the same deal now, only we don’t know it yet. Consider the parallels. The Nineties was a blessed decade marked by unprecedented economic growth and technological innovation. Remember the dot-com bubble and the so-called New Economy? How about “budget surpluses?” Or our suave president who could actually string together a coherent sentence or two, and got noisy blowjobs while conducting national business to boot? The Simpsons debuted. There was great music from the likes of the Meat Puppets, Spin Doctors and gin blossoms. Nobody saved any money but that was okay since we always had Social Security and Medicare to fall back on. ATMs were invented. We had the OJ Trial to entertain us. Ellen DeGeneres came out as a lesbian and paraded around with kooky Anne Heche. The lecherous president beamed as they smooched at White House soirees. It was a hoot. Oh sure, there were nerds nagging us about the Y2k boondoggle or global warming or cooling or terrorism or whatever; but nobody ever listens to nerds.

For me the only fly in the ointment was that Coach Joe Gibbs retired in 1992. My beloved Redskins promptly spiraled into a sharp decline.

When I say the Nineties I mean January 20, 1992, when Clinton was inaugurated through September 10, 2001. Then came the tragedy and everything wilted. The stock market plummeted. We find ourselves in a perpetual state of warfare. We have terrorism threat matrixes. We have Amber Alerts. We see naked human pyramids. We’re told that Social Security and Medicare are kaput.

Quality music is non-existent. Huge, corrupt corporations collapse overnight. People lose their life savings to these swindlers and yet nobody is seemingly to blame. There are a string of highly celebrated murders (Phil Spector, Robert Blake, Chandra Levy and the list goes on) and yet again, nobody is culpable. Pricey i-Pods were invented so you could download all those useless songs. My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss debuted. Sultry Portia del Rio moves in with The Tongue, demoralizing men the world over. What’s more, the internet never lived up to its promise. It’s a vast wasteland strewn with lethal viruses and 8,000,000 websites devoted to gambling, porn, 4 hour erections and scams. It just sucks. It sucks so bad that 5 years in, this damn decade doesn’t even have a name let alone a nickname like the Roaring Twenties.

Coach Joe is back but the Redskins still blow. So we might as well name the damn decade before it fizzles out.

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I've never tried to shelter Ian from stuff that a lot of parents do. You know, violence, graphic sexual imagery and such. He was born in 1990 the same year the internet appeared. So I figured he'd be exposed to it all anyway. Plus I want to be there to explain the difference between reality and fantasy. When he was 4 we took him to see Jurassic Park. He goes, "I'm not afraid of those 'rassic park monsters. They're just pictures."

Now we have the digital cable and of course there's some pretty graphic stuff on there. The smut falls into 3 main categories: 1 Hardcore stuff in the 500's that you have to pay for and it appears on your bill. Not happening here, trust me. 2 Softer core stuff that my son discovered while flipping through the channels early one morn. I haven't really seen that either, though I have caught glimpes. As MG pointed out, family life and this sort of imagery just doesn't mix real well. At least here it wouldn't. 3 Regular cheesy Showtime movies with sexual themes.

We do watch these from time to time. One had a minor Baldwin brother in it. Three guys plot to kidnap a glamorous Hollywood star and force her to have wild sex on the web for money. It works with much dough rolling in as the Baldwin does this busty blonde chick in a variety of zesty positions. The boy, who is 13 and has hormones a-coursing through his veins but also has this offbeat sense of propriety, felt it was overdone. He thought the plot could have been advanced without it being so long and detailed.

I was just thinking my wife would appear at any minute and think we were watching real porn. I'd have to explain that we sat through an hour of exposition before a thread of clothing came off. And that the banging of the glamour queen was essential to the plot. She is ok with nudity and sex in movies so long as it isn't gratuitous, like when they show a chick taking a shower but she doesn't get stabbed or bludgeoned to death between shampoo and conditioner.

The chick in the movie, truth be told, wasn't real hot or well-known. Supposedly she agreed to the plot (which she was in on from the start, unbeknownst to two of the plotters) because she thought it might boost her flagging career. So any well-known but aging (29) actress couldn't be in it for obvious reasons. They'd all say, "Oh she's trying to boost her flagging career by being in a porno within a real movie about an actress who's trying to boost her flagging career by..." And so on, sort of like that picture on that Pink Floyd album where the band is sitting in a room and on the wall hangs a picture of them sitting in the same room but slightly different and in that picture they are sitting in the same room... I guess you had to be there on acid to really understand that picture.

Watching a silly movie like that makes me wonder why they make them. Everyone knows why hardcore porn is such a hit: Guys like to sit around and whack off to DVD porn. Some gals do too, though I'd be suspect of any one that was really into it. Thus the porn industry actually outsells the mainstream movie industry when you count all avenues of sales. But both the softcore version, with no genitalia or money shots, and the regular movies with sex scenes are no good for that purpose. And it's not like anyone watches for the quality of the drama, dialogue or plot lines. It just seems like one more odd piece of detritus strewn about these aimless times.

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Besides, it seems like I might have run through the list of people you’d never expect to see naked, but who actually have naked pictures of them floating around the inter-nets.

A while back someone suggested I start up a segment on the site called “I always though I’d see you naked” to compliment the “Never Naked” feature. That was more than 2 years ago. I don’t remember if I thought it was a funny idea at the time, but I do know I’ve never thought of it since. It only came back into my consciousness at all when the post with that particular comment showed up in the “On this day” widget. It just so happened that Anna making reference to how much he despised Lindsay Lohan.

The confluence of events here was just too overwhelming for me to ignore. Which means you’ve just read through the long-winded introduction to Bad Samaritan’s I always though I’d see you naked.

Lindsay Lohan has the honor of being the first on the list for always naked. Why? If anyone was to make a list of people everyone is expecting to see naked at some point, it’d have to be the young Miss Lohan. Considering all the nip slip pictures of Lindsay Lohan out there on the net, this girl seems to be looking for any excuse to flash her mams.

Once Lohan pries control of her life back from the cold-dead grasp of Walt Disney, she will certainly be looking for ways of distinguishing her “adult” self from her “Mouseketeer” self. Look at Natalie Portman, another child star, who decided to announce her blossom into womanhood with some full-frontal nudity in Closer (in a scene that was cut before final edit of the movie).

Lohan was a 17 year-old dating 24 year-old Wilder Valderama (Fez, from That 70s Show. Even with all that Latin machismo, Fez wasn’t enough for her, and after dumping his ass, she was said to have hooked up with Hollywood’s biggest man-whore, Colin Farrell. While Lohan may play the good girl on the screen, but she is mos def a bad girl inside.

You’ll most assuredly never win an Oscar, so hopefully you can take pride in the knowledge, Lindsay Lohan, that I always thought I’d see you naked.

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It's a strange and lonely time when you come home from college for the summer. Lots of people stay at their schools, some have left town permanently and those who stayed behind have got their own thing going on. You aren't a part of the scene. Bored, I decided to get a haircut. Right off the bat I sensed something was amiss. The stylist was way too chatty, almost flirty. She kept rubbing up against me and fussing over every strand of hair.

She wasn't much to look at but friendly or so it seemed. And I was a sucker for friendly. We wound up dating for a few months. The relationship never went well because I liked her little sister better. I'd tell the sister that she could do better than her shiftless loser of a boyfriend. That would piss stalker chick off. So we broke it off. End of story.

Not. My college roommate Roger had a girlfriend who remained local. She would come to visit and he'd throw his college girlfriend out. Before long, stalker chick had suddenly made friends with his gal and started accompanying her on these visits. This seemed odd as they never knew each other before. We hooked up once during that time. Before I knew it she'd moved 300 miles and moved into the apartment upstairs, which was occupied by my other roommate's sometime girlfriend. It was a topsy-turvy time. Stalker chick claimed to be pregnant and had everyone driving her to medical appointments and tests and everything. But her belly never swelled and eventually she went into this whole drama queen thing about losing the imaginary baby to miscarriage.

After school she continued to pop up. Always with some bizarre scenario that required my immediate intervention. She had this way of interlacing a hook into the tall tale that would be something I wanted out of the deal. It always wound up real convoluted, fruitless but somehow credible. She was being abused by her husband and had self-inflicted bruises to prove it. Some complicated deal involving the imaginary band she supposedly sang for was conspiring against her and so forth. She'd play one party off against another but the end result was always the same: you'd wind up dealing with her for days on end. During which she'd try her damndest to seduce me. After the faux pregnancy scare I never fell for that again but that didn't deter her from trying.

Whenever I'd get a girlfriend she'd ingratiate herself with them and then proceed to poison the relationship if she could. Some of the gals saw through it but others did not. She'd have her mother contact me and tell me all about her woes, all of which were somehow my fault. If I'd just see that she really loved me, everything would be fine in her troubled life.

We dated for a total of 4 months. I dealt with her for at least 6 years hence. Has anyone else ever experienced something like this?

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We were talking last night about how much of a positive impact quitting the partying lifestyle has had on our lives. We both have more money in the bank due to the lack of drunken shopping sprees, we both have been back in the gym working out for the past week or so, we are much kinder and more loving to one another, and we’ve bought ourselves a freaking house. A house! Holy shit, if you’ve never bought a house then prepare yourself to go through some of the most anxious and stressful moments of your life, to date. The lender pores through your credit history and keeps you guessing if the “numbers will work out right” or not. The realtor assures you that they are working for both you and the seller but you just can’t shake the feeling that they’re having dinner together and laughing behind your back at how gullible you are. This whole process is somewhat of a nightmare but once it’s over, Amy and I will own our first home. It’s nothing too fancy but we fell in love with it as soon as we saw it. It has two bedrooms, two baths, a wrap around deck on the front, a small deck off the master bedroom upstairs, it’s an A frame that looks like a ski chalet, and it’s two minutes from the Shenandoah river. I think it’s going to be a perfect first house for us. There are a few upgrades I want to do like a two car garage with an area for a work bench, central air and heating but it’s livable the way it is. We close on Feb. 25th if the inspection goes well and the house appraises for the amount we offered. Everything feels right about the move but it’s still a large investment for us and we both have moments of sheer panic. We’ll survive though. This is the next logical step, right? You can’t throw away your money renting forever if you can afford to call something your own, can you? Well, whether it’s the correct move or not, we’re approved for the loan, have signed a contract with the seller and can’t back out now unless there is something wrong with the house. It’s surprising but that makes it a little easier knowing that you’re locked in. This weekend will be spent throwing away anything I haven’t seen, worn, touched, or looked for in the last two years. That should clear out a bunch of crap. I hate moving and want this to go as smoothly as possible. I considered hiring someone to do it but we really don’t have enough stuff for me to justify it. Oh well, we’ll see.

Another thing, is it just me or does Quiznos have the worst freaking commercials ever? The last one was with two rodents (that’s what they looked like to me) singing about how we should all eat Quiznos subs and that they have a damned pepper bar. Now, they have this baby with an adult male voice selling their crap. Talking babies just aren’t funny. They never have been and they never will be. “Look Who’s Talking” both I & Too should have discouraged anyone, from that point forward, in employing this tactic for comedy. It just doesn’t work. Quiznos, please fire your marketing team/company, talk to ESPN’s marketing team/company, and get some decent commercials. Yours make me want to vomit. Also, using animals that look like roadkill to sell food is never a good idea. The negative mental image stays with you. Thank you.

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By the time they get to #1, it’s always a colossal letdown. The worst #1, for instance, was allegedly the harmless diversion called The Macarena. And then they start showing The Surreal Life reruns featuring someone known as Flava Flave sporting this weird Viking sort of hat; or else the 25 Most Awesomely Oversexed Celebrities. That is my cue to start cleaning the house. But I leave the TV on for background noise. As I vacuum and dust, commentators prattle on about this breakup or that cheating incident. I pay little attention; though on one occasion I went running to the set, only to have them cut to commercials. Bah! I will explain myself in due time, trust me.

Now I’ve made it clear how deeply I deplore celebrity worship. Julia Roberts’ twins aren’t the goddamn Babies of the Year as People recently proclaimed. Hollywood is like this zoo full of mollycoddled animals that prance, preen and do that fluttery wave thing resplendent in their wear-and-burn Vera Wang finery. If we diverted half the resources devoted to tracking mummers’ every move, we could set Southeast Asia right overnight. Just the resources devoted to Lindsey Lohan’s seemingly inflatable chest could spruce Sri Lanka right up. So no, I don’t care a whit about celebrities’ sexual shenanigans. That is, except for one: Ethan Hawke leaving his wife Uma Thurman, the ethereal 6 foot goddess of Pulp Fiction fame. My reason is entirely selfish. You see, when this all went down, I had a post centered about what manner of vixen might lure Mr. Hawke away from the still-svelte mother o’ his children. Her name is Jen Perzow, described in numerous print articles as a leggy 22 year old Canadian model. The post never materialized for lack of a link. It was one of those ones that just cried out for a visual. Onto the post scrapheap it went.

Even though everybody and their stepsister has a website featuring pictures of them in various stages of undress, a Google image search turned up nothing. Zero matches! I even scoured Canadian model sites. This chick is supposedly a model, and yet no pix?! How could that be in this imagery-dominated day and age? Who does she think she is, a latter day Greta Garbo? Periodically since then, I have rerun the search---more out of idle curiosity than anything else--- and never turned up squat. Then this lone image appeared as if by magic. Since it lacks context, there is no way to know if it really is the elusive Ms. Perzow or not.

But as far as I am concerned, my search is over, finito. This is her. And come to think of it, she does look kind of Garbo-esque. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

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It's the sorry-ass competition, stupid. Take JFK for example. You remember him, the smooth-talking cad who brought the world to the brink of destruction in a game of nuclear chicken, hung those Cuban exiles up like human pinatas for Castro to belt, got us entangled in Nam and dreamed up the money-draining boondoggle that is the space program. For which we have to show what? Tang, moon rocks, a couple blown up shuttles, Mars rovers gone astray and the ISS overhead. The only reason history gives him a pass is cuz he got capped by the mob or CIA or both.

He was succeeded by Lyndon Johnson. He escalated the senseless war, saddled us with expensive social programs and didn't even run for a second term. After him came Nixon, who brought the US military its first bitter taste of defeat. He was a foul-mouthed, paranoid drunk and a creep to boot. He resigned in disgrace.

Next came Ford, a nice enough chap but a bumbling oaf and a lifelong legislator. Charisma wasn't his strong suit either. He never won a national election. Then there was Carter, an eeily calm peanut farmer from Georgia. He brought us double-digit inflation and got our hostages snatched in Iran. He botched their attempted rescue. After Reagan kicked his ass, like do-gooder Jesse Jackson, he flitted around the world mediating things. That's annoying.

After Reagan you had Bush I, an absolute charisma vacuum. He'd walk in a room and promptly suck all errant charisma out of it. He left Saddam in power. He tooled around mindlessly on his speedboat. Like John Kerry, he sought to offset his patrician air by tapping a boyish senator as running mate. It didn't work. He got trounced by Clinton after 4 forgettably prudent years in office.

Now Clinton exuded charisma galore. But he was a blatant skirt-chaser, dug fat chicks and by some accounts was a rapist and murderer. He and his shrew of a wife were two of the most divisive figures ever to come down the pike. That's why he got impeached. Not for his failure to deal with the Osama menace, opting instead to launch a bloodless war against Slobo Dan.

Lastly there's Bush II, with his boyish smirk, false bravado and stumbling speech. And talk about divisive figures! And it's not like voters ever had much choice. You had Fritz "The Cat" Mondale, Kerry and Michael Do Cock Kiss looking like they'd been wheeled out of the morgue and Libby Dole's worst nightmare, a Viagra-crazed Bob Dole.

Reagan is starting to sound better and better, no? And I think there's a parallel in the UK, with Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher.

Bedtime for Bonzo, anyone?

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---

And the train conductor, eyes closed like a prophet from up high, said “The W stops running at 9 o’clock.” I listened, trying to comprehend exactly what such a statement might mean, and how that meaning might effect me.

She repeated, eyes still shut tightly, but somehow staring directly at me, “The W stops running at 9 o’clock." Still not consciously knowing what this might mean to me, my body decided I should board this “R” train and made my limbs carry me aboard.

Now, having departed the “R” train only one stop later at 34 street, and waiting for the next “N” or “W” to take me home, I contemplate the strange path my life has taken.

Two years ago, sitting and waiting for the subway to take me home, drunker than I should be with a 9 am presentation the next morning, would not have seemed so strange.

But I’m a husband now. I’m someone’s father now.

---

That was all I got before the next train came along. I wanted to continue writing, but instead just sat and appreciated the feeling when the way the drink makes the world start to move on its own syncs up with the sway of the train to counteract each, and in stead of doubling the motion (or perception of it), the world just seems to stop completely.

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The quiet also makes it hard to sleep. Babies take a while to understand the difference between night and day, so they don’t really appreciate the unwritten rule that people who live together have of not screaming their heads off at 4:30 in the morning. As previously mentioned, I hadn’t been getting particularly good sleep before the holidays. I didn’t get particularly good sleep during the holidays. I don’t like silence, and I also don’t really like being away from home all that much, and I always find sleeping on the road to be a particularly difficult task. That was the only reason I didn’t go on tour with Van Halen when they asked me back in ’84.

Now that I’m home, you’d think I’d be able to sleep again, but no. I can’t sleep if it is quiet. (Looking back on this post, I have a lot of problems) Without the impending threat of someone waking up crying in the middle of the night to encourage me to fall asleep early so at least I can get some sleep, I have trouble falling asleep in the first place.

What is worse than the quiet, at least in terms of sleeping, is that the bed is too big. Without someone to push me way over onto the edge of the mattress so I’m almost falling off, I can actually stretch out and sleep in a comfortable position. Who wants that? And, how can I sleep with all those covers to myself? It just gets too hot. And how does anyone possibly manage to fall asleep without someone’s head resting heavily on their shoulder?

My wife and daughter will be back in town on Sunday. My ears can’t wait. The rest of me either.

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The latest hit movie: Directed by noted shlock-merchant so-and-so, this clunker stars an ensemble case of nobodies. They were all desperate for a paycheck. Yet the New York Times raves, “Side-effects of this movie may include coma, anal leakage and an urge to commit suicide. Patrons are urged to consult with their doctors before viewing this.” Siskel woke up long enough to give it a resounding thumbs-down. Rent Gigli or Glitter instead.

Budweiser beer: This swill tastes like one of those Clydesdale horses pissed down your throat.

And on the next exciting episode of Desperate Housewives or Lost: Nothing much happens. But hey, we sure sucked y’all in with those action-packed debut episodes, didn’t we?

The NFL playoffs: Not much drama is expected. Due to the seeding system, home teams will always be favored and will likely win handily. Catch the highlights on ESPN.

Cars: (spoken slowly, not like an auctioneer on meth) Additional terms and restrictions apply. Actual cost will be much higher than MSRP. Not all buyers will qualify for preferred financing. In fact, only those who don’t need financing will.

Best Buy: Come on in for great values on all the complicated, useless electronic gizmos everyone else passed up. The inscrutable directions are in six languages, but not English, so they’ll wind up in a drawer with the portable TV that doesn’t pick up any stations and the portable CD player that skips. Great for regifting next year. Give one to your boss or somebody else you hate.

Great fun for the kids: Boring for you.

Taco Bell: This fart-inducing food is to authentic Mexican cuisine as the Monkees or Archies were to late 60s rock and roll, what Kris Kross and Vanilla Ice ever were to rap.

Hair Cuttery: You really do get what you pay for. If you don’t mind looking like a randomly selected Three Stooge, you can get a decent haircut for $13. Sure you can.

Lotto: Why not just throw your money down a rathole? Or else give it to someone living al fresco. After all, nobody you know ever wins these things. Do they?

The Army: Join the Army. Go die in Iraq. The Iraqis will be forever grateful. Or not.

Victoria’s Secret: Wear these undies and imagine yourself looking like the impossibly thin heroin addicts who appear in this ad. Dream on.

I could go on and on but I sense that I am boring y’all to tears. But try it for yourself, it’s easy. And fun. Really!

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I seem to attract the innocent, the naive, the untested and the untried -- or if not the un-, then the next closest thing to it. In my past, there have been two virgins, at least three other virgins who requested my aid (as it were), and several boys whose experienced has been limited to one or maybe two other girls.

Apparently, I seem nonthreatening or something.

Granted, I'll admit I'm open-minded, easy-going, difficult to flap in the bedroom, and so am probably a good choice for teacher, but in all honesty? I'm not very interested in being a teacher. I barely have the patience to teach an experienced boy what it is I like and what gets me going. I find it tiresome to explain to boys over and over again, "no no, it's okay, you can bite me harder, you can scratch me, you can fuck me harder." I'm not good at the spoken word in the bedroom, and I seem to have difficulty finding the boys that read the body language.

This is where we move on to one of the boys I've been sorta seeing for awhile. I met him ages ago, he struck me as an over-eager little puppy dog, so we kinda went different ways for awhile, and now we're back in touch. I'm finding myself more attracted to him than I was before, but still... not totally convinced as to how attracted I am. In reality, if I have to put this much thought into it, I don't think I'm that attracted, but it's usually a slower-build for me anyhow.

Anyways, I'd been getting an overall innocent vibe off of this guy (who happens to be 4 years my senior), so I finally caved the other day and asked him how old he was his first time. His first time was at my current age. I did some math later on -- and said it to him -- that I've been having sex for over twice as long as he has. I don't necessarily consider this a badge of honour, but...

He showed me his place the other day for the first time. I was checking out the DVD collection that he had in his bedroom, and happened to spot a few porn titles -- likely soft-core at worst (one of 'em was a playboy tape). I started harrassing him about this all day, just teasing him and whatnot, threatening to tell his folks when I met them a half-hour later and so on, and this poor boy was actually half-embarrassed about it. Apparently he's never looked too closely at the counter in my bathroom, where I happen to have a waterproof vibrator half-hidden.

I finally gave him the link to the Whore's Boudoir, and we'll see how he does with that. He asked me (after some minor prodding) the other day what the craziest thing I'd ever done was -- I told him he'd better start with a more tame question. He claims that he's fairly open-minded and so on, and I'm sure he is, but really... he's an innocent.

So, I'm frustrated. It seems as though the boys that I'd like to meet -- the ones that have a few miles on them, who are open-minded and better-yet, experienced and interested in the ways that I'd like 'em to be -- are either only interested in flings, which I'm not, or are not attracted to me, or too arrogant or something... I don't know. I'm starting to give up on this whole meeting boys thing -- either that, or it's time to find either a nice boy, or one who meets my sexual needs. The problem is, given my past history and knowledge of myself, I know that if I wind up with an unsatisfying nice boy, I'm going to be straying.

Where is my kinky, experienced, monogamous nice boy?!

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If I’m supposed to believe that there is a loving God, what possible reason would he* have for killing 150,000 people? I’m willing to accept that if there is a god his intelligence is so far different than my own that explaining his reasoning for this would equivalent to someone trying to explain to me the success of Charlie Sheen’s career.

But, even with that in mind I can’t understand why a loving, parental god would kill his children. It doesn’t even matter that I’m a new father myself, because I’m pretty sure a year ago I wouldn’t have been able to think of a lesson important enough to teach one of my children that I’d have to kill another child. Sending them on a “time out” or “straight to bed without desert” makes sense as a punishment, but it is safe to say that drowning will never be part of my parental tool-kit.

Maybe your god is a vengeful, Old Testament sort of a God, rather than that wishy-washy, blue state, New Testament Jesus. In that case, why would anyone but a Gwar fan want to worship such a god? You’d have to live your life constantly in fear. “Am I praying enough?”, “Should I be tithing 10% before or after taxes?”, “Have I sacrificed enough young goats this month?”, etc.

With a god like an alcoholic parent, you’d never know when the hammer was going to fall, and god was going to come along and burn you with a cigarette butt or submerge you and your entire village under 100 feet of water. Loving someone who may, for no apparent reason, go off and start wailing on you like Ike Turner is the stuff of a Lifetime movie, not the foundation for a religion.

Another situation would be an ambivalent god. Now, this is a god I understand. If you were an omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient and a host of omni-other thinged being, what interest would my life hold for you? You could be watching Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry, and Franz Liszt jamming in heaven. You could be hanging out in every Sorority shower in the entire universe, at once. You could have time to watch all the shows you’ve Tivoed. Why would you take any sort of a personal involvement in my life?

An ambivalent god makes sense in me. But like I’ve always said about pretty girls, if they don’t want nothing to do with me, I don’t want nothing to do with them.

I’m guessing there aren’t a lot of religious people who read this site, but are there any out there among you who can come up with some sort of an explanation why your god would want to kill 130,000 people and injury hundreds of thousands more? I’d really like to know how you can reconcile such horror with a god you’d want to serve.

* I would be politically correct and say “she/he” but seriously, if there is a god, how could it not be a man?

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But I’ll admit that trying to get into the habit of writing more often is one of my New Year’s resolutions. That resolution didn't do so hot last year (like my resolution to make more money, get taller, and win 74 days in a row on Jeopardy), but I'll try.

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Mostly trains ran on time just as under Mussolini. Oil flowed as freely as semen in a pre-AIDS whorehouse. For the government could easily circumvent sanctions through the UN's corrupt oil-for-Saddam's whores and toadies program. Electricity and running water were plentiful. Life was good for everyone except said rabble-rousers and they were dead and thus didn't care.

In that respect they're a lot like you 'n me. Chances are you have precious few dealings with the government, aside from paying taxes and maybe voting. I don't receive any government assistance. I am not in the running for any grants. I don't do crimes anymore so I don't deal with law enforcement. It's just this huge amorphous blob that is out there doing something or other that I don't care about. Not only is it irrelevent to me but I expect nothing from it and that's exactly what I receive.

Now that could change overnight were a marrauding army of invaders to come storming into my 'hood with tanks a-rumbling, guns a-blazing, guards a- PFC Lynndie Englanding and soldiers kicking in doors willy-nilly. When they started hauling my neighbors off to God knows where, I'd fully expect my government to step up and respond forcibly. I'd expect the US military to repel the invading forces. It wouldn't matter to me if they told me their way was better than George W Bush's regime because I never cared about it in the first place.

(It is worth noting here that today W announced his plans for permanently housing suspected terrorists that he doesn't have the goods on to charge, but are deemed too dangerous to every release. Yes, permanently, as in forever!)

But what if they failed? What if our troops were too weak to protect me and my family? You can rest assured I'd take up arms and fight them to the death with whatever means I could muster, including car bombs, booby traps, sabotage, germs and poison. Not by holding elections because in my experience that has never changed anything. Pesidents come and they go, but everything remains the same.

Hence the so-called "insurgency" in Iraq. These people are doing what anyone in their right mind would do under the circumstances. Just imagine if the roles were reversed and it was you that had been invaded.

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You're also saddled with your own set of physical attributes. You might have a large forehead or a unibrow. You might stutter or have an annoing facial tic. You might have an elongated nose like a ferret. You might have a tight pussy or massive dick. But it might now work right. You could have honey blonde hair that is frizzy or lacks body or luster. Maybe your breath stinks.

So the whole package is there for others to evaluate. In large measure this will in turn determine your level of success in the major arenas of life, such as earning money, having meaningful relationships with friends, self-realization and sex frequency/quality. Again, there isn't much you can do, aside from emphasizing the positive traits you possess and downplaying the bad ones.

Yet there is a huge industry centered around self-improvement. Use this technique or that and you will presto-chango become this highly successful human that glides through life with the greatest of ease. Yes, the world will be your oyster. This, of course, is pure unmitigated bullshit. You are who you are, for better or for worse. With any luck at all, you've found someone who can tolerate you with all your faults without deciding to Lorena Bobbitt or OJ you in your sleep.

The best story to come out in recent times was the one where this Chicago woman got raped. In the course of which she had occasion to gnaw off the man's dick. He's all whining at the ER about his misfortune, which he brought on himself. Cops arrested him and the newly minted eunuch will spend the rest of his miserable life behind bars, being passed around like a joint by his fellow inmates. Ha!

It's best to heed this sage advice from Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu: "Always we hope someone else has the answer. Some other time, it will all turn out. This is it: No one else has the answer. No other place will be better. And it has already turned out. At the center of your being you have the answer. Search your heart and see the way to do is to be."

Happy New Year, y'all.

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